On Love

The Miracle Of Birth - Poem by Sri Aurobindo

 

Life Unity - Poem by Sri Aurobindo

 

On Marriage - Message to X by The Mother

( Now it is part of a Message card)

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Man is in love with pleasure; therefore he must undergo the yoke of grief and pain. For unmixed delight is only for the free and passionless soul; but that which pursues after pleasure in man is a suffering and straining energy .

Human love is mostly vital and physical with a mental support-it can take a 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. ..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 .

It is certainly easier to have friendship between man and man or between woman and woman than between man and woman, because there the sexual intrusion is normally absent. In a friendship between man and woman the sexual turn can at any moment come in a subtle or in a direct way and produce perturbations. But there is no impossibility of friendship between man and woman pure of this element; such friendships can exist and have always existed. All that is needed is that the lower vital should not look in at the back door or be permitted to enter .

Man seek Sex is a movement of general Nature seeking for its play and it uses this or that one--a man vitally or physically "in love.' as it is called with a woman is simply repeating and satisfying the world-movement of sex; if it had not been that woman, it would have been another .

Sri Aurobindo, On Yoga, 11, tome II, 7

The terrestrial sex-movement is a utilisation by Nature of the fundamental physical energy for the purposes of procreation. The thrill of which the poets speak, which is accompanied by a very gross excitement, is the lure by which she makes the vital consent to this otherwise unpleasing process ; there are numbers who experience a recoil of disgust after the act and repulsion from the partner in it because of the disgust, though they return to it when the disgust has worn off for the sake of this lure. The sex energy itself is a great power with two components in its physical basis, one meant for procreation and the process necessary for it, the other for feeding the general energies of the body, mind and vital-also the spiritual energies of the body. The old yogis call these two components retas and ojas.

It is the ordinary nature of vital love not to last or , if it tries to last, not to satisfy, because it is a passion which Nature has thrown in in order to serve a temporary purpose ; it is good enough therefore for a temporary purpose and its normal tendency is to wane when it has sufficiently served Nature's purpose. In mankind, as man is a more complex being, she calls in the aid of imagination and idealism to help her push, gives a sense of ardour, of beauty and fire and glory, but all that wanes after a time. It cannot last, because it is all a borrowed light and power, borrowed in the sense of being a reflection caught from something beyond and not native to the reflecting vital medium which imagination uses for the purpose. More over, nothing lasts in the mind and vital, all is a flux there. The one thing that endures is the soul, the spirit. Therefore love can last and satisfy only if it bases itself on the soul and spirit, if it has its roots there. But that means living no longer in the vital but in the soul and spirit.

Sri Aurobindo, On Yoga, II, tome I, part 11,7

Notes on the Way

Humanity has the sexual impulse; that is altogether natural, spontaneous, and, if I may say, legitimate. This impulse will naturally and spontaneously disappear with animality [in man] The most conscious impulse in a superior humanity, that which has persisted as a source of- bliss is too big a word -joy, delight, is certainly the sexual activity.

It will have absolutely no reason for existence in the functions of nature, when the need to create in that way will no longer exist. ...But what the ancient spiritual aspirants had sought on principle - sexual negation - is an absurd thing, because this must be only for those who have gone beyond that stage and have no longer animality in them. And it must drop naturally without effort and without struggle.

It is only when the consciousness ceases to be human that it drops off naturally. Here also there is a transition that may be somewhat difficult, because beings of transition are always in an unstable equilibrium; but within there is a kind of flame and a need which makes it not painful -it is not painful effort, it is something that one can do with a smile. But to seek to impose it upon those who are not ready for this transition is absurd.

