Love

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..:: Love ::..

Alan Schneider

In pondering this existence, at least two questions of the utmost significance arise – what are we, and why are we here in that form? These essays have explored many possible answers to these questions, as viewed through various different spiritual, social, scientific, psychological, existential, and political lenses of perception. The use of these perspectives implies a starting point for this latest inquiry – we appear to be perspective-dependent expressions of conscious perception – observation occurs in the context of some background condition that influences the outcome.

And this statement, in turn, implies or suggests that there may be an ultimate background, or perhaps background-free, condition that might serve to provide the most authentic responses possible to the first two questions of the preceding paragraph. My Ascension experiences have furnished considerable insight into what this ultimate and final “background” condition at least perceptually resembles in the field of human consciousness, and these have been reported exhaustively in my writing. Yet, I am left with the intuition that more needs to be expressed in the response to the first paragraph. What, indeed, are we, in the most holistic and expansive terms?

To begin with, since my Ascension experiences are so central to this theme, where did they occur? Did they occur within me, or around me, or perhaps beyond me, with “me” considered here to be coincident with my physical organismic boundaries? Freud would say “Yes, they occurred within you, and should or could be classified as hallucinations, or as extreme fantasies at the very least”. Jung would beg the question, and say “You were experiencing the spontaneous manifestation of Archetypal symbolism, and we do not know with certainty where the root Archetypes are located”. The Buddha would possibly say “Since all life is suffering, and compassion dictates that we should release suffering, we should meditate on the desire to know what and why until we transcend even these Dualistic questions in the blissful attainment of Nirvana, where all suffering ceases”. Hinduism says “All life as we experience it in the senses is Maya – Illusion – including suffering and desire. We are all One in the Supreme Absolute Truth of Brahman”, and advises the practices of Yoga and austerities to attain blissful Samadhi in the reunion with that Brahman. Western Christianity simply says “God is Love”, and the way to experience that Love is through Christ, and the acceptance of the Sacrifice of Christ, as the Path of Salvation. And, of course, there are multitudes of other beliefs, great and small, with many other prescriptions for, and answers to, the riddle of this existence.

All of the aforementioned philosophies – and even the scientific explanations are still ultimately philosophical in nature – express some degree of truth as observations about life and living, even perhaps a very great degree. And, of the greatest significance is the primary observation that they are all occurring in the context of our manifestation as living beings sustained by an environment, however austere (intentionally or otherwise) that environment may be. They all amount to manipulations of awareness, consciousness, and perspective in an attempt to expand the lens of perception as far as possible and access the most authentic and valid experience of the Truth possible. A clue to the answer of our first question, then, is present in the observation that all that we know occurs among the living, even what we presume to know about death, the dead, and alternative states of spiritual consciousness that seem to originate beyond life. All of these, and any other information, is the result of living human testimony and record. Even the Christian Bible is the result of human record keeping, all of the spiritual miracles accounted therein notwithstanding, as is every other spiritual document, including this one that I am currently writing.

So, what, then, are we? The answer, put as simply as possible, is: a living, perceiving, evolving, field of communication. I flatly defy anyone to invalidate any of this statement – it is the summon bonum of our existence, always has been, and always will be. The second question asked in this essay is actually more challenging to answer: “Why are we here in that form?” To answer that question, the location of the field of communication just referred to must be considered.

So, if we are a field of communication, where, specifically, is that field? Anything that exists must be located somewhere, after all. It is tempting to fall back on the psychodynamics of Freud and say “in the individual brains of humanity”, but this fails to take into account the fact that each of us is participating in many levels of collective consciousness – cultural, social, scientific, transpersonal, and so on. So, we could then generalize that this field is located, for the most part, on the land masses of Earth. But, this theory discounts the ocean inhabitants, at least some of which, like the dolphins, exhibit highly intelligent, organized social behavior. OK, so we must say “on planet Earth generally”. Now, if behavior implies consciousness, then all of the behaving organisms on Earth must be considered as well, whether human or not, not just the dolphins and dogs, but even viruses and bacteria. And, in some way, these all contribute to our human consciousness, because they, and their behavior, are subject to human observation, and may generate impacts on our human condition that can be unpredictable and far reaching. Moreover, since everything in the entire universe that we can observe functionally exists in the field of consciousness as thought constructs, even the hypothetical postulates must be included in the field, including all of the Jungian archetypal symbols, and all of the religious theories, whether in conflict with each other or not, and whether shared among specific individuals or not.

