Importance of ‘Love’ on the Spiritual Path

To the one who has unfaltering love for the God-man, the way to abiding truth is clear and safe. Such a one must waste no time playing with things that do not matter.

Loyalty to the unchangeable truth guided by enduring love is the simple way that leads to ‘God’ and ‘abiding peace’.

Although “God” is more easily accessible to ordinary man through the God-men, yet God also reveals Himself in His impersonal aspect, which is beyond name, form and time. Regardless of whether it is to be through His personal or His impersonal aspect, it is necessary that the aspirant seek Him and surrender to Him in “love”.

When the aspirant contemplates only God without a second, there is no room for ‘love for God’ or ‘longing for God’. The individual has the “intellectual conviction” that he is God.

Yet in order to experience that state in actuality, the aspirant goes through ‘intense concentration’ or ‘meditation’ on the thought– “I am not the body, I am not the mind, I am neither this nor that. I am God”.
   In exceptional cases, the individual may experience through “meditation” what he has assumed himself to be. This mode of experiencing God is not only difficult, but DRY.

Progress is more realistic and enjoyable when there is an ample play of “love” and “devotion” to God. This postulates temporary and apparent separateness from God and longing to unite with Him. Such provisional and apparent separateness from God is reflected in the Sufi concepts of the states of “Hama az Ust” or “Everything is from God”, and “Hama Doost” or “Everything is for the beloved God”.

In each of these concepts, the individual perceives that his ‘separateness from God’ is only temporary and apparent, and he seeks to restore this lost unity with God through ‘intense love’, which consumes all duality. The only difference between these two is that,

• whereas the individual who follows the concept of “Hama Doost” rests content with the “will of God” as the Beloved,
• in the concept of “Hama az Ust” he longs for nothing but “union with God”.

Since the individualized soul which is in bondage can be redeemed only through “divine love”, even Perfect Masters who attain complete unity with God and experience Him as the only reality, apparently step into the ‘domain of duality’ and talk of– love, worship and service of God.

“Divine love”– as sung by Hindu masters like Tukaram, as taught by Christian masters like Saint Francis, as preached by Zoroastrian masters like Azar Kaivan and as immortalized by Sufi masters like Hafiz– harbours no thought of the ‘self’ at all. It consumes all frailties which nourish the illusion of duality, and ultimately unites the individual with God.

The ‘awakening of this divine love’ in the heart of the aspirant and the ‘cleansing of his being’ is one of the functions of the God-man and Perfect Masters.

The life of love of a Perfect Master is unperturbed by ‘desires’ or ‘duality’. Once the mind of the aspirant gets a glimpse into this ‘life of true values’, it protests against the bondage of ‘desires’ and the cage of the separative ego-life.

The Perfect Master acts from the truth with which he is one and not from any ‘limited ego-consciousness’. Hence ‘His help’ is more effective than all the unaided effort the aspirant himself can make.

The Perfect Master does not give something which is not already within the aspirant in latent form. He unveils the ‘real self’ of the aspirant and enables him to come into his own rightful divine heritage.

“Complete surrenderance” to the God-man is not possible for one and all. When this is not possible, the other high roads which can eventually win the grace of God are:

1. Loving obedience to and remembrance of the God-man to the best of one’s ability;
2. Love for God and intense longing to see Him and to be united with Him;
3. Being in constant company with the saints and lovers of God and rendering them whole-hearted service;
4. Avoiding lust, greed, anger, hatred and the temptations of power, fame and fault-finding;
5. Leaving everyone and everything in complete external renunciation, and in solitude, devoting oneself to fasting, prayer, and meditation.
6. Carrying on all worldly duties with a ‘pure heart’ and ‘clean mind’ and with equal acceptance of success or failure, while remaining detached in the midst of intense activity; and
7. Selfless service of humanity, without thought of ‘gain’ or ‘reward’.

In the end, all walks of life and all paths ultimately lead to the one goal, which is God. All rivers enter into the ocean regardless of the diverse directions in which they flow, and in spite of the many meanderings they may take.

The high roads are important because they take the pilgrim directly to his ‘divine destination’, avoiding prolonged wanderings in the wilderness of complicated by-ways in which the traveller is so often unnecessarily confused.