Commentary by Siddha Yoga Meditation Teacher Paul Hawkwood
Love can be as simple as making tea for your spouse, and as profound as experiencing the all-pervasive heart of God in every moment. Love, in the highest sense, is the transcendent, all-embracing essence of God, manifesting throughout creation in ways both vast and ordinary. Love can feel as quiet as a drop of rain falling from a leaf and as immense as the stars. Love is the infinite manifest.
What are some of the ways we experience love and practice it as a virtue? Of the several Sanskrit words that can be translated as love, one of the most encompassing is premā. It conveys qualities of affection, benevolence, tenderness, and compassion. In English, the word love also refers to feelings of deep fondness, devotion, and appreciation.1 These qualities of love also point toward the ways we express love as a virtue: we can speak and act in ways that reflect the love in our hearts.
At the deepest level, we experience love as our own innermost nature and as the essential nature of everything that exists. We experience the presence of God as pure, all-pervasive love within ourselves and all of creation, and our lives become a living expression of this love.
What does it take to experience this kind of love? Gurumayi Chidvilasananda describes how meditation awakens a seeker to the experience of pure love:
When you sit for meditation, in the beginning you may think, “Why must I meditate if love is everywhere?” You meditate to unleash devotion, to set free the love in your own being. If you do not experience this love on the inside, then no matter how much you experience it on the outside, you cannot really understand its worth. Once the experience takes place inside, then no matter where you go, that is all you see. That is all you experience.2
As you turn within, you can become more and more aware of the love that is always present within yourself. You see that every experience you have of affection, wonder, contentment, and peace is a reflection of this inner love. As you stop looking for satisfaction outside yourself, as you enter ever more thoroughly into the vast space of love within your own being, your experience of love becomes all-embracing.
In his Bhakti Sutra, the sage Narada says that the highest love, what he calls parama-prema, is ultimately indefinable and beyond all thought and language:
अनिर्वचनीयं प्रेमस्वरूपम्॥५१॥
Anirvacanīyaṁ prema-svarūpam ॥
The essential nature of love cannot be expressed in words.3
Narada says that the highest love is anirvacanīyam—a truth beyond scriptural teachings, definitions, speech, words, and sounds—a truth so pure and so profound that it is inconceivable to the mental faculties. Love is the inexpressible, immeasurable essence of the divine and can only be known through the heart. What a wonderful teaching to contemplate! Instead of thinking about love, we can practice encountering love directly in our own being, exploring the wordless, expansive presence of love within.
Narada also uses the word svarūpam to guide us toward recognizing pure love, premā, our truest nature. The Sanskrit word rūpam refers to the form of something—its nature, characteristics, shape, and beauty—while sva indicates that something is one’s own. Prema-svarūpam can thus be translated as “the essential nature or form of the highest love.” In the context of the Bhakti Sutra, Narada reminds us again and again that the highest love, prema-svarūpam, is the nature of the divine, and is therefore our own nature, our own beauty, our own form, beyond all words and definitions. We are the embodiment of the highest love.
By cultivating the awareness of prema-svarūpam as our inner nature, love becomes our ongoing experience. Ultimately, as Gurumayi says, we come to see that love is all there is. We are living in the hṛdayam, the Heart of all. Then, wherever we go, love is all we experience. We perceive the resplendent fullness of God’s love, and our life naturally blossoms into an expression of that love. To experience love, we have to become love. Only love can know love.
1Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “love,” accessed May 9, 2016, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/110566. 2Swami Chidvilasananda, “Look Inside the Heart,” Darshan magazine, no. 119 (February 1997), Love Begets Love, p. 47. 3Bhakti Sutra, 51; William K. Mahony, Exquisite Love: Reflections on the spiritual life based on Narada’s Bhakti Sutra (Davidson, NC: Sarvabhava Press, 2014), p. 267.
For me, the word love itself makes my heart skip a beat. This is even more so in the English language because the word is made up of only four letters, yet it is immense in its deepest meaning.
