Pure Love is Divine In Nature
Pure love sees not with the physical eyes but with the eyes of the soul.
Pure Love
by Barbara Briggs
“Krishna! – Yea, my Lord, I come! Play, but Thy flute and I come! – The world hath been flung off like a soiled garment, I am clad in shining robes of Bhakti, pure white, gleaming as a white pigeon’s wing in the sunlight! I come, my Lord, I come! – Rich honey of Prema will I suck from the Lotus of Thy Feet. Thine eyes, shining upon me, will bathe me in the waters of immortality! … To Thy dance with the souls of Thy Bhaktas, I come, O Thou, that lurest the souls of Mortals to the joy of Divine Union!”
(Quote from The Heart of a Gopi by R. Tyabji)
Pure love is all divine in its essential nature. In pure love, the soul of the lover and the beloved become one in an eternal embrace. Shri Radha’s love for Shri Krishna is an expression of the height of divine love, the most perfect expression of total surrender of the individual soul to the Cosmic Self. Their love was so complete that the line of division between the lover and the beloved faded away. Only the Divine Light of Love remained, spreading its luminous glow over everything. The world became a temple of His Grace. Shri Radha’s love was so full that She lost Herself in that love and merged completely with Shri Krishna, the Divine Beloved.
Only pure love is capable of opening wide the windows of the heart so that one can see into the very soul of life. Pure love sees not with the physical eyes but with the eyes of the soul. It sees not just the body but the soul of the beloved. It appreciates the Higher Self of the beloved and is drawn to the kindred song that calls awake the same melody humming deep within its own heart. Pure love is ever-giving. It desires only to give, to serve, to worship at the altar of Love. It seeks not to possess but to bestow. It willingly sacrifices everything for the beloved without ever feeling that it is giving because the nature of pure love is unity, the oneness of life. When the beloved eats, the lover feels full. There is no longer any division between “me” and “mine” – no boundaries of the ego to obstruct the flow of love. There is only: Thy Will Be Done, Thou art and All Is Thine. Such a love as this is rare in this world. Why is it so rare? Because to experience divine love, consciousness must become divine. The senses, mind, intellect, and feelings must be purified so that the subtler, more celestial levels of life can be perceived. The subtler levels of life contain more power, more happiness, and more love.
The value of meditation(sadhana) is that it enlivens subtler levels of experience and perception. To love as purely and deeply as possible is also a kind of sadhana for real love requires great self-sacrifice. The Mother of Shri Aurobindo’s ashram says: “Of all austerities, the most difficult is the austerity of feeling and emotion, the tapasya of love.” Love is the most powerful force in the universe yet it is the most tender. It requires great courage to give of oneself completely and infinite tenderness to nourish the deepest level of someone else’s being. It is the pride of the ego which stands in the way of pure love. For it is the nature of the ego to assert its independence, and it is the nature of love to unite, but even the resistance of the ego can ultimately be overcome by the power of pure love for the bliss of union surpasses the limited pleasure of self-assertion. There is a beautiful saying by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi:
“Love is an eternal triangle. God is at the apex of the triangle and man and woman at the base of the triangle. When a man and woman are united at the top, they will not be separated at the bottom.
Union for unity.
Unity for union with God.”
Ideal relationships are based on a spiritual union of deep love and devotion. Such a union opens the heart, enabling the feelings to soar upwards to God. Only a relationship based on pure love can untie the knots of the heart and melt the rigid space-time boundaries of the ego so that the inner vision can expand to embrace the totality of life. In an ideal relationship, the spiritual union between the heart of the man and woman is most important. The quality and strength of their union on the spiritual level is what sustains and develops their relationship on the emotional, mental and physical level. The bliss of spiritual union based on pure love far exceeds the transitory happiness available on the emotional, mental or physical level because the spiritual level is the immortal, never-changing level of life whereas the grosser levels of life are always changing. Such a spiritual union is the ideal kind of relationship for seekers on the path of liberation for, like a divine elixir, pure love heals, soothes and nourishes the finest level of feeling. In its purest expression, pure love inundates the heart with divine bliss, silently preparing the way for the final consummation of Love wherein the individual soul merges completely with the Divine Beloved – the Lord of Love, the all-pervading Light of Life.
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About the Author
Barbara Ann Briggs is a poet, freelance journalist and a teacher of Transcendental Meditation. Her most recent publication is Pilgrimage on the Path of Love, a novel of visionary fiction. Her website is: https://barbaraannbriggs.com and www.facebook.com/barbara.briggs.524
