Love is a natural propensity of the soul. However, pure love can factually be experienced only in relation with the Supreme Lord and He alone can perfectly reciprocate our love. For the spirit soul to repose love on something non-spiritual, based on considerations such as bodily relationship, is superficial, incompatible, and therefore quite unfulfilling, often ending in frustration. In fact, God is the active principle of everything; thus whatever is lovable or attractive to us is only due to its connection with Him. If at all we love someone it is due to the fact that they are a spark of the Supreme Lord. For instance when the soul, which is a spark of God, leaves the body, no one loves the dead body.
Because our love is now misdirected towards matter and has been thwarted so many times in frustrated attempts to find a worthy object for our love, most of us even become reluctant to trust and love anyone at all. Even if we do so it is sustained only on superficial, conditional terms. But as soon as we turn our attention and affection again to Krishna, the natural love of the soul can flow unimpeded.
Srimad Bhagavatam describes such love as unmotivated and uninterrupted; there is no cause or personal motivation why we love Krishna except that He is so lovable, and there is no stop to such love. On this platform a devotee can truly love everyone else also in relation to Krishna as His parts and parcels. This alone is fully satisfyingfor the soul.
In true love, love which is pure and selfless, one’s ego, pride, identity everything becomes dissipated for the pleasure of the beloved.
Once when Lord Krishna and His eternal consort - Radha were together, Radha expressed her envy over Krishna's flute, as it was more closer to Him. Krishna replied “O Radha, it is very difficult to attain that state. One would have to annihilate oneself totally to become like the flute. In true love as in the case of the flute, the identity melts away. The flute is in fact the very heart of a beloved. It does not carry its own tunes. Rather it simply becomes an instrument for mellifluous music of the lover to flow. When I breathe life into it, it sings forth the sweet notes loudly. When I become silent, it simultaneously slips into silence!"
By becoming selfless, one realises one's true self. On realising one's true self, the pseudo-self drops where one becomes the expression of divine love.
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