Love is one of the most mysterious feelings that everyone has. Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it the meaning. Love has been given many meanings such as affection, adoration, friendship, lust, passion, tenderness, feeling, affection or devotion. We often get confused in our life if the feeling we have for our loved one is really love or not. People often confuse physical desire, passion, or strong liking for another person with love. However, the same people see such a strong desire simply as a crush once they get out of love.
Although love is often understood as the bond between opposite sexes, it can have various manifestations in human life. The love between mother and child is considered the most sacred and true, as it is devoid of any physical desire and is often called affection. Love for God or a revered person takes the form of devotion that is highly spiritual as it is totally independent of physical attributes. One can also love his country so much that he can give his life for it. We all seem to love many people in our lives, and we often call all forms of attraction love. However, only when we get out of the forces of attraction do we realize that we were not in love. People also call friendship with love.
What then is true love? How is it different from other forms of attraction and likeability? Is there a litmus test that we can have to prove if our love is real or merely an illusion? Gandhi said, “Love never claims, it always gives. Love always suffers, never resents, never takes revenge.”
What is love?
Is it possible that one part of the body has pain while the other part of the body has pleasure? Can you enjoy your favorite movie, if your tooth hurts a lot or you have a fever? Is it possible that one part of the body has a temperature while the other part of the body remains normal?
We all know that it is impossible because all parts of the body are connected to each other and any problem in one part of the body automatically registers and is felt in other parts of the body. Most of the diseases can be easily identified simply by taking a tissue from the body and analyzing it in the laboratory, since all tissues reflect the same behavior in our body.
However, when any physical ailment occurs with any other person, our body is hardly affected. You don’t have a temperature if your neighbor or even your parent or child has a temperature. No one tests the blood of a person’s family to diagnose the disease of any other member of their family.
However, the same cannot be said for the person’s mental ailment. If a member of her family is worried, the pain seems to come from all members of the family. When you see pain and suffering even in an unknown person on the road or even in movies, you cannot control your feelings, which invoke similar pain in you. Psychologists call it sympathy or even empathy because it seems that we are capable of having the same feeling as the other person.
What does it mean? This shows that although the body of all people is different, there is something that unites all the creatures of this world and that is common to all beings. Such a common entity is not physical as it has never been seen or measured by anyone. However, its presence can never be doubted, as we are affected by another person’s emotion, particularly the person we love.
This non-material reality common among people is often called the “universal soul” or “spirit” or God.
The Scriptures believe that the individual soul of the person is a spark of this universal spirit that permeates everything, just as a drop of an ocean is part of the ocean. However, the soul of individuals, being a non-material entity, does not occupy any space. The influence of the soul is often limited in the person’s body.
However, by the magic of love, the soul can expand and expand so that it can encompass the whole world in the Self and love them as one loves the Self. Similarly, by the emotion of hate, the individual soul can shrink and shrink until the person who loves no one even begins to hate himself.
Love and passion
Indian philosophers believed that the soul is the cause and origin of the body and mind of all living things. This individual soul is part of the Universal Spirit or God. Therefore, the physical and mental functions of the person are governed by the soul.
The essential difference between love and any other form of attraction is that love is not physical or mental but spiritual. Love is purely a spiritual experience as it originates from the Soul. However, since the Soul is the master of the body and mind, it also looks both physical and logical. Therefore, when the person is in love, his attraction to her love can appear physical if the soul so desires. Love also seems perfectly logical since the mind itself is controlled by the soul.
However, the essential character of love is that it is spiritual. If a man loves someone, his soul reaches out to encompass the soul of his beloved in such a way that both souls become one and develop a bond with each other. They both love their original nature and transform to become complementary to each other to form a single entity. In this way, love is like the bond between two or more atoms of water, that is, Hydrogen and Oxygen, which when joined become one and lose the nature of the individual atom. The properties of water are radically different from those of hydrogen or oxygen. Thus, when they are in love, individuals lose their identities since the bond develops not at the level of the body or the mind, but at the level of the soul, the essence of people.
Therefore, when in love, the person’s self extends to the loved person’s self so that they become one. The individuality of your body and soul is lost and a new soul is created by the synthesis of the souls of loved ones. Therefore, you feel happy when your loved one is happy and you feel sad when your loved one is sad, since you do not have a separate identity from your loved one. Robert A. Heinlein has rightly said,
“Love is that condition in which another person’s happiness is essential to your own.”
In the same way you cannot see your loved one unhappy since that puts you in the same emotional stage. If you love someone, what you fear most is losing them. It is rightly said,
“Every man is afraid of something. That’s how you know he’s in love with you; when he’s afraid of losing you.”
Passion: physical attraction
Passion on the other hand is purely physical and is governed by the laws of physics. Although the attraction is very real, often much stronger than love, it lasts a long time. It can be lost as soon as the physical union occurs. It is governed by the laws of induction of physics. When two objects have opposite charges, they strongly attract each other. However, as soon as they come into contact with each other, they neutralize each other and the attraction is removed. If one charge is more than the charge of another, they are charged at the same charge, which creates the forces of repulsion instead of attraction.
This is what happens with all physical attractions. You fall in love with a beautiful person and achieving it seems to be the most desirable thing in the world. However, once you have her, the attraction becomes less and less and soon loses its strength. Unless the physical attraction leads to soul bonding, love soon shatters and both people try to get out of it as hard as they realized when they felt they had fallen in love.
Friendship: mental attraction
Friendship is also often confused with love, particularly if the friendship is between people of the opposite sex. The necessary nature of friendship is that it is based purely on the meeting of minds. People become friends when they like other people’s thoughts. However, friends are replaceable, as there is no spiritual union between friends. When people develop different thoughts, the friendship breaks down. The change of friends does not leave any permanent mark on the soul, since friendship is never based on the union of the soul.
However, friendship is automatic between people who love each other. When there is soul union, the physical and mental union is automatic. The only difference is that people in love are friends without even being aware of it. You can’t be friends with yourself since you are. The same occurs with love. However, when separation occurs, then it only forces it if the attraction is realized and people understand how much they love and need another person. The lovers are therefore true friends, since such friendship is free from adjustment, since the lovers have understood each other so well that they know the mind of their beloved from their own mind. Therefore, the question of misunderstanding and confusion does not arise.
The search for true love
It is therefore evident that love is a spiritual experience of human beings that manifests itself in the meeting of souls. However, since the body and mind are manifestations of the soul in the physical realm, love takes the form of passion and friendship. Attraction at the level of body and mind are a creation of nature that unites the loved one and unites his soul. Therefore, all love can start from the physical or mental level, but soon it must reach the level of the spirit which is the true cause and source of love.