Question: How can we love God more with our mind?

Sri Chinmoy: You have to know where love usually lives. Love usually lives inside the heart, not inside the mind. When you have a house, you know that there is a particular room, whether it is the living room or the kitchen or the bedroom, where you stay most of the time. You go to all the rooms, but most of the time you are in one particular room. In the spiritual life also, you have to know that love most of the time stays inside the heart. If I know that here there is water, I shall dig deep and find water. But if water is not here and I all the time dig, dig, dig, it is just a waste of time. In our spiritual life we see that love exists, not most of the time but all the time, inside the heart.

If we want to have more love for God, we have to approach Him with our heart. We have to feel that we have only the heart for God. If we start our journey with the mind, we are bound to be frustrated. But if we start our journey with the heart, we are bound to be fulfilled. The child runs towards his mother, towards his father, towards a flower, because of his continuous love. The child has no mind; he only feels with his heart. When we identify ourselves with something, then only do we feel real love. But when the child grows up and starts living in the mind, he starts doubting everything and finding fault with everything.

In the spiritual life we have to be like a child. Only then does love come to us. When we use the mind, already we think that we know much about spirituality. But what do we know? We know how to doubt, we know how to suspect. If we want spirituality to offer its message to us, we do not need mental interpretation. Spirituality has its own light, its own love, to offer. We do not have to be in the spiritual life for two years or three years in order to love God. No, we can love God right from this moment, provided we use the heart to love Him and not the mind to think of Him. Love comes from the heart and not from the mind. The heart is identification-oneness, whereas the mind means constant judgement and separateness.