Much of what is termed Love is purely Maya--that is to say, Illusion. And yet Illusion is not an adequate translation of Maya, because this word does not mean non-existent or illusory like the objects in a dream, but a condition in which things appear to be as they are not, or in which we see things as they are not. Thus, much of what is taken for love is Maya, and because it is fraught with illusions and engenders illusions in ourselves, the unenlightened and the sentimental think love will last forever, but it doesn't--and that is Maya; they think their loved ones are other than they proved to be--and that is Maya. A comprehension of this idea is very important, and one of the greatest aides to spiritual progress consists in the attempt to free ourselves from the thralldom of Maya.

When we can see all things as they are, instead of as we desire them to be, then we shall have no more disappointments and few more sorrows.

We find much of this thralldom of Maya in relation to marriage. The man thinks he wants to live with a woman for a lifetime and finds he doesn't want to live with her for a month is under the thralldom of Maya. The man thinks the women will be faithful to him till death, and finds she commits adultery with the first handsome soldier, is under the thralldom of Maya. And so on and so forth. We must endeavor to free ourselves from this thralldom otherwise we shall never gain wisdom or come to know peace.

We see much of this Maya element in the prevalent attitude toward sexuality. To give an example: "the man who shoots or divorces his wife because she has had sexual intercourse with another man" shows at once that he attaches a prodigious importance to sexual intercourse itself; on the other hand, the man who forgives his wife, or, better still, does not even feel there is anything to forgive, attaches little importance to sexual intercourse itself, and therefore proves himself to be not only a more evolved and enlightened soul but a more chaste one as well. Such a man no longer sees either sexuality or marriage through the veils of Maya.

There are prevalent misconceptions regarding chastity, purity, and complete abstinence. The chaste man is not to our way of thinking here, the man who practices complete sexual continence, but as I just implied, the man who sees sexuality in its true light. As nobody should be called a gourmand who enjoys his dinner when hungry, yet otherwise attaches little importance to eating, so nobody should be called unchaste who enjoys the sexual act when the body demands it, but otherwise is not preoccupied with sexuality itself.

With regard to purity--what we mean by the word is not prudery but the exact opposite. Purity is the power to see the beautiful in all things and all functions of life, and to glorify all actions by the spirit of unselfishness. He who has learned to be unselfish in every act of the sexual life, is pure.

If only the pure in heart, in the sense of the sexually abstinence, could see God, then every old lady and old gentleman who had outgrown all their passions--or never had any--might be in that enviable position. Why should God create in men and women a function by means of which they were to be debarred from seeing him? Maya again--even texts the unwary interpret through the veils of Illusion.

Some students and teachers of mystical or occult philosophy have a wrong attitude toward love and passion. You have no right to expect unadvanced souls to behave like advanced ones. Though the example is trite, the child in the kindergarten cannot be expected to know or learn the lessons of the Sixth Form. Nor must you expect even advanced souls to behave like perfect souls in this world--for even advanced souls may not be equally evolved in all directions; there's a little chip out of the crystal somewhere.

There's also the type of body to be considered, in which an advanced soul finds itself during a particular incarnation. Take for instance the creative artist: very often the finest creative artists appear by their behavior in the domain of sexual morals to be unadvanced souls. And yet they're not--they're merely born with a type of body which is exceedingly difficult to operate and control. When, say, a musician is composing a music drama or a symphony, tremendous forces from Beings perceptible to clairvoyants are playing around and through that man, and the result is a stirring up of his entire emotional nature.

Again--you have to realize that every form of control entails the expenditure of force, and if we consider that nearly all the force which the creative artist has at his disposal must go into his work, there's very little over by means of which to control his sex nature. But even so, the love affairs of a great artist, looked at from the standpoint of the Masters--who can see--are not quite the same as are those of the ordinary man. Their very transience, which the strict moralist condemns, is symptomatic not of a vacillating soul, but of a soul so one-pointed that even love in its erotic sense makes no lasting impression on it. It is only an evolved soul who can fall in love with ten women and not wish to marry anyone of them.

The great artist knows, be it consciously or subconsciously, that his love affairs are only Maya--and as soon as anyone realizes that Maya is Maya, he proves himself free from the thralldom of Maya. Those self-righteous ones who exclaim: "He's a genius, poor fellow, so I suppose we must forgive him. . . " are neither charitable nor enlightened: only in the heart of the flower of true understanding is hidden the sweet honey of pardon. Thus love affairs are not evil in themselves; they are only evil when they upset a man's judgment, bring suffering to others or lure us away from the Great Purpose.

But the above is not applicable to souls so advanced as to be nearing Masterhood. In this case, sexual fidelity to one woman is desirable because infidelity has a disintegrating effect upon our higher bodies.

The highest type of love may be seen where two people are united in the spirit of perfect freedom, yet neither feel the desire to avail themselves of it. But although this may be the highest form of love, it is not of necessity the highest form of marriage. Only when such people marry in order to serve the Higher Ones and Humanity, be it either through work which can only be undertaken conjointly, or by providing suitable bodies for souls wishing to reincarnate through them, only then did they enter upon that type of marriage which is the highest of all, and hence totally beyond the glamorous distortions of Maya.