From the book "Morning Talks", written by Sant Kirpal Singh

1968-01-28, Delhi, Sawan Ashram
Talk available as mp3 at audio.sant-kirpal-singh.org

God is love, our soul is also love in its nature. That love is innate in our soul, and it is natural that love wants somebody to love, and to be loved by somebody. Every man wants to love somebody and that somebody should be there to love him. This is but natural. Now, the question at hand is, whom should we love? Our soul is a conscious entity. Love is innate in its nature and it requires somebody whom it can love. A conscious entity should love an all conscious God. Our love has been just something that is not conscious, or less conscious. The material world is engaged in outward attachments, so the result is, we go where we are attached. The man-body is the highest rung in Creation and the highest thing that we can achieve in this man-body is to go back to the Home of our Father. The true Home of our conscious Self is the true Home of our Father, and is all consciousness. So we should love God, who is immune from coming and going. He is ever existent, in all eternity. All of Creation came into being by His wish, it is all His expression. The point is, if we have not seen God, how can we love Him? We should love God, but to love God, we must be able to see Him. We must be able to come into contact with Him, enjoy His society and company. For that purpose, God resides in every heart, but blessed is the heart in which He is manifest. The manifested God-in-man is to be loved, so that the God in Him may by radiation boost up the love which is already in us, and give us something permanent, which is never to decay. This is the God in us, already existent, and is the Controlling Power which keeps us in the body. So to love God, the first step is to love such a human pole in which He is manifested. That human pole is the God-in-man or man-in-God, who speaks as inspired by God, although the words appear to be coming through a human throat. But it is not He who is speaking, it is the God in Him. Guru Nanak once said, "I talk what God speaks through me. I am a mere puppet, merely the mouthpiece of God".

So, whom should we love? We should love God, so that we should have an eternal life, never to return to the world. We may be sent to the world as Teachers, but not as convicts. To have contact with God, we should have the society of suchlike persons in whom God is manifest, and who are competent to open our inner eye to see God. Not God absolute, but God into expression, who is the cause of all Creation, and who is immanent in every form, pervading all, animate and inanimate. So loving Him will uphold us and give us eternal life.

How do we get a contact with God? The only way is through the God that is manifest in the human body. As a matter of reverence, Masters sometimes speak of a comparison. If God and the human body where He is manifest are both standing before us, to whom should we pay reverence? Naturally to the human body in which God is manifest, because if He does not meet us, how then can we have love for God, unless we see Him? The manifested God-in-man gives us an experience of the God in us. So as a matter of reverence we say, "All right, we should bow down to the God-in-man rather than God immanent, because the latter can only be contacted through the love of God which is manifested." That is why the Masters say, "I will bow down to the human body in which He is manifested." The God-man cannot be greater than God, mind that, but we pay respect to the God in Him, because it is only through Him that we are able to have some glimpse of God.

We should first serve God and then the God-in-man. Both are good things, which will lead us on the way back to God and to eternal life. We serve God, because only by coming in contact with Him, may we able to be emancipated from the wheel of transmigration. We serve the God-in-man, because He gives us a contact with the God in us. So both things are inseparable, without the one you cannot do the other. The love of God is the love of God-in-man, and the love of God-in-man is the love of God. Maulana Rumi says, "If you come by such a human body where God is manifest, you are nearer to God, you are sitting by Him. If you want to sit in the presence of God, then sit in the presence of some human body in which He is manifest". For example, there is a power house and one switch is in tune, in contact with the power house. If you sit by that switch, it is like sitting quite close to the power house. This is just an example to explain. Electricity is pervading all through Creation, but that does not do us any good unless it is collected together in some power house, and any switch which is connected with that power house does wonders for us. So both things are necessary. Love of God, because this is the ultimate goal that will take us to His home, give us eternal life, and love of the human body in which He is manifest, because only the God in Him can give us a contact with God.

