A: The love that I speak of is an emotional experience that arises in an expanded consciousness to express the connection that one has with every being.
Love is distinguished in stages according to who one is conscious of being while experiencing it. When we are conscious of being separate individuals, we can have respect, admiration, affection, and passion, according to which element is active in the love. When we are less conscious of being separate, we can have intimacy, self-recognition, affinity, profound respect, joy, elation, deep compassion, etc. When we are conscious of being all, we can have glorification, ecstasy, peace, sublime intimate solitude, and cosmic bliss.
Here are some quotes from Hazrat Inayat Khan where he uses the word "love."
A person learns their first lesson of love by loving a human being; but in reality love is due to God alone.
The most beautiful form of the love of God is compassion, divine forgiveness.
Love from above is forgiveness; from below, devotion.
God is love; when love is awakened in the heart, God is awakened there.
My heart has become an ocean, Beloved, since Thou hast poured Thy love into it.
Love which manifests as tolerance, as forgiveness, that love it is which heals the wounds of the heart.
As water is the cleansing and purifying element in the physical world, so love performs the same service on the higher planes.
No love-offering can be more precious than a word or act of respect, for the highest expression of love is respect.
Is love pleasure, is love merriment? No, love is longing constantly; love is persevering unweariedly; love is hoping patiently; love is willing surrender; love is regarding constantly the pleasure and displeasure of the beloved, for love is resignation to the will of the possessor of one's heart; it is love that teaches one: "Thou, not I."
The best way to love is to serve.
Love creates beauty by her own hands, to worship.
To analyze love is to destroy love.
Love that ends, is the shadow of love; true love is without beginning or end.
Love in its beginning lives only on reciprocity, but when fully developed it stands on its own feet.
Life is too small a price to offer to someone whom you really love.
In whatever form a Sufi may express it, this is the central theme: the constant desire to prove one's love for humanity, to be the friend of all.
Love in its fullness is an inexpressible power which speaks louder than words; there is nothing that one is too weak to do when it gushes forth from his heart.
Love is the best means of making the heart capable of reflecting the soul-power; and love in the sense of pain rather than of pleasure. Every blow opens a door whence the soul-power comes forth.
The worlds are held together by the heat of the sun; each of us are atoms held in position by that eternal Sun we call God. Within us is the same central power we call the light, or the love of God; by it we hold together the human beings within our sphere, or, lacking it, we let them fall.
By Puran Bair, author of "Living from the Heart" (Random House, 1998)
Copyright © 2000 by The Institute for Applied Meditation, Inc.
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