The Rungs of Love:
At first one loves only when one is loved.
Next, one loves spontaneously, but one wants to be loved in return.
Then one loves even if one is not loved, but one still wants one’s love to be accepted.
And finally one loves purely and simply, without any other need or joy than that of loving.
The Mother – Words of the Mother: CWM, Vol. 14, p122
“Awakened to the meaning of my heart
That to feel love and oneness is to live
And this the magic of our golden change,
Is all the truth I know or seek…”
Sri Aurobindo – Savitri: CWSA, Vol. 34, Book Twelve, pp 723-24
.… love opens all doors, penetrates every wall, clears every obstacle. And a little true love does more than the most beautiful speeches.
The Mother – Prayers and Meditations: CWM, Vol. 1, p40
True love can achieve extraordinary things, but it is rare. All kinds of miracles can be done out of love for the person one loves – not for everyone, but for the people or the person one loves. But it has to be a love free from all vital mixture, an absolutely pure and selfless love which demands nothing in return, which expects nothing in return.
The Mother – Words of the Mother: CWM, Vol. 15, p325
Love of Nature is usually the sign of a pure and healthy being uncorrupted by modern civilisation. It is in the silence of a peaceful mind that one can best commune with Nature.
The Mother – Some Answers from the Mother: CWM, Vol. 16, p401
Absence of love and fellow-feeling is not necessary for nearness to the Divine; on the contrary, a sense of closeness and oneness with others is a part of the divine consciousness into which the sadhak enters by nearness to the Divine and the feeling of oneness with the Divine…. In this Yoga the feeling of unity with others, love, universal joy and Ananda are an essential part of the liberation and perfection which are the aim of the sadhana.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga: CWSA, Vol. 31, p285
Love is a supreme force which the Eternal Consciousness sent down from itself into an obscure and darkened world that it might bring back that world and its beings to the Divine….. That is the beginning of the Soul’s aspiration, that brings the awakening of the consciousness and its yearning for union with the Divine….
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM, Vol. 3,p73-74
Love must not cease to live upon the earth;
For Love is the bright link twixt earth and heaven,Love is the far Transcendent’s angel here;
Love is man’s lien on the Absolute.”
Sri Aurobindo – Savitri: CWSA, Vol. 34, p633
The Divine’s love and knowledge must always govern our thoughts and actions.
The Mother – Words of the Mother: CWM, Vol. 14, p116
The true love for the Divine is self-giving, free of demand, full of submission and surrender. It makes no claim, imposes no condition, strikes no bargain, indulges in no violences of jealousy or pride or anger―for these things are not in its composition.
The Mother – Words of the Mother: CWM, Vol. 14, p130
One should keep goodwill and love constantly in his heart and let them pour out upon all with tranquility, and with equanimity.
The Mother – Words of the Mother: CWM, Vol. 14, p186
Keep your love pure of all selfish claim and desire; you will find that you are getting all the love that you can bear and absorb in answer.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga: CWSA, Vol. 29, pp338-39
When the baker wants to make the dough of his bread rise, he puts some leaven into it, and it is from within that the transformation takes place.
When the Divine wanted to rouse Matter, awaken it and make it rise towards God, He threw Himself into Matter under the form of love, and it is from within that the transformation takes place.
So it is by living from within an organisation that one can help it to become enlightened and rise towards the Truth.
The Mother – Words of the Mother: CWM, Vol. 14, p118
… Love is obviously the mightiest, the most integral—integral in that it applies to all cases. It’s even mightier than the power of purification which dissolves bad wills and is, in a way, master over the adverse forces, but which doesn’t have the direct transforming power; because the power of purification Must FIRST dissolve in order to form again later. It destroys one form to make a better one from it, while Love doesn’t need to dissolve in order to transform: it has the direct transforming power. Love is like a flame changing the hard into the malleable, then sublimating even the malleable into a kind of purified vapor. It doesn’t destroy: it transforms.
The Mother – Agenda: Vol. 2, pp 19-20
…. For human nature is so limited, so full of contradictions and so exclusive in its movements that if one wants to reject love in its lower form, that is to say, human love as human beings experience it, if one makes an inner effort to reject it, one usually rejects the entire capacity of feeling love and becomes like a stone. And then sometimes one has to wait for years or centuries before there is a reawakening in oneself of the capacity to receive and manifest love.
