CHAPTER 3
As The Idea Of ‘Self’, In Objective Terms, Is Often Pitted Against
The ‘Self’ Itself; Love Too Has Similar Shade Of Conflation…
Love is ideally acceptable with its three elements of Mystery, Magic and Marvel. Most of us feel, if love is made to be understood with objective technicalities of science, the three ‘M’s’ of love withers away. The three ‘M’s’ land most of us in inexplicable troubles and pains of love, still, we do not wish to understand the mechanism in its objective and scientific terms, which can put us in good stead, vis-à-vis all the love troubles.
This mysticism of love is what most lovers get attracted to initially. This suits the consciousness of love. This marvel of love gives the young men and women huge kicks of life. Young minds get huge thrills in journeying amidst the mist of mysticism of love as precariousness of the enterprise always has its own joy. Similar is the human desire, when it comes to religion and spiritualism. Mysticism is preferred state here too. However, this mysticism further confuses those in love and faith and this confusion in turn leads to calamitous patterns of behaviors and actions in love. The resultant pain and chaos is cyclic.
Sciences may not be in a position right now to tell us in perfect details as why and how, what happens in love. However, there are huge research-backed substantiations explaining lot many aspects of the purely physical and bio-chemical mechanisms and processes of love, as human mind handles them. This surely takes away lots of mysticism, magic and marvel out of the age-old notion of love and archetypal imagery of love in society. However, it is hugely helpful in clearing the mist of confusion and chaos around the very core idea of love.
It is a humble suggestion that objective knowledge about something never ever takes away the subjective joys. It rather enhances them. We all know it very well that an actor on the movie screen is just portraying and professing a role or character still, we cry with them and get emotionally one with the fictitious character. The knowledge, that the actor is actually not dead and it is only the character he portrayed is dead in the movie, does not anyway reduce our emotional joy and satisfaction of movie viewing. The knowledge surely enhances our joys and nullifies the pain, as we know, at the end of day everything is back to real.
The dualism of love is actually the root cause of why such a beautifully powerful and beneficial facility called love becomes a cause of pain and trouble. When we do not understand the mechanism of something very clearly, mysticism is bound to creep in and it shall unleash the destructive energy of confusion. We need to understand the mechanism of love in scientifically explained terms to enhance the joy of love.
The mechanism of mind, explained in terms of detailed neurochemical and neuroelectrical processes in pure scientific traditions may not be suitable for all of us. Therefore, what we shall talk about here is just an outline and simplified description of the mechanism.
What we are attempting to bring out from our discussion is the ‘dualism’ inherent in the mechanism and processes of love, as human mind handles it. We also need to accept that it is not something which science is telling us now. Thousands of years back, great minds of spiritualism and philosophy have told similar facts about consciousness, the cardinal position of love in it and the dualism, which consciousness faces about the emotional positioning of love.
Human mind is where all mysticisms emanate and end. The multilayered mechanisms of mind is one huge mystery, humanity has been attempting to unravel since thousands of years. The spiritualism and philosophy have given its own interpretation. Science has taken over and presented great facts about mind mechanism, its structure and functions and this has led humanity to understand lot many things about consciousness.
Human brain is the central mechanism for ensuring the survival and excellence of human body and it has to be accepted that the conscious and subconscious mind accepts and expresses almost everything in terms of its primary and pivotal role of ensuring a mechanism for survival and excellence. This interpretation of human mind looks so demeaning as we all are inclined to accept ourselves as something big and a lofty and special creation of God. Accepting ourselves as an entity, with base idea of survival is revolting.
That is why, science says, “the idea of a self, in objective terms is often pitted against the ‘self’ itself, which we have been used to accepting subjectively since thousands of years.”
Just for knowing the mechanism, we need to accept that human mind ensures this survival and excellence through a continuous and complicated maintenance of a process called homeostasis – better understandable as ‘poise’. All wisdoms, old or new, since thousands of years, have talked about the importance of this idea called ‘poise’, explained in terms of philosophy and spiritualism. Science unravels its physiological, bio-chemical and psychosomatic aspects.
