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Neuroscience & Karma
worldly life. Stronger the intensity of fruition of the deluding karman, deeper is the attachment and vice versa. 1. Loving and Reproduction
The word love is used in many senses. In fact, the Oxford English Dictionary has no less than 24 columns of meanings for 'love'. Basically all love involves an element of self-love and we can safely emphasize that our actions are a curious confusion of selfishness and altruism. When we love someone, we feel happiness in their company and sadness in separation. Pleasure and happiness are internal signs that our programs of action are working successfully. We have, however, to search for the connection between happiness of loving others and our inherent selfishness and this is not quite as easy as we might hope.
We have seen that sensations of pleasure are possible only with proper functioning of certain centres and circuits including the frontal cortex and hypothalamus. People in whom these regions are not working adequately are difficult to please. Indeed they may be full of displeasure and even apt to terminate their life altogether. It is, therefore, no surprise that the activities that we characterize as loving, are also regulated by the actions of the hypothalamus. Electrical stimulation of these centers in conscious human subjects may produce feelings of general well-being and pleasure.
The hypothalamus insists upon the performance of self-preserving activities and makes sure that we eat and drink the right amounts and defend ourselves if attacked. Homeostasis conserves the whole program for a way of life, which is written in the genes and passed on by reproduction. The hypothalamus contains programs devoted to longterm conservation. It ensures that, in due course the individual comes to sexual maturity. In humans, sexual attracations, mating behavior and care of the young occupy a major part of our lives and energies. It is proper for the conservation of our kind that such activities should be pleasurable and rewarding, and these are the pleasures of love.
The hypothalamus, thus, has a central part in directing behavior towards the goals both of self-preservation of the individual and the
