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116

Love

Divine Love

In the Divine’s love we always find all support and all consolation.

7 May 1954

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When you reach the contact with the Divine’s love you see this love in everything and all circumstances.

20 July 1954

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The Divine’s love and knowledge must always govern our thoughts and actions.

24 July 1954

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May the Divine’s love dwell as the sovereign Master of our hearts and the Divine’s knowledge never leave our thoughts.

29 October 1954

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The Divine’s love can generate in all peace and the satisfaction that comes from benevolence.

27 November 1954

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The Divine’s love is an eternal truth.

21 July 1955

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The Divine Love is the essence of Truth and cannot be affected by human confusions.

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117

An Old Chaldean LegendfnMessage for the 1955 Kali Puja.

Long ago, very long ago, in the desert land that is now Arabia, a divine being incarnated on earth to awaken it to the Supreme Love. As one would expect, he was persecuted by men, misunderstood, suspected, hunted after. Mortally wounded by his assailants, he wished to die alone, quietly, so that his work might be accomplished; and, pursued by them, he fled. Suddenly in the broad barren plain, a tiny bush of pomegranate appeared. The Saviour stole under its low branches in order to give up his body in peace; and at once the bush expanded miraculously, increased itself, widened, became deep and luxuriant in such a way that when the pursuers passed by they did not even suspect that the One whom they were chasing was hidden there, and they continued on their way.

While, drop by drop, the sacred blood fell, fertilising the soil, the bush covered itself with marvellous flowers, scarlet, enormous—clusters of petals, innumerable drops of blood…

These are the flowers that, for us, express and hold the Divine Love.

14 November 1955

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Yesterday morning I distributed petals of “Divine Love”. The previous night was, here, the darkest of the year and in India it is a great festival. Its true significance is that the Divine’s Love is at the base and core of all manifestation, even where it seems most completely inconscient.

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When Consciousness separated from its Origin and became Inconscience, the Origin emanated Love to reawaken Consciousness from the depth of the Inconscience and bring it back into touch with its Origin.

118

It may be said that at its origin love is the supreme power of attraction which awakens, in response, the irresistible need of an absolute self-giving; they are the two poles of the urge towards complete fusion.

No other movement could, better and more surely than this, throw a bridge across the abyss dug by the sense of separation that comes from the formation of the individual. It was necessary to bring back to itself what had been projected into space without destroying for this purpose the universe created thus.

That is why love sprang up, the irresistible power of union.

*

When the baker wants to make the dough of his bread rise, he puts some leaven into it, and it is from within that the transformation takes place.

When the Divine wanted to rouse Matter, awaken it and make it rise towards God, He threw Himself into Matter under the form of love, and it is from within that the transformation takes place.

So it is by living from within an organisation that one can help it to become enlightened and rise towards the Truth.

17 January 1965

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Consciousness is a state and a power. Love is a force and an action.

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The Divine has an equal love for all human beings, but the obscurity of consciousness of most men prevents them from perceiving this divine love.

Truth is wonderful. It is in our perception that it is distorted.

26 November 1971

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119

Only he who loves can recognise love. Those who are incapable of giving themselves in a sincere love, will never recognise love anywhere, and the more the love is divine, that is to say, unselfish, the less they can recognise it.

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To become conscious of the Divine Love, all other love must be abandoned.

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Divine Love and Human Love

Lean more exclusively on the Divine’s love. When one receives the Divine’s love, of what value can be any human love?

2 September 1939

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There is always a bitter taste behind the human love—it is only the Divine Love which never disappoints.

5 May 1945

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Do not grieve. Human love is fugitive. It is only the Divine’s love that never fails.

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Certainly one has the right to love and true love carries in itself its joy, but unhappily human beings are egoistic and immediately mix with their love the desire to be loved in return, and this desire is contrary to spiritual truth and the cause of passions and sufferings.

The one you love must have the right of freedom in her feelings and if you want the truth you must understand this right and accept it. Otherwise there will be no end to your miseries. This 120is an occasion to surmount your egoism and to open to the true life. If you decide to make this effort my help will be with you.

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The need for human love, to the extent that it is not merely in obedience to the instinct of Nature or to a vital attraction, is the need to have a Divine for oneself alone, at one’s entire and exclusive disposal, a Divine who is one’s personal property and to whom one gives oneself totally only if the gift is reciprocated.

Instead of enlarging oneself to the size of the Divine and having a love as vast as the universe, one tries to reduce the Divine to one’s own size and have His love for oneself alone.

Therefore, human love is not a need of the soul, but rather a concession it makes for a time to the ego.

*

I have postponed my answer to give you time to look carefully into the problem and to face it with more quiet and detachment.

One thing only I can tell you that whatever the sincerity, simplicity and purity of the relation between two human beings, it shuts them off more or less from the direct divine force and help and limits their strength, light and power only to the sum of their potentialities.

I cannot say that this is very advisable in your case.

15 February 1950

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You lose a great part of your strength, energy and capacity due to your so-called human love. It is a great hindrance in your progress.§

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If there is, somewhere in some part of your being, still the need for human affection and love, it is better to go through the experience of life; it is the best preparation for Yoga.

