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My dear brothers and sisters, friends here in Javan Ashram and around the world, wherever you are—good evening, good day, good morning. Yesterday, Swami Jasar Spurījī gave me a book to read. It was written by Ram Dass, and the title is something like Love. Be Here Now. Love is most probably the second most-used word in the world, in all languages, after the word "God." What is love? We can say love is an emotion. It is motion; it is positive motion. We know that whatever exists in this universe has two sides: positive, light; negative, darkness, ignorance. On one side we have positive love, and on the other side we have negative emotions like anger, hatred, sadness, jealousy, and so on. We know that when our mind goes into motion, our awareness, our consciousness, somehow gets closed. We have little capacity to observe or to control. When we are in emotion, our awareness gets closed. When somebody gets angry, his perception closes; he doesn't know what he is doing. He can run over fire and is not afraid. A similar thing happens when we are in love. It is also an emotion—a positive emotion. When we are full of love, when we are filled with love, there is nothing that we cannot do. We are expanding, we are getting strength, we are radiating happiness. What can we not do? We can move the mountains when Śraddhā is in the love. Love is made for the first time when we are very, very small, before birth. And then, when we are born and in the first years, love is essential. It is like sun and fertilizer, or nourishment, for the small plant. That love we get from our mother is very, very important, because when we get love, we get one of the very important qualities a human has to have. If that stage is jumped over, the grown person thinks, "What is? I love how it looks. Something is missing." What can we give to our children if we did not learn how to get it? How to give love if we did not get love? So, the first time we meet love is when we are very small children. Then, usually in teenage years when we are getting into adolescence—I think something like this is said, no?—usually then we get in love with somebody from the other sex. And then come the children; we love them, we love brothers, and we love sisters. And in the end comes, if we have good luck, Sadhguru, who can teach us a different kind of love. You see, we know the Rāmāyaṇa; we read it or we have heard about it. Swāmījī often talks about the Rāmāyaṇa, God Rāma. The love between the brothers was unbreakable. It was such a love that Bharat did not want to sit on the throne which belonged to Rāma. He was living in a very small cottage made of grass beside the throne, or āsana, of Lord Rāma. And Lakṣmaṇ left everything and did not sleep for fourteen years while Rāma was in exile. This is possible only through the immense, immense power of love. Because, as we said, love is emotion. And when you are in emotion, you see the world differently; you sense the world differently. There is nothing that is not possible. Even not sleeping for fourteen years is possible if one is loaded with love. So we have love between brothers and sisters, and love between friends. To have a friend is a great, great, great blessing. A friend will give love, will give life for the other friend. There is nothing a friend will not do for a friend. Or, of course, love for the children and love for the parents. Nowadays, many of us are handicapped and actually did not develop that love for our parents. But we have time; we are in a good place where we can learn how to love our parents, which maybe we have not loved all our life. The love about which I am talking is centered in the heart, not in the mind. To speak about love with the mind is like eating a plastic apple; it has no taste. All emotions come through the heart. Why? Because there is a center of the soul, and the soul actually is pure love. We know that we are not these bodies. We know that we just got them—rent a car, rent a body. So we got it, use it as best we can, and the time will come when we have to leave it here. We came here as pure love, but due to karmas, the curtains, the layers of different qualities were added between the Ātmā and this physical body. In Satya Yuga, when everybody was aware that we are divine, that we are God, that we are part of Him, love was everywhere. All this planet was radiating. Slowly, through time, people began forgetting that we are God Himself, that we are Ātmā, divine Ātmā, which cannot die, which cannot be destroyed, which never was born and never will die. It is like a fly which enters the spider's net and is moving deeper and deeper into the net. Similarly, the Ātmā which comes to this planet, due to karmas, goes deeper and deeper and deeper into problems. We have heavier and heavier karmas because we are not doing good things. So, in India they know; they have a few words for love. In the West, we have only one: "I love you," "love." "I love this car," "I love this flat," "I love the holidays." So everything is love, but it is not like that. In India, they know Prem, Pyār, Sneha, and Bhakti, and more. For different relations, they have different names which are connecting. Because love is such a power which connects everything together. And the opposite—anger, sadness—is distracting, is dividing. When people speak about love or show love or affection, then they come together. They long to be together. They are thinking, "When will come the time that we can again be together?" And when people are getting