There is much to be
learned in love and the art of loving. Always so much.
The study and understanding of love is perhaps an unending
process. The possibilities of loving in spite of and because of all that we
endure in love astound me. Here are some things that in my experience stand
out. Yes, I like physics.
Love is a living thing
Love is a living throbbing thing. A thunderstorm that rips
lives in a second is alive and so are the bacteria in the soil that give the
monsoon its mesmerizing scent. Love is alive inasmuch as we are alive in it and
through it. It is in flux just like life. Wherever it stagnates, things start
to ‘go bad’. Like a river its sacred duty is to rush along, sometimes slow
sometimes fast – but move it must. Damming rivers is costing the Earth its
lifeblood; damming hearts is costing us ours.
Putting a dam on a river to get
material gain be it energy or water – is a disaster to all things around. The
upstream land is flooded, causing hundreds of hectares of land, trees, forests
and communities to be submerged. Thousands of plants rot and decay to give off
greenhouse gases. Silt that could have been fertile builds up swiftly from
places far away and the dam becomes shallower and shallower till it loses its
purpose.
Downstream all things are parched. Fish die and the people
face drought. Those most in need of life giving water die of thirst only
because we want to divert that water to one specific place. So also love that
is locked away to be extracted for a specific goal, destroys. The lover’s heart
is an upstream deathbed of choking life and stifled emotions. The silt of past
mistakes – an otherwise fertile source of experience – builds up serving no
purpose until it fills up the dam. The whole of the parched love-starved world
lies downstream.
Love is light
Love is universal and fundamentally inclusive – it is the
very embodiment of inclusiveness.
There are certain basic physical quantities in Nature that
have a peculiar characteristic of spreading out. These things like pressure and
heat and radiation have a tendency to travel until they reach equilibrium.
Light from the sun for example spreads out in all directions for ever until it
reaches almost the same temperature as the universe – almost.
Two things can be said of this – 1 The Earth thrives with a
fraction of this light and yet it is not jealous that more than 99% of the
sun’s love just goes away into the cold dark universe. Nor does the sun expect
anything back from the Earth. He not only loves her unconditionally but also
loves the whole of existence unconditionally. One of these cannot be separated
from the other. The pop culture myth of romantic love being the greatest kind
of love and our obsession with it is doomed to fail in misery because we try to
separate these two things. In true love there is no I love “You”. There is no
You.
One either loves or one doesn’t. The object doesn’t matter;
the object isn’t there (pun intended). The nature of relationships may be
different for each receiver. There is life only on one planet even if the light
reaches all planets. Yes that relationship is precious, wonderful, unique and
special. Yes it doesn’t work to force the same kind of relationship with other
planets. But to try and give all our love in to one relationship is a blunder. It
is physically impossible to have the whole of the sun’s energy concentrated on
to one Earth. Even if we could do that without burning the Earth, the Second
Law tells us that the fallout impacts of making such a machine and keeping it
running will cost a lot more than it gives. Trying to vie for ALL of the love
and attention of one person will inevitably have a similar fallout and end in tremendous
misery.
The 2nd thing is in that word, almost. When two bodies at different
temperatures exchange heat, the cold body gets a little warmer and the hot one
a little cooler. In case of a teeny tiny extremely hot body like the Sun at
5600K giving away heat to an immeasurably vast cold universe at 3K, the final
temperature will not be the average of 5600 and 3, but will actually be
unnoticeably greater than 3K. The Sun will be utterly spent in its light as it
sets itself ablaze gloriously giving every last bit to everything without
condition. The universe won’t get warmer by any appreciable amount, but the Sun doesn’t care. It doesn't even care if the universe cares. It is a true lover.
Another peculiarity of these physical quantities is the lack
of a negative side. Cold is only relatively less warm than warm. Temperature
may be reduced right down to near absolute zero. Theoretically we may ascertain
what that absolute zero is, as a number. But one thing that is impossible is to
go below absolute zero. The same goes
for pressure. A theoretical vacuum may be ascertained and reached, but no
further.
Taking from Prevost’s theory of heat exchange, Darkness also
is a virtual concept – there is no such thing. Every object at all times gives
out light – very little of which is visible to our eyes or our instruments. But
it is there nonetheless. Darkness is the relative absence of visible light. In
this sense darkness is in the eye of the beholder. The world is teeming with
love unrecognized and unseen. It emanates out our every creature and fills the
entire universe. But those not en-tuned will not see. Just like a bad or faulty
instrument will not pick up a signal.
The sensitivity of any instrument is inversely related to
its inertia. The easier it is to move, the more it will pick up. An accurate
compass needle is light in weight – it moves swiftly to align with the magnetic
field which then flows through it. A thermometer is filled with mercury, a
substance that needs very little heat to raise its temperature – it doesn’t ask
for too much heat to fill itself with before it starts conducting it onwards – in all directions. A sensitive person is
likewise an excellent receptor and conductor of love. This can also be said of
the ego, in case of meditation and conscious living. The smaller the ego, the
more easily one’s will aligns with the will of the universe. And then magic happens.
The opposite of love
Consider love as a force. Perhaps like the one between two
magnets. If one tries to pull two magnets apart, they resist quite strongly. So
also they repel when one of them is flipped. Is this repulsion then the
opposite of the former attraction? I think not. Repulsion - like attraction – is
an interaction. It is an acknowledgement of the force or a communication coming
from another entity. It is an induction of magnetic potential within one body
in response to the magnetic field created by another.
Nickel alloy magnets can be extremely difficult and
dangerous to take apart by hand. But there is a trick – to slide them apart
rather than pulling them. Here we apply force in a direction perpendicular to
that holding the magnets together.
The magnetic force will very strongly attract or repel in
its direction. But in the perpendicular direction, it has no component. Thus
love and hate go hand in hand as interactions along the same direction. Once we
move away into the lifeless perpendicular of indifference however, this
happens:
Love•cosӨ = 0
Gravity
Love is like Gravity. Among the four(three) fundamental
forces of Nature, gravity stands out in many respects. Three things especially.
One – Gravity is the only force without a known negative side. Gravity does not
repel. It only and only brings things together. Two – it is the only true long
range force. That’s why gravity governs all motion at the scale of planets and
stars and galaxies and galaxy clusters.
The other forces like magnetic and nuclear forces, operate
very strongly at smaller scales. At that scale they block out gravity and give
us the false impression of being stronger than it. Yet this misconception is
based on a false sense of the domain of these forces – not in space but in
time.
When all is said and done, when all the lower levels of
existence have sorted out their little attractions and repulsions that arise
out of a temporary polarization of their orientations, gravity prevails.
Likewise when we are done with our little separation of ideas and gender and
relations and borders, love prevails – always bringing things together in the
end (of a certain amount of space and time).
The wider our perspective in time and scale – the easier it
is to live in love (not to mention in awe) and to avoid violence in thought and
deed. Take our unsustainable practices for example. Once we think of the ambit
of our short sighted actions both spatially as well as in time, choices become
clear. Structural violence becomes suddenly as visible as torture in broad
daylight. And we are filled compassion. It is only on the much smaller scale of
thoughtless everyday living that we see differences.
Thirdly, Gravity is often considered not a separate force
but a manifestation of the arrangement of mass in the universe. It underlines everything. A force most subtle and yet most powerful.
