The Feb 14, 2011 edition of Scientific American gave an excellent representation of the effect of different neurochemicals that go into creating "love". Researchers found that there are a dozen brain regions that go into creating romantic fervor by comparing functional MRI studies of people who indicated they were experiencing passionate love, maternal love or unconditional love. These regions release neurotransmitters and other chemicals in the brain and blood that prompt greater euphoric sensations such as attraction and pleasure.
Passion also heightens several cognitive functions, as the brain regions and chemicals surge. “It’s all about how that network interacts,” says Stephanie Ortigue, an assistant professor of psychology at Syracuse University, who led the study. The cognitive functions, in turn, “are triggers that fully activate the love network.”
There is an excellent graphic which captures all of this, but of course, it cannot be copied. The article is @ (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=your-brain-in-love-graphsci&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_MB_20110209)
This is it. Noticing non-dual stillness is love-making with now. The now loves itself. It wants to stay there because it knows that to be anywhere else is to willingly leave the Lover's embrace. This love affair with now/All seems to quench that body-knot's primal desire to be held, protected as awareness is suffused with the feeling not needing any protection. Something remembers that this defense is an imaginary movement away from this self-love. T'would be nice to know about more studies on love and how it relates to nonduality. It sometimes feels like this is a school of divine love, know what I mean?
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