Esoteric Significance of Love
There is nothing more beautiful than Love. The greatest commandment given to Humanity is Love. The purpose of our existence is to incarnate love. But, since the dawn of 21st century, we have reduced the word Love into something very cheap, something shallow and something mundane. It is today something that is easily found, easily cultivated, almost every supposedly spiritual people are brimming with divine love and radiating it all the time. This is no exaggeration, this has been the attitude of many spiritually inclined people. Something which ancient yogis, saviors, saints found through great suffering, ordeal and sacrifice is already possessed by the people of our time without any effort.
Many people believe they are full of love. They don’t see their own contradictions. They don’t perceive the facts of their own existence. They claim to have divine love, but at the same time in their daily life they are sad, lonely, bored, frustrated and afraid. They claim to have love and yet trying to compete with their neighbor everyday. They claim to have love, yet they separate themselves from others based on their religion. They claim to have love, yet jealous of someone more successful and happy than themselves. They don’t see the simple fact, all this indicates one has no Love.
These days we have infinite capacity to speak about love all day. The Prolific broadcasters of Love are many. They are speaking about it all the time as if it were a thing one can buy in the market or something to be cultivated. But, esoterically speaking, all this is not Love.
"Love, for many people, for the majority indeed, is not really love but a mixture of the desire to love and the desire to be loved, plus a willingness to do anything to show and evoke this sentiment, and consequently to be more comfortable in one’s own interior life. The selfishness of the people who are desirous of being unselfish is great. So many contributing sentiments gather around the sentiment or desire to show those amiable and pleasant characteristics which will evoke a corresponding reciprocation towards the would-be lover or server who is still completely surrounded by the glamor of sentiment."
Esoterically, love is not something easily found. Great ones have sacrificed their lives and have still not found it. Some who did find were persecuted and crucified. In the esoteric teachings Love is something profound, it is not goody goodiness. Love is something that frees one from all sorrow. But at the same time Love can not be cultivated. Why? The reason is simple. One can only cultivate something which one doesn’t have. If one cultivates apples, that means one doesn’t have apples. So one cultivates love because one doesn’t have it in one’s heart. One who has love in their heart doesn’t have to cultivate it, it is already there. So, as long as one cultivates any virtue it signifies one doesn’t have that virtue in them. But, can one find love through cultivation? One can cultivate a habit, which is a pattern, a programming in the brain. Anything that is cultivated is like a rule, a program, something mechanical. Cultivation also implies process, repetition. But, something that is repeated belongs to the world of matter. It is limited and therefore conditioned. Love however is something that is unconditioned. Something that is unconditioned can not be cultivated through a mechanical conditioned process.
Just like Love, virtues can not be cultivated either. But, since we live mundane mechanical lives, we can’t see anything beyond it. A mind that has never experienced intuition, which has never experienced anything beyond the known tries to solve the problems of existence using the tools of the known. But, for love or virtue to come into being, a higher power is needed. Something beyond the mind. Cultivation of virtues, of love inevitably fails because it is within the limits of the mind. It can not go beyond. It is limited and confined by various mechanical laws of the mind and of thought. And when this mind cultivates Love, then love becomes mechanical and ceases to be love. With observation this matter is very simple and easy to see.
"Love is not to be cultivated. Love cannot be divided into divine and physical; it is only love -not that you love many or the one. That again is an absurd question to ask:"Do you love all?" You know, a flower that has perfume is not concerned who comes to smell it, or who turns his back upon it. So is love. Love is not a memory. Love is not a thing of the mind or the intellect. But it comes into being naturally as compassion, when this whole problem of existence as fear, greed, envy, despair and hope has been understood and resolved. An ambitious man cannot love. A man who is attached to his family has no love. Nor has jealousy anything to do with love. When you say, "I love my wife," you really do not mean it, because the next moment you are jealous of her. Love implies great freedom -not to do what you like. But love comes only when the mind is very quiet, disinterested, not self-centered. These are not ideals. If you have no love, do what you will go after all the gods on earth, do all the social activities, try to reform the poor, the politics, write books, write poems -you are a dead human being. And without love your problems will increase, multiply endlessly. And with love, do what you will, there is no risk; there is no conflict. Then love is the essence of virtue. And a mind that is not in a state of love is not a religious mind at all. And it is only the religious mind that is freed from problems, and that knows the beauty of love and truth."
