Types of Love

Article by H.H. Younus AlGohar · February 06, 2016

Amelika Confidence wrote a book called, ‘Religions and the Way to God’. He says to me, ‘You say that love is fundamental. What is love’s work. From where and to where does love go?’ He said to me, ‘If you have love and peace, or wish for them, you will welcome clean-hearted debate.’

In reply to this, I said to him, ‘Discussion is better than debate. I do not debate.’ Firstly, I did not say that love is fundamental. I talk about love and how to achieve love. I propagate the importance of love in a human’s life and I also discuss what the substance of love is and how to acquire love. Regarding from where loves comes and to where it goes - love is not like a boat. Love is not like an airplane. Love is not transportation. What do you mean by, ‘From where it comes and to where it goes?’ I don’t understand it. I’m sorry, but this is really bemusing. You need to understand different types of love. Love. metaphorically, is considered to be an outburst of emotions. That’s what people call love. These emotions have to be generated on a constant basis.

If you have an outburst of emotions for somebody for a few days and then it goes away, it is not love; it is infatuation, affection.

Affection

Affection is when you look at somebody physically and you like their body, you like their company because they are handsome or they are beautiful. You fall for the beauty of their body. It is called affection because it is affecting on you. For example, you walk in a mall and see a woman who is wearing revealing clothes. You look at her and you want to keep looking art her. You forget why you are there. So in a way, you are affected. Suddenly, you forget everything and are just looking at that woman. If that woman was really unattractive, even if she was walking naked, you wouldn’t be affected. You would just continue doing whatever you were occupied. When we say, ‘Beautiful or ugly,’ it is to do with the body. Obviously, you are not looking at her soul or heart; you are looking at her body. This is why it is affection, sudden change.

Puppy Love

There is another type of love. When you are a child, you have innocent love. You have love for your toys and you fall out with other kids. You say, ‘This is my toy. I won’t let you play with it.’ Then you enter into a phase where you reach the age of puberty. When you reach the age of puberty and enter into adolescence, you begin to have feelings and vibes. If a girl at that time starts taking interest in you, you suddenly develop love. You become Romeo and think, ‘I have found the true love of my life. I’m going to sacrifice my life.’ That is fake understanding because the emotions that you have at the time are due to the fact that you entering into adolescence period. Before you reach puberty, you don’t have these kinds of emotions. But as you reach that age, the world changes. You’re not innocent anymore.

This outburst of emotion at the time when you reach the age of puberty is called puppy love or cupboard love. It doesn’t stay forever.

Because you have reached the age of puberty and there are new emotions, every time a girl takes interest in you, you think this is your true lover. You make a list of girlfriends. Every time you change a girlfriend, you think, ‘No, this is my true girlfriend.’ But as you become mature, you realise that it was nonsense. This is not love.

Divine Love

You have to be careful in defining divine love. You’re suppose to develop love for God and you haven’t seen or spoken with God. You don’t know anything about God. Whether you are a Muslim, Christian, Jew or you practise any other religion - you have the books and stories, but you have no personal experience about God. How do you develop love for God? You look at a woman, her curves and her beauty and you fall in love with her. You have an outburst of emotions because you reach the age of puberty and you have puppy love. What about divine love? How do you have love for God? Even if God has a handsome body, you haven’t seen him.

Some people think that becoming more religious, doing all the rituals and fulfilling all the commandments of God is God’s love. That’s obedience and practice of a religion. That is not love.

Then there are two types of love: conditional love and unconditional love. It is very easy to say, ‘unconditional love,’ but unconditional love is very, very rare to be seen. When we say, ‘unconditional love,’ it means you have love for somebody and no matter what happens, this love will stay with you in your heart forever. Nothing will change. For example, I respect you and you respect me. If I insult you, you will insult me. But if you have love for somebody and they insult you every day, do you think love in you heart for that person is not going to be affected? Of course it will be affected. If the other person doesn’t stop insulting and abusing, maybe this love will turn into hatred. There is a condition: if you behave well, I will love you. If you respect me, I will love you. If you  feed me, I will love you.

If somebody doesn’t do anything good, will you still love them? Humanly, it is not possible; but God has unconditional love. However, before unconditional love is granted to you by God, there are many conditions to be fulfilled.

I want to tell you how to obtain God’s love. Some people have a problem in their heart, so a pacer is installed inside the heart to generate ticking. In a similar way, we need an outburst of emotions for God in the heart.

There is no connection between you and God. How would you have emotions for God?

For a moment, just forget about God. If we say, ‘Please love Obama; he is very nice,’ can you do that? No. There are many examples. Generally, men go after beautiful women who are fair in complexion, tall, etc. But we have heard, when the bird of love, Cupid, strikes on a heart, you will see that a man loves a woman who is not  beautiful at all. This is because somehow or other, he has emotions for her not for other women.

We need to generate an outburst of emotion for God. In order to do that, God’s light, God’ energy, has to be generated inside the heart through spirituality.

God’s name has his light;it is not like your name and my name. Spiritually, God’s name is implanted into the heart and thereafter, the heart will vibrate with God’s name constantly. As a result of this constant vibration of God’s name inside the heart, divine energy is generated. When enough divine energy has been accumulated inside the heart, you begin to have feelings for God.

When you have something from God inside your heart, it uplifts the outburst of emotions for God. This is the first stage of love. You begin to feel his light in your heart.

However, this love is not eternal. If you do something wrong and God doesn’t like it, then these emotions will be gone; this love may not stay forever. The original form of love - which does not fade away and never disappears from the heart - is granted to an individual by God only when he is spiritually trained and makes a journey spiritually, by the soul of his head, and he arrives at a station where God will see him and he will see God.

The moment you see God, special energy will emanate from God’s body; it will come to you and will want to pull you towards God. This attraction from God is known as pure, unconditional love. It is natural.

If you have that energy that pulls you towards God, it will become unconditional love. Then, whatever happens, this love will never depart your heart.