Yoga
The Yoga of Love
Abstract
This article glimpses at the evolutionary aspects of the Yoga of Love, seen through the lens of personal experience. For true Love to manifest inside, certain steps are needed, the most important being to align oneself to the Truth itself. To love truly one must live truly. We must rise above ourselves to reach the summits of Love. The ideal must always be set before us and we must become vast and give ourselves entirely to it.
No word is more misunderstood and abused than love. There is so much base content that masquerades under its compelling disguise. It would be true to say that love has many gradations. At this stage of our evolution, what counts for love is a torrid mix that deadens and distorts this supreme state. Really though, it takes only the tiniest morsel of pure love to transform our murky emotions into something very vast. It requires only a small fraction to lift our whole being. When installed inside, there is no greater surety of health. It has a mighty power. Indeed if the totality of true Love were to descend, it is certain that we would all explode…. So humanity as a whole is still not ready for it. It is up to the individual to prepare the ground for the future.
When the heart is pure and aspiring, it feels love. However, the whole complex nature needs to lift and harmonise for true Love to permeate completely in the being. So many of its parts have a way of barricading this force. If we live in the heart more than in the head, it really helps. The heart is the channel and transmitter of love and in those moments when it touches our true nature, love automatically dawns. Love appears, bringing drops of bliss (Ānanda) to saturate our being. Love and Ānanda come hand in hand: we give love and receive Ānanda. We begin to realise why Love and Ānanda are the twin pillars of all existence.
These brief moments have a way of changing our life and become imprinted in our consciousness for all eternity. The descending ecstasy is generally as much as our mortal frame can bear. Initially Love comes in sudden rushes when the mind is quiet and the vital still. If our nature is agitated it stays away. Veering between states of duality, we tend to play hide and seek with this state more than any other. But anything simple, like a photograph or a supreme act of kindness, might inspire it. Just repeating the word ‘Love’ sincerely from the depths of our heart can be enough. There is no set procedure for the heart; it opens as spontaneously as a flower blooms. But it needs to be constantly nourished. With neglect it only becomes withered and grey. It is such a good place to live in!
For love to manifest fully in us, certain steps are required. The one essential is to align to the Truth. The Mother has often stated that the Truth needed consolidating first before Love could pour into terrestrial existence. What is evident on the cosmic level is certainly valid for the individual. The whole practice of sādhanā concentrates on establishing a bridge with our Truth inside. It can be a painstaking process. All those chinks in our nature need erasing if we invite the Truth to step forward. For virtually all, this alignment is a lifetime’s work. However as we align our well-being increases. The progress is cumulative and mounts as our true nature harmonises everything inside. Our joy expands as we get closer and closer to our core. And as the inside governs the outside our body starts to benefit too. The progress is integral as we are calling a consciousness that brings order to the multiplicity of our entire nature. Surely there can be no better way of opening to the vibration of Love than this. When the Truth fully radiates inside, our human nature can finally be mastered. Love is unleashed and the joining is complete.
So to realise true Love we need a solid grounding in the Truth. We walk a very perilous path without this understanding. After all, Truth is the soil from which Love grows. However they are not separate entities. They work together hand in hand inside all of us. Each is intrinsically contained in the other. Everything is one: Love is Truth and Truth is Love. Ultimately if we want to love truly we have to live truly and vice versa. Love cannot be set apart from the rest of our living; it has to blossom in an atmosphere of Truth. But it’s not like one thing won’t come until the preceding condition is fully reached. Many of us feel an aspiration to the path of Love rather than the path of Knowledge or, for that matter, Works. It depends on our calling as well as the proclivities of our nature.
By our exposure to Truth we start realising the Love that we aspire for. A greater knowledge starts to dawn and this knowledge enriches our love. The knowledge spontaneously guides us and we open more and more to the true vibration of love. The Love we yearn for is not ephemeral. It is not physical gratification. There is no sense of trade or expectation. Love in return is not sought because the essence of divine Love is unconditional. It is free of all attachment. We start to understand that attachment is merely an extension of ego. In fact the overriding characteristic of all human love is attachment. The moment it appropriates it diminishes into attachment. We realise that the ego must be shed for us to open fully to the radiance of love.
In a very real sense we have to rise above ourselves to reach out for this summit of Love. We have to rise above our humanity. We have to become this Love and to become it we need to hold the ideal before us at all times. Its aspects are so sublime we are incapable of fully realising them. Something new has to lift us up and without surrender it is an impossible task. Occasionally we might even slide down to murkier depths but when that happens we must realign and climb again. We hold onto our truth as we climb this mountain of Love.
Love is a whole new level of consciousness and we must understand that to attain this love ultimately our being needs to be divinised too. A disinterested and long-term perspective really helps; we are not looking for immediate return. We only aspire to fulfil our divine potential: it is a calling. That is our final destination, maybe many lifetimes ahead, but there is no other way. I believe that once our soul has set its course, eventually the aim will be realised. This not only instils well-being for this life but for future incarnations too.
We can work through affirmation. With affirmation, we are stating a truth which may be unrealised but which is present in seed form. By repeating in front of the mirror, “I manifest unconditional love” we are stating a truth that resonates with the Truth deep inside. It vibrates with our innate divinity although the immediate reality may be very different. We are not speaking from the perspective of linear time but from what exists in a vaster, multi-dimensional context. Present, past and future merge and become one. The words help to bring the Truth forward and precipitate radical change inside. With continual repetition, the words soak into our subconscious and purify our nature. They encourage the seed to grow.
We need to develop an atmosphere of Love. We do this because we are also manifesting our Truth when we mirror this Love. We need to carry this truth around with us at all times. The vibration is highly contagious. In essence we are Love and Love is at the source of all existence. We build this atmosphere not for appreciation but because we are expressing our deepest truth. We need to watch ourselves very closely for the least signs of insincerity. We offer anything that panders the ego. The Mother says:
“So long as the ego is there, one cannot love.
“Love alone can love, Love alone can conquer the ego (1).”
Initially this may seem a tall order for us, but it is always good to aspire for the heights. This atmosphere is an armour that protects and insulates us from negativity. Whenever I am facing an intimidating situation, I call for a bubble of Love to descend around me and every menace simply disappears. I find the protection needs to be erected selflessly and without hankering for results for its influence to be invincible and complete. If the connection is lost, the bubble can easily get punctured from outside: it is an exercise in true living.
What we give and receive in love is very much a reflection of our consciousness. The level of our love is also a measure of our purity. With Love there can be no half-measures. Either we join the pack or give ourselves entirely to it. “To become conscious of the Divine Love, all other love must be abandoned (2).” What a startling statement! Once we realise this, we begin to understand the true meaning of Love. Really though, Love cannot be expressed in words: our consciousness must become vast to open to the experience. It is the only way.
References
1. The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother, Volume 14. 2nd ed. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust: 2004, p. 121.
2. Ibid., p. 119.
James Anderson is a member of SAIIIHR and coordinating editor of NAMAH.
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