I don't think loving God is divine and loving your Family is Attachment

Yesterday I wrote a bit about the change in my life from being a guru and religious preacher to the man I am now, not religious and not even believing in God anymore. So many things have changed over the course of time and of course I could fill lots of pages with the details. In fact, I would even say everything changed, including my idea of love.

When I was preaching the scriptures, I thought of love in the way that the scriptures described it. It is written that the love that you have for your family, your parents and children, your siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, is only attachment. Only your love to God is real love.

I believed in this and told this to people in my lectures. If you have never heard this concept, you may find it strange or even cruel to think in this way but here it is a very normal idea which people can accept as the truth. That is why Sadhus, who want to rid themselves of every attachment, leave their families. They just leave their homes and don’t keep contact even with their own children. They want to live their love to God and people accept it. Even more, people regard them as very pious, holy men of whom they can get blessing. After all, they managed what most people cannot – they separated the ties of attachment to their families.

I fully believed in it then but today I don’t believe this anymore. I believe that the love that you have for your parents or children, for your family and friends in general, is real love. Loving God however is in my eyes never pure love.

I don’t think you can really love God purely. There will either be fear or greed and it is the parents who install these feelings related to God. If you think that greed is too harsh a word, you can call it the expectation of getting something. You get to know God if your parents tell you of him. God sees if you are a bad child! Don’t lie or fight with others, God knows everything! If you want to achieve something, be good and do what God says! Parents use God for their education – either threatening with him or promising that he would reward you.

Of course religious parents may now argue that they never use God’s name in such a way and that they tell their children only about God’s love, that he is always there to protect you, like a father, holding your hand or like a friend, playing with you. In my eyes however that won’t make you love God as much or even more than you love your parents. No, you cannot love God even approximately as much as your family! How could you? He – or she – is not a person like your mother or father who take you in their arms when you need a feeling of security or comfort. Your siblings play with you and make you laugh – when did God do that? Your mother is the one who feeds you when you are a baby. It is her smell, her noises, the feeling of her touch that becomes imprinted in your mind and most importantly in your heart. Not God’s smell, noise or touch. It is impossible that you ever have the great love for God that you have for your family!

So you see, my mind changed completely to the opposite and I believe today that I am right. Obviously I thought the same in that time, too, but wherever my way will lead me now, I will not go back to the belief I had before.