The Way of Love/Sant Keshavadas

Sadguru Sant Keshavadas of India, (Temple of Cosmic Religion) my Spiritual mentor, radiated love through the air. Without needing to speak a word, his message to me was profound and unforgettable. We can manifest the love of God, if we surrender our ego to God.

When I was a child, long before I knew a word for it, I felt a fire moving through my cellular being whenever my mother and father came near me. I felt a similar feeling when I was near my grandmother or others who nurtured me. At an early age I became aware of another dimension to this experience. Perhaps the key to this awareness was the prayers my mother prayed for me and later with me as I lay in my crib in semi-darkness. It was more than the sound of my mother's voice. Beyond the quality of her soothing words there was something else I could feel. It enveloped me. It comforted me. It was a living presence when my mother left the room. By age three I would sit up and bathe in the glow of this feeling. I had no words to call it. I needed no words. I just rested in it. As I grew, this fire, this glow did not go away. It expanded in many directions. It was my friend, my teacher. The fire was my center. It was the gyroscope which always restored my balance. The world has always seemed somewhat foreign to me. I felt myself to be a visitor but home was not a place. Home was a feeling. There was something that connected me to people, however, places were just backgrounds. As a youth I enjoyed silence. I was a loner. I did not have a great need to share my thoughts. I thought that all human beings were experiencing basically the same thing. I did not talk about my inner-feelings during the early years. I felt, I observed.

At age nine, as I sat in the balcony of Zion Bethel Church in Portsmouth, Virginia. I heard a story that revealed the vibrant presence behind my mother's prayers. I recognized the same spirit. The preacher spoke of Jesus Christ on the Cross, suffering for the world. Everything vanished and I saw him there. We touched mentally and spiritually. At that moment my soul embraced the man, the suffering, the love and the peace. My mind was changed and I felt a universal connection with the peoples of the world. Suddenly, there was a reason to talk, to share, to do something with the fire. The fire I felt was called love.

Love is not a mere word. It is a motive power that transforms and enriches all who embrace it without resistance. The foundation of the mission of my Spiritual teacher, Sadguru Sant Keshavadas was love. He wrote:

Love is the law of life. To love is to live. This divine love is prem (Sanskrit)

It is the one sun which reflects on all ponds It is the one water which slakes the thirsts of all. It is the one air that sustains all life; it is the one fire which burns in all houses;colors of the cows may be different but the milk is the same; systems of faith might be different but God is one; nectar drunk through any vessel will bestow immortality.

Hate no one, love all, for God is love.

The spirit of love, its way, is to give. Love gives of itself. Love is expanded through the act of giving. As a nine-year old having a mystical vision of Jesus on the cross I was moved by his supreme act of giving. I knew that he was suffering by choice for the sake of others. I was one of those he was sacrificing himself for. In merging with him my experience of myself changed. I knew without analyzing the knowing that I,too, must give my life away, if called for. I knew this because my heart overflowed with compassion and the burden of the world was mine. I, too, felt a love for the people in the world too great to speak of.

God is love, it s taught. It is also taught that mankind was fashioned in the likeness of God. If we use scripture as our spiritual guide then we should understand that the core, the very nature of our being is love, itself. We can measure ourselves by how close or far away we are from love. We are also taught that God is one. Love reflects. The light of love returns to itself. Love is not an object. Love is not a thought. To satisfy thirst we must not look at water nor discuss it's properties, we must drink it. To taste the truth of our being we must allow it to emerge. That is the Zen aspect of this journey. To truly express love we must be love. Only then can we express it effortlessly. Only then can we be genuine.

Love is not a concept with rules to remember that we put into practice consciously. That is only a mental construct, an imitation of the real. The real moves naturally, like breathing oxygenates our blood. Those who have faith in God and believe we are born of His nature must go one step further. We must let go of our intellectual scaffolding and allow ourselves to fall back into the very source of our being. This may be terrifying to the thought-driven person but love can conquer even that fear. The word Religion comes from the Latin, religare. It means to bind. In Religion we tend to place all of our hope on embracing or binding ourselves to a symbol of love, be that a person or revered object. At its highest point that object or person is only the symbol for what is represented. The Manifested One. The Loving Master admits this freely, “The Son can do nothing without the Father.” In embracing the object of Love, the wise disciple realizes he must go even further. He must embrace the very Source of Love by surrendering in love to the Unknowable. If we are born out of love, only love can heal us. We cannot heal ourselves no matter how skillful our machinations. If you believe there is such a thing as love, you believe in God by another name. Let love take you, if you would truly experience its power.