God Is Love

By Swami Ramdas

God is defined as Love. What does this word Love here signify? What is its real nature? Love is absolute and is perfectly impersonal; it is the pure and dazzling power of the Spirit that dwells in and pervades all beings and things. Love is infinite and eternal. Love is beyond the implications of name and form - still it works through them. Love is beyond the sense of duality - still it reveals in multifarious ways. It is the omnipotent power that guides and controls all things.

Love is unaffected by the touch of time and place. The so-called right and wrong are unknown in the realm of Love. It is not coloured by the conflict of opposites and the modes of nature. Its light is as of a crystal. Love is spontaneous in expression and therefore supremely blissful. Its manifestation is based upon its indivisible unity and oneness with all that exists. Love is the one truth and one power. Love is ever taintless, ever flowing and ever acting from a transcendent plane. The upward movement and the downward both belong to Love. All opposites neutralise in the undifferentiated spirit of Love. Love is the mystic solvent of all diversity.

To realise God who is Love, you are asked to love one another; to look upon others in the same light as yourself; to feel for others as you do for yourself. Can you understand the secret of this Love if you only strive to attain it through physical or mental perfection without seeking for a greater ideal? No, this is not possible. On no lower plane can you love another as yourself. You have to transcend individuality; you have to rise higher than the body and mind and realise the universal and immutable essence of your being, and then alone can you love another as yourself - not otherwise. You must attain to that consciousness in which you experience the ecstasy of oneness with all beings and creatures in the world. You must feel at the core of your heart that you, another and all are forms of one underlying Spirit. Diversity is merely on the surface. In the splendour of Truth, you and all are one.

In the vision of oneness and sameness of the life-principle there can be no dualism and the consequent clash of opposites. This vision is of Love - a pure emanation of an almighty and impersonal Spirit. Love’s nature is therefore equality and harmony founded on the knowledge of oneness of all beings.

Compassion is the first quality to be developed in order to attain the bliss of impersonal Love. At the sight of suffering your heart is touched and it melts. In a mysterious way you now feel the suffering of another as your own. This feeling is not of the body or mere mind. It is the outcome of a consciousness of something that equally dwells within you and the sufferer, and which is undivided. By a strange impulse you are urged to succour him. Your act of relief, whatever shape it takes, yields you inexplicable peace and joy. Verily, the peace that you thus derive has sprung from nowhere but the outer fulfilment of your intuitive or mystic realisation of inner identity with the sufferer. When impelled on by Love, you invariably take your stand on the impersonal truth of your existence.

So long as you are only seeking for perfection of Love in the relative good conceived by you as an ideal, you will be caught in the labyrinth of a never-ending quest. Understand at once that the root of Love is in your impersonal Self and to realise it, awakening the heart to the feeling of compassion and the resultant selfless action is essential. Perform all of life’s activities in such a manner that you can every moment be conscious of your identity with the whole creation. Do not rely on any standard, however exalted, which is merely dogmatic, ethical or mental. Soar beyond all conditioned states of thought and life, and, reaching the infinite Reality, make this great Impersonal as the one immortal standard of your entire life. This Truth or God has become all - there is none besides He.

Extracted from Swami Ramdas, RELIGION - ITS UNIVERSALITY (Published by Anandashram, Kanhangad, Kerala)

(Swami Ramdas (1884-1963), who was known as P Vittal Rao during his pre-Sannyas days, was leading an ordinary life till God’s grace descended on him in or about the year 1920. Then he was made to think deeply on the futility of worldly pursuits and the necessity of pursuing the Divine path. In 1931 he and Mother Krishnabai, his foremost disciple, founded Anandashram [near Kanhangad, in Kerala, in southern India] with the object of propagating the ideal of Universal Love and Service).