Love
NOTHING AND ALL
The virtue of love is NOTHING and ALL, or that nothing visible
out of which all things proceed; its power is through all things; its
height is as high as God; its greatness is as great as God. Its
virtue is the principle of all principles; its power supports the
heavens and upholds the earth; its height is higher than the highest
heavens; and its greatness is even greater than the very
manifestation of the Godhead in the glorious light of the divine
essence, as being infinitely capable of greater and greater
manifestations in all eternity. What can I say more? Love is higher
than the highest. Love is greater than the greatest. Yea, it is in a
certain sense greater than God; while yet in the highest sense of
all, God is LOVE, and love is God. Love being the highest principle,
is the virtue of all virtues; from whence they flow forth. Love being
the greatest majesty, is the power of all powers, from whence they
severally operate. And it is the holy magical root, or spiritual power
from whence all the wonders of God have been wrought by the hands of
his elect servants, in all their generations successively. Whoever
finds it, finds nothing and all things.
JACOB BOEHME
DIVINE LOVE
Love is divine. But love is expressed differently and in different
degrees according to the evolution of the individual human soul.
There are people who still have hatred, jealousy, anger and pride
in their hearts. To such, God is above, beyond and apart. They also
may love God, but their love is selfish. This love is tamasic.
That, too, is a low form of love by which people love and worship
God as a separate being, and pray to him for the fulfilment of their
material desires. Such love is known as rajasic love.
But the love which seeks God for the sake of love alone and by
means of which we offer ourselves whole-heartedly to him - this love
we call sattvic love.
But when the love, the lover and the beloved have become one,
when we see God and love him as the innermost Self in all beings; and
when there is a continuous current of love flowing in the heart, then
is it that we realize divine love.
When such divine love fills the heart, we transcend the three
gunas and become united with Brahman.
KAPILA
A LIVING FLAME
Love is a mighty power, a great and complete good. Love alone
lightens every burden and makes the rough places smooth. It bears
every hardship as though it were nothing and renders all bitterness
sweet and acceptable. The love of Jesus is noble and inspires us to
great deeds; it moves us always to desire perfection. Love aspires to
high things and is held back by nothing base. Love longs to be free,
a stranger to every worldly desire, lest its inner vision become
dimmed . . . . Love flies, runs, and leaps for joy; it is free and
unrestrained. Love gives all for all, resting in One who is highest
above all things, from whom every good flows and proceeds . . . . Love is
watchful, and whilst resting never sleeps; weary, it is never
exhausted; imprisoned, it is never in bonds; alarmed, it is never
afraid; like a living flame and a burning torch, it surges upward and
surely surmounts every obstacle.
THOMAS à KEMPIS
THE LAW OF LOVE
Fear and love are contradictory terms. Love is reckless in giving
away, oblivious as to what it gets in return. Love wrestles with the
world as with itself and ultimately gains a mastery over all other
feelings. My daily experience, as of those who are working with me,
is that every problem would lend itself to solution if we are
determined to make the law of truth and non-violence the law of life.
For truth and non-violence, are to me, faces of the same coin.
Whether mankind will consciously follow the law of love I do not
know. But that need not perturb us. The law will work, just as the law
of gravitation will work whether we accept it or no. And just as a
scientist will work wonders out of various applications of the laws
of nature, even so a man who applies the law of love with scientific
precision can work greater wonders. For the force of non-violence is
infinitely more wonderful and subtle than the forces of nature, like
for instance electricity. The man who discovered for us the law of
love was a far greater scientist than any of our modern scientists.
Only our explorations have not gone far enough and so it is not
possible for every one to see all its workings.... The more I work at
this law the more I feel the delight in life, the delight in the
scheme of this universe. It gives me a peace and a meaning of the
mysteries of nature that I have no power to describe.
M. K. GANDHI
BEAUTY AND LOVE
From all eternity the Beloved unveiled His beauty in the solitude of the unseen;
He held up the mirror to His own face, He displayed His loveliness to Himself.
He was both the spectator and the spectacle; no eye but His had
surveyed the Universe.
All was One, there was no duality, no pretence of 'mine' or 'thine'.
The vast orb of Heaven, with its myriad incomings and outgoings, was concealed in a single point.
The Creation lay cradled in the sleep of non-existence, like a child ere ithas breathed.
The eye of the Beloved, seeing what was not, regarded non-entity as existent.
Although He beheld His attributes and qualities as a perfect whole in His own essence,
Yet He desired that they should be displayed to Him in another mirror,
And that each one of His eternal attributes should become manifest accordingly in a diverse form.
Therefore He created the verdant fields of Time and Space and the life-giving garden of the world,
That every branch and leaf and fruit might show forth
His various perfections.
The cypress gave a hint of His comely stature, the rose gave tidings of His beauteous countenance.
Wherever Beauty peeped out, Love appeared beside it; wherever
Beauty shone in a rosy cheek, Love lit his torch from that flame.
Wherever Beauty dwelt in dark tresses, Love came and found a heart entangled in their coils.
Beauty and Love are as body and soul; Beauty is the mine and Love the precious stone.
They have always been together from the very first; never have they
travelled but in each other's company.
NURUDDIN ABDUR RAAMAN JAMI
