65. Romantic Love and Bhakti - How are they Different?

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

This is indeed the intelligence of a Bhakta. He has a Beloved. But absolutely nothing is expected of the Beloved. He is just ecstatic that he has one. There is no unlocking combination defined. He drops himself just at the utterance of the Name. He melts away by himself into a timeless orgasm.

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.