Love is the foundation of spirituality. If there is no love there is no awakening of spirit. Love is that force which ties all beings and all things to each other, that makes life interwoven and interconnected. It is love that holds people together, that holds life together. A mother loves her babe. The babe loves the mother. All things move in love.
Behind human love, behind the love that animals have for their offspring, for their herd, for each other that which brings them closer to each other, is a deep natural inclination of all living beings to love. An inclination to want to be close, to be drawn to connection, to closeness. That draw to connection, to closeness, is the yearning which creates love. That is natural within you. Not only within you but within all living beings because there is a natural draw to the cosmic source, to Purushottama, that cosmic nucleus. All living beings are attracted, drawn. The word Krishna means attracted, attraction - attracting all beings. Krishna attracts all beings to him.
The Purushottama, the cosmic nucleus, draws the whole universe together around it, and its force brings all beings to it in this longing for love, this longing to connect, to feel whole, to feel united. This longing is the inner call within you towards the one, towards wholeness.
But in the mind the longing many times is interpreted for the needs for the physical body. The physical body wants food and shelter, physical comfort, pleasure. And so the longing gets translated into the desires of the body. The desires of the animal tendencies of the physical form. It gets translated into desires for safety and security and therefore for power and control, for being appreciated by many people, and therefore gaining a certain feeling of connectedness from that.
These forces, all of these things—whether they are material, success, position, wealth, prestige—are manifestations from the inner longing within. But the mind confuses things of the material world with that inner longing. There becomes a confusion between the desires of the body and the mental desires and security and love. The natural longing within for that unity, for that wholeness becomes lost, mired in these external desires. And so people lose their way in this. They become confused about what they really want; about what their life is really about.
Awakening to awareness of the spiritual nature, the nature of love, the nature of your own heart is in your heart. It’s in the center of that love that you find the unitary whole that you most easily connect with that cosmic nucleus which is pure essence, pure being—the Self of yourself. And that cosmic nucleus is exerting a force on you.
If you learn to listen, really listen, not to the desires of the mind and body, but to the call of spirit, then you begin to feel that draw towards the cosmic nucleus. And the closest interpretation to that draw is love. The yearning to be one. The yearning to be whole, to be complete, to have deep fulfillment, to go from separateness in duality to a sense of unity, a love that has no divisions.
And cosmic love is always there. Like a gently falling shower it always falls upon you. It is never ending because that cosmic nucleus has always been, always will be, always drawing all created beings back home, back to their core of their being, back to the center of their existence which is pure love.
Love fulfilled in union. This is your natural tendency. This is your own nature. The inner core of your own heart. And yet it is the core of the entire universe. The entire universe dances around this cosmic core, this cosmic nucleus, Puroshottama as it is called in Sanskirt. Purushottoma--Purusha. It is Purusha consciousness awareness drawn into the nucleus, the essence of being.
And it is dharma. It is your deep dharma, your natural leaning as a human being to pursue love, to pursue that journey to wholeness and to oneness. That is your dharma, your natural purpose as a human being. Within that you may have your individual dharma, your unique expressions, your unique ways, your unique contribution to the whole. But within that uniqueness is this universal dharma, the dharma of your humanity to move towards divinity, to move towards love unconditional.
When you move away from this, it causes pain in you. The pain of separation. The pain of aloneness. When you feel you have no way to achieve this bright love, this deep fulfillment, it causes despondency and sorrow. When you become afraid that you can't find it, it causes anxiety. You don't feel safe.
But when you feel you are connected to the whole of being, to the core of yourself and to the purpose, your dharma in life, then you feel peace, contentment. You feel the effulgence and emergence of love. So, in spiritual life the confusion between the desires of the mind and body and the love of the heart can be difficult. But the solution lies in connecting to your feeling inside, your heart core. In the heart is the mind which can lead you in the path of spirit, in the path of love unconditional, in the path of truth. The mind is a monkey mind that goes everywhere. The heart knows truth. And when you attune to your own heart you know the real from the unreal; you know the truth from the untruth.
Let that love of divinity, that love from the core of your heart, from the call from the cosmic center be the beacon of your life. Listen for that call and follow it, and your life will be a happy life.