Spiritual love

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have several times spoken about spiritual love and its effects in the different planes of creation. Divine love is an aspect of the divine Ananda Shakti. Human sexual stamped love has more to do with the preservation drive, the untamed lion of the 12th Tarot Card.

"The Divine is a being and not a detached existence or a state of timeless infinity. The original and universal existence is He, but that existence is inseparable from consciousness and bliss of being, and an existence conscious of its own being and its own bliss is what we may well call a divine infinite Person,—Purusha. Moreover all consciousness implies power, Shakti; where there is infinite consciousness of being, there is infinite power of being, and by that power all exists in the universe.
All beings exist by this Being; all things are the faces of God; all thought and action and feeling and love proceed from him and return to him, all their results have him for source and support and secret goal.
It is to this Godhead, this Being that the Bhakti of an integral Yoga will be poured out and uplifted. Transcendent, it will seek him in the ecstasy of an absolute union; universal, it will seek him in infinite quality and every aspect and in all beings with a universal delight and love; individual, it will enter into all human relations with him that love creates between person and person" (Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, II Kap-VIII , Pg. 600 ,The Yoga of Divine Love)

"The encounter between man and God must always be a penetration and the occurrence of the divine in the sadhak and a self-sinking of the sadhak into the divine. But this sinking is not the type of dis-becoming. Extinction is not the fulfillment of all this search and passion, of this pain and this ecstasy. The game would have never started if it had to end like that. ."(Sri Aurobindo, Thoughts and Glimpses)

"The natural attitude of the psychic being is to be the child, to feel as the son of God,the Bhakta. It is part of the divine, one in essence with him, though in the dynamics of disclosure always exists a difference, even in the essence. The Jivatman on the other hand, lives in nature and can merge with the divine essence in a unit. But as soon as he manages the dynamics of the revelation, he also knows himself as a center of the divine, not as the Parameshvara. "(Sri Aurobindo, On Yoga, II, book I, Teil I, 5)

'He who gives to me with a heart of adoration a leaf, a flower, a fruit or a cup of water,
I take and enjoy that offering of his devotion'; Bhagavad-Gita

482 – The seeker after divine knowledge finds in the description of Krishna stealing the robes of the Gopis one of the deepest parables of God’s ways with the soul, the devotee a perfect rendering in divine act of his heart’s mystic experiences, the prurient and the Puritan (two faces of one temperament) only a lustful story. Men bring what they have in themselves and see it reflected in the Scripture.
484 – Sin is a trick and a disguise of Krishna to conceal Himself from the gaze of the virtuous. Behold, O Pharisee, God in the sinner, sin in thyself purifying thy heart; clasp thy brother.
422 – There are four stages in the pain God gives to us; when it is only pain; when it is pain that causes pleasure; when it is pain that is pleasure; and when it is purely a fiercer form of delight.(Sir Aurobindo : Thoughts and Aphorisms)

Krishna, the divine flute player, is the inherent and total divine, the highest attracting force. Radha, the psyche, the spiritual personality responds the call of the flute player ... Krishna's grace calls whom she wants, without a specific reason for the election or rejection. Everything is in her liking .... It depends not upon external credit or apparent suitability ... Some may have the willingness to recognize Krishna's flute, some for the call of Christ, some for the dance of Shiva - each his own way, and the nature of his response to the call of the divine.

To have no more feeling of separation one must realize a perfect consubstantiality. If this happened once, then the story comes to an end, and there is nothing to tell. Therefore, it was said that if the world, the creation, the total consubstantiality with the Divine would beachieved, there would be no more creation. It would be the return to Pralaya. The solution is, therefore, To find the Ananda in the middle of this game, where one gives and receives, where one seems to be two. Therefore keep the Vaishnavas and so many mystics the taste of the duality. Otherwise - in the consubstantiality complete and perfect - there would be no more objectification. I already said, it starts with the Ananda of the consubstantiality and ends after the whole round trip in the creation in the Ananda of conjunction. Had there not been a round trip, there would never be the Ananda of conjunction. There would be only the Ananda of the consubstantiality (The Mother, 1218.7.56; Bulletin, Febr. 1961)

" There is still another great personality of the Divine Shakti. The most indispensable of all for the spiritual realization is the personality of that mysterious and powerful ecstasy that flows out from the highest divine love, the Ananda, which alone can heal the gap between the highest levels of the Divine and the deepest depths of matter, the Ananda, that owns the key of a most wonderful divine life has and which even from his concealment the interaction of all other Powers of the Universe supports."(Sri Aurobindo, Die Mutter, V)

