The Yoga of Love
The Psychology of Love
Without Awareness the mind and the intellect cannot function. The duty of the intellect is thinking. The mind is responsible for expressing feelings and emotions. The direct realization “I am the Self” neutralizes the vasanas, which purifies the mind of dualistic thoughts and the negative feelings that arise from them, causing the experience of non-dual love. Non-dual love is an unconditional continuous feeling of satisfaction toward oneself, one’s life and the world. It is described in the Bhakti Sutra, the most authoritative Vedantic text on Love, as continuous intense love of the Self. Because the Self is everything that is, bhakti, devotion, is love of everyone and everything.As we pointed out in Chapter 2, If I am whole, limitless, complete and unconditioned yet think I’m limited, incomplete, conditioned and separate, I’ve made a mistake. Guilty feelings of self-loathing, self-rejection, anger, depression, failure, emptiness, longing, desire, arrogance…and others…develop unconsciously because of this mistake. When a mistake is made fear of unwanted consequences arises. This unnamed existential anxiety affects the ego’s ability to act creatively and spontaneously. The longer this mistake remains uncorrected and we remain unaware of our real nature the deeper the unconscious reservoir of fear becomes. It leaks out and attaches itself to myriad things, polluting our contact with the world and generating an unfortunate identity...the idea that there is something ‘wrong’ with us, that we are ‘sinners.’ Because it is untrue, a negative identity is unacceptable so it is denied and projected in the form of negative feelings about someone or something, perhaps God or fate or a family member. To hide the guilt that comes from putting blame elsewhere we often attack. But attack reinforces the guilt. To make matters worse attack requires a defensive state of mind…we must be ready to defend ourselves when our bad karma comes bouncing back. The more we defend ourselves the more we reinforce the guilt. Attack is projected fear, so defense is an attempt to protect against fear, but like all ignorance inspired thoughts, it reinforces the emotion it is intended to relieve. This nasty complex of emotions is unconscious and universal, the result of Maya or ‘Original Sin,’ and although we are not personally to blame because the mistake was made for us by Maya we need to take responsibity and set out to correct it…it if we want to be free to love unconditionally.
The most fundamental expression of our sense of separation and incompleteness is the need for love…even though love is our nature. The most common expression of this need is the desire for ‘relationship’ even though we are always in relationship to everything…the Self ‘within’ and the world ‘without.’
The idea behind the desire for a love relationship is simple: it is expected to produce positive feelings and emotions which will erase the sense of separation and make the ego happy. Is this belief true? Is there a situation in this world that involves somebody ‘out there’ who can solve the happiness issue by loving me and/or providing me with a love object?
Objective Solutions
A. ‘In love’ relationships
The vasanas are subtle and powerful. We become aware of them when they appear as our likes and dislikes. Likes and dislikes, attractions and aversions, are just memories of pleasant and unpleasant experiences. Guided by our likes and dislikes we choose our relationships. When likes and dislikes are operating the universal non-discriminating love that is the nature of the Self is consciously or unconsciously directed toward certain ‘special’ objects and away from others. This influence of conscious and unconscious factors conditions love and produces attachment to objects. Attachment is the belief that an object that once supplied happiness should continue to supply it over time, hopefully forever. Or, conversely, that an object that once caused pain should never cause pain again.
What actually happens when we fall in love? The unfulfilled desire for love causes the mind to fantasize in line with its likes and dislikes. When the mind obsessively dwells on an object, the desire or aversion for that object increases. Desire is suffering. When a real life approximation of the fantasy person appears the desire for completeness temporarily disappears, the mind becomes still and the bliss that is the nature of the Self floods the mind. The feelings that arise from this blissful condition of the mind are called love. Believing that the bliss is coming from the love object the mind becomes attached to the love object and a new problem arises, the desire to ‘keep’ the love object. Unfortunately, the love object did not create the sense of separation that produced the desire in the first place. Even if one can tie the love object down with marriage and children or in any other way, desire for completeness does not go away once the relationship is in place; it simply morphs into another desire.
For a relationship to succeed the participants should have accurate information about themselves and each other. To gather information effectively the mind should be clear, alert, focused, observant, and panoramic. But because being in love is so exciting and pleasurable, the ego focuses only on the feeling of love and excludes potentially important information, particularly information about the nature of the love object that might threaten its enjoyment. The intensity of the ‘high’ associated with this feeling is directly proportional to the degree of attachment to the fantasy. And the degree of attachment to the fantasy is related to the intensity and frequency of the vasana for love.As less attractive aspects of the respective personalities surface in unguarded moments to challenge their fantasies the lovers need to continually update their romantic notions about each other. When the love object exhibits behavior that contradicts the fantasy, confusion, doubt and ambivalence arise. Furthermore, because dependence on objects limits one’s innate sense of freedom…and freedom is the human being’s highest value…one develops an unconscious aversion to the love object which manifests in many ways: criticism, complaint, argument, envy, and perhaps even hostility.