The Mother, Notes on the Way, Bulletin, Feb. 1966

Two Movements of Love

At the beginning of this manifestation, Love is, in the purity of its origin, composed of two movements, two complementary poles of the impulsion towards complete fusion. On one side, it is the supreme power of attraction and on the other the irresistible need of absolute self-giving. ...What was projected into space had to be brought back to itself without, however, destroying the universe so created. Therefore Love burst forth, the irresistible power of union. Is it not love, under an erring and obscure form, that is associated with all the impulsions of the physical and vital nature as the push towards every movement and every grouping? This has become quite visible in the plant world. In the plant and the tree, it is the need of growth to get more light, more air , more space; in the flower it is the gift of beauty and fragrance in a loving efflorescence. And in the animal is it not there behind hunger and thirst, the need for appropriation, expansion, procreation, in brief behind all desire, whether conscious or not? And, among the higher orders, in the self-sacrificing devotion of the female for her young ones ? This naturally leads us to the human species where, with the triumphant advent of mental activity this association attains its climax, for it is there conscious and deliberate. It is also from this very moment that there has clearly appeared in Nature's works her will to build up again, by stages and degrees, the primordial unity through groupings more and more complex and numerous. She used the power of love for bringing two human beings together and creating the dual group, the origin of family. Once she had broken the narrow limits of personal egoism by changing it into a dual egoism, she brought into being, with the appearance of the child, a more complex unit, the family. In course of time through manifold association between families, interchange between individuals and blood mixture, larger groupings appeared: the clan, the tribe, the caste and the class to end in the creation of the nation. The work of group formation proceeded simulta neously in different parts of the world; it has crystallised in the formation of different races. Even these races Nature will by degrees fuse together in her endeavour to build a material and real basis for human unity.

The Mother, The Four Austerities and the Four Liberations, III

To X For R Her Marriage

To unite your physical existences and your material interests, to associate yourselves so as to face together the difficulties and successes, the defeats and victories of life- this is the very basis of marriage-but you know already that it does not suffice.

To be united in feelings, to have the same tastes and same aesthetic pleasures, to vibrate together in a common response to the same things, one by the other and one for the other-it is good, it is necessary-but it is not enough.

To be one in profound sentiments, your affections, your feelings of tenderness for each other not varying in spite of all the shocks of existence; withstanding weariness, nervous irritation and disappointments, to be always and in every case happy, most happy to be together; to find, under all circumstances, one in the presence of the other, rest peace and joy-it is good, it is very good, it is indispensable-but it is not enough.

To unite your mentalities, your thoughts harmonising and becoming complementary to each other, your intellectual preoccupations and discoveries shared between you; in a word, to make your spheres of mental activity identical through a broadening and an enrichment acquired by the two at the same time-it is good, it is absolutely necessary--but it is not enough.

Beyond it all, at the bottom, at the centre, at the summit of the being, there is a Supreme Truth of the being, an Eternal Light, independent of all circumstances of birth, of country, of environment, of education; the origin, cause and master of our spiritual development-it is That that gives a definite orientation to our existence; it is That that decides our destiny; it is in the consciousness of this that you should unite.

To be one in aspiration and ascension, to advance with the same step on the spiritual path-such is the secret of a durable union.

The Mother, "Mother India", Oct. 1966

Thoughts and Aphorisms - Sri Aurobindo

Man seeks at first blindly and does not even know that he is seeking his divine Self; for he starts from the obscurity of material Nature and even when he begins to see, he is long blinded by the light that is increasing in him. God too answers obscurely to his search; He seeks and enjoys man's blindness like the hands of a little child that grope after its mother.

Death is the question Nature puts continually to Life and her reminder to it that it has not yet found itself. If there were no siege of death, the creature would be bound for ever in the form of an imperfect living. Pursued by death he awakes to the idea of perfect life and seeks out its means and its possibility.

Pain is the touch of our Mother teaching us how to bear and grow in rapture. She has three stages of her schooling.. endurance first, next equality of soul, last ecstasy.

Pain and grief are Nature's reminder to the soul that the pleasure it enjoys is only a feeble hint of the real delight of existence. In each pain and torture of our being is the secret of a flame of rapture compared with which our greatest pleasures are only as dim flickerings. It is this secret which forms the attraction for the soul of great ordeals, sufferings and fierce experiences of life which the nervous mind in us shuns and abhors.