Was there ever a word more awkward to define? And, for that very reason, more thrillingly divine? Above all, what has it to do with dreary economics? Histrionics? Half or full employment? Matrimonics? Flushing your veins with a scent of spring or with the majestic glow of fall and causing the Heavenly bodies to dance in space, it is called by many names.
To the unwary youth, it is sex; to the blushing maiden, her heart; to the artist, his dream; to the scientist, his every try; to the musician, his tune-in; and to the God-seeking: GOD.
The maddest of all is the last one: The seeker and lover of GOD. Swathed in his fantasia robe he sees all following his path. Whatever they begin to love, they will end up -- he knows -- loving only that one and final ALL, that one and only Being -- GOD.
He sees the sex-bitten, first walking like a drunk, flailing, wildly, helplessly, his only aim being to thoroughly possess the beloved. In the course of this quest, which the drunkard first thinks of as a conquest, he discovers there is no satisfaction without consent; there is no happiness without communication, understanding. He is no drunkard any longer. Urgent interest chimes forth; feverish curiosity in all aspects of the beloved -- body, mind, heart, aspirations. So, from sex springs love.
With the glow of understanding of the beloved, understanding of one human being other than himself, more and more follow; interest in all follows. Interest in and understanding of other nations follows. "International relations" become two words with meaning. The real and genuine profit, however, is that with understanding people, he obtains a glimpse of that many-splendored SOMETHING that made the people. He looks at and understands people: Actually he looks at and understands GOD through His windows that are the people.
Ah, to such a seer, to such an observer come many thrills; through and beyond the apparent faults and shortcomings he sees the pattern. The goal toward which shortcomings and assets, sins and virtues alike - are stepping stones. Rungs in the ladder up which he climbs!
"What is wrong with the world" are not words of a seer. They are words of the blind.
"What is right with the world" are the corresponding words of the seer, the lover.
Love, when you get down to analyzing it, turns out to be, not an emotion, nothing that vague -- but a realization.
Realization of what?
Realization of the togetherness of us creatures. Looking at our physical bodies, we look very much separated. Looking deeply into our minds, we see that we hang together like the branches of a tree. And who or what is the stem?
Guess, won't you?
As you grow, with time, you may look back, occasionally, at your discarded idea that we are separate beings, and it begins more and more to look like a side-splitting joke -- until you notice the tragic consequences of this superstition. Then you don't laugh any more, for although the solution appears to be near and clear to you it is unattainable at the present time. It is unattainable, not for lack of intelligence. The ocean of intelligence is here, common to all, available to all, always open, always ready to be poured from.
The lack is of another kind: Lack of love. Perhaps one should rather say: Lack of discovery of love. For love is there too, a frothing, surging stream. It just has to be discovered, then tapped. Love is the driving force that harnesses and uses will, intelligence, muscle.
How may this surging stream of love be discovered? Ask the lovers. They have difficulty not finding it, but restraining it. So they may eat and live on. Most of our lovers are so blinded by their particular object of love that they know practically nothing of love itself -- the stream. Through disappointments and sufferings, they may learn if they have the guts to learn.
The first love of the arriving soul is the mother and a little later, the father. This first love of the baby and child for its parents is delightfully intertwined with hunger, greed and all those little things we blandly term selfishness". This term is involved in all of life and it isn't as bad as rumored.
Suppose one or both parents are unworthy of the child's love and cannot evoke it? This is a matter for concern but not worry. Countless children have jumped the gap to more mature and deeper love for a mate or child or teacher later in life, so that the difficulty with the parents became a spur to depth and clarity. Others did not seem able to pull themselves out of the hole parental negligence dug. Community care, county-state and-federal, have an opportunity here. The greater opportunity is that of friends.
The dating and mating season is much more difficult. Casualties abound. All your resources come into play here: The tenure and texture of your love, its depth, your judgement your self-control, your resolve. With minor wounds, most players emerge in a fair enough condition to submit to the grueling try-out of married life. Could even the keenest planner have devised a more telling test.
