Love is the highest emotion known to man. Love is of so many moods---love of the devoted wife for her husband (shanta bhava), love of the servant for the master (dasya bhava), love between friends (sakhya bhava), love of the mother for her child (vatsalya bhava) and finally, the sweetened love between lovers (madhur bhava). Each of these relationships represents a stage and a phase of love. Each mood again in some degree includes the other moods of love as well. The difference between these various relationships lies in the degree of the intensity of love as also the freedom of expression of love. Love, to be truly love, must be free from fear and must be uninhibited in its play. Also, love must be perfectly pure without the least vestige of material contamination for its fullest play, for purity frees love of all the fetters that bind man.
The five-fold love stated above are the successive stages of the manifestation of love as it progresses towards perfection. Shanta bhava, that of the ' pativrata stree ' (the ever-faithful wife), is smooth in its flow as it is sanctioned by society. Concentrated love on the husband frees the wife of all earthly bondage.
Dasya bhava, the attitude of the devoted servant towards the Master when raised and deified frees the soul of all earthly bondage. Service perfected is karma-yoga and bhakti-yoga conjoined.
Sakhya bhava, the free association of true friends with the carefree love between them is the next higher step towards perfection of love. Here there is no fear, no barrier of reverence and hence there is a rambling freedom in the love that ensues.
Vatsalya bhava comes as the next higher phase in the ascending order of love. The mother's love for the child---that selfless love which flows out of the mother's heart for her child, that eternally pure love devoid of all material contamination, that love which is the sustaining force for the child, that love is freedom itself when raised and deified. The mother here lovingly worships her own child as God and thereby frees her soul.
Finally, the most sublime of love-relations, the madhur bhava or the sweetened mood of love. This is a most difficult mood to even comprehend, much less practise. The aspirant here must be totally liberated of all carnal thoughts, of all low sensuality, base desires and earthly cravings before he or she may even contemplate practising this mood of devotion. Usually, only liberated souls or very advanced spiritual seekers are fit to practise this path. Lovers, bereft of all desire except the desire to feel the oneness of love get enmaddened following this sublime mood of love and, unshackling themselves of the eight fetters that bind man, rise to the supreme heights of spiritual oneness where the least distinction of personalities is barely maintained to savour the love that floods their hearts and minds and souls. Now, separate and now, one---thus the oscillation goes on drowning the souls in ecstatic bliss. The earth is forgotten, heaven becomes a distant dream and liberation a boon spurned as they unite heaven, earth and the beyond in a supreme sweep of their unearthly love and render the mortal frame divine. The trinity of love is united as the lover, the beloved and the the pulsating feeling of love are fused and diffused into the sublimest essence of oneness. Om Madhu ! Om Madhu ! Om Madhu !
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