Love with a capital L: That’s the Great Love, love as the source of everything, love as radical unity. At this level, love is another name for Absolute Reality. Supreme Consciousness, Brahman, God the Tao, the Source—that vast presence the Shaivite tradition sometimes calls the Heat. The yoga tradition often describes Absolute Reality as satchidamanda—meaning that it is pure beingness, present everywhere and in everything (sat), that is innately conscious (chit), and that it the essence of joy and love (ananda).
As ananda, the Great Love is woven into the fabric of the universe, which of course also puts it at the center of our own being. Most of us get glimpses of the Great Love at some time in our lives—perhaps in nature, or with an intimate partner, or in the moment of bonding with our children. We remember these experiences for year afterward, often for the rest of our lives.
It happened like that for me one November evening in 1970. He was sitting with a friend in the living room, listening to a Grateful Dead Album, when without warning, an overwhelming experience of joy welled up in him. The state sprang up seemingly out of nowhere, a sensation of tenderness and ecstasy that seemed to ooze out of the walls and the air, carrying with it a sense that everything was a part of him.
This experience inspired a burning desire to get back to it and ultimately became the motive for my spiritual practice. At the time, however, I did what most of us do when we get a glimpse of unconditional tenderness: I projected my inner experience onto the person I happened to be with and decided (rather disastrously; as it turned out) that he was the love of my life and the mate of my soul.
