ON LOVE

IRUP RAWHIS

ON LOVE

Published by: ISHA

All rights reserved.

This book is published under a CC BY-NC-SA license, which means that you can copy, redistribute, remix, and freely distribute sections of the book, as long as any derivative works or new resulting creations are not used for any commercial purpose and as long as you give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.

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Copyright 1984

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ISBN: 978-0-937067-03-1

Introduction

The Institute for the Study of Human Awareness encourages individuals to know and understand themselves in the manner of the Socratic theme of “Know Thyself”. This knowledge permits us to understand others and the world in which we live. The institute provides resources which lead to the investigation and discovery of one’s real self.

These publications are compilation of taped lectures by Ishwar C. Puri. Due to the varied formats and lecture subjects, some information may be repeated. We hope that you would experience the love as if you were there, and we invite you to experience the reality of your being.

On Love

The teachings of the Masters can be summed up in one word, love. If you can understand the meaning of that one word, you have understood completely the teachings of the Masters. The problem is that this one word is so difficult to understand. I don’t blame anyone for not understanding the word love, because love is beyond our understanding. Even if we get that beautiful experience of the radiance of love around us, we will lose it by trying to understand it. The whole process of understanding takes place in the human mind, through the intellect. Love has no place in the mind and is not dependent upon intellect. Nobody has experienced love with the mind.

Nobody has been able to think himself into loving. But many people have been able to think themselves out of love. They were able to reason themselves out of love.

Love is the most beautiful experience that defies both time and space. All other things that the mind can perceive occur in time and space. Therefore, love is unique. If you have truly experienced love, you have experienced the ultimate experience that there is. Love leaves no questions, no other pursuits and there is no seeking left when you have

On Love

experienced love. Therefore, the teachings of the Masters are the experience of love.

Now, before I continue with this work, love, I would like to say that the word love is used far more often in the West than in the East. Very rightly so, because when there is love you don’t have to mention love. And when you don’t have it, you have to speak about it. Do you know that most of the time we speak of the things that we don’t have? We talk about them because we don’t have them. That is further why you hear this word “love” so many times in the day. “I love you, dear.” “I really love you.” Surely there is no love with this kind of conversation going on. This very conversation proves that there is no love. Were there really love, there would be no room for this kind of conversation.

The reality of love is that it introduces oneness. There are no two left to participate in a conversation of this type. Where conversation can still take place, it is a copy of love, a pseudo love. Another word to describe this copy of love is attachment.

Attachment is the situation wherein there are still two persons to have the conversation, “I love you.” In the attachment you will always have the “I” and the “you,” sometimes in equal measure. “I” is equal to “you”. If not, then the “I” is bigger than “you” and it’s an ego game. All attachments are ego 2

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games and there is no love. With attachments the maximum you can expect is togetherness. In love you find oneness. And there is a very large difference. In togetherness there is always a separation, no matter how together you think you might be.

The fact that you are two makes you separate and

separation gives you pain. In love there is oneness, the “I” is gone. If I love you, then only “you” will remain. If “I” is still there, then there is no love. It is the ego that disappears in love to make it oneness. Where there is no ego, there is no two.

That which separates us from others is our own ego; I-ness, this is me, that’s not me, etc. This I-ness, my-ness, mine and me separates us from all others, in attachments, not love.

Love is the complete identification with the object of love. The identification is to such an extent that the one you love totally fills your awareness. Your awareness will have no room for anything else except the you, you, and you.

Therefore, even the word love cannot be used. Even the awareness of the love is lost when there is love. In attachments, of course, it’s all conditions. “I love you now, so what do you do? You do not love me? I hate you.” In less than two minutes this can happen. I hear this. These are attachments, but we often use the word love. I have introduced 3

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this subject because we should know the difference and love will not be confused with attachment.

In truth, the teachings of the Masters are teachings of realization of one’s own self, the real self. The real self is so called because we discover it in ourselves. When we started the discussion, it looked like it belonged to our selves; but when we discover it, the real self, we find that it covers everything. The whole universe, the whole creation is within that self. Then it no longer remains the self and we give it another name, God. The most appropriate name we have ever given to that is God. Then we say it is God-realization. God-realization is total self-realization or realizing of the total self.