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121

The thirst for affection and love is a human need, but it can be quenched only if it turns towards the Divine. As long as it seeks satisfaction in human beings, it will always be disappointed or wounded.

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There is a thirst for Love which no human relation can quench. It is only the Divine’s love that can satisfy that thirst.

4 December 1954

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They always speak of the rights of love but love’s only right is the right of self-giving.

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Without self-giving there is no love; but self-giving is very rare in human love which is full of selfishness and demands.

15 August 1955

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So long as the ego is there, one cannot love.

Love alone can love, Love alone can conquer the ego.

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Self-love is the great obstacle.

Divine love is the great remedy.

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One is outwardly alone only if one is closed to the divine love.

8 December 1960

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You feel lonely because you feel the need to be loved. Learn to love without demand, to love just for the joy of loving (the most wonderful joy in the world!) and you will never again feel lonely.

11 April 1966

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122

The Rungs of Love

At first one loves only when one is loved.

Next, one loves spontaneously, but one wants to be loved in return.

Then one loves even if one is not loved, but one still wants one’s love to be accepted.

And finally one loves purely and simply, without any other need or joy than that of loving.

15 April 1966

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There is a love in which the emotion is turned towards the Divine in an increasing receptivity and growing union. What it receives from the Divine it pours out on others, but truly without demanding a return. If you are capable of that, then that is the highest and most satisfying way to love.

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It is not the love that someone feels for you that can make you happy, it is the love you feel for others that makes you happy: for you receive the love that you give from the Divine, who loves eternally and unfailingly.

20 March 1967

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All the forms that love has taken in the human consciousness on earth are but awkward attempts, deformed and incomplete, to find once again true Love.

23 March 1967

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True love has no need of reciprocation; there can be no reciprocation because there is only one Love, the Love, which has no other aim than to love. It is in the world of division that one feels 123the need of reciprocation—because one lives in the illusion of the multiplicity of Love; but in fact there is only One Love and it is always this sole love which, so to say, responds to itself.

19 April 1967

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Indeed, there is only one Love, universal and eternal, as there is only one Consciousness, universal and eternal.

All the apparent differences are colorations given by individualisation and personification. But these alterations are purely superficial. And the “nature” of Love, as of Consciousness, is unalterable.

20 April 1967

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When one has found divine Love, it is the Divine that one loves in all beings. There is no longer any division.

1 May 1967

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Once one has found divine Love, all other loves, which are nothing but disguises, can lose their deformities and become pure—then it is the Divine that one loves in everyone and everything.

6 May 1967

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True love, that which fulfils and illumines, is not the love one receives but the love one gives.

And the supreme Love is a love without any definite object—the love which loves because it cannot do other than to love.

15 May 1968

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124

There is only one love—the Divine’s Love; and without that Love there would be no creation. All exists because of that Love and it is when we try to find our own love which does not exist that we do not feel the Love, the only Love, the Divine’s Love which permeates all existence.

5 March 1970

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When the psychic loves it loves with the Divine Love.

When you love, you love with the Divine’s love diminished and distorted by your ego, but in its essence still the Divine’s love.

It is for the facility of the language that you say the love of this one or that one, but it is all the same one Love manifested through different channels.

I have given you the clue to find the love you are seeking for since many years; but it is not a mental clue; and it is only if your mind falls silent that you can feel what I want to convey to you.

Blessings.

14 March 1970

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As for true love, it is the Divine Force that allows consciousnesses to unite themselves with the Divine.

22 May 1971

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True love is something very deep and calm in its intensity; it may quite well not manifest itself in any exterior acts sensational or affectionate.

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Divine Love, true love, finds its delight and its satisfaction in itself; it has no need to be received and appreciated, nor to be shared—it loves for the sake of loving, as a flower blooms.

125

To feel this love in oneself is to possess an immutable happiness.

21 June 1971

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Love and Sexual Desire

Love is not sexual intercourse.

Love is not vital attraction and interchange.

Love is not the heart’s hunger for affection.

Love is a mighty vibration coming straight from the One, and only the very pure and very strong are capable of receiving and manifesting it.

To be pure is to be open only to the Supreme’s influence and to no other.

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I do not like that the word love should be polluted to speak of sexual desire, the human inheritance of the animal.

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You are making a great confusion between maternal sentiment which is, in the physical, an expression of the force of the universal Mother, and the physical act of procreation which is something wholly animal, most often even bestial, and which is only a means that Nature has found to perpetuate the different species.

6 October 1952

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Sexual relations belong to the past, when man was closer to the animal than to the Divine. All depends on what you expect from life, but if you sincerely want to do the Yoga, you must abstain from all sexual activities.

23 March 1968

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126
127

A decisive choice has to be made between lending the body to nature’s ends in obedience to her demand to perpetuate the race as it is, and preparing this very body to become a step towards the creation of a new race. The two cannot go together; at every minute you have to decide whether you wish to remain within the manhood of yesterday or belong to the supermanhood of tomorrow.

