I suppose "love"
expresses something more intense than goodwill which can include
mere liking or affection. But whether love or goodwill the human
feeling is always either based on or strongly mixed with ego,
- that is why it cannot be pure. It is said in the Upanishad,
"One does not love the wife for the sake of the wife",
or the child or friend etc. as the case may be, "but for
one's self's sake one loves the wife".
There is usually a
hope of return, of benefit or advantage of some kind, or of certain
pleasures and gratifications, mental, vital or physical that the
person loved can give. Remove these things and the love very soon
sinks, diminishes or disappears or turns into anger, reproach,
indifference or even hatred.
But there is also an
element of habit, something that makes the presence of the person
loved a sort of necessity because it has always been there - and
this is sometimes so strong that even in spite of entire incompatibility
of temper, fierce antagonism, something like hatred, it lasts
and even these gulfs of discord are not enough to make the persons
part; in other cases, this feeling is more tepid and after a time
one gets accustomed to separation or accepts a substitute.
There is again often
the element of some kind of spontaneous attraction or affinity
- mental vital or physical, which gives a stronger cohesion to
the love.
Lastly, there is in
the highest or deepest kind of love the psychic element which
comes from the inmost heart and soul, a kind of inner union or
self-giving or at least a seeking for that, a tie or an urge independent
of other conditions or elements, existing for its own sake and
not for any mental, vital or physical pleasure, satisfaction,
interest or habit. But usually the psychic element in human love,
even where it is present, is so much mixed, overloaded and hidden
under the others that it has little chance of fulfilling itself
or achieving its own natural purity and fullness.
What is called love
is therefore sometimes one thing, sometimes another, most often
a confused mixture, and it is impossible to give a general answer
to the questions you put as to what is meant by love in such and
such a case. It depends on the persons and the circumstances.
When the love goes
towards the Divine, there is still this ordinary human element
in it. There is the call for a return and if the return does not
seem to come, the love may sink; there is the self-interest, the
demand for the Divine as a giver of all that the human being wants
and, if the demands are not acceded to, abhimana against the Divine,
loss of faith, loss of fervour, etc., etc.
But the true love for
the Divine is in its fundamental nature not of this kind, but
psychic and spiritual. The psychic element is the need of the
inmost being for self-giving, love, adoration, union which can
only be fully satisfied by the Divine. The spiritual element is
the need of the being for contact, merging, union with its own
highest and whole self and source of being and consciousness and
bliss, the Divine. These two are two sides of the same thing.
The mind, vital, physical can be the supports and recipients of
this love, but they can be fully that only when they become remoulded
in harmony with the psychic and spiritual elements of the being
and no longer bring in the lower insistences of the ego.
*
It is the ordinary
nature of vital love not to last or, if it tries to last, not
to satisfy, because it is a passion which Nature has thrown in
in order to serve a temporary purpose; it is good enough therefore
for a temporary purpose and its normal tendency is to wane when
it has sufficiently served Nature's purpose. In mankind, as man
is a more complex being, she calls in the aid of imagination and
idealism to help her push, gives a sense of ardour, of beauty
and fire and glory, but all that wanes after a time. It cannot
last, because it is all a borrowed light and power, borrowed in
the sense of being a reflection caught from something beyond and
not native to the reflecting vital medium which imagination uses
for the purpose. Moreover, nothing lasts in the mind and vital,
all is a flux there.
The one thing that
endures is the soul, the spirit. Therefore love can last or satisfy
only if it bases itself on the soul and spirit, if it has its
roots there. But that means living no longer in the vital but
in the soul and spirit.
The difficulty of the
vital giving up is because the vital is not governed by reason
or knowledge, but by instinct and impulse and the desire of pleasure.
It draws back because it is disappointed, because it realises
that the disappointment will always repeat itself, but it does
not realise that the whole thing is itself a glamour or, if it
does, it repines that it should be so. Where the vairagya is sattwic,
born not of disappointment but of the sense of greater and truer
things to be attained, this difficulty does not arise. However,
the vital can learn by experience, can learn so much as to turn
away from its regret of the beauty of the will-o'-the-wisp. Its
vairagya can become sattwic and decisive.
*
The Divine Love, unlike
the human, is deep and vast and silent; one must become quiet
and wide to be aware of it and reply to it. He [the seeker] must
make it his whole object to be surrendered so that he may become
a vessel and instrument - leaving it to the Divine Wisdom and
Love to fill him with what is needed. Let him also fix this in
the mind not to insist that in a given time he must progress,
develop, get realisation; whatever time it takes, he must be prepared
to wait and persevere and make his whole life an aspiration and
an opening for the one thing only, the Divine.
To give oneself is
the secret of sadhana, not to demand and acquire. The more one
gives oneself, the more the power to receive will grow. But for
that all impatience and revolt must go; all suggestions of not
getting, not being helped, not being loved, going away, of abandoning
life or the spiritual endeavour must be rejected.
*
When you come to the
Divine, lean inwardly on the Divine and do not let other things
affect you.
*
One can love divinely
only by becoming divine in nature; there is no other way.
- Sri
Aurobindo
