The Mastery of Love: 

Discussing What the Masters Said

02-18-01

Readings and Comments

[This was a somewhat guided discussion keyed off of the collected quotations. Allow yourself to contemplate what comes to mind after each, if you will.]

The Only Reality

"Love is a language which is universal, interpreted through every living soul and understood by all. Love will find the solution to every problem, will answer every question, and will ultimately vanquish every foe. Love begets tolerance; tolerance begets understanding, and understanding which is able to put itself in the other person's place.

Love is unity, understanding, harmony. It is as necessary to the well-being of the soul as food is for the strength of the body. A life which is starved of love, which knows no affection, is unnatural and abnormal. Love would sit within every person, flowing through and permeating one's entire being. We truly live in its atmosphere when we meet people through whom love radiates. A unity is formed, harmony is created, and we desire to be in their presence.

Love is a synonym for God; and God is love, the universal outpouring of the Spirit through law, wisdom, life and action. God knows us in love: we know God only through love. When we love humanity we are loving God, in and through others.

It is impossible to enter a state of peace without love. Love is the only reality there is."

Ernest Holmes, The Science of Mind, 1926 Ed.

Leo Buscaglia, the wonderful writer, teacher and speaker who spent his life speaking on the topic of Love, wrote the following in the Foreword to his book Living, Loving and Learning:

"Nikos Kazantakis suggests that ideal teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross, then having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create bridges of their own."

I hope that is what I shall have done today with this survey of what the Masters have had to say about Love. When I refer to someone as a Master in this talk today, I do not necessarily mean that someone has mastered Love, but in the Mastery of their own discipline, that they have found Love’s essence and they have come to know that it is essential to all of life and to their work. Think of Jean Paul Sartre and all those dark and dreary existentialist ideas, such as the idea that God is dead. While doing my research for today’s discussion, I read things that display the consciousness of all of mankind, not just that which inspires us and comes from an enlightened point of view. I begin with the French because they so clearly define the breadth of the spectrum of feeling about Love.

The French

The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all, but love only one.

Honore De Balzac
1799-1850, French Novelist

It is easy to see why the French celebrate Honore de Balzac. By hearkening back to the days of chivalry, here he refers us to a time when knights were in charge of their own standards, though they were the lowest rank of nobility, and their personal conduct distinguished them in every way, they had a say about how they interacted socially, spiritually and as a soldier. Their character was meant to be seamless, a unitary whole and they were to put nothing before their love of God. To serve all but love only One represents the idea of multiplicity within a Unity. Remember the “All for One and One for All” that we would call out in our childhood games? It is not a new idea, one of the places it comes to us from is from the European tradition of chivalry. Balzac reminds us of its nobility while reminding us of the One we are to Love.

Contrast that idea with this, which says it all about what we are afraid of:

To love someone is to isolate him from the world, wipe out every trace of him, dispossess him of his shadow, drag him into a murderous future. It is to circle around the other like a dead star and absorb him into a black light.

Jean Baudrillard
French Postmodern Philosopher, Writer

Is it any wonder that there are those who think it glamorous to be glum? What fear envelopes those who think in this way that they glower darkly in this way? And does this not illustrate what we know in metaphysics, that as you think, so it is done unto you? Let us affirm the power of love of enjoy a good chuckle when we encounter these souls caught for a time in the darkness.

Russian Writers

Love all that has been created by God, both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf and every ray of light. Love the beasts and the birds, love the plants, love every separate fragment. If you love each fragment, you will understand the mystery of the whole resting in God.

Fyodor Dostoevski

Now, writers like Dostoevski say these things in very deep, poetic and very profound ways, but how do we take this into the practical realm? How do you relate to your children? Your friends? Are your most intimate relationships deepening and expanding? Are you open and honest enough to let love in? honest enough to let love in? Are you taking the time to know what it means to love each of them in the present? Are you loving them only in the past tense, as if they are now who they were long ago?

The Bible has plenty to say about Love, particularly in the New Testament. While in New Thought we do not characterize ourselves as Christians in the traditional sense, we do celebrate the life of Jesus Christ for the way Love was exemplified in his life. He showed us a way to live successfully and that way was the way of Love.

The Bible

Love is the fulfilling of the Law.

He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. [I John]

And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment. [Philippians 1:9]

The Mystics

 

Love seeks no cause beyond itself and no fruit; it is its own fruit, its own enjoyment. I love because I love; I love in order that I may love.

St. Bernard
1090-1153, French Theologian and Reformer

Love feels no burden, regards not labors, strives toward more than it attains, argues not of impossibility, since it believes that it may and can do all things. Therefore it avails for all things, and fulfils and accomplishes much where one not a lover falls and lies helpless.

Thomas ã Kempis
1379-1471, German Monk, Mystic, Religious Writer

 

20th Century Philosophers and Theologians

Love without attachment is light.

Norman O. Brown
1913-, American Philosopher

Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.

Charlie Brown (Cartoonist, Charles Shultz)

When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.

Martin Buber
1878-1965, Austrian-born Israeli Theologian, Mystic Philosopher

Someday, after mastering winds, waves, tides and gravity, we shall harness the energy of love; and for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.

Love alone can unite living beings so as to complete and fulfill them... for it alone joins them by what is deepest in themselves. All we need is to imagine our ability to love developing until it embraces the totality of men and the earth.

Love is the affinity which links and draws together the elements of the world... Love, in fact, is the agent of universal synthesis.

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

American Business Leaders

Love - THE FEELING - is a fruit of love, the verb.

Stephen R. Covey

Love has no errors, for all errors are the want for love.

William Law
American Merchant

The First American Feminist

Two persons love in one another the future good which they aid one another to unfold.

Margaret Fuller
1810-1850, American Writer, Lecturer, Transcendentalist 

From India

Dive deep, O mind, dive deep in the ocean of God's beauty! If you descend to the uttermost depths, there you will find the gem of love.

Bengali Hymn

In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love

Mother Teresa

Van Gogh

The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic that to love others.

Vincent Van Gogh

The Poets

It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations.

Kahlil Gibran

This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more they possess.

For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Love is not love until love's vulnerable.

Theodore Roethke, American Poet 

American Spiritual Leaders

Love wholeheartedly, be surprised, give thanks and praise then you will discover the fullness of your life.

David Steindl-Rast

If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?

Go to the truth beyond the mind. Love is the bridge.

Stephen Levine, Psychotherapist, Speaker, Co-Founder of Seva Foundation with Ram Dass

Love is the river of life in the world.

I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.

Henry Ward Beecher
1813-1887, American Preacher, Orator, Writer

Love is everything. It is the key to life, and its influences are those that move the world.

Ralph Waldo Trine

Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.

Wayne Dyer

There is no difficulty that enough love will not conquer;
No disease that enough love will not heal;
No door that enough love will not open;
No gulf that enough love will not bridge;
No wall that enough love will not throw down;
No sin that enough love will not redeem.
It makes no difference
How deeply seated may be the trouble,
How hopeless the outlook,
How muddled the tangle,
How great the mistake;
A sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all.
If only you could love enough
you would be the happiest and
most powerful being in the world.

Emmet Fox, Minister

Closing Affirmation

LOVE

Today I bestow the essence of love upon everything.
Everyone I meet shall be lovely to me.
My soul meets the soul of the Universe in everyone.
This love is a healing power touching everything into wholeness.

Ernest Holmes

Thank you for being here today.