Divine Love is one of those topics that people can talk about and theorize about all day. But will they have a clue as to what it is? Words, after all, are just words. It’s like trying to describe a beautiful vista to a blind person who has never seen anything.

It’s important to understand that there are different degrees to which one may receive this love. For the rare fortunate one, it could mean a complete drowning — an elimination of the limited ego resulting in God Realization. For most people, however, it is more of a melting, an embrace from divinity. It serves the purpose of focusing the consciousness on the life of the spirit.

In my life, I have experienced the latter a few times. Each time. tears flowed out of immense inner joy. To me, each of these experiences were revelations that God is Love, that God is the sole reality, and to paraphrase Meher Baba, closer than my own breath.

To have that experience is to know that unbounded love and joy are real. It is life changing. Once someone becomes the recipient of this Divine Love, his or her life changes to a different playing field. As Dorothy said, “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”

No religion has a monopoly on Truth or Love. I’m sure just as many Hindus have been the recipients of Divine Love, as have Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, or Jews.The Divine Beloved is Infinite and could care less about religion. Infinite Love is concerned only about Love. Nothing else.

Recently, just a couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity to witness someone experiencing this Divine Love. It was wonderful to see. It happened at the Meher Spiritual Center. Here’s what happened:

One Sunday afternoon a month I volunteer to give a tour of the Meher Spiritual Center to newcomers. And to make the tour interesting, I tell a story about the origins of the Center.

The day before I gave this most recent tour, I spent several hours preparing for it, weaving several stories into my narrative. And these stories were about a few people, whose lives were transformed by Divine Love, which led to the founding of the Meher Center. One of these stories goes all the way back to 1876 and the invention of the telephone. I decided I would start the tour with a question, “What is the connection of the Meher Center to the invention of the telephone?”

But before I started the tour, I noticed that a woman was already in tears. She and her husband were visiting Myrtle Beach from New York and were staying in a timeshare nearby. This was the very first time they had been to the Center. She said the tears started just before they turned into the Center from Highway 17. And when they got to the parking lot, they were both in tears.

I told them that tears played a significant role in the history of the Center, and that I was going to share that on the tour.

To my tour group, I shared the story of Thomas Watson, the assistant to Alexander Graham Bell, who was made famous because his name was the first words ever uttered on a telephone when Alexander Graham Bell said, “Mr. Watson, come here…”

I told them that Watson was 22-years-old then. But when he was 77, he had an experience that was so profound wth Meher Baba, that he invited, arranged and paid for Meher Baba and a few of Meher Baba’s disciples to come to America for the very first time in 1931.

He met Meher Baba after hearing that Meher Baba was coming to a retreat in England called Devonshire. Receptive to new experiences, he went there from America and waited eagerly for Meher Baba’s arrival. He was able to stay in the retreat’s main building, on the second floor of a multi-storied house in the English countryside.

On the morning that Meher Baba was expected to arrive, Watson woke up with tears streaming from his eyes. He noticed that his pillow was wet with tears. He didn’t know what was happening to him. He got out of bed and looked out his window, enjoying the beautiful morning view and wondering what was happening to him. What was the meaning of this experience, these tears, this spontaneous joy?

What he didn’t know was that Meher Baba had just arrived in the house and was just then climbing up the stairwell to his room, a floor above Watson’s. As Watson was staring out the window, Baba saw him through the open door and silently walked up behind him.

Watson felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned around and saw for the first time, Meher Baba. More tears started flowing. Watson’s heart was the recipient of Divine Love. He said he gained at last the knowledge of God and Love for which he had been searching most of his life. He said that meeting Baba that morning, in his room, was the culmination of his quest for the Living Truth.

A few days later he invited Meher Baba to America, and volunteered to make and pay for all the arrangements. Baba refused Watson’s offer several times, but finally agreed.

As I was telling this story, I checked again with the woman from New York. She was still crying — having her own joyous inner experience.

I continued with the tour, telling them that this trip that Watson arranged was Meher Baba’s first visit to America. And it was on that trip that Meher Baba met Princess Norina Matchabelli and Elizabeth Patterson, the two women who not only found the land for the Meher Spiritual Center, but who would begin the magnificent work in 1944 of developing the Meher Center. I told you there was a connection.

I also shared with the group something interesting about Norina Matchabelli, that when she was first told about Meher Baba by her friend, Jean Adriel, she had no interest: “Who is this Master at whose feet you would worship? How can you worship at the feet of any man, even though he calls himself a Master? Women like ourselves, who have had such deep inner experiences, need no man to show us the way to God. How can you allow yourself to be drawn into such foolishness?”

But when she was told about Thomas Watson’s experience and his weeping upon meeting Meher Baba, she replied: “Well, when your Master arrives, I must meet him. I too would like to weep.”

It turned out that she wept a lot. In fact, from the moment that Meher Baba’s feet first touched American soil, she did nothing but weep, without even meeting him. It was so profound that she had to cancel all of her social engagements (and they were considerable for she was the wife of a prince and a theatrical star of the hit play, The Miracle). Jean Adriel wrote that “the old hauteur of sophistication was replaced by child-like wonder.”

I checked again. The woman from New York was still weeping.

I talked about Norina eventually meeting Meher Baba and her heart breaking in an ecstasy of pain and how Meher Baba would sit by her bedside to sooth her pain.

