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Love dwells in us like an unopened flower
Awaiting a rapid moment of the soul,
Or he roams in his charmed sleep mid thoughts and things;
The child-god is at play, he seeks himself
In many hearts and minds and living forms:
He lingers for a sign that he can know
And, when it comes, wakes blindly to a voice,
A look, a touch, the meaning of a face. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/34/satyavan#p51</ref></center>
In its essence, in its origin, love is like a flame, a white flame which overcomes ''all'' resistance. You can experience this yourself: whatever the difficulty in your being, whatever the burden of accumulated error, ignorance, incapacity and bad will, a single ''second'' of this pure, essential, supreme love dissolves it as in an all-powerful flame; a single moment and a whole past can disappear; a single instant in which you ''touch'' it in its essence and a whole burden is consumed.
[Based on Aphorism 49- To feel and love the God of beauty and good in the ugly and the evil, and still yearn in utter love to heal it of its ugliness and its evil, this is real virtue and morality.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-49#p11,p12</ref>
There are in the vital itself two kinds of love,—one full of joy and confidence and abandon, generous, unbargaining, ungrudging and very absolute in its dedication and this is akin to the psychic and well-fitted to be its complement and a means of expression of the divine love…
But there is another way of vital love which is more usually the way of human nature and that is a way of ego and desire. It is full of vital craving, desire and demand; its continuance depends upon the satisfaction of its demands; if it does not get what it craves, or even imagines that it is not being treated as it deserves—for it is full of imaginations, misunderstandings, jealousies, misinterpretations—it at once turns to sorrow, wounded feeling, revolt, pride, anger, all kinds of disorder, finally cessation and departure…Love departure. …Love should be a flowering of joy and union and confidence and self-giving and Ananda,—but this lower vital way is only a source of suffering, trouble, disappointment, disillusion and disunion. Even a slight element of it shakes the foundations of peace and replaces the movement towards Ananda by a fall towards sorrow, discontent and Nirananda. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/divine-love-psychic-love-and-human-love#p32,p33</ref>
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All these "feelings"—what to call them?—have a mode of vibration, with something very essential at the core, and covering layers, as it were. And the most central vibration is the same, and as it expands to express itself, it becomes distorted. With love, it is quite obvious; it becomes, outwardly, in the vast majority of cases, something whose nature is quite different from the inner vibration, because it is something that withdraws into itself, shrivels up and wants to draw things towards itself in an egoistic movement of possession. You ''want'' to be loved. You say, "I love that person," but at the same time there is what you want; the feeling is lived as, "I want to be loved." And so this distortion is almost as great as the distortion of hatred which consists in wanting to destroy what you love in order not to be bound by it.Because you cannot obtain what you want from the object of your love, you want to destroy it in order to become free; in the other case, you shrivel up almost in an inner rage, because you cannot obtain, you cannot absorb what you love.
[Based on Aphorisms - 113—Hatred is the sign of a secret attraction that is eager to flee from itself and furious to deny its own existence. That too is God's play in His creature.
114—Selfishness is the only sin, meanness the only vice, hatred the only criminality. All else can easily be turned into good, but these are obstinate resisters of deity.]
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'' Q. It is said that to become conscious of divine Love all other love has to be abandoned. What is the best way of rejecting the other love which clings so obstinately '' (''Laughter'') ''and does not easily leave us?''
'' A.'' To go through it. Ah!