Nobody can endure married life except through a love so deep that it forgets selfish urges in the effort to please the beloved. This is how LOVE is discovered.
Not everybody is tailored to this particular type of love or even if they are, it may not happen to them. To some, their principal love is their profession, their work, their science -- or their religion. They may be unmarried or, again, they may be just as happily married as anybody else, but their marriage may be bent to a more demanding love. A wise wife, even if she does not directly share her husband's work or ideal, will readily submit and by so doing evoke a love in her husband that he was not capable of before. An unwise wife will nag -- or divorce.
From the early days in school through the University and on through the laboratories, the working places -- and the churches -- there is another object of love: The teacher.
This often is a very pure and deep love that is closer than any other form to the essence of love. Intertwined with the personal admiration are the inspiration, the logic, the thrilling contents of a profession, a trade, a religion.
Is it proper to mention the trade, the profession, the science and the work in the same breath as religion?
Yes, all are from the Great Creator; all are designed for the education and development of man. In the good old days, the professions and the work were not so varied. The bearing of these aspects of life upon the essence was not so fully realized. Therefore, in the ancient traditions one hears so much about religion, so little about these other things, these other paths, these other aspects of religion. One might say that all of them were embodied in the beautiful symbology of the religious traditions.
To a great many people, religion has something beyond and above these other aspects. While a school teacher or an advanced scientist may be equated with a minister or rabbi, a Hodja or a priest, religion, in addition, has the prophet, the Savior, the founder, the "Son of God" (we are all sons or daughters of God but some are more consciously so). In religion there is the great master, the Perfect One to some, the best One to others, who will embrace you in a life-giving, everlasting stream of love if you accept Him. This is a climax, though it is not the final climax. In your adoration of the Master you try to be like him. That is essential. It is not enough to adore him or love him. Well, it is enough for some -- for the time being. But in some phase of life you will have to go further -- to become like that master; in a sense to BECOME THAT MASTER. That is why the Master said, "There is no path to God except through me." Every master has said the equivalent. It means that through the loving example you reach that love that reveals GOD.
Today, some scientists replace in many people's mind the Master of religion and that is quite all right. Each one can and should follow only the ideal he finds in his heart. He finds it in his heart after having perused books or lectures. He finds it there because his heart so responds.
Some people arrive at a love of GOD without having gone through the love of a man, a teacher, a MASTER, a Prophet. They deserve as much respect, as much admiration, as much recognition as those who took the road via a Master -- perhaps even more, in some cases -- who knows? Who is there to pronounce judgment?
The proof is in the pudding: Has such a direct God-lover become of more service to his fellowmen, or less, or just as much, as those other travellers? Beware, even before you pronounce a verdict on this latter issue!
Whether the path goes through the Prophet or directly, it is glittering, gleaming with the gold of a love sweeter, mightier, more genuine than the love of a mother, a wife, a friend, the best teacher.
In the cycle of a human life, there is a love more compassionate, more selfless and more pure than that of a child for his parent or, usually, that of a mate for the other mate. That is the love of a parent for his child. This is why God is often pictured as the Father or, in India for example, as a Mother, too. The love of God could not have been better expressed in the language of men than by the love of a Father or Mother.
A person may reach that blessed stage of parental love for his children after he has experienced all other facets of love including the love of a teacher, the love of a humanized Lord, Master, Messiah, Savior, Son of God! He will then love his children with wideness and depth and with a fiber woven from all these stirring facets of love and life.
A person may go through the human cycle of love only, without the addition of the love of profession or religion, and still reach a stirring and deep love for his children, a love that will filter down as blessings to his children and their childrens' children -- for all aspects of Love are but one: The stream of love through and by which this universe with all its beings was created and is being maintained.
Therefore, love is the basis for a society and its economics. If love abounds, society flourishes. If love ebbs, there is danger of dissolution.
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