654. Love is Blind

One would love to be blind if only Love lasts. Behind this idea of blindness lies a philosophical truth. Love is the pure celestial emotion for the Beloved. Sadhaks writing to Sri Aurobindo about love or divine love got a reply saying divine love is love for the Divine. Man extols the idea of his love for the woman and desires to raise it to the divine status. Sri Aurobindo quickly disenchanted the writer about his illusion. He even asked one correspondent if it was an application for marriage. The romantic youth idolises his beloved. To him, love is a sacred word symbolising his emotion for the object of his love. He would see her perfect, and would not listen to any information to the contrary. Even when she is abusive, coarse, her true nature refuses to make a dent in his armour. What is known to youth as love has several grades - passion, infatuation, intoxication, illusion, charm, attraction, all of which qualify to be blind.

Passion has three or four versions. Physical passion such as Romeo's egged him on to climb into the chambers of Juliet, during which process he was oblivious. Romeo was possessed by a passionate energy and he was under its spell. The varieties of human nature permit a mixture of the noblest emotion of the heart with the strongest urges of the body. Passion can be physical, vital, mental and spiritual. All the above variations of love listed exist at all these four levels. When we say Love is Blind, we mean Love renders the lover blind during the spell. He is disenchanted when the spell ends. In the imagination of an ardent youth earnestly in love, it is not an emotion that admits of disillusionment. To him, during the SPELL, love is eternal, whether it is pure love or one of infatuation.

While he is attracted to his object of love, he is blind, not because he refuses to see the defects, but to him no defect can be there in her. It is a blissful mental state. What is in love is one's personality commonly known as ego. Ego sees what it wants to see, not what is there. Sri Aurobindo says ego is of the Infinite. We refer to ego as self, and the Infinite in us as Self. The self is blind, but the Self that sees into the past as well as future sees in the other the self-same SELF in which there is no defect. This truth is highlighted by the Upanishads as ‘all is in each and each is in all'. The Divine perfection of flawless Self of the other comes to Man as the capacity to be Blind to the defects of the beloved during the spell of charm. Every human action, emotion, thought, or movement has its divine counterpart. Man sees them as inverted. Love is the most attractive emotion to the youth's exuberance. It loves to be Blind in its love.