PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE

The word love itself is very philosophical, romantic and emotional, and has been the core of human relationships. Several books have been written, several plays are performed, and several movies have been made, yet the word love is the most mystical and beyond the understanding of an ordinary human being.

In the modern world where people have no time to deliver or express this natural emotion, it has become more of an idiom for demonstrative feelings. In some cases, the word or feelings of love have become more synonymous to the term ‘Lust’ where the physical desire is the sole cause of its invocation. And once this pseudo desire is fulfilled, the feeling of love evaporates like camphor. Therefore we are forced to think whether the  love of Romeo and Juliet or Laila and Majnu or Siri and Faryad or Meera and Krishna were also superficial or rather true with eternal feelings without succumbing to any desires. And if it was true love then what makes it different from the pseudo love or untrue love.

Scientifically the emotion of love is triggered by the part of the brain called the hypothalamus and the related endocrine glands. Once the feeling of love is generated and the neurotic activity is electrified, one feels a sense of compassion towards a person or other living creature, and object. It also creates intense interpersonal affection towards the other person. Depending upon the intensity and motive of this feeling, testosterone and estrogenic fluids are released by the brain to the blood.

However, the idea is not to write a thesis on this but to discuss the types of love we feel towards each other in our normal lives, and then to see where we stand when we claim to love people around us; and whether our feelings are genuine, selfless or self-centric, whether we love somebody because we are in need of them, or the feeling of love has come from the deepest part of our hearts.

As I see it, philosophically love can be categorized into seven different types:

1)      Love due to natural bond (Natural Love)

2)      Love due to compassion (Compassionate Love)

3)      Love due to necessity (Temporary Love)

4)      Love due to lust ( Lustful Love)

5)      Love that is superficial (Demonstrative Love)

6)      Love to Oneself (Self Centric Love)

7)      Love due to devotion (Devotional Love)

A mother’s love towards a child, or love between own blood relatives can be considered under the first type. This natural quality has been bestowed upon every living creature on this world and for that, no effort is required. It comes naturally unless we are crooked enough to pollute this natural feeling.

Interpersonal love between husband and wife or two different persons and/or with other living creatures can be considered as the love of the second type. My topic of discussion will be mainly centered towards this type of love which may also fall under another category depending upon the desire and motives of love.

We love our employer or employee or clients or donors or providers due to our reliance upon them for our livelihood or to maintain our lifestyles. As a result, such love may fall under the third category. Any love which activates our endocrine glands only for the purpose of temporary pleasure may be categorized as the love of the fourth type. In this situation the feeling of love evaporates with the fading of intravascular activity. We generally express superficial love, in order to show off to other people that we really love them, whereas the truth is that the person showing the love does not mean it seriously.

The love due to devotion is Para natural and very few people experience this love. Love to the divine with full affection, having the feeling of complete surrender is devotional love. In this love, the emotion is of the purest level and a person is longing for the divine with full faith and trust.

Now I would like to discuss the most contentious category of love and would like to invoke a debate whether we really love our partners, family members or friends? As I perceive, if one really loves another person and that person may be his wife or her husband or other family members or a friend, then that true love should not expect any return from the other person. If we expect any return, then in the process we are trying to conduct a business.

Sometimes I am dismayed seeing people kissing several times in a day and suddenly I see them breaking off. In this case did they really love each other in the first place? Was it all pretentions of love to fool for personal advantage? If they truly loved each other then they should have been tolerant enough to adjust with the difference in mentality and personality. A person cannot become bad or good overnight. There are signs in daily life which tells us about a person’s character and personality which should have been noticed and thought over before outpouring the emotion of love. And if it was true love then it should have survived the litmus taste of time. True love breaks all barriers of anger, ego and discomfort and even tries to look for beauty in a beast. Therefore to me it was a demonstrative love or temporary love or lustful love and it disseminated once the purpose is served.

Hence, we should look within ourselves that in reality do we expect anything from our loved ones or it is just a pure love, free of all expectations? Pure love is based on the foundation of trust, confidence and sacrifices in small things in our daily lives. Thus, if we love a person then are we willing to make sacrifices? That sacrifice will require some mental adjustment with our desire, ego, anger and overall personality.

To provide examples, in our daily life we claim to love our wife or husband but ignore the pain or suffering she or he goes through in her or his day to day life. If we really care for them then we should feel the same pain and sufferings and try our level best to minimize them. We all claim that we love our children but we are not willing to take pain in shaping their lives. Here I mean to create an exemplary life by sacrificing or suppressing our own worldly desires and pleasures for their sake. But instead of doing that, we start debating with ourselves that God has given us only one life and we should enjoy it. Therefore this feeling itself defies the meaning of true love. In case of our friends and relatives including our parents we keep talking that we love them. If we really love them then there should be a sense of longing for them. If the feelings of yearning for their company are not there then it is not love but just to fill a vacuum in our mind or overcome our guilt sense or to pass time. 

I have also come across several people who show self-centric love. It means that they love to love themselves more than anybody else and for the sake of their own pleasure; they are not willing to adjust or sacrifice with anything and with anybody. I will demure in saying that they are the sole cause of their own pleasures or sufferings. These people at times may be heartless in fulfilling their desires at the cost of humility and as such; their love towards another person is more demonstrative and superficial.

What can I say about humanly love when, people even deceive God? I heard many people saying that they believe in and love God. But their love for God keeps changing as per their comfort and suitability. If one really loves God then it means that one has been able to develop a strong emotional connection with the almighty. This strong emotional connection cannot be developed unless one has complete faith and trust in divinity. The true love towards divinity makes one’s nature mellow, humble, and egoless and one becomes calm and stable in all situations. If this has not happened then it will be a mere belief and their visits to the temple, church or synagogue will be more a customary or ritualistic.

