Vipul Agarwal, Delhi, 4 September 2024
Yesterday evening, we bid farewell to a great officer and a very evolved human being. Somebody asked a question about how she could be so nice. I have no doubt that everybody appreciates fearlessness, love, and compassion. In fact, all three qualities may also be summarised in a single word “love”. The opposite of love is fear. All of us are beloved children of the Almighty. At the core, all of us are connected to the divine consciousness. That’s why love is quite natural to us. The feeling of love connects us to the divine and since all other human beings are different manifestations of the divine, we love other human beings as well. However, we slowly lose awareness of that inner connection and that loss of awareness makes us fearful.
Probably the only parameter to evaluate the growth of any person, as a human being, is the centre of his life. The more the life of a person is centered around fear, the less evolved he is, and the more his life is centered around love, the more evolved he is. Savitri did not need to borrow courage to go to Yama to save the life of her husband Satyavana, and Ram did not need to borrow courage to fight Ravana. Savitri loved Satyavana and Ram loved Sita and love filled them with courage naturally. When a mother stands up to protect her child, the apparently fragile and weak woman gets converted into Durga and saves her child from the biggest of the monsters.
Some may say that they too love their family and friends but do not have the courage and feel weak. I feel that the word love has been the most misused word in the history of humankind. People say that they love fish and then eat fish. Is that love? How can an insecure person love? Somebody who can not love his true self, can never love others? That is simply an impossibility. What to speak of love, mostly we remain quite ignorant of what we truly are almost the whole of our lives. Due to this ignorance, we cling to fragile “ego” and the weak ego seeks support from one or the other thing. At a young age, it clings to family and friends, and as we grow, it clings to money and powers, and as we learn the worldly knowledge systems, it clings to that knowledge. Later in life, it tries to cling to some Baba or religious sect to ensure smooth passage to the other world after the death.
In such a state of insecurity, how can we love somebody? We just love our fragile ego and keep looking for different ways and means to feel secure. Money, power, relationships, knowledge, and everything else in this world are one or the other ways to feel secure. That is why we do not have the conviction and courage. On the other hand, when we connect to our inner self, we realize the temporariness of the outer world and at the same time realize how connected we all are. We realize that the birds, animals, and all the human beings, and everything in this nature are connected at its core. That is what Arjuna realized when Krishna made him experience His Vishwaroopa. That realization of the truth fills us with a natural “love” which is not like love for the fish we eat. Such love is not like the love for the husband or wife we want to use as a tool to make us secure. True love comes with a feeling of contentment when one can see that one is already complete within and does not need anybody or anything. In that state of completion, one is filled with a feeling to share and care which brings a natural dare.
It’s not so that Ram does not love Ravan and can’t see Ravan as the manifestation of the same consciousness. In fact, Ram can look back in time and see how Ravan got disconnected from his soul. Ram can see his insecurities as an outcome of that inner disconnection and that is the reason why he always had compassion. Despite his wife being kidnapped by Ravan, he did not behave like the angry young man of Bollywood hellbent to kill the villain, rather he gave many chances by sending Hanumana and Angad to Ravan. However, when Ravan does not mend his ways, he has to kill Ravan because Ram loves everyone alike and Ravan’s ignorance, and resultant arrogance are detrimental to all other creatures.
Compassion and courage are natural offsprings of love. Love without awareness of the true self is blind. If someone does not connect to his true self, one can’t love oneself. A disconnected person will keep pretending to love those whom he seeks to cling to in order to allay his inner insecurities. Only when a person gets connected to his inner self, does he learn to love self. As the inner connection gets deeper, he can connect to other beings, and that brings natural compassion and love to other human beings. Such love can’t be selective. It will be universal. We can’t imagine Ram loving only Sita and not Hanumana, Bharata, Kaikeyi, or Manthara. Ram will have a natural love and compassion for everybody. Love gives a natural courage to stand against injustice. When courage has the force of love, it is very difficult for even the strongest of the demons to stand up against the force. Probably that is the reason why we admire the qualities of love, compassion, and courage and will always admire them in the future of humanity. With the grace of God, we get to meet people with these qualities and once we meet them they do change the course of our lives. Probably that is how the consciousness acts by igniting the fire and helping people wake up from their slumber.
