Love is as water of the Ganges; it is in itself a purification.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
When God’s divine love rises as a wave, it washes away the sins of the whole life in a moment, for law has no power to stand before love: the stream of love sweeps it away.
Think of the life of the great Master Jesus Christ who was the soul of religion — one sees that from beginning to end there was nothing but love and forgiveness. The best expression of love is that love which is expressed in forgiveness. Those who came with their wrongs, errors, imperfections, before the love, that was all forgiven; there was always a stream of love which always purified.
( from Religious Gathekas, Series II: Chapter 1 (Paper 41) – Rulership of God [ Unpublished ] )
All the beauty that there is in life is after all what we call love. From it all the virtues spring. The whole beauty of life is in it, and it is as the English song says, ‘The light of a whole life dies, when love is done’. Life’s light is love; and when the heart is empty of love, one is living and yet not living; from a spiritual point of view one is dead. When the heart is asleep, one is as though dead in this life, for one can only love through the heart. But love does not mean give and take. That is only a trade; it’s selfishness. To give sixpence and receive a shilling is not love. Love is when one loves for the sake of love, when one cannot help but love, cannot do anything but love. Then one is not forced to love; there is no virtue in that. One does not love because another does. It is simply there. It cannot be helped. It is the only thing that makes a person alive. If a person loves one and hates another, what can that one know of love? Can you love one person fully if at the same time you cannot bestow a kind glance on some other person? Can you say you love one person fully when you cannot bear them to be loved by someone else as well? Can you hate a person when love is sprinkled like water in your heart? Love is like the water of the Ganges. It is itself a purification. As the Bible says, ‘God is love’. When love is awakened in the heart, God is awakened there. When we have journeyed, we reach the goal as soon as our heart has reached love.
The Sufis say, ‘The Kaaba, the divine place, paradise, is the heart of the human being’. That is why they have respect for every heart. Every heart is their Kaaba, their shrine. The human heart is the place toward which they bow, for in this heart is God.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
Heart heals heart. Heart may contract or expand. Heart’s expansion is caused by Ishk which brings healing and joy, and this joy touches every corner of the Universe. The lover is as the sun which radiates energy everywhere. This cannot be explained. It is the nature of love, it is the quality of Ishk, it is the Sifat, or divine quality, of God.