angry, then they go away from each other to corners; they don't want to meet each other, and so on. All these loves about which I was talking—that love is somehow selfish because it comes from us and goes to a certain person, and always demands something. So there is expectation for return. I love you, but I expect that you will love me. I expect that you will respect me. I expect that you will return it in a similar way, and so on. So, though it is a positive emotion, positive energy, it has something that is not pure, and this is expectation. I am expecting that I will also get. It is conditional; it is not unconditional. But there is one love which is unconditional, and this is where we come to the Sadguru. His love is absolutely unconditional. He loves us as we are, with all our good and bad qualities, all our good and bad moments. And this is why Swāmījī attracted so many people around the world—not because he is rich or famous or a nice-looking person or a good speaker, but because he is radiating the love. And that is received by our soul. And that soul is longing. Yes, yes, this is. This is what I am searching for. Because all we are searching for is love: ultimate, unconditional, supreme love. Of course, it is not so easy, because if you would get that love in its full power—because what is God? God is the love. God is the purest, purest shape or purest form of the love. So if that love would be given to us as we are, we would die instantly, in a part of a second. We would be burned. So it is not possible that Gurudev gives us all that love which he has. He cannot, so he is preparing us, and he is giving us as much as we are able to receive. Gurudev is like a sun. He is radiating, and we are receiving as per our capacity. More for somebody, less for you. I would like to ask, or I am loudly thinking: do you think it is easy to travel all year round by airplanes, by cars, twenty hours per day, sitting in a car to go from one place to another? Coming from the airport, being received by the bhaktas, getting and answering many, many answers—personal questions, many organizational questions—going to the hotel room, not having time for rest, just again organization meetings or some interviews, then going to the lecture hall, giving the lectures, going back to the room, and having a rest after midnight, and in the morning at six o'clock again start? Forgetting the jet lag, forgetting the hunger, forgetting the other problems which we have? Giving lectures day by day, all around the year? Do you think this is possible if one is doing this professionally to earn money or to earn name and fame? It is not. It is not possible. Organizers know very well: when Swāmījī comes to some place, there are many organizers running here and there, and they cannot cope with the work which is given by Swāmījī, by Gurudev. This is possible only if somebody loves us—loves us more than our mother and father, more than brother, sister, friend. There is nobody in the world who loves us more than Gurudev loves us. Nobody. And that love is unconditional. It doesn't matter in what state we are, how pure or impure we are. If we manage to open ourselves, to put aside fear or doubts and open our heart, Swāmījī's heart is there, always ready. Holy Gurujī used to say, "The guru is as far from the disciple as the disciple is far from the guru." Take a measuring tape and measure. Now, how to develop love? Many of us are a little bit weak on that subject. You see, there are techniques. There was one old man—I think I told you the other day—there is one old American Indian sitting together with his grandson. And the grandson asked him, "Oh, grandfather, you told me that within us there are living good and bad animals. And can you tell me which will win, which will be stronger? The good animals will be stronger, or the bad animals will be stronger?" And grandfather said, "Those will be stronger which you will nourish. If you nourish the good ones, they will be stronger. And if you nourish the bad ones, they will be stronger." It means that it is our choice which qualities within us—the good: compassion, understanding, honesty, Ahiṃsā; or the bad: calm, crude, love, greediness, Māyā, attachment, Ahaṃkāra, ego—we will be stronger. It is our choice. I remember one story Swāmī Gajānanjī liked to tell years back. It is years back, so I forgot half, but that half hopefully will serve the purpose. In one monastery or ashram—it doesn't matter, it is the same thing—there was living one great saint. And that monastery was flourishing. People were coming for advice and lectures, bringing their children for blessings, leaving the children in the monastery to become the sons, supporting the ashram or the monastery, and the monastery was flourishing. Years passed, and the saint left the body. What happened? There was no one there to carry the light of the knowledge on. So slowly, slowly, the monastery started to be less prosperous. People were coming less and less; it became more and more rare. The young children, the youngsters, did not decide anymore to come to the monastery. The food was little and less. The condition of the monastery was deteriorating. Walls got slowly, slowly; plasters were falling down. The roof forgot the holes, and so on. In the monastery, every year there were less and less monks. It was quite a worrying situation. So one of the monks who were there decided to go to one great saint for whom he heard that lives somewhere very far, in some forest. He was walking for days and days, but he came. And he explained