Love is the most talked about subject. There have been more songs and poems and books written about love than any other subject, from all different angles, from “Oh, I am so happy about this” to “Oh, I am so sad about this.” Always up and down, isn’t it?
And it starts from birth. You don’t have to learn about love, it is built-in. The baby needs love just as much as anybody, in fact often times more.
The scientists did an experiment. You see, the scientists are always experimenting with things trying to figure things out, often doing a very good job. At this case they took baby monkeys away from the mother at birth, and they isolated them alone in a cage. They gave them adequate food, water, etc. They even put another monkey in the cage, another mother monkey in the cage, but this monkey was made out of wood. And then they observed these little monkeys. And without exception every single monkey would go to this wooden mother monkey, hang on and cried. And eventually they all went crazy. You see, they went crazy.
Very cruel experiment, I would not condone this experiment at all. But this proves one thing: no matter what body the person is in, the monkey body, the dog body, the cat body, the human body, it doesn’t matter, love is wanted ingredient and necessary ingredient. For life to be as it is supposed to be, there must be love.
Yet love is the most elusive thing. Everybody is looking for it, trying to grasp it. When we think we have it, it gets out of our hands, it slips away or it fades. Love causes so much joy, but love causes so much pain. And this is an ongoing situation. You can say, “Oh, ok. I’ve had so many failures, love has caused me so much difficulty and pain, complicated my life in so many different ways. I give up, I quit.”
What you really mean is you give up on humans and then you go out and get a dog. And you direct your love to a dog or a cat, or a bird, or a snake. I knew one girl in Los Angeles, she had a big boa, huge. She liked the way it hugged her, she got big hugs out of her snake. (laughs)
Everybody is looking for love. The Beatles said a long time ago, “All we need is love.” And they were right. Nothing wrong with that statement, it’s absolutely correct.
But why is it that love causes us so much pain, so much anguish? Why is it so difficult? Why is it so elusive, etc., etc.?
The number one crime in the world is household violence, domestic violence. You see, domestic violence, that means in the home. In the home is where it’s supposed to be love. Here is the husband, the wife, the kids, see, mom and dad; that’s where the love nest is. Why is the violence there? Where there is love, it is not supposed to be violence. It doesn’t make sense.
Because it’s not love. That’s why. It’s actually not love, it’s a semblance of love, it’s the illusory love. The problem we have is we don’t really have access to real love in the way we live today.
Last night I talked about lifestyle choices and the choices we’ve made in our life. We’ve actually moved away from or removed ourselves from the possibility of real love, unfortunately so. And we pay a very, very big price for this.
Last night I talked a lot about health, physical health, mental health. Tonight we are going to talk about health of the heart, health of the soul. This is the most important.
You can have perfect physical health, do all the things right. We have talked about a lot of things last night: the perfect vegetarian diet and the exercise, and whatever, whatever. Physically you are tuned. And you can even do different things so that the mind is very tuned: it’s very calm, very peaceful, not so much agitation. But if the heart is not tuned, if we don’t have that health of the heart, the harmony of the heart, then we are miserable, we are miserable.
That’s why life in the world is so miserable: we don’t have love. That’s why there are all these conflicts and wars and whatever is going on. That is the symptom of non-love. You can go, “Oh, but I love my husband, my wife, my kids, my this, my that.” But it’s not really true love. We think it is, it seems so deep, but it’s not. It’s apparent. It’s the illusion. And that’s what we have to understand.
So how do we understand all this? I’ve just explained, hopefully enough detailed that you can maybe accept it, we are spirit souls, we are not our material bodies, we are not. Never have been, never will be. And we are never going to become someone else. We’ll always be who we are right now. That is our eternal identity.
And as a spirit soul we have certain inherent characteristics. An inherent characteristic means a characteristic that is always present. Just like in this bottle there is water and I know it’s wet, you know it’s wet as well. Why? Because wetness is an inherent characteristic of water. You can’t separate wetness from water. Heat and light are characteristic of fire, etc.
The soul has many inherent characteristics, you see, many. One of those is the need for love and also the possession of a little bit of love. We are a part and parcel of the Supreme Soul, the Supreme Lord, part and parcel. We have all the qualities of the Supreme Lord but not in the same quantity, just like a chip of a diamond has all the qualities of the diamond but in a very minute quantity. Same quality, minute quantity. So we are exactly like that. One of those qualities which we have is the quality of love. It is built-in.
But love is what? Love is an exchange between two people. There is no such thing as loving independently, love is an exchange. So if there’s an exchange between two people, then everything is in harmony, see.