Love......................................

Devotion is nothing but a tremendous creativity and the whole world is by and by transfigured, transplanted into a new dimension. Everything becomes luminous with personality. Nothing is a thing... everything has a soul. You impart the soul, or it has always been there but you were blind. Love opens your eyes and you discover -- yes, that is more correct: you discover the soul. So let it be a continuous adventure. Look at things, look at people, at the sky, but let love be flowing. Your love will create the world around you, a new world, a new being That new being is what in the old ages people used to call God. God is not somebody sitting somewhere. Unless you impart godhood to existence, God is nowhere to be found. Unless you create Him, He is nowhere. God exists in the love of the devotee. You get me? In the love of the devotee, God exists. Devotion is that creativity, that poetic way of looking at the world. Romance in the eyes is what devotion is. Poetry in the heart, that's what devotion is. So let that by and by be imbibed by you.

Logic is a very destructive force. It is a question of love. So from this very moment start moving in a very very loving way. Even if somebody comes and kills you, it is God who has become the murderer. Good if He chooses that way, but don't take the godhood from the person. He may be a murderer but he remains a God. Somebody insults you, he is very antagonistic and full of hatred for you; that makes no difference... God is playing that way. It is said about Mansoor, the great sufi mystic, that when he was killed, he laughed. He was murdered, butchered, in a crueler way than Jesus. His limbs were cut one by one: first his feet, then his hands, then his eyes, then his tongue. He was killed pan by pan and it was a tremendous agony, but when he was being killed, he laughed. He looked at the sky and laughed tremendously. an uproarious laugh. People were shocked.. .they could not believe it -- 'Has he gone mad? This is no situation in which to laugh!' And when somebody asked from the crowd, 'Why are you laughing, Mansoor?' he said, 'I am laughing because He cannot deceive me. In whatsoever form He comes, I will recognise Him. So I am laughing at Him!' He was laughing to God saying,'You cannot deceive me. In whatsoever form you come, I will love you ! You cannot trick me. I have known you and I have known you once and for all.' So become a devotee. This is your name -- forget the old name. Now this is going to be your birthdate from now onwards. Remember this day as your birth. The old man is gone. Say goodbye to him, because he has brought you here.

Prem means love and Dhruva is the sanskrit word for the polar star. This is the star which is the most permanent, unmoving star. Everything goes on moving but this is the only star which doesn't move. 'Love is the polar star' -- that is the meaning of the name. Everything moves, only love never moves. Everything changes, only love remains permanent. In this changing world only love is the unchanging substance. Everything else is a flux, momentary. Only love is eternal. So these two things you have to remember. One is love, because that is the only thing that is non-illusory. That is the only reality; everything else is a dream. So if one can become loving, one becomes real. If one attains to total love, one has become himself, the truth, because love is the only truth. And the second thing, Dhruva. When you are walking, remember that something in you never walks. That's your soul, your polar star. You eat, but something in you never eats. You become angry, but something in you never becomes angry. You do a thousand and one things, but something in you remains absolutely beyond doing. That is your polar star. So walking, remember that which never walks. Moving, remember the immobile. Talking, remember silence. Doing things, remember being. Always remember that which is absolutely permanent, which never flickers, never wavers, which knows no change. That unchanging one within you is the real. And love is the way to find it. That's why I call love the most real thing. So love is going to be the path. And that polar star within you -- call it God, kingdom of the within, atma, soul, or whatsoever -- but that polar star, that permanent substance in you, your very essence, that is the goal.

Love is the way. The more loving you become, the closer you come to your polar star. The more unloving you are, the father you are from your polar star. So love really is nothing but closeness to one's being. That's why everybody is hankering for love so much because when love is there, you are. When love is not there, you are not. When love is not there, then you are just a dream. When love is there, then you are really tremendously real. Only in a few moments of love, one touches the substratum of life, the ground, the very ground. Love gives you a grounding... one feels rooted. So love, and when somebody else loves you, allow it; never create any barriers. People do two wrong things. First, they make themselves so hard that they cannot love. And then when somebody comes and knocks at their door, they refuse, because by refusing love the ego feels very very good. The ego always feels good whenever love is refused because it feels powerful. Whenever love is accepted, the ego feels powerless. If you love, the ego disappears. If you don't love, the ego becomes more and more concrete. So people don't love, and even if somebody wants to share his being with them, or her being with them, they refuse. They go on becoming more and more hard and father away from reality. So remember two things: love is the way and the unmoving within you is the goal.

