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What is Love to you? When you approach people randomly asking this question, the first thing they give you is a startle expression as if you have asked them out of syllabus question and once the moment sponges in than they give you either a monochromatic answers naming their pet animals or love interest or parents, grandparents, siblings, etc, etc or they go prolific with quotes from intensive literature.
Well this can not get more complicated than it is and we end up on square one thinking again what the hell is Love or ever this true love thing does ever exit.....
I opened my Srimad Bhagvatam one day and stumbled over the Vedic light over the subjects. So here I am quoting from the purport of Canto1, Chapter 1, text 3 by His Divine Grace A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.
"Every living entity, beginning from Brahma, the first-born living being within the material world, down to the insignificant ant, desires to relish some sort of taste derived from sense perceptions. These sensual pleasures are technically called rasas. Such rasa are of different varieties. In the revealed scriptures the following twelve varities of rasa are enumerated: 1) rudra (anger), 2) adbhuta (wonder), 3) srngara (conjugal love), 4) hasya (comedy), 5) vira (chivalry), 6) daya (mercy), 7) dasya (servitorship), 8) sakhya (fraternity), 9) bhayanaka (horror), 10) bibhatsa (shock), 11) santa (neutrality), 12) vatsalya (parenthood).
The sum total of all these rasas is called affection or love. Primarily, such signs of love are manifested in adoration, service, friendship, parental affection, and conjugal love. when these five are absent, love is present indirectly in anger, wonder, chivalry, fear, shock and so on. For example, when a man is in love with woman, the rasa is called conjugal love. But when such love affairs are disturbed there may be wonder, anger, shock or even horror. Sometimes love affairs between two persons culminate in ghastly murder scenes."
That's quiet intensive.
Well this is the way I understand it, it's like a prism being kept and the white light passing through it splits into different shades reflecting different moods of love that a person may feel. Not completely but a portion of it that is according to his taste or mood or pleasure. The scripture again describe this material world to be a "dukhalaya", the place of constant misery. What ever you do this material world is going to be the place of constant misery. So these pleasing looking so called shades of the love or rasa may cause repercussion later on for example betrayal, heart break, mistrust, misery and so on...
There is a medical perspective of these rasa too, repercussions in the form of diseases, like vatsalya or motherly affections is controlled by a a hormone prolactin. So this is the positive emotion, its good to have it more but medical book claims it to be inappropriate. Excess of this hormone prolactin can be because of pituitary tumors/ brain tumors. Which is not good and requires treatment and sometimes surgery too.
Getting excessively happy is also not good. Happiness is controlled by feel good neurotransmitter serotonin and in case serotonin rises bound high it can indicate to a cancerous growth in body in form of Carcinoid tumor.
Even in homoeopathy there is a medicine which has under it's pharmacological usage, affections caused due to excessive happiness, the name of the medicine is coffea cruda.
Even we can't afford excessive happiness in this world leave aside the indirect emotions of Love like anger, wonder fear and shock which disturbs the adrenal glands and the increase the production of non-epinephrine hormones which basically regulates the fight, fright and flight response in body making it susceptible to other bout of tumorous growth in body.
And talking of conjugal love going astray, it opens the box of Pandora of sexually transmitted disorders.
God, we have no peace in this material world, the place of misery, the dukhalaya!
This is not love, it's so called emotional slutting which we do to each other. The most legal emotional prostitution which we are subjected to and pleasure too and get addicted too. there is no ban on it. (Sorry for the language but I couldn't find a better vocabulary to put my point).
So hence proved that the true love doesn't exist in this material world.
Very true!
Than where can we find this entity called True Love.
For that we have to approach the spiritual realm, to go on other side of the prism, the side where there is white light. In fact we need to the prism out of the picture. We need to concentrate the white light instead of deciphering into different shades.
And who owns the single handed proprietorship of this mallows of love?
It is none other than Srimati Radha Rani. Even Krsna couldn't garner this amount of love and therefore he stole it from Srmati Radha Rani and distributed it to people of this world when he came as Yuga Avatar or the incarnation of this age, of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.
What is this mallow of Love of Srimati radharani?
It is the concentrating Love more and more. It's like you take the mortar and pestle and keep on grinding it, making it more concentrated and refined at the same time.
When prema or Love is concentrated it becomes Sneha, affection.
The signs of affections is that the soul inside becomes so enlightened as if hundred and thousands lamp are burning inside. It's like the Gopis used to blame lord Brahma, the creator, for making blunders while creating them. He just gave them two eyes instead of thousand to use them to see Lord Krsna and than in those two eyes he created eyelashes which when bling occuludes their vision while watching Krsna. So these are some symptoms of sneha.
When sneha concentrates it becomes mana, when mana concentrates it becomes pranaya and when pranaya concentrate it becomes raga, further anuraga than bhava and the ultimate ecstasy mahabhava.
Well my understanding is very limited about this topic, hence to get the better understanding about it listen to the given link, a very interesting lecture by his divine grace srimad sri Gour Govind maharaj Swami who explains in detail the true constituents of true love.
And than you will understand the difference between emotional slutting and true love.
So when you learn to concentrate prema or love, you reach your actual destination where there is no fear no distress just pure ecstasy.
So it finally boils down to what you are in for?
Which side of the prism you choose?
Regards
Hare Krsna