In lower organisms, the homeostasis or poise is only physiological and biological but as human mechanism is very complex, human mind has to perform a complex and multidimensional homeostasis. In humans, the poise also has to be bio-sociological, psychological, emotional, spiritual as well as volitional. We are talking about this all because, love has to do specifically with this homeostasis thing and the trouble it creates also emanates from this.
There are sufficient scientific researches to establish that when people are in true love and absolute intimacy, their overall homeostasis is in great shape and this reflects in their healthy state of mind and body as well as behavior-action. The reverse has also been established as researches show, when people are in instable and unsettled love elements, their body gets affected and they land in serious body-mind dysfunction and even death.
Science has also established that most of the behavior-action of humans is instinctive and intuitive. Even the learned behavior, the nurture part, in time becomes part of instinctive behavior and nature. The simple idea is, almost everything, which our conscious and subconscious mind accepts and expresses, has to be in consonance and conformity with the larger homeostasis, which is essential for survival and excellence.
The conscious as well as the subconscious minds operates in a way, which is mystical for most of us as most operations and processes are intangible and we are mostly oblivious of it. That is also why, love, which is a very potent, cardinal and critical element of behavioral and emotional expression of our consciousness, remains in the mist of mysticism, magic and marvel.
However, we all can now understand the mechanism of this mysticism of love consciousness and come out of the veil of mysticism, standing tall on the ground of practical and tangible realism. This we can do by understanding how essentially our larger consciousness is an intangible expression of homeostasis process and how love is the strongest and most authoritative voice of this consciousness; seeking perpetuity of ‘poise’ – the larger homeostasis.
The process of making of consciousness, which stays with us lifelong, starts even when we are in mother’s womb. The sense of ‘self’ or to say, the question as ‘who I am’, starts to take shape when in womb, a child gets the feel of sounds and vibrations around. The unconscious mind of child starts accepting these elements of his immediate milieu as part of its homeostasis requirements. Science admits; a newborn child is designed to be born as a genius. It readies itself for the environment outside the womb by imbibing the signals it receives inside the womb. That is why; modern couples start the education of their kids well in the womb itself.
From the day first, the human child is instinctively loaded with one facility, which helps him or her evolve his or her ‘self’ – the subjective consciousness. This facility is instinctive inquisitiveness – the insatiable inclination to know. This desire also seems to be a beautiful expression of the homeostasis mechanism of body-mind consciousness. The mind can maintain poise only when it incessantly updates information about the surrounding environment and makes prompt decisions about the utility of these information for maintaining homeostasis.
It is here the trouble seems to start for humanity. The need to know exposes the mind to loads of multiplicity of information in the larger environment. As subconscious mind of the child starts to accept and adopt most of them as ‘essential’ for his homeostasis, he or she becomes unconsciously predisposed to these information and they become part of his or her larger consciousness, which science refers to as love/belief system.
Even before a child grows up to become an adult, he or she already accepts thousands of beliefs. However, most of these beliefs are based on his or her personal and subjective interpretations of experiences, inferences, assumptions, probabilities, deductions, inductions, and loads of oversimplifications, which the subconscious mind is expert at making. Most of these beliefs are very much part of the subconscious mind and continue to present themselves as potent referrals for conscious mind even years after. We all have heard people saying, an adult’s love is very much a reflection of what he or she got in childhood. We all know, a love-deficit childhood engenders an adult with troubled love life.
All these beliefs, which a child acquires, form part of the ‘self’, the subjective consciousness, about which we always keep asking question as ‘who I am’. Our subconscious mind starts building an image of ‘self’ and this process expresses itself in mystically intangible ways. We unconsciously start extending the limits of our ‘self-image’ in things and beliefs around us. It starts with we identifying with our body first, then with our mind, our family, friends, neighbors, teachers, partners, the special someone and later with our career, assets, ethnicity, nationality, gender etc. As we grow in life, we identify more with ideas and issues. All these are expression of our ‘self’, the consciousness.