That is the real self, the supreme self. The quality of that supreme self is witnessing. It only witnesses, it is not a doer. You walk; it witnesses walking. You eat; it witnesses eating. You become angry; it witnesses anger. It simply witnesses. It is just consciousness, that's all... pure consciousness. So love and go on falling into that consciousness. And nothing else is needed. In these two words the whole religion can be summarised.... it is the part that loves. So if you love, you fall into that part. It starts functioning, it becomes alive. If you don't love, it becomes dead, far away, distant. One can live an unloving life when one is not in touch with one's own being. When you live a loving life, you live in touch with your being. Your contents are constantly in contact with your being. So love is the way to reach to one's own self. The closer you reach, the more you become capable of love. The more you love, the more you become capable of reaching into your own self. So they are one in a way. But about the ultimate being, nothing can be done. But about love, something can be done. You can be loving. You can be open. You can be in a let-go.

The more you love, the younger you will remain. When you don't love you start becoming old, because when you don't love you lose contact with yourself. Love is nothing but coming in contact with yourself via the other... somebody who accepts you, mirrors you as you are. So good, nothing to be worried about. But problems will arise out of it because you don't know how to cope with your childhood. ... that's what others have taught you, because children are not accepted. Everybody teaches them to become older. Everybody says to them, 'Be mature, don't be childish.' And it is natural in a way because old people manage young people, so old people like them to be just like themselves. They completely forget that they are children. They should not be forced to be old. Old they will become by themselves one day, but there is no need to force. That forcing creates an unripe maturity, a very confusing state. The fruit starts looking as if it is ripe but deep inside at the very core, it remains unripe. So you will have to learn to accept it. The child is beautiful -- accept it and enjoy it. Don't feel guilty about it. Reclaim your childhood. That's you. That's your real face. And there is no way to be somebody else. You can go on trying but everything will prove a failure. One remains oneself. That's why you have become false and you feel that you have been false for your whole life. Now if you fight with your childhood, again you will be false.

So drop that effort. You are playing old tapes. Your parents, society, teachers, have conditioned your mind. Drop that conditioning! Love can be the right situation to drop all conditioning. Love is an unconditioning. It simply takes away the old patterns and does not give you a new pattern. If it gives you a new pattern, again it is no more love. Then again the politics has started. That's what your mother has done to you, your father has done to you. Your mother says, 'If you don't do what I am saying, I will not love you.' You know how to manipulate your mother's love. You have to be somebody other than who you are and then she is loving. If you are simply yourself, she is angry, annoyed. The child by and by learns it... a simple diplomacy that one is not accepted as one is so one has to be very political. And the child is absolutely helpless. He cannot escape, he cannot fight back. If he has to survive, he has to be political. Hence everybody has become a politician. Drop that politics and just be -- whatsoever it is. Don't judge it because that judgement will not be yours; it will be your mother's, your father's, your society's. It will be their voice inside you telling you that you are doing wrong. If you listen rightly, you can immediately catch who it is speaking. When you are feeling childish, being childish, some voice inside immediately says, 'What are you doing? That is not good:' If you are alert, perceptive, you can see who is saying this. You can find out if it is your mother's voice or your father's voice or maybe both together. It is a tape. This is what people call conscience. It is not conscience. It is a trick. Conscience arises only out of consciousness. In French, I think, they have only one word for conscience and consciousness. That's right, that's absolutely as it should be. Consciousness is conscience, but ordinarily you have conscience and consciousness separate. Consciousness is what is happening to you as you are relaxing and becoming a child; that is conscious. And then conscience comes in, the parental voice. It says, 'What are you doing? This is wrong,' and immediately you become tense, and then there is confusion because now there are two alternatives, so what to do and what not to do? ... Again you are thinking of the other and how to manipulate the other and do what she needs. Don't be bothered. Do that which you need. Be absolutely selfish and you will never hurt anybody, because when you are absolutely selfish you never do anything wrong to anybody.