Bhakti Yoga is the conversion of human love into divine love. To understand Bhakti we must first understand what human love is.
The medieval Hatha Tatva Kaumudi asks what the use of Hatha Yoga without bhakti is (Hatha Tatva Kaumudi, p.629). It then describes bhakti as the process during which a yogi gets drenched in tears of intense bliss, provoked by love through communion with the Divine. The text further states that bhakti is experiencing eternal love upon plunging into the ocean of divine love. It is apparent from the choice of words that the concept of love here significantly differs from contemporary ideas about love currently used in modern society. Today, we use the term mainly in the context of romantic love. Romantic love subscribes to the myth that we are somehow incomplete and that there is precisely the right person out there to make us whole and complete if only we can find them (Robert A. Johnson, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love, Harper One, 2009). Modern people, therefore, tend to enter romantic relationships saddled with enormous expectations, under which weight they tend to collapse quickly. Most people cannot live up to the expectation that it is their responsibility to make their partner whole and happy, and why should they? We then believe that we chose the wrong person, go our way, and continue to look for Mr or Mrs Right.
One of the problems with human love is the always- present element of projection. Freud pointed out how our relationships with our primary carer(s), usually our parents, leave certain psychological wounds, in yoga called samskaras (subconscious imprints). Based on such early imprints, we select our partner(s) later in adulthood based on their capacity to re-inflict those same wounds simply because they confirm our existing biases. Thus, our partners become the receiving screen for projecting our subconscious biases. I will refer to them simply by the term projections.
These biases may involve beliefs such as that life is painful or complex, that we are worthless or unworthy, that men are interested only in sex, that women are in it only for money and security, and many more. Our subconscious has distilled such beliefs from our life experiences for the purpose of survival, and many of them during early childhood by emulating our primary carers. We developed such beliefs as a response to coming to terms with the behaviour of our primary carers and all others we encountered. Unless we engage in transformative work, such subconscious biases and beliefs are usually not examined in adult life simply because they worked in the past. For this reason, in yoga, we refer to the totality of these beliefs as robotic programming.
We tend to select our partners not based on who they truly are as individuals but based on their suitability to receive our projection. The point at which we wake up from projecting subconscious needs on our partner is often the point at which the romantic relationship breaks down. At this point, we usually scout for a new partner to become our projection’s next recipient. Alternatively, when we consciously decide to love our partner without projecting on them, our love may take on a spiritual quality. In this case, the relationship’s focus will switch from receiving what we need from our partner to what we are ready to give. This is the point of departure where human love begins to turn towards and into divine love. Ultimately, divine love asks us to see and experience everybody as an embodiment of God. For many of us, starting with one’s partner is a natural starting point on this journey.
A similar source for projection may be our love for our children. Modern people who don’t follow a particular religion or spiritual path often harbour the subconscious hope or belief to attain some form of immortality by continuing to live on in their children. As a child, I was struggling with my mother’s sometimes obsessive form of identifying with me. When I approached my father with the request for advice on how to handle this situation, he said that I needed to understand that my mother was an atheist. Like all atheists, so my father said, she saw her children as a continuation of herself and her ticket to immortality. Such unconscious and unexamined beliefs may surface in statements as simple as “I don’t want my children to suffer the same deprivation or difficulties that I did”, or “I always wanted to do this or that but never could. Now I make sure that my children can.” Alternatively, we may have wished to become a doctor, successful singer, or athlete, but it never worked out. We may now attempt to achieve this success through our children by manoeuvring them into a position where we can enjoy and consummate their success per extension. Such an attitude is present to the degree to which we try to push our children in a particular direction.
Of course, also, here, an evolution can take place. This is especially clear when we start loving our children not for who they can be for us but simply for who they presently are, even if that is not necessarily the person we bargained for. Especially if our child has what we could call a problematic fate, and we still love and support them selflessly or possibly gradually learn to do so, then our love is beginning to evolve towards the ideal of bhakti, divine love.
The next article will explore the difference between human and divine love.
This is an excerpt from Gregor’s book BHAKTI The Yoga of Love.
