Human love
(Sri Aurobindo:) “Human love is mainly vital, when it is not vital and physical together. It is also sometimes psychic + vital. But the Love with a dominant psychic element is rare.”[1]
(Mother to Satprem, 1958:) “If human love came forth unalloyed, it would be all-powerful. Unfortunately, in human love, there is as much SELF love as love for the beloved; it is not a love that makes you forget yourself.”[2]
(Sri Aurobindo:) “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 satisfactions, 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 phrase. It depends on the persons and the circumstances.”[3]
- (Sri Aurobindo, Savitri:)
- “Amazed, his senses ravished with delight,
- He moved in a divine, yet kindred world
- Admiring marvellous forms so near to ours
- Yet perfect like the playthings of a god,
- Deathless in the aspect of mortality.
- In their narrow and exclusive absolutes
- The finite’s ranked supremacies throned abide;
- It dreams not ever of what might have been;
- Only in boundaries can this absolute live.
- In a supremeness bound to its own plan
- Where all was finished and no widths were left,
- No space for shadows of the immeasurable,
- No room for the incalculable’s surprise,
- A captive of its own beauty and ecstasy,
- In a magic circle wrought the enchanted Might.
- The spirit stood back effaced behind its frame.
- Admired for the bright finality of its lines
- A blue horizon limited the soul;
- Thought moved in luminous facilities,
- The outer ideal’s shallows its swim-range:
- Life in its boundaries lingered satisfied
- With the small happiness of the body’s acts.
- Assigned as Force to a bound corner-Mind,
- Attached to the safe paucity of her room,
- She did her little works and played and slept
- And thought not of a greater work undone.
- Forgetful of her violent vast desires,
- Forgetful of the heights to which she rose,
- Her walk was fixed within a radiant groove.
- The beautiful body of a soul at ease,
- Like one who laughs in sweet and sunlit groves,
- Childlike she swung in her gold cradle of joy.”[4]
- ↑ Letters on Yoga – IV, p.301
- ↑ Mother's Agenda 1951-1960, 9 August 1958
- ↑ Letters on Yoga – II, p.339
- ↑ Savitri, p.105, “The Kingdom of Subtle Matter”
See also