the situation to the saint. He said, "Please, can you tell me what will happen with our monastery?" And the saint said, "You see, I cannot say to you what will happen, but I can tell you that one of you who are living there will become a great saint, but I will not tell you who it is. And after that, the monastery will flourish as it was flourishing before." Happy news. So the monk was very happily hurrying back to the monastery and gave the news to the other monks. And he was questioned, "Who is that one? Who is that one? Who will become a great saint, a realized one, will be able to bring the glory of the old monastery back, will be able to give the blessings and knowledge received from God?" They didn't know when it would happen; they didn't know who would be that one. So everyone was thinking, "Maybe I will be that one." So they started to behave as saints. All of them suddenly forgot the quarreling between themselves, forgot the jealousy between themselves, forgot the blackmailing which they were doing before. They started to keep the discipline, doing their sādhanā. They started to follow the rules of eating. They started to follow the way a saint should live. And really, in a few years, the blessed one, one of them, becomes illuminated, Ātmagyānī, and the life of the ashram was going on as it was before. So it is up to us what we want. Do we want enlightenment? Do we want to meet, to come to that unlimited light, unlimited love, about which we are hearing so much, but we are so rarely experiencing it? Or, better to say, there are so few who can experience it. We know how life is going in the ashram. There are many things going on, but we can decide honestly, sincerely: I will do my best. We can start to have good feelings or positive feelings, or affection, or maybe love, to somebody who is sympathetic to us. Let us say, start with the Master. We can consciously put efforts to love him. Or consciously put efforts to love one of us, our ashramites, our friend. Or consciously develop positive feelings towards our parents. Our parents, whatever they have done, they have done their best. If they could do better, they would surely do better. To blame them for this, what we are carrying often with us, it is not right. They are not guilty. They are not guilty. It was their karma, circumstances of life, conditions of life, which made them as they are. To understand, to forgive, and to love is a great step. What we can do is to say, "Oh, mother, father, whatever you have done, I forgive you. You have no more any debt towards me. I love you as you are." So maybe towards the parents or relatives, brothers, sisters, friends, systematically try to keep positive feelings towards a certain person who is the closest to us. And then slowly, slowly, try to spread this to a wider and wider circle of people. And then, towards nature—so beautiful—where we are going to the forest or mountains. When you come to the top of the mountain, you are standing above the clouds and the sun is going down. The heart wants to explode from the joy, the happiness. That feeling we can remember and we can share. It is possible. Some effort has to be done. Now you will say, "Who are you talking to? We are the worst of all." Yeah, I may be. But you know that story Swāmījī so many times says: they were sitting one saint under the tree and just repeating God's name, and he was observing the ants, how it is carrying the big grain to the tree. It came one foot up and the grain fell down, so it went down again, put it up. The grain was a few times bigger than the ant, but the ant was going up. It came two feet, or let's say sixty centimeters high, and fell together with the grain down, and again went down. Again up, again the grain fell down. And so, repeating, repeating. And it happened that once, after the tenth repetition, it managed to bring that grain to that nest on the top. So, the quality of a disciple is that when he fails, he again stands up and goes further. We all are as we are, but we are in a good place; we are in the best place. And with our will, our efforts, Guru Kṛpā, and his efforts—we should not make the mistake of thinking that we are the doers. We are doing a little bit; we are more or less showing the effort. He is the doer. He is that one who is carrying us when we cannot anymore. He is that one who will take away the sickness, the danger. He is that one who takes away the karmas. He is that one who is pushing us further and further. But in his modesty, Gurudev will never show us that. He will play the strict master. He will play that he doesn't know anything, but he is behind everything. So we are in the best place. What we can do is do our seva, because through seva our bhakti—our highest love—Bhakti is that love which is unconditional and selfless. It is not selfish; it is just giving. And that love is orientated or directed towards the ultimate God, towards the Master. So, I wish all of us the best, that we will be as successful as those saints in that monastery. And who knows, maybe somebody will get self-realization between us sitting here, or between all of you sitting behind your laptops. I wish all of us good luck, good health, and long life. We need all that, that maybe at the last second we can manage, or it will come over. So every day is precious; every day of life is precious. And of course, I wish a lot of blessings of our Gurudev and Divine Masters: Mahāprabhujī, Devpurījī, and Holy Gurujī, and Alakpurījī from the Himalayas. Thank you for listening. Śrīdīp Marembaghvān kī jay ho.