Over the centuries, the world has captured the depth of the powerful emotion called love through some great love stories. Romeo and Juliet, Laila-Majnu, Heer-Ranjha, Sohni-Mahiwal and Mirza-Sahiba are some classic stories that portray the divine power of love and made it immortal. True love, however, evolves and goes beyond romance, kisses and grand gestures. Love has been defined by different civilisations, cultures, religions and philosophers. The ultimate love as per the Greeks is Agápe, which transcends body, mind and heart. Agápe is love for God—it is universal and spiritual. The Sufis too separated worldly love from spiritual love.
They called worldly love ishq majazi and spiritual love ishq haqiqi. Ishq haqiqi, as per the Sufis, is divine love or true love—also the love of God. In ancient India, when spiritual love was spoken about, Narada Bhakti Sutra was surely mentioned. This scripture advocated 11 flavours of love, each a form of bhakti or devotion. Even though there have been many discussions on different aspects of true love, its essence unfortunately has not been captured by the world today.
So, what is true love? True love is told to be love from the soul or spiritual love. It goes far beyond body, mind and heart. It connects two spirits, two souls to become one. This spiritual love creates the unconditional, magical, everlasting, true love that is bliss, not just a kiss. Lovers who are blessed to realise true love become soulmates. How can one understand spiritual love? Is what we experience love or lust or something deeper? These are questions in many minds nowadays. So, let’s understand how we can identify spiritual love through these signs:
● Love is an emotion that seems to be in the heart, but it is an ecstasy of the soul. So, when you feel that love is not just skin-deep but rather emanating from the soul, that is the first sign of spiritual love.
● Spiritual love is for the divine that is within. Those who are in true love go beyond outer appearances. This love is from the soul to the soul.
● Spiritual love is universal love where you can love one and all. It is the love for every creature. It is experiencing the emotion of love for even a little dog wagging its tail and a little bird, singing and chirping.
● The love does not get sour because one’s expectations are not met. Love says, ‘I love you because I need you.’ True love says, ‘I need you because I love you.’
● Spiritual love is unconditional—not transactional. It has no limitations. Our love reaches out to the beloved and the divine spirit in one and all. Thus, spiritual love is blissful.
● Spiritual love reflects in our kindness and compassion. There is no feeling of anger, hate, revenge and jealousy because we realise that we are not the body, mind and ego, we are the divine soul. And all that we see is nothing but the manifestation of SIP, the Supreme Immortal Power we call ‘God’. Then there is no duality. No ‘I’ and ‘You’. All are one. So, love flows to one and all.
● In spiritual love, one forgives the other because, in reality, all are the divine soul. All are SIP. Love comes from the divine and it goes to the divine. Love is divine.
● In spiritual love, there is no heartache and heartbreak. One is ever-joyous and joyful.
● Spiritual love is prema yoga, the yoga of divine love. We love the divine in our beloved and we are ever-united with the divine.
Spiritual love is not just the love of the body, it is the rainbow of seven colours— VIBGYOR—Violet Love (from child to parent), Indigo Love (between friends), Blue Love (the innocent romantic love), Green Love (self-love), Yellow Love (intellectual love), Orange (emotional love) and Red Love (physical).
A combination of these seven colours of love appearing from the White Love, which is from the soul and reaches out to the soul of our beloved and anyone and everyone in this universe, is the ultimate sign of divine spiritual love. It is in every definition, true soulful love. The author is a spiritual leader and founder of the AiR Institute of Realization and AiR Center of Enlightenment