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Posted on : Dec 1, 2011
Radio Sai Study Circle – 6
Understanding Love in All Its Dimensions
Part-6
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Tips to Practise Love in Daily Life
GSS: But, all said and done, let's now ask ourselves the most pragmatic question – how do we practice this love? It's easy to philosophise love and talk about it and its various nuances. But then, how do we transform our worldly love into divine love?
Today, there is a dire poverty of love in this world. It would be very appropriate here to recall what Mother Teresa says about this poverty of love. She says, “Love begins at home. Love lives in homes. Why is there today so much of suffering and unhappiness in the world? Everybody seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater development and greater riches. Children have very little time for their parents; parents have very little time for each other. In the home begins the disruption of the peace of the world.”
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BP: That is a very famous quote of Mother Teresa.
GSS: Exactly! She says that today there is more hunger in the world for love than for bread. The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved.
So, how do we bring back this love in whatever form? As we have clearly seen in our deliberations, it is not just one type of love which is sacred; any sort of love...
BP: ... can be made divine.
GSS: At any rung of the ladder. It can be raised to the transcendental level. So let's now spend the last 5-10 minutes of our discussion on how we can really manifest love in its true essence.
Who would like to start? Maybe Ganesh?
KMG: Yes sir. Talking about of how to practice love, we all are aware that each of us have our own strengths and weaknesses. In fact nowadays, the situation is that when we look at our weakness or anybody points out our shortcomings, we become the greatest of lawyers. But when it comes to the weakness of others, we become the greatest of judges. That is how it is today.
Swami has given two tips in this regard. He says that whenever we see the weakness in ourselves, we must see it as something big, because we have to work on it. And when we see shortcoming in others, we must look at it as a small thing; in tother words, we have to overlook it.
The second tip that Swami gives is – we should see the Divine in everybody. An example of this that comes to my mind is a real-life incident from the life of Phyllis Krystal that happened sometime in 1975.
BP: A long-time devotee of Swami.
KMG: She in fact has authored the book, ‘Mastering the Monkey Mind’.
GSS: And ‘The Ultimate Experience’.
BP: And they are wonderful books!
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| Phyllis Krystal with Bhagawan Baba | ||||
KMG: In 1974, she was travelling from Puttaparthi back to Los Angeles. Their aeroplane was hijacked and you can imagine the situation. She narrates in her own words that the hijacker had in fact spilled alcohol and perfumes all over the cabin in the aeroplane. And he was holding a cigarette, threatening all the passengers that if they moved, he would light up the cabin.
She was very panicky and at that moment, inside her she was shouting, “Baba, Baba, Baba please help”. Suddenly, she heard her inner voice saying, “Send love to them.” It was a very clear instruction, but she thought, “It's a very crazy instruction! Is it possible?”
All these questions started going on in her mind.
But somehow, may be because they had just come back from darshan, she closed her eyes and started visualising Swami. When you think of Swami, the first thing that happens is that love dawns into your consciousness; you go into that state of love. She started breathing that love and visualising Swami. The effect was that slowly, the hijackers started shivering. They became nervous and right in front of her, she saw that they were dropping the guns. After some time, the plane landed safely in the Amsterdam airport and within minutes, the hijackers were arrested.
Later that year, she came back to Puttaparthi and shared how they were saved by Swami's intervention. Immediately, Swami in His unique style said, “Baba, Baba, Baba”, the way she had shouted in her mind. He told that it was actually the love when she thought of Swami and the love which filled the cabin and permeated the entire ambience through her, which changed the situation. That is the power of love and that is a practical tip we can take away.
GSS: But Ganesh, one question that comes to our mind is, if there is somebody whom we cannot stand the very sight of, how do we go about loving them? Especially if they are very much part of our own life.
KMG: Oh yes, I am sure there are lots of examples to solve this problem.
Conquer With Love
SG: In fact, I can give an example from my own life. There was one colleague of mine I found very difficult to get along with. Even seeing him would create some kind of a negative emotion in me. I definitely wanted to get rid of that, because Swami insisted all through His life that one has to love all.
