The Influence of Love
Love itself is the beginning and the end. It is a pure emanation of God’s current, which enters the heart of a pure person and spreads its influence all round, thus purifying the entire area. The heart of a lover is pure, and at the same time those who have the opportunity of meeting him cannot escape his purifying influence. It one comes across such pure souls, his heart is so greatly influenced that he feels as if purity has entered into him from head to foot.
Love is not worldly material. It is divine. If you see two hearts sacrificing their very existence at the altar of love, you should understand that they are vessels filled with divine influence. By their mere touch, even withered hearts become fresh and are renewed. You cannot conceal it.
Even if the tongue does not speak, the eyes reveal it by the tears that fill them.
Kabir says:
Try hard to conceal love. But it cannot be concealed once it as taken hold of a person. Even if one does not talk about it, the eyes disclose it.
The refreshing rainfall comes from the sky, but when the eyes of two lovers meet, they are flooded with tears of love. It takes time for a Swanti drop to turn into a pearl, but the water oozing from living eyes flows like a string of shining pearls. The dryness within is removed and one’s entire being is refreshed from head to foot.
Just as milk and water become one when mixed, the two loving hearts blend themselves into divine union with the water of love. It is then difficult for them to be separate entities. Love is true. It contains no deceit and no superficiality. Coming under its influence, two hearts unite into one in such a manner that one cannot detect any difference between them. Then one is not able to find out who is the disciple and who the Master, who is the lover and who the Beloved. The curtain of duality is removed. The lover and the Beloved become one.
You are me, I am you. You are body, I am the life. Let nobody say hereafter that I and you are different.
If I am the body, you are the life. If I am the life, you are the body. You have surrendered your heart to me. I have surrendered my heart to you. Two bodies now have one life and one emotion. This is the ideal of love. How can a third person realize it!
Love is a sword, by which two lovers combine into one. (Ordinarily a sword cuts one into two but the sword of love unites two into one.) The lover adores the beloved to such an extent that he becomes his very self. It is said that Radha was so deeply engrossed in her love, that she considered herself as Lord Krishna. In this state of rapture she would ask her friends if they had seen Radha anywhere. This type of union has also been described by Bulleh Shah, as being a characteristic of Heer.
I have been crying, ‘Ranja, Ranja’ and I have become Ranja. Please do not call me Heer any more, because I am now Ranja.
Dadu says:
Real love is that in which a lover transforms himself into the beloved, and on such lovers even God showers His Grace.
When love produces this condition in one’s heart, he needs no meditation, prayer or any spiritual effort, because Love is the real meditation, is the real prayer, is the real union. A true lover is a real believer in the oneness of God and is a true discerner of the jewel of His non-duality. But this does not convey the correct meaning. Actually he himself becomes the very embodiment of His attributes.
True union and one-pointed attention come only with love. The spiritual progress achieved by means of meditation over a number of years can be had in a moment through love, because the union of inner sight takes the lover immediately to the goal. This is real love and this is true yoga. In fact, this is the be-all and end-all. This should be our aim. This should be our goal, and this should be our fast, our prayers, our meditation and everything else. You should therefore kindle the light of love within you and burn away the rut of repeating mantras, performing austerities, etc.
The value of a man’s life is greatly enhanced by love, for, the influence of love is unique. It lifts a man from the state of being a mere nothing to the celestial heights.
Maulana Rumi says:
With love, even bitter things become sweet, brass is turned into gold, and everything that is soiled becomes clean. With the pain of love in one’s heart, love itself becomes the remedy for it. Thorns then give the same pleasure and fragrance, as would beautiful flowers. Under the influence of love even the peevish temperament, which is as sour as vinegar, turns into a sweet intoxicant as that of wine. People become as smooth as oil, as soft as wax, even if they were as hard as iron.
By love, poison becomes nectar, and a tiger is turned into a harmless mouse. Disease turns into a blessing, and tyranny into mercy. The dead are even brought to life, and kings become slaves by means of love.
Love is an intense light which shows us the way of Spirituality. A person is blind without love. He is also lifeless, and a dead body is no more than food for beasts.
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Footnote:
1) Swanti or Swati is the star Arcturus, the brightest star in the northern sky. It is located in the constellation Herdsman, also called Bootes. Translated, Swa(n)ti means "the first pure raindrop".
In Vedic astrology, Swati Nakshatra is one of the 27 lunar houses associated with the star Swa(n)ti, Arcturus.*
* Vedic astrology - just like any other form of astrology - belongs to the lower worlds and is ultimately one of the paths of Kal - for this, see in the Anurag Sagar in Bhai Jamal's edition the section "Kurambh Doot" in the illustrations to "The Attributes of the four Messengers" URL:https://www.santmat-diewahrheit.de/anurag-sagar-580/buch_anurag_sagar_de_04_02_01.html
According to ancient Indian traditions, on days when the moon is in Swati Nakshatra, oysters open to drink the first drops of rain, which then become pearls.
The symbol of the Swanti drop is used here merely to illustrate that the formation of a pearl in the oyster takes time, whereas the tears of True Desire for the Almighty are immediately transformed into pearls.
Indeed, the tears that arise from such longing are the pearls that the Hansa - a mythological swan symbolic of the liberated soul - eats.
Hafiz says:
You should shed tears of pearls from your moist eyes. Perhaps He, in the form of a swan, may be caught by you when this swan1 is tempted to come to you to eat these pearls.
Maulana Rumi says:
I wish that I had wept so much in my longing to meet the Lord that the tears from my eyes had swelled into a river, and every tear drop had turned into a spiritual pearl. Then I would have placed all those pearls before the altar of my Beloved.
Gurumat Sidhant (Fifth Edition, 1987) -
Part I, Chapter XII: Bireh – Intense Longing,
by Kirpal Singh, 1894–1974
[…] It is by copious tears that we can wash down impressions of ages lying in the folds of the mind. Maulana Rumi tells us that a pilgrimage to Kaaba is possible only through the sea route and not by land. So God can only be reached through the pearly tears flowing down one’s checks. […]
Satsang – Search for Truth,
by Kirpal Singh, 1894–1974