Love with no Object

Know that when
you learn to lose
yourself, you will reach
the beloved. There is
no other secret to be
learned, and more than
this is not known to me.
—Ansari of Herat

Although you may devote yourself to an aspect of the Beloved, like the guru or the deity as a mother, child, or lover, you are in it for the love, not for the attainment, not for the object. It’s one of those wonderful paradoxes you encounter on the path. You can’t attain it; you have to become it. In the process subject and object, lover and Beloved, become one. You lose yourself and gain your Self. To go from the experiencer to the merger with the One requires grace.

To stay in love, or to serve as Hanuman serves Ram, the true devotee maintains a thread of connection to the self and pulls back from fully merging, or goes in and out.

The truth of this path of the heart is that there is no path. There is only the heart and the love that consumes the lover who becomes the Beloved. Love is a state of being, not a trip from here to there.

– Ram Dass

9 thoughts on “Love with no Object”

  1. Thank you Ram Dass for sharing this piece of peace :-). As I started to read it I was overcome with a feeling of pure Love, your energy I’m sure. I wondered how anyone could Live without the state of Grace I just experienced. Until I surrendered to the Love of God I spent 38 years in a desert of meaningless existence. It hurts to know that my brothers and sisters choose to turn away from the Light of The Creator and live in the darkness of the Ego. To know God is to experience Love bestowed on the most precious and valuable child of the Universe each and every day :-). Shalom.

    Reply
  2. Thank you. I think this gives me the feeling. For the moment – not something I am possessing but something I am glimpsing. Maybe I will focus on the Metta meditation – feeling that Love/State of Being In Love, for me, is often blocked by my difficulty feeling it for myself. I like to do the Metta for one of my youngest son, then for me, back and forth – makes it like drag and drop.

    I think too part of what has helped me return to being Love (at least for moments) is accepting that wherever I am in my path is just right. I can be no other place than where I am. And ‘rushing it’ is just getting in my own way. “Trust in the slow process of God” helps me – it is trusting Grace. I also like the reminder that the Bhakti path includes keeping a thread to Me! Without a ‘me’ there is no serving. As my son would say “It’s the awesome-est show ever” – I’m applying this to The World/Life. Love Love Love Love Ram Ram Ram Ram

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  3. As we all know, the Gita is full of symbolization. For me, when Hanuman tells Ram, “When I don’t remember who I am, I serve You. When I remember who I am, I am You.”, means the very same as “Love with no object.” To be “in love together” is very different than being “in love with.” Ram Ram

    Reply
    • like that quote from Gita; makes one look.
      You got me there!
      As a child I always served, and even used my boxing skills to defend the abused by flooring the bullies…lol
      But in later Life, i learnt how to forget and having forgotten I got well an truelly lost.It needed the False-Guru to bring me out of My hardened-shell by stepping into My open Family and bloe it all to smithereens.

      Reply
  4. Love the last paragraph, reminding us that there is just love and only love. I am heartening by the message. We have no where to go, nothing to do. The journey is a metaphor that can be helpful, but eventually we have to know it is a metaphor. Thank you!

    Jodi Aman

    Reply
  5. Thank you once again Baba! Although I am drawn to many aspects of Yoga, Tantra and sadhana, our Guruji owns my heart and that is my most precious connection to the One.

    Reply

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