God is Love, Live in Love 



Once while I was sitting at His Lotus Feet, Swami asked my son who was also present in the Interview Room, “Whom do you love most?”

Swami Himself, proceeded with the answer, “All the relatives in the
 world are bound to depart from this world one day or other and love 
toward them is also a passing phase. Before we marry, there is no wife and until we beget a child or children there is no father or mother. All these relationships evolved one day or other during this lifetime, and your love with 
such persons are also developed through attachment and selfish desires. This love is not permanent.  But one should remember that God is with you through and through, in your past births as well as in
 this birth, and in the forthcoming births, too.  So, if you love God without any condition, it will be pure and selfless love.  We should
 develop constant faith and love toward God, who alone is eternal.”

There were a group of devotees from Australia with Swami during the interview. Swami turned toward one of them and asked from where they had come. He replied that they were from Australia. Swami asked him 
the reason for this visit to Prasanthi Nilayam. He replied, “Swami,
we have come here to see God.” Pat came the Divine reply by way of
 another question, “Oh! Is that so? Then you do not have God in 
Australia?” The devotee could not say anything. Somehow another one 
from the group replied, “Swami, there is God in our country also, but
 we have intense desire to see God in human form, who is none other than Baba Himself.”

Bhagavan was pleased with this reply. Swami advised, “We should 
love God without any conditions or reservations in mind because God 
is one who is our ever-lasting friend, relation, and everything during all our births. This intense love toward God should be continuous and a constant feeling and should develop a feeling to 
be with Swami as much as possible. In faraway places, when devotees 
think of Swami, they should pray to Him, or sing of His glory, 
whenever they feel lonely.  They could also reach out for satsang, 
company of other Sai devotees that would to some extent satisfy their longing to see and to be with Swami.”

Swami continued,
”There are some devotees who reply that Swami is always in their heart, and they need not go to Him very often. This shows their lack of
 enthusiasm.  What does this reply indicate? Here is a kerchief, and I 
am holding this in my hands. This means my hands are bigger
 than the kerchief and it can hold the same inside the hand. Likewise, when somebody claims that Swami is in His heart, then it 
means that he is much bigger than Swami.  This is not correct.  Sure,
 Swami is in your heart. But He is also in front of you, behind you,
 around you, and all over the place. He is omnipresent. There could be
 some compelling reasons for the inability of the devotee to come to
 Me. One reason is lack of enthusiasm. It could be due to the
 pressure of your work from which you could not escape and come to Swami.
 Another reason could be the lack of resources.
 But if only you have enthusiasm and intense desire to be with
 Swami, then the obstacles could be overcome by His grace.”

‘Love is God’, is a repeated maxim of Swami. The God incarnate Bhagavan is Himself the embodiment of Love. If only we spend a few minutes in His Divine presence with intense love and prayers in our hearts, we can positively experience the strong divine love flowing from Him. Swami’s love envelops everybody, even in an assembly of lakhs of devotees who throng for His darshan. One has only to experience this bliss all by himself to understand what Divine Love is!

I wish to narrate a scene on ‘Love on Motion’ that I witnessed. The Divine Love pulls the multiplying millions of devotees to His presence. In Dwapara Yuga, it was the melody of Lord Krishna’s flute that made the devotees of Brindavan gravitate toward His presence.  The gopis [milk maidens] lost any consciousness of their body, mind, and spirit, dropped their work and other activities. They were absorbed by the melody.  How lucky we are to witness today the re-enactment of the same phenomenon by Sai Krishna at Parthi. The devotees run to catch a glimpse of Swami even at a murmur of the news that Swami’s car is approaching. They feel elated and truly blessed by the chance darshan even of a fleeting second as the car passes through.

Once Swami graced me with a rare chance of following His car from Puttaparthi to Brindavan (Whitefield).  Swami’s tour program is always unpredictable and un-announced. Nobody can dare to set the exact timings of such tour program. On that blissful day, Swami left Parthi about one and half hours earlier than scheduled. I was fortunate to be provided with the experience of following Swami’s car. I followed Swami’s car as the second one for quite a long distance till all other cars in the caravan showed up. I could not really believe the emotionally surcharged sendoff given by the devotees even at such short notice.

From Gopuram onward, up to and far beyond the gate of the Super Specialty Hospital, devotees had lined up in good strength on both sides of the road. Even the devoted Sai Gita [the elephant] turned up with her majestic presence to greet Swami as the car passed by the side of the gates of the shed. Hundreds of devotees were showering flower petals on the car. I saw many of them breaking coconuts on the street in front of the car. Indeed, it looked like a real car festival in our villages when people offered special poojas in front of the Divine car as it passes through the streets. Swami’s’ car was bedecked with the petals offered by devotees.

But the measure of attraction that the Divine drew all along the villages and the paddy fields had to be seen to be believed. All the villagers enroute were out in the streets in time for the divine darshan. How did all these villagers and agricultural workers come to know the time of Swami’s moving presence in their areas?! It could only be divinity-induced intuition that foretold the people in the villages the possibility of the Divine darshan. The Divine Love, in motion, was attracting the entire mankind all along the way!

