Dear sisters and brothers, I wish to share with you my humble philosophy, which is based on love. We know that there are two types of love: human love and Love Divine. In human love, what we actually try to do is to possess the many without caring for the One, the Source. But if we do not possess the Source, then the many cannot be of any help to us. If there is no root, then how will the tree grow? How will we be able to claim the branches or the flowers and leaves as our very own? With the divine Love, we go first to the One, the Source, and from there we go to the many. We become one with the root, and then we grow into the tree, which will manifest itself through the branches and leaves, the flowers and fruits. Divine Love is the song of multiplicity in unity.

In human love there is demand or, at least, expectation. Very often we start with demand, and when a higher wisdom dawns we no longer demand, but still we expect something from others. We convince ourselves that this expectation is justified. Since we have done something for others- offered our love-we feel it is quite legitimate to expect something in return.

But in divine Love there is no such thing as demand or expectation. In divine Love we just give what we have and what we are. What we have and what we are is dedicated service. In the human life, before we give our love, we try to discover love in others-that is, their love for us. In the divine Life, before we give our love to others, we try to discover Love in its reality and integrality within ourselves. Only then are we in a position to offer love to others. At first our satisfaction dawns when we feel that those to whom we offer our love accept it wholeheartedly. But there is an even higher form of divine Love when we go beyond this feeling, and give love just for the sake of self giving. We give, and even if our love is not accepted, we do not mind. We shall go on giving, for we are all love, our Source is all Love.

In human love there is not only demand and expectation, but there is something even worse: withdrawal. First we demand, then we expect. When our expectation is not fulfilled, we sometimes try to withdraw from the person to whom we have offered our love. In divine Love, it is never like that. With divine Love we try to become one with the weakness, imperfection and bondage of others. Although we have inner freedom, we use this inner freedom not to lord it over others, but to become one, consciously one with their imperfections. In this way we can understand them and serve them at their own level, with a view to transforming their imperfections.

The capacity of human love is so limited that we cannot expand ourselves and totally embrace one another. There is bound to be a feeling of supremacy. I shall love you, no doubt, but I wish to remain an inch higher than you. On that condition I shall love you. The superior loves the inferior because he is satisfied to some extent with his position in this relationship. The inferior very often loves the superior because of his insecurity. So love binds them and gives them both some sense of satisfaction. But in divine Love there is no such thing as superiority and inferiority. Divine Love always gives itself freely and wholeheartedly. Divine Love gets satisfaction only by offering itself totally and unconditionally. In divine Love, we come to notice that the personal and the impersonal perfectly go together. There is a balance between the two. The personal in us enters into the vast, which is impersonal; and the impersonal in us enters into the personal to manifest its unmanifested Reality, Divinity and Immortality. In human love, the personal and the impersonal are two strangers; worse, they are at daggers drawn. The personal and the impersonal at best try to reach a compromise, but this compromise brings no satisfaction at all; in the very depth of human love, there is always a rivalry and competition between the two. On rare occasions, the personal says to the impersonal, which is inside the human being, “Let us alternate our reality, our height, our wisdom, our capacity. This moment you stand up and I shall remain seated; the next moment I shall stand up and you will sit.”

In human love, very often the physical mind, the doubting mind, the suspecting mind, comes to the fore. But in divine Love, we see only the loving heart, the surrendering heart, the all beckoning heart. The mind loves a reality because it sees the reality according to its own understanding and vision. But the heart loves a reality because it sees the reality in the reality’s own form. The heart becomes inseparably one with the reality, with the very existence of that reality, both inner and outer. It sees the living breath of the reality in its own form and shape; it sees the body and soul of the reality all together.

In human love, the lover and the beloved are two separate persons. The lover is running toward the beloved, and when he reaches the beloved he finds his satisfaction. In divine Love, the lover and the beloved are one and inseparable. In divine Love, the Lover is the Supreme and the Beloved is the Supreme. In human love, we feel that satisfaction lies somewhere else- not within us, but in somebody else. But in divine Love, satisfaction is found nowhere else but in ourselves. The Lover and the Beloved are one and the same-the Supreme dwelling within and the Supreme outside us. When we speak of our ‘self’ as the divine Lover or Beloved, we have to know that this is the ‘Self’ which is both the One and the many. This Self, the Supreme, finds its satisfaction only when it gets a glimpse of God’s Reality, Infinity, Eternity and Immortality in the many. This ‘Self’ is the One, and it wants to see and feel its Reality in the many.

Love is duty. In our human life we see duty as something mechanical, lifeless, forced-something thrust upon us. But in the divine Life, duty is something full of opportunity. At every second an opportunity dawning for us to expand our life’s consciousness, our life’s reality, our life’s delight. So in the divine Life we welcome duty, for it increases our capacity and potentiality and expands the dream of our divine, unhorizoned Reality.

Life is the lesson of Love. Love is the lesson of Life. When we study Life’s lesson in our human life, the lesson is composed of fear, doubt, anxiety, worry and frustration. But in the divine Life, we see that Love is the lesson not only of Life, but also for Life-for the Life that is everlasting, ever illumining and ever fulfilling.

A divine Lover is he who believes in the divine miracle. A human miracle is something that feeds our curiosity, something that lasts for a fleeting second. But the divine miracle is the elevation of consciousness. To raise somebody else’s consciousness, to raise humanity’s consciousness even an iota is the true divine miracle. The conscious help the divine Lover gives to the seeker performs this divine miracle.

We are of God the eternal Love and we are for God the eternal Love. We are of God the infinite Love and we are for God the infinite Love. Eternity is the Source of the Silence life; and Infinity is the message of the sound life. From the One we came and for the many we exist. This is the real message of divine Love. We are of the One and we are for the many-the many in the

One. This is the quintessence of Love Divine.

– Sri Chinmoy

February 27th, 1974
2:00 p.m.
Jefferson Davis Campus
Mississippi Gulf Coast Junior College
Room 132
Gulfport, Mississippi