“Personal love is concentrated universal love.”
-Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
If you know me, you probably know that as a family, we go big on Valentine’s Day. So much so that my daughter Delphine is aghast every year when she has to go to school on that day. “How is it not a national day off, it’s the holiday for LOVE!!!” she complains every year. And she’s not wrong that love is the most important phenomenon in creation. But what is love? I immediately get in my head that old Def Leopard song (I know I’m dating myself here) “How do I know when it’s love? I can’t tell you but it last forever, ohhhh.” Song after song and poem after poem tries to define what seems undefinable.
The Vedic view on love is actually very specific and clear. Love is the Self recognizing the Self. The feeling of love is a wave of unity as we see ourselves in another. And it’s the beautiful reason all of us are here. This whole big story and all these disparate creations came into being through the Self forgetting its Oneness status in order to experience the joy of remembering itself.
So, like Maharishi Mahesh Yogi says in the quote above, when we fall in love with someone, whether it’s with a partner, a friend, a child, we are experiencing that big universal love in concentrated form. With meditation, that net of love gets wider and wider as our consciousness expands and we perceive more beings as extended Self. Until eventually, it’s all love.
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!
