Cosmic Love

The fundament of spiritual life is a pure heart, a loving heart, a heart that is filled with cosmic love, divine love, love for God. This single love for God unfolds many other virtues. Without universal love, a love that embraces all mankind, all living beings, the entire creation, it won't work. It is the precondition for God-experience. A divine and spiritual heart is automatically filled with universal love, cosmic love. You find in daily life people who talk to their horse, to their dog, their cat, to all pets. They respect, love and value these animals, and they talk to them just as others talk and lead dialogues with their own mind. Yes, there are people who talk to plants. They love, value and respect them.

The lover of the Divine respects every being, every thing to the highest degree, for he finds in all his own beloved, supremely respected God. He sees God in one and all, and therefore values all, worships all, leads dialogues with all.

You talk to animals and plants, why not also to stones and rivers and to fire? In them, too, there is the presence of God deserving respect, estimation, love and adoration. The lover of the Divine talks to stones and mountains, to the air, the water, fire, the sun, the moon, stars, the sky and earth. He loves and respects everything. He hurts nothing and no one.

The precondition for the spiritual life is, that no living being has to fear you. You have to assure all beings, all mankind, all visible and invisible beings freedom from fear of you. Also prejudices hurt people. These too are absent in a truly spiritual heart, in a real spiritual life. Prejudices, condemnation of others and aversion to others too are insults and therefore against the law of love. They too need to be avoided.

On the other hand you should bear offences, slander, insults and provocations without reacting, as if it was a praise for you. On the other hand you have to secure for all freedom from fear, joy and peace in your presence. Be it friend or foe, no one must fear you or feel hurt by you. This is possible, when your heart is filled with love for the all-seeing, omniscient, omnipresent God. How could you commit a mistake, when you are constantly face to face with an all-knowing, omnipresent God? God watches all your thoughts and feelings. How can you ever cultivate wrong thoughts and feelings when you are conscious of this fact?

This inner spiritual exercise transforms you into a person of cosmic love, universal love - love for everything and all - true love, a love founded not on selfishness or egoism or vanity, but on Truth, on God, on an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-loving, all-protecting divine presence.

Another point: As long as your heart is filled with desires and selfishness you commit mistakes. You create problems. Therefore, the lover of the Divine is free from all desires and self-interest. His interests never conflict with those of others, and therefore there are no fights, no wars, no violence, no use of force. All these fall away, when you are truly spiritual. The spiritual heart has no desires, it is satisfied with little or nothing. In order to progress spiritually, one has to fulfill the conditions. An Ashram is a place where one constantly cultivates this cosmic-universal divine love. One sees God in one and all, one cannot hurt one's own God, or exploit one's own God. One serves, loves, gives, and does not advocate one's own interests. One does not cultivate desires but lets His will happen. And God's will is universal love, universal joy, universal satisfaction, perfection.

Every moment we have to analyze ourselves, whether this cosmic love is growing in us, whether desires are diminished, whether life gets very simple whether high thoughts and feelings are cultivated, divine thoughts and feelings, universal thoughts. Then we progress.

- Swami Omkarananda