Is Love a Computer Game?

Boy meets girl. He has known her for all of five minutes. In that time he has guessed her age, recreated a fantasy of her life and probably envisioned the two of them starring in his own personally directed mind movie.

He is in love.

Or is he?

Clearly his whole organism is responding to his created reality. In a matter of minutes he has created an illusion about a woman that his body treats as reality.

Put a man in a computer simulator and again the artificial world dictates his responses. In our example of the young man his reality has gone beyond the few minute meeting of his desired soul mate.

It is as if time has no real meaning within his neurology. It could be compared to a character in a computer game.

If I could enter the cyber world and ask the hero his age he may tell me he is twenty five and been chasing the dragon for six months. There would be no point in tell him he is part of a five minute clip on a DVD. That concept is beyond the programmed responses allowed the character.

As long as there is power this cyber reality exists. However, the moment the power is cut it is as if this reality never existed.  In the same way, if the power of love is lost, the illusion of desire will disappear from our young man’s life.

The question remains whether we rewrite our program, in whatever small capacity of free will we have, and whether we can create our own love?

Is life a virtual reality with angelic computer programmers setting the variables?

If you have seen the movie What the Bleep Do We Know? Then the idea that our reality is nothing but a perception will be nothing new to you.

Is our reality nothing more than our perception of stimuli? Can there really be love, or is that to an illusion? Is that young man’s experience really love? Or is there a divine absolute reality or truth called love?

On a physical level, researchers like Helen Fisher describes love as a drive with 3 overlapping stages of lust, attraction, and attachment. Lust as a preparatory device for mating see’s the release of testosterone and estrogen. As attachment develops   pheromones, dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin act as amphetamines stimulating the brains pleasure centers.

In long term relationships oxytocin, the same hormone that bonds a breast feeding mother to her child, and vasopressin cement the relationship.

God is love says Christianity. In Islam, one of the 99 names of God is Al-Wadud, or “the Loving One.” If so, then love would be a manifestation in diluted form, of a transcendent reality lifted beyond our biological imperative to mate.

In the Christian example, the dominant love agape, is a lifted beyond passion and is charitable, selfless and altruistic.  This derives from the Jewish idea that love  includes good deeds, and a willingness to sacrifice rather than transgress others and even sacrifice our own goods and possessions.

It even includes being grateful for our lot even when we face hardship.

In Hinduism pleasurable love, kama, is personified by kamadeva, sometimes holding a bow of sugar cane and an arrow of flowers riding on a parrot. However, prema refers to a deeper, elevated love, Karuna to compassion and mercy reduces others suffering and Bhakti is the  ”loving devotion to the supreme God.”

In Buddhism kama is often seen as a selfish obstacle to enlightenment that contrasts with karuna, compassion and mercy or metta, or benevolent love. However, Mahayana Buddhism emphasizes that form is emptiness and emptiness is form.

“Nirvana is simply the true nature of this world, when our non dwelling awareness is not fixated on particular forms ….. including attractive sexual ones” said David Loy, in Money, Sex, War, Karma: Notes for a Buddhist Revolution.

Clearly, there seems to be as many descriptions of love as there have been cultures. In many cases love is simply reduced to cliché.

Or could it be that all these are simply manifestations of the same reality? Much as the spectrum is part of the same white light?

Hinduism and Jewish Kabbalah describe all reality and qualities as part of one transcendent divine reality – a reality that surpasses a fixation on the sex organs and attractive sex partners.

The Hebrew word for love is “Ahava.” The root of Ahava is Hava, meaning to offer or to give. It also is related to the root Ahav, meaning to nurture, or to devote yourself completely to another person.

Ancient Hebrew, unlike modern languages, is centered on verbs. The thought process behind the language is constant action. The Hebrew world view was of an ongoing process, a changing fluid reality.

This is consistent with the Chassidic idea that at each moment past, present and future are recreated. Like a virtual world, where each new frame on the computer screen is a constant act of recreation, the world needs the fueling of a divine spark to exist.  While this idea sounds very New Age, it was taught by Israel Shem Tov 250 years ago derived from older kabbalistic roots.

We can see this any relationship that goes sour. Characteristics that were once seen as cute, suddenly are proof that the ex lover was really inherently selfish and evil. Not only is that a memory, it becomes our physical reality as the very memory of the person effects our physical responses and feelings.

Even the unpronounced name of G-d, YHWH, is a verb. A construct of ‘to be.’ Anything that can be considered as existant or not existant cannot be G-d by this view. Rather, this trans-infinite, transcendent reality, or G-d (whatever that means) generates and chooses what is and is not. This somewhat existential view cannot be defined, but rather only small infinitely small fragments of it can be experienced

It is as if God is infinite light, and our body, are the sunglasses that make experience of that light possible for us. Our body is how our soul responds to G-d.  For that reason, then, the body is not something to be distained, but a beautiful organ that allows us to experience the beauties of love, that include sexual delights as part of that divine reality.

