First of all, the two words are synonymous. Love means no conditions. Conditional love isn't love! To understand why this is so, let us explore the concept of love and why we are unable to experience it on a day-to-day basis.

True love needs nothing. When you truly love, you transcend notions of sex, status, caste or community. Of these, sex is perhaps the hardest to overcome. Most of us are conscious of the gender of the other person and this conditions our response. It splinters our personality because we are unable to respond to the inner beauty, which is present in all persons.

Love happens. "I" cannot love because "I" cannot exist. Only in the absence of the self can I be completely yours. As long as the "I" exists love is sentimentality. Love happens when the God within me vibrates with the God within you.

When I am meditating or when I am at my best I love you. At those times I am completely yours. I pray to God to take me over and to make everyone happy. I can never ask for my happiness alone because my happiness comes from yours. To find out if I really love you, think of me in the midst of any difficulty. The answer will come to you. It must happen, otherwise there is something wrong with my love.

The object of love is to seek truth, to understand it and become part of it. The ultimate truth is God. But because it is not possible to see God, we can only access him through truth. At the final stage you become totality. At this stage, there is no relativity. Terms like better, worse, man, woman cease to apply. It is inherent in human nature to yearn for the truth. Unfortunately, most understand truth to be right and wrong. Moral or immoral. This can never be truth because it is in duality and is therefore splintered. The two must come together. Nothing in the universe is absolutely right or wrong. Only when distinctions merge do they become absolute.

To seek the truth we must have a methodology. Most of us try to understand life  through the senses. But for our senses to lead us to the truth, they must be one-pointed. This is rarely the case. Look within yourself and you will find that you never experience life as it is - it is always mingled with past experiences. You are not attempting to see truth as it is but as you wish it. People see God as Allah, Paramatma, Jesus Christ. They are not seeing God as He is but as they wish to see Him. Only in shunya avasta (zero level) can we see things as they are.

Why is shunya avasta (zero level) difficult? This is because whatever we see or experience through the senses, becomes equated with either sukha (happiness) or dukha (unhappiness). If you are going for an exam and a black cat crosses your path you immediately conclude that you will not do well. The sukha-dukha duality gives rise to vasana (desire), where we want certain things to happen and other things not to happen. Desire can never lead us to the absolute truth because desire is stuck in sensory experiences. When we see a Mercedes, we are fired with desire for it and want to possess it. But we never think whether it will bring us happiness. We have lost the habit of understanding things as they are. Can you reach the absolute truth in this way?

There is no problem, if we know who or what we are, but we are inhibited from knowing our true selves because of the presence of the ego. The ego is a false centre. No one wants the truth because the ego comes in the way. This is why in normal life, there is no possibility of reaching the truth.

To understand truth, do nothing. Be an observer. Watch detachedly, with asmita (awareness). There should only be an awareness of being human. Awareness brings down the ego. You begin to relax. This makes you humane. In turn your body-mind system becomes sensitive, not sentimental. Soon you will be so relaxed that you will forget the body. At that stage the mind opens up and starts stretching. As you go higher, your consciousness widens. At that stage the mind opens up and starts stretching. As you go higher, your consciousness widens. At this stage, comes the love force. But your vivek (intellect) is still there. Only when that goes is there an explosion in the mind and the seeds of prarabdh (result of doctrine of cause and effect of whatever you have done in the past-including your past lives), are burnt. Then all conditioning ceases. You act as per the need of the hour, purely on instinct. Totality's computer feeds you and you act accordingly, and forget it as soon as it is over. You see things through a vastness, and become universal in outlook and this is - pradnya jagrutt (spontaneous signal from totality).

At this stage an outburst of love starts flowing. You become part of totality's consciousness and you see that all is God.

Freed of attachments you experience real love. So strong is this force that if you really wish to, you can mend a broken leg with it. Then sharing starts. We should love each other so much that we should forget ourselves. Without consideration for myself I should ask, "What best can be done for you? What is the need of the hour? Whatever it is, I must do it." No, not even that I. It is done. Forget that it is "I" who does it. Then comes the grace.