ELIZABETH DENLEY shares reflections on love as the foundation for human existence and how it manifests in our daily relationships.
The English language is full of proverbs about love: love makes the world go round, love conquers all, love begets love, love knows no bounds, love is blind, and love is patient and kind, to name a few. Many have tried to understand love through categorization—C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves, Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages, John Gray’s Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, and Elif Shafak’s The Forty Rules of Love. But while these intellectual frameworks offer insights, that approach never resonated with me. Experience has always been the main thing. Love is behind most of our pleasure and pain in worldly existence. Love kindles belonging and community. But while love’s overwhelming importance in all our lives is a truism, how we experience love can be vastly different. Quite possibly, no two people feel it the same way, and none of us feel the same way at different stages in our lives.
By my late teens, I believed that loving is the main reason we are born, and that we grow by engaging with its many faces. To use Henry Handel Richardson’s phrase, this was “the getting of wisdom.” In later years, that belief broadened, thanks to meditative experiences that took me beyond any worldly experience of love.
And then, one day, I read something written by Babuji that resonated so well. In his words, love was neither emotion nor feeling, but the fundamental force of existence itself—more essential even than gravity:
“God has created innumerable worlds, and has kept them connected to one another by what the people of the western civilization call gravity. That connection or attachment, which is common to all, is itself supported by something else. That is, the mutual attachments of all are with that Big Thing, which is the cause of all, and which is attached with its material cause. It is the state of this great cosmos, in which all things are manifested, maintaining their connection with their origin and holding each other together.
“The origin of all things is the same, and the origin of man, too, is the same. But God has compounded him into such a mixture that all these particles are included in him. That is, he has been formed with those things with which the worlds are made. In other words, all these things are in him, and such power is given to him that he may shatter any world by a mere glance, and may transmit to anybody he likes. This is about the powers.
“Now listen: There exists a world in each particle of man, which is connected with the lower chakras of man that are specially meant for them. This particle gives them power. When the reservoir opens up, that very thing gives power to the world, the mixture of which also exists in man.
“The connection of the chakras is with a number of small worlds, and these worlds become hindrances for our onward march. When a man starts to attain his approach beyond this, it means that he has crossed those places; that is to say the worlds that are found between two chakras. Now, the question arises as to when can a man cross these mid-worlds? It can only be when he completes the bhoga1 of the place, by undergoing the experience. Similarly, the places beyond that too are crossed when the bhoga of those places is completed. This takes ages.
“When man is helped by a special power, cracks build up in these places, and the power of gravitation (with which everything is tied up, and the essence of which is in man) is diverted toward another direction. This special power is only present in a person who has risen very high. There is materiality in this power of attachment [gravity], whereas the power of attachment by which these things are shattered has no materiality. That man is very successful who is free from materiality.
“Now, the question is how to take help from the power of attachment that is without materiality. The answer is to develop a connection with him who has got such power. That connection is also called attachment. Love is its good translation.”
Babuji’s words reaffirmed love’s innate nature as the essence of being. He equated love with the force that holds existence together, and this universal perspective confirmed what I’d always sensed: we all experience love beyond this worldly plane of existence and always have. Even so, worldly life remains the field for our expansion; the soul’s incarnation in human form is a way of expressing love.
Love fuels our evolution, encompassing pleasure and pain—the dualities of existence. It is not all beautiful; our deepest heartbreaks come from our deepest love, and from that, acceptance has gradually emerged. This is the opening. Vulnerability is a sign that all is well. Walling off feelings and numbing pain are not the solution. Rather, acceptance of whatever life brings—not in a morbid way, but simply as it is—offers a way through.
That doesn’t mean I have not tried to numb the pain—there are times when I have needed to pause and allow time to heal heartache. But it has become easier with each passing year, and there is more lightness and carefreeness in approach.
Also, with time and the practices of meditation, the extremes of the ecstasy and pain of love have lessened, like the arc of a pendulum’s swing winding down. Occasionally, life throws a curveball that sends a jolt through the heart, but it is always a precursor to further expansion, and that understanding has brought courage and faith in the process.