"It therefore through the sacrifice of love, works and knowledge with the psychic being as the leader and priest of the sacrifice that life itself can be transformed into its own true spiritual figure.
Although it is a divine love for the supreme and universal Divine that must be the rule of our spiritual existence, this does not exclude altogether all forms of individual love or the ties that draw soul to soul in manifested existence. A psychic change is demanded, a divestiture of the masks of the Ignorance, a purification of the egoistic mental, vital and physical movements that prolong the old inferior consciousness; each movement of love, spiritualised, must depend no longer on mental preference, vital passion or physical craving, but on the recognition of soul by soul,—love restored to its fundamental spiritual and psychic essence with the mind, the vital, the physical as manifesting instruments and elements of that greater oneness.
"Love is one of the big forces of the universe. She existsis in itself, independent of the objects in which, through which and for which it reveals itself in an increasingly free movement. People think they have suddenly fallen in love. They see their love grow arise and pass away, or take a little longer for those who are more predisposed to an extension of their movement. Not only in the people's is love revealed, it is everywhere. Her movement is stirring in the Plants, possibly even in the stones. It is easy to detect her presence in the animals. The Divine Love gives itself and requires nothing. What people have made out of it one speaks better not. They have distorted it into something repulsive and ugly. Nevertheless, launches the first Contact with this love even in the people a pure reflection of her content within them. For a moment they are able to forget themselves. For a moment awakens and increases the contact with divine love all that is noble and beautiful. But soon wins human nature the upper hand back, full of unclean claims, requires something for what was awarded, haggles about what should be a selfless gift, claimes with big Noise the satisfaction of lower desires, defaces and defiles what was divine. (Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga,I, Chap. VI )
The general, power of thew Delight is love and the special mould which the joy of love takes is the vision of beauty. The God-lover is the universal lover and he embraces the All-blissful and All-beautiful. (Aurobindo : The Synthesis of Yoga - pg. 591)

"The facing of the Divine love should not be the usual lively feeling to which give the people that name. Because that is not love but a vital desire, an instinct for appropriation and the drive to have and to monopolize. Not only is this not the divine love, but it may not be permitted the least interference in the yoga. The true love of the Divine is a self-giving, free of claim, full of submission and devotion. It demands nothing, does not trade, is not the violence of jealousy, arrogance, or anger, because these things are not created in it. In response gives the divine Shakti herself, but free through her presence into your mind, your awareness of your body vital and consciousness of the body."(Sri Aurobindo , On Yoga II, Band I, Teil II,7)

"It is also a mistake to think that the vital alone has warmth and the psychic is something frigid without any flame in it. A clear limpid goodwill is a very good and desirable thing. But that is not what is meant by psychic love. Love is love and not merely goodwill. Psychic love can have a warmth and a flame as intense and more intense than the vital, only it is a pure flre, not dependent on the satisfaction of ego-desire or on the eating up of the fuel it embraces. It is a white flame, not a red one; but white heat Knot inferior to the red variety in its ardour. It is true that the psychic love does not usually get its full play in human relations and human nature; it flnds the fullness of its fire and ecstasy more easily when it is lifted towards the Divine.." (Sri Aurobindo, On Yoga, II, book I, Teil II,7)

"Note that I am not speaking of what men call joy, which is not even a caricature, which, I think, is a diabolic invention in order to make one lose the way: the joy which comes from pleasure, from forgetfulness, from indifference. (Silence) I am speaking of a joy which is perfect peace, shadowless light, harmony, total beauty and an irresistible power, that joy which is the divine Presence itself, in its essence, in its Will and its Realisation. With the adversary came the suffering into the world. Only the Ananda can defeat him. The Ananda has created, the Ananda will complete. "(The Mother, Questions and Answers-PDF, 7.12.1955)

"Man is in love with the pleasure. So he must shoulder the yoke of grief and pain. For unmixed delight exists only for the free and dispassionate soul. But that what hunts in the people for pleasure is a suffering and strained energy." (Sri Aurobindo, Thoughts and aphorisms)

"What is commonly called love, is from the main vibration of true love as far away as hatred, only narrows and hardens the one, and the other strikes out. That's the whole difference. "(The Mother,"A Props", Bulletin, February 1966)

50 – To hate the sinner is the worst sin, for it is hating God; yet he who commits it glories in his superior virtue.
484 – "Sin is a trick and a disguise of Krishna to conceal Himself from the gaze of the virtuous. Behold, O Pharisee, God in the sinner, sin in thyself purifying thy heart; clasp thy brother.
"66 – Sin is that which was once in its place, persisting now it is out of place; there is no other sinfulness." (Sri Aurobindo, Thoughts and Aphorisms, II chap.VIII, (PDF))

"Love is not sexual relationship. Love is not vital relationship and vital exchange. Love is not the need of the heart for affection. Love is an all-powerful vibration, emanated directly from the One, and only the very pure and very strong is able to receive and reveal her. To be pure means only to be open the influence of the Supreme and for no other."(The Mother, Bulletin, Nov. 1963, pg. 24)

