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The Rungs of Love
 
At first one loves only when one is loved.
 
Next, one loves spontaneously, but one wants to be loved in return.
Then one loves even if one is not loved, but one still wants one's love to be accepted.
And finally one loves purely and simply, without any other need or joy than that of loving. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/divine-love-and-human-love#p32,p33,p34,p35,p36</ref>
<center>~</center> ''Q. Mother, what kind of love is that which says, "If you love me, I shall love you"?''
''A.'' If you love me, I shall love you? That's exactly the way men speak: "If you love me, I love you, if you don't love me, I don't love you." This is just the most human expression of love. And it goes still farther, they apply it also to their relation with the Divine. They say to the Divine: "If you do what I want, I shall say that you love me, and I shall love you. But if you don't do what I want, then I won't think at all that you love me, and I certainly will not love you."
That's how it is. That means that it becomes commercial.
That begins to be better!
 
And what is better still is not to ask oneself whether one is loved or not, one should be absolutely indifferent to that. And that begins to be true love: one loves because one loves, not at all because one receives a response to one's love or because the other person loves you. All those conditions—that is not love. One loves because one cannot do otherwise but love. One loves because one loves. One doesn't care at all about what will happen; one is perfectly satisfied with the feeling of one's love. One loves because one loves.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/26-august-1953#p12,p13,p14,p15,p16,p17,p18,p19,p20,p21,p22,p23,p24</ref>
<center>~</center> ''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!
To go through, to see what is behind it, not to stop at the appearance, not to be satisfied with the outer form, to look for the principle which is behind this love, and not be content until one has found the origin of the feeling in oneself. Then the outer form will crumble of itself and you will be in contact with the divine Love which is behind all things.
 
That is the best way.
 
To want to get rid of the one in order to find the other is very difficult. It is almost impossible. For human nature is so limited, so full of contradictions and so exclusive in its movements that if one wants to reject love in its lower form, that is to say, human love as human beings experience it, if one makes an inner effort to reject it, one usually rejects the entire capacity of feeling love and becomes like a stone. And then sometimes one has to wait for years or centuries before there is a reawakening in oneself of the capacity to receive and manifest love.
 
Therefore, the best way when love comes, in whatever form it may be, is to try and pierce through its outer appearance and find the divine principle which is behind and which gives it existence. Naturally, it is full of snares and difficulties, but it is more effective. That is to say, instead of ceasing to love because one loves wrongly, one must cease to love wrongly and want to love well.
 
For instance, love between human beings, in all its forms, the love of parents for children, of children for parents, of brothers and sisters, of friends and lovers, is all tainted with ignorance, selfishness and all the other defects which are man's ordinary drawbacks; so instead of completely ceasing to love—which, besides, is very difficult as Sri Aurobindo says, which would simply dry up the heart and serve no end—one must learn how to love better: to love with devotion, with self-giving, self-abnegation, and to struggle, not against love itself, but against its distorted forms: against all forms of monopolising, of attachment, possessiveness, jealousy, and all the feelings which accompany these main movements. Not to want to possess, to dominate; and not to want to impose one's will, one's whims, one's desires; not to want to take, to receive, but to give; not to insist on the other's response, but be content with one's own love; not to seek one's personal interest and joy and the fulfilment of one's personal desire, but to be satisfied with the giving of one's love and affection; and not to ask for any response. Simply to be happy to love, nothing more.
 
If you do that, you have taken a great stride forward and can, through this attitude, gradually advance farther in the feeling itself, and realise one day that love is not something personal, that love is a universal divine feeling which manifests through you more or less finely, but which in its essence is something divine.
The first step is to stop being selfish. For everyone it is the same thing, not only for those who want to do yoga but also in ordinary life: if one wants to know how to love, one must not love oneself first and above all selfishly; one must give oneself to the object of love without exacting anything in return. This discipline is elementary in order to surmount oneself and lead a life which is not altogether gross. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/19-september-1956#p21,p22,p23,p24,p25,p26,p27,p28,p29</ref>
 
<center>~</center>
Let us grant that at first love may only be an extended selfishness and that this aspect of extended selfishness may persist and dominate, as it does still persist and dominate, in higher stages of the evolution: still as mind evolves and more and more finds itself, it comes by the experience of life and love and mutual help to perceive that the natural individual is a minor term of being and exists by the universal.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-ascent-of-the-sacrifice-ii#p2</ref>
<center>~</center>
I should perhaps add one or two things to avoid misapprehensions. First, the love for the Divine of which I speak is not a psychic love only; it is the love of all the being, the vital and vital-physical included,—all are capable of the same self-giving. It is a mistake to believe that if the vital loves, it must be a love that demands and imposes the satisfaction of its desire; it is a mistake to think that it must be either that or else the vital, in order to escape from its "attachment", must draw away altogether from the object of its love. The vital can be as absolute in its unquestioning self-giving as any other part of the nature; nothing can be more generous than its movement when it forgets self for the Beloved. The vital and physical should both give themselves in the true way—the way of true love, not of ego desire.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/32/the-right-way-of-loving-the-mother#p6</ref>
<center>~</center>
..."Aspiration in the Physical for the Divine's Love."By the "Physical" I mean the physical consciousness, the most ordinary outward-going consciousness, the normal consciousness of most human beings, which sets such great store by comfort, good food, good clothes, happy relationships, etc., instead of aspiring for the higher things. Aspiration in the physical for the Divine's Love implies that the physical asks for nothing else save that it should feel how the Divine loves it. It realises that all its usual satisfactions are utterly insufficient. But there cannot be a compromise: if the physical wants the Divine's Love it must want that alone and not say, "I shall have the Divine's Love and at the same time keep my other attachments, needs and enjoyments...." <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/aspiration-in-the-physical-for-the-divines-love#p1</ref>
 
=How does Divine Love Manifest?=