The experience of "falling in love" - Romantic Love - by its very description suggests something is happening to us which is beyond our control. It has been described as a type of a madness as well as being totally divine.

To experience full blown romantic love is perhaps the most exhilarating, ecstatic and euphoric experience we could possibly have. It is so captivating, so powerful and so enticing that we are simply compelled headlong into the most delightful, delerious and disturbing emotions imaginable.

Some believe the love between men and women is part of 'divine' love, for the human experience both conceals and reveals the ultimate Lover and the ultimate Beloved. Whatever our view, there is no doubt that deep romantic love awakens within us the most sublime feelings.

So intense are these emotions that we feel we are now truly alive, maybe for the first time, and that having tasted this new energy of passion we will remain forever restless until our yearnings are satisfied.

When we experience romantic love we may feel it has peeled the scales from our eyes for everything up till then seems phoney or shallow compared to the rich and concentrated emotions of romantic love.

Others may disparagingly say that this new love has blinded us and that we are simply caught up in the extravagances of these rapturous feelings which will not last and which ultimately will leave us disappointed and disillusioned.

When we "fall in love", we slip into feelings of oneness and completeness with our beloved. This profound sense of unity and belonging gives us those deeply desired feelings of blissfulness as our heightened sense of passion finds its expression in each other's embrace. But when we are separated from or lose our beloved, we plunge into emptiness and insufficiency like nothing we have ever known before. Others may observe this as the most pitiful derangemnent.

The intense painful anguish and aching we feel can become so consuming that our lives are driven almost to despair. This agonizing bliss of union in romantic love is the nature of this divine madness. Its bliss enlivens us and its absence distresses us.

I once read how a professor of science had "madly fallen in love" with his secretary. It had been a short-lived, difficult affair that ended up with her rejecting him and seeking new employment. This, it was reported, did not end the psychological connection between them, for he remained preoccupied with her. His obsession took the form of cataloguing the "synchronistic" events that surrounded their meetings and activities. Birth dates, names, geographic locations, dreams, automobile licence plates: he wove a fascinating picture of insignificant linkages that criss-crossed every dimension of their lives. He felt that somehow their relationship was made more significant by all the extraordinary dimensions which surrounded it.

Extraordinary events like this tend to cluster around a profoundly felt love affair like this. That is because our heightened feelings for our beloved are placed onto all the circumstances associated with them. Everything in our lives changes colour and takes on a richer significance. No wonder such "divine madness" can become so obsessive and addictive!

The great surge of excitement, sense of rapture and feelings of bliss associated with romantic love make this experience an extraordinary encounter. It awakens us and wounds us at the same time.

The wounds of romantic love are as intense as its blissfulness. It can be truly an experience of agony and ecstasy, and invariably is!

To have experienced this "divine madness" is an almost intolerable privilege.

To have never known its intensity may leave us with a quiter life, but romantic love when tasted changes our perceptions for ever.

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