When the self becomes total, that is God because everything inclusive is God.

The only wall or obstacle that separates us from God is our own ego, the I-ness or individuation. The ego is being built up by our mind and intellect. This is why the mind and intellect that did the building cannot then demolish the obstacle. We try many funny ways in which to demolish the wall of the ego. We try to get out of the mind with the mind itself. We make an effort and try very hard, “I must get it.”

The more “I” try hard, the more I am building up the ego. The very wall we are trying to demolish, we are building it up. But, 4

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on the other hand, if we don’t try and we just sit back, then almost nothing happens, we are isolated. So what do we do? If we make no effort, then we are also at a loss. There is only one way out of this, love of the Master. In this way, we demolish the ego without the other problems.

When you have the experience of love, the ego goes and you become that which you love. You become him, as it is he that you love. Therefore, if you come to love a Master who has realized God, who has realized his total self, you will not have the problems. Love of the Master demolishes all of the walls.

There is no other way in which we can solve this problem except to get the love of the Master.

And how do we get the love of the Master? If this is what the teachings are all about, then it should be simple. So how can we get it? There is no way of getting it on your own. He can give it, but you cannot get it. If you want to love the Master, you can do nothing about it. It is the Master who will do it. A Persian mystic says, “Love is first born in the heart of the beloved.” Something must happen at that end before you can feel that you have any love for the Master. When that happens, then, of course, many things keep on happening.

They develop in you. It’s not coming from you, but from the other end. The Master can see whether you are craving for 5

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love, whether you are ready for love, and if you are ready for love? If you are ready and prepared for love, you get it. It comes then from him, there is no magic that you have by which you can say, “Alright, I am going to love so-and-so.”

You can’t love a human being, you can’t love an animal nor can you love a house. These are attachments and attachments are no substitute for love. In fact, they are the antithesis of love. They take you in exactly the opposite direction. Because in love, you are forgetting the “I.” In attachments, you are strengthening the “I.” Whatever you are attached to, that strengthens your I-ness with that thing or object.

The attachment is created by the flow of human attention to the things to which we are attached. The flow of attention takes place through our senses, from this body, to the things to which we are attached. It is surprising to know that we always get attached to the body, to something physical. But you will see that all attachments are from the body. We don’t speak of mental attachments, although it’s the mind that is creating the attachment. The mind wants to attach us to the body. If one is attached to one’s son, as “my son,” then that is the son of the body. The “my” that is not the body doesn’t fit into the picture at all, but yet we continue to operate through the body because all relationships are created by the physical body. So these 6

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attachments are taking the attention out from the body to other things which are part of the experience. They are the exact antithesis of the teachings of the Masters. The teachings tell us to go within and discover your own self and, through the self, discover the total self of God.

The whole process of meditation, sadhana, the process of discovering the self is based upon techniques of withdrawing attention from things. Every meditation is based on the same principle. That principle requires that you withdraw your attention from things outside of yourself to within yourself.

That means withdraw back to yourself by breaking away from the attachments that have taken you outside. How can you break these attachments? Can you break the attachment by simply saying no to them? Nobody has succeeded!

Meditation is the method. I don’t know of anybody who has practiced detachment in order to break attachments. In fact, the harder one is practicing detachments, the more attachments have grown. If I am attached to pizzas with mushrooms, and I say I am going to detach myself from the pizzas, I would go to the Himalayas in India. I am going to run so far away from the pizzas and the Pizza Hut. I wish to run as far away as possible from them. But do you know that I will think of pizzas far more in the Himalayas than I will in the 7

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Pizza Hut? The further I remove myself in trying to practice detachment, the more my mind gets attached to the object of the attachment. You can’t run away from attachments, and practicing detachment is no way of destroying attachments.

On the other hand, you can have detachment by

practicing attachment. If you are attached to ‘A’ and then become strongly attached to ‘B’, that ‘A’ is forgotten and you are detached from ‘A’. This is the only way to obtain detachment. A lot of us, after reading holy books, have tried to practice detachment. It doesn’t work that way. Now, if one attachment can detach us from others, what’s the good of doing that? We can’t get rid of the attachments.

