According to the average person, the desire for possession is the criterion, the touchstone of sincerity or reality by which love is to be judged. Even the mother is accused of not loving her child if she is not particularly possessive towards her baby. Love - the sentiment, and love - the non-affective state of mind, where a subject-object relationship does not exist, are infused by the same force. Though basically not different, one is steeped in egoistic involvement, the other unaffected and pure. The former is exemplified by the love of a man for a woman, the latter, sometimes called divine love or caritas, is a luminous pool of light and not a beam focused on one object at a time. All-embracing, bathing all alike in its radiance.
It must, however, be recognized that the discrimination between spiritual and romantic love is illusory because both are aspects of the same reality. Physical expression of love cannot be excluded because the relationship is on the plane of phenomenality. In a few rare cases, even the sense of doership and possession will not exist.
Recently, I came across an instance where the personal element was not excluded
from true love. A nurse recounted: "While taking care of my patient's wound,
we began talking, and he told me that he needed to visit the nursing home to
eat breakfast with his wife. She had been there for a while, a victim of Alzheimer's
disease. I asked him if his wife would be worried if he was a bit late, whereupon
he replied that due to her loss of memory she no longer knew who he was, nor
had she recognized him in five years. I was surprised and asked him: 'And you
still go every morning?' I had to hold back tears when he smiled, patted my
hand and said: 'She doesn't know me, but I still know who she is.' I realized
that true love is neither physical nor romantic. True love is an acceptance
of all that is, that has been, that will
or even will not be."
NOTE: Reproduced with permission from The
One in the Mirror: See What You Truly Are! By Ramesh S. Balsekar, published by Yogi Impressions Books, India.
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