Something Daaji once said sent this inner exploration on another trajectory: “Saying that compassion is empathy in action is like saying that generosity and acceptance are love in action.” Love is sometimes expressed outwardly in the world, and sometimes inwardly—an ecstatic feeling within, or a subtler presence without the need for overt action. A clue came from a dear friend from Germany. She wrote to Babuji once in the 1970s, asking what she should do when she had hurt someone, and his reply was, “Go into your heart.” No external action was needed, only inward action of the subtlest kind.
Babuji’s words reaffirmed love’s innate nature
as the essence of being, and awakened memories.
He equated love with the force that holds existence together,
and this universal perspective confirmed what I’d always sensed:
we all experience love beyond
this worldly plane of existence and always have.
Even so, worldly life remains the field for our expansion;
the soul’s incarnation in human form is a way of expressing love.
Does it mean that there is no need to say thank you for kindness, or apologize when we have hurt someone we love, even unintentionally? I don’t think so, because being considerate toward others and acknowledging mistakes are often helpful and build trust and confidence. But here’s the question: Is it heartfelt and authentic, or is it for the sake of politeness or because of social convention? And does it have to be voiced? Always, the heart will know what is needed in love.
Do we expect consideration from others in relationships? I’ve learned this is partly cultural—some cultures are more outwardly expressive, but does outward expression mean they are more loving? The language of love “is a many-splendored thing.”
In his book, Reality at Dawn, Babuji describes moving from thinking to feeling, to becoming, to being, to non-being. I began to wonder: What happens if we apply that sequence to love? Sometimes we are at the level of thought. We want to understand love, and we practice loving. We read books, recite poetry, listen to music, or watch movies, and something is awakened inside. In the spiritual context, we may practice constant remembrance,2 zikr,3 or metta.4 We are learning about love. It is a stepping stone. But is it enough?
From experience, I would say that acceptance and generosity
have come with purification of the heart and
the resulting expanding consciousness.
Actually, I think that before all this, at conception and for our first months as babies, we experience love as Babuji describes it—in its original, ultimate essence of non-being. Life’s experiences then pull us into the world, into a spiral of being, becoming, feeling, and, eventually, thinking, with the need for mental practice. Evolution is not linear. From time to time, we find ourselves at different levels in this sequence. We may be back at the feeling or thinking level, or even further at the reactive level of dealing with love.
At the point in childhood where we start associating love with the qualities of life and human behavior, we seem to get it so very wrong. Love has nothing to do with transactions and expectations, likes and dislikes, pleasure and pain. It is beyond conditions—unconditional and essential in its very nature. But that is also the journey, the “Divine Play,” as Babuji once called it. We come full circle and move once more toward the essence of pure being.
From experience, I would say that acceptance and generosity have come with the purification of the heart and the resulting expansion of consciousness. One of Daaji’s favorite phrases, “Purity weaves destiny,” is so fitting here. With purity comes an infusion of the fragrance of love into thought, feeling, action, connection with others, and inner states. Love permeates the being until finally it is so all-pervasive that it disappears into nothingness, and at every stage the perception of love changes. What a beautiful blessing is this human existence!
References:
¹ Bhoga refers to the process of undergoing the effects of impressions through experience.
² In Heartfulness practice, the continuous inner awareness of the divine presence throughout daily activities.
3 Zikr (also dhikr): A Sufi devotional practice involving the remembrance of God through recitation of divine names, phrases, or prayers.
4 Metta: A Pali word meaning loving-kindness or benevolence.
With purity comes an infusion of the
fragrance of love into thought,
feeling, action, connection with
others, and inner states. Love
permeates the being until finally
it is so all-pervasive that it
disappears into nothingness, and
at every stage the perception of love
changes. What a beautiful blessing
is this human existence!
Elizabeth Denley
Elizabeth is the founding editor of Heartfulness Magazine. She is Australian, loves meditating, writing, playing and singing music, gardening, thinking, spending time with her two grown up children, and life in general. She has been a st... Read More
