What Is True Love? Who Can Truly Love Us? The Love of God.

Does someone truly love each other, is someone truly happy in this world? If not, then who can, and how?

Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash

(Watch the videos on YouTube of Swami Mukunananda, and ISKCON, in English, for great knowledge and education of God, devotion, and spirituality) (Read this article with patience, it is a long article)

There are 3 things. Love, business, and lust.

1. Love means to give and give.
2. Business means to give and take.
3. Lust means to take and take.

Of course, people come in the 2nd and 3rd categories only. The 1st one, no one ever does, and no one can ever do. Why?

We do not love anyone. We just get attached to them. Do you really think that you have ever truly and purely loved someone, here in this world, even if they are your parents or child? Think slowly and deeply. Why do you love them? Why do you get attached to them? What are they bringing to you?

Well, the truthful/harsh answer is that you love them for your own happiness. Do you love them to give them happiness? Think again, from inside. I think the answer may be no. Do you love them for only their happiness, and their welfare? Maybe, no.

You love them because it is making you happy. By living with them, it makes you happy. You are enjoying yourself with them, and that is why you are living with them. Living with them makes you happy, you do not care about their happiness or welfare, much. You try to find your own happiness by living with them. Your heart should get happiness, enjoyment, and taste, this is what truly or genuinely matters. If you are unable to find happiness with someone, think again, do you really care? No, maybe. If you won’t find happiness in someone, you do not care about them much, and go somewhere else, where you can find happiness.

For example, if you did not find happiness in your parents, you go to your friend to find happiness, like playing video games. After some time, when you get bored with your friend and again your happiness drops, you go somewhere else, where you can find enjoyment and happiness. You keep on going to places, objects, animals, and people, for your own happiness, again and again, and again and so on. You are going everywhere, where you can get attached and get happiness from it. This is a form of lust. Take and take.

And a very deep thing is, even if you try to give happiness to others, it is also because you are getting happiness, by giving happiness to them. You try to give happiness to others, and by seeing them happy, you also get happy, and here again, there is your happiness involved. I give you happiness, I also get happiness.

If you try to do welfare for the other person, it is also because you are getting filled with happiness and pride, by helping them in any way. You help others, and you get a feeling of happiness and pride. Your heart/mind becomes happy and proud when you help others, you would have noticed this at least once in your life. This is business. Give and take.

Look inside yourself. Wherever you go, your mind always thinks, what is in it, for me, here? What will I get from here? What will I get from this person or this object? What will I get from doing this thing? Yes, this is selfishness.

Have you ever loved, only to give and give? Not involving your happiness or welfare at all? Have you ever thought of giving someone happiness, without anything in return, from your heart? No, right? You even love your parents, because you are getting happiness with or from them.

You love your children, you try to give happiness to them, you try to help them for their welfare because you feel better by doing it, you are getting comfortable with them, and ultimately you are getting some kind of happiness from them as well. You are doing it because it brings some good feelings to you. This also cannot be counted in true love which is 100% true love.

You have to love someone, without expecting anything at all, in return, not even your own comfort. You have to love someone, only and only for their sake, happiness, and welfare. Can anyone do this, in this world? Well, the thing, is no one can truly love someone, here in this material universe. It will always be for their own sake, happiness, or welfare, no matter how much a person really tries to become selfless, etc. I love someone for my own happiness only. This is the truth.

We serve people, only in the expectation, that we will at least get a small thing in return, like even something like appreciation, or we are just only eager to get something. This is the same thing only, what I will get from here? These are lust and business.

Similarly, no one can truly be happy, or satisfied here, in this material universe, also called the universe of pain, anxiety, sadness, and sorrow. This universe is made like this only. There will always be some kind of pain, anger, frustration, anxiety, sorrow, etc. This world was never meant for your happiness and enjoyment.

So, what is true love? People do not know what true love is. And a person can never love something when he himself is ignorant. When a person himself does not have the right knowledge of life, his existence, or his nature, when he does not have the answers for what to do and what not to do, when he does not have the answers of what and why about life, in a clarified way, how can he actually live in this world.

To live in this world, one must have right, proper, and clarified knowledge of his own existence, first, and then decide what to do ahead. And the only way, he can get the proper knowledge/education of life and his existence is through spirituality.

Why did you come to this world? Who are you? What do you have to do here? Everything vanishes after death, so what is the point of enjoying and doing all the things here, for your happiness? The animals also do the same thing, then why you are made a human being? You have been blessed with an intellect, through which you can make decisions properly, why is it so? There must be a higher purpose for you, here.

Do you have some proper and clarified answers to these above basic questions? If not, then how can you say or decide, what you have to do here, whom to love here, where to get happiness from, what is good/helpful for me and what is not?

The so-called schools and colleges never teach you this, as they themselves do not know these things and their system only teaches you to enjoy and consume through work. You even work for your own happiness and pleasure only.

