LOVE: The Ultimate Alchemy

Ravindranath Tagore says, “Love is the only reality and it 

is not a mere sentiment.” The great mystic and poet very 

suitably sees it as “the ultimate truth that lies at the core of 

creation”.

Love defines the countless pathways to the cause of creation 

as Lord Byron points out with poetic precision: “Love will find 

a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.”

Do you think fear, anger, hate, envy, jealousy, ego, lust and 

greed have their own standing? No. Just like darkness is simply 

an absence of light, all these tortuous tools that lynch our self 

are nothing but phantoms doing painful rounds in the absence 

of love. Like a tiny lamp puts out darkness simply by casting 

light, without fighting the dark, a simple ray of love, a symbol of 

our true self, chucks out the flimsy appendages of the unreal self.

There is definitely limit to everything in cosmos. But there 

is one exception: Love, prem as we say it in Hindi. Yoko Ono 

feels the mankind’s regret in not fully absorbing their self in the 

sea of love when he says: “The regret of my life is that I have not 

said ‘I love you’ often enough.”

One need not fight fear, fury, hatred, jealousy, distrust, ego, 

lust and greed at various fronts to defeat them. They have a 

common root: burial of your loving self, your essential nature, 

under the peripheral dust of illusions and ignorance, making you 

identify with what is essentially not your real self. Remove the grime, allow the light of love to emanate from your soul, enter 

your behavioral self, and all around you see peace, harmony and 

balance. The vices, which you yourself condemn against yourself 

after being judgmental on your own self, just dry up, like fresh 

rays of sun dispel the last traces of dark clinging to the morning 

twilight.

A house—an assemblage of concrete, mortar, bricks and 

steel—turns a home only with love and care. Without affection 

decorating it from inside, it’s merely a soulless structure. Billy 

Graham says it very aptly: “Nothing can bring a real sense of 

security into the home except true love.”

The mankind’s fears driven by greed have already resulted 

in nukes and super-nukes having the capacity to destroy not 

just earth but many planets and stars around. Does it serve any 

purpose? The modern civilization sitting on the stockpiles of 

death and destruction is always one button push away from 

annihilation. No man, we don’t need hate anymore. We need 

more loving people around. The moisture of love will dampen 

the explosives of death and destruction.

Love for your man, your woman, your family, friends and 

near and dear ones is the seed that holds the potential to blossom 

into universal love for all and everything making you a loving 

person. So guys start your journey on the love path as a lover, as a 

caring husband, wife, parent or friend and proceed onto nurture 

the seed to help it grow into a robust tree of loving kindness 

for all. This basically is supposed to be the natural evolution 

course for your consciousness attached to this mater, this mix 

of materials called body comprising water and few kilograms 

of matter found in earth. The consciousness, the blueprint, the 

carrier of your previous journeys, is on the path of evolution, to 

merge into the all pervading super-consciousness, like a drop of 

water is moving to mix with the seas.

Do you think you can fight darkness by flailing your arms 

and fists in the dark? No man, that’s not the way. Darkness 

cannot be dispelled. It stays irrespective of your fusillade. All you need is a small lamp. It simply leaves darkness redundant 

by itself.

“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy 

into a friend,” Martin Luther King, Jr. Love definitely is the 

panacea for thousands of ailments afflicting human society. The 

Modern Gandhi of the West further says, “Darkness cannot 

drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive 

out hate; only love can do that.”

Haven’t you felt almost fully alive when in love with your 

man or woman? Well, that sums it up. This feeling is just a 

glimpse of the eternal bliss available on the higher rungs on the 

same ladder. Move up. There are no alternatives. This is the sole 

destiny.

Mind you, there are no sinners. We just have loving and less 

loving people. Come, join me in tilting the scale in favor of love. 

That is your destiny. Later or sooner, in this avatar or in the ones 

coming up next, you have to get along. Just like a river’s natural 

destination is the sea, your soul’s journey is to merge into all-

encompassing love of the eternal entity. The so called sinners, 

who we scorn at, are nothing but strayed selves, like the river 

exploring its final path to the sea gets into a lake somewhere but 

finds it unviable to stay there and takes on the journey again. All 

of us have to explore and find the fallacy of many a thing that 

our disillusioned self makes us believe and come face to face 

with the ultimate meaning of life.

Max Muller says: “A flower cannot blossom without 

sunshine, and man cannot live without love.”

Come, let’s explore the path of love, the alchemy, which 

remedies the suffering self, making it a beautiful, loving entity.

Love is the seed of spirituality. Holy people of all religions 

and faith reached one single point, all-encompassing love.

Saint Basil: “A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds. 

A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, 

and he who plants kindness gathers love.”