There is an advantage. If we can now attach ourselves with someone who is attached to God, then we are detached from the rest. Now, we are not talking of love because we do not have the power of love. In attaching ourselves to this someone who is attached to God, we will eventually get so attached ourselves. So if one really wants to have detachment and thus practice successfully the art of meditation for withdrawing attention from the outside unto oneself, one must attach oneself at the same time to someone who is attached to God. You might ask, “But aren’t all attachments bad, whether attached to someone attached to God or not?”

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Many years ago at the Chicago World Congress of

Religions, I listened to a swami as he raised the same issue about attaching people to himself. He said, “I have been telling you that everything you see is maya, illusion, unreal and not worth your attention or your attachments. Do not give your attention to what you see about the world. This is a world of experience, a world of illusion. I want you to get back to your real self within. Get back to the experiencer, the reality, and not the world outside which is illusion.” And then he further said, “If everything around you that you see is unreal, I must also be unreal. My discourse is unreal, all illusion. Why then would I tell you to ignore the unreal, ignore all that you see and hear, and yet have asked that you listen to me? If I, too, am illusion as the rest of the world, why then would I ask that you listen?”

The swami went on to answer his own questions. “This is true. I am also an illusion and unreal as the rest of the world you see. There is no difference in the unreality of the world, but this one. The rest of the world draws your attention to itself, outside, attaches your attention and makes it seem so real. This is an illusion. But this illusion of myself does not attach you to itself, but will make you get back to yourself and find out the reality within and attach yourself there.” That is 9

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why, even if we attach ourselves to a person physically present in this world, where we are putting our attention, and he is attached to God, he will perform the role of pushing you back into yourself for attachment. Such a person we call a Master, a perfect Master.

If there is anything worthwhile in this world, any person worth loving and worth attaching ourselves to, it is the Master.

He will enable us to obtain detachment as he then becomes a rallying point for us. If we do everything that we know in attachment, then we think of him, serve him and do what we can for him. He then will send toward us the spark of the experience of love. And when love comes, detachment comes also, but not before that time. This is the simplest way of describing how love for the Master works to create detachment and makes you get back to yourself to find the reality within and attach yourself there. The meditation becomes successful and we are able to realize ourselves and God.

The process of attachment, meditation, and love for the Master is more easily said than done. When we want to practice it, we find so many question marks. We are very unsure. So how are we to be so sure of anything? At a seminar and meeting in Minneapolis, I was once speaking to a group when a man ran into the room by mistake. He said, “Oh. I am 10

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sorry. This is not the place I was to be in.” He did not leave and, of course, after that he was there throughout all the rest of the sessions. He suddenly found the place where he was supposed to be. When he walked in by mistake, he discovered a strange feeling, the questions were different and he was unprepared, without any background. He had just walked in by accident without knowing what was going on. Some of the questions he later asked were like this, “Ishwar, in whatever you are saying, you seem to be very sure. Why am I so very unsure of myself? Why so unsure of all of my questions?”

This uncertainty, unsureness, comes by overuse of the mind. The more you think, the more you intellectualize and try to fit things into a pattern created by your own conditioning of the mind. And the more unsure you become. We are trying to fit into a pattern phenomena and experiences that did not fit the space and time framework at all. You cannot fit everything into the intellectual pattern if it does not belong to the time and space pattern. The thinking machine that we are using gives us so much pride. The more we can think the more intellectual we are and the more proud we become. This thinking machine that we are carrying in our head, what is it doing? What function does it perform? Let us analyze what the mind is really doing.

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Firstly, it is performing the interpretive function of sensing. The mind takes all the perceptions of the senses and gives them meaning. If the mind did not do this, the mere perception of any sensation wouldn’t give us any meaning at all. We would see only globs of color and all different forms and things which would make no sense. It is the mind that makes these globs and forms into people. Without the mind, the senses would make no meaning at all. All of the touches, smells, tastes, and other sense perceptions are interpreted by this lower part of the mind.

The middle part of the mind is doing what we call reasoning, thinking, or logic. It is putting two and two together, inducting, inferencing, deducting, and getting conclusions. This is a continuous process and we are using words to do it. As human beings, we use a language of words and these words are continually being pumped through the middle part of the mind. The words form our thought patterns and the thought process goes on. We keep on thinking day and night, whether asleep or awake. This middle part of the mind never stops, from birth to death.

