Love For God and Others

First and foremost, I humbly offer all my respects to my spiritual teacher, Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa Prabhupad, who thought me what real love is. Without Him, I know nothing. I also offer my respects to all the saintly teachers, especially Lord Jesus Christ who declared that one must love God, the Supreme Father with all our heart, mind and entire being. And like unto it love His other children.

Love for others must come from love for God. It is the natural way. Some people claim that they can love others without even believing in the existence of God, but eventually they should be able to come to the point of asking what or who gives them the joy of loving. Did it come from love, which is a vague and abstract idea or entity? Did we make ourselves happy? Did those whom we had helped made us happy? Can we even make ourselves happy only by sheer will power? If so then why do we have to get out of our way to find happiness in loving others?

The conclusion of saintly teachers is this: when God is pleased with us we experience sublime joy. When we are loving His children, God, the Father of all living entities, is pleased with us and we experience joy.

Love for God must come first, as declared by Lord Jesus Christ, because it is the proper way. As rain can be produced by seeding clouds, the natural process of evaporation and precipitation, as conducted by nature, is far more superior. Thus, we can make believe that we are loving others even without loving God, but such “love” and the concept of “others” is dubious. Without love for God, so-called love for others is driven by different things. It could be out of anything: pity, patriotism, loneliness, hunger for glory and fame, self-righteousness, etc. And this so-called love is directed to many different concepts of “others.” “Others” may refer to a certain type of race, species, name, form, color, denomination, etc. That’s why we have patriots who love others i.e. their countrymen, collected as a nation. We have environmentalists who love others i.e. whales, pandas, gorillas, etc. We have so-called public servants who love others i.e. their constituents or possible voters. We have philanthropists who love others i.e. living entities in human form.

When it is said that God is the Father of all living entities, it means all living entities regardless of physical differences of form, color, species, political boundaries, etc. God, being the Father of all living entities, naturally loves each and every single one of His children in whatever form they are in (whether they are inside a body of a maggot or the president of a country). Love for others therefore is to love every single one of God’s children. To appreciate this, we must be able to see God as our Father, and we must be able to see others as our brothers. But to actually achieve this love for others, we must be able, not only to see, but to actually love God as our Father in order for us to actually love His children as our brothers. This is simple science. This is real love for others without boundaries. This is love beyond the material garb of the living entity which is inside a certain body. At the same time this is also knowing the real identity of the other person, that he is not his body but the person inside the body.

One must be able to taste love for God to know the difference. Love for others in itself can offer a slight, albeit fleeting, taste of happiness or fulfillment to a person, but it can never compare to the happiness and satisfaction in loving others a lover of God feels. In fact, one just needs to love God, and love for others automatically follows. One cannot love God and hate others, one cannot factually love others while hating God. It is like separating wetness from water, it is not possible. When one is tasting love for God, his entire being is flooded with ecstasy. He becomes, just like a prism hit by a single ray of sunlight, an explosion of light. He sees everything in relation to his beloved; he sees His beloved in everything. An ant crawls up his foot, he does not see the little creature as a threat, instead he understands that this little fellow is a brother, a person like him caught in the web of birth and death. He sees everything animate and inanimate as his Lord’s property, thus he does not use them for his own selfish motives, instead he tries to engage them in the loving service of his Lord. This is love for God, this is love for others founded upon love for God.

My teacher said: A person can only be truly happy, truly satisfied when he is tasting love for God (and from that, love for others). The easiest way to come to the transcendental platform of love for the Lord is by regularly hearing and chanting His Holy Names, Gopala, Govinda, Rama, Madana-Mohana, Krishna, Allah, Jehova, etc. Haribol!