The Mental Highway
	Psychology Of Love And Marriage <  Previous Contents Next  >

The most vital application of psychology is in the study of the supreme passion of life called Love, because it takes hold essentially of the feeling element of consciousness. Nothing so tones up the body, illuminates the mind and glorifies every object about one as the influence of love. Nothing can so undermine physical vigor, depress the mental processes, drape the soul in gloom and annul all the processes of action as much as a love disappointment. This is true not only because of the beneficent effect of love as an emotion, but because love is the movement to fruition of the fundamental Creative Impulse.

We have not worked out the psychology of love as has been that of the more somber experiences of life. When we feel good, we surrender ourselves to enjoying it, without analyzing the causes, but when our general vital feeling is that of illness or discomfort, we study all the minutiae of cause and effect, self-pity and self-blame. Very few people ever stop to analyze their love emotions.

Love is often an unconscious affair in its beginnings. You are unconsciously in love. You know that something out of the ordinary is the matter with you, but do not know what it is, although everybody else does. Love is the carrying out of a general feeling of pleasure into something specific. It is inseparable from desire. Desire is impulse directed by ideas. We trace the psychology of love in this way: First we find pleasure in the presence of another, followed by the egoistic desire to continue or increase that pleasure. The desire follows to hold or possess the person exclusively, which in turn is followed by a solicitude for the person’s welfare, the feeling of responsibility, and the extending of protection. Then follow exclusive possession and ownership, and then love comes to the full bloom of the Creative Impulse from which it started, or dies of suffocation.

We may call one phase of love "intellectual love," which is another word for idealistic sympathy. It loves for love’s own sake, and has no ulterior motive, beyond the delight of mental association.

Going into speculative psychology, love arises in the Universal Mind. It is the birthright whose image and superscription are upon every individual born. Each comes into the world with an unconscious ideal of our mental counterpart or other half, our partner to be. With that mental picture or ideal, which is purely spiritual, we are always in love unconsciously. One day our senses report the image of someone who resembles this mental picture with a physical form. The more perfectly they look like the picture, the more positively and consciously are we in love. Sometimes the discovery is gradual, as in those cases in which friendship ripens into love. Often the eyes are blind to all defects. The object seems to step in and fill perfectly the picture, and we are in love at first sight.

The truth is, we are never in love with a man or woman. We love a perfect ideal, and someone who more or less fills that ideal steps into the picture, and furnishes an objective upon which love may express itself. Such an objective may move into the picture anytime, and he or she may move out anytime because they no longer fill the picture, and another who more perfectly fills the ideal takes the place.

This may seem to make love a fickle and undependable thing. However, its fickleness is not in love, nor in the lover, but in the objective that has failed to fill the ideal, which has failed to grow and more perfectly express the perfect spiritual reality in objective form. The glamour of love is likely to be dimmed the moment that the humdrum of life renders the relationship commonplace. A common idea after the marriage ceremony is "Now I have my mate, I don’t need to work at making myself agreeable." That thought is the death knell of love, and the first step toward the divorce court. Yet if we will learn of the ancients we may learn the secret of holding the object of love. The mystery of charm is this saying, "Wonder is the beginning of wisdom." If we can, out of our own inner self discover some new excitations to the wonder and admiration of our mate, we can constantly grow into the picture, and nothing can oust us.

People marry for many reasons. Very few marry to please their parents. The two supreme motive qualities for action are curiosity and selfishness, even in love and marriage. The moment we think that we have exhausted the possibilities of a partner, have discovered all the charms of mind and heart, and have surveyed all the possible excellencies, and nothing remains to excite our further wonder or curiosity, we are open to the challenge of the next candidate to fill the picture. Only the most staunch fidelity to the memory of what has been, will keep love from seeking a new image to express its spiritual counterpart.

Among the motives for which people marry, some desire to avoid being alone, others marry for social position, or simply because they want a change. People marry for physical beauty, fascination with a keen mentality, pity or sympathy for their partner’s loneliness and helplessness. Others marry because the partner is good, pure or innocent. Some marry for companionship, or they want children to perpetuate the family name, to help them in their old age, and apart from the deeper motive of answering the Creative Impulse within. Some men marry for a home, a cook and housekeeper. They want somebody to mother them. Some women marry from pride in landing a husband. Still people marry for spite, others for money, and finally, some marry for excitement, and they usually find it.

The ideal marriage is based primarily upon spiritual affinity, the fact that two people perfectly fill each other’s spiritual ideals. Marriage requires harmony of mental qualities, companionship of ideas, and finally physical harmony. All these elements must be present. Many people have wrecked their marriages because they do not suit each other physically, others because they had no harmony of ideas. The truth is that most people need special instruction as to the physical, mental and spiritual elements entering the marriage contract and relationship. The glamour of love so blinds most people that they do not see the seriousness of the undertaking. They need to go to a school of matrimony, where the commonsense facts are presented to them so that they can undertake this great adventure with at least a reasonable chance for success.

People have so debased some of the greatest words spoken that we need to send them to the laundry. Among these are love, marriage and affinity. The world has lost their deep spiritual significance and a very material notion has taken its place. People talk of love as if it were a sort of material reality, something that begins in, belongs to, and ends in them. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Love is a cosmic phenomenon — a Universal Power whose mystical and spiritual significance we have lost or forgotten save in those rare moments of emotion when we catch the thread of its real meaning and feel the wondrous thrill. However, these are rare moments, which the grind of life quickly submerges. The moment we try to harness it to work for us, and to serve us, its glory departs. Only when we let it work in and through us with perfect freedom will it abide.

