--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Share Long <sharelong60@...> wrote:
Share1 "Personal love is concentrated universal love". Maharishi [with thanks to share long] Share1: And let's not forget the opposite: Universal love is expanded personal love (-: Robin2: That Maharishi guy, he knows how to so effortlessly make his consciousness the metaphysical measure of all things. When he says this *he is depriving the TM-conquered consciousness of the individual any chance of testing what he has saidagainst reality*the reality that would be there if Maharishi has never lived. We must conclude, Share, that, according to Maharishi there is only kind of love: either in its concentrated form:that is personal love. But concentrated love (personal love) then becomes, when it expands, universal love. Therefore there is no difference intrinsically between the two forms of love. But the concentrated love, when it becomes universal love, does it dilute in some way? I would think that universal love (if it exists) should in some sense be even a *more* concentrated form of love than personal love. Let us assume that Bevan Morris loves Maharishiloved Maharishiwith some degree of universal loveand Maharishi, he returned (since he created it) that universal love towards Bevan. Now imagine Bevan deciding to marry someone he truly loveshe finds 'the one'; a woman. He has a baby boy. When he first looks at his child, does his love for his boy have anything to do with what he remembered (and still is aware of) as his love for his Master, Maharishi? The love we have for significant others, that is so very real and deep and yes, even biological. If making the unmanifest take up residence inside our consciousness enables us to embody the love that *is* the unmanifest, then *that* love surely should be concentrated love on an order to make even a father's love for his new-born child seem unreal, relative, impermanent even. But yet, right until death that love between father and son will be preserved. How may of us initiators who adored and surrendered our very souls to Maharishi retain our love for him? Hardly any of us. Which must mean that none of us ever really knew "universal love"*but we sure thought we did*. The TM Movement has been going strong ever since John Lennon fell deeply in love with Maharishi and they all went to stay in in Ashram in India in 1967. I figure, based upon my experiences in the early and late seventies, there should be at least one thousand of us initiators/governors living out the truth of: "personal love is concentrated universal love". "Universal love is expanded personal love". Is there even one of us, Share? Here you are having a conversation with a former devout and dedicated initiator, who even claims to have been inside Unity Consciousness for ten years, and yet we are controverting the meaning and truth of what Maharishi has saidprobably 40 years after he revealed what he wanted us to know was an objective truth about the cosmos and the human heart. Robin1: Might be if you're sucking up to them devas. But what kind of personal love is universal love? It is a Maharishi-ism, bound to seduce, arrest, and mystically paralyze one in bliss. Because all one does is say to oneself: Maharishi is saying this, and I feel the power of his personal consciousness making it seem truer than anything else I've ever heard about impersonal and personal lovehow they get connected. Share1: laughing because if you knew me in person, you'd know that I'm the least likely to be a bliss bunny. I'm trying to remember who else I've heard speak about this topic. I guess eros and agape from some university class. Catholics speak about brotherly love. Ayn Rand weighs in on the personal love side. I realize I also love this quote from Maharishi because lots of New Agers I know denigrate personal love. Especially, if I dare say so, New Age men. With this quote, Maharishi saves personal love from the trash heap of "not spiritual and abstract and free enough." Robin2: I should say it was so refreshing to get your post, Share; and I should confessI think this is obvious:I was only challenging Maharishi's notion of personal and universal love; I was not contemplating what I think love is. So I was being adversarial in relation to Maharishiperhaps consolidating my liberation from his incredible hold over my mind and heart all those years. Yes, I agree: you do not give off that feeling of someone who is a "bliss bunny" (or "ninny"is the latter the unisex term? Bunny seems gender specific somehoweducate me on this, please). The quote for me, for all those years I loved Maharishi, Share, was as real as quantum physics. But it ain't no more. Why? Because reality has judged it to be meaningless. At least this is the effect of these twenty-five years of taking a stand against my Unity Consciousness. [In case you didn't know: I am back in waking state. :-)which of course in the way this reversal of 'evolution' came about entails a very deliberate opposition to the person and influence of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.] Sure, just as you say, "Maharishi saves personal love from the trash heap of 'not spiritual and abstract and free enough'". He does indeed; but how do you go about persuading those New Age men of the greater empirical validity of Maharishi's idea of the connection between universal and personal love? Obviously Maharishi is not talking about some intention, some ideal, some orientation to live by. *He is talking about a certain objective, mechanical, physiological, metaphysical "style of functioning" of the human nervous system*. Therefore, Maharishi is not *arguing* that this is true. Maharishi does not argue. He pronounces ex cathedraontologically. So, Maharishi wouldn't care what those New Age men thoughtbecause (and I truly believe this) Maharishi lived out the truth of what he said in his own experience, in his own apprehension of the reality of personal and universal love. Robin1: The thing is, I don't believeexcept in the case of Christthere was any such thing as universal love. Sure, we all have felt it, experienced it, known itLove-ins, weren't they really all about "Personal