Is God’s love conditional? – Lessons from Ramayana

Transcript

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so we all may have some ulterior motives so if we have ulterior motives what happens? the lord doesn’t come in our hearts we may want to control, we may want to enjoy now our ulterior motives don’t stop god from loving us ram still loved bharat so but what those ulterior motives do is that they stop us from experiencing god’s love for us so although god always loves us, we can’t experience his love if we are not if we have ulterior motives, if we have a desire to be powerful, to be famous, to be prosperous in this world now yes, somebody might be devoted and maybe all these also but if those are our primary driving desires then god doesn’t have place in our hearts and then if that is what we want he says yes you can have it so it’s important that to understand is god’s love conditional? well to understand this we have to understand that there are two meanings of the word condition condition means demand this is going to be a conditional piece so for example two countries are fighting and one country is more powerful and it’s willing the conditional piece, as long as you satisfy these terms we will hold ourselves back, so it’s conditional piece so condition can mean demand but condition can also mean state, for example if somebody is sick we may ask what is their condition now, so is god’s love conditional in the sense of demand no he doesn’t make any demand from us whether we love him or not he still loves us always his love is unconditional in that sense we may have forgotten him but he doesn’t forget us he remains in our hearts waiting for us to turn toward him working so that situations in our life are arranged in such a way that we turn to him so in that sense his love for us is unconditional sarvasya cha aham hrithi sanni vishthu in the hearts of everyone, not just in the hearts of the devoted Prahlad Maharaj says that the lord is not just not just the lover of the devotee not just compassionate to the devotee krpanas, even those who are miserly those who are materialistic those who have no interest in the lord even for them he is loving so in that sense his love is unconditional in the sense that he doesn’t make any demand from us before he will love us but in the state in the sense of state that our heart has to be in a particular state to experience his love so the sun gives light to everyone in that sense the sun’s giving of light is unconditional but if we consider that if we go into a dark dungeon if our state is that we are not in the sunlight our state is that we are in a dark dungeon we cannot see the sun so similarly if our the state of our heart is that we have filled it with other things and there is no place for god to come in then there is no experience of then we can’t experience the lord’s love for us so in that sense the lord’s love is both unconditional and conditional unconditional in terms of he always keeps loving us but we can’t experience his love if our heart is not in the receptive state and receptive state means it’s guileless guileless means we have no ulterior motives what if we have ulterior motives I am not that pure, I have so many other desires then we can still open our heart our heart is filled and locked so that god can’t enter but then we have the key the key to open the heart is humility humility means even if our heart is not open because of love for the lord so it can be open because of humility and we can humbly be see pray to the lord I am not yet pure but I want to be pure please purify me, my heart is dark please light my heart and the lord will indeed light it so at our level we can’t have guilelessness in the presence of no ulterior motives but even if we don’t have guilelessness at that level we can have guilelessness we don’t conceal our motives we don’t put on an act that doesn’t mean we go around and parade to the world that we are impure and we tell everyone about our impurities it’s just that we don’t become proud, we don’t become presumptuous we don’t become arrogant, we stay humble so in a sense humility is simply honesty we are not at a very high level in our devotion unless of course we are special souls and we are but even then as an example for others devotees are humble