A SCRIPTURE OF LOVE

[Guest guest]

I sought love in many lives. I shed bitter tears of separation and

repentance to know what love is. I sacrificed everything, all

attachment and delusion, to learn at last that I am in love with

Love - with God - alone. Then I drank love through all true hearts.

I saw that He is the One Cosmic Lover, the One Fragrance that

permeates all the variegated blossoms of love in the garden of life.

 

Many souls wonder wistfully, helplessly why love flees from one

heart to another; awakened souls realize that the heart is not

fickle in loving different ones, but is loving the one God-Love that

is present in all hearts.

 

The Lord ever silently whispers to you:

 

I am Love. But to experience the giving and the gift of love, I

divided Myself into three: love, lover, and beloved. My love is

beautiful, pure, eternally joyous; and I taste it in many ways,

through many forms.

 

As father I drink the reverential love from the spring of my child's

heart. As mother I drink the nectar of unconditonal love from the

soul-cup of the tiny baby. As child I imbibe the protecting love of

the father's righteous reason. As infant I drink causeless love from

the holy grail of maternal attraction. As master I drink the

sympathetic love from the flask of the servant's thoughtfulness. As

servant I sip respectful love from the goblet of the master's

appreciation. As guru-preceptor I enjoy purest love from the chalice

of the disciple's all-surrendering devotion. As friend I drink from

the self-bubbling fountains of spontaneous love. As a divine friend,

I quaff crystal waters of cosmic love from the reservoir of God-

adoring hearts.

 

I am in love with Love alone, but I allow myself to be deluded when

as father or mother I think and feel only for the child; when as

lover I care only for the beloved; when as servant I live only for

the master. But because I love Love alone, I ultimately break this

delusion of my myriad human Selves. It is for this reason that I

transfer the father into the astral land when he forgets that it is

My love, not his, that protects the child. I lift the babe from the

mother's breast, that she might learn it is My love she adored in

him. I spirit away the beloved from the lover who imagines it is she

whom he loves, rather than My love responding in her.

 

So My love is playing hide-and-seek in all human hearts, that each

might learn to discover and worship, not the temporal human

receptacles of My love, but My love itself, dancing from one heart

to another.

 

Human beings importune one another, "Love me alone," and so I make

cold their lips and seal them forever, that they utter this untruth

no more. Because they are all My children, I want them to learn to

speak the ultimate truth: "Love the One Love in all of us." To tell

another, "I love you," is false until you realize the truth: "God as

the love in me is in love with His love in you."

 

The moon laughs at millions of well-meaning lovers who have

unknowingly lied to their beloved ones: "I love you forever." Their

skulls are strewn over the windswept sands of eternity. They can no

longer use their breath to say, "I love you." They can neither

remember nor redeem their promise to love each other forever.

 

Without speaking a word, I have loved you always. I alone can truly

say, "I love you"; for I loved you before you were born; My love

gives you life and sustains you even at this moment; and I alone can

love you after the gates of death imprison you where none, not even

your greatest human lover, can reach you.

 

I am the love that dances human puppets on strings of emotions and

instincts, to play the drama of love on the stage of life. My love

is beautiful and enjoyable when you love it alone; but the lifetime

of your peace and joy is cut when instead you become entangled in

human emotion and attachment. Realize, My children, it is My love

for which you yearn!

 

Those who love Me as only one person, or who imperfectly love Me in

one person, do not know what Love is. Only they can know Love who

love Me wisely, faultlessly, completely, all-surrenderingly - who

love Me perfectly and equally IN all, and who love Me perfectly and

equally AS all.

 

-by Paramahansa Yogananda (From "The Divine Romance", final chapter)