Seeking love from others is fraught with anxiety and disappointment for other reasons, one of the most obvious of which is that people prone to falling in love obviously don’t know that love is their nature or they wouldn’t chase it. Even if another person has Self love he or she cannot give it to you because it is caused by an unconscious misunderstanding about the nature of the Self. On top of all this it is virtually impossible to keep the illusion of love alive for long because the needs of both people are constantly changing and both people’s relationship to their needs is constantly changing and the context in which the love is happening is constantly changing. Trying to keep the love bubble from breaking while we are engaged in earning a living and raising a family is simply too much to expect. Even people with money in the bank and plenty of leisure find relationship love equally difficult. When coping strategies no longer work the love withers on the vine and, depending on the depth of attachment to our projection may turn into any number of unsavory emotions, including hatred.
In the mad world of object oriented love, likes and dislikes seem to be a reasonable basis for a relationship. A man falls in love with a woman because she is vivacious, attractive, and has a beautiful sexy body. She falls in love because he is successful, handsome and wants children. They take out a thirty year mortgage on a lovely home and produce three lovely children. Maintaining this kind of life is stressful for both. To remove the stress he starts drinking and watching sports on TV while she grows fat from overeating. The demands of his wife and kids keep him in a perpetual state of agitation and his desire for them changes into a desire for peace and freedom. Slowly the excitement that caused the attraction to the wife, fades and turns to obligation. Now, instead of wanting what he once wanted he feels trapped. The wife experiences the same emotions and craves peace too. Now, both begin to feel that peace can only be achieved through separation. Whether they get back together or end up mortal enemies, new desires and fears will come into play forcing them to continually react, adjust, and change. As soon as one set of subjective needs is satisfied others emerge from the Unconscious to disturb the relationship. Even if the relationship physically terminates it continues in the minds of both people as a dislike that will color new relationships. If nothing is learned about the way one’s likes and dislikes operate to condition happiness both people may assume that they got the ‘wrong’ person, blow life back into their fantasy person and set out to remove the ignorance inspired emptiness by repeating the same experiment again.
If our couple manages to work though all these subjective and objective obstacles together and see ‘in love’ turn into love, so much the better. But if they don’t and they still crave love from outside, another option is available.
B. The Soul Mate
The ‘soul mate’ relationship is the apparently superior option in the relationship game. Because relationships based only on physical, emotional and intellectual likes and dislikes are so insecure, basing a relationship on spiritual factors is meant to produce the emotional stability and intimacy lacking in ordinary relationships.They can be equally problematic, however, because the value of spiritual qualities, like worldly qualities, is also based on ever changing likes and dislikes. Spiritual qualities do not exist in a vacuum; they are part and parcel of the Subtle Body and as such are conditioned by their opposites. For every transcendent impulse there is an equally powerful need to cling to the securities and pleasures available in the world. For every generous impulse a strong tendency to selfishness lurks in the unconscious mind. For every attraction to the light there is a fascination with the dark. Spiritual or not, when attachment develops an aversion to one’s god or goddess is not far behind because ‘the other’ represents a limitation of one’s innate spiritual freedom. Therefore, the ‘spiritual’ foundation of the relationship is always under attack.
In spite of the problems involved, a spirit based relationship is more likely to succeed than one founded solely on worldly factors. In worldly relationships the ego is king; the relationship is supposed to satisfy its needs for security and pleasure. Conflict in ego based relationships…and all relationships are ego based… is difficult to resolve because both people, no matter how far apart they are on the issue in play at the moment, are essentially ‘right.’ They have…or believe they have…come to their respective points of view honestly. And there is no court of higher appeals to which the conflict can be presented for adjudication. Furthermore, because there is no value for self awareness and spiritual growth conflicts tend to be suppressed. A suppressed conflict is not a resolved conflict and the relationship slowly becomes unworkable as it is colored by unresolved issues.
A spiritual relationship is more likely to succeed because it can present conflicts for resolution to a ‘higher court’ than the respective egos of the love objects. The court of appeals in a spiritual relationship is truth, growth, and unconditional love. Truth means that both parties agree that living non-dual truth is more important than living ‘my truth’ if there is a conflict which there need not be. Growth is a value for sacrificing the dualistic impulses that create conflict before they manifest as karma and disturb the relationship. And unconditional love means that peace and harmony trump attachment to one’s point of view…I would rather be happy than ‘right.’ Because the participants value these qualities more than their personal ‘stuff’ there is a willingness to surrender the conflict at this altar.
