On Sunday evening, 24 December 1939, a lawyer from a rural area, a simple and plain-spoken man, met Baba and quite frankly told Baba in a quiet voice, “I have heard many people talk about love, but I don’t know what love really is.”
Baba asked, “Are you married?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any children?”
“Yes.”
“Do you love them?”
“Yes, in the ordinary way. But I cannot say that is real love. My object is to have real love, not this worldly affection and attachment. I visited saints, in the hope of experiencing love, but so far have not succeeded in any way.”
Baba praised the man’s longing for true and divine love, and explained:
You must first understand what real love means. Selfish motives, even in what people call love, often deceive them, and they mistake selfish feelings for love.
I will make the point clear with an example. A person talking of love will say, “I love my Beloved. I want my Beloved to be with me,” and so on. In all these expressions of love, the I and “my” are predominant.
Another example: Suppose you find your child running about in tattered clothes and feel unhappy about it. It will pain you, and you will readily feel for him. You will do all in your power to see that he has good clothes and to make the child happy.
On the other hand, if you see someone else’s child in the street in a similar state, would you feel the same and act as readily as you did in the case of your own child?
If not, it shows how your attitude toward your own child is merely a result of your selfish feelings.
Your feelings could be called the outcome of true love only if your attitude toward the unknown child of a stranger in the street were the same as toward your own child, under the same conditions.
Complete absence of selfishness is, therefore, the true characteristic and real test of pure love.
-www.lordmeher.org, p2060
Dec, 1939; Byramangala