Love is fundamentally the power that holds and binds all the different elements of creation together. At its lowest, it takes the form of attraction (and repulsion). In human beings, this takes the form of a typical ego-based, desire-driven likes and dislikes, attractions and repulsions. It is evidently hardly love. At best, it is a disfigurement, a travesty of the true thing. At worst, it is a perversity that places the ego at the center and wants everything for itself.
This, of course, is Love in its lowest disfigured state and yet it serves to hold creation together by the balance between the power of attraction and repulsion.
At its highest, Love is the power that attracts and draws creation upwards, joining the lowest to the highest. In human beings, it takes the form of bhakti, of love for the Divine, of a complete self-giving to the object of love. It is full of a conscious, joyous sacrifice for realising the union that already exists at the deepest and highest level.
In between these two, the highest and lowest forms of love, there are several shades depending upon the stair of evolution one stands. There is the tamasic attachment to those with whom one shares one’s physical life, or the rajasic attractions driven by seeking for vital pleasure or a higher grade of the vital moved by the spirit of giving, or the idealistic human emotion uplifted by the sattwic impulse towards something high and true, pure and beautiful. There is also the psychic love that looks at the beautiful, divine portion in the person one loves, ignoring completely the dark and negative elements. All these are different forms and aspects of love. But the purest, highest, truest love is that which rises on fiery wings of sacrifice towards the highest or flows from the some great peak of human consciousness to something that is far below it.
In the last analysis, however, love is a seeking of the One for the One in countless bodies and numberless births.
Here are some powerful, uplifting passages from Sri Aurobindo on Love.
‘All hatred & repulsion arises from the one cause, Avidya, which begot Will, called Desire, which begot Ahankar, which begot desire called Hunger. From Desire-Hunger are born liking & dislike, liking for whatever satisfies or helps us to our desire, dislike for whatever obstructs or diminishes the satisfaction of desire. This liking in this way created is the liking of the protoplasmic sheath for whatever gives it sensual gratification, the liking of the vital sheath for whatever gives it emotional gratification, the liking of the mind sheath for whatever gives it aesthetic gratification, the liking of the knowledge sheath for whatever give s it intellectual gratification. But beyond these there is something else not so intelligible, beyond my liking for the beautiful body of a woman or for a fine picture or a pleasant companion or an exciting play or a clever speaker or a good poem or an illuminative and well-reasoned argument there is my liking for somebody which has no justification or apparent reason. If sensual gratification were all, then it is obvious that I should have no reason to prefer one woman over another and after the brute gratification liking would cease; I have seen this brute impulse given the name of love; perhaps I myself used to give it that name when the protoplasmic animal predominated in me. If emotional gratification were all, then I might indeed cling for a time to the woman who had pleased my body, but only so long as she gave me emotional pleasure, by her obedience, her sympathy with my likes & dislikes, her pleasant speech, her admiration or her answering love. But the moment these cease, my liking also will begin to fade away. This sort of liking too is persistently given the great name and celebrated in poetry & romance. Then if aesthetic gratification were all, my liking for a woman of great beauty or great charm might well outlast the loss of all emotional gratification, but when the wrinkles began to trace the writing of age on her face or when accident marred her beauty, my liking would fade or vanish since the effect would lose the nutrition of a present cause. Intellectual gratification seldom enters into the love of a man for a woman; even if it did so, more frequently the intellectual gratification to be derived from a single mind is soon exhausted in daylong and nightlong companionship. Whence then comes that love which is greater than life and stronger than death, which survives the loss of beauty and the loss of charm, which defies the utmost pain & scorn the object of love can deal out to it, which often pours out from a great & high intellect on one infinitely below it? What again is that love of woman which nothing can surpass, which lives on neglect and thrives on scorn & cruelty, whose flames rise higher than the red tongues of the funeral pyre, which follows you into heaven or draws you out of hell? Say not that this love does not exist and that all here is based on appetite, vanity, interest or selfish pleasure, that Rama & Sita, Ruru & Savitri are but dreams & imaginations. Human nature conscious of its divinity throws back the libel in scorn, and poetry blesses & history confirms its verdict. That Love is nothing but the Self recognizing the Self dimly or clearly and therefore seeking to realise oneness & the bliss of oneness. What again is a friend? Certainly I do not seek from my friend the pleasure of the body or choose him for his good looks; nor for that similarity of tastes & pursuits I would ask in a mere comrade; nor do I love him because he loves me or admires me, as I would perhaps love a disciple; nor do I necessarily demand of him a clever brain, as if he were only an intellectual helper or teacher. All these feelings exist, but they are not the soul of friendship. No, I love my friend for the woman’s reason, because I love him, because in the old imperishable phrase, he is my other self. There by intuition the old Roman hit on the utter secret of Love. Love is the turning of the Self from its false self in the mind or body to its true Self in another; I love him because I have discovered the very Self of me in him, not my body or mind or tastes or feelings, but my very Self of love & bliss, of the outer aspect of whom the Sruti has beautifully said “Love is his right side” etc. So is it with the patriot; he has seen himSelf in his nation & seeks to lose his lower self in that higher national Self; because he can do so, we have a Mazzini, a Garibaldi, a Joan of Arc, a Washington, a Pratap Singh or a Sivaji; the lower material self could not have given us these; you do not manufacture such men in the workshop of utility, on the forge of Charvaka or grow them in the garden of Epicurus. So is it with the lover of humanity, who loses or seeks to lose his lower self in mankind; no enlightened selfishness could have given us Father Damien or Jesus or Florence Nightingale. So is it finally with the lover of the whole world, of whom the mighty type is Buddha, the one unapproachable ideal of Divine Love in man, he who turned from perfect divine bliss as he had turned from perfect human bliss that not he alone but all creatures might be saved.
To see your Self in all creatures and all creatures in your Self—that is the unshakeable foundation of all religion, love, patriotism, philanthropy, humanity, of everything which rises above selfishness and gross utility. For what is selfishness? it is mistaking the body & the vital impulses for your true self and seeking their gratification, a gross, narrow and transient pleasure, instead of the stainless bliss of your true self which is the whole Universe & more than the Universe. Selfishness arises from Avidya, from the great fundamental ignorance which creates Ahankara, the sense of your individual existence, the preoccupation with your own individual existence, which at once leads to Desire, to Hunger which is Death, death to yourself and death to others.’
(Ref. https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/17/the-ishavasyopanishad-with-a-commentary-in-english)
Love is what cures us of the disease called egoism, selfishness. Therefore is it always accompanied with a state of beatitude and joy. On the other hand selfish egocentric feelings lead to a progressive narrowing of the consciousness, which makes the consciousness enter into a hole with its accompaniments of depression, unhappiness, anger, hate, jealousy and all else.
