Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II

Categories of Love

1) Is human love the combination of the mental, vital and physical loves or the predominance of one or another? And does it depend upon the largeness, purity and harmony of the nature that this love can take an unselfish, noble and pure form and expression? But after all, is it not a mixed affair of the human folly, ignorance, attachment, passion and desire? And although one should offer the best thing of it in one's aspiration and opening towards the Divine, is it not absolutely necessary in order to be free from all ties and bondage, not to allow this human love and relation to grow?

Human love is mostly vital and physical with a mental support. It can take an unselfish, noble and pure form and expression only if it is touched by the psychic. It is true, as you say, that it is more usually a mixture of ignorance, attachment, passion and desire. But whatever it may be, one who wishes to reach the Divine, must not burden himself with human loves and attachments, for they form so many fetters and hamper his steps — besides turning him away from the concentration of his emotions on the one supreme object of love.

2) Is there anything like psychic love?

There is such a thing as psychic love, pure, without demand, sincere in self-giving — but it is not usually left pure in the attraction of human beings .to one another. One must also be on one's guard against the profession of psychic love when one is doing sadhana, — for that is most often a cloak and justification for yielding to a vital attraction or attachment.

3) What is universal love? Is it based upon the sense of oneness in all?

Universal love is the spiritual, founded on the sense of the one and the Divine everywhere and the change of the personal into a wide universal consciousness, free from attachment and ignorance.

4. What is the nature of the Divine Love? Can you say that it is in its nature free from all lower bondage, vast, pure and luminous?

Divine love is of two kinds — the Divine love for the creation and the souls that are part of itself and the love of the seeker and love for the Divine Beloved; it has both a personal and impersonal element, but the personal is free here from all lower elements or bondage to the vital and physical instincts.

5) As a definition can it be said that the personal sense is that which affects the little human egocentric 'I' and all the consequence of its self-will, habits and notions and to efface it is to be released into the wideness of the true consciousness and in the full awareness of the true self?

There are two forms of personality in the being — the little ego personality which is what you describe and the true person which is a conscious portion of the Divine.

13 December 1934

Sri Aurobindo