It is not enough to love people; you must ask yourself how you love them. Strive to introduce purity and light into your love, for it is this condition alone that enables those you love to grow and attain fulfillment. True love must bring people all blessings: joy, peace, beauty, health and especially a sense of the meaning of life. If you see that the person you love is weakening and losing their joy of life, you must question your love and say: ‘But what have I done to this creature? I was meant to cultivate it like a flower in a garden, but instead I have allowed it to wilt, I have damaged it!’ You have little to be proud of and must seek to rectify your errors. Your love must help a being to grow, and only when you see that this being is blossoming because of your love can you be happy, proud and grateful to heaven.

True love is not a feeling but a state of consciousness. This is worth meditating on if you want to further your evolution. So long as you do not know love as a state of consciousness you will remain in darkness and you will not understand much about life. Of all the qualities that will bring you closer to this understanding of love, purity is the most important. And when I say purity, I mean thoughts and feelings that involve no selfish interest whatsoever. The words life, love and purity are linked. Why? Because life is based on love and the purer this love is, the richer, brighter and more beautiful life is. The meaning of life is to love and be loved. When you love others with a disinterested love, in other words love that involves no self-interest, you are like a spring to them, a spring that brings life. And those who love you will also bring you a plentiful life.

What is love? A cosmic energy which exists in every corner of the universe. This is why love can be found in the earth, in water, in the air, the sun and the stars. It can be found in stones, in plants, in animals and, of course, in human beings. But – contrary to what too many people believe – not only in human beings. Why should you feel deprived of love simply because you hold no man or woman in your embrace? It is not in the body, the flesh and blood that you can find love, for that is not where it dwells. Love can use the physical body as a vehicle, but it itself is elsewhere; it is everywhere. It is a light, a nectar, an ambrosia that fills the whole of space.

When you are looking for love you don’t really know what you’re looking for. You think you are looking for the love of a man or woman, but basically it is the love of God you are looking for. That is your fundamental need: the love of God, immensity, the infinite, all the beauty of nature and of living beings. And before you find this you will visit many ‘shops’, looking for love and fulfillment!

But no shop can give you fulfillment. That is something only the Lord can give. So that is where you have to go to look for it. Look what happens with all those who continue to search through the shops (by “shops” of course you will understand that I mean a lovely lady or a handsome man). After a while their stock is depleted, the goods are no longer fresh, so the buyer turns to another, smarter shop with better publicity, more attractive window-dressing, brighter lights and colors And there again, after a while, the merchandise loses its freshness and becomes spoiled… Yes, because it is not divine. Only that which is inexhaustible and eternal is divine. This is why you must turn your steps toward divine love.