But the ‘soul mate’ idea is still an object-oriented solution to the problem of incompleteness. And as we know object-oriented solutions eventually lose relevance and fail. Furthermore, when one is not blessed with the clarity of Self realization one is prone to delusion. So this kind of relationship often tends to be more mate-oriented than soul-oriented. In practice it usually ends up as little more than a ‘spiritual’ justification meant to permit the ego to pursue its self-centered desire for love under the banner of a ‘noble’ idea.
C. Marriage
There is a third objective option, one that seems to have fallen out of favor since the idea of ‘relationships’ appeared in the Sixties…marriage ‘till death do us part.’ The post-war hedonism that broke out after the Fifties was probably a reaction to the perceived limitations of the traditional idea of marriage. The institution of marriage, as it was practiced in the post war years, was indeed stressful but social and economic factors driven by excessive materialism were probably more responsible for its unpopularity than the idea of a lifelong commitment. With economic success instant gratification became a reality. What should have remained a purely economic phenomena extended to all areas of life, including marriage. Mechanics quit taking apart carburetors to find the offending part; they simply swapped the whole thing for a new one. Husbands and wives were reduced to the status of replacement parts.However dismal the statistics on traditional marriage, it is not clear that the ‘relationship’ solution produced any more happiness in the long run. And although it is impossible to know how many traditional marriages are a complete bust, it so happens that many who stuck by their wedding vows found deep and lasting emotional satisfaction… albeit after many ups and downs. When one commits to an ideal and sticks with it growth comes, although slowly. This is not to say that the committed love of another is a satisfactory answer to the deeper need for unconditioned freedom that is the cry of every human heart. But it need not stand in the way…if indeed it is true love. It can become a platform from which one can foray into the infinite.
D. The Householder
Vedic spiritual culture offers another objective solution to the love problem. According to the Vedas the purpose of life is Self realization. The re-discovery that one is whole and complete and lacking nothing destroys loneliness because it frees one’s love…which is the nature of the Self...from its dependence on objects allowing it to flow into everyone and everything. Not only is this kind of love satisfying in itself, but it makes an individual immensely attractive. Consequently, the world beats a path to his or her door.If the goal of life is not to produce offspring but to realize the Self, how does this biological urge fit into the greater scheme of things? According to the Vedas human beings should serially assume and relinquish four limited identities as they pass through the four ‘stages of life.’ These are: student, householder, forest wanderer and the renunciate.
During the student phase the individual is given ethical and moral values, trained in an occupation, taught the karma yoga attitude for dealing with action and the fruits of action and made aware of the ultimate purpose of life. The second phase is devoted to raising a family. To raise a family it is necessary to mate. Mating involves intense emotional excitement and pleasure. When one experiences intense pleasure, attachment to the object of pleasure arises. Attachment to a pleasurable object is generally thought to be ‘love.’ When children arrive a second major attachment appears. To raise a family one needs money and to get money one needs to perform work so work and money constitute a third attachment operating during this phase of life. In fact the householder phase is nothing but an ocean of attachments. An inability to cope with the myriad of attachments of the householder phase is probably the primary cause of the tendency of marriage in desire-oriented societies to fail.
But the Vedic model offers a powerful tool for dealing with attachment. In the first place, marriage is not considered to be an end in itself, just one of the four way stations on the road to liberation. So on the wedding day the respective spouses understand that it need not continue after the children are married and have assumed their place in the society. If marriage is no longer necessary in late middle age, attachment to the idea of marriage will not be as strong as it would be if one felt committed ‘until death do us part.’ Simply agreeing to this possibility removes considerable stress from the marriage. With this understanding it is also possible to emerge from marriage psychologically in tact. Secondly, marriage is considered a sacred duty, not a right. Its purpose is to honor the natural order of creation by supplying offspring that will eventually take one’s place in it. So the fundamental idea of the institution provides an impersonal framework for individuals to work out their basic vasanas (love, work, children, and security) together.
The fundamental spiritual tool to deal with the problems occurring in married life is the karma yoga attitude unfolded in the last chapter. Western societies are desire-oriented societies. Each individual has the ‘right’ to pursue happiness according to his or her desires. In this model the ego is king. As long as it plays by the rules it is entitled to pursue whatever it pleases to gain happiness. While this approach has certain benefits it has one obvious problem; the needs of others, if they are considered at all, are not valued as highly as one’s own. While it is necessary for the individual to take care of his or herself, everything that comes to us in life comes through others, so it is wise to properly understand the importance of society in terms of one’s pursuit of happiness. Desire-prompted rights-oriented societies are afflicted with many social ills, probably because the impact of one’s behavior on others does not have a high value.
