This text was written by Paramahamsa Yogananda following revelations he had in a deep state of samadhi.
I have sought love in many lifetimes. I shed the bitter tears of separation and repentance to know what love is. I sacrificed everything, all attachments and illusions, to finally learn that I am in love with love – with God – just that. Then I drank love from all the true hearts. We have seen that He is the Only Cosmic Lover, the One Fragrance that penetrates all the various flowers of love into the garden of life.
Many souls wonder, longingly and helplessly, why love flies from one heart to another; awake souls realize that the heart is not fickle in the love of various beings, but it loves the One God of Love, who is present in all hearts.
God, in His eternal silence, whispers, “I am Love. But to experience the giving and the gift of love I have divided myself into three: love, love, and love. My love is beautiful, pure, eternal joy; I am tasted in many ways through many forms.
As a father I drink the respectful love that springs from the hearts of my children. As a mother I drink the nectar of unconditional love from the cup of the little child’s soul. As a child I am burdened with the protective love of my father’s righteous reason. As a teenager I drink the love without reason from the holy grail of material attractions. As a master I drink the compassionate love of the Master’s cup of appreciation. As a preceptor Guru I enjoy the pure love derived from the chalice of the disciple’s all-embracing devotion. As a friend I drink from the boiling well of spontaneous love. As a divine friend, I drain from a sip the crystalline waters of cosmic love, coming from the reservoir of hearts that worship God.
I am only in love with love itself, but I allow myself to be deceived when as a father or as a mother I think and feel only for the child, when as a lover I only care about the beloved, when as a disciple I live only for the Master. But since I love only Love, ultimately I am breaking this illusion of the myriads of the human Self. For this reason I transfer the father to an astral realm when he forgets that it is My love, and not his, that protects the child. I lift the child from the mother’s breast so that she may learn that It is My love that she adores in him. I kidnap the lover of the lover who imagines that she is the one he loves, rather than my love that responds in her.
Thus My love plays your-hide-and-seek in all human hearts, so that each may learn to discover and adore, not those temporary human receptacles of My love, but My Very Love, dancing from one heart to another.
Human beings ask one another to “Love only me,” and so I cool their lips and seal them forever, so that they will never utter this untruth again. Since they are all My children, I desire that they learn to speak of the ultimate truth: “Love the One (present) Love in all of us.” To tell someone “I love you” is false until you realize the truth: “God present as love in me is in love with His love within you.”
The moon laughs at the millions of well-meaning lovers who unwittingly lie to their sweethearts saying, “I will love you forever.” Their skulls are covered in the wind-swept sand of eternity. They can no longer use their breath to say”I love you.” They can no longer even remember or keep their promise to love one another forever.
Without saying a word, I have always loved you. I alone can truly say “I love you”; for I love you before you were born; My love bestows upon you life and sustains you in every moment of it; and I alone can love you after the gates of the prison of death are closed behind you; where even the most sincerely loved human can not touch you.
I am the love that handles human dolls with the strings of emotions and instincts, to play the spectacle of love on the stage of life. My love is beautiful and endlessly joyful when you love it alone; but the line of your life, peace, and joy is cut off when instead you allow yourself to be engaged in human emotions and attachments. Realize, My children, it is My love that you long for!
Those who love Me only in the form of one person, or who love Me in an imperfect way only in one person, do not know what Love is. Only those who love Me in a wise and equal way in everything and who love Me perfectly and equally as all can truly know Love.”