So I was praying to Swami and He gave a beautiful tip – “If you're not able to stand somebody, or cannot look into his eyes for any reason, then how can you express your love to him? Instead, you can do this: When you're not in his presence, close your eyes and pray to Swami to fill that person's life with joy, love, and laughter.”
Such selfless and unconditional love, if we practice continuously, just by closing our eyes, thinking about that person and sending our unconditional love to him through a prayer to Bhagawan, it really does wonders. When I started practicing this over years, now I see that we get along very well, and it's a beautiful experience. Now when we meet each other, we greet happily and the bond of love is re-established.
KMG: That is the power of love.
BP: Yes, absolutely. I would like to share something which I have been trying to practice in my life. Whenever I feel that there is some person in my life who doesn't have a relationship with me the way I want it to be, what I do is – during my prayer time, imagine that I'm enveloping that person with my love. I have done that any number of times and believe me, it has had amazing results.
The next time or the subsequent times when I meet that person, that feeling of negativity is not there. He's no longer someone who doesn't want to look at my face, because the power of love is so much.
If it can save a plane from being hijacked, it can do all these other small things too. These are no big challenges for love to achieve. So, if there's any situation that is not working, all we have to do is pour more love into it.
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I'm reminded of one incident shared by an alumnus, Dayasindhu. He narrated how in a project that he was involved in, he had a particular client who was very difficult to deal with. Nobody in his team wanted to work in the project because they had to deal with this person, who was in the habit of using very abusive language and was an absolute tough nut to crack.
There were times when all his colleagues said they didn't want to work on that project. Dayasindhu thought he will give one last try. “Let me try and be extra nice to this manager and see what happens” he thought.
So he did exactly that and suddenly, the attitude of that person changed; he started smiling and wishing him well. Of course, initially, it was not so forthcoming, but when Dayasindhu did it two-three times, suddenly, there was some sort of a muted acknowledgement of his affection.
A few days later, when they had to meet one evening, Dayasindhu suggested, “Maybe we can postpone the meeting. Why don't you spend this evening with your son? He has come back. We'll do it tomorrow, no problem.” This touched that manager so much that there was a sea change in his attitude. With time, he became one of the best clients they were working with; he was always supportive and cheerful.
Everyone wondered what magic did Dayasindhu do. I think this is something which we all can practice wherever we are – in our social life, professional or personal life.
Selfless Service – A Supreme Manifestation of Love
GSS: I think this discussion wouldn't be complete if we did not touch upon one more manifestation of love – which Swami has perhaps talked about throughout His life – and that is service.
There can be no true love that does not manifest as service. Similarly, there can be no true service that does not manifest as love. Love is born in the womb of service, love expresses itself as service, and love grows through service. In fact, Bhagawan says wherever you see a disconsolate, diseased person, there is your domain of service. Every nerve must tingle with love with eagerness to share that love.
Here, I would like to narrate the experience of a devotee of Bhagawan by name Hal Honig from US. He had a very good habit. Whenever he left his office, he would buy a few buns to distribute to some poor people who sat along the street. It so happened that one of these men was just at the entrance of his apartment, and this was a regular practice.
Now, one evening, he was very busy and unfortunately, he could not buy these buns. He was feeling very uncomfortable because he wouldn't be able to give it, but he came along. His only worry was that while he would be able to bypass all the other poor people because he would be driving in his car, the person he would definitely have to encounter is the one at the entrance of his apartment.
He wondered, “How can I face this person? Surely, he's going to ask me for the bun and I will have to tell him 'no'.” So, he came up with an idea. He thought, “I'll park my car a little far away and enter my apartment from the rear.”
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But, unfortunately, when he reached his place and was about to do this disappearing act, this poor man sitting in the entrance saw him and called out, “Sir!” Hal says it was a very uneasy feeling. He thought, “He's going to ask me for the bun. How am I going to tell him that I have no bun today?'”
Anyway, he responds and says, “I'm really sorry, I couldn't get a bun today.” The poor man looks at him with a smile and says, “Sir, I did not call you here for your bun, but every day, when you give me your bun, you give a beautiful smile and that makes me feel wanted. That makes me feel part of this human fraternity and it's only that smile that I ask for.”
