EXPANSION OF THE HEART
A human being’s heart is forever expanded. It does not require expansion. The core of the human personality, which we know as the heart, could be equated very well with the Spiritual Self of man, the pure entity that resides within man and can be called the heart. One aspect of that pure entity is the heart because its nature is to express, and what does it express? It expresses love.
The heart is not the little physical organ but the core of the human personality, the individual soul if you wish to call it that; its very nature is to express love, and the heart is an indefinable quality or substance. Its expression, love, is also indescribable. Indefinable by the mind but experienceable by itself.
When the heart is filled with love, it experiences its true nature.
The heart does not experience its true nature because man’s actions and thoughts create so many blockages, which could be put into the package of samskaras. This package of samskaras, or these veils of our doings, the veils created by the seeds we have sewn, builds a wall around the heart, and it is this wall that prevents the heart from expressing itself. The only way the heart can express itself is through love.
LOVE REQUIRES NO ANALYSIS
We have spoken about love, combining it with other questions, and we have seen that love is a quality that requires no mental analysis. For as soon as one starts defining love, one is limiting love. The limitation occurs because we are defining with a limited instrument called the mind, and the mind, as far as we know it, or as far as we cognize it, or as far as we use it, is finite, while the quality of love is infinite.
Because of the veils created around it, the heart cannot fully express love. Dante has said that the greater the man, the greater his love. So, stature, spiritual stature, or man’s evolutionary status can be judged by how much he loves.
We are talking of real love, not that which is taken to be love, and what most people practice in the name of love is but a form of hypocrisy. Love knows no need. It exists by itself; it does not need support. Yet, to express itself, it has to find an object to which it could express itself, and in the expression of that love to an object, the heart expands more and more; and by “expansion”, we mean an unfoldment so that more and more love filters through.
OPENING THE DOORS OF THE HEART
That is the aim of our foundation, whereby the human being can reach the core of his personality, and by reaching the core of his personality, he starts opening the door. And in opening the door of the heart, more and more love filters through. It is like driving a car. The more you press the accelerator, the more the jets in the carburettor open and more and more petrol flows through, and the car goes faster. But if the carburettor is dirty, if the jets are not clean, no matter how much you press the accelerator, the petrol cannot flow through, and the car does not go smoothly.
To make one’s life go smoothly like a car, we have to clean the carburettor. We clean the carburettor through our spiritual practices. Spiritual practices are effortless, but certain effects are created in their effortlessness, and the effects are sometimes a bit abrasive. It is only by rubbing, polishing, or scouring the pot or pan that it becomes clean. The finest iron or steel is always made in the hottest heat.
In the beginning stages of our spiritual practices, we recognize the blockages and dirt in the carburettor and start cleaning it. If this cleaning is done without understanding, we could find it very challenging. Still, if proper knowledge is had or given, with the practices, then one’s attitude in the cleaning process changes, and then we start saying that this cleaning is a must. The car can never remain stationary. It is the vehicle’s nature or the car’s duty to be driven. It has to move, and without cleaning the carburettor, it is rusting away.
When we do not accept these challenges, life starts stagnating, and whenever there is stagnation, it could rot and lead a person into greater and greater misery. When these challenges are brought to us, we could become so fortunate that all our faults and frailties are pictured before us when we look at ourselves squarely in the mirror through our spiritual practices. Then we ask, “Is this me?” And if this me is so incomplete and has so many faults and frailties, what will I do about me? And once we make that real decision, earnest, sincere decision, there has to be sincerity, because on the spiritual path, there is a lot of cleansing required, and it is only with sincerity that one can persevere.
Sometimes, a person is seemingly happy. By seemingly, I mean that he bluffs himself, saying I am happy. He is in a state of euphoria. It happens many times, and it has been proven that if a person falls in the snow, say he breaks a leg, when the time of death approaches, he gets enveloped in such a lovely warmth that he does not want to get up. Like that, he passes away in this warmth. This false warmth.
Many people who are unprepared to face their weaknesses live in this kind of false warmth. But if only this person who has fallen in the snow would get up and walk around a bit or crawl around and get the blood circulating, he would be alive.
TO THE PERFECT, EVERYTHING IS PERFECT
To recap, the nature of the inner core of man’s personality is love, and love is forever trying to find expression. No single man or woman in this world does not want to love or be loved in return because that quality of love is his or her inner nature.
You would sometimes find that a person cannot find someone to love. Why is that so? Sometimes, certain karmic factors prevent one from letting one’s heart flow. Sometimes, there are factors like the dirt in the carburettor, which the man is not prepared to clean up, and sometimes, the mind exaggerates one’s capacity to love.