The top part of the mind we call the creative mind because all creativity, all new things come from this function of the mind. But the upper part of the mind, the creative mind, 12

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is nothing more than a pattern maker. Whatever elements of sense perceptions it picks up, it put into new ideas, patterns, and presents them and then says, “Ah, creative, something new I’ve produced.” Of course, the pattern is new, but the elements of perception are still the same which have just been turned about in the two lower parts of the mind.

These are the only three functions of the mind. There is no other function of our human brain. Brain cannot do anything more. The intellect cannot do anything more than this thinking. The point I would like to make is that all of these three functions require time, space, and causation. You cannot have sensing, reasoning, and creating except in that frame of time, space, and causation. That is why the entire intellectual apparatus, the entire mental faculty of the human being, operates with these restrictions. This places experience into a time-space frame with a beginning, middle, and ending, and experience then has cause and effect relationships built into it.

Now, what about the rest of us other than the body and the mind? What of our consciousness, the self? What about the self which is using the mind? And what of the soul of man, what is the soul doing? The soul does what it is supposed to and it does not fit into time, space, and causation. The function of the soul is love, and the experience of love defies time, 13

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space, and causation. Suddenly, love is there in no time. You cannot say from where it came, and there is no cause and effect relationship at all. Now, when love comes, of course, the mind starts thinking, “Now, what is it that has happened? Is it true? Can it be?” This is the mind, thought and this requires time, functions in space, and obeys the cause and effect relationship; and it destroys the feeling of love. We remove it by thinking about it.

The second function of the soul is that of intuition.

Intuition, too, requires no time. Suddenly from nowhere, in a flash with no time at all, an intuitive knowledge is there. It wasn’t there, then suddenly it is. Intuition defies the laws of time, space, and causation. It will not fit into the Intellectual apparatus. But the intellect can think about it after the intuitive knowledge has come; can figure out, “Now, this doesn’t look very rational. This can’t be. It just doesn’t fit, it cannot be.”

And with a thought we reject it and destroy the intuitive experience.

The third function of the soul is that of beauty and joy, the aesthetic sense which comes to you suddenly, and from nowhere. When you then think about it, it is destroyed. I am trying to present to you the functions of our own self, the soul.

These functions of the soul do not occur in time, space, 14

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causation and the manner in which we are used to in our present awareness. We don’t allow the soul function to take place because we overuse the mind, the intellect, which can only operate in time, space, and causation and, thereby, we destroy the very beautiful experience of our own self. It is a beautiful faculty that has been given us the mind, and what a use we make of it. We could put it to such good use, but we are using it for self-destruction. We are using our minds for thinking and for the destruction of the most beautiful part of the self. When the most beautiful part of the self is destroyed, so, too, are the most beautiful experiences around us.

That is why people make hell out of a paradise. This very earth, this very experience of life, we make into a hell by using our minds. And this earth, this life, can become heaven, paradise, if we stop overusing the mind and start living with the soul. If we live in love, intuition, joy and beauty, this world looks like a paradise which, indeed, it is. It is when we think, and think and over-reason, that we destroy all of this. Why should this happen? I believe that it is because of our whole system, the system in the western world that sharpens the faculty of the mind. We are producing the kind of people with emphasis on the increased intellect at the cost of the other human faculties. When I go to the universities, the schools, I 15

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find that they are all teaching the kids how to sharpen their intellect, but nobodies teaching how to sharpen the intuitive process. Nobody’s teaching how to rely on the intuitive hunch that comes from within the soul. Nobody’s teaching them what the soul is. Instead, they are taught, “Don’t go after these superstitions. Don’t go after any assumptions. Pursue only what the mind can see.” The mind can fool itself to that extent.

I am amazed to see that the most irrational things are said by the mind in the name of rationality.

For instance, look at this concept of time itself. Let’s demolish the game that the mind has been playing with us.

Maybe the time has come for us to say to the mind that we have had enough. We want to become more with our true selves and less with the mind. Let’s have a conversation with the mind. Let’s ask, “Mind, you are supposing that there must have been a beginning. You rely so heavily on the concept of time there must have been a once-upon-a-time beginning.

