[h=2]Lust, A Very Limited Form Of Love[/h][h=4]Discourse: Avatar Meher Baba[/h] Those who try to understand God through the intellect alone, arrive at some cold and dry concept which misses the very essence of divine nature. It is true that God is infinite knowledge, existence, power and bliss, but true understanding comes from knowing His essence as infinite love.
In the ‘beyond state’ from which the entire universe springs and into which it ultimately merges, God is eternally infinite love. It is only when God’s love is viewed in the limited context of forms – which arise in the interim period of the appearance of the illusory universe of duality – that its infinity seems to
have been impaired.
When God’s love experiences itself in and through the manifested forms of the universe, it goes through the following phases: (i) experiencing itself as extremely limited, (ii) experiencing itself as becoming less and less limited and becoming more and more like infinite love, and (iii) experiencing itself to be what it really is: infinite in essence and existence.
The experience of limitation in love arises due to ignorance caused by the sanskaras which are by-products of the evolution of consciousness; and the process of love becoming infinite is characterised by the shedding of these limiting sanskaras. After going through the almost unconscious stages of the mineral kingdom, love becomes conscious of itself as lust in animals. Its first appearance in human consciousness is also in the form of lust.
Lust is the most limited form of love in human consciousness for it is undiluted selfishness, because all the objects to which lust clings are desired for the sake of and from the viewpoint of the limited and separate self. At the same time, it is a form of love, because it has in it some kind of appreciation for others, though this appreciation is completely vitiated by thick ignorance about the true Self.
When human consciousness is caught up in the duality of the gross sphere of existence, love cannot express itself as anything other than lust of some type. A man likes curry because it tickles his palate. There are no higher considerations, so it is a form of lust. It is only a craving for the sensations of taste. Mind also has cravings for bodily sensations of sight, smell, sound and touch, and nourishes its crude ego-life through the excitement derived from these sensations.
Lust of every type is an entanglement with gross forms, independent of the spirit behind them. It is an expression of mere attachment to the objects of sense. Since in all forms of lust the
heart remains unfed and unexpressed, it becomes a perpetual vacuum and it is in a state of unending suffering and non-fulfillment.
When the heart is in the clutches of lust, the deluded spirit remains in stupor. Its functioning is severely curtailed and perverted by the limiting ignorance to which it is subject. Its higher potentialities are denied expression and fulfillment, and entails a state of utter bondage.
In the lustful life of the gross sphere, God is experiencing Himself as a lover, but it is a state of a lover who is completely ignorant about the true nature of himself or the beloved.. It is nevertheless the beginning of a long process by which the lover breaks through the enveloping curtain of ignorance and comes into his own Truth as unbounded and unhampered Love.
.......:hungry:......
