Unconditional Love Really Exists
by Ram Dass

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Unconditional love really exists in each of us. It is part of our deep inner being. It is not so much an active emotion as a state of being. It’s not "I love you" for this or that reason, not "I love you if you love me." It's love for no reason, love without an object. It's just sitting in love, a love that incorporates the chair and the room and permeates everything around. The thinking mind is extinguished in love.

If I go into the place in myself that is love and you go into the place in yourself that is love, we are together in love. Then you and I are truly in love, the state of being love. That's the entrance to Oneness. That's the space I entered when I met my guru.

Years ago in India I was sitting in the courtyard of the little temple in the Himalayan foothills. Thirty or forty of us were there around my guru, Maharaj-ji. This old man wrapped in a plaid blanket was sitting on a plank bed, and for a brief uncommon interval everyone had fallen silent. It was a meditative quiet, like an open field on a windless day or a deep clear lake without a ripple. I felt waves of love radiating toward me, washing over me like a gentle surf on a tropical shore, immersing me, rocking me, caressing my soul, infinitely accepting and open.

I was nearly overcome, on the verge of tears, so grateful and so full of joy it was hard to believe it was happening. I opened my eyes and looked around, and I could feel that everyone else around me was experiencing the same thing. I looked over at my guru. He was just sitting there, looking around, not doing anything. It was just his being, shining like the sun equally on everyone. It wasn’t directed at anyone in particular. For him it was nothing special, just his own nature.

This love is like sunshine, a natural force, a completion of what is, a bliss that permeates every particle of existence. In Sanskrit it's called sat-cit-ananda, “truth-consciousness-bliss,” the bliss of consciousness of existence. That vibrational field of ananda love permeates everything; everything in that vibration is in love. It's a different state of being beyond the mind. 

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Unconditional Love Really Exists What does unconditional love mean to you? Can you share a personal story of a time you experienced bliss arising from your consciousness of existence? What helps you enter the state of "being love"?

NAREN KINI wrote: Lovely passage. There has been a revelation in me that only when we transcent inquiry will we enter the realms of feeling and experience. Unconditional love is akin to space. We unfortunatley have bee...

Jagdish P Dave wrote: There are many faces of love. The most common is conditional love. It has "if" and "then". What Ram Dass is talking about is unconditional love. To put it in Ram Dass's words,&...

rahul wrote: The paradox is that we're all seeking unconditional love through conditional experiences. The real question is 'what does it take to get beyond conditions?' We've got so many practices...

David Doane wrote: Love means abiding in togetherness,oneness, unity. Unconditional means no condition, no ulterior motive, no agenda, no goal. Unconditional love means oneness without condition or motive. Ram Dasssaysl...

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