on Love

...the problem of love, in the contemporary way of looking at the world, is regarded as something given, as something already understood and known. Different systems contribute little that is enlightening to an understanding of love. So although in reality love is for us the same enigma as is death, yet for some strange reason we think about it less. We seem to have developed certain cut and dried standards in regard to an understanding of love, and men thoughtlessly accept this or that standard. Art, which from its very nature should have much to say on this subject, gives a great deal of attention to love; love ever has been, and perhaps still is, the principal theme of art. But even art chiefly confines itself merely to descriptions and to the psychological analysis of love, seldom touching those infinite and eternal depths which love contains for man.

If, for convenience in reasoning, we shall accept the division of man and of the world into three planes: material, psychic and spiritual, then we may say that all the current understandings of love are confined to the material plane; art deals with love on the material and psychic planes, while only as a rare exception do philosophy and art rise to the spiritual plane in the understanding of love. It is commonly assumed that love does not reach the spiritual plane, and even hinders the spiritual evolution.

From this point of view the denial of love, and its repression, which is regarded as the overcoming of the flesh, conduces to spiritual development.

Humanity has had far other understandings of love, but for the most part they are lost and forgotten, and contemporary thought of the most diverse shades does not comprehend, except by flashes, the most important aspects of love - its mystical and religious content. The chief cause of this condition of things lies in the fact that the two great religions which embrace the majority of human-kind - Christianity and Buddhism - deal with love negatively, as a deplorable necessity of physical existence, and as a phenomenon of a lower order in comparison with spiritual aspirations, with which it is assumed to interfere. This view, milleniums old, has inevitably affected the most various modes of world-contemplation. Moreover, during the last few centuries, a growing materialism has cheapened love in men's minds even more, degrading it to a material fact with material consequences, which fact is on a level with other physiological functions of the organism. As a result of such a direction of thought, of such a warped point of view, contemporary humanity has almost entirely lost the spiritual understanding of love.

So that in our time men understand love as a common, every-day manner of life, they understand it as a psychological phenomenon, but all idea and sense of the cosmical element of love is atrophied in them.

In the first mentioned case - in an every-day understanding of love - men strive to utilize love as an instrument or means for the settling of their lives; and in the second, they demand of love that it shall settle the affairs of their souls. But in both cases love is burdened by purposes and problems which do not belong to it at all. In reality love is a cosmic phenomenon, in which men, humanity, are merely accidents: a cosmic phenomenon which has nothing to do with either the lives or the souls of men, any more than that the sun is shining, that by its light men may go about their little affairs, and that they may utilize it for their own purposes. If men would only understand this, even with a part of their consciousness, a new world would open, and to look on life from all our usual angles would become very strange.

For then they would understand that love is something else, and of quite a different order from the petty phenomena of earthly life.

Perhaps love is a world of strange spirits who at times take up their abode in men, subduing them to themselves, making them tools for the accomplishment of their inscrutable purposes. Perhaps it is some particular region of the inner world wherein the souls of men sometimes enter, and where they live according to the laws of that world, while their bodies remain on earth, bound by the laws of earth. Perhaps it is an alchemical work of some Great Master wherein the souls and bodies of men play the role of elements out of which is compounded a philosopher's stone, or an elixir of life, or some mysterious magnetic force necessary to someone for some incomprehensible purpose.

It is difficult to understand all this, and to make it seem rational. But by seeking to understand these mysterious purposes and by departing from mundane interpretations, man, without even being conscious of it at first, unites himself with the higher purposes and finds that thread which in the end of all ends will lead him out of the labyrinth of earthly contradictions.

But this thread must be found first through the emotions, by direct feeling, and only afterwards by reason. And this thread will never reveal itself to a man who denies love and scorns it, because the denial of the importance and deep meaning of love always results from the materialistic view, and the materialistic view of love cannot be true. This view cannot be true because it considers love too narrowly, deduces general conclusions from premises of too negligible a percentage of data based on facts, sees only in a plane section a phenomenon of four-dimensional character. Love is exactly as material a phenomenon as is the picture of a painter or the symphony of a musician. To analyze and evaluate love materialistically is precisely the same thing as trying to value a picture by its weight and a symphony by the volume of sound produced.

What does the spiritual understanding of love mean?

It means the understanding of the fact that love does not serve life, but serves the higher apprehension. If he is in right relation to it, love attunes man to the note of the "wondrous," strips off veils, opens closed doors. Both in the past, and perhaps in the present, there undoubtedly have been attempts at the understanding of love divorced from life, as a cult, as a magical ceremony, attuning body and soul to the reception of the wondrous.

Love in relation to our life is a deity, sometimes terrible, sometimes benevolent, but never subservient to us, never consenting to serve our purposes. Men strive to subordinate love to themselves, to warp it to the uses of their everyday mode of life, and to their souls' uses; but it is impossible to subordinate love to anything, and it mercilessly revenges itself upon these little mortals who would subordinate love to anything, and it mercilessly revenges itself upon these little mortals who would subordinate God to themselves and make Him serve them. It confuses all their calculations, and forces them to do things which confound themselves, forcing them to serve itself, to do what it wants.