A man might have certain qualities within himself, but the object of his love must have tenfold more qualities. The imperfect man is looking for someone to love who is perfect. That, too, is a kind of false assumption. It is untrue because I have no right to demand perfection from another if I am imperfect. In this matter, man is misguided by his mind. In other words, he is not evaluating himself as he truly is but projecting himself into what he is not. Therefore, the object of his love must be perfect, and that will not be found. Only if you are perfect will you find your object perfect, too.
When you are perfect, you overlook the imperfections in the object of your love. Perfect love, or an expanded love, does not find faults. That is why the common saying is, “Love is blind.” There is great truth in it if it is real love.
To understand love, one has to mould one’s life, face one’s weaknesses, and do something about those weaknesses. When we start doing something about weaknesses, the heart’s flower starts blooming spontaneously. When we do something about our shortcomings, it means we are watering the plant and the flower. If we do not water the flower, the flower cannot grow. The entire flower is contained in the seed. All the elements of the flower are included in the seed. The very nature of the flower is contained. It is through nurturing that seed, watering, and fertilizing it that the flower can grow.
THE MAN THAT CAN TRULY LOVE, TRULY KNOWS GOD
The same thing applies to man’s heart. It is there, and it will forever be there; it will eternally be there. To open it up, we have to rub off the mind’s dirt or the misconceptions of the mind so that the eternal quality of love within can have a free flow. When there is a free flow, it brings with it happiness.
The man who can truly love genuinely knows God. There are degrees of loving depending upon how much unfoldment has taken place and how much we have allowed the light of love to shine through. The more it shines through, the closer we are to the goal. Because all existence is love – everything in the universe apart from man grows because of that love. How much does the sunshine not love the flower to give of itself? How much does the air not love the plant to give of itself? How much do the minerals in the ground not love that seed to give of itself and support it? Love is always supportive. Love is such a beautiful quality, a law, an eternal law, that even before the baby is born, milk is provided in the mother’s breast. You could call it Love and Grace and God; these are labels. It is all just the same thing. If we accept one fact, that love is God and God is love, then labels are not necessary. And if love is God, then God is indefinable. We can only talk about it in inference. We can infer with the mind, but we can experience with the heart. We can experience it so much that we feel uplifted.
When a man loves a woman, really loves a woman, you look at that man; he seems to live in a different world altogether. Sometimes we make jokes about it, where the man becomes forgetful of this, that or the other, and we say, “Ah, he has met a girlfriend, he is in love.” There is a lot of truth in it. Perhaps it is not real love. It might be just a reflection of love. Even infatuation has its purpose. Infatuation, too, is a reflection, but infatuation, being a reflection, is not a genuine article. However, even knowing the reflection, one can lead to a genuine article. If you smell the beautiful fragrance of a jasmine flower and love the fragrance, then some curiosity can be exciting to see what the jasmine looks like if you have not seen the flower.
THE NATURE OF LOVE IS FOREVER EXPANDING
Remember, no one closes up our hearts because the heart can never be closed within itself. The nature of the heart is forever to expand, and we, with our conceptions, doings, actions, and thoughts, build this wall around it. When the heart expands, instead of being closed up, the expansion that is taking place in the heart is knocking on those walls, hammering away like a prisoner; let me out, let me out, let me out because the nature of love is forever to expand.
If we, by our actions, can knock out one little brick from the wall, only one little brick from the wall, and with the force of love that comes through that one tiny opening, that force plus your actions will make the opening bigger and bigger. When a little love starts seeping out, it will also help you remove more bricks from the wall until the entire wall is finally broken down and love shines in its glory. When love shines in its fullest glory, all obstacles in life are drowned away in that light.
There could be a million candles burning, but when the sun comes out, all the light is drowned away, merged away, in that infinity of the sun’s light. That is what love does, and we have to give it a chance. We have to give this eternal force a chance.
We know the saying that even God only helps those who help themself. This force of love forever wants to come out if we only give it a chance, which is very easy. Spiritual practices, right living, and right thinking would break down the barriers, unfold the heart, and show how joyful life can become. Because every action of yours, every conception, every perception will be coloured with the Light of Love. And when everything we do is coloured with the Light of Love, everything else around us also seems so loving.
WE START WITH OURSELVES FIRST
If I want to love, I must make myself loveable if I want someone to love me. If I am loveable, then very automatically, people will love me. We start with ourselves first. We find this is a common thing, and of course, in my work, there is a lot of counselling to do where the woman says, “My husband does not love me.” Or the husband says, “My wife does not love me.” The blame is always on the opposite party. But we never examine ourselves that if my husband has married me, there must have been some attraction for him to marry me or the other way around, that my wife has married me. Initially, there must have been some attraction for him to marry me. It is a free world. He could have chosen someone else. Circumstances drew us together. There might be some karmic value to why we are drawn together.
