The notable English writer and poet Shakespeare described love as mere madness.
In his poem, he wrote, "Love is mere madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as a madman does, and the reason why they are not so punished and cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that whippers are in love too."
Meanwhile, Plato also argued love is a serious mental disease. The classical definitions of love are an image of the earliest philosophers trying to navigate love's real meaning.
Recently, psychologists have been able to medically prove the effects of love on the behaviours of those experiencing emotions. For instance, the brain scan results indicated that the hormonal chemicals released during romance were capable of causing some brain regions to activate while others shut down.
The brain scans found out the essential part of the brain responsible for judgment, which is the brain's frontal cortex, shuts down when someone is shown a picture of the person they love, forcing them into a position where they can't make a clear decision on their lover's nature. On the other hand, brain parts become active when you gaze at the picture of someone you love.
"When you look at someone you are passionate about, some areas of the brain become active", Semir Zeki, Professor of neuro-aesthetics at University College London, said according to the Medical Daily tabloid. But a large part is deactivated, the part that plays a role in judgment. "
Despite all the definitions and deeply detailed clarifications about love, the faith-based doctrine goes ahead and define love in angles of spirituality as something beyond mere chemical components of our bodies. Love is spiritual according to the bible because it is a spiritually breathed book; therefore, scriptural phrases about love in real life are looked into the perspective of spirituality.
Biblically, it is a distortion to try to understand love on the measures of bodily sensations like desire and sexuality. According to spiritual thinkers, love cannot be limited to only situations of feelings and sensations.
They actually believe spiritual love is forgiveness, kindness, loyalty and patience. And therefore, with such a kind of interpretation, we can say that love is not about sexuality but deeply unconditional giveaways and selflessness towards others.
As opposed to sexuality, spiritual love can be given to any person instead of the persons who are, for instance, dating each other. It is unique in a way that it can be given as well as it can be received by anyone.
On the other hand, spiritual love is beyond desires or materialism but an experience that allows us to reach spiritual wholeness.
Christians primarily credit spiritual love as the primary component of their religion, emphasising that other human capabilities combined with those that are spiritual are actually vain if love is not involved.
To understand spiritual love, one might need to infer Apostle Paul's epistle letters that he wrote to the Corinthians. And this is actually what the bible describes as [spiritual] love.
"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, I become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
And though I have the gift of prophecy and understanding all mysteries, and all knowledge; and all knowledge; and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, and have no love, I'm nothing.
And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned and have not love, it profits nothing. Love suffers long and is kind; love envies not; love braggs not itself, is puffed up, does not behave itself unseemly, seeks not her own, is not easily provoked, thinks not evil; rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth," the book of 1 Corinthian 1-13 writes.