GOPI KRISHNA
TALKS ABOUT LOVE
GOPI KRISHNA
TALKS ABOUT LOVE
As we have seen in our previous discussions, it is not easy to prescribe behavior and diet for the future evolution of the brain. Although I also spoke about love before, I now would like to be a little more explicit. Inasmuch as all our modem theories about love, including the ideas expressed by Freud, do not take evolution of the brain into account, we can therefore say that they are incomplete.
The moment it is established that the brain is evolving biologically, it will then be seen that a part of the reproductive energy is consumed in this evolution. I have given the proof, genius and the illuminated mind. For the last three thousand years the Indian savants knew it, as did the Greeks and the Egyptians. They knew that genius and illumination come from transmuted love energy.
Freud puts it in a different way. He says it is libido and that all creative activity and mental disorders arise out of the libido. But he has not defined libido. For him, libido is psychic energy in its subtle form, in its psychic form.
But it has a somatic aspect also, as Reich correctly put it. It is anchored in the body, his libido. He has clearly mentioned this. But since science has no awareness of a phenomeno that has been in evidence for the last thousands of years, that it is the transmutation of love energy that leads to creativity, then naturally all current theories about love are incomplete.
What is recommended by some psychologists or by some clinicians about unrestrained love is therefore not only fallacious but highly dangerous for the race.
In the ages to come, people will determine what part of the energy goes to the brain and what part they can utilize for procreative or for pleasurable purposes. There is no doubt that there is nothing in the world so enchanting, so alluring, so inspiring as love. It has inspired some of the greatest thinkers. It is the women whom they loved who inspired some of the greatest writers, thinkers, politicians, conquerors of the world. There is nothing comparable to love for the happiness, health and evolution of mankind.
Evolution Must Have Its Share
But it has not to be abused, because this energy is designed by nature both for evolution and procreation. And evolution must have its share. It would be saner to conserve the energy, even to be a celibate than it would be to overspend it. This is the reason why celibacy has been recommended in religions. Otherwise there is no reason. Why should religion in some way insist that you have to be celibate unless the energy is used in some way?
But we need not go to that extreme. The rational, normal and natural course is to adjust our life so that we allow that part which is meant for our evolution to be used for that purpose.
There are some facts that show that nature is always giving us warnings. For instance, many people, after the climax, after the expenditure of the energy, feel a sense of disgust or coldness, antipathy, or great tiredness. That is a warning from nature that they have overdone it. After the love climax, man should feel as energetic as before. That means he has not used or taken from the amount that is needed for evolution.
love Energy Creates the Spirit
With scientific investigation many facts will come to light about how love behavior has to be regulated. As a general formula, you have to see how much time must elapse afterwards before you are able to indulge again without a feeling of regret, strain, or guilt. That will give you the time span quite correctly.
It is the love energy that creates the spirit, the creativity and manliness in us. Perhaps you know that when animals are castrated, like a horse or a bull, they become very docile and weak. Although they are very bulky, they become even fatter. But their spirit is lost.
Excess of love indulgence is also a self-castration. The vim, zeal and zest of life is lost. The individual functions as a normal being. He attends to his office and does everything. But he is not able to do what he could do if he were to use this energy sparingly. He loses the chance. It is a disservice to mankind to suggest that people should indulge in their love activity unrestrainedly.
In the social work I undertook in Kashmir, one of our accomplishments was the remarriage of hundreds of widows, who in my community were not allowed to remarry. They were not allowed even to meet men. They were treated almost as outcasts and had to live lonely lives. All the members of the family looked down upon them as almost witches. They said, ěThey brought misfortune to our house, as our son died because of them.î They cannot remarry. They sometimes get very harsh treatment. They are not even able to go in the company of men. This is changing now and has changed to a great extent.
But out of the hundreds who might have been rehabilitated, I have not seen one that had gone insane. Not one. If you were to collect the statistics of mental disorders for the advanced nations, and also for the backwards people who canít afford even two meals a day, you will find perhaps a greater incidence in the advanced nations than in the poorer ones. Among the widows with whom I worked, some of them were of such noble character that I cannot express to you.
How love Energy Must be Spent
I still have a recollection of my aunt, who was a widow from an early age. She was a saint, but her life has been a tragedy. Much harm has been done. As soon as research is made on the biological mechanism responsible for evolution it will be shown that love energy has to be spent only frugally.