The outward experience that we can have of the love of God is constant remembrance, sweet remembrance of God. You can never forget Him whom you love. You are always remembering Him in your heart of hearts. You are attracted like anything. How is that love developed? A child is born and the mother has love for that child. Naturally the child will have an affinity with the heart of the mother. The child remembers the mother for everything, and if the child is in trouble, it will go to the lap of the mother. So conscious contact with the mother has also created love in the child. Similarly, it is the God-man who first loves us and that love is just reciprocated. If you love Him, naturally you will go where He goes. If He is not affected by transmigration, and has an Eternal Home, you will go to His Home, never to return. If you remember Him in your heart of hearts, there will be a reaction in Him whom you remember. So God said in the Koran, the holy scriptures of the Mohammedans, "I love those who love me. I remember those who remember me". If we love God, naturally there will be a reaction in the heart. But whom do we really remember or love? Those with whom we have a contact. We can have that contact, as it is already within us. God is the Controlling Power keeping us in the body. The man-body is the Temple of God, in which God resides and we also reside. So constant remembrance, sweet remembrance, is bliss giving, specially in cases where man has a contact with Him. If you have seen Him and enjoyed His love, that love becomes embedded in your heart.

There is a story about Moses, in which he is quoted as saying that he was the best lover of God, and that he requested God to let him know anybody else who loved God as much. So it is said that God sent him to a bird sitting on a tree. Moses went to this bird and said, "Well, are you going on all right?" The bird replied that it was. "Are there any difficulties that you experience?" asked Moses. "There is one difficulty that I have and it gives me much trouble," replied the bird. "And what is that?" asked Moses. The bird replied, "There is a spring of water flowing under this tree and the time that it takes me to fly down from the tree to the water and sip to my fill gives me very much trouble, because I forget the Name of God." Moses was ashamed. He thought, "Even a bird has got more love for God than me". So this is an example to show whether we have love for God. To give you another example, once God ordered Abraham to sacrifice what was most dear to him. Abraham first sacrificed a lamb, then a camel, but God said that it was not enough. So he took his son to be sacrificed in the Name of God and only then did God express satisfaction and stop the sacrifice. God wants, love demands every sacrifice from us. Who is the lover of God? It is He who can sacrifice everything in the Name of God. Can we? Can we say that we have love for God? For trifling things we say that we have no time to remember God. So love demands sacrifice of everything, even of your life, let alone to speak of outer things.

So love is God and God is love. Whom should we love? We should love God. We are conscious entities and we should love God because He is all Consciousness. Next to God, we should love the human body where God is manifested. It is not for the human body that we love Him, but for the God manifest in the human body. That is blessed, because He is manifested there. So for success, two things are very essential. One is love of God, and the other, love of the human body in which He is manifest. We love the latter, because He gives a contact with the God within us, and we love the former because, by coming into contact with Him, we reach our true Home, never to return. If we have love for the God-in-man, we will go where He will go. He comes from the House of our Father. It is God who sends Him to the world. If you love the God-in-man, God will love you. Christ said, "Those who love me are loved by my Father, and when they are loved by my Father, I manifest myself to them". These are the words expressed by almost all Masters who came in the past.

Love is innate in our soul and it has to be attached to somebody. Unfortunately, it has been attached to the material world outside. So the result is, we come again and again to the world. Where our love is, there we have to go. We love the God-in-man, where God is manifest, because He opens our inner eye to see the God-into-Expression Power. For that we have to sacrifice everything. Now we can judge where we stand. The highest aim in the man-body, is as I told you, to know God, to reach God, to go back to our Father's Home. We will go where we are attached. We have been coming again and again to the world, because we are attached to the world. You are fortunate in having the man-body, which is the highest rung in Creation. If we develop love in us for God, through the grace of the God-in-man, then we will go to the Home of our Father. It is for this purpose that we have to develop love for the God-in-man. The teacher of man is a man. He talks from our level, develops love in us, gives a contact within us, opens the inner eye to see the Light of God and to hear the music of all spheres. Remain in any religion you like. The main purpose is to go back to the Home of our Father and, while on earth, we should also have peace of life. We can only have peace of life if we develop love for all, for the God in them. Why? because we are all brothers and sisters in God. We are conscious entities, drops of the Ocean of all Consciousness. So by love, if it is directed to the right source, we get some peace here and in the hereafter. This is what is meant by, "May Thy Kingdom come on earth".