Love is grounded in our ultimate possible idea of God. We read, "In the beginning God," never thinking that it points to that era before time and space, or any of the relations of material things because no material things existed. There was just God, Life, Mind — Infinite Life, undivided and unexpressed, Infinite Love with no object upon which to lavish it, none to reciprocate, Infinite Power and Wisdom, and no one to understand and cooperate with it. So, the motive of the creative process is expression.

The "Logos (or idea) which was in the beginning with God" was a process, which would culminate in beings made in the image of God, reflecting or expressing His Intelligence, Love, Wisdom, Power and other qualities. The process involved Life coming from the universal into the relative, which is the real "fall of man." It also involves the truth that since the Life of God took on the human form divine, every step has been toward a recovery of all those activities and privileges that were ours in the Consciousness of God.

Of all the activities in which we can engage our consciousness, love stands first in its range, power and achievement. The emphasis of Christ-centered truth is love’s spiritual reality rather than its human shadow. "God is love" describes this divine quality in love and introduces the element of the wondrous in love. Every new incitement to wonder adds to the glamour of love. The great classic on love, in the 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians, describes the developmental steps of love to the state of perfection where it never fails, and is the greatest of all spiritual qualities.

Since the primal impulse of Being is to create, and since that Creator is Love, it follows that Love is the great Creative Power. Creation is essentially the birth of ideas. It is the fire that furnishes all energy. It stimulates the imagination to construct all ideals, the skill to formulate all symbols, and furnishes the power to build all forms. Love purifies all human imagery and evolves all the forms of human genius. It holds the prophecy of setting humanity free from all the chains of matter.

The primary expression of the creative power is reproduction in every species of its kind. We see this in every form of life from the lowest to the highest. Yet reproduction does not use up all the creative powers set free by love. In spring, the bird clothes itself in gorgeous plumage and sings its sweetest songs to find its mate, but it continues to wear its plumage and to sing after the mate is found. The creative power is busy building and preparing for the offspring when it arrives. So that both the primary and secondary expressions of the creative power seem to center in and revolve around love, at least in bird life.

Most people see these secondary and greater expressions of love as a creative power only hazily, and think them associated with the sex life. Yet the highest ideals that we express in thought, literature, song, service and other symbols that we see in the arts, sciences and philosophy, arise from love. The charm and inspiration of the opposite sex awaken and arouse us to attain and continue at our highest note of service. Love is the anterior power in all advance. Life’s secret of all abundance is Love. It comes from the one Absolute Source, and to give it the right of way in our heart is to fulfill all law, human and divine.

Perfect love always seeks another’s good. Selfishness seeks its own good. Two people love perfectly only in forgetfulness of self, "Love seeks not her own," yet the reciprocal operations are such that love never fails to draw its own. The law of affinity, the irresistible attraction of likes, guarantees that "None shall lack her mate," and that every individual goes to his own place in the scale of character.

The affections and emotions are grounded in the Divine Love, which is universal and perfect. Love instinctively clothes its objective with a perfect ideal. To the lover, love is supreme, and all things are lovely and lovable, just as "to the pure all things are pure." Often we find that the one we love does not fulfill the ideal. It is this eternal struggle between the ideally perfect and the realistically faulty objective that tries so many couples to the breaking point. Only a course in the University of Hard Knocks can help students to a wise adjustment of their perfect ideal to their imperfect human mate.

Love is the legitimate basis of all ties, especially those of the family. Marriage can arise only in the outgoings of this Divine Love ideal, which finds its own, and they two are one. Marriage can begin, continue and end aright only in this Divine Harmony of two ideal lovers. This alone constitutes marriage, and because of this perfect harmony, we say that marriages are made in heaven. Legal and ecclesiastical sanctions alone cannot make "Holy Matrimony." Love alone is the divine warrant. The other sanctions are provisions for the protection of the social order. The love that endures is so akin to God that it takes the form of worship toward God and His human image. Love is, therefore, a divine prerogative whose volume is measured to the individual according to his intelligence and uprightness. Love fills its possessor with a general altruistic inclination that expresses itself in kindness to every living thing. This is the key to every permanent success.

Divine Love, with its gentleness, cannot exist apart from a forgiving attitude toward all others and toward ourselves. Love endows the soul with redeeming purpose and power. Love stimulates the incentive to achievement, industry, presentable personality and self-esteem. Love imparts its divine quality to everything, and transforms its surroundings into a paradise. Love reclaims when all else fails. "Thy gentleness hath made me great," was the testimony of the inspired one of old, and it is the secret of all preferment. Love alone with its kindness and gentleness can inspire to greatness of achievement. Love promotes to honor and shapes destiny.

Love may lose its objective because love was not pure, unselfish and exalted, because the objective was not worthy, but love can never lose itself or the fruit of its service. "I am persuaded that nothing can separate us from the love of God." Love is the highest form of Divine Harmony, making its human medium a harp of a thousand strings, from which vibrates its soothing, healing and ennobling power. Love profoundly impresses the physical body, filling it with contagious health and boundless energy. Our body systems appropriate our feelings, and every cell in the body shouts for the joy of living when the divine stimulus of true love reaches them. Love absolves from all wrong and consumes all iniquities, for "we are without blame before Him in love."

Love inducts us into the thought atmosphere of the Eternal, for "He who dwells in Love dwells in God, and He in him." It lifts us out of the idea and sense of time into the method of the Divine Existence. The idea of time is lost to lovers. Jacob’s seven years of service "seemed but a few days, for the love he had for her." Love is the all-compelling power, for "all things work together for good to them that love God." Logically this is true of love, whatever its object. Therefore, the greatest thing in the world is love, for love is the highest characteristic of the Divine Nature and noblest expression of a Divine Character.