Therefore, I would like to invite your comments on this topic, which has been discussed and has been in the minds of many. I have written this article the way I have perceived and I would like to share your perception on the topic.

I wanted to add a poem in Hindi called “Pyaar ki Paribhasha” (The Definition of Love) written last year which describes the meaning of true love but in order not to make this blog  long and boring for English readers, I may share with you in my future postings.

Suman Saran Sinha

THE PHILOSOPHY OF HAPPY HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS

The issue of human relationship has been the most difficult to handle in our day to day life. Somewhere there is a problem between two brothers or parents with their offspring or a husband with his wife, or a friend with another friend or a colleague with another colleague or an employer with employees or a boss with his subordinates or vice versa. It is a great predicament to understand how to handle this delicate human issue and in order to balance it out; one party has to compromise with another at the cost of their ego, self respect, dignity, or at the cost of pecuniary loss. And if these compromises are not made, then there will be friction and rifts in the human relationship at the cost of losing bondage of kinship, marital relationships, or friendships, or universal brotherhood, or even losing a job.

I think our social structure and education system has contributed a lot in mishandling this human dilemma. We all go to schools and colleges to gain knowledge but unfortunately, most of the education system is focused towards teaching books which are going to make us successful in a particular vocation for survival. Medical science can only provide the physiology, anatomy or functionality of a human mind and the science of psychology can explain the state and reactions of such minds in particular circumstances. Every branch of psychology handles a particular issue; how the thought process is evolved and its relationships with the outside world. However the spiritual psychology or the metaphysics may contain the answer to our mental woes, if analyzed or deciphered spiritually and consciously.

The philosophy of metaphysics describes the fundamental nature of being and its relationship with the world. From the time of Aristotle to the present age, several research projects have been conducted in this direction, but it is still difficult to understand this philosophy from a common man’s point of view. And unless we understand this theory of relationships with our body, soul, mind and matter, it will be difficult to explain why human behaviour is so varied and what causes it to be so amazing. Like some, my knowledge of this philosophy is also limited, hence I would like to discuss here how I have perceived human relationships due to my spiritual understanding and what causes people to be so different from each other. If we are able to understand this secret, then we will have no grudges or grievances with each other, which will ultimately build a strong society and human relationships free of all ills.

In order to understand this, we will have to analyze the character of a person, how it is made or what circumstances contributed in its creation. As I perceive, the cause of formation of characters depends upon three factors - the spiritual or metaphysical factors, biological factors and environmental factors. Unless we analyze these three factors, it will not be possible to explain the making of a character and unless we understand this, we will not be able to understand how to live happily with each other in this world. It is hard for me to summarize this intuitive and complicated philosophy in one or two pages. I hope I am able to make points of this topic clear to my readers. I can further expand this topic by responding to your comments.

As per my transcendental understanding of this philosophy, every human being or every soul has its own characteristics. Those characteristics are formed depending upon the evolution of a soul. A soul is evolved through the process of re-birth and as such, in every birth the soul is influenced by the actions or karmas. If the soul has gone through pleasure or suffering, the good karmas or bad karmas then accordingly the sub atomic part of the soul which is in the form of energy, gest coded accordingly and carry those characteristics to the next life. This is the reason that in spite of one's best effort, one is carried away by the influence of its basic nature with what a soul is marked.

The biological factors contribute in the creation of the outer forms of the body where the soul resides. In this case, the law of genetics work in the making of the personality, therefore the saying goes - 'Like father like son'. This likeness may not only be in personality, but in behaviour as well.

The third major factor is environmental, in which a person is born and grows to adulthood. This factor may include the family code of conduct, social rules and regulations, educational opportunity, financial affluences or shortcomings, moral and ethical environment, religious influences etc. and in order to make this article short, I will not like to deliberate much on this factor.

Now the environmental factors may be managed to upgrade one’s personality and thought process, but what about the biological and spiritual factors? This is the reason that in spite of our best education and environment, our original nature--which comprises biological and spiritual factors--, dominates in our day to day life and makes two people think and respond differently in spite of the same parenting, education, and environment.

Therefore as a layman, I would like to illustrate that every person in the world is marked to behave in a certain way which is very natural for that person but may be different, surprising or shocking for others. And if that person as per his or her true nature, accordingly acts or behaves with others, then it does not surprise me, as that person's mind or thinking process and resulting actions are guided by spiritual, biological, and environmental factors. If a person is bad in nature, then he or she is supposed to behave exactly as his or her nature and it would be very surprising to me if instead of behaving badly, that person would start behaving nicely or vice versa.

I often use this analogy to describe the characteristics of a person to my family that "a tomato will always taste like tomato and not like a potato, but the problem comes when we expect the tomato to taste like a potato. If peppers are hot and bitter then that is their characteristics and nothing is wrong with that. The problem comes when we taste those peppers and burn our tongue."

Similarly, if we do not have enough intelligence to understand the characteristics of a person and thus get deceived, insulted, humiliated, or hurt, then the problem lies with us and not with that person. If we can understand that person or if we can get along with that person knowing his or her true nature, then I do not think there would be any problem. However, if our nature or background or ego or lack of spiritual awareness is hurdles in getting along with that person, then it's our personality problem and in that case we should get away from that person as soon as possible in order to obtain peace of mind.

Therefore, to sum up, instead of breeding anger, hatred, jealousy or other complexes with each other in the family, in society, or in our day to day life, if we could uplift ourselves spiritually, understand these natural qualities of a person and then adjust accordingly, then I am sure it will bring harmony and peace not only in our different relationships, but in the society and the world at large.

Your comments on the issue is solicited.

Suman S.Sinha