Love is divine

Dr Satish  K Kapoor

‘He whom love touches not, walks in distress’ - Plato, Symposium 197

Love is a natural expression of the higher self, and thus fundamental to existence.  It burns like fire, purifies like water and bears hardships like the earth. It never fails like the gravitational pull, and is limitless like space. It is light as the air, and gives flight to images and concepts that reflect in art, architecture, poetry and other creative forms. Falling in love is human; rising is divine. 

Love has its roots in purity, faith and virtue. Its stem is honesty, its flowers, beauty, and its fruit, wisdom. Love of the divine entails recognition of the cosmic spirit in all, and respect of life in its myriad forms – from plants, birds and animals to humans. Love leads to empathy that is born of the soul, crystallized by the mind and expressed through actions. It is the righteous path that leads one to one’s real self. Human love is often self-seeking and gives short-term satisfaction; divine love is selfless and fulfilling. The former gives pleasure, the latter bliss. Human love has a personal, social or cultural bonding – it caters to the desires of the corporeal self. Divine love is unbound and unconditional – it is love for love’s sake. Human love can fail or fade out due to loss of trust, ideological differences, termination of life or the exigency of circumstances, but divine love is lasting as it remains unaffected by extraneous factors.

In terms of guna-s, love is of three types – sattvic, rajasic and tamasic. Sattvic love has a great moral and spiritual beauty to it. It is loving others the way one loves oneself. Sattvic love is profoundly tender and unalloyed, like the love of mother for her child, or of soulful companions for each other. 

Rajasic love has the element of self in it. It is passionate with a purpose, as in case of romantic or conjugal love, goaded by primary biological or social instincts. Tamasic love is selfish, sensuous, fickle, and often one- sided. It is a violent emotion that fails to hear the voice of reason or of conscience, as during adolescence, or in case of the sick minds who indulge in crime and violence in the name of love. Love is interplay between eternal and temporal existence, between timelessness and time. It provides glow to the body, harmony to the mind and beatitude to the soul. Shabari who first tasted each jujube-fruit before serving it to Shri Rama, gopi-s of Vrindavan who danced to the notes of Shri Krishna’s flute, Mirabai and Surdas, whose devotional feelings were metamorphosed into soulful prayers, or Sarmad who saw god in his executioner, were all imbued with divine love, which the Sufi saints classified as ishq majazi, love of physical form or ishq haqiqi, love of the formless Being. Love does not need the other for its expression; it simply is, like the grandeur of nature.  Yet it covers the whole gamut of human relations and sensibilities, and provides the key to harmonious living. Love is god; god is love. Says Kabir:

The path of love is narrow;
It cannot contain two;
When I am there, the Lord is out. When ‘I’ cease to be,
The lord is there.

(Dr Satish K Kapoor is a noted author, historian and spiritualist based in Jalandhar city)