Concerning one who indulges in love, or I should say overindulges, perhaps you donít know about the experiments made on rats. A rat was put in a cage and an electrode was attached to the pleasure center in his brain. When the current was on, the pleasure center was excited. And when it was off, it was disconnected.
The rats were taught how to move the lever that gave the pleasure sensation. They went around and around, always touching the lever that gave them the pleasure sensation. They went on doing it until they were exhausted and fell down unconsciousness. After they were revived and put into the cage again, they did the same thing; they went around and around. Should we do the same? Should we bargain our future, our life hereafter, for this sensation, which often leaves us disgusted and weak afterwards?
These are the things we have to learn. We have to be normal. One can have love again after waiting some days. That will give greater pleasure. Just try to observe it. Wait for a longer period and you will find that you have greater pleasure. You will have more love for your wife or for your friend. But when you are at it like the rat, a time comes when you have no pleasure, either with the friend or the wife, and so a divorce results.
The Greatest of Illuminated Men
We never understand the basic reasons for our behavior. As intelligent human beings, we have to adhere to certain moral laws which we do not know. Since I have to speak the truth, I cannot keep back anything that my experience has taught me.
I have been dealing in the social field with thousands of men and women as closely and intimately as a modem psychiatrist does in a laboratory. And I never came across even one widow whom I found insane. On the other hand, I found them more tolerant. They were resigned to their fate.
By this I do not mean that you have to neglect the love impulse, or to be celibate. There was no system of celibacy in India in Vedic times. In fact, it was looked down upon in the Vedas. In the Upanishads we have the greatest illuminated men ever born, hundreds of them. During the period 1,500 years before the birth of Christ to about 500 years B.C., there were hundreds of spiritual geniuses. And when they were of ripe age, they went into hermitages, and there they gave the teaching, and that teaching is recorded in the Upanishads.
The Upanishads are the fountainhead of all the philosophy of India, even of Greece, although this has not yet been traced by modem scholars. But you will be surprised to know that out of those great sages were those who first said that all this was one.
They were the first to declare that consciousness is the real basis of the universe. They gave the first teachings to mankind, and not one of them was a celibate. One of the wisest of them, Yajnavalkya, had two wives, in accordance with the custom then in vogue. And both of them went with him to the forest.
The Best Use of Our Brain
So on the one hand we have asceticism and monasticism. It was Buddha who introduced monasticism, and it was St. Benedict who introduced it in the West in the sixth century. Monasticism was not a part of the early Christian church.
What I mean to say is that we are not called upon to repress this urge. But we are certainly bound to moderate it if we want to live happy, creative lives; if we want to maintain the spirit in us in a bloom; if we want to make the best use of our brain and our energy; and if we want to give the right heritage to our progeny.
Although we have not discussed love and social behavior very fully, what little I have said may appear difficult. Inasmuch as it does not accord completely with modern views, it may even appear unusual or outlandish, but I say it with full responsibility.
And most of you who are young will see in the movements that will start all over the earth, during the next twenty years, generated by the bomb, that these same ideas will be confirmed by science and by scholars. They are the keys to a happy life in which the evolutionary laws are not violated.
The Reward Set By Nature
I cannot express to you what reward nature has so far kept for man. Just let me give you an example. You know what a fascination love has for us. You know what sacrifices a man makes for his beloved, especially in the past when there were restrictions on love behavior.
In Europe the knights fought and went on errands to please their beloveds and died in the attempt. They fought duels. Kings were inspired. Empires were destroyed in war when an emperor wanted to have a woman belonging to another country but could not get her without a war.
We know how history has changed because of women, similarly because of man, and what sacrifices they make for men. Now imagine a couple that loves each other intensely, almost to death, who are separated by some circumstances, then come together again after some years. Imagine the intensity of the pleasure and the love when they embrace.
Multiply it a hundred times and you can have a little foretaste of the rapture which fills the brain when you are one with Cosmic Consciousness. This has been considered to be the greatest happiness possible to man. It is for this reason that it is known as sat-chitananda. Ananda means extreme bliss. Sat means truth, and chit means consciousness. This union of the human soul, it is not union, because soul is already the infinite, is only the breaking through of the veil of maya, which obstructs its vision. And when this liberation occurs it becomes sat-chit-ananda.