We adopt them in our minds and guard them very ferociously as if they were part of our ‘self’. We fight over our people and beliefs like we fight for our dear life and well-being. It is because, they are part of our self and anything against them threatens our homeostasis, making us react fiercely. This is mystical. We may think, we are fighting for the cause of our dear ones or dear beliefs but essentially, we are fighting for our own survival, which is expressed in terms of homeostasis.
We all know, how people feel so strongly about their family, loved ones, ethnicity and nationality. People go to the extent of sacrificing their lives for the dear cause of family and even nation. It is very simple to understand why people do not think twice, giving up their lives for lovers and even something as vague as loss of their favorite football club. People commit suicide even when their favorite pop star falls from stairs and hurts him or her seriously. This is no joke. These incidents somehow are very intense and as some people accept it as something seriously threatening their ‘self – their very homeostasis wellness, they feel, their very survival is threatened. The reaction can be very disproportionate and precarious. They often are in love!
We all need to understand and accept it with a non-judgmental and objective mind that usually, when we are in love; we are in the ‘mystical middle’ of a very intense and powerful dualism. True love is one beautiful and everlasting ‘poise’ of person and personality. However, in our pop culture, we all can see how love is one huge ‘psychosis’. The trouble is, both poise and psychosis can be simultaneously present and active in one single person, at any given time.
A person seeks to be in love to internalize this ‘poise’ to the core of his or her personality. However, the same person is battling against the psychosis on the periphery of his or her personality as the culture and society we live in, exposes him or her to loads of conflicts and competitiveness. This dualism often expresses itself in chaotic love emotions.
When we love someone, he or she becomes an essential and ingrained part of our ‘self-image’ and systemic wellness homeostasis. We start taking him or her for granted as part of ‘me’ and ‘mine’. That is why; when there is trouble in love, or a situation, where it seems the love-situation is unsettled, we feel hugely threatened. We unconsciously feel that our very survival and core wellness is threatened. In this unsettled situation, the very person, who was the ‘receiver’ of all our love- largesse, poses as the one, who is a threat to our wellness.
We all have experienced and witnessed this situation all around us when a lover kills his or her beloved and also kills himself or herself. Why? This dualism plays the villain. The dualism of the subconscious mind makes us do all unimaginable things. The simple reason is – when your love is threatened, your unconscious mind quickly attempts to identify the ‘enemy’, who threatened your survival instincts. As your beloved himself or herself is someone, who jolted your love-wellness, the unconscious mind identifies him or her as enemy. The war is then declared against this ‘enemy’.
The dualism is playing its mystical marvels to us. The special someone, the beloved, whom we love so much that we cannot think of living a moment without him or her, becomes our enemy number one. Depending on how we all have been culturally trained to treat our enemies, we start executing our battle-tactics against him or her. Those, who are well groomed, trained by parents and family to be accommodative and compassionate with even the enemies, shall never opt for violent and overtly physical battle-plans. However, they can be sadistic about them. Those, who have a culture of violence, can go to any limit as it is said, “Everything is fair in love and war”.
Global data shows that intimate partner violence is hugely on rise. Failed love and intimacy has become the chief pain-inflictor in our pop culture. The easiest expression of the desire to inflict pain on intimate partners is ‘promiscuity’ and ‘character assassination’. Sadism, aggression and behavioral hostility are sure signs of a troubled and unsettled wellness homeostasis of the person. This person shall be hugely intense and passionate in love. However, be sure, when things are on the low, such a person can be calamitous and extreme with expressions of his or her desire to secure his or her wellness.
As we said earlier, researches have confirmed that when a person’s dear ideas or people are in trouble, his or her bio-sociological, psychological, emotional and volitional homeostasis is disturbed and this leads him or her to dysfunctional health and even death. The perception of threat to their homeostasis is very subjective, varying hugely.
That is why, we all need to understand and accept; love needs huge preparedness. We all are given enough time for the preparations. When I am perfectly settled and in absolute ‘poise’ of my overall wellness homeostasis, then only I am ‘ready’ for assimilation and integration of love. Moreover, the special someone, I love, has to be in this ‘poise’ too. Then only the magic works!