"Even when love intervenes, the self-giving at first still preserves to a large extent the mechanical character of the subconscious will in the atom. Love itself at first obeys the law of hunger and enjoys the receiving and the exacting from others rather than the giving and surrendering to others which it admits chiefly as a necessary price for the thing that it desires. But here it has not yet attained to its true nature; its true law is to establish an equal commerce in which the joy of giving is equal to the joy of receiving and tends in the end to become even greater; but that is when it is shooting beyond itself under the pressure of the psychic flame to attain to the fulfilment of utter unity and has therefore to realise that which seemed to it not-self as an even greater and dearer self than its own individuality. In its life-origin, the law of love is the impulse to realise and fulfil oneself in others and by others, to be enriched by enriching, to possess and be possessed because without being possessed one does not possess oneself utterly. The inert incapacity of atomic existence to possess itself, the subjection of the material individual to the not-self, belongs to the first status of life. The consciousness of limitation and the struggle to possess, to master both self and the not-self is the type of the secondary status. Here, too, the development to the third status brings a transformation of the original terms into a fulfilment and a harmony which repeat the terms while seeming." (Sri Aurobindo, Life Divine, I, Kap. XXI pg. 217 - The Ascent of Life)

" No error can be more dangerous than the interference of sexual desires and to allow a kind of subtle satisfaction of that kind and to see that as part of the Sadhana. This would be the most effective and most direct way to a spiritual crash and to allow the break-in of forces which inhibit the spiritual descent and bring down opposing vital powers, which instead would sow confusion and mischief.

An error is also the idea that the sexual activity has to be given up but that a kind of inner imitation is involved in the the transformation of the sexual urge. The activity of the animal sex energy in nature is an institution for a specific purpose in the household of the material creation in the ignorance. But the accompanying vital excitement and vibration provides an opportunity in the atmosphere for those vital forces and beings of nature whose whole aim is to prevent the descent of the spiritual light ....

....If divine love touches the physical, it does not awaken the rough slopes of the lower vital. To dwell on them would only repel it and cause it to withdraw to the heights from where it is difficult enough to bring it down into the rudeness of material creation which only it alone can convert. ("Sri Aurobindo says, Bulletin, August 1965)

" The earthly sexual impulse is a utilization of the physical basic energy by the nature for the purpose of reproduction. The shudder of which the poets speak which is accompanied by a coarse excitation is the bait with which the nature wins the consent of the vital to this otherwise unpleasant action. There are many who feel repelled and disgusted by the act itself and therefore feel an aversion to the partner. Yet they return back when the disgust has evaporated in the face of the lure.

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.
There are in the vital itself two kinds of love, - one full of joy and confidence and abandon, generous , unbargaining , ungrudging and very absolute in its dedication and this is akin to the psychic and well-fitted to be its complement and a means of expression of the divine love. And neither does the psychic love or the divine love despise a physical means of expression wherever that is pure and right and possible; it does not depend upon that, it does not diminish, revolt or go out like a snuffed candle when it is deprived of any such means; but when it can use it, it does so with joy and gratitude.(Sri Aurobindo, On Yoga II)
The sexual energy is in itself a great power with two partial forces in the physical basis, the one for determination of the necessary progress of reproduction, the other for supplying the general energies of the body, mind and vital, and the spiritual energies of the body. The ancient yogis called these two forces "Retas" and "Ojas". (Sri Aurobindo, On Yoga, part II,7)

" At the beginning of this revelation exists this love in the purity of its origin out of two movements, the two complementary poles of the urge to complete fusion. This is on the one hand the highest attraction force and on the other hand the irresistible urge for unconditional surrender. What had been thrown into the space, had to be returned, without it being necessary to repeal the thus created universe. Therefore sprang forth the love, the irresistible force of unification....

Is not love, in deviant and darkened form, connected with all the impulses of the physical and vital nature, the drive of each movement and each grouping?
This is completely visible in the plant kingdom. In the tree and the plant is the urge to grow and to get more light more air to gain more space. For the flower it is the gift of her beauty and fragrance in a blossoming bloom. Is it not also in the animals behind the hunger, the thirst, the need for acquisition, propagation, reproduction, just beyond any desire, conscious or not, and among the higher species in the self-denying sacrifice of the mother for its young? This leads us naturally to human species, in which the triumphant appearance of mental activity brings that connection to the high point, because she has become aware and deliberate.

From that moment on appears in the works of nature also clear her will to rebuild the initial unit with the means of ever more numerous and complex grouping, progressively and gradually. After she has made use of the love power to bring together two people, and to create the two-group as the basis of the family, after she has broken the narrow limits of personal egoism to swap it with a selfishness as a couple, she forms with the coming of the children a more comprehensive unit, the family, and over time with the mhelp of multiple connections between the families and single exchange and mixing of blood always larger groupings formed - Clans, tribes, castes, classes to ultimately lead to the creation of nations.
The group effort is the same at different points in the world and crystallizes in the different races, and by and by will the Nature to melt together these races in her effort, to establish a material and real a basis for human existence.
(The mother, the four-fold self-discipline and four-fold liberation)