Swami once said, “The snow on the mountain peaks softens during the day as the result of the sun; and it hardens during the night since the sun is absent. So, too, your hardened heart hardens me; your soft heart softens me. Understand this. Each of you knows the love of a single mother only. But my affection, My Love, toward each one of you is that of a thousand mothers!  Do not deny yourself that affection, that love, by denying Me your love!”

Those were the days when the journey to Prasanthi Nilayam was very tedious and tiresome. On one such day, Swami said the following lines in His discourse:

“A word spoken in love is balm to the tired feet. You come to Prasanthi Nilayam by road, rail, or bus; you walk into the garden exhausted and eager. I ask from the verandah, O, when did you arrive? Others may doubt, why is Baba asking this question? ‘Does He not know?’ Surely, He must be knowing all about him and us.  Why then this query? But you to whom this question is put, you are elated that ‘Baba spoke to me as soon as I walked in!’ I seek to give you joy and so, though I know I ask such questions. If I do not ask, but you keep quiet, you feel forlorn and frustrated, don’t you? You know that I am asking you not for the sake of the answer that I am asking you, that I am already aware of, but for the sake of the satisfaction My words give you. So also, I may ask, ‘How are you?’ though I know that you are well and that is why you could come or that you are unwell and that is the very reason that has brought you to Me!  This is the mayashakti, the spirit that charms; If it speaks, if it casts its eye, if it does something, you derive pleasure thereby! It is yogamaya, which makes you happy when I accost you or talk to you or do something to you.”

Swami further says: “Scatter the seeds of love in the dreary desert hearts; then sprouts of love will make the wastes green with joy. Blossoms of love will make the air fragrant; rivers of love will murmur along the valleys, and every bird, beast, and child will sing the song of love!”

In another quote, Swami says: “Every worker in the organization must rid himself of the idea of separateness or distinction between one person and another. He must always be eager to share the sorrows—and what is more difficult—the joy of others. My desire is that whenever any slight misunderstanding arises among you, you must set it right among yourselves, exercising love and tolerance. You should not plunge into a passion over it and let things blaze into a quarrel or a factional split. Recognize that you are engaged in the exercise of widening your hearts, of reaching the Feet of the Lord through the expression of Love. Unless you cultivate love, tolerance, humility, faith, and reverence, how is it possible for you to realize God?

At the present time, when we see all over the country confusion, fear, and anxiety, each worker, each devotee must contribute his share of cool, calm love to suppress the anger and fury. No government authority can suppress it effectively and as quickly as you can by love and brotherliness.

Swami had declared that He is the richest person in the world, nay, in the universe itself, richer than Kubera, the Lord of wealth. Swami further clarified that His richness does not consist of money or materials; the most valuable asset of Baba is Love. He is the embodiment of Love itself.

The whole world is an expanse of love enveloping all the living beings one way or another. Even the driest-hearted human being or for that matter even any wild animal exhibits sparks of love in its own way. Such love may be of selfish nature with attachment or bondage to one’s kith and kin or to outside people who are admired or revered.  It is only the consistent spiritual sadhana that slowly and steadily leads us up to a level in which we can transcend the narrow frontiers of selfish love into the vast expanse of divine love enveloping the whole of humanity. “Premaswarupalara“, Swami addresses very often while delivering Divine Discourses to the gathering. Because this is the real nature of mankind.

Swami’s advent of this Avatarhood is to regenerate mankind with human values, informing both our view and way of life.  As all of us know, these values are sathya, dharma, shanti, prema, and ahimsa [truth, righteousness, peace, love, and non-violence]. If only the prime value of universal prema is fostered and developed in our life, it will be very easy and almost automatic to develop the other values. How do we go about it? According to Bhagavan, it is very simple; it only requires a degree of earnestness in our efforts.

Man is by very nature love personified. But the self and the desires of the self, have come to grip our thoughts and actions in our lives past and present.  Our efforts, therefore, should be to purify our chitta [will] by removing the accumulated dirt slowly, so that the ever-present quality of love surfaces in all our thoughts and deeds. Swami is, in fact, making us aware of the inherent ‘Love’ in us by inculcating subtle methods of spiritual sadhanas.

To develop universal love, we must first realize that the universe is only a manifestation of Divinity, and that Divinity is inherent in all living beings – what Swami calls as ‘Resident Divinity’. We should extent our love to every living being as a manifestation of the same divinity in the same way as we love God. Swami also invariably emphasizes the need to have expansion of love and not contraction of love, which means that love should be selfless and with not selfish motive. We love family members because they happen to be our wife/husband, son, daughter, father, or mother. The love extended to all these relatives are only selfish in nature.  Our love is conditional based on our relationships.  We even find variations in the intensity of love toward different relatives depending upon the degree of attachment with each one of them. But divine love is not conditional. It is selfless. Our love for God should also be selfless. “Love is selflessness and self is lovelessness”, says Swami.

