Why is love not included in the real holy trinity of truth, beauty, and good?

Yesterday you explained the real holy trinity as being truth, beauty and good. Why is love not included?

Love is included. It is part of beauty, that's why it has not been named separately. It is the eyes of love that discover beauty; it is the beauty that provokes love in you. They are one phenomenon.

Please talk to us more about the holy trinity -- truth, beauty and love.

The first thing: you have inserted "love" on your own; it is not part of the holy trinity. I have said, satyam -- satyam means truth; shivam -- shivam means goodness; sundram -- sundram means beauty. Don't try to cheat me; it is impossible! Love simply happens. The man of truth cannot but be loving. The man who understands beauty cannot but be loving. The man who lives all that is good cannot but be loving. Hence, love has not been included in the trinity; it is a by-product. These three things have been included in the trinity because they are independent of each other; they are not by-products. It is possible that the man of truth may not have any sense for beauty; it is possible that the man of sensitivity for beauty may not have any regard for truth. It is possible that a man may respect beauty…

Raising on the ray of love one can enter the enlightened kingdom of God. It is better to say that love is God than to say that truth is God, because the harmony, the beauty, the vitality and the bliss that are part of love are not part of truth. Truth is to be known; love is to be felt as well as known. The growth and perfection of love lead to the ultimate merger with God. The greatest poverty of all is the absence of love. The man who has not developed the capacity to love lives in a private hell of his own. A man who is filled with love is in heaven. You can look at man as a wonderful and unique plant, a plant that is capable of producing both nectar and poison.

In indian philosophy, the nature of ultimate truth has been described as truth, satyam, beauty, sundram and goodness, shivam. Are these the characteristics of god?

We do not know if animals perceive the divine, we do not know how they perceive things at all, but one thing is certain: they will not perceive the divine in human terms. If they perceive the divine at all, they will feel and perceive it in quite a different way from us. The qualities they perceive will not be the same as they are for us. When a person is predominantly intellectual, he cannot conceive of how you can say God is beautiful. The very concept is absolutely foreign to his mind. And a poet cannot conceive that truth can mean anything except beauty. It cannot mean anything else to him. Truth is beauty; all else is simply intellectual. For a poet, for a painter, for a man who perceives the world in terms of the heart, truth is a naked thing without beauty. It is just an intellectual…

Love is the only thing on the earth which is heavenly. Everything else is earthly, hence love is the only door to God. Those who love are bound to find God. It has never happened to persons who have not known love. Start remembering it from this very age; this is the time when children get corrupted. Each child is loving, and if love can be retained uncorrupted, there will be no need for any religion, any church; love is enough unto itself. [The power of love and its seeming fragility... ] Love is mighty, but its might is totally different from other kinds of power. It is not power; power belongs to the ego. Love is humble, love is not an ego-trip at all. It happens only when all ego-trips have stopped.