The Vedic model, which is the basis of Hinduism and responsible for the stability of marriage in India, offers a duty-based approach to life, the idea being that the road to happiness lies in taking care of one’s duties and obligations to one’s family, caste, occupation and religion first and one’s ‘personal’ needs second. The duty-oriented approach is based on the karma yoga idea which deals with the happiness issue by removing vasana-generated problems through the gradual reduction of the vasanas in preparation for the realization of life’s highest goal. So the primary gift that the society gives a young person about to enter the householder phase is the understanding that the results of his or her actions are not under his or her control. In short, the society cultivates a value for non-attachment. In addition it inculcates an attitude of gratitude for what one already has and encourages devotion to God. Armed with these tools it is quite possible to negotiate the reefs and shoals of marriage and emerge relatively unscathed. Additionally, it should be noted that traditional societies do not produce ‘teen-agers.’ Children turn into young adults without going through this neurotic narcissistic phase. This is especially important for the institution of marriage because children are raised by adults, not by children masquerading as parents.
It remains to be considered how the karma yoga attitude works to promote healthy love relationships. As mentioned above human beings tend define love as attachment to objects that provide happiness. I love my car, my house, my dog, my husband/wife, job, etc. But this kind of love comes at a cost; bondage to the object. Bondage to an object creates conflict with the object in one’s mind because it seems to inhibit one’s freedom. Conflict sinks the ship of relationships. If the result that one wants when one enters a relationship with someone else is love he or she should be prepared for many disappointments because love that comes from others depends on many factors over which one has no control.
What is the best way to deal with the many disappointments that love relationships offer? Should I become angry and resentful? Hurt and depressed? Or should I come to the relationship with the understanding that getting what I want on a daily basis is not up to me and that the failure to achieve a desired result is not a statement about me at all? It neither invalidates the actions I put forth to attain love from my ‘significant other’ nor does it invalidate me. It is simply a statement of the complexity of the matrix in which I live and the seemingly irrational way it delivers experience.
The intensity of a conflict is directly proportional to the desire of a person to remove it. This desire is based on a strong memory of the bliss of harmony with the object. The memory takes the mind away from the specific issues that the conflict produces rendering it inefficient at conflict resolution. A non-attached mind does not run away from conflict but seeks solutions in the present. A non-attached mind is a peaceful mind. A peaceful mind is an attractive mind and on that account alone it does not cause problems that irritate loved ones.
Most conflicts with others are born from conflicts within one’s self. A non-attached mind is an introspective mind capable of self analysis. It can lay inner conflicts to rest before they have a chance to work out and disturb relationships. In any case it is completely unrealistic to expect someone else to resolve one’s inner conflicts, particularly someone with whom one has an attached relationship. So if I view my relationship as a vehicle for spiritual growth and conduct it in an attitude of non-attachment, it will serve, not prevent, the attainment of my ultimate goal…and my relationship will be fulfilling as well.
Success in duty oriented relationships does not depend on the widely unrealistic expectation that each is responsible for the other’s happiness, only that that both do their duty to the relationship…as defined in the scriptures and endorsed by the society. All that is required is that the wife play the wife role and the husband play the husband role. When individuals are freed of the burden of unrealistic personal expectations, real love between husband and wife can flower. No human institution is perfect but the householder concept as practiced in India is more successful in terms of individual and social happiness than the Western model.
If true love happens in the context of a duty-oriented marriage of limited duration and the participants view love relationships as means to an end…and not the end itself…both will be well prepared when the next stage of life dawns. When you understand that you are loved and can love unconditionally major life transitions are easy to face. In Vedic culture the next stage is a conscious search for God. It is called the ‘forest wanderer’ stage. During the householder phase worldly duties and the relationship to one’s spouse and loved ones were in the foreground and one’s spiritual needs were secondary although they were not ignored because religious duties are incumbent on householders.
During the forest wanderer stage one’s spiritual vasana, one’s duty to one’s self, becomes the primary vasana and duties to others assume a subordinate position. The fundamental desire to mate and produce offspring is over, the individual has achieved a degree of financial security so that is possible to live simply without working and, most important, the desire to love and be loved has been laid to rest. Love does not disappear. How could it? It is the nature of the Self. But it is channeled into the desire to know the Self. Mystics of all times and places have made this journey into the ‘desert’ in search of the Self. During this phase the desire for relationship is sublimated into the desire for a ‘relationship’ with one’s Self although in the next stage one discovers that one cannot have a relationship with the Self…because one is the Self. During the forest wanderer phase one gains direct experience of the Self through contact with great souls and various spiritual practices. This provides a clear idea of what one is seeking and the desire to realize the Self becomes a burning ambition.
The final identity one is meant to assume before the discovery of one’s limitless identity as the Self is that of a renunciate. Now the love that motivated one’s spiritual search and produced many epiphanies morphs into a life of constant meditation and inquiry. Outwardly the renunciate dies to the world and inwardly to the idea that he or she is a doer. He or she realizes that the Self is free of action, that there is only one Self and that he or she is It. Or, to formulate it in terms of love, one discovers that one is the love that one was seeking and the spiritual journey ends.