The soul-stirring nature of true love by Aruna Jethwani

Topic: The soul-stirring nature of true love

Writter:  Aruna Jethwani

Publish Date: 21 December 2017

Published on : The Times of India

The soul-stirring nature of true love

By Aruna Jethwani

Recently, a seminar held in south India threw up many surprises. A young IT professional began his talk by showing a video, depicting a couple engrossed in sending messages on their mobile phones over a dinner date in a restaurant. He went on to say that technology-dependence was relegating face-to-face conversations to the back burner, to a large extent. A girl in the audience argued that e-interfaces did give the option of a face-to-face conversation. “Yes. But it has an intermediary in between,” pointed out the presenter.

He said, “Could your e-device provide a touch of comfort, a hug of acknowledgement or convey the feeling of love of Oneness? It may convey a part of these emotions or a part of your love and concern, but it cannot replace the human expression of understanding and pure love.”

Returning to the crowded lunch table, i observed that the participants were wearing worrying and preoccupied, restless looks. Faint smiles, or ‘Hi, how are you?’ were heard in passing. The crowd of mostly young students looked bored, and a bit insecure, like anywhere in the country. A situation which my scholarly professor kept predicting while talking of social change, referring to the book Lonely Crowd written by David Riesman 60 years ago, where the author laments the disintegration of ‘face-to-face communities’ termed as ‘Gameinshaft’ in German.

That feeling of togetherness, that feeling of Oneness is receding, whereas Indic tradition has always glorified love in its myriad forms and shades, ranging from Radha and Krishna in love songs, to Mira and her Girdhar Gopal in her verse, and love stories ranging from folk tales of Rai Dhiyach and Jam Tamachi to Sufi stories of Umar Marui and Sassi Punnu. All of these are wonderful pieces of literature with the core essence of spirituality.

The words ‘Love of Oneness’ lingered long; reminding me of a book called Oneness: “Once man realises the symbiotic relationship in which he stands with the world, nature, and Creator called Divine power, love will pour out of his inner emotional self. And that love is real, uplifting and generous. For want of understanding the deep ecology, man hurts himself as well as others, creating disruptive forces, because self-intervenes in between”.

Love plays many tunes, spreading the joy of being. There is devotional love for the guru, reverential love for the mentor; self-fulfilling love for one’s role model, and ‘togetherness love’ for friends, duty-filled love towards the family and yes, the strong pull of love between two people, called karmic love. Most of us have experienced these joyful tunes. But few of us know the meaning of true love.

Selfless love is unconditional, and this is illustrated in a story narrated by Sadhu Vaswani: A young man of 31 years was seen trying to climb with great difficulty, a very steep hill. He keeps falling again and again. Undaunted, he continues to climb. On reaching the hilltop, he picks up the wounded man lying there and carries him to a hospital, and arranges for medical treatment. People ask him, “How much have you suffered for this man! You put your life in danger! Is he your close relative?” Replies the good Samaritan, in a quiet tone: “He is a fellow human being.” Such is the soul-filled tune of ishq-e-haqiqi, true love.