The ennobling power of love.

When a human heart is set on fire with love, the entire human being is enlightened by its radiance. All extraneous things step back to the background, and a soul can completely, sometimes even ecstatically, plunge into contemplation of the beloved one. Even the most dry and boring people change when they fall in love, their soul softening and becoming bright, as if having wings. For other people a person who is loved by someone does not seem to be any better or more handsome than others, but for the lover he or she is the only one, the incomparable and the irreplaceable. This is the idealization that is so often described in literature. It means that through an external cover, we, in light of love, see the ideal side of the loved one which is hidden from others. It is present in every human being, as an image of God, not noticeable, and very often suppressed by the external shell, by appearance or "character," which is always something secondary, and not representing the "essence."

All the power of love consists in the fact that through love we are as though touching upon the internal beauty of a human being. We cannot leave the person – we would like to be joined with the loved one forever. A soul that has experienced those feelings even once will preserve memories about their transforming and creative power for the rest of its life.

It is exactly in the rushes of love that a soul experiences a deep need to come out of the boundaries of its own personality in order to be united with a loved one. The need for love witnesses that it is impossible to retire into oneself — all the natural limits of individuality are overcome in love, and its shell is torn apart. That is why in the rushes of love a human being starts to be burdened by himself: to retire into oneself, in the light of love, means to condemn oneself to loneliness, to find oneself in a metaphysical emptiness. That is why our soul is tirelessly looking for somebody to love in order to find a point of rest and a purpose for existence.

The power of poetic imagination that is so characteristic for young love, through which we idealize a loved one, is not some play of fantasy. On the contrary, it reveals a deep thirst for a spiritual and absolute life.

Love for one’s mother, sister, and wife — however different these kinds of love might be — presents an aspect of spiritual life anyway. The human being is designed according to the law of "sexual dimorphism," that is, one belongs either to the masculine or to the feminine gender. This dimorphism borrows the natural need for love from the depths of the spirit. It is exactly in this sphere of gender-dependent love that Eros has the most important meaning, sexuality only being the latter’s bodily transcription.