What we are left with in the wake of this argument is that the communication field necessarily exists everywhere, without specifically existing in any one location anywhere. And, since this field is ongoing through the processes of education and acculturation, it is also functionally immortal as an evolutionary phenomenon. One of the very interesting results of this consideration is, for example, that if enough people believe in their personal fields of consciousness within the social collective that there is a God, then, for all practical intents and purposes, there is. In fact, even if only one person perceived God, that is enough to substantiate the concept in the entire field of consciousness. One might argue that “God” is only an idealization, and cannot be proven to exist in so-called objective terms, but to this I would respond “does this mean that a perhaps lesser idealization, such as love, also does not exist? Where is love? Can I hold it in my hand and show it to you?” Of course, most of us have felt the heady emotional delirium of romantic love, or the sacrifice of agape love, or the ongoing parental love for our children, and feel that we “know” that love is real and exists, yet I must maintain that this existence is largely internal, and cannot be proven scientifically. So, what this boils down to is that the single most important driver of events in the universe (or at least in our pocket of the universe!) cannot be objectively demonstrated, but can only be intuitively experienced at the most subtle, personal level within the field of consciousness!

Let us return to the Christian observation that “God Is Love” – and, by the way, this is not solely the property of Christianity – many other spiritual belief systems throughout history and the world also hold this as a valid observation of the Divine Essence. What does this phrase really mean? Essentially, we are saying that the presumably hypothetical Source of all Creation and Manifestation is also the Universal Embodiment of Love at the highest idealized level. What I am going to say here is that, because we experience love at all, we also experience the Divine Spark of the Soul within our consciousness, and through that Soul, the Logos and God. Even the most selfish love still implicitly recognizes the self that is the object of that love, and that self is personally involved in the field of collective consciousness in each human observer.

Thus, if what we are is consciousness, and where we are is everywhere, the why of our existence must also be universally present, just as is our consciousness. It must be present from the most minute and hypothetical cosmic string to the vast expanse of the cosmos itself, and beyond both as well, if for no other reason than because we can envision what is “beyond” as primordial chaos. The only Manifestation that can fulfill these requirements is God, plain and simple – God must exist to complete the equation of existence. And if God is the source of all Creation, we come at last to the question of why. Why should there be a Creation at all? Why should anything exist? If God is omnipotent, why should this Being, who could just as well have continued to reside in solitude, have even bothered to Create anything? Because the supreme experience of consciousness on every level from the local, personal, and physical to the Universal and Divine is Love. Love is the essence of all conscious manifestation. At the instant of Self Realization, God simply poured forth all manifestation in an expression of Love on every conceivable level that continues to this day, and will continue throughout all time to come forever. This is the meaning of “God Is Love” – the infinite dance of existence. This is the why of our existence.

In Hindu and Yogic terms, the manifestation of this driver of Creation is the Kundalini Energy. This is presumed to exist in a seed form in the Root Chakra, Muladhara, in a conceptual “packet” at the base of the spine, very near the anus. This parcel of Divine consciousness is generally considered to be largely dormant until the onset of puberty, “awakening” at that time with the onset of the hormonal secretions associated with the maturation of the gonads. But consider this – if all that has been suggested here is substantially valid, and all consciousness is created from Love, and quite literally is Love, then any from of consciousness must be an expression of that Love at any physical age. Perception itself is an act of Love. There cannot be anything other than Love in the field of consciousness. Therefore, I maintain that the Kundalini is always manifest and active at the root of consciousness, as our guarantee that, no matter how involved in the Illusion of Maya we become, there will always be a force at work relentlessly pulling us toward the Soul, Divine Love, and God Realization, from the point of conception onward.

So it is that the whole dance of manifestation on the Physical, material Plane is also the dance of Creation on the highest Spiritual Plane – the Logoic Plane – and any distinction we perceive between the two, or among any of the intermediate levels of experience, is a simple function of personal perspective in experiencing what amounts to One Universal Condition that is omnipresent and eternal. I once met a little Buddha working behind the counter in a Subway restaurant who looked at me radiantly and said “Life is all a matter of perspective”. I invite you to expand yours!

- With Love, Alan -

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