Supposing that you, mind, have created the concept of time.

Where is time?” And the mind is clever and would likely say,

“I cannot think that there would be such a situation without a beginning.” Put straight questions to your mind, “As the mind, you operate in time, do you not? In which time do you operate? The only time available to you is “now” and the 16

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“now” has no time to it, no duration. What time are you talking about?”

The mind cannot talk of now, it can talk of what

happened yesterday or five minutes ago, but that’s all in the past. How can the mind do anything in the past? And what is now? Even when you say “now”, it is already past. “Before you said it, it was the future. So how and when are you saying it, mind? When did you say the word, “now”? Before you could say it, it was the future and as you said it, it slipped into the past. And why do you call it “now”, mind?”

It is because the mind is not rational that it mistakenly calls the immediate past, the present. What has happened in the last few moments, the last few minutes and hours, the mind refers to as present. Present has no time at all. The mind sees time as a valid thing. All that we know about time is that it creates a past, present, and a future, and that’s all. I have yet to meet someone in this world who can give a better definition of time as experienced by the mind. There are other definitions of time, of course. But as we are experiencing it, suppose we take time out of our experience, what we ourselves create as past, present, and future. There is no concept of time then left.

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A nanosecond is one billionth of a second. The present has no time, not even a nanosecond. So let’s disregard it, take it out. The future is nothing more than our fears, hope, and anticipation. Fear is a negative outlook, hope the positive, and anticipation is neutral. The point is, the future hopes, fears and anticipation are being done in the present, now. So, therefore, the future, too, is past. Because we hope for things, because we are afraid of things, did you know that the future is built up like this? But what if we lose the ability to anticipate these things, lose the ability to fear and to hope for the future. If we don’t know these things, then there is no future. The concept of future disappears.

Hoping, fearing, and anticipating take time. That means they are in the past. You cannot have the smallest hope but what it slips into the past. A few seconds of fearing goes into the past. All of these things are in the past. What we have, for all of these years, been calling the future, was the past. What we have called the present, was in fact, the past. Past is in the past. So now you can ask the mind “Is this what you call time?”

We think we are being clever people, very intellectual, and we have found out just about everything. All the answers we are asking and all that we are doing is remembering. We 18

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have been talking about the past, Mr. Mind. So where is time, and where is the past? In human awareness the only way to experience the past is through the use of memory. One small part of the brain we use for memory. Do you know that all the time, whether sleeping or awake, day or night, we are using only that part of the mind? It is only the use of the memory cells that we confine ourselves to, and yet we think we are living in todays and tomorrows. This is the knowledge we have? How irrational. How illogical. And yet the mind is not willing to swallow this. No, no, the mind says. There must be tomorrow, there must be today.

In the very basic premise, even in the very constriction that is placed upon the mind, to function in time, is not logical.

And yet our intellect proposes logic to solve all problems. This is why the mind and intellect have a built-in inability to comprehend experiences which transcend time. It can’t even understand its own function. The best contribution the mind can make is this; the mind can acknowledge that it is tired of this and cannot do it. The mind can realize the limitation, and give up. Only then can you find out for yourself. If your intellect has done this for you, it has done the best service it can do for you. And if it is still trying to find all the answers to 19

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it questions, well, it has a long way to go before the journey towards the experience of love can start.

Overthinking, over-reasoning, we have trained our minds like this. To accept blindly, unconditionally without even stopping to see what we are doing, destroying ourselves. It’s time we call a halt and say, “Let’s see what I am like.” The moment you can stop the mind from interfering, you find yourself. It doesn’t take too long. What takes too long is to persuade yourself to stop the mind from interfering. Because the mind will always take us out and not let us come back to our true selves. The only thing that subdues the mind is love.

You can intellectualize and you can have high philosophy, but when you experience love it’s all thrown away. Love is the only thing that can destroy the mind’s interference, destroy the ego.

So now we come back to the same question, “What can we do with the mind?” If you can attach yourself to the Master and get his love, you have found the answer. If you try by your own effort, by your own ego, it doesn’t work. All effort is ego.