So whom should we love? We should love God. How can we love God? By loving the God-in-man, who gives us a contact with God. The love of God-in-man is the love of God. He is overflowing with the love and intoxication of God. He is not bound to the earth, but is sent here to guide the child humanity, and go back to His Home. If you love Him, where will you go? You will go where He goes. If He is not to return to the world, why should you return, how can you return! So these two things are very essential.

Amongst the Sikhs, there is always a prayer that they offer, which says, "O God, grant us love and the company of those who are the mouthpiece of the God-in-man. Thou art manifest in the God-in-man and He is both God-in-man and God. In such a society my love would always be turned to Thee". It is the very highest prayer, I think, that you can have. "O God, let us be with those people in whom Thou art manifest, who are overflowing with the love of Thee. Suchlike society should God grant us". We should have the society of suchlike people till the end of the world. Any lover wants to die in the lap of his beloved, is it not? He would like to be with Him all through life, even up to the last breath. Why? because love for suchlike people will lead us to the love of God. Love for the God-man, for the God in Him, is really the love of God. Where suchlike people laid their feet, those places became places of pilgrimage. Christ was born in Jerusalem and so were thousands of other people. It is not because so many thousands of others were born there, but because Christ was born there, that Jerusalem became a place of pilgrimage for all Christians in the world. That place was sanctified by the birth of a Master. Mecca is the place that was sanctified by the Prophet Mohammed and is a place of pilgrimage for all Mohammedans in the world. In other places of pilgrimage, you will find that they have become so because some saint, some God-in-man lived there. Why? Because our soul is just identified with the body and outward attachments, and He is competent to withdraw our attention from outside, raise it up, drag it up from the level of the outgoing faculties and to open the inner eye to see the Light of God.

When you become the conscious co-worker of the Divine Plan, who is there to bring you back to the world? You may have been away from God for thousands of years, but once you meet a God-in-man, He gives you a contact with God. If you develop it, then naturally your coming and going is ended and you will go back to your Home. Love of God means implicit obedience to Him. To love the words of the God-in-man is the true love of the God-in-man, not mere outward obeisance. We should pay respect to His words. He expects you to live up to them. The God-in-man already resides in the Word personified within us. So when He resides within you, you should not transcend any limitations. You should abide by anything that He says, and not transcend. If we have such a Master, then we need not fear anybody all the world over. He is the Beloved of God and who is loved by the Master is loved by the Father, the God in Him, and whom God loves, then as Christ said, "I manifest myself to him". God appears in the form of the God-in-man. It is the grace of God which affords that privilege. Once He is manifest in us, He talks to us just as He would outside. He is our unpaid Counsellor in all our affairs, both outer and inner.

So this talk is about whom we should love and why. We should love God, and for the sake of the love of God, we should love the human body in whom God is manifested. He can teach us, He can give us a contact with God. So love God first and the God-in-man next. We should also have love for all others because all souls are a conscious entity, a drop of the Ocean of all Consciousness. All bodies are controlled by God, who is their Controlling Power. So naturally, he who loves God loves all Creation, whether animate or inanimate. This we have to develop in the man-body only, which we fortunately have got. For that purpose, we go to the feet of some Master, some God-in-man. No son of man can do it. It is all the grace of God, and when that grace descends, we are brought into contact with some human body where He is manifest. Blessed are they who have such a society, such a company. This is a sign, a foreshadow, that they are going back to their Home.

All Masters who came in the past gave the same Teaching, and this of course, we are not just to read out or hear, but for the most part, to have in our own life, to live up to that level. The nearer we are to God, the more we derive benefit from the man-body that we have got. The Masters have the right view of these things, which have also been given in books. Some people hear in one ear and it goes out through the other. Other people hear and give out through their mouth, that they know so much. Both of these things do not give you any real benefit, unless that very thing forms a part and parcel of your life. The food that is digested gives you strength. Otherwise, it will result in diseases, such as vanity and other things.