Love
In the Discourses, love is mentioned in many forms. Love pervades the universe. The first fundamental force known to have split as an independent principle from the original primordial unity in recent Cosmology is gravity. Baba says that gravity is the reflection of love. All the forces of attraction and of repulsion in every level (from small particles to material objects to living organisms) are expressions of love. In the animal kingdom this love becomes explicit in conscious processes through instinctive drives. The drive to look for nutrition is love. Sex-attraction is love. Actually anything that drives an organism to fulfill a bodily impulse or desire is love.
In the human level, with the development of consciousness, love, although continuous with its lower forms, attains a higher form because of its relation to reason. In the beginning these two factors are in a natural harmony, but the one doesn't have conscious access to the other. Each one operates almost separately from the other. Then comes a stage where reason and love come in rapport and conflict with each other, yet the important factor is that they start coming simultaneously in the conscious sphere. Then comes a third stage where a synthesis of love and reason is achieved to bring an altogether new type of consciousness, best described as superconsciousness.
Obviously the longest part of human development deals with the second phase. Yet from the effort to resolve the conflicts brought about between love and reason there arises spiritual progress. As lower forms of love come in conflict with higher ones, human love is limited by many factors. Lust, greed and anger are limiting factors mentioned in many philosophies. The only hope of breaking these limits is the appearance of a pure form of love, called Divine love. This love can only arise through the grace of spiritual Masters. This is not a momentary event. The Avatar comes to awaken humanity to this higher love. An individual has to develop a conscious longing for this love and has to give up all forms of desires except for the desire to attain it. In human love the duality of the lover and the Beloved persist. In Divine love, lover and Beloved are indivisibly one.
Read more about this topic: Discourses (Meher Baba)
Famous quotes containing the word love:
“Whether I flie with angels, fall with dust,
Thy hands made both, and I am there:
Thy power and love, my love and trust
Make one place ev’rywhere.”
—George Herbert (1593–1633)
“First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Would not love see returning penitence afar off, and fall on its neck and kiss it?”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)