Therefore, the best way when love comes, in whatever form it may be, is to try and pierce through its outer appearance and find the divine principle which is behind and which gives it existence. Naturally, it is full of snares and difficulties, but it is more effective. That is to say, instead of ceasing to love because one loves wrongly, one must cease to love wrongly and want to love well.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM, Vol. 8, p301
You feel lonely because you feel the need to be loved. Learn to love without demand, to love just for the joy of loving (the most wonderful joy in the world!) and you will never again feel lonely.
The Mother – Words of the Mother: CWM, Vol. 14, p121
It is not the love that someone feels for you that can make you happy, it is the love you feel for others that makes you happy: for you receive the love that you give from the Divine, who loves eternally and unfailingly.
The Mother – Words of the Mother: CWM, Vol. 14, p122
When the true and sacred love is there (love from the Divine and for the Divine), whatever happens is always utilised as a means for increasing and perfecting the union. This leaves no place for worry, regret and depression, but, on the contrary, fills the consciousness with the certitude of victory.
The Mother – Words of the Mother: CWM, Vol. 14, p131
There is a thirst for Love which no human relation can quench. It is only the Divine’s love that can satisfy that thirst.
***
They always speak of the rights of love but love’s only right is the right of self-giving.
***
Without self-giving there is no love; but self-giving is very rare in human love which is full of selfishness and demands.
The Mother – Words of the Mother: CWM, Vol. 14, p121
There is a love in which the emotion is turned towards the Divine in an increasing receptivity and growing union. What it receives from the Divine it pours out on others, but truly without demanding a return. If you are capable of that, then that is the highest and most satisfying way to love.
The Mother – Words of the Mother: CWM, Vol. 14, p122
.…if you love someone and are separated from that person, you suffer – this is one of the most common of sufferings, it is the ties which are broken – well, in a certain state of consciousness the real link between two beings cannot be broken, for it does not belong to the domain where things break. Therefore one is above what may happen.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM, Vol. 4, pp 44-46
All the relationships are good in principle and each one expresses a mode of the Eternal. But each can be perverted and become bad due to the selfish falsehood of human nature which prevents the vibrations of love from manifesting in their purity.
The Mother – Some Answers from the Mother: CWM, Vol. 16, p278
It [a sense of harmony, delight and love] is in you and when it is like that it spreads out in the atmosphere – but naturally only those can share who are open and sensitive to the influence. Still everyone who has peace or love in him becomes an added influence for its increase in the atmosphere.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga: CWSA, Vol. 31, p320
If there is, somewhere in some part of your being, still the need for human affection and love, it is better to go through the experience of life; it is the best preparation for Yoga.
The Mother – Words of the Mother: CWM, Vol. 14, p120
….friendship or affection is not excluded from the yoga. Friendship with the Divine is a recognised relation in the sadhana. Friendships between the sadhaks exist and are encouraged by the Mother. Only, we seek to found them on a surer basis than that on which the bulk of human friendships are insecurely founded. It is precisely because we hold friendship, brotherhood, love to be sacred things that we want this change —….
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga: CWSA, Vol. 31, pp294-95
For instance, love between human beings, in all its forms, the love of parents for children, of children for parents, of brothers and sisters, of friends and lovers, is all tainted with ignorance, selfishness and all the other defects…. not to want to take, to receive, but to give; not to insist on the other’s response, but be content with one’s own love; not to seek one’s personal interest and joy and the fulfilment of one’s personal desire, but to be satisfied with the giving of one’s love and affection; and not to ask for any response. Simply to be happy to love, nothing more.
If you do that, you have taken a great stride forward and can, through this attitude, gradually advance farther in the feeling itself, and realise one day that love is not something personal, that love is a universal divine feeling which manifests through you more or less finely, but which in its essence is something divine.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM, Vol. 8, pp301-02
425—The next greatest rapture to the love of God, is the love of God in men; there, too, one has the joy of multiplicity.
The Mother – On Thoughts and Aphorisms: CWM, Vol. 10, p333
487—Love of man, love of woman, love of things, love of thy neighbour, love of thy country, love of animals, love of humanity are all the love of God reflected in these living images. So love and grow mighty to enjoy all, to help all and to love for ever.
The Mother – On Thoughts and Aphorisms: CWM, Vol. 10, p346-47
So long as the ego is there, one cannot love.
Love alone can love, Love alone can conquer the ego.
The Mother – Words of the Mother: CWM, Vol. 14, p121
The psychic love is pure and full of self-giving without egoistic demands….
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga: CWSA, Vol.29, p336
Love for the Divine
The vegetal kingdom gathers together its most beautiful possibilities to offer them to the Divine.
Rosa
Rose
All forms and sizes of roses, single and double, usually fragrant, in a great variety of colours; includes both shrubs and climbers.
