Is love just chemistry?

#1 07-10-2010, 02:25 PM

Is love the outcome of chemical reactions or the chemicals at work? But spiritualists do not think so.

We need illuminating ideas

#2 07-10-2010, 03:39 PM

According to a book I read, love (like romantic love) is just a chemical called PEA.

Although I think it's so much more than chemicals running through our body.

Sophie x

Chrysaetos · #3 07-10-2010, 03:41 PM

Love is similar to words like God and spirit.
It is so conceptualized that you really can't explain it physically, even if it wouldn't exist.

Uma · #4 07-10-2010, 04:00 PM

Well there are definitely body chemical reactions that bring out lovely feelings. Prolactin, the "mothering hormone" is activated during the process of breastfeeding. It tranquilizes both the mother and baby and helps in the bonding.

Dr. Herbert Benson, a cardiologist and graduate of Harvard wrote that feelings of love stimulate the immune system's killer T cells and immunoglobulens so that you become healthier. He taught meditation but called it "The Relaxation Response" and showed how being loving with your body helps it to heal.

A runner's "high" is the effect of releasing natural endorines... Extreme atheletic work can produce an intoxicating effect and high adrenaline rushes, and take you to the "zone" space - which is a spiritual dimension.

An esoteric explanation for all of this is that we live in a subtle energy body that fits like a glove into the physical body. All the subtle energy vortexes and channels (chakras/acupunture points and nadis/meridians) line up perfectly to the physical body's nervous system - which is chemically based. Scientists think that mind is in the physical brain but spiritual scientists know better - it's in the energy body, it is the energy body! Mind stimulates the nervous system and that triggers chemical reactions in the body.

Our physical body is also made up of 50 trillion or so tiny cells, each of which is a little organism that responds to our thoughts and feels (read Deepak Chopra). When we love our cells, they respond to us by producing warmth. These little guys instinctively join together to form our physical body and they have emotional reactions of their own like the stress response (fight or flight) or sexual feelings. We live in an energy body that is so tightly connected to the physical body that we think we are feeling these things when really it's coming from the cells. Likewise, if we experience thoughts and feelings, they get lodged into the cells as cellular memory. It's a mess!

Basically we have two brains to handle all of this information. The higher functioning brain is the neocortex (front of the head) and the lower animalistic brain is the limbic brain (back of the head). Our spiritual being uses the neocortex to control the gut impulses of the limbic brain, which are fed by cell intelligence. Well at least that's the goal. For most of us it's a struggle as we are pulled by the body's wants and needs and desires...sort of like a mom being pulled by many children in all directions.

Didn't mean to get into a whole biology and spiritual anatomy lesson but I think these details are important.

Uma

#5 07-10-2010, 04:02 PM

right before i came on here i was reading a bunch of quotes on sex and love.....lots of ideas out there.

7luminaries · #6 07-10-2010, 04:12 PM

NO...lol...love is not "just" chemistry as most conceive of it. For me, love isn't chemistry at all unless it's soul chemistry.

Falling Star · #7 07-10-2010, 04:21 PM

I believe that love is the true nature of the soul and when two souls connect love maybe awoken in them, especially if there was love in a past incarnation between them. Love is an energy.........Vibration IMO.

#8 07-10-2010, 05:23 PM

If love was a thing of mere chemicals, then there would have already been REAL love making chemicals. To make true love by now would have already happened guaranteed if it were mere chemicals because who DOESN'T want to be in love?

It's an emotion, a bond, and it's spiritual; even though probably half the country doesn't believe in such. Think about it, we have aphrodisiacs to turn someone on and named after Aphrodite - Greek Goddess of Love, but they didn't push it from there? Yeah, okay, keep thinking it's chemistry, imagine how much easier it would have been to start from aphrodisiacs and tried out all kinds of methods, how about instead of working on phony fish, robotics, and so on we could have had real intimate couples born from there. If people can now successfully transplant a face, imagine how much money we'd have been making by now.

#9 07-10-2010, 06:33 PM

The love that seeks seems to have a chemical addiction following it. Yet, the infinite, universal love appears to be more than chemistry to me; it's very intuitive and selfless.

Verunia · #10 07-10-2010, 07:32 PM

In my opinion all things begin as basic building blocks and evolve into something much greater.

Love can exist as physical, emotional, unconditional, and universal, and all sorts of other ones, I am sure. It still remains one thing but our situations may change our meaning of it.

As we live on this physical world we may need chemicals to process emotions and feelings such as love into the body, and we get the feelings of love from those reactions..

But I do not think that love is strictly only chemicals. I believe it goes far beyond that and beyond even that.