A young father has his little daughter growing fast in a very big city of United States of America, where pop culture has taken the teenagers in perfect grip. The mother is very concerned and even tense. She worries for her teenage daughter and asks her husband, what to do to avoid any ‘accidents’. Nothing new! However, what the father of this teenage girl said to his wife is interesting. He said, “I am trying to figure out, what my daughter can do, which I cannot forgive. I love her and I think, the sky of my affection and compassion for her shall always remain much larger than her arms can stretch for possible wrongs.”
True love has to be like that. Love, in all its manifestations and expressions has to be like that. Love liberates, never suffocates. The ‘compassion’ of forgiveness shall always remain larger than the ‘accidents’ of ‘passion’, when you are in true love and absolute intimacy.
The father, in the above story, is in perfect ‘poise’ of his wellness homeostasis. His wellness is not threatened by his subjective ‘self-image’ of right and wrong. It is his poise, which is so beautifully and magnanimously reflected in his behavior and action. It is only natural that this father is a sure hero for the girl and this girl shall grow to be one ‘poised’ person.
From the day we are born, we are muffled by love, in one form or other. Our preparedness starts from that day. Initially, it is the responsibility of parents and family but later, we ourselves have to learn and unlearn our ways towards this ‘poise’ of our larger wellness homeostasis. If we have this poise, love shall be one huge theatre of song and dance within. And, when we choose to extend this wellness poise to someone special, we need to be sure, he or she is in the same ‘poise’.
Love, as an idea, deeply associated with the entity of homeostasis, is hugely beautiful and highly useful. Love is a mystical expression of the ‘sense of larger wellness’, which is a cardinal and potent condition for homeostasis.
What mind receives and expresses are through neurochemical and neuroelectrical processes. However, these processes are intangible and our conscious mind never is able to see or perceive them. It is when, these processes are translated in behavior and action then we understand and accept it. That is simply why; there is a sense of mysticism, in all our behavior-actions, which are expressed in subconscious state of mind.
The affectors of human emotions, which in turn impact the human mind’s decision-making choices of behavior-action are mostly intangible. That is why; there is a sense of mysticism and marvel around it.
Love also being an expression of intangible nature and essentially a neurochemical and neuroelectrical expression of the larger need of body’s homeostasis wellness, lands in the domain of mysticism, magic and marvel.
Love is an intangible and very subjective expression of emotions in terms of behavior-action to extend the domain of self’s homeostasis wellness in the ambient environment. When the self accepts and adopts something and someone as right and good for its homeostasis wellness, there is a neurochemical and neuroelectrical impulse to merge in as part of its larger ‘self’. This Process Is Body-Mind Consciousness Expressing In Terms Of The Emotion Of Love.
Love is essentially an extension of one’s ‘self’ and subjective consciousness to accept and accommodate a thing, idea or person in its fold. Therefore, love basically is a very selfish and self-indulged emotion, an expression of the self’s ever-present need to maintain its homeostasis. It is our higher consciousness, which assigns and aligns this ‘selfishness’ to lofty and noble values of life and living in societal space.
That is why it is very important to accept that incidence of love shall always be mired in conflation and conflict as it is like just the birth of a child, which we all nurture, evolve and mature in time with care and perseverance. Love too happens or delivered in precarious mode but needs to be evolved definitively. Love evolves in echelons, like consciousness, which rises up with the energy of unlearning…
Love is a mind-mechanism and process in the side of ‘self’, for enhancement and aggrandizement of the broader need of survival and wellness. When we explain love in these terms, we shall see that there is nothing that remains in the veil of mysticism, magic and marvel. Everything, even weirdest of action-behavior in love can be explained and understood in scientifically calculable ways.
