I read that God’s love is the only completely fulfilling love, and that all human love pales in comparison. However, shared human experience, human speech, and human touch have such powerful, visceral allures that I become bemused as to how God’s love could really supply all one’s felt needs in these areas. Do these yearnings become wholly transmuted with increased spiritual growth, or does God often somehow almost literally fulfill those needs?
—A., U.S.
Dear A.,
Yes, the Masters say that human love is nothing but a faint taste of the pure love of God, which takes you right to ecstasy. If you feel it, you won’t need anything else anymore. Yogananda explains: “If you could feel even a particle of divine love, so great would be your joy – so overpowering– you couldn’t contain it.” Actually, there exists only His one LOVE in the universe. When we seek it on the human level we are like the man who looks down to the pond to see the reflection of the sun, instead of looking up to the sky.
Once you have that Love of God, He even touches you and speaks to you. Yogananda sings: “…I will meet Thee, I will touch Thee, I will love Thee….”
Now down to earth: as long as we do not experience that all-fulfilling Love of God in inner communion, you are right: our natural human need for love remains unfulfilled. Human closeness from heart to heart is still necessary then. We all need love. That need can be perfectly fulfilled not only with a partner, but on a level of pure friendship. Actually the “visceral allures” of sexual touch is a strong power of illusion, and is a yearning to be transmuted, bit by bit. There is a huge difference between “sensual touch” and the love-touch from heart to heart, just as there is between attachment and love. We need love, not the rest.
From the “visceral” level of love we proceed to pure human love, and from there we advance to love with God alone. Love is a path, a direction, with a goal: LOVE.
May you feel a taste of that divine nectar, jayadev
