Love, Untrapped From “I” & “You”

Author: Swami Amritaswarupananda Puri.

Swami Amritaswarupananda Puri is the Vice-Chairman of the Mata Amritanandamayi Math and the senior-most disciple of Indian spiritual leader Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi (Amma). He is the author of several books, the latest of which is titled The Irresistible Attraction of Divinity.

Summary: Swami Amritaswarupananda Puri expounds on the true nature of supreme love. Most people are familiar with attachment, which can quickly turn to aversion, but true love is different. It’s a love without duality, where two become one, and it’s not an emotion that comes and goes. This supreme love is undying, without cause or reason, and transcends the mundane world of likes and dislikes. It’s a love that dissolves the ego and merges with the infinite, as seen in the poem by Mīrābai. As Amma says, “We are formless love — the embodiment of love,” and this love is beyond human intellect and calculation, a pure awareness that is the very nature of existence.

 For the most part, people only know one type of love: attachment. Though generally interpreted as “love,” attachment is not real love because it can move in the opposite direction and become aversion at any moment. In other words, attachment is like a mask, behind which aversion is waiting. Today, you love someone because he or she pleases you. If tomorrow the same person criticizes you, your love turns to hate.

This is the love discussed in the Bhakti Sūtras of Nārada. There the sage says:

Thus, Nārada points out that this is a love different from the one we commonly know. This supreme, pure love is not an emotion. Emotions, by nature, come and go; they are fluctuating and volatile. People marry someone, go through a divorce, experience mental agony for some time, and then move on to another relationship.

Supreme love is undying.

It doesn’t even have a cause or reason. It is not, “I love him because he is nice to me,” or “I love her because she is beautiful,” etc. Real love is love for love’s own sake. It transcends the mundane world of likes and dislikes. It is losing oneself — dissolving one’s ego — into the vast infinitude of God.

The following poem by Mīrābai, an unsurpassed devotee of the Divine in the form of Śrī Kṛṣṇa, provides us with a glimpse into that highest echelon of love:

Unbreakable, O Lord,
Is the love
That binds me to You:
Like a diamond,
It breaks the hammer that strikes it.
My heart goes into You
As the polish goes into the gold.
As the lotus lives in its water,
I live in You.
Like the bird
That gazes all night
At the passing moon,
I have lost myself dwelling in You.

I am reminded of Amma’s words, “All over the world, people say, ‘I love you.’ It sounds as though ‘love’ is trapped between ‘I’ and ‘you.’ We should embark on a journey from ‘I love you’ to ‘I am love’ because that is the truth of our existence. We are formless love — the embodiment of love.”

Love is a mysterious thing. The more you try to explain it, the more mysterious it becomes. A surgeon cuts open the human body and sees all the blood and filth inside of it. He may even comment, “The body is such a miserable thing — disgusting.” However, the same doctor may become emotional when he speaks about his girlfriend. Eyes filled with tears, he may even say, “I can’t live without her.” One moment, the doctor explains the body as repulsive; the very next, he proclaims his love with immense emotional fervor. What does this reveal? It shows us that love is something beyond the body. In reality, it doesn’t see the body — its limitations, impurities, ugliness and petty feelings. Love, whether it is ordinary or spiritual, transcends the human intellect and all its calculations.

For the great spiritual masters like Amma, who are permanently established in pure awareness, the divine bliss of existence is their very nature; the sky of consciousness, their innate abode. There, all relationships, such as “mother and child,” “guru and disciple,” “friends” and “foes,” do not exist. Everything is but an indivisible consciousness — pure, supreme love, without beginning, middle or end.