If you make an effort and say, “I am going to do it,” this is ego. Should we then give up meditation? Well, if we give up meditation, we have no chance of attachment and if we have no attachment to the Master, there is no chance of love. So 20

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how do we overcome this apparent contradiction? If we make an effort, it bolsters the ego and the ego keeps us away from the Lord. So how do we overcome this problem in meditation?

It is an ultimate question.

If you take up meditation as an effort, it will involve ego.

And, therefore, this meditation will not be successful. Those who try very hard at meditation quite likely say that they can get nothing from meditation. Those who try very hard are the furthest removed. On the other hand, if they don’t try, of course, they don’t get anywhere either. What is the correct approach to meditation? In other words, what is the ego-less method, the effortless method?

The answer to this has been given by the Masters who say that meditation with effort is a credit transaction for which you’ll get paid much later. But sewa, or service, is a cash transaction for which you will get paid now. And it is in sewa, service, in which the answer is given. If you can do sewa, then you can reach a point where you don’t have to wait for the results of meditation. By service, they say you should serve the Master. Serve the Master in any way that you can. Serve the Master with your body, with your wealth, and with your mind.

If you are willing to serve with your wealth, body and mind, he is willing to give you the love right now. We get this instant 21

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knowledge, love, if we are willing to give this service as an offering.

Now, what is the effect of this offering of our service?

The effect is to do away with evil which is being built up by effort, the ego. To do service with your wealth is the easiest way of service. It is the simplest form of service such as simply writing out a check and sending it. The simplest form of service also has the least effect, least useful.

The next higher form of service to the Master is with the body, the physical body. When you can do service with the physical body, it will have some effect on lowering the ego.

You can carry the Master’s bags or do some other sort of work for him, such as cooking him a meal. When the Master is not around, it is more difficult to be of service to him, but you can then do service for his disciples. The advanced souls who are not Masters, but of his followers, may then be helped. You can look after them. If you cannot find such souls, then you can find other souls already on the same path. If you can’t even find these persons, then provide service to those souls un-advanced, because Master is then everyone. This service with your physical body gives you the advantage of lowering your ego.

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The third form of service to the Master, the highest form of service, is the service with the mind. Now, what is service with the mind as an offering? All the teachings and readings have recommended this service with the mind. This service with the mind is the withdrawal of your attention from the world into your body, and from the body, from your limbs on upwards to the third eye center behind the eyes. If you withdraw your attention and place it there at the eye center where the astral form of the Master exists, that is service with the mind.

But isn’t that meditation also? It seems to be the same thing we have heard of as meditation. Then what is the difference between service with the mind and meditation? The difference is ego, or the lack of it. In meditation we are saying that we are going to do it, I am going to do two and one half-hours of meditation. In this the ego is there. In service there is no such condition, it’s an offering. And this is when it becomes successful. The secret of ego-less, effortless meditation is to do it as a service with the mind and not as meditation. Don’t do meditation just to open the eyes and open the doors to see what is happening. The harder you apply to open the door inside, the tighter it gets locked inside. But when you relax and offer your process of withdrawal as an 23

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offering to the Master, It opens effortlessly. So you have to relax, don’t have any strain at the third eye center. And that is how the meditation can become effortless.

I would summarize by saying that in the teachings of the Masters, the main thing is that we be prepared, that we be ready to receive his love. We must first of all be prepared to be found. We can’t find the Master. If we are ready, he finds us.

When we are found, we can then attach ourselves to the Master by service. Service with our wealth, our body, and service with our mind, and thus get on to effortless meditation.

It is then that he shows us the light within and we find the totality of our own selves.

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…that you shall love one another.

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Ishwar Puri is an international

traveler and lecturer on a wide

variety of subjects. Each of his

eloquent presentations is made

without reference to notes and

includes art, religion, human

relations, science, philosophy, human awareness, consciousness, and many other subjects. The lectures are motivating, enlightening, and reflects the highest flight of philosophy and human understanding.

As founder and principle speaker for the Institute for the Study of Human Awareness, Ishwar Puri continues to donate to others his time and activities through this non-profit organization.

Published by: ISHA

ISBN: 978-0-937067-03-1