THE STREAM OF LOVE

 
Human love makes its appearance in the matrix of ego-consciousness, which has countless desires. Love is colored by these factors in many ways. Just as we get an ever-changing variety of designs in the kaleidoscope by the various combinations of simpler elements, we find an almost limitless qualitative variety in the range of love owing to novel combinations of factors. And just as there are infinite shades of color in different flowers, there are diverse, delicate differences in human love.

Human love is encircled by a number of obstructive factors, such as infatuation, lust, greed, anger, and jealousy. In one sense, even these obstructive factors are either forms of lower love or the inevitable side results of these lower forms of love.

Infatuation, lust, and greed might be looked upon as perverted and lower forms of love. In infatuation a person is enamored of a sensual object; in lust he develops a craving for sensations in relation to it; and in greed he desires to possess it.

Of these three forms of lower love, greed has a tendency to extend from the original object to the means of obtaining it. Thus a person becomes greedy for money or power or fame, which can be instruments for possessing the different objects that are craved.

Anger and jealousy come into existence when these lower forms of love are thwarted or threatened to be thwarted.

These lower forms of love obstruct the release of pure love. The stream of love can never become clear and steady until it is disentangled from these limiting and perverting forms of lower love.