I often repeat the word love out loud. Sometimes I do this when I am in nature, when I am in the company of animals, when I observe the sky, when I witness a mother’s embrace, and above all when I experience the Guru-disciple bond.
Gurumayi represents love for me. And when I experience this love, I truly feel that “I am prema-svarupam.”
San Giorgio a Cremano, Italy
Reading the commentary on the virtue of love brought to mind my experience in the audio satsang in celebration of Baba Muktananda’s birthday.
During Baba’s talk, I began to experience his words with my whole being. I was no longer listening to his talk only with my ears but feeling each word Baba was uttering as a sensation sweeping over my whole body. His words pulsated and swelled like music, as though I was a musical instrument being played by God’s divine hand. Every word was a new note, a new sound.
On reflection, I understood that this was an experience of divine love, that Baba’s love is boundless and infinitely compassionate.
I want to always live my life as a living expression of this love.
Sydney, Australia
I need to make a decision that might disappoint someone. I have become aware of many different feelings that have made this decision complicated. But when I think of this decision in terms of love, it is clear what the decision will be.
After reading the commentary on love, I held the affirmation in my mind, “I am prema-svarupam, the highest love.” Then I meditated. As I did so, I got in touch with a deep experience of serenity, strength, steadiness, and love, along with devotion for Gurumayi.
I pray that my vision today and all my senses will remain attuned to this prema-svarupam.
Massachusetts, United States
Before reading this commentary, I wondered if there could be anything new to say that hasn’t already been said about love. Yet, as I read this exquisite commentary, my heart began to sing with joy, because I experienced that I was in the presence of the Truth. From Gurumayi’s teaching on meditation and love to the words in Narada’s Bhakti Sutra on prema-svarupam, I feel that I have received new insights on love that I can contemplate and savor again and again. How grateful I am to walk this path that is illumined by Gurumayi’s grace!
Georgia, United States
I am so grateful for this beautiful commentary on the virtue of love. When I read that we live in the “hrdayam, the Heart of all,” I experienced an expansive, blissful space fill my being. What an incredible moment! It has left me feeling that I can move forward in the firm conviction that love is alive in everything.
Ajijic, Mexico
After studying this commentary on the beautiful virtue of love, I feel newly open to seeing that not only am I lovable, but also that I am the form of the highest love. As I took this teaching in, my heart filled with ecstasy.
New Jersey, United States
While reading this commentary, I felt space in my heart where I can find love for all. I am so grateful for this teaching that love exists everywhere in countless forms.
Khamgaon, India
What a beautiful commentary! I was particularly drawn to Gurumayi’s teaching about love: “Once the experience takes place, then no matter where you go, that is all you see. That is all you experience.”
Spending extensive time in nature recently, I experienced God’s creation as nothing but love—pure, perfect, and unconditional. I saw everything and everyone as perfect the way it is.
Thanks to the Guru’s grace and the Siddha Yoga practices, I feel able to see more clearly when my thoughts, moods, and hidden agendas keep me away from the true purpose of life—to live in love. With the intensified intention and awareness that grace and the practices bestow, I am grateful to remember to align myself to experiencing love throughout the day.
Delhi, India
These virtues are helping me to reflect on my day-to-day behavior and to recognize my true nature. The commentaries are especially helpful for understanding the actual meaning of the virtue and how to apply and practice it. After reading today’s commentary on love, I know that I have received an important sutra for my life: “I am prema-svarupam.”
As I read the description of prema-svarupam, I was filled with a great and divine love: “We are the embodiment of the highest love.”
How blessed we are to walk on the Siddha Yoga path! I offer my heartfelt gratitude to Shri Gurumayi every day for the beautiful virtues.
Chandigarh, India
When I read Shri Gurumayi’s teaching on love, I experienced an incredible rush of love in my heart. In that very moment, I knew that it was the Guru’s immense love that had touched my innermost being, releasing the purest love within me. As I write this share, my heart is moist and my eyes can’t hold back the flow of this love. Truly, the svarupa of prem is so mystical and yet so utterly simple!