Our feelings get reflected in others. When we show hatred to anyone, the other party also responds with hatred.  When we show love, they also extend their love to us. Love is reciprocated by love. Swami often points out the simple analogy of a person looking in the mirror. If the person puts on an angry face, the reflection is also the same. If we smile, the reflection also smiles!

Thirty thousand feet above the earth, when an aircraft was being hijacked, a devotee heard the command from Swami to “Love the hijacker.” How could you love a hijacker when he was threatening to blow up the plane killing everybody on board? And yet this was the command. The lady devotee, on hearing the message, mentally extended her love toward them. It was reported that the hijackers subsequently lost their nerves to live through the tension drama and ultimately surrendered to the authorities.

It is not enough if we say that we love somebody.  In case of pure love, we follow it up by with positive action.  When we love our child, we try to express our love by purchasing and presenting something for the child to bring joy. Any sincere feeling of love manifests itself into an action.

When we love God, God’s love also manifests. In fact, God is ever loving and at times we are not able to feel and enjoy that Divine Love because of certain inherent blocks in our feelings of love. The magnetic power in iron automatically attracts the ordinary iron. But in case the ordinary iron is densely covered by rust and impurities, the magnet cannot attract it. The rust in our feelings must be removed and our chitta purified to be able to absorb the abundant Love from God. And we, too, should love God unconditionally.

When once we develop love toward someone, we start listening to him or her with interest and act in the best way possible to please the party whom we love.  When we say we love God, it implies and involves total commitment to the Divine commands and direction. We can then claim that we love God unconditionally.  This aspect of obeying Swami in totality was mentioned in His Divine Discourse on 14th of this month (January 14, 1999).

What is it that Swami is instructing us? “Start the day with Love. Spend the day with Love. Fill the day with Love. End the day with Love.” We hear the sayings of Swami several times, but we fail to put them into practice in our daily life. ‘Start the day with Love’. But what do we do? A slight delay in getting our morning coffee or in sighting the newspaper boy makes us agitated. We have sharp remarks in reserve for the maidservant if she comes late or slips up in work. In our conversations we exhibit irritation because it has been our way of life all along. We seem to have lost the faculty of tolerance and softness in speech.  Only when we are free of mental agitation we can speak softly and sweetly.

Swami has been teaching us to mend our habits and has shown us the ways, too.  Early morning if we sit for meditation followed by japa [repetition of Lord’s name] and pooja [prayer], our mind becomes calm and gets itself conditioned to accept the events as they come and to develop tolerance, which in turn removes anger and hatred.  Love resumes its place in our mind.  This is what Swami wants from us under item No.1 of the Nine-point Code of Conduct, which has been prescribed for all the devotees.

As we go out into the world during the day, we encounter various personalities.  Some of them you may like and many others you may not like. We react differently to different people. You feel happy to see and talk to the one whom you like.  We breed a sense of aversion to those whom we do not like.  It is very difficult to condition the mind. Yet, we must try and attempt to foster and develop a proper balanced attitude and behavior toward everyone. Constant remembrance of Swami in such situations would to some extent direct us to stick to proper behavior. Swami teaches us to mentally extend our love toward such persons. Our smiling face would elicit the same smile from the other party, too.

However, at times when we are engaged in conversation with someone, the subject matter quite often turns to those on whom we may have reservations. We pass comments and criticisms on them. Swami warns us to be cautious and careful about this habit and behavior. Remember Swami’s dictum in the Nine-point Code of Conduct, which says, “Don’t talk ill of others, especially in their absence.”

As the day closes in, we prepare ourselves to retire for the night. While doing so, we should spend a while in self-retrospection.  What are all the mistakes we have done during the day? Have we strayed away from the path of Love any time during the day?  We should contemplate and try to improve our performance the next day.  It should be a continuous process. The is the sadhana of self-discipline.

As long as hatred and anger prevail in our mind, it is very difficult to cultivate love in our hearts.  Anger and hatred must be eliminated gradually by constant practice and tolerance and love assumes it places automatically.

The most tolerant person may encounter a very difficult man who may even inflict mental or physical pain on us. Then what are we to do? Here, too, Swami says that we should not act in the manner of ‘tit for tat’.  For all the pain inflicted, it is our duty to pray for forgiveness and for his welfare despite all that he has done to you.  This pleases Swami very much.

‘Sarva Jana sukhino Bhavantu‘, (Let all people be happy) is the prayer we offer three times at the end of each bhajan session. Suppose on that day somebody, one Mr. X, had done harm to you causing mental or physical harm, what will we mean by the prayer mentioned above. Will we mean, “Let everybody except Mr. X become happy?”  No, there is no provision there. Let everybody means everybody including Mr. X also, who would have done harm to you, is included. When we pray, we should mean the full implications of that prayer. This could be possible only when we develop Love toward each and one, whether friend or foe.

Swami wants us to live happily forever with overwhelming Love in our Hearts, for God is Love!

Sai Ram!

~”Mumbai” Srinivasan, India