a way, different from them, because henceforth its operations have to be carried on side by side with a new factor, which is reason. Sometimes human love manifests itself as a force which is divorced from reason and runs parallel to it; sometimes it manifests itself as a force which gets mixed up with reason and comes into conflict with it; and lastly, it expresses itself as a constituent of the harmonized whole, where love and reason have been balanced and fused into an integral unity.

Thus, in relation to reason, human love can enter into three types of combination. In the first type, the sphere of thought and the sphere of love are kept as separate as possible, i.e., the sphere of love is practically inaccessible to the operation of reason; and love is allowed little or no access to the objects of thought. Complete separation between these two aspects of the spirit is of course never possible; but when there is an alternate functioning of love and reason (with both oscillating in their predominance) we have a love which is unillumined by reason, or a reason which is unenlivened by love. In the second type, love and reason are both simultaneously operative, but they do not work in harmony with each other. But though this conflict creates confusion, it is a necessary phase in the evolution of the higher state, where there is a real synthesis of love and reason. In the third type of love, this synthesis between love and reason is an accomplished fact, with the result that both love as well as reason are so completely transformed that they precipitate the emergence of a new level of consciousness, which, in comparison with the normal human consciousness, is best described as super-consciousness.

Human love makes its appearance in the matrix of ego-consciousness, which has its countless desires. Love is colored by these factors in many ways. Just as we get an ever-changing variety of designs in the kaleidoscope by the various combinations of simpler elements, we get an almost limitless qualitative variety in the range of love, owing to the novel combinations of psychic factors. And just as there are infinite shades in the colors of different flowers, there are in human love diverse, delicate differences.

Human love finds itself encircled by a number of obstructive factors like infatuation, lust, greed, anger and jealousy. In one sense, even these obstructive factors are either forms of lower love, or the inevitable side-results of these lower forms of love. Infatuation, lust and greed might be looked upon as perverted and lower forms of love. In infatuation, a person