One Upanishad compares it like this: If the pleasure of love were one unit and the pleasure of reaching Heaven were a hundred such units, then thousands of such units would make up the ecstasy of Brahmajnana (the knowledge of Brahman). This is also known by the terms ecstasy, rapture and ravishment. It is so intense that the mystics faint.
A Glimpse of Your Own Self
It is not possible for the human mind to bear such happiness, when once he is face to face with the creatrix of the universe; when one knows oneís own majesty; when one knows that he and the beloved object, the universe, are one. It is attended by such intense rapture that all the rapture of this earth is but a faint reflection.
In fact, when you experience this rapture of love you are experiencing but a glimpse of your own self, still veiled. It is only a glimpse, a slight glimpse of that greatest of all pleasures. Even kings, emperors, multi-millionaires, and billionaires, all bowed to love. All their lives were made happy by love.
Imagine that this love, which is the greatest incentive to human effort, so valued that people even die for the sake of their beloveds, imagine this love multiplied and becoming a part of your daily life. Imagine that the joy, the exhilaration of an emperor, like Alexander, though he was prone to drink and ruined his happiness, and the joy of the richest billionaire in the United States, and the life of a man who had the most beautiful harem in the world, all combined in Cosmic Consciousness. Where then will be the need for people to run after wealth, or to run after seats of power when such a blessing comes within their reach?
For confirmation of what I say, read the lives of mystics. They spurned everything. They never cared for riches, for wealth or for position. They were all engrossed, day and night, in their inner bliss. And when it failed them sometimes, they were in despair.
The Crown of Evolution
It is this marvelous crown of evolution that will provide the greatest incentive to mankind. The love incentive is insignificant before it. It will provide the incentive for peace, for service, because without inner peace, without service, without humility, without absence of pride, one cannot reach that state.
So one will have to give up all these things to reach this bliss, this gift, this blessing, which is beyond everything we can dream of, beyond what wealth can give you, beyond what power can give you, and beyond what love can give you.
This major incentive will result in the complete change of humankind, because all those who reach the illuminated state of consciousness will repeat what has been said by Christ and Buddha and the spiritual teachers of the past. The knowledge in that state is one, and it is in that direction that mankind is evolving.
This is the dream, the golden peak before us. And once it is acknowledged and known, and people go in that direction, you will soon have thousands upon thousands of lofty illuminated human beings to run the various departments of human activity. They will conduct the race safely through the nuclear age; and they will give everyone an equal opportunity and due credit.
There will be no exploitation. No Christ or Buddha would like to have the credit to himself. He will say, ěLet us share it all.î That will be the future man and woman. That is the man or woman for whom the world is waiting and who is sure to arrive when these methods are confirmed.
No Desire for Anything Else
And it is for this lofty goal, to make mankind aware of our glorious destiny, that I am going from place to place. Otherwise I am happy inside, and traveling does not suit me so well. I am blessed. I do not need any praise, any commendations or any followers. I have enough. What I have gained leaves no room, no desire for anything else.
I am living a normal life, eating my meals, sleeping. I am normal in every activity. But I am also blessed. I know what I am talking about. And I take care to say only that which I feel is the truth, and in perhaps the simplest words. I have no need, but I want to share this with all fellow human beings; to put this idea before the scientists and scholars; to encourage and initiate research on it so that the human race, which is suffering, might be spared this suffering and live a more happy, purposeful and more fulfilling life; might reach the stature ordained for her and win the golden prize which Nature has reserved for us. That is my only ambition.
And, I am content to whatever extent Heaven allows me to fulfill this mission. I am content if I am able to talk or to write about it, leaving the fruit in the hands of God. So I thank you very deeply for your patience in listening to me these days.
My words are being recorded. No effort on our part, no discovery of science, no strategy adopted by our political leaders all over the earth, will alter the situation until we change ourselves. The nuclear bomb is Nature ís instrument to correct us. Otherwise it would not be there. It is so preposterous, so suicidal, so inhuman, that such a weapon could never be devised by a normal thinking people. But it is here because we have deviated from the path prescribed by Revelation.
All civilizations fell when they transcended the limit. The same fate awaits our own civilization if it does not change.
- Gopi Krishna, Nishat, Kashmir, 1979
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