Date: February 15, 2025
Venue: Matriniketan
As part of the residential programme organized by Uditam: Institute for Integral Healing, Sri Aurobindo Society, Dr. Beloo Mehra, Director, BhāratShakti, was invited to facilitate a group discussion session on Saturday, February 15, 2025. For her session, Dr. Mehra focused on the topic – Love and Relationships.
The session opened with general introductions all around, after which Dr. Mehra asked everyone how they understand the word ‘love’. Participants shared some very interesting responses from which Dr. Mehra pulled out some key words such as care, affection, mutual understanding, forgiveness, respect etc, and a completer understanding was then developed slowly through an interactive process.
Building on this initial shared understanding Dr. Mehra then highlighted the significance of examining the nature of human love and relationships using a deeper psycho-spiritual view of human nature, given to us by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother who had not only explored the depths of human nature but had also raised themselves to the highest heights of consciousness. She shared a few lines from Sri Aurobindo’s epic mantric poem, Savitri, which highlight on one side the eternal and divine basis of Love as a Force, and on the other the human deformations that enter into Love which make all human ties fragile and temporary. She also briefly explained the context in which these lines appear in the poem.
This story-telling approach was taken further through sharing examples of specific human relationships as presented in Indian epics such as Ramayana and Mahabharata. Participants were asked to share their understanding of some of the popular stories from these epics which are focused around human relationships. They were also able to connect some of the insights from these stories with their own lived experiences and observations of life around them. This reflective approach made the experience richer and more meaningful for all.
Through an interactive appraoch it was also highlighted that most often we go through life experiencing several aspects of human love and relationships, without ever examining them in any deeper way. We go through a variety of emotions, ranging all the way from pleasure to pain, from passion to indifference, from happiness to sadness, from calmness to rage, and so on. Such ups and downs cause much turmoil in people’s lives – outer and inner, and also lead to strained and troubled relationships. But a deeper exploration of these aspects of our lives from a yogic perspective, from the perspective of how the movements of various parts of our being colour and shape our experiences and understandings of our relationships, can be very helpful in creating a deeper harmony within and without.
Some questions about the changing societal contexts also came up, which deepened the discussions and also brought in cross-cultural views on these topics. It was discussed how important it is to explore the notion of human relationships from an evolutionary perspective also. The hour-long session was appreciated by all participants.