The ordinary love that you know is simply infatuation; just hormonal torture. Your hormones are just pushing you out of your mind, that’s all. You need someone outside to satisfy your psychological image; someone who can give you psychological support. You need a shoulder to support you for two minutes.
You need someone to take care of your needs. You need someone who will boost you up when you are down. You need someone who will sympathize with you and confirm your worries for you. This is what you call love. True love is beyond forms and names, beyond mind and body. Only a person who can love the whole world beyond all these can become a sannyasi, can become a Vivekananda!
A small story from the life of Vivekananda:
One night, Vivekananda woke up at 2am and awakened his disciples.
His disciples were anxious and wanted to know what was happening.
Vivekananda said that he was feeling a lot of pain and that in some part of the world there was a natural calamity that was happening which was causing him the pain.
The next day morning papers announced a terrible earthquake in Cuba that consumed many lives.
He was sensitive to a calamity that happened in some corner of the world, thousand of miles away! Do you think normal humans can be this sensitive? Even if our neighbor is sick, it will not have any effect on us!
A small story:
A man called up his family doctor and said, “Doctor, I think you should visit us and do a check-up on my wife.”
The doctor asked, “Why? Is she unwell?”
The man replied, “I think so doctor. Yesterday, she got up at her usual time, had a bath, cooked food, sent the children to school, cleaned the house because the maid did not turn up, washed our clothes, brought the children back home, attended to their homework and went to bed. Around midnight, she was complaining that she was tired. Maybe she needs to be checked up.”
(Laughter!)
We have become so insensitive today! We are not able to connect to the other person who is living with us 24 hours and 365 days of the year. We need to become a lot more sensitive and alive. When your Being becomes love, this will happen automatically. No one needs to tell you anything; you will simply be able to feel them and help them. It will become the most natural thing for you.
Of course, there are people who crave for attention and so pretend to be sick. Nothing needs to be done to them. The sensitivity that I am talking about is the deep connection that you need to develop with Existence by virtue of which you become sensitive to the collective Consciousness.
What happened in Vivekananda is what you call Empathy. Mind you, it is not sympathy; it is empathy. Sympathy is a very superficial word. We are all capable of sympathy. When someone tells you their suffering, you just confirm their suffering for them; this is sympathy! If someone tells you that their husband is ill, you tell them, “Oh! How awful, you must be very unhappy. Don’t worry, everything will become alright.” In the name of sympathy, we confirm their suffering to them and they in turn tell us that we are so caring and love us for it.
Actually, they love us because they feel good when we tell them that they are suffering a lot; it is a subtle ego boost to them. They feel good that we are acknowledging that they are managing such big worries. This is what society calls sympathy.
What Masters feel is never sympathy; it is empathy. Empathy is when you feel another’s suffering in your own Being; It is when a person does not have to tell you his suffering, but you simply know because the Existential Energy in you feels it.
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This excerpt has been taken from the book: Guaranteed Solutions.
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