By Sant Rajinder Singh Ji Maharaj
A basic need for every human being is to love and be loved. Psychologists speak of our human needs as food, clothing, shelter, and safety. They also add the need for love.
Love is the state when two entities discover each other and find an affinity of heart and soul. They recognize their essential oneness. Love is the expression of that recognition that two are really one. On this planet, to find love we often look in the outer world—love from our parents, siblings and relatives. As we grow older, we seek love from our friends. In adulthood we seek the love of our spouse and our children. Unfortunately, at sometime in life, we also learn that these loves are fleeting. Relationships change; children move away; parents die. Eventually, with each loss, the loves of this world bring us sorrow.
At some point we turn to God for relief from the suffering of the loss of love. When God hears our cry, God brings us to someone who can show us that we always have God’s love. Saints and Masters show us that God’s love is eternal.
The Masters who have come through the ages have shown us a way to find lasting love within. They teach us meditation on the inner Light and Sound so we can experience deeper states of God’s love for us. Because we cannot see God with our outer eyes, God communicates instructions to us through a spiritual Master who teaches us how to find God with our inner eye.
God’s love is like sweet mango nectar flowing into the cup of one’s soul. It is an all-pervading sweetness that permeates one’s being. It is filled with a life force or vibration that uplifts the soul.
We know how some people drink alcohol to get drunk or take drugs to become high. They use chemical means to make themselves feel intoxicated. Although they are looking for happiness, they fail to realize that no matter how inebriated one can become with drugs or alcohol, that state cannot equal a fraction of the intoxication one receives when tasting God’s love within. Additionally, chemical intoxication does not last and has serious side effects for which one suffers. However, the intoxication we receive from God is lasting and has no dangerous side effects.
Whoever tastes of godly love wants to be in that state again and again. It uplifts the soul far beyond this physical world and carries one through regions of bliss and divine love.
Our situation is similar to a fish whose whole existence is living in the sea. There is nowhere the fish can survive other than the sea. Wherever the fish swims, it finds the sea surrounding it. Whether the fish swims up or down, left or right, it finds itself still in the sea. Likewise, God is an infinite sea without any shore. God has no beginning and no end. Like a fish within the sea, our soul is always immersed in God. There is no place the soul can go where it is not surrounded by God. Whether the soul is asleep or awake, standing or sitting, going right or left, inhabiting a physical body in life or a spiritual body after life, it is always immersed in God. Just as a fish cannot live without the sea, the soul cannot live without God. We can become aware of our situation and experience the ocean of God’s love at all times through meditation.
Once we realize that God’s love for us is eternal, we begin to understand its uniqueness. God’s love for us does not wither with time like a flower, nor does it turn sour or sad like some worldly relationships. God’s love withstands all the tests of time.
When we choose to love God instead of the multiple temporary loves in the universe, we discover a Beloved who is with us even beyond the gates of death. We will go with God to God’s true Abode. There, we will live in eternal wedlock with the true Beloved.