One person might live in Australia, another in America, and somehow, the circumstances just come where all the jigsaw puzzle pieces get together to form the picture. And then the problem starts. Then the man says, “My wife does not love me.” Then, the wife says, “My husband does not love me.” But the emphasis is always on the opposite party. When something goes wrong in my life, I blame my wife. If I cannot blame my wife because she starts with the rolling pin, I blame my children. If I cannot blame my children, I blame my boss. If I cannot blame my boss, I blame my friends. And lastly, after I blamed everyone and could not blame anyone anymore, I blamed God. That is the human mind, the cunning animal that I have always been speaking about.
WITHIN ANY PROBLEM, THE SOLUTION IS BUILT IN
And I tell you one thing: whatever difficulties exist in the lives of two people, husband and wife, these difficulties can be overcome. There is no such thing as not being able to overcome any difficulty if husband and wife are willing to overcome these difficulties, if husband and wife are willing to develop an understanding if they are willing to accept each other as they are, if they are eager to surrender to each other, then every difficulty is overcome. Because within every problem, the solution is inherent – there can never be a problem without a solution. The solution to the problem is built in.
In Western countries, there are first courtship and love and then marriage. In Eastern countries, you will find that parents arrange marriages. The only opportunity the boy and girl have is to meet each other, talk to each other, see each other, feel some mutual attraction, and get married. In Western countries, although all the love and experimentation that takes place before marriage, even cohabiting and things like that, which is entirely against all religions, primarily referring to trial marriages, is against all ethics and morality. Yet, despite all that, despite all the experiments and all the trials and everything, there is one divorce in every three. I believe there is one divorce every two and a half now.
In the East, I am referring mainly to India because I have experience in India, and there is one divorce in 10,000.
In India, divorce has always been allowed except in one particular small caste, which is not even one-thousandth percent of the Indian population. It is a specific religious sect. Why are those marriages workable? Marriages in some Western countries are not workable, although they have undergone trials and experimentation. What happens with those people in the East is that there is a mutual attraction at first. That mutual attraction is worked upon after marriage. It is worked upon where there is total surrender and acceptance. Total surrender and acceptance of each other. The wife regards her husband as a god; they are brought up that way, perceiving that Divinity resides within everyone. She perceives her husband as a god, and he, in turn, regards her as a goddess.
Every home would have disputes, but those are never taken into the bedroom. So, there are some things we can learn from the East, and the Easterners have a lot to learn from the West. There is no East and no West. These are man-made boundaries! This is America, which includes Germany, South Africa, and England. These are man-made boundaries. It is one world, and humanity is the same everywhere. Humanity essentially, potentially, is the same everywhere. Perhaps circumstances or ways of upbringing might influence people in different ways. However, we must return to the fact that these marriages become lasting because of acceptance and surrender to each other. There is great harmony, which is why there is only one divorce, perhaps, in 10,000.
THE HEART IS FOREVER EXPANDED
To come back to the expansion of the heart. I will repeat this repeatedly: the heart is forever expanded, and the core of the human personality has that ineffable luminosity forever shining. It is us because of our actions, thoughts, preconceived ideas, non-surrender and non-acceptance, and other things that build a wall around it. Therefore, I tell meditators worldwide to be regular in their practices. Your practices are specially designed for you for a particular purpose. If the wall is very thick, you use a bigger hammer. If the wall is fragile, you use a smaller hammer. The practices given to you are carefully weighed and evaluated to bring about the maximum result in breaking down this wall.
REGULARITY
So, regularity, regularity. We could even make a song of it. If we have some composer, he could even make a song: Regularity. There are a lot of “ities.” Regularity, sincerity, and oneness of purpose. There is a lovely little story from one of Ramakrishna’s books. A bird was sitting on the mast of a boat. This bird wanted to reach the shore, so it flew to the south, got tired of flying, and could not find the shore, so it came back and perched on the mast. It flew to the north, got tired of flying, and returned. It flew to the west and the east, and the same happened because the shore was far away. Then it decided that, look, this ship must reach the shore, so instead of me flying around and wasting energy, let me stick to the mast, and indeed, the boat reached shore, and the bird was at the shore.
What it means is one-pointedness, which means sticking to the boat. Be regular, and you will surely reach there. It would be best if you reached there. It is our nature to reach Divinity because Divinity is within us, and the full power of love can only be experienced when we dive deep within ourselves and get bathed with the Light of Love and God, which is the same thing.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang US 1977 – 08
