L O V E

L O V E

Love has been given the highest status spiritually equating the same with God. The irony is that it is also brought down to the lowest level of carnal pleasure. In the religious/spiritual level, Love is a bhavam- an attitude - expressed as bhakthy or premam to unite oneself with the highest Truth. Our love towards God is not to crave for any material gain. It is a medium communicating with Him. Sri Krishna explains to gopies on one occasion - one loves another based on reciprocation, a circular love. Another one loves even if the other doesnt reciprocate. There is a third category who never expresses love in either of the above situations. This category is further divided as 1)Atmaraman. 2)Aptakaman, 3)Akritgnan and 4)Guru drohi. Here, the first two are laudable and the 3rd and 4th are condemnable. Krishna says that He is neither of the above categories or sub-categories. He doesnt reciprocate and in order to strenghthen the bhakthas' love He ocasionally enacts the drama of invisibility. He says He considers bhakthas with strong love as part of Him or rather they do not have a separate existence apart from Him.



In the ordinary level i.e. in the vyavakarik level, this love is expressed differently such as mother's love towards children and conversely children loving the mother, a wife loving her husband and vice-versa, a worker - whether he be a manual worker, artist or a white collar worker - loving the work he is engaged in. Mother's love has to be emphasised here since the same is comparatively superior. A mother loving the children doesnt expect reciprocation of the same from the children. She loves her children for love sake. An artist or for that matter a manual worker or white collar worker cannot rise upto that level. Many a time they forget the intrinsic value of love and they engage themselves in their respective work with expectation of material benefit. In the case of mother's love she gets fulfuilment even while loving the children and apart from that she expects no other benefit. If only this fulfilment is derived in the case of other categories it is an achievement indeed. Ofcourse there is a small percentage of such persons who enjoy doing their respective work and they consider the material benefit as incidental and the happiness as intrinsic. In the case of a mother also there might be a small percentage loving the children with expectation of return either immediately or at the time of their old age. This category is rare or almost nil since mother's love is an expression of consciousness through instinct and without the interference of ego or selfishness.


In the case of our loving God, many of us beg Him to give this and that and even we go to the extent of bribing Him in advance or later when we gain in the bargain with Him. We forget the fact that God bestowes 'hitam' and not priyam and in our prayer we should remember this . As said in the beginning, Love is an attitude - a bhava - to unite one another. In our loving God we should unite ourselves with Him as children sit comfortably on the shoulder of their father and viewing and enjoying the surroundings with least bother about their safety which ofcourse is taken care of by the father.


We may take the case of a young couple. Each of them crave for the love of the other. If the love is not passed on either in the material fulfilment or sexual appetite or fulfilment of any other desire they possess, the attitude changes to different emotions like disappointment, anger, and ultimately they end in quarrel. The crux of the problem to this development is that instead of giving love in abundance unconditionally, each one of them crave for the love of the other. Thus they lead a beggar's life always begging and not giving at all.


We may wonder, as said earlier, if each one of us go on giving love, there should be someone to receive it. We interpret love as a friendly attitude or sympathetic attitude forgetting the true meaning of it. Love is a medium where there is neither a giver nor taker. This medium connects man with God, mother with children, a manual worker or a white collar worker with their respective work and ofcourse connecting husband and wife and connecting each one of us with the other. We may think for a moment how it works as a medium. In the ocean how nicely each wave is connected with the other. The base - water is the medium there. Only in the medium of Love we exist and our forgetting the medium causes disturbance to that extent mentally and brings chaos in our relationship with men.





If there is only Love and nothing but Love - an adwaithik truth - what justification is there for our inter-actions seeing multiuplicity everywhere. Hindu philosophy, particularly adwaitha has the answer. We see waves, we see mirage, we see snake, forgetting the reality of water, desert or rope. We are caught in the illusory appearance and we suffer in one way or other. Once we have the intellectual conviction about the reality behind these deceptive appearances, the next step is that we should constantly contemplate/concentrate on the Reality and be one with it - a fulfilment, call it either atma-anuboodhy or Brahma-anuboodhy.


Again, going down and viewing love at the lowest level, there is campus love, teenagers' attraction towards each other, our love towards pets, our love towards Nature and people around us - all of them are expressions of that Love only in a dissipated way passing through a medium of selfishness, smallness, separateness, multiplicity etc., in a concealed form. If only the true reality of Love as fullness, oneness, unity instead of selfishness, separateness and multiplicity, is realised first in the form of intellectual conviction and following that in our anubhavam, our actions come out in a different dimension covered by true love in and out and as Iswara prasadam - thinking of God every moment and there wont be conflicts whatsoever because every expression would be an expression of that LOVE.