love is concentrated universal love"? or maybe no: Love-ins were just universal love getting expressed personally. Who knows? I thought under psychedelics that Mao was the 'daily flash' guy who was bringing in the love through the Cultural Revolution. And I was convinced The Tibetan Book of the Dead was metaphysically a correct read on reality. I don't think so now. And I think I know what personal love is, and I would say that personal love in its highest form is the gift given by the Personal God who is love itselfthe simple intelligence of loving goodness. Share1: What are the indications of personal love in its highest form? Did Christ also love personally, eg Mary and Martha? Robin2: I certainly believe he (Christ) did express "personal love in its highest form". And I think the Saintsmany of them, that isimitated Christ in this. But the highest form of personal love would have been Christ as a human being (with a human soul) expressing the personality of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity loving his Mothertheir connection especially and most intensely when she looked up at him on the Cross. That, for mespeaking subjectivelyexpressed the fusion of universal and personal love to the maximum. What are the indications of personal love in its highest form? Well, I don't know because I have never experienced what Mary and Christ experienced. But I can speculate. The complete absence of fear. Unconditioned by personal history. Allowing for a perfect perception of reality and the immediate unfolding of providence in every moment. A sense of self-sacrifice that enables the person to know that the love he or she is experiencing finds no obstacle to its absolute individuation in that person. A sense of a reality which is stronger than death. The execution of a kind of pure intelligence (intelligence conversant with the purpose of each moment). The sense of love as composed almost entirely of gracenot carnal, not alloyed, not conditioned by human experiencein the main, at least. Love as purposeful, cutting into reality, revealing meaning and intelligence in the movement of life. Love that enables one to assess the truth of a given point of view about what reality and truth is. Love that perpetually renews itself without attenuation or fluctuation or variability. Love that allows one to have a sense of the purpose of creation and the why of one's personal existence: a sense of coming upon one's perfect destiny. A sense of dwelling in the unknown, so nothing is familiar to one other than this love. And that love determines the decisions one makes. Love that destroys nearly all the programming of oneself over the course of one's lifetime. These are some of the indicators, Share, I would imagine "personal love in its highest form" exhibiting. Robin1: What did Maharishi mean to communicate to us by telling us this? I certainly took it to be as true as the earth goes around the sun (which, come to think about it is a pretty neat thing). But now, after some reality has settled in, it seems too mystically alluring and beautiful without making any real sense except in terms of the feeling one gets in hearing and thinking about it. Was the love you felteverfor your mother and father, for your brother, for your loverfor anyone you have ever lovedjust concentrated universal love? Why that takes away the love from the person who loves, doesn't it? I think personal love is personal love. And I doubt very much if there is such a thing as universal love. Love can only be personal.Not that there aren't persons who have experienced, and who express something which seems to take the form of universal love. Share1: I have experienced both personal love and universal love for the same person. But not at the same time! Robin2: Well, this certainly (as Maharishi would say) gets my attention. Seems real and individualized; that's for sure. I would be very interested in your first-person description of these two different forms of lovehow your apprehension of this person was altered under each form of love. And what your experience of the significance and meaning of these two different forms of love as they applied to that person. Which form of love afforded you a great sense of the reality of that personof yourself? And most important of all, Share, did your experience verify the claims of Maharishi? Robin1: But I always in the end find such people a little off the ground and not real. They love feeling and radiating universal love, but in their private lives that universal love doesn't generate whatever love they have for wife and child and brother and sister and mother and father. Personal love is first-person ontological love. Universal love: that's the love comes out of pure consciousness. I believe pure consciousness to be unreal. A myth. And therefore without neurophysiological correlates. :-) Share1: I wonder if there is brain research indicating a locale for universal love in the skull? I much prefer personal love myself but maybe it's just a part of my brain that needs activating (-: Robin2: Share, find someone you can confirm is manifesting universal love in some way you find reliable, credible, compelling. A love, then, that seems more real in its expression and form than any love you have known. That is the person I wish to meet. I believe Maharishi took universal love to its very limits. But it was not enough to allow him to fulfill the criteria of the highest personal love as I have attempted to adumbrate in answer to your question about 'indicators". This neurophysiological research, it can never get to a first person ontological reality whatsoever. You think science can find the specific correlates which could determine exactly what your experience is in this moment of reading this sentenceyour experience of being Share Long right now? I am a Mysterian in this. Like Thomas Nagel; like Colin McGinn (both atheists by the way). Personal consciousness (what it is like to be Share Long and what it is like to be Robin Carlsen) can never be subject to some measurable specification by a purely third person form of knowledge, which science will always be. No one will ever know how a first-person