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Human love and divine love

“My Lord, what is the difference between human love and divine love?”
“My child, the difference between human love and divine love is very simple:
Human love desperately needs.
Divine love abundantly feeds.” 1

Sri Chinmoy

Human love we all know. After five or ten years, it is all frustration. Why? Because with human love we try to bind others and then, to our sorrow, we see that others have already bound us. We want to possess and be possessed, and the result is frustration. This is human love. But in divine love there is constant expansion. We expand on the strength of our identification with somebody else or with the whole world. Divine love does not bind anybody; it just helps us to expand our consciousness. At the same time, we see others expanding their consciousness through divine love. In divine love we don't bind; we only expand and enlarge our consciousness together. 2

Divine love is unconditional. So far in your life, nobody has loved you unconditionally, so right now it is beyond your expectation that some body can love you unconditionally. But when you go deep within, you see that God, the Supreme, loves you unconditionally. 3

Question: I believe that love is always the same, whether human or divine. Is this true?

Sri Chinmoy: No! 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 don’t 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 we 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. Mind you, 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. 4


  1. Sri Chinmoy, My Lord's Secrets revealed, Agni Press, 1971↩︎

  2. Sri Chinmoy, Self-discovery and world-mastery, Agni Press, 1976↩︎

  3. Sri Chinmoy, Service-boat and love-boatman, part 2, Agni Press, 1974↩︎

  4. Sri Chinmoy, Yoga and the spiritual life. The journey of India's Soul, Agni Press, 1971↩︎