Those who cultivate Love, therefore are cultivating a habit, a mechanical process through which they repeat a certain course of action which they call love. Inevitably that makes the mind more mechanical and dull. Because Love is not a habit. One can not find love in their heart by cultivating a habit. To have the Love which Jesus spoke about is something entirely different from the mechanical activity of cultivation of virtues. Since we don’t know what love and virtue is, we have created a replica of it with our intellect. We call that love, but it is not Love. It is a product of the mind and the intellect. All the Law of Attraction followers and other spiritual people are perpetually talking about love today. In their pursuit to obtain love as if it were a thing, they have deceived themselves. From morning till night they talk about love and cultivate it with their minds, but the heart remains empty in this process. That is why they fail to wield the same intelligence, the same sacrifice, the same strength wielded by the great ones that truly were inspired by Love. Like St Francis of Assisi, Mother Teressa, Nikola Tesla, Rudolf Steiner, H.P Blavatsky and others. These beings were truly inspired by love and their intelligence, light, strength is an evidence they truly loved. One who claims to have love and is still mediocre and weak does not have the flame within them. If there is love, then there is a radical change within oneself. One then becomes intelligent, strong, efficient, sacrificial, pure and luminous. One may still suffer like Lord Jesus did, but that is because his light was too bright for the people to handle. It created cosmic shocks for the whole humanity, so they crucified him. He was not a mediocre man, but a being of light, love and power.
Surely one doesn’t have to become Jesus to have love in their heart. That standard might be too high. But, Love is something that dispels all sorrow, misery and confusion. Therefore, one who has love will be intelligent, strong, radiant and efficient no matter what the circumstances. One who has love will manifest with their deeds and through their sacrifice which is denial of self. One who has love will not be busy sitting in the corner of the room cultivating a habit of Love. That is not Love. One major aspect of love is sacrifice. Without Sacrifice there is no love. One who is loving is sacrificing their personal self for the service of others. In other words love manifests with the denial of the self, the “I”.
“Love is not the self. Self cannot recognize love. You say ‘I love’, but then, in the very saying of it, in the very experiencing of it, love is not. But, when you know love, self is not. When there is love, self is not.”
– J. Krishnamurti, 1952, 5th Public Talk, Madras
"Every time you "love" without sacrifice, you create a complex situation in your inner world. You create congestion. This can be avoided if you will stand behind your love and express it through your practical sacrifices. If you love and do not express your love with sacrifice, the fire of love burns your mental, emotional, and etheric centers creating in them insensitivity, dullness, ulcers, and many other unwholesome conditions. Every time you love and are not making sacrifices for it you are touching electrical energy which may burn you. It is said that our God is burning fire. If you say to a beloved one, "I love you," but refrain from performing sacrificial acts to meet that person's various needs, your love is selfish. If you fail to make sacrifices necessary to uplift and to reach a deeper stage of understanding and creativity, your love is selfish. Selfishness is a state of mind in which the channel of love is congested. The Love Energy cannot circulate and communicate with the greater whole. Selfishness stops the transmutation of matter. Love causes transmutation of matter. The matter of your vehicles must be transmuted into higher sensitivity, enabling you to create under higher spiritual impulses."
The word Love today has been grossly distorted by various spiritual organizations, new age psychology, law of attraction and by other organizations that embody the wishful goody-goodyness in their curriculum. They have made love into something shallow, easily found and something that you can almost buy in the market. All you have to do is join one of the courses organized by one of these organizations and you will be brimming with love. Students of esoteric wisdom must guard themselves from these distortions of esoteric teachings. Teachings that claim “You already have love.”, “You are already divine.”, “You are already enlightened.” are one of the most obvious obstacles to spiritual development today. Those who think, they already have love, must question themselves how the great ones found this same love with so much suffering and so much torment. Moreover one must stop sugar-coating their mediocrity with words of love. Hypocrisy is born out of this. Pretending to be loving while one has unresolved issues within leads to hypocrisy. All spiritual aspirants should make sure they are honest and truthful.
Love is not born out of cultivation and habits. It is born from Self-knowledge. When the “I” has been totally dissolved. When the “I” melts, there is emptiness, in that emptiness Love can come into being. In that emptiness love can blossom. Love is always self denying. If we look at the lives of great saints and saviors this fact is obvious. Therefore, we must cease to cultivate Love artificially and find out for ourselves how to find Love truly in our hearts. Finding this out for ourselves can be more interesting than being told how to have love by someone else. It is definitely more invigorating than cultivating a habit according to an idea of love our limited minds have created.
"Do you know what love is? Do you want to find out? What will you do? Start with not knowing. If you introduce a motive, you already know. To come upon this extraordinary thing called love, have no motive. Your interest is to breathe that perfume, and you cannot if you have a motive. The intensity of your observation puts aside your motive; you don’t have to fight the motive."
