The Gravity of Love

Literally.

One early morning, sitting facing east as the sun rose in front of me, I was performing my morning rituals to the sun God. In the tradition I come from, the ritual is known as Sandhyavandanam, a prayer-based practice that meditates and acknowledges basic elements the universe as well as asks the Divine grace for guidance in the righteous path and wisdom.

Immersed in the mental chanting of the Gayatri Mantra, a thought arose in my mind. I opened my eyes and stared at the grass and trees in front of me for about 30 seconds. A squirrel came into my view and I stared at it as it sat for a few seconds and went about its way. Then the thought came to me, “The Gravity of Love.” I was astonished.

What is it about a mother’s voice that, upon hearing, comforts her child? What is it about any living creature that moves to nurture its loved one with great, unconditional, care and comfort? What makes a bird fly great distances to bring its children food and shelter? What is it that allows a plant to grow into a beautiful tree which it then shelters in its shade, with its branches and leaves, other living beings unconditionally while asking for nothing in return? What is it that anchors the roots of a tree to the crust of Mother Earth?

What is it about rain that gives itself to everything, without asking, unconditionally and equally? What is it about the sunlight and its generosity that gives us the ability to perfectly survive, illuminating our existence in various ways? What is it about the moon that keeps itself in perfect distance from the Earth, for that matter, the relationship between the sun and the Earth? What is it about the number 9.8 m/s^2 that keeps me on this planet and all that it protects? What is it that brings you and me together, our relationships, our values, our so-called ‘connection’? For a long time, I’ve asked myself these questions and the answer was, “The Gravity of Love.” Literally.

You see, in the material sense, gravity is a universal force that pulls together all matter. Anywhere you see in the universe, Gravity stirs up the attraction between any two objects. There is nothing more to be said about this.

Love is a state of being or an expression that brings about a loss of self. That is, there is the cessation of the ‘I’-consciousness which brings about selflessness. When one is lacking conflict with oneself, the selflessness that arises from this effort of expressing the feeling of love reveals the constant longing to be closer to the object, with the help of gravity, and to become one.

At a deeper level, in a spiritual sense, it hit me that it is because of love that the phenomena of gravity, as we physically see it, brings the universe together — microscopically and macroscopically. It is this answer that that morning just felt so satisfying. The intensity of it. The gravity of it. I felt like it completed me. I was some how fulfilled with the answer.

To further talk about this, we have to talk about a deeper reality, at the conscious level. At this deeper level, love works tirelessly with gravity to bring about unity. A sense of union. This unity brings the gravity of love to be one. All of us, as humans, animals, living beings, have, somewhere deep within us, a yearning to unite. To come together. To express and feel oneness. Love, through gravity — physically and at a deeper level, spiritually — brings this oneness. If we fight this unity, love will want to bring us together.

To feel this love is to automatically bring towards us, selflessly, to whatever it is that we long to be complete with. Now when it comes to the longevity of this oneness, we must explore the varying degrees of love. As much there is love in creation, there is also love in destruction—but the unity is very temporary. With the element of love, destruction unites two objects together. Like the sun engulfing the Earth in a few billion years, this is a form of love too. It’s another pull. Matter of fact, it’s happening all the time in universe at all levels. However, the important thing to understand here is how long does this union last? The greater the love, the greater the selflessness, the more eternal the unity—the union.

It is because of the selfless nature of love that sun gives its light and warmth, allows the Earth to orbit it in perfect distance, a mother to give, give and only give all that its child longs for, a bird to travel distances to feed its children, a plant to grow into a tree and shelter all that it comes, without discriminating, in its shadow. For a second, if we think about the immensity of love, the formless nature of which we try to express through our beings in so many ways, we realize that you and I are not really independent of each other.

We are inside one another, one, at all times. We are so inextricably woven with each other, each other with the plants and trees, rocks, dirt, dust, wind, all the elements and all the animals and all of creation. We don’t even really need to communicate. We are already united with each other. However, it is because we lack this knowledge of unity that our beings scream, literally scream, to unite.

I hope now you see the gravity of love, gravity and love, its ability to unite. The only way we can experience this unity is if we create an environment, through our existence, that expresses the gravity of love. As beings with intelligence, we must seek to love, ourselves, and one another. Due to our inextricable nature, at the deepest levels of our beings—the pain you feel is also the pain I feel. The love you feel is also the love I feel. If we can express love, unconditionally, to those we come in contact with through the course of our lives, then all of our longing to unite will be fulfilled. We become complete beings. This kind of a love when it fills our hearts, separate from the influence of the mind, we realize that it is in all of life and creation— the animate and the inanimate. The immensity of this love and its only purpose is to bring two things together and unite. There is nothing more selfless than this purpose of gravity of love.

All of creation is governed by this act of selflessness. And this kind of an act of selflessness is sacred.

So let’s love. Let’s pull each other together. Let’s unite. For today. Well, at least, just for this moment. By doing this, we increase the vibration of humanity, the nature in which it resides, Mother Earth and all of creation in every corner of the universe.

© Sai Santosh Kolluru