There are other stories, too. But if you want to hear them, come take the tour.

Anyway, I found it an interesting synchronicity that on this tour on which I planned to talk about a few people’s experience of Divine Love and how it transformed their lives, that I got to witness someone having an experience of Divine Love while I was telling the stories.

It added a special dimension to the whole tour.

I think more and more people are going to be having those kind of experiences. I think it will be eventually happening on a universal scale. Meher Baba referred to a New Humanity coming about from “a release of love in measureless abundance.”

I also remember the story of a famous Indian saint named Kirpal Singh who visited Meher Baba several times. Kirpal Singh was known for giving his followers inner experiences, such as seeing lights and colors and hearing celestial sounds, and he told Meher Baba that he too should give his followers these type of experiences. (I had a professor at the University of Cincinnati who followed Kirpal Singh for that very reason.)

Anyway, Meher Baba handed Kirpal Singh a book about a special school for boys that Meher Baba ran in 1927 and 1928 called the Prem Ashram. The book was called Sobs and Throbs because all the boys at the school wept uncontrollably due the divine love they were experiencing. Meher Baba told Kirpal Singh, “This is the experience I give.” Kirpal Singh then understood.

Love, when received as a gift from God, is the experience that gives one the conviction that God alone is real. More and more people are being prepared for these type of experiences. How could humanity not evolve to a higher level of existence — a new humanity.

Until then, all we can do is love for the sake of love.

And the woman from New York: I was told two days later she was still weeping.

The experience I am going through now I call the Zen of Being Sick.

Over the weekend I became sick. I lost my voice. I probably have bronchitis. I have a fever, chills, no energy for work and too much discomfort for sleep. And the end result is feeling miserable.

And yet, it serves a purpose.

Illnesses and the suffering they bring are opportunities. Most people don’t realize that while they are going through them, but some, after it has passed, do. I’ve even heard of cancer patients (from the director of a cancer institute) wishing they had the disease years earlier because the experience was so transforming.

When feeling sick and weak, a lot of the limiting patterns of life are broken. Things that formerly seemed so all-important are pushed to the bottom of the list. What was formerly unimportant take on a new priority. The claims of the spirit prevail over the claims of the ego-mind.

Until something like an illness breaks the patterns, life becomes so habituated with deadlines and money and excitement-seeking that we forget about the subtle things of life that give it the deepest meaning and flavor.

A supposedly higher lifestyle is supposed to lead to greater happiness but more often than not, it focusses energy on meeting the financial demands of the higher lifestyle. The great disciple of Meher Baba, Bhau Kalchuri, calls it “Bill Meditation.” It’s all the game of the ego asserting its separateness from others, trying to stand out, to be noticed, to be congratulated. We make progress only if we are able to progress from bill meditation to something that nourishes the soul.

What is real meditation? Meditating on what is real. Eternal values — love, truth, beauty, knowledge, oneness, understanding, ethics and aestetics. It’s also meditating on Masters who embodied those values in everyday life — great souls like Ramakrishna, Ramana Maharshi, Meher Baba, St. Francis, Rumi, and Hafiz.

But being laid up in bed invites new interests. They float to the top as the old encrusted habits, like ice of ages past, melts away. Habit patterns that were part of the old identity are weakened. A lot of the attachments begin to fall away. The mind slows down and perception of true and lasting values becomes clearer.

It’s like the world’s economic health. It brings a lot of suffering and hardship. But in the long run, the world will be better for having gone through it. Corporate greed is being addressed. Huge bonuses for executives of failing companies are being addressed. The darkest shadows of corporate excess are coming to light. When the light of consciousness turns on, the darkness of unconsciousness vanishes.

But back to physical health and illness. Great suffering brings with it great spiritual insights. People who are suffering from illnesses and accidents begin to see the transitoriness of life. Little things like a flower blossom or a smile from a child touch the heart. And sometimes happiness comes for no external reason at all. That is when you know from experience (and not from a book) that true and lasting happiness comes from within. That is mysticism in its beginning stage.

Mysticism? Yes mysticism. Suffering seems to launch a lot of people into mysticism. I know it did for me over 33 years ago. And when a person becomes mystically inclined, it is a new way of life that will never be given up. It is a clear perception of reality. It comes with the knowledge of what is illusory and what is real. It differentiates between the Real Self and the False Self.

A mystic would never consider stealing the money from someone to pursue their own selfish desires. That’s because a mystic knows that the inner joy he has come to know increases when he is able to share that joy with others, by touching the hearts of others.

To be the cause of suffering of others is only inviting more suffering on himself. Why? Because we are here to learn — we are spiritual beings striving towards spiritual freedom. And to learn the lesson the lesson of suffering, he too will suffer from the hand of another. Then he will understand. Without the lesson there is no learning.

We live in a world of oneness. We all have effects on each other, even when we don’t see it. Just the elevated spiritual vibration of someone walking into a room has an impact on everyone else in the room, without a word being spoken. It’s just like adding hot water to a tub of water that has already started to cool. All of the water is affected. Not some drops, but the whole.

Don’t curse your illnesses. They have a purpose. If you are really fortunate, they will unveil to you the highest purpose of life — to discover the Infinitude of who you really are.

Remember that the next time you have your head in the toilet heaving up a $100 meal from a restaurant that made you feel so chic and high-class. It’s amazing what opportunities life can present.