The only thing, here is the lack of spirituality, and the supreme spiritual being, which is God. The only thing lacking here is God. When we try to answer the above questions, by putting God, see how easy it becomes to answer them.

God, the supreme father/mother, who is perfect and complete, sent you this world so that we can realize his value in this world of sadness, so that we can be devoted to him, and live life by his laws and rules, and he may grace us. You are not body; you are soul, and your nature is spiritual. Everything vanishes after death, therefore, the only purpose I have been sent here is to be devoted to God, purify myself, and go back to him. And for that, I have been given this precious human body, so that with my intellect I can differentiate myself from animals and try to find a proper direction of knowledge, here.

The higher purpose for me here is to increase my knowledge/consciousness, to know God, and for that, I have to read scriptures and listen to the saints and prophets who came here in the past, to remind us of our real spiritual identity, that we are souls, and we have to go back to our supreme eternal spiritual father, God.

Now, I can understand that as God is spiritual and supreme, and is also perfect and complete, I am a soul, and my nature is also spiritual, so I will get pure, true, and complete happiness from that God only, and for that, I have to love God only. I have got one heart, and it is only to love God. That is why he sent me here so that I can develop love and faith for him, with the help of Sadhana, knowledge, surrender, etc.

And as God is the perfect supreme being, he is the only one who truly and purely loves us, and we also have to practice developing true, pure love, and faith for him, back. And finally, it means God only truly loves us, and we can truly love God only. So Simple!

God loves us selflessly, and we have to develop selfless love for him. As no one can truly and selflessly love here, we must slowly, start to find the right knowledge for God. Death may come at any time, and before that, we have to develop a good love for God. This human form is precious, because we get this human body very rarely among all the 84,00,000 species, and only in this form we can do devotion to God and go back to him. We have to utilize this human body in following the proper knowledge in this birth itself. Now, let’s see an interesting thing.

God is called the soul of all the souls. He is the soul of our soul. Now, if you want to test a true love of someone, just do this thing. Try to silently put a rubber snake between two so-called lovers, holding their hands genuinely, and who say that they love each other truly, and see the drama. See, the instant impulsive reaction of both of them. As you put a rubber snake between them, their hands will leave each other, and go for protecting themselves first. Both of them, will save and protect themselves first, and later on ask the other person, if they are alright or not.

This means, their own lives were more important than the other person’s. Their first priority at that time, was to protect and save themselves. This clearly explains that everyone is concerned about themselves only. I first, and then you. I love myself the most. But what does ‘I’ mean here? First, I have to protect my body. Everyone loves their body. We love our body. Now, we love our minds more than our bodies. The mind/heart gives us pleasure in various things, as it allows us to enjoy things.

But there is another thing that we love more than our mind. It is our intellect. We love our intellect, our brain. Intellect helps us in thinking and making decisions. We love it because we trust it even more. It is more powerful than our minds. It is the truth. But there is another thing, whom we love, even more than our intellect. What is that?

Yes, that is our soul. ‘I’ refers to our soul, as mentioned in the previous paragraph. We love ourselves means; we love our soul. We are soul, not body, mind, and intellect. The soul is the one, that helps us govern our body, mind, and intellect. The soul is the most powerful among all of them. The soul is the driver, and the body is the vehicle, with mind and intellect as the vehicle’s parts, which help it guide.

And as mentioned above, God is the ‘soul of your soul’! It means he is even more important than you are to yourself. Now, imagine you love your body so much, how much could you love your mind? You love your mind so much, how much could you love your intellect? You love your intellect so much, how much could you love your soul? The soul is that everyone loves, that is, people themselves. And now, imagine if you love yourself so much, that is your soul, how much would you love, the soul of your soul, which is God? This means God is even dearer to you than yourself. Imagine, how much would you love him. How much happiness would you get from him?

Imagine, the long-lost love of your supreme father/mother for you. Since eternity, you have been separated from him, because you have taken infinite births, in this material world, and you have forgotten your eternal relative, God. Like a child getting separated from his mother/father, how concerned the parents get for their lost child, and how anxious the child gets, to get to his parents again.

Now, imagine your long-lost love and concern for your supreme father/mother. You are that child who has got separated from him, for endless lifetimes. Imagine, the love and concern you will get from him after eternity when you meet him. Imagine, how concerned he will be for you, for his child, who is suffering here, separated from him, for endless lifetimes. This love can never be matched with any love in this universe. A long-lost love of a supreme parent, to his tiny child, since eternity.

God is beautiful, pure, divine, and is the most handsome personality, one cannot even imagine by his material intellect. He once said in the Bhagavad Gita, that whatever beautiful things you see in this world, are just a spark of his splendor.

This is true and pure love, the love of God and his tiny soul.

Watch the videos of Swami Mukunananda, and ISKCON, in English, for a better understanding of devotion and spirituality.