Some of you may raise this question, What good will it do me?’ What good does it do anyone to fall in love? Go and ask a lover; he will look upon you with pity in his eyes. Love is the fulfilment of life. Neither earning much wealth nor gaining great fame nor knowing many things fulfills a man, but he is fulfilled when he can feel at one with at least one other being. That is love. Isolation is death; union is life. That is why you find men are gregarious: everyone wants someone to love, if not another person, at least a canary or a dog. Something to love. It is a symbol of his unification with the other existence, represented not by himself but by the rest of this universe. That is the answer: love is the fulfilment of itself. It is its own end.
If you want to be philosophical, then I say that love is also the realization of truth. If I speak philosophical, logical language, you will at once accept it. If I say our true nature really is infinite; everything is infinite; therefore we should feel at one with everything, you will say, Yes, that’s right, that’s the truth.’ But we can also speak the language of love. I have always thought that monism could be spoken of in either of these two ways: in the language of love as well as in that of logic the language of the heart as well as that of the intellect. Although, generally speaking, logical language is used to express truth, I think one should make an effort to use the language of the heart to express the same truth, in order to eradicate this misconception about the quest for truth. And isn’t it the same thing? The same psychological state applies to both ways.
If you follow the path of logic, your philosophy will tell you that if you want to find this one Being you must go beyond manifold existence, beyond the world of name and form, as they say. How do you do it? As long as you are interested in the world of name and form, this external world, you will never be able to go beyond it. Never! Neither in regard to yourself nor to others. If I am to perceive this formless, nameless Being which I truly am, this eternal, infinite Spirit which the human soul truly is which I am, which you are I have to go beyond the symbol of limitation, beyond my own form, which is the mind as well as the body, and also beyond the name, which is the idea in the mind. I have to go beyond both. As long as I seek the comforts of the body, as long as I crave the things which can be had only through the body, I am the prisoner of the body, I have become one with it; I cannot get beyond it. That is why all religions have said give up, give up, give up. Give up the things of the senses. As long as you are still attached to those things, you cannot find the truth. The moment you have given up your desires, you will become free from this body; it will appear separate from you. Just as this robe feels separate from me, although I know of its existence around my body, so your body will feel separate from you. Then you will begin to feel yourself as the Spirit. So in the primary stages of whatever path you follow you continually try to cut the bondages by which the soul has been tied to the body. And when we rise above name and form, we become aware of this one Existence.
What has happened? As I have already indicated, sense desires are false representations of the true desire for God, and when we discover this fact, our desires all become unified. All the emotions, all the forces of the mind just blend themselves into one, and this one becomes the longing for God. You see, when this tremendous longing was scattered in the form of many sense desires, our life was a poisonous swamp; but when we give those desires the right direction, then we find they all become joined together and become a mighty and powerful river, sweet, wholesome. That is exactly what happens to a person who has reached that state of longing: the search for beauty, for sweetness, for love and affection, for power and security, for the perpetuity of existence, for the sense of harmony with all, possession of all, unification of all all our aspirations are blended into that one great longing. And we know that the fulfilment of that longing is He who is the source of everything we seek here infinite love, infinite life, infinite power, infinite wisdom, infinite goodness, infinite peace, infinite harmony. Yes, He is the all.
