Spirituality and love

The whole world talks about love. Billions are spent on making movies and music on love. 'I love you,' is probably the most beautiful statement that we hear. However, is this love truly blissful?

While the world is preoccupied with this worldly love, love as advocated by spirituality is entirely different. Not only is spiritual love for the Divine, the Supreme Immortal Power we call God, but it is love for all of mankind, all beings and creatures, realising that each one of us is a manifestation of the Divine. Spiritual love is beyond the physical. It is love from Soul to Soul. It has no demands or expectations. It is not need based. It is selfless, unconditional, there is no sense of possiveness, sorrow or suffering. It is bliss!

The world does not realise that true love is not just a kiss. It is real bliss. True love is a fountain of joy. It is not just love from a lover to his beloved. It is not a red-coloured heart. The symbol of love itself is a misrepresentation. We all wrongly believe that love comes from the heart. We even clutch our heart if we see the object of our love. We don't realise that the emotion of love causes blood to gush to the heart creating that ecstasy in our heart that makes it beat faster, making it seem that the heart is the organ of love!

Somehow, the world has evolved to believe that love is all about hugs and kisses, roses and flowers, about man and woman falling in love. We know of love stories where kings have given up their thrones for the sake of their love or lovers who have tragic endings. While love is beautiful, it is sad that we have not understood the true meaning of love!

The Greeks have talked about several Gods of love. While most of the world understands Eros, the God of erotic love, which leads to the manifestation of romance and sex, only a a few pray to Agape, the goddess of Divine love, love that is not just from skin to skin, but true love that is born from deep within. The Sufis too differentiated love as Ishq-e-Majazi, love between the lover and the beloved, and Ishq-e-Haqiqi, love between man and God. The ancient Sufis realised that love was not just a physical expression. While the ancient Greeks and Sufis had realised the truth about love, modern-day man is not enlightened with the truth about true love.

What is true love? True love is a rainbow of 7 colours, VIBGYOR. It is a Divine emotion that springs as a fountain of joy from deep within. It starts from the moment we are born, as Violet love between a child and a parent, and grows up into Indigo love between friends. It is also an experience of Blue romantic love, but there is Green self-love, Yellow intellectual love, and Orange emotional love. But people are so enamoured by Red erotic love, that the other colours of love are lost and forgotten. True love sprouts from White Divine love that emerges from the Soul within. It is the Soul, the energy of the Divine that creates the fragrance of love throughout life. Those who Realise this truth, love one and all, from Soul to Soul, realising the truth that love comes from the Divine Spirit that is in every living creature. Service to humanity or other beings is not out of pity or charity but out of love, love for the Divine Soul that each one of us is.

We have to evolve from love to spiritual love, to the Yoga of Divine Love, Prema Yoga. Prema Yoga is an evolution of ordinary love into spiritual love, not for the one who is made of bone and skin, but for the Divine that resides within. Prema Yoga is the experience of the highest form of love, Prema, and the highest form of Yoga, union with the Divine. When there is Prema Yoga, one attains God, one evolves from Self-Realisation to the Realisation that the beloved is not the beloved. The beloved is God, a manifestation of God. Prema Yoga becomes the way to experience God and to live with God in our Consciousness at all times.