Saturday, October 26, 2002
M A I N   F E A T U R E


"O’ thou pleasant madness love! Thou physician of all our ills!"
R.C. Sharma

"IT’s love that makes the world go round", says W.S. Gilbert. In fact, love is life. Love is happiness. Love heals the sick. Love begets love. Love is the foundation of human existence.

Lord Krishna says in the Bhagavadgita, "I love the wise man, Arjuna; he is dear to me" (VII.17). Love your friends, children, the sick, the poor and the downtrodden, irrespective of caste, creed, religion and sex, because love is the basis of sweet and deep human relations. With love, you can make a heaven on earth.

Bertrand Russell, the celebrated writer, thinker and philosopher in his book Marriage and Morals says: "I regard love as one of the most important things in human life, and I regard any system as bad which interferes unnecessarily with its free development. Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives. Nature did not construct human beings to stand alone, since they cannot fulfil her biological purpose except with the help of another; and civilised people cannot fully satisfy their sexual instinct without love. The instinct is not completely satisfied unless a man’s whole being, mental quite as much as physical, enters into the relation. Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best things that life has to give."

 


Love keeps us fresh and cheerful. It pulls us out of a dull and monotonous life. You can love human beings, flowers, plants, birds, animals, rivers, streams, lakes, mountains, valleys, falling cataracts and many more things in the lap of Nature. Wordsworth, the high priest of nature, feel that when he was in a pensive mood, the company of "jocund daffodils" refreshed him and "the sounding cataract haunted me like a passion."

Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats, Byron and many other poets and writers have immortalised love in their sonnets, poems and other writings. Somebody has rightly said, "So long as we love, we serve; so long as we are loved, we are indispensable, and no man is useless while he has a friend" and "Ten men banded together in love, can do what ten thousand separately would fail in". Jesus Christ taught that the highest law of life was love: "I am not born to share men’s hatred but their love."

Guru Nanak, Ramana Maharshi, Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Swami Vivekananda, Mahtama Gandhi, John F. Kennedy, Jawaharlal Nehru, S. Radhakrishnan, Mother Teresa and many others taught us the way of understanding, the joy of giving, the secret of loving. There are tender hearts all round us who are thirsting for our love. The future of humanity lies in the hands of those who are strong enough to provide coming generations with reasons for loving and hoping.

When beauty, whether that of the moon, stars and natural scenery or of feminine faces, casts its spell on the beholder, it gives rise to the dormant emotional sentiments in his mind. The outpouring of these emotional sentiments if reduced to writing becomes immortal poetry. Such is the impact of love. Jayadeva’s Gitagovinda, which describes the love of Krishna and Radha, their separation and final union, is a classic example of immortal love.

Love of Laila-Majnu, Heer-Ranjha, Shirin-Farhaad, Sassi-Punnu, Meera, Radha, Gopis and many others is immortal. Waris Shah, the great Sufi poet and seer has immortalised the love of Heer-Ranjha in his popular book Heer Waris Shah.

"Love of God" is regarded as the best means of achieving this much-coveted union. Jalaluddin Rumi sings sweetly thus: "O thou pleasant madness love! /Thou physician of all our ills! /Thou healer of pride, /Thou Plato and Galen of our souls."

Buddha said, "Hatred ceases by love." Christ said, "Love thy neighbour." St Paul says: "Love never faileth."

Lala Har Dayal says "Flee passion, but welcome true love with joy and zest. Passion is chiefly physical and sexual in its origin and content; it often ends in disgust and indifference. But love is a psychological experience; it rises in the soul at first, and is then expressed in the body. Love is a gentle emotion, which is always under the control of reason and conscience. It enriches, beautifies and develops life. Love knows where it is going and what it is doing, it is not blind and deaf like passion. Love is a relation between two personalities of opposite sex; it is friendship sweetened with sex. Friendship between a man and a woman must precede true love."

True love grows deeper, finer, fairer, richer with the lapse of time. It does not change or vanish like the shallow love that Alfred de Musset mourned, when he cried: "In this place, one day I loved and was loved." True love lasts through life. Such love, as defined and delineated by the wise sages, is a priceless blessing. Search for it, find it; keep it, and cling to it all your life.