Question: How can people have love?

Sri Chinmoy: If we do not have love, what are we aiming at? If we do not love the world, that means we can be neutral or indifferent to the world. When we hate the world, we destroy ourselves. Again, when we are indifferent, we do not get any joy. We have to love the world and accept the world as our very own. What for? For the betterment of the world.

Your question is, how can we have love? The answer is, if we do not love, what happens? The world that we are now facing is all hatred, all supremacy. By not loving one another, we are suffering so much.

But how to love someone or something? First, if we do not love ourselves, we cannot love others. If we are happy early in the morning, then on the street whomever we see, we try to greet or give a smile. But if in the morning we are unhappy, then we do not even look at others. We feel miserable and we may even go to the length of saying that if we see others, we have ruined our whole day. If we are happy inwardly, then the whole world is good for us. But if we are miserable deep within, then we blame the whole world. We never blame ourselves; we blame the world. And who is actually at fault? It is we who are to be blamed.

So how do we love the world? I want to say that we can love the world by creating joy. From joy we get love and from love we get joy. How do we create joy? We get it by doing something. A little child gets joy by playing with her doll. If I have faith in God, by praying to Him I get joy. When I get joy, I immediately find that I want to apply it in my day-to-day life. Then this joy is transformed into love.

I wish to say that we must pay attention to the things that give us joy. Then from joy we can get love. We have to start with joy. We came into the world to give joy and to accept joy from the world. But, unfortunately, many people are using the mind instead of the heart. That is why they find it so difficult to get joy from the world. The mind's only joy is to divide and divide. By cutting the reality into pieces, the mind tries to get joy. The heart wants to keep that reality intact. It does not want to cut the reality into pieces.

So our heart is the answer. The heart has joy and the heart has love, whereas the mind is empty of joy. Something more, the mind takes away all our inner joy that we derive from the heart. Because of the mind, we doubt others, we become jealous of others. If somebody is good or if somebody has achieved something remarkable, we use the doubting mind and we try to belittle that person or the achievement of that person. By doubting somebody or by becoming jealous of someone, are we getting any joy?

If we use our heart, on the other hand, to identify ourselves with that person, we get such joy! If we are using our heart to listen to a most lovely and beautiful piece of music, we will identify ourselves with the music, with the singer or with the melody. We may even feel that we are the singer, that we are carrying the melody. But if we use the mind, then we become jealous of the singer, jealous of the music and so forth.

So the heart and the mind give us two different experiences. One appreciates others and the other tries to minimise their glory. One makes us so happy and the other makes us miserable. If a Chinese song is being played and I hear it, if I use my heart, I will get such joy, such a feeling of oneness with the music. But if I use the mind, I will say, "Oh no, my Indian music is far better!" Again, in the same way, if you use the mind, you will say, "Indian music is silly. It just puts us to sleep. Once it starts, it has nothing else to do." But if you use the heart, then you will say, "Indian music is so beautiful, so soothing, so haunting."

When we use the critical mind, who becomes the loser? We do. By criticising someone, we will never, never be happy because our inner nature is all love, abiding love. That is why, in our philosophy, we give so much importance to the heart. The heart accepts the reality as such. The heart does not mind whether others are good or bad. By offering its goodwill to others, it becomes inseparably one with them. The mind, on the other hand, constantly plies between the good qualities of others and their bad qualities. This moment it says that so-and-so is a good person; next moment it tells us that we are wasting our precious time by remaining with that person. By approaching others with a heart of goodwill, we establish a kind of friendship or oneness with their soul and this gives us tremendous joy. But if we approach others with the mind, then we will only try to find fault with that person.

When we use the mind, we go near a flower and, like a mischievous monkey, we try to destroy the flower, petal by petal. But if we use the heart to approach a flower, we will appreciate the beauty and fragrance of the flower.

The heart gives joy and the heart receives joy. The mind tries to destroy the beauty or the reality that the mind sees. Naturally, those who are being criticised by others will respond in the same way. They will muster the strength to defend themselves. So the heart is mutual love and the mind is mutual destruction.

When goodwill works, immediately we open up our heart's door. This is how we liberate our heart. In your case, you have definitely opened up your heart. By opening up the heart, you have arrived at a particular destination. Tomorrow you will see that this is not the end. You have taken the first step. It is a very solid step and you are bound to feel love, joy, light, peace, bliss and other divine attributes inside your heart. This first step, the opening of the heart, is most satisfactory. Then tomorrow you will see that many, many divine qualities are blossoming inside you. Like a flower that blossoms petal by petal, in exactly the same way many, many divine qualities in your heart will blossom and they will give you tremendous joy. And you will feel that there is great meaning in your life — that meaning is to increase your love, joy, peace and bliss on a daily basis.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Conversations with Sri Chinmoy, Agni Press, 2007
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/csc