In Search of a Lost Love

The most incredible discovery of my life was the simple truth that all our desires have a single origin - forgetfulness of a love that is dormant within our hearts.

Finding love is our greatest need because it brings true fulfillment in life. Love can empower us to be instruments of a positive change within this world beyond our imagination.

Some years ago, I met Mother Teresa at Kolkata. She told me that the greatest problem in the world is hunger; not hunger of the belly but hunger of the heart. People are lonely; people are emotionally starving and trying to fill it with so many other things. But the only thing that could nourish the heart is love for God. She told me that she knows some of the wealthiest people of the world living in New York, London, Sydney, Laos Angeles etc. She saw them as starving people and she said that the greatest service, the greatest welfare activity one can do in this world is to feed the hunger of the heart with God's love.

We often mistake temporary pleasures to be love. But these flickering sensations are like a mirage. A person in the desert is searching desperately for an oasis of water, and in that desperation, due to longing and hopefulness, sometimes a mirage appears before him. It appears that that mirage can quench his thirst but all he gets is a mouthful of hot sand.

So what is real love? In order to understand that we have to first understand who we really are. This body is like a vehicle, it is made of matter. The eyes do not see, the ears do not hear, the nose does not smell, the tongue does not taste and the flesh does not feel. It is you and me that are seeing through the eyes and experiencing life through the senses. Our body is compared to a chariot, the mind is compared to the reigns, and the senses are the horses. The intelligence is supposed to be directed by the passenger, the atma or the soul. This is the basic teaching of the Bhagavad-Gita: that we are not the body, not the mind but we are the living force. And that living force is our spiritual nature. Its potential is to love and its need is to be loved.

Spiritual love is what we are all searching for. Actually all the progress of civilization through millennium is simply in search of that love. Science, technology, entertainment, family life, art, music, business, and economics are all searching for that one thing-what the heart needs-to love God and to feel God's love.

Our natural position is that we are the eternal servants of God. This is the universal principle. In the Bible, Jesus tells us, "What is the use if you gain the whole world but lose your eternal soul?" The first great commandment is to love God with all your heart, your entire mind and all your soul and the natural consequence of such love of God is to love your neighbor as yourself.

How is it that loving the centre of all existence, God, enables us to spontaneously love every living being? The Gita explains that every living being is a part of God just like every ray emanating from the sun is the part of the sun. When we discover the love of God that is within our own hearts, we see an inseparable part of God in the heart of every living being-male or female; black, white, red, yellow or brown; Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jew, Sikh, Pakistani, Indian, Israeli, or Palestinian. These are all temporary bodily designations. They are ever changing. They are like clothes on the body. When we actually understand our own soul and our own relationship with the God, we can identify the soul in every living being and see their relationship with God. Then instead of hatred there is love, there is compassion.