So, this is a beautiful experience which says that it's not just about giving material things. Even a smile is also about love.
Khalil Gibran beautifully captures this need for love in our every act by saying, “Work is love made visible and if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. For, if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger.” Such a beautiful thought!
Any concluding remarks before we close our discussion?
The Power of Love
BP: Talking about the power of love, I cannot but share this research done by the Japanese professor Masaru Emoto. Probably, many might have seen the book ‘The Hidden Messages of Water’. This professor has been visually capturing the structure of water at the moment of freezing, and he has done it through high-speed photography.
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What he has found is our thoughts have a direct consequence on the formation of the water crystals. And the quality of these crystals depend on the emotion that we exhibit to water. Suppose you go to water and say ‘love’ or ‘gratitude’, and express happiness, then you see that the water crystal forms diamond-like structures which are so beautiful to look at.
So when you talk about love to water, it is almost as if the water crystal is opening itself and stretching its hands to express the joy. On the other hand, if you go to the water and say, “You're not so good, I don't like you, I hate you” and so on, and photograph that water crystal, you see that it is totally crumpled; it is so sad.
KMG: It doesn't have a crystal structure at all, isn't it?
BP: Absolutely. The message that Professor Masaru Emoto gives is, we must all pay respect to water and fill it with positive vibrations, because when water changes, you will change, I will change, and the whole world will change, because we are all made of 70% water.
If it's true for water, I'm sure it is true for all elements, because God is latent in everything. And where there is God, there is love. If you know how to love the elements and Nature, surely Golden Age of Love will not be far off.
The Love That Baba Expects From Us
SG: In fact, the concluding thought coming to me is the definition of love that Swami had given to some students in Trayee Brindavan. He said, “Boys, you don't love Me, you only like Me.” As usual, all the boys in chorus said, “Swami, we love You.”
Swami said, “No, no, you like Me.” Swami then went on to give an analogy. He said, “Do you have pets at home?” A few boys raised their hands saying yes. “See, when your pet is around you, do you feel happy?”
“Yes Swami, we play with it, we are very happy,” one boy replied.
“And then, when it falls sick, do you feel sad?”
“Yes, Swami, we feel very bad that it is not well.”
Swami then said, “You live with Me in a very similar way. Whenever I'm around you, you're very happy. And when my physical health is not good, you feel sad. That is what I call ‘liking’. Do you follow your pet all around wherever it goes?”
“No Swami,” was the reply.
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Then, Bhagawan made the statement: “To love is to follow. If you love Me, follow every single thing that I have taught you. That is true love.”
AD: I think the greatest teaching of Bhagawan comes through the beautiful words He often tells in His discourse, ‘Prema Swaroopulara’ meaning 'Embodiments of divine love’.
Let me just read out something which Swami has put very beautifully. There is nobody on this earth who can speak the way Bhagawan has spoken about love, because He is love walking on two legs. Swami says:
“You may call me Prema Swaroopa. Prema is the wealth I have, which I share among the miserable and afflicted. I have no other riches. Prema is My distinctive characteristic, not the creation of material objects or of conferring good health and happiness by the sheer exercise of My will.
Now, let us listen to this beautiful bhajan that Swami loved so much. I still remember those beautiful days when He used to come to the primary school and we all used to sing this:
Listen to: Prem Ishwar Hai, Ishwar Prem Hai.
GSS: Thank you brothers Giridhar, Bishu, Ganesh, and Amey. It's been a very very interesting discussion. It's been long, but I guess that's how it would be with something as infinite as love and how you reach the culmination of this infinite journey towards love. The ultimate fulfilment comes as the merger of the river with the sea. God, our beloved Bhagawan, began this process of love when He separated Himself from Himself to love Himself. Now, each one of us must realise and experience this true love, so that we can ultimately claim, “I united myself with myself to be myself.”
Let's conclude with the prayer of peace and love.
Aum Shanti, Shanti, Shanti
Samastha Loka Sukhino Bhavantu
Aum Shanti Shanti Shanti
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