ontology forms inside the human being. And this being so, it must follow therefore that it is what is most precious and significant about what it means to have been created as a human being. Personal consciousness is metaphysically indestructibleas, I believe, even Maharishi found out. Robin1: Still, saying it, it sure creates a happy vibration. But does that vibration have intelligence inside of it? Share1: I like that question, and more: Does any vibration have intelligence in it? I'd say yes. But not a mind based intelligence. More a body based intelligence. Robin2: Again, an answer which intrigues me. "More a body based intelligence": that might be one of the most interesting ideas I have come across here on FFL. I am very interested in your developing this ideaif you feel like doing so. I feel some kind of truth is there, Share. But I am not sure (for myself) what it is. Robin1: For myself, I don't think so. I spent ten years convinced of the empirical truth of what Maharishi says here: I think it does go along with so-called 'higher states of consciousness". But can the unmanifest be loving in its preparation to manifest? Share1: Just as the unmanifest knows itself before manifesting, so too does it love itself before manifesting. As in, to know me is to love me (-: Robin2: I am just enjoying reading this; so I say nothing to this. Nothing argumentative, at least. I have met the unmanifest and I think it a dream. A form of profound deceitfulness of the human being. But for all that, very coherent, very powerful, very intelligent, very impressiveand gives to the human person resources he or she could access no other way than having the unmanifest annex one's entire personal consciousness. But keep going, Share; who knows? you might yet make me reconsider going up on that mountain again. From Ignorance to Enlightenment to Ignorance and then finally to Enlightenment again. But skydiving without a parachute: the world starts to really shake when you pay no attention to gravity*and get the support to do this*! Robin1: You tell a small child there is a God (Personal kind). He or she can believe this. You feel your child loving you. Would you ever try to convince your child that what he or she was feeling towards you was just "concentrated universal love"? Share1: Of course not! What would be the usefulness of that? Robin2: No, no, Share: I was making the point that if the concept and reality of God can be comprehended by a child; then does it not follow that it becomes possible to explain the truth that the child's love for his mother is somehow (without him knowing this) merely the concentrated from of universal love? I am a traditionalist in this; I believe ultimate truths about Creation and the human soul can be communicated to a child. The Catholic catechism (well before Vatican II, that is, when the Church was alive and was runI believeby Mary) was accessible to a six year old childprobably even younger than that. The essential truths for the salvation of the soul, then, could be communicated to a child. Well, if personal love is concentrated universal love; and universal love is expanded personal love, why categorically rule out trying to communicate this truth to a child? Seems like, if it is true, the child could become more intelligent about himself and the universeeven about the nature of what this love is that he feels towards his mother, Robin1: Don't let this spoil your day, share. I am still unstressing a little after my ten year Unity blow-outwhich I loved incidentally. Now I can't find that universal love anywhere. Share1: Actually, it's a relief to engage in an intellectual exchange like this. Not at all spoiling. I miss being a student. Robin2: Well, this is the most fun I have had all day. You don't close off any avenues of discussion, exploration by unrecognized a priori notions of truth. You are obviously going for the Eastern truth, but you seem entirely available to hear other truth versionsalthough understandably you have a deep reaction to the agonies of your disillusionment with Catholicism, which sought to impose its discipline on you without the grace to make that a beautiful form of sacrifice and love for you. Robin1: And it is a relief to me. Share1: laughing because I wrote my previous sentence about relief. Then read yours! Robin2: Unconscious universal love connection? But the word "relief" of course as employed by me in this context means something different than what you mean by using it. When I knew universal love, Share, my love was not under my own control. I was owned by that universal loveand its unpredictable and inexorable demands. Robin1: But you and raunchydog and merunanda: I am prepared to be reconverted by you guys. Share1: I'm happy to leave universal love to the New Age guys. Robin2: Who are these "New Age guys" you refer to? What are the "indicators" of being a New Age guy? Are you giving up, then, on the expanded version of personal love? I hope so, Share! :-) But you got to be careful with the flying sidhi: if you ever float you will be skydiving without the parachute for sure. And then the universal love will take total possession of you, and I don't like your chances of returning to the more concentrated version: the personal love which I figure is almost your signature trait. Which will undoubtedly mean you won't post again in answer to Robin.But don't let that be the deciding factor in your spiritual destiny. :-) Robin1: But you have to promise that if I reenter Unity Consciousness the love will still be there, and I will be able to believe the truth of what Maharishi has said here as much has I once believed it. Because, you see, reality won't be supporting that idea that "personal love is concentrated universal loveI think about the most intoxicating, mesmerizing, blow-your-mind aphorisms I have ever heard. Robin1: Do we have any universal lovers at FFL? Share1: Yes but they're all lurkers (-: Robin2: Well, then, they should have fun reading this conversation. Should we sell tickets to the next show, Share? Be it resolved: Personal Love is Concentrated Universal Love. I have enjoyed this. Some admixture of personal and universal love perhaps?
