The Yoga of Love

About the Book

The Yoga Of Love is the much-awaited third volume, completing the trilogy that started with Arc Of The Horizon in 2001, followed by the monumental Legends of The Emperor’s Ring, published in September 2003. In many ways it is the culmination of the major theme that was first advanced in Arc Of The Horizon and then again strung along as a recurring motif in the second volume of Legends. In many ways this blissfully vivacious, heart-stirring volume draws together Balkrishna Naipaul’s balancing act of not just a story of passionate coexistence among the three main characters with whom we cohabited in the first two volumes of the trilogy, but it is indeed, the construction of a brand-new theory of love that opens the way to understanding the underlying philosophical basis of Hindu Tantra. Still, the book can be read as a stand-alone, even though, the reader would be much more enriched of vital experiences given in the previous volumes. Indeed, if the first volume played out the pivotal theme of the quest for identity in the nebulae of rising consciousness, and the manner in which this quest had tripped up the characters’ own assessment of their true identities in the second volume, with Rani and Meena having to shift perceptions of past lives vis-à-vis their past-life intimate relationship with the narrator, then these preliminaries, certainly served the essential basis for our own limitations in coming to grasp the essence of Mr. Naipaul’s theory of love. This theory of love, which is trashed out in the full spectrum of the novel, has a lot to do with how we know, and which requires a knowledge of not just whom we are in this life, but a thorough understanding of our past lives and our relationship with the planet and the cosmos, perhaps in the manner in which the narrator instructs, “Open your heart to its spirit being and listen with the skin of your mind; open your pores to its poignancy, to the rustle of its leaves.” p.80 Which prompted Meena to ask, excitedly, “Is that it, then? Is that how you know?” And the narrator answers: “To some extent that was how I came to know of your connection, but the knowing involved more than the connection with the ring [the Emperor’s Ring]. As I said, it has more to do with the twilight; that area of consciousness where everything is transparent and where the mind is linked with the universe: the chit aspect of being. Indeed, the twilight which you now carry in your head is only the beginning; it is the entry point to the invisible centre from where we make contact with the soul, our own souls and the souls of others; others whom we once knew in different bodies but are recognised without bodies. Spirits some call them, but in truth they are born of primal cause.” p. 113 In The Yoga of Love, the quest to know comes from the rising of consciousness, even though the knowledge is not what one consciously seeks, but which is given from the soul as the mind is submerged under the influence of the twilight of being. The quest to know, which was the leitmotif in Arc On The Horizon, and from which the concept of Yoga of Love was born, is brought at the very beginning of this third volume –with the statement from Meena, the twin protagonist in the novel when she asks, ‘Dada, is it possible to die and still live?’ This question was trashed out in the plot arrangement of the previous two volumes, especially in the dynamic interplay of the characters relationship with each, but in The Yoga of Love it is posed as a catalyst for conclusive resolution of both blot and theme, as well as giving vent for the underlying premise for Mr. Naipaul’s theory of love. As is shown in the novel, through a delicate balance of a passionate triangular love-relationship between the narrator and the twin protagonists, the basis of love between and among these three, unique individuals, does not rest on physical attributes, but at a higher plane of consciousness. This is clearly shown in the following passa

About the Author

none