Relationships leading to marriage often begin with intense love and romance. This is so wonderful that people start wanting more, but as soon as they want more, it’s gone because you can’t. get glad. It is the byproduct of giving.

When people start wanting more, it becomes like shopping at the supermarket. They soon want more for less and the relationship becomes need oriented. Each begins by demanding more and giving less. Eventually, the needs of one or the other are hurt, causing one to withdraw, and then we have distance and apathy.

Thus, the energy shifts from moving outward to moving inward and going nowhere as the relationship moves from love to need to apathy. These three stages are equivalent to going from hot to cold to lukewarm.

There is a formula to bring this back to intense romance once again. That formula is to trigger the need, but avoid all pain and feelings of jealousy.

This can apply to the relationship that has become need-oriented or even distant and apathetic. Here, one of the two must make a move in the direction of independence, but without causing pain or feelings of jealousy. It is important to arouse only interest, which is the attention directed away from the apathetic. This outward directed attention becomes love. as long as feelings of pain and jealousy are not triggered.

For example, a couple had been married for forty years and the wife decided enough was enough. She had compiled a shopping list of everything she found wrong with the marriage and decided to move. They both believed strongly in a marriage, and neither would go against their wedding vows or have an affair, so that was not a concern for either of them. However, her husband was quite upset about the separation.

This man really liked to dance, so I suggested that he ask his ex-wife if she would mind if he joined a dance club, a group of people who went to different places every week just to socialize and dance. He didn’t really need her permission because she had already decided to leave him, but it was critical for him to get her to say that she was okay because she was giving him permission to reduce or eliminate jealousy and anger on her part. He explained to her how she was getting lonely from human company, and she agreed to pursue her newfound interest.

Since she agreed to the arrangement, she couldn’t justifiably feel hurt, jealous, or angry. He often invited her to accompany him. He was very affectionate and sociable, and at the dances she made sure that none of the women were left out of her. If any lady hadn’t been asked to dance, he would make sure to invite her.

One night his wife finally agreed to go with him to a dance. She watched in amazement as woman after woman asked her for a dance, several telling her how lucky she was to have him for a husband. Her interest in him soon returned. That was many years ago, and today they live together as a happily married couple.

This approach was learned in part through a dream, regarding a very challenging therapeutic situation that was about to lead to divorce. In the mid-1970s, while I was sleeping, I received information that the situation would be resolved because I would prove what was written in the Gita, in terms of the three Gunas: Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. Sattva is the highest level, followed by Rajas and then Tamas. I compare Sattva with love, or energy that flows out; Rajas with need or desire, or energy that flows back to the self; and Tamas with apathy, or no energy going anywhere. There are biblical references to this as well. Christ made reference to preferring hot or cold people, but definitely not lukewarm. Tamas is the lowest of the three Gunas. I equate it to apathy or lukewarmness.

In the Gita it is stated that the route from Tamas to Sattva sometimes it is through Rajas, or to put it in English, the route from apathy to love is sometimes through need. Then I realized that it is possible to instantly convert people from apathy to love by causing need. but preventing feelings of hurt or jealousy. It is possible to take the triggering need for a more distant and apathetic relationship but avoid the pain or the feeling of jealousy-and thus precipitates intense feelings of love and romance.

Perhaps this is the formula used by the Lord in the book of Revelation and in various places in the Old Testament. When people see utter devastation and carnage, terrors beyond imagination, they fear losing their lives (need) and then turn their attention to God (energy directed outward); and when they think of Him, their need begins to turn into love and appreciation.

This treatment modality requires much more explanation than we have in this book, but it has saved many marriages that were doomed to fail.

One more example is that of a sixty-year-old librarian who was married to a man who belonged to half a dozen organizations and was president of several of them. She could go to meetings with him, but she felt completely ignored and excluded from her life. I suggested that she become more independent, that she go places and do things on her own; but she would have to let him know that she really cared about him, that he was number 1 in her life and that she preferred to be with him. There are many social clubs like dance clubs, bird watching groups, book clubs, etc.; and she could ask if she would mind if she joined one of them. I told him to start any question with “do you mind if…” and this would arouse interest, but it shouldn’t provoke jealousy. I also suggested that she think about this for a couple of weeks and put it in her own words.

The next morning, as he hid behind the newspaper and drank a cup of coffee, she said, “Bill, do you mind if I have an affair?” She spilled her coffee all over the front, but the next week she took her on a tropical vacation to the Bahamas.

If he had said, “You don’t pay attention to me, so I’m going to have an affair,” it would have provoked pain, jealousy, and anger instead; and the result would have been just the opposite.

This is not a recommendation for risk behaviors. This extreme example is used to illustrate this elusive flow of loving energy; and the powerful dynamic of how to take the lukewarm, trigger the need, but avoid feelings of hurt or jealousy and thus propel the person towards powerful feelings of love. Any move toward independence can serve the same purpose.

Sigmund Freud, in The EGO and identification, wrote that the effectiveness of the therapy of the future could depend mainly on the mobilization of energy. This mobilizes energy.

When you understand the flow of love energy, you can redirect it. To help a person recover from a serious illness, have that person help another person or help other people with the same illness. One of my AIDS patients experienced a substantial improvement in her condition when he began counseling people in the hospital who were dying of the disease. Get the patient’s energy flowing out, get the patient to help others, and encourage the person’s spiritual practices. Here you may have to redirect the person from the “give me, give me, give me” sentences to the “I love you, I love you, I love you” type of sentence.

Fear is the antithesis of love, and it is counterproductive. Focus your attention and energy on yourself. Imagining a good, disease-free body, knowing and trusting that it is so, and helping others to recover, perhaps from similar problems, is much more productive. For the healing process, it is important to avoid hate, bitterness, unforgiveness, worry, and instead focus on intensifying love, care, and doing for others regardless

anything in return. The ultimate enhancement comes through the expression of devotional love and appreciation. All of this increases life force, healing energy and the recovery process.

Upon closer inspection, this love energy continues to follow precise laws that are like other laws of physics and are quantitative. Of all the things to study in medicine today, it is the analysis of love energy itself that could be the most rewarding and productive. It is to this energy of love that I hope to devote a large part of the rest of my life. It’s probably the most important factor for healing and longevity since Hans Selye discovered stress, and it’s as invisible as stress was in the early 20th century.

Besides, there is a growing awareness of the absolute importance of aiming at the target and directing love towards God. This really improves the flow of love energy because we don’t hold back for fear of rejection. We begin to emulate love at its source and begin to experience a multiplicity of blessings, further magnifying our love. The great commandment to love God with all our hearts, all our minds and all our souls is a commandment of mercy and compassion, because nothing instills more joy and more blessings.