My heart can never understand
Why my mind, vital and body
Are so attached
To the fleeting finite.
Sri Chinmoy, Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees, part 9, Agni Press, 1998
I believe that love is always the same, whether human or divine. Is this true?
No, my young friend, human love and divine love are two completely different things. If I give you fifteen cents and you give me a piece of candy, that is called human love. In divine love, you do not wait for my fifteen cents. You give me the piece of candy cheerfully of your own accord. Divine love is sacrifice, and in this sacrifice, you are fulfilling God's Will, consciously or unconsciously. In human love, we display the buyer's and the seller's love, which is synonymous with self-interest. I am not saying that human beings cannot express divine love. They can and sometimes do. But consistent divine love is, at present, rare in human beings.
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How can we tell if our love is vital or pure?/
You can easily tell whether your love is vital or pure. When your love is vital, there is a conscious demand, or at least an unconscious expectation from the love you offer to others. When your love is pure or spiritual, there is no demand, no expectation. There is only the sweetest feeling of spontaneous oneness with the human being or beings concerned.
Question: Is it possible to prevent oneself from giving off impure vital love and to substitute the heart's pure love for it?
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How can we consciously give pure love?/
It is not only possible, but absolutely necessary, to prevent oneself from giving off impure vital love. Otherwise one will have to constantly wrestle with the gigantic forces of ignorance. One has to use love, not to bind or possess the world, but to free and widen one's own consciousness and the consciousness of the world.
Now you want to know how you can consciously give pure love to others. You can consciously give pure love to others if you feel that you are giving a portion of your life-breath when you talk to others or think of others. And this life-breath you are offering just because you feel that you and the rest of the world are totally and inseparably one. Where there is oneness, it is all pure love.