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=How does Divine Love Manifest?=
The nature of Bhakti is adoration, worship, self-offering to what is greater than oneself; the nature of love is a feeling or a seeking for closeness and union. Self-giving is the character of both; both are necessary in the yoga and each gets its full force when supported by the other.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/sabcl/23/sadhana-through-love-and-devotion-ii#p1</ref>
<center>~</center> All love, indeed, that is adoration has a spiritual force behind it, and even when it is offered ignorantly and to a limited object, something of that splendour appears through the poverty of the rite and the smallness of its issues. For love that is worship is at once an aspiration and a preparation: it can bring even within its small limits in the Ignorance a glimpse of a still more or less blind and partial but surprising realisation; for there are moments when it is not we but the One who loves and is loved in us, and even a human passion can be uplifted and glorified by a slight glimpse of this infinite Love and Lover. It is for this reason that the worship of the god, the worship of the idol, the human magnet or ideal are not to be despised; for these are steps through which the human race moves towards that blissful passion and ecstasy of the Infinite which, even in limiting it, they yet represent for our imperfect vision when we have still to use the inferior steps Nature has hewn for our feet and admit the stages of our progress. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-ascent-of-the-sacrifice-ii#p3</ref>
<center>~</center> ''Q. Sweet Mother, Sri Aurobindo has said that one can pass from human love to divine Love.'' ''A.'' He was speaking of human love manifesting as Bhakti, as a force of devotion for the Divine, and he says that at the beginning your love for the Divine is a very human love with all the characteristics of human love. Yet if you persist and make the necessary effort, it is not impossible for this human love to be transformed into divine love through identification with what you love. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/16-june-1954#p61</ref>
=Love and Bhakti for Krishna=
=More on Love=
Love is the nature of the lover, courage the nature of the warrior; love and courage are impersonal and universal forces or formulations of the cosmic Force, they are the spirit's powers of its universal being and nature. The Person is the Being supporting what is thus impersonal, holding it in himself as his, his nature of self; he is that which is the lover and warrior. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-gnostic-being#p29</ref>
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Krishna with Radha is the symbol of the Divine Love. The flute is the call of the Divine Love; the peacock is victory. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/gods-goddesses-and-semi-divine-beings#p13</ref>
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Radha is the personification of the absolute love for the Divine, total and integral in all parts of the being from the highest spiritual to the physical, bringing the absolute self-giving and total consecration of all the being and calling down into the body and the most material Nature the supreme Ananda.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/bhakti-yoga-and-vaishnavism#p61</ref>
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The Divine has an equal love for all human beings, but the obscurity of consciousness of most men prevents them from perceiving this divine love.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/divine-love#p31</ref>
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You feel lonely because you feel the need to be loved. Learn to love without demand, to love just for the joy of loving (the most wonderful joy in the world!) and you will never again feel lonely.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/divine-love-and-human-love#p29</ref> <center>~</center>
The thirst for affection and love is a human need, but it can be quenched only if it turns towards the Divine. As long as it seeks satisfaction in human beings, it will always be disappointed or wounded.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/divine-love-and-human-love#p17</ref>
It is not the love that someone feels for you that can make you happy, it is the love you feel for others that makes you happy: for you receive the love that you give from the Divine, who loves eternally and unfailingly.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/divine-love-and-human-love#p38</ref> <center>~</center> True love, that which fulfils and illumines, is not the love one receives but the love one gives. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/divine-love-and-human-love#p52</ref>
''Q. Are Divine Love and Grace the same thing?'' ''A.'' Essentially, all things are the same. In its essence everything is the same, it is a phenomenon of consciousness; but Love can exist without Grace and Grace can exist without Love. But for the human consciousness all manifestation of Grace is a manifestation of the supreme Love, inevitably. Only it goes beyond human consciousness. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/24-march-1951#p19,p20</ref> <center>~</center>
For God has not set me here merely to think, to philosophise, to weave metaphysical systems, to play with words and syllogisms, but to act, love and know. I must act divinely so that I may become divine in being and deed; I must learn to love God not only in Himself but in all beings, appearances, objects, enjoyments, events, whether men call them good or bad, real or mythical, fortunate or calamitous; and I must know Him with the same divine impartiality and completeness in order that I may come to be like Him, perfect, pure and unlimited—that which all sons of Man must one day be. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/12/philosophy#p2</ref>
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Thus if it be the divine Love that is the subject of concentration, it is on the essence of the idea of God as Love that the mind should concentrate in such a way that the various manifestations of the divine Love should arise luminously, not only to the thought, but in the heart and being and vision of the sadhaka.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/concentration#p8</ref>
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To live, to love are signs of infinite things,
Love is a glory from eternity's spheres.
Abased, disfigured, mocked by baser mights
That steal his name and shape and ecstasy,
He is still the godhead by which all can change. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/34/satyavan#p48,p49</ref></center>
'''Content Curated by Pritu Vatsa'''