Love and Awareness

Here I’m paraphrasing Bhagwan (Osho), as his exact words are somewhere on an old lecture cassette which would take me too long to find. But his words have, in essence, remained with me for many years, so now to look at them:

Love is the movement of the light away from the source, out into the unknown. Awareness is the reflection of the light, the return movement back to the source again.

The words ‘love’ and ‘light’ and ‘source’ are not part of my vocabulary for a model of existence. And there is the question whether with ‘source’ he meant what I have called The Absolute, or Universal Awareness, or something else. And could it be that he used the word Awareness for what I call Consciousness?

After much deliberation, I noticed that a basic feature of this statement is that it uses emotive, inspiring words. Which is surely why I still remember it. But in all my own writings I have tried to clearly define all the words I use, to remain consistent in their use, to explain my meaning and to avoid emotive words and descriptions. And yet even I, as abstract and rational as I am when left to my own devices, have still been fascinated by the above statement after all these years!

After about three attempts to put this statement into my own terminology, none of which convinced me, I can only add some remarks about Bhagwans statement.

‘Love’ sounds here like the will to be, to reach out, to experience something. I have not used any such term (nor ‘light’) in my model of existence. Looking at what I call the all-encompassing and indivisible Trinity (Absolute, Awareness and Consciousness):

• The Absolute is prior to all experience, the foundational state of all which exists. Therefore it can play no part in ‘the movement of the light’ – but it could be identical with what Bhagwan also calls the source.
• Universal Awareness can be experienced as permeating (in fact creating) manifestation, but it doesn’t do anything, it is just a Noticing. So this would definitely fit the Awareness in the above statement.
• Through Great Consciousness space, time and events are shaped, and complexity (i.e. things to be aware of) develops. This is the only remaining candidate for light – which feels about right, since we say ‘lights out’ when someone becomes unconscious.

Most humans tend to prefer an inspiring or emotional view of things – something to strive for, or something to comfort them or make them feel safe. The above statement caters to that by using the term love as some sort of drive or desire, the will to be, to discover. But such qualitites are things which humans as individual beings experience, and then project them onto the Trinity – which in fact it can well do without, thank you very much. The Trinity simply IS, and it brings forth, as manifestation, all possible phenomena (including individual beings) without discrimination.

One day later…

Love as seen by Sri Nisargadatta

I happened this morning to read a remarkably relevant passage on love in the book ‘Seeds of Consciousness’, a collection of talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (the books of his talks are often like that – wherever you open it to, it’s the right text for the moment).

Maharaj: … If there is no need, can there be love?

Questioner: From that perspective, no; but the Absolute has always been associated with that concept. Why do we describe It as love?

M: He does not know himself. He does not know what he is. He doesn’t need anything. He does not need to call himself “I AM”. The Absolute state is called Jnani by ignorant people only. The Absolute doesn’t call himself the Absolute or Jnani.

Q: Why have those who are ignorant idealized the Jnani as love?

M: For the ignorant it is a matter of convenience. So long as he has not reached that Jnani state he must have some motive force: to get that, he calls Jnani full of love, compassion, kindness etc. These are confirmed or opposed by the ignorant.

[…]

M: From my standpoint love is the quality to be. Beingness is love. Only when this “I Amness” appears is there love. Can the love prevail if the “I Amness” is not there? You have the urge to be, to continue your beingness – that is the love.

So, in his words, Maharaj is saying the same as I wrote above, that the concept of love is a result of the (individual) “I Amness”. And Bhagwan, therefore, by formulating the emotive statement was actually playing to the crowd (something he loved to do – I personally experienced him doing it in Pune, towards the end of his life).