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Somebody has said, “Sex is of the mind. The act is no problem. Sex is a problem to us because we are not sufficiently creative.”

Is not sex a thing not only of the mind but also of the vital being and the physical? What is it essentially and intrinsically? And how is the attraction between the sexes to be completely erased from the being?

Sex seems rather to be more of the body. It is only when you pass from the lower to the higher hemisphere that you can completely erase the thing. Sex belongs to Nature in her lower working and as long as you belong to that Nature, her working will be there automatically in you.

*

At present I am much disturbed by sex difficulty. My rejection is not of much value, and I feel confused.

You have to persevere until it is valid.

1933

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When you will think no more of sex at all and see no more women as women but only as human beings, then and then only 128I will know that you are beginning to get cured.

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Sexual desires do not come from eating well but from thinking wrongly and concentrating on that. The less you think about it, the better it is. You should not concentrate on what you do not want to be, but on the contrary on what you want to become.

7 June 1964

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Instead of being dominated by the sexual impulsions, they must be put under the domination of the highest will.

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Passion: it is a force, but is dangerous and cannot be used unless it is perfectly surrendered to the Divine.

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Human passions changed into love for the Divine: may they become a real fact, and their abundance will save the world.

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Perfect attachment to the Divine replaces all vital attractions and passions.

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Love for the Divine

Greed, greed, always greed… is the response of material nature.

In whatever way the Divine manifests there, it becomes at once an object of covetousness. A rush to appropriate, an endeavour to rob, exploit, squeeze, swallow and in the end crush down the Divine, this is the receptivity of matter to the divine touch.

129

O my Lord, Thou comest as the redeemer and these would make of Thee a dupe! Thou comest for union, for transformation, for realisation, and they think only of absorption and selfish increase.

9 March 1932

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No half-measure would be enough to please you.

In short, what you want is a Divine for yourself, who would have no other occupation than to satisfy you, a Divine whom you could see physically at every hour of the day or night, whom you could argue with at your leisure, whom you could live with, marry—for in its ideal principle, marriage is nothing else but that.

But for it to be so, this Divine would have to be of your own size, your own stature.

And towards what could He lead you if not towards yourself as you are. Is this what you really want in the truth of your being?

I refuse to believe it.

*

Child, you say to me, “To love me is to do what I want.”

But I say to you that for the Divine to love truly is to do what is best for the one He loves.

May 1946

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Each and every one, when he turns to the Divine, demands that He should do for him exactly what he asks. Whereas the Divine does for each one what is best for him from all points of view. But man, in his ignorance and blindness, revolts against the Divine when his desire is not satisfied, and says to Him, “You do not love me.”

28 May 1946

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130

You say of your God: “I have loved Him so much and yet He did not remain with me!” But what kind of love have you given Him? In its essence, love is one, just as consciousness is one; but in the manifestation, it is coloured and differentiated by each individual nature. If you are impure and egoistic, love in you will become impure and egoistic, narrow, sectarian, limited, ambitious and possessive, violent, jealous, vulgar, brutal and cruel. Is this the kind of love that can be offered to God? If you want your love to be worthy of the one you love, if you want to enjoy love in its eternal perfection, become perfect, break out of the limitations of your ego, partake of eternity. And then you will always be close to the object of your love, for you will grow into his likeness.

27 November 1952

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It is said that one grows into the likeness of what one loves; but with regard to God it is also true that one can remain always with Him only when one grows into His likeness.

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It is not through human love that one can learn to love the Divine, for the love is of quite a different nature. First learn to give yourself sincerely to the Divine and then the joy of love will come afterwards. By giving yourself sincerely all your difficulties will disappear.

28 December 1955

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The true love for the Divine is self-giving, free of demand, full of submission and surrender. It makes no claim, imposes no condition, strikes no bargain, indulges in no violences of jealousy or pride or anger—for these things are not in its composition.

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131

When the true and sacred love is there (love from the Divine and for the Divine), whatever happens is always utilised as a means for increasing and perfecting the union. This leaves no place for worry, regret and depression, but, on the contrary, fills the consciousness with the certitude of victory.

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Integral love for the Divine: pure, complete and irrevocable, it is a love that gives itself for ever.

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Flaming love for the Divine: ready for all heroism and all sacrifice.

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To love truly the Divine we must rise above attachments.

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General

Love is with all, working for the progress of each one equally—but it triumphs in those who care for it.

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[Message for the World Vegetarian Congress]

Love alone can overcome hate and violence.

Let the divine compassion express itself through you always and in all circumstances.

The divine compassion reaches out not only to the one who is eaten but also to the one who eats, not only to the one who is tortured but also the one who tortures.

1957

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132

Divine Love can overcome the evil and the cruel—the tiger does not attack the yogi.

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Unmanifest Divine Love: the splendour of the marvellous love which the Divine keeps for the pure heart.

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Indeed, all life is love if we know how to live it.

13 July 1963

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Sweetness is within every heart.

Bitterness is an illusion that melts in the Sun of Divine Love.

July 1966