Love...I
Love itself is intemporal. Only the jivanmukta (libéré vivant) knows it in its plenitude, and he lives in it. Probably only those who have experienced the effulgence of such a one have known it even at second hand, though it may perhaps be experienced temporarily by people in some samadhis or ecstasies. What we know as love is perhaps a reflection of that in muddy water darkened by the contents of our ego and misapplied to desire - desire for possession and sensual desire. In so far as any of us may be capable of caritas we may have the clearest reflection of it that is possible on the plane on which we normally live.
Our experience of love is affective: love itself is buddhi - a ray of Reality. We have been led to regard buddhi as what we think of as Pure Intelligence. No doubt it is that, but it should also be Pure Emotion, equally devoid of thought and of affectivity. It is what-it-is, but in order to conceive it we need to envisage both aspects.
'Union'
Human love is a will-o'-the-wisp. How could any human being either possess or unite with another? Psychically, there is nothing possessible to possess, nothing dispossessible to give, nothing with which to effect union. Physically, contact of surfaces is only juxtaposition, and no simulation of penetration can ever go deeper than surfaces.
Whatever we may do we find a surface opposed to another surface.
On the plane of Manifestation each of us is utterly separate and alone. Union is only on the plane of Reality, and thereon mutual possession is universal and absolute.
Our notion of love is perhaps a nostalgia for that.
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Self-sacrifice? ... If only it were possible!
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What we think of as self-sacrifice has been described as the supreme form of selfishness.
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