A person’s homeostasis often accepts contradictory ideas. It is possible that a person is a devout faithful, still that person relishing an abusive tongue. It is all in the subconscious. It became ingrained in that person’s subconscious mind probably early in his childhood and now forms part of his or her larger wellness homeostasis. Therefore, this person would love another person, who has similar faith system, however, would not desist from using bad mouth to him or her as the subconscious mind is used to accepting the abusive tongue as ‘good’ and acceptable.
You may see a dualism and contradiction in it. You may think, if a person loves you, he or she should use nice language with you and should not be a boozer or a gambler. However, for that person, love is only an expression of his or her ‘self’ and his or her ‘self’ already accepts abuse and boozing as acceptable things for his or her wellness homeostasis.
If you attempt to reason it out with him or her that if he or she loves you, he or she should stop abuse and booze, he or she shall first of all look confused. He or she would not even understand why you are saying this. Because, he or she (his or her subconscious mind), does not see any contradiction and conflict in it. Most likely, he or she shall take your words of reasoning as a threat to his or her wellness homeostasis and would likely to go away. Nobody can compromise with his or her long preserved homeostasis.
Actually, this person loved you because you fitted in his or her larger scheme of homeostasis wellness. Now when you have put up ideas, which disturb his or her homeostasis, his or her sense of wellness is threatened and compromised. He or she is likely to stop loving you, or shall be unsettled and erratic in his or her action-behavior.
The subconscious mind is almost too obsessed with the idea of survival and homeostasis. That is why, when it is faced with some situation, which is unpredictable and for which it has no ready solutions, it shall start creating such ideas for ensuring his or her win and success, which shall be weird and even illusory. Not only that, it would also prompt the conscious mind to go ahead with those weird ideas in terms of action and behavior.
For example, when you ask someone you love deeply to do away with some nasty or not so good habit or idea with him or her. He or she would first resist it saying, ‘why do you want to change me?’ You may tell lot many things to convince him or her but with little success.
Consider, what this person’s subconscious mind can come up with. It can device a series of questions, which shall essentially be his or defense against the change you want. His or her subconscious mind shall create all possible patterns of action-behavior to ensure he or she wins against your suggestion for change. Homeostasis needs to always win for survival.
The person would ask:
The general refrain of most people in love is, “why cannot you accept me as I am. The God accepts me and loves me the way I am, good or bad. Why can’t you? Are you greater than God? Love never puts conditions!” Etc.
Remember, the more intelligent a person is, more artistic and ingenious shall be his or her advocacy against change. More unsettled, ephemeral and indecisive one’s overall homeostasis is, more intense and vocally demonstrative he or she shall be in love. However, this person shall be tougher for you to change him or her and shall be equally demonstrative in denying changes.
This dualism needs to be understood. The unsettled homeostasis makes one to seek love more intensely, desperately and sincerely. Such love is usually highly demonstrative and aggressively centrifugal. Love is the emotion of search for larger wellness homeostasis and people, who have larger need for wellness poise, shall be very intense, highly possessive and overwhelming in love. This initially suits love needs of both the partners.
Everyone loves to be smothered and submerged in love’s intensity and its mystically disproportionate multidimensionality. However, this is the seed of big trouble-tree of love. If we wish to be swept away by the storm of love, we need also to be ready of the calamitous fallouts of this storm.
Love in its pure and pious form is never passionate but always compassionate. Love is a ‘well-poised’ consciousness positioning, an innate state of settled internal wellness, seldom in need of passionate and demonstrative expressions.
Love’s expression is like systemic serenity of ‘song and dance’ staged within a person’s consciousness. You shall come to relish and feel at peace with his or her innate song-dance positioning, without that person saying anything to you.
The higher consciousness, in compassionate possession of the settled wellness of love shall be calm and composed like a deep ocean and blue sky. Such a person shall be widely accommodative, assimilative and integrative towards everything, like an ocean and sky.
Compassion only assimilates; passion can often drift in the storm of disproportionate demonstrations of love. As we have talked about it earlier, humanity needs to ‘unlearn’ this old cultural cognition of accepting love as a ‘passion-positioning’. Love is essentially about compassion – this higher consciousness of ‘I’ and resultant assimilative cognition about mutuality priorities.
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