Read Book - Avatar Meher Baba Trust

68 THE PATH OF LOVE
alone knows how to give without necessarily bargaining for a
return. There is nothing that love cannot achieve and there is
nothing that love cannot sacrifice.
Love for God, love for fellow-beings, love for service and
love of sacrifices; in short, love in any shape and form is the
finest “give and take” in the world. Ultimately, it is love that will
bring about the much-desired universal leveling of human
beings all over the world, without necessarily disturbing the
inherent diversities of details about mankind.
All the same, in order to burst out in a mighty big spirit to
serve as a beacon for those who may yet be groping in the darkness
of selfishness, love needs to be kindled and rekindled in the abysmal
darkness of selfish thoughts, selfish words and selfish deeds.
The light of love is not free from its fire of sacrifice. Like
heat and light, love and sacrifice go hand in hand. The true spirit
of sacrifice that springs spontaneously does not and cannot
reserve itself for particular objects and special occasions. Love
and coercion can never go together. Love has to spring spontaneously
from within. It is in no way amenable to any form of
inner or outer force and it cannot be forced upon anybody, yet
it can be awakened in one through love itself.
Love cannot be born of mere determination; through the
exercise of will, one can at best be dutiful. One may, through
struggle and effort, succeed in securing that his external action is
in conformity with his conception of what is right; but such
action is spiritually barren because it lacks the inward beauty of
spontaneous love.
Like every great virtue, love, the mainspring of all life, can
also be misapplied. It may lead to the height of God-intoxication