It wasn’t directed at anyone in particular. It was just his being, shining like the sun equally on everyone. He was just sitting there, looking around, not doing anything. I opened my eyes and looked around, and I could feel that everyone else around me was experiencing the same thing. I was nearly overcome, on the verge of tears, so grateful and so full of joy it was hard to believe it was happening. I felt waves of love radiating toward me, washing over me like a gentle surf on a tropical shore, immersing me, rocking me, caressing my soul, infinitely accepting and open. It was a meditative quiet, like an open field on a windless day or a deep clear lake without a ripple. This old man wrapped in a plaid blanket was sitting on a plank bed, and for a brief uncommon interval everyone had fallen silent. Thirty or forty of us were there around my guru, Maharaj-ji. Years ago in India I was sitting in the courtyard of the little temple in the Himalayan foothills. That's the space I entered when I met my guru. Then you and I are truly in love, the state of being love. If I go into the place in myself that is love and you go into the place in yourself that is love, we are together in love.

The thinking mind is extinguished in love.

It's just sitting in love, a love that incorporates the chair and the room and permeates everything around. It’s not 'I love you' for this or that reason, not 'I love you if you love me.' It's love for no reason, love without an object. It is not so much an active emotion as a state of being. Unconditional love really exists in each of us.

What does unconditional love mean