Right from an infant who has just entered into the world till the old man who is about to exit the world, love is the one cry, even the animals crave for love. Love seems to be something that is the most wanted thing in the world.  For long I wanted to compile Swami Vivekananda’s sayings on Love, for that would provide us a better understanding of what true love is.

It looks impossible to understand what Swami Vivekananda thought of love. Going through his teachings it appears like he gave utmost importance to love, love in its pure form, the love in its divine form.  He once said that Love is the only thing worth having in this world

“There is only one element in life which is worth having at any cost and it is love. Love immense and infinite, broad as the sky and deep as the ocean. This is the one great gain in life. Blessed is he who gets it.

This love, He considered to be primary even for inspiration. He said,

“First, feel from the heart. What is in the intellect or reason? It goes a few steps and there it stops. But through the heart comes inspiration. Love opens the most impossible gates; love is the gate to all the secrets of the universe.

Talking in the same spirit, he said in another place,

“The heart is great indeed; it is through the heart that come the great inspirations of life. I would a hundred times rather have a little heart and no brain, than be all brains and no heart. Life is possible, progress is possible for him who has heart, but he who has no heart and only brains dies of dryness.

Elaborating on the nature of love and giving key insights into it, he says

“Every act of love brings happiness; there is no act of love which does not bring peace and blessedness as its reaction.

Getting deeper into it, he declares,

“True love can never react so as to cause pain either to the lover or to the beloved.

And he makes a strong observation on love,

“With love there is no painful reaction; love only brings a reaction of bliss; if it does not, it is not love; it is mistaking something else for love.

Magnifying the power of love, he says,

“When you have succeeded in loving your husband, your wife, your children, the whole world, the universe, in such a manner that there is no reaction of pain or jealousy, no selfish feeling, then you are in a fit state to be unattached.

Clearly separating the physical love from true love, Swamiji says,

“Wherever there is attachment, the clinging to the things of the world, you must know that it is all physical attraction between sets of particles of matter — something that attracts two bodies nearer and nearer all the time and, if they cannot get near enough, produces pain; but where there is real love, it does not rest on physical attachment at all. Such lovers may be a thousand miles away from one another, but their love will be all the same; it does not die, and will never produce any painful reaction.

He made the strongest observation about the power of love in these words,

“Kindness and love can buy you the whole world; lectures and books and philosophy all stand lower than these.