Love, compassion and kindness are the biggest commonality 

across various faiths and belief systems. Love is basically the 

essential nature of soul. Kindness, compassion, gratitude, 

generosity, truth, beauty, and all other virtues we hold in 

high esteem are simply the manifestations of love. Love is the 

light that shows everything as it is. It dispels the dark corners 

surrounding our selves. It is the guiding light that takes us on 

the path of our individual and collective destinies.

Though no words are sufficient to cover the fathomless 

power of love, let’s try to know a bit more about our loving self 

and its miraculous powers in shaping our lives.

This book is meant to set up an instructional manual to 

help one rise higher on the scale of evolution by changing one’s 

limited love, defined by family and relations, to universal love 

for a compassionate and all-loving being.

The work is meant to help one hone the art and craft of 

building a loving character, which in turn sets up the base for 

a happy and joyful life. All the chapters in the book are full of 

commonest of the common day-to-day techniques, which can 

build up our compassionate self, like we work in the gym to 

strengthen our muscles.

Things are rapidly aggravating. It’s an angrier world than 

ever. Material progression has proved counterproductive. 

Mother Nature is ailing due to our greedy onslaught, which 

borders on raping mother earth. Now an ailing nature is 

handing over its pain and miseries to the human society in the 

form of wars, diseases and strife. Irony is that we are materially 

the most advanced society in history with the USP of being the 

most miserable one at the same time. Isn’t it the right time to go 

into a pause and rethink our collective priorities? Through my 

work, I am simply trying to ask individuals and organizations 

to reconsider their values because there has been a basic flaw, 

otherwise why would there be so many problems.

My work involves simple tools and techniques of going into 

self-discovery to see things in a larger perspective. It’s a semi-spiritual journey looking within and out to be aware of the 

bigger plights written everywhere, to inculcate a basic loving 

nature almost at the instinctive level, to be more observant of 

the self as much as we observe things outside. It breeds self 

responsibility, leading to a considerate nature. These are the 

basic building blocks of a compassionate self.

For decades I have been into spirituality and meditation. 

All the simple instructions, guidance tools and observations are 

born of my own experiences. Spirituality is not something about 

mysteries in the farthest corners of the universe. It’s simply about 

being a more aware person. It’s about realizing the basic loving 

nature in each and everyone around. It’s about harnessing joy 

out of the mundane incidences of life.

Working on this book itself has been really rewarding. I 

cannot ask for much other than writing it. It has given me so 

much of unconditional love and peace while working on it. I 

am not looking much on the material front from this treatise on 

love. All I need is one more partner in spreading the message of 

unconditional love, peace and harmony.

I firmly believe that ordinary beings possess extraordinary 

potential to win against odds, to jump over hurdles, to smile 

over tears, and, most importantly, to be happy when there aren’t 

enough reasons to be. People like you and me are the faceless 

constituents of a massive commonality. We are surrounded by 

a swiping generality. We are coloured in the monochromes of 

mundane reality. Still we are special. And that speciality is love 

at the core of our being.

Through my work, I acknowledge and celebrate the 

extraordinary in the ordinary people. I see heroes and heroines 

on the common stage of life chugging around. And most 

importantly, we have the very same essentially loving nature 

at the core. Just that the flimsy clouds of ego and apparent 

sufferings keep it buried inside. I try to help people unearth the 

basic seeds of goodness inside to help them grow into luxuriant 

trees of compassionate beings.

We fight, and oftentimes fail, but write a little passage in the 

infinite book of life: an ordinary life that was lived substantially. 

On the small stage of life, we live very intensely. Somehow, the 

world would not be the world that is still beautiful without our 

contribution. We heave humanity onwards in its march to some 

better destination. Just that all this gets overshadowed by the 

shifting clouds of ego, stress, frustration and jealousy. We simply 

need to look beyond the clouds to spot the glorious sun.

With our essentially loving nature fully acknowledged in 

our daily lives, all of us can be the heroes and heroines of our 

stories. The seed in us, the seed of love, carries the potential 

to be the tallest, luxuriant-most tree. The powerful force of 

creation propels the potential for maximization. Nature doesn’t 

want it to be a world of half-smiles, half-growths, half-blossoms 

and half-potential. There is a tendency for fullness. It pulls the 

process of evolution for the maximum, for completion, for what 

we call greatness. And the driving force for all this is love. It exists 

in each and every atom in the cosmos. All we need is to be aware 

of it. And this awareness needs practice. I have put an effort to 

nurture this habit of always reminding ourselves of our basic 

loving nature.

O my mind, my seat of potentiality, take my journey further,

Be the seat of my strength, not weakness,

Be the seat of kindness, not cruelty,

Be the source of light, not darkness.

You, me and all of us are born for the stories of greatness. 

Let’s acknowledge our loving nature to see through the journey. 

Please be my partner in sharing this message of universal love.