Why so much hype is given to romance, and why whole film industries are running on it is that when in the arms of the lover, one melts away and tastes dissolution. In those few moments of emotional orgasm the shields of individuality go down, and the constant buzz of inner resistance is dropped. The individual momentarily ceases, and there is a glimpse of liberation. We can see that the language of love is that of self-annihilation — "I fell for him", "When she looked into my eyes, I died". "She pierced my heart" etc., and the symbolism of love is also that of a heart pierced by an arrow (basically a dying heart). Notice that no one finds all this talk of self-annihilation negative, for they unconsciously know that it is a sublime state. But unfortunately, like with everything else, it is short-lived and the individual springs up with as much force as before. And then arises the struggle to somehow reproduce it.
So, what one is fundamentally looking for is dissolution, not romance (or any other stimulant for that matter). But in unawareness these two get equated, and one pursues the stimulant rather than the core phenomenon. Romance is perhaps the strongest stimulant known to mankind towards prompting this state of dissolution, and that is why it attracts a tremendous amount of attention. People go up to the extent of painting it as the ultimate aim of life, calling their lover as God etc. All this is a result of a mixing up the stimulant to be the core phenomenon.
When we use a specific person at a specific time to withdraw our shields, the flipside is that with other people, or even with the same person at some other time, the shields will go up. Now we become a puppet that gets played around by the outside. We will then wrestle with the outside, try to retain it the same way, demand the other person to remain the same way. Once we define the unlock combination to our own fortress as "I will dissolve only if this happens on the outside" it becomes a chase. And it is very difficult to get back the same unlock combination, the same stimulant, once again. As a result drudgery and misery follow.
When one becomes aware of this he will go after the core phenomenon itself. He has nothing against the stimulant, but it is no more a dependency and a deciding factor. When the shields are mine, when the resistance is mine, why cannot I simply sit by myself and drop it absolutely? Why do I need anyone in front of me for it to happen? Why imagine a complex unlock combination, and then desperately seek it to be fulfilled from the outside?
 |
| Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in Devotional rapture |
The mundane merely fall in love, only to get to their feet in no time; but a devotee collapses into nothingness in his ultimate love for the Supreme, where he is absent and That alone is.
Acharya,Pranam. Thank you for blogging again. Your videos in youtube and this blog are so helpful for my self enquiry. Please continue your videos also as you promised :)
ReplyDeleteNamaste,Thanks for your thought provoking writings. Each line in your blog is like dissecting love&bhakti with razor sharp intellect:-) I certainly respect bhakti than mundane love which could be sometimes just sensory masked as love.
ReplyDeleteBut aren't mundane love & divine love stages of emotional evolution as long as one is watching himself? While mundane love needs an external (gross) stimulus of a person temporarily, a saguna bhakta needs an external (subtle) stimulus of his lord as a form/name. Each of them taste that momentary dissolutions and joy perhaps. Stories of some bhaktas say, few of them wept when the pratima of their lord is taken away same like a normal person grieves for his beloved. Saguna bhaktas also fell in love with their lord's 'form' and again they rise up towards nirguna aspect.
It is only in the nirguna bhakta we see this non necessity of a stimuli, be it just the name/thought of his beloved
Now even if one realises verbally the idea of dissolution being primary than the stimuli, intellectually to let go of our strong beliefs( incl.the hidden implied beliefs), to empty the grooves of mind is a challenging process. till we attain realisation the concept of god is also a product of my mind. To realise our mental dependencies takes time and is not a matter of strong will power to just drop it. In mundane love death of beloved might cause us to realise the impermanence of stimuli, but in bhakti we have to kill (or let go of) our stimuli/ forms.To empty our beliefs( incl that of god) shakes the mental foundations we built. So i see gradual thinning of such is a better way for masses, which also may not upset the whole mental balance.
Only on jnana marga and that using will power- we note these changes, while in bhakti/ mundane love the changes happen unconsciously which is like a surgery done with anaesthesia. Probably thats another reason why people feel mundane love easy and delightful. Some bhaktas said they dont need dissolution/ mukti as well.Ref: Sankara in few stotras. Could it be that seeing love and bhakti with the eyes of just bhakti/emotion vis-a-vis with intellect give a different insight altogether?
Namaste, Expression needs intellect. That need not mean its source is intellectual dissection, or that it is through the eyes of the intellect.
DeleteSome of these statements are responses to imagined assertions from the blog. There is nothing in the blog related to that. So I have nothing to say about them. May be they are responses to the conclusions that people may come to reading the blog. They may need that 'But'. You may start a blog or give lecture and clarify more if you wish.
As for other things, Yes, we can add those points, and even more. I just express certain key points to a certain extent and leave it. Just to make people stop and think. What they do further with that is up to them. If they are interested they will probe further (If they ask me questions in the proper way, I will explain a bit more or direct them to some source, but that is more suited to live sessions). Or else they may come to wrong conclusions. That will happen even if you write a thesis (and when you write more, lesser people will read the whole - so it is a choice you make). So at some point one will stop. There is always a 'But', some exception, some extension, to what is said. You can add Buts to your own comment, and see how much can be added.
Some of the general points (such as gradual thinning) apply to almost every piece of writing on spirituality. I would have told it earlier somewhere in a specific post. I cannot keep repeating them. People should not expect too much from one blog post.
It is not a good practice for a spiritual seeker to not take accountability to what he says. He should not write anonymously, especially when commenting on other's work.
I will not respond to such things further. Cannot afford to spend time for such clarifications.