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Love: we all need it. And we need to both give and receive it. But in this material world, do we ever get enough love to be satisfied? Or even if we do get to give and receive love, is it ever perfect? And is love in this material world ever eternal?

We all know the answers to these questions: no, no and no. We cannot get the satisfaction we seek from love in this material world, because as spiritual beings, we need a much larger quantity of love and affection than are available here; we want perfect love with a perfect person; and we want our love relationship to be eternal. But we can experience satisfaction in love if we pursue Divine Love, or bhakti-rasa, through the spiritual path of the Esoteric Teaching.

Every day I am amazed by the beauty and overwhelmed by the magnitude of the unconditional love of Kṛṣṇa for His devotees. And the opportunity to love and serve such a perfect person is precious, because it gives priceless emotional satisfaction to the soul. This is the result of long-term practice of the Esoteric Teaching.

During the past few days and weeks, we have been going over the beginning slokas of the second chapter of Bhagavad-gita with a fine-toothed comb. We have discussed one point in particular until I’m sure you’re tired of hearing about it: the eternal individuality of the soul. But we have to master the basics of the Esoteric Teaching before we can understand the advanced topics.

So far, we’ve been concentrating on the theory of the Esoteric Teaching. Well, today we’re going to discuss the application. The application of the Esoteric Teaching’s philosophy of the eternal individuality of the soul is in the experience of divine service and spiritual love.

We cannot love unless we are an individual and a person, nor can we love someone unless they are an individual and a person. By definition, love is an exchange of service and affection between two individual persons. A loving relationship can only exist between conscious, individual persons. It cannot exist between two objects or between a person and an object, because love must involve mutual reciprocation to be satisfying.

When we speak of Divine Love and spiritual service, this means an eternal, spiritual reciprocal loving relationship between two persons. Everything that is spiritual is eternal. So a spiritual love relationship is eternal and perfect. And the perfect object of love is Kṛṣṇa. He has all good qualities in unlimited perfection and unlimited quantity.

Kṛṣṇa’s wonderful spiritual character is that He reciprocates our love perfectly according to the mood or rasa in which we approach Him.

ye yatha mam prapadyante
tams tathaiva bhajamy aham

“All of them—as they surrender unto Me—I reward accordingly.” [Bhagavad-gita 4.11]

There are five principal moods of service and love of Kṛṣṇa: neutrality, servitorship, friendship, parenthood and conjugal love. In neutrality (santa-rasa), we admire Kṛṣṇa from afar, but we are not engaged in direct personal service to Him. In servitorship (dasya-rasa), we are directly engaged in Kṛṣṇa’s personal service; He is the Master and we are the servants. In friendship (sakhya-rasa), our service becomes more intimate, and we are on an equal level with the Lord. In parenthood (vatsalya-rasa), the devotee actually becomes the Lord’s parent or superior and cares for Him as a child. And finally, conjugal love (madhurya-rasa) is the highest form of direct, intimate service to the Lord, where the devotee actually becomes the lover of the Lord, and He reciprocates.

Conjugal love is the most exalted and advanced mood of spiritual service and love of Kṛṣṇa, but all of them are equally glorious because they are completely spiritual and eternal. And each spirit soul already has an eternal relationship with Kṛṣṇa in one of these moods.

The practices of the Esoteric Teaching, especially chanting the Holy Name of the Lord, remove the covering of material consciousness and false ego from the soul, allowing him to revive his original spiritual consciousness. At that time the soul remembers his past relationship with Kṛṣṇa, and it resumes as if nothing had happened.

The Master Teacher will never tell you what your relationship with Kṛṣṇa is; whether you are situated in the rasa of neutrality, servitorship, friendship, parenthood or conjugal love. When you come face-to-face with Kṛṣṇa, you will know. Just like when you are presented with a big plate of delicious food, no one needs to tell you whether you are hungry for it or not; or when a young boy and a young girl come face-to-face, no one needs to tell them that they are attracted to each other.

When you become self-realized, you will spontaneously know what your relationship with Kṛṣṇa is. There is no need for any mechanical system, or any artificial means of revealing it. It will spontaneously manifest as soon as you approach Kṛṣṇa by study, service and purification. This is self-realization, and it is the miracle of the Esoteric Teaching.

“The stage of perfection is called trance, or samadhi, when one's mind is completely restrained from material mental activities by practice of yoga. This is characterized by one's ability to see the self by the pure mind and to relish and rejoice in the self. In that joyous state, one is situated in boundless transcendental happiness and enjoys himself through transcendental senses. Established thus, one never departs from the truth, and upon gaining this he thinks there is no greater gain. Being situated in such a position, one is never shaken, even in the midst of greatest difficulty. This indeed is actual freedom from all miseries arising from material contact.” [Bhagavad-gita 6.20-23]

The state of complete self-realization is explained in summary in Bhagavad-gita, but it is explained much more fully and elaborately in Srimad-Bhagavatam and other advanced texts of the Esoteric Teaching. In Bhagavad-gita, Arjuna is a friend of Kṛṣṇa, but he voluntarily becomes a servant or disciple because he could not solve his problem without Kṛṣṇa’s instruction.

Similarly, to inquire from a Master Teacher and receive spiritual instruction properly, one must adopt a humble and submissive service attitude. One must offer service to the guru or Master Teacher, according to one’s means. In other words, if one is very wealthy, one should donate a significant portion of one’s wealth to the mission of the spiritual master. If one is not so fortunate, one should become a personal servant of the spiritual master and help him in his work.

This service is love. Love is a mutual exchange of service with affection and appreciation. The spiritual master is giving the priceless gift of spiritual knowledge and self-realization, and the disciple must exchange something for the valuable service of the spiritual master, otherwise he is cheating. Taking knowledge and instruction from the spiritual master means accepting the service of the spiritual master. If the disciple does not offer some service in return, this ungrateful attitude will spoil everything.

Love and affection must be mutual to be satisfying. No one likes a cheater, and this is particularly true in the spiritual realm. If one tries to cheat his spiritual master, whatever knowledge he has becomes useless. So it is very important that the disciple should serve the Master Teacher, because this is what activates the knowledge he has received and empowers him to realize it in practice.

The exchange of loving spiritual service between the Master Teacher and disciple is practice for the exchange of love with the Lord. It is a test. The servant of Kṛṣṇa who teaches the disciples is very, very dear to Him.

ya idam paramam guhyam
mad-bhaktesv abhidhasyati
bhaktim mayi param krtva
mam evaisyaty asamsayah

na ca tasman manusyesu
kascin me priya-krttamah
bhavita na ca me tasmad
anyah priyataro bhuvi

“For one who explains the supreme secret to the devotees, devotional service is guaranteed, and at the end he will come back to Me. There is no servant in this world more dear to Me than he, nor will there ever be one more dear.” [Bhagavad-gita 18.68-69]

Kṛṣṇa wants to see how you treat His representative before He is willing to reveal Himself. He is saying, “If you love Me, then love My servant.” Ye yatha mam prapadyante: “I reciprocate with them according to their degree of surrender.” If you take the relationship with the Master Teacher cheaply, then Kṛṣṇa will remain elusive and you will not find the satisfaction you seek. But if you give your heart and soul, mind and body in service to Kṛṣṇa’s representative, then Kṛṣṇa will give Himself to you in the way you most desire.

The music in today’s podcast is from my CD Vipralambha—Love in Separation.