Love and Loving

Wisdom Teachings
Essences of the Teachings
Book: On Love

Love is the basis of the existence of the entire universe, it is the synthesizing principle. Love brings and holds everything together. Through love even seemingly opposites can be brought together, because it makes us realise the opposites as complementary, mutual supplements: “The source of love unites all that exists.” (Infinity I, 203)

Pure love is magnetic and impersonal. Like the currents flowing through a magnet it doesn’t choose where to flow and what it wants to attract. The Masters of Wisdom live in this divine magnetism of Love. They don’t attract people; however, people get attracted by them. They give each soul the measure of freedom it wants. There are people who work with constraint or animal magnetism; they try to tie people to themselves and to control them. This has nothing to do with love, but is manipulation and keeps people like prisoners. Pure love isn’t possessive, but sets free.

The soul radiates will, love and intelligent activity as its three essential qualities. When the soul reflects in the personality, the three qualities normally get distorted: Will becomes desire, divine Love and Wisdom become emotion or opinions coloured by emotions; and intelligent activity becomes concrete intellect, rational mind. The infinite gets circumscribed; Love gets limited and becomes personal love: We love our own people and not the others; we have likes and dislikes and judge others according to this. Emotional love restricts, it gives us the feeling that someone grabs us by the neck and presses us. Through their emotional love some mothers lose their children, the children run away, because they don’t want to be pocketed.

To demand something in the name of love is nothing but the wish to possess. Many commit the mistake that they demand the love of others. This doesn’t work. Love arises in us by itself or by our having a good conduct of life. If couples demand love of each other, they at best annoy the other. We often also see broken marriages; in most cases the relation was based more on outer attraction which later became aversion. Many just wish to dissolve their union because of the behaviour of the other; they grate on each other, but stay together because of social reasons.

Today’s society doesn’t distinguish between love and desire, and even sex is mistaken for love. When a young man looks at a young woman and vice versa, there is rather desire and emotion in the eyes than love. Instead of saying “I love you”, we would have to say: “I have fallen into emotion.” We are calling it love, but are looking for satisfaction of our desires. This is a distortion. When we furthermore have a desire for the other sex in an unlawful manner; even an advanced disciple falls. To satiate one’s sex impulses in unlawful ways causes inner havoc and creates outer problems.

As long as man and woman are not balanced in themselves, there is the urge of the man for a woman and of the woman for a man. This yearning is replenished on the spiritual path, not by the experience of sex, but by a supply from within. Firstly we are given to understand that the partner whom we choose and marry is our life partner and that we are not only ethically, morally and socially bound to him, but also spiritually. Through him Nature supplies the necessary help and training. The modern fashion of a “spiritual wife” in addition to the wife is a farce and a mockery of womanhood. There is no bending of rules for individual conveniences. The living together in harmony with the spouse would enable adjustments at psychical and physical levels, and the biological needs are satiated on either side. Also healthy and harmonious bodies can be given to incarnating souls. This in itself is a grand ritual. When the progeny, in due course of time, works for the welfare in general, the ritual is fulfilled. In a further step man slowly raises to the devotional state, in the sense that man feels the feminine aspect more in the heart and woman the masculine aspect. At this stage man is recommended to contemplate upon the Divinity as female deity, and the woman upon the Divine as male deity. In India many turn to the path of discipleship in this way. Here emotion dies, but true love lives.

Pure love cannot co-exist with desire. Many initiates have demonstrated that there can be love without desire and emotion. Thus Jesus loved Maria Magdalena, but he didn’t desire her in any way. Others were desiring her without loving her. From an initiate there is only love and light flowing all the time, but never desire, for when the plane of truth is reached, craving and desire no longer exist. For him love also doesn’t need a particular person, object or place like it is the case with us, because he lives in love. Living in love is different from loving. To love is a personal approach, and living in love is the life in the ocean of love or in soul quality. When we live in love, love pours through us and we know no preferences. However, when we start loving, this is a personal aspect.

Much is being talked about people having to love their neighbours, but with the request to love the others or even our enemies we cannot live love. Love arises out of the experience of unity; through the realisation of unity love automatically begins to flow. When we retain this unity of existence in the background of our mind, we find the One in ourselves and also in all others, no matter if they like us or not.

Love means to care of something; ignoring is no love. When we have love in ourselves, giving and sharing is also natural, without a bad feeling. With love we can make easily a sacrifice. Money is an excellent means to demonstrate love; in the hands of persons of good will it can do a lot of good. If we don’t have the necessary means, we can earn money or also help people with other abilities. A lot is also given to us by Nature out of pure love. We should realise these gifts and be grateful.

On the physical plane we can understand the cohesive power of love as blood. Through blood a lot of magic is done, since it has a magnetic impact. At the level of colour it can be seen as the red colour that emerges before dawn. It is the coral-red, called Ardra in Sanskrit. The corals themselves carry very much the energy of Ardra. The touch of corals stimulates the heart quality and the life principle in us. Corals give us the warmth of love, not bodily craving, but the kind of belonging. In the East many people carry coral chains. They should not be worn over the robes, so that other people see them, but in such a fashion that they touch the heart region, then only they give their impact. Coral-red is a protective colour; essentially it is the sublime quality of the heart lotus. The seers realised in it the inherent divine quality of blood. Meditating upon this colour dispels impurities from the aura and makes us receive the true characteristics of love. In India they make ritual worship of the divine Mother with coral-red saffron powder and with coral-red flowers. Thus the beauty of the Mother’s love is worshipped, since she weaves everything together and holds it in mutuality and interdependence. Nothing exists independent by itself: the minerals, plants, animals, the humans and the devas – all is beautifully intertwined through mutuality, interdependence and through the thread of cordiality.

Sources used: K.P. Kumar: Hercules: The Man and the Symbol / Venus. The Path to Immortality / The Aquarian Cross / seminar notes. The World Teacher Trust - Dhanishta, Visakhapatnam, India. Infinity I. Agni Yoga Society, New York (www.agniyoga.org ).