The Divine name is sometimes substituted with the word HaVaYaH (from YHWH backwards).  While HaVaYaH represents gods universality and oneness, Elohim (God) is his manifestation in the created world.

God has chosen to experience himself by investing infinite potential in everyone of us. In a sense, each one of us is an illusory finite description of an infinite reality.

However, unlike a computer game, where there is one central reference point controlling the program, each person is in a way a center of the universe. In that sense, the ego mimics the I am, or isness,  of divinity. However, it is by love that we activate that central power and live out our purpose.

As Genesis said G-d created the universe by speech, you could say God is speaking to himself. These words are depicted in Kabbalah as divine energies, or sephirot, that like the spectrum, are part of his oneness of universal light.

This gives us a clue of how our live can transcend the virtual reality of distorted desire.

These energies are also qualities of which love is a manifestation. They are always there, and are reflected in various ways by all ideas and religions.

It is just that some can in a moment of creative impulse grasp the signal and create beauty. Some get the signal in HD, others receive it distorted and confused.

The idea behind love, or ahava,  is action and not emotion. True love then, does not happen to us at all. Rather, we create love by acting for and giving to others.

Love is in many respects like a tree. It grows from a seed like foundation and while it may be shaped by its environment, it remains true to the DNA of the seed. Like a spring, it runs forth living and pure. It is us who keep it pure, or pollute it with selfishness.

True love is part of the divine energies, or sephirot, and for it to be sustained we must constantly refer back to the source signal.

If you like, life is the feedback signal of how we respond to that light. It is also what distinguishes our lusty young lover from a man who knows the true meaning of love.

The young man’s love is with, not the woman, but with his idea of her reality. He has constructed a whole view of who she is and will be under his romantic spell.

He is like a computer programmer who creates what is called a ‘God Game.’ However, the computer programmer cannot appreciate what it would like to be the character in the game. He cannot experience what it is like to be the mountain scenery, or the grass the hero treads on, or the dragon he slays.

However, G-d is both the source of all things, and is invested in all of his creation.

As the divine energies of creation are qualities, it follows that in their fullest sense the divine attributes, including love, are manifested when in vested and experienced in another.

Remember love, ahava, is to give. Love is a verb, it is action, the currency of love is in the act of giving and reciprocity.

The Hebrew word for “giving,” is “Natan.”

In Kabbalah, it was words that created all things. So the letter of words have spiritual significance (Kabbalah believes there is a spark of the divine in everything, including you).

“Natan in Hebrew and in English is the same forwards and backwards. The secret of giving is that giving is a circle. What goes forward, comes back –as you give so do you receive” wrote Rachaele Yisrael in ‘Do We Really Fall in Love … Kabbalistically?’

“Rather than being a victim of fleeting emotion, a real lover, creates love. They take responsibility for the pleasure of their spouse, and for themselves. This encourages the spouse to give with equal force, building on a foundation of mutual respect.”

Rather than being invested in how love should be, the true lover, like Neo in The Matrix, the true lover jumps the program and chooses to be a co-creator in his reality.

“My reason to exist is that for which I am needed” he says.

In mimicking the divine, I choose to try and truly experience my lover’s perception of reality, so that I can give more of what she needs. In fulfilling the needs of my partner, I create love. I do not fall in love.

Compare that with a mother’s love for her child. A mother will do anything for her child, yet it does not reduce her love for her husband. If it does, then is it really love or is it fear based attachment?

As Kabbalah explains, what we often call love is really our ego demanding satisfaction.

Tree love comes not from denial, but rather from finding the good in even the darkest challenges and recreating them for good. It is achieved when we can find and recreate within any situation a good or equal or greater value and benefit for others.

It may be that in offering love when we least want to give it that we both give the most and in turn we are blessed to the fullest.

If I have fallen in lust – it is up to me to develop the value in a relationship and empower it with meaning.

So while lust may be a biologically inspired projection I throw on my reality. Love is an enrgy that drive a program where I am, at least in part, a programmer.

However, like a programmer, I must know the language. In the non virtual world, language is the vehicle of thought, and though springs from inspiration. The more metaphors that we have to understand the divine realities that inspire us, the more control we have to influence our reality. In love, if two begin to grasp the metaphors that drive the lovers life, the more our communication can interface.

Contrast that with lust. In some ways lust is like food. We see it, we want it. It’s all about me.

What if, just for a few minutes you stopped, and waited for the food to stop calling you? What if, you imagined that this food was to be given to another? Once the impulse has died, when you eat it your experience is totally different.

What if in love, just for a moment, you stopped and asked what your lover will experience in your action? In that moment, in that present reality, you r past and future are recreated.

If just for that minute you stopped and realized that her annoying nagging is a call for help, or his neediness was a fear of rejection. What is the need that must be filled?

In that moment of discovery, you have purpose in your life, because you realize where you are needed

In love, as in business, the greatest profit comes from filling another’s needs.

In that service, love is its own purpose.