Although our relation to love is so naive, there is no reason to suppose that men cannot take toward it an entirely different attitude, or that they always have been or always will be completely bound by materialism, without flashes of understanding of the wondrous in love...

The chief error that men make about love consists in the fact that they believe in its reality, and ascribe love to themselves; or, generally, to mankind. It seems to them that love begins in them, belongs to them, ends in them. And even when they admit that everything in the world depends upon love and moves by love, they still seek in themselves the sources of love.

Mistaken about the origin of love, men are mistaken about its result. Positivistic and spiritistic morality equally recognize in love only one possible result - children, the propagation of the species. But this objective result, which may or may not be, is in any case an effect of the outer, objective side of love, of the material fact of impregnation. If it is possible to see in love nothing more than this material fact and the desire for it, so be it; but in reality love consists not at all in a material fact, and the results of it - except material ones - may manifest themselves on quite another plane. This other plane, upon which love acts, and the ignored, hidden results of love, are not difficult to understand, even from the strictly positivistic, scientific standpoint.

To science, which studies life from this side, the purpose of love is the continuation of life. More exactly, love is a link in the chain of facts supporting the continuation of life. The force which attracts the two sexes to one another is acting in the interests of the continuation of the species, and is accordingly created by the forms of the continuation of the species. But if we regard love in this way, then it is impossible not to recognize that there is much more of this force than is necessary. Herein lies the key to the correct understanding of the true nature of love. There is more of this force than is necessary, infinitely more. In reality only an infinitesimal part of love's force incarnate in humanity is utilized for the purpose of the continuation of the species. But where does the major part of that force go?

We know that nothing can be lost. If energy exists, then it must transform itself into something. Now if a merely negligible percentage of energy goes into the creation of the future by begetting, then the remainder must go into the creation of the future also, but in another way. We have in the physical world many causes in which the direct function is effected by a very small percentage of the consumed energy, and the greater part is spent without return, as it were. But of course this greater part of energy does not disappear, is not wasted, but accomplishes other results quite different from the direct function.

Take the example of a common candle. It gives light, but it also gives considerably more heat than light. Light is the direct function of a candle, heat the indirect, but we get more heat than light. A candle is a furnace adapted to the purpose of lighting. In order to give light a candle must burn. Combustion is a necessary condition for the receiving of light from a candle; it is impossible to ignore this combustion but the same combustion gives heat. At first thought it appears that the heat from a candle is spent unproductively; sometimes it is superfluous, unpleasant, annoying; if a room is lighted by candles it will soon grow excessively hot. But the fact remains that light is received from a candle only because of combustion - by the development of heat and the incandescence of volatilized gases.

The same thing is true in the case of love. We may say that a merely negligible part of love's energy goes into posterity; the greater part is spent by the fathers and mothers on their personal emotions as it were. But this also is necessary. Without this expenditure the principal thing could not be achieved. Only because of these at first sight collateral results of love, only because of all this tempest of emotions, feelings, effervescences, desires, thoughts, dreams, fantasies, inner creation; only because of the beauty which it creates, can love fulfill its immediate function.

Moreover - and this perhaps is the most important - the superfluous energy is not wasted at all, but is transformed into other forms of energy, possible to discover. Generally speaking, the significance of the indirect results may very often be of more importance than the significance of direct ones. And since we are able to trace how the energy of love transforms itself into instincts, ideas, creative forces on different planes of life; into symbols of art, song, music, poetry; so can we easily imagine how the same energy may transform itself into a higher order of intuition, into a higher consciousness which will reveal to us a marvelous and mysterious world.

In all living nature (and perhaps also in that which we consider as dead) love is the motive force which drives the creative activity in the most diverse directions.

In springtime, with the first awakening of love's emotions, the birds begin to sing, and to build nests.

Of course a positivist would strive to explain all this very simply: singing acts as an attraction between the females and the males, and so forth. But even a positivist will not be in a position to deny that there is a good deal more of this singing than is necessary for the "continuation of the species." For a positivist, indeed, "singing" is merely "an accident," a "by-product." But in reality it may be that this singing is the principal function of a given species, the realization of its existence, the purpose pursued by nature in creating this species; and that this singing is necessary, not so much to attract the females, as for some general harmony of nature which we only rarely and imperfectly sense.

Thus in this case we observe that what appears to be a collateral function of love, from the standpoint of the individual, may serve as a principal function of the species.

Furthermore, there are no fledglings yet: there is even no intimation of them, but "homes" are prepared for them nevertheless. Love inspires this orgy of activity, and instinct directs it, because it is expedient from the standpoint of the species. At the first awakening of love this work begins. One and the same desire creates a new generation and those conditions under which this new generation will live. One and the same desire urges forward creative activity in all directions, brings the pairs together for the birth of a new generation, and makes them build and create for this same future generation.

We observe the same thing in the world of men: there too love is the creative force. And the creative activity of love does not manifest itself in one direction only, but in many ways. It is indeed probable that by the spur of love, Eros, humanity is aroused to the fulfillment of its principal function, of which we know nothing, but only at times by glimpses hazily perceive.

-Ouspensky, from Tertium Organum, 162-68