Subtitles
I'm going to talk to you this evening on the subject of the spectrum of love we 00:00:00
know that from time to time there arise among human beings people who seem to 00:00:09
exude love as naturally as the Sun gives out heat we would like to be like that 00:00:18
and by and large man's religions are attempts to cultivate that same power in 00:00:28
ordinary people but unfortunately they normally go about this task as one would 00:00:39
attempt to make the tail wag the dog 00:00:47
I remember when I was a small boy in school I was an honest interested in 00:00:50
being able to do my school work properly and everybody told me that I didn't work 00:00:58
hard enough and that I ought to work i have an intense desire to do this but 00:01:06
when i asked how do you work 00:01:12
everybody shut up like a clown so I was extremely puzzled but there were 00:01:14
teachers who apparently knew how to work in the detained considerable height of 00:01:21
scholarship and I admire them very much for their attainment and so I thought 00:01:26
that maybe I could learn the secret by copying their mannerisms I would imitate 00:01:31
the style of handwriting that they used i would use the same kind of 10 I would 00:01:37
affect the same mannerisms of speech and gesture and insofar as i could get 00:01:42
around the school uniform even clothing i must assure you with this of course 00:01:47
was a private school in Indian not a public school in America but none of 00:01:51
this revealed the secret because i was as it were copying the outward symptoms 00:01:57
and knew nothing of the inner mountain are being able to work and exactly the 00:02:04
same thing is true in the case of people who love when we study the behavior of 00:02:11
people who have the power of love within them we can catalog how they behave in 00:02:17
various situations and out of this catalog formulate some rules one of the 00:02:24
peculiar things we notice about people who have this astonishing universal love 00:02:31
is that they are apt but not always so but they are a very often to play it 00:02:38
rather cool on sexual love the reason for this is generally speaking unknown 00:02:46
to preachers but it is because an erotic relationship with the external world 00:02:53
operates so far as they're concerned between that world and every single 00:03:02
nerve ending they are whole organism in all its aspects physical psychological 00:03:07
and spiritual is an erogenous zone and therefore they are flow of love is not 00:03:15
specialized are catalyzed so exclusively in the genital system as it is with most 00:03:22
other people especially in a culture such as ours where for so many centuries 00:03:29
that particular expression of erotic love has been so marvelously repressed 00:03:35
as to make it seemed the most desirable kind of love that there is and so we 00:03:42
have as a result of two thousand years of Christianity sex on the brain 00:03:48
it doesn't always the right place for it 00:03:58
of course also people who exude love our apt to give things away they are in 00:04:02
every way like rivers they stream and so when they connect possessions and things 00:04:14
that they like they are apt to give them to other people because when you have 00:04:19
you ever noticed that when you start giving things away you keep getting more 00:04:26
the same way as you empty out you create a vacuum nature of positive vacuum and 00:04:29
more flows in so we're noticing this Dakota fires of nothing behavior right 00:04:35
down that you should give so much money to tax deductible institutions and to 00:04:42
the poor and that you should be nice to people that you should act towards your 00:04:52
relatives and your friends and even your enemies as if you love them even if you 00:05:00
don't 00:05:05
and of course for Christians and Jews and believers in God there is a 00:05:06
peculiarly difficult task and joined upon us namely that thou shalt love the 00:05:10
Lord thy God and not only here going through the motions of it externally but 00:05:15
with all your heart with all your soul and with all your mind and that is of 00:05:20
course very demanding indeed but you see what is happening 00:05:25
it is as if for example we admire the music of a certain composer and having 00:05:31
started his style 00:05:37
verily we draw up rules of musical composition based on the behavior of 00:05:40
this composer we then go to mute send our children to music school where they 00:05:45
learn these rules in the hope that if they apply them they also will turn into 00:05:51
first class musicians which they usually fail to do because what might be called 00:05:55
the technique of music as well as the technique of morals as well as say the 00:06:02
technique of speech of language is very valuable because it gives you 00:06:07
something to express if and I repeat if you have anything to express but if you 00:06:12
don't if you don't have anything to say not even the greatest master of English 00:06:18
will stand you in good stead unless you can manage to fool your listeners by 00:06:22
talking beautiful nonsense and make it sound profound now so the question and 00:06:30
the possible remains you cannot imitate this thing there is no way of getting it 00:06:39
and yet it is absolutely essential that we have it because obviously the human 00:06:45
race is not going to flourish harmoniously unless we are unable to 00:06:52
love each other but the question is how do you get it is it something you simply 00:06:57
have to contract like measles or is a theologian say is it's a gift of divine 00:07:03
grace which somehow is dished out to some but not to others and if there is 00:07:10
no way of getting divine grace buy anything you do as the Calvinist server 00:07:16
then we've got to just sit around and wait until something happens 00:07:20
although Calvin is never did that 00:07:26
they were almost depressing the energetic 00:07:29
but surely we can't be left in that kind of a hopeless situation there must be 00:07:36
some way of getting the grace or getting divine charity or love some sort of 00:07:41
wangle some sort of way in which we can as it were open ourselves even so as to 00:07:47
become hundred pipes for the flow and so the more subtle features try to see if 00:07:53
we can open ourselves and teach methods of meditation and spiritual discipline 00:08:04
in the hope that we can contact this power the less subtle creatures simply 00:08:09
say you don't have enough faith you don't have enough guts you don't have 00:08:14
enough willpower if you only put your wheel 00:08:20
I mean your shoulders of the wheel and shoved you would be of course an example 00:08:23
on the same actually you will only be an extremely clever hypocrite the whole 00:08:28
history of religion is a history of the failure of preaching preaching is moral 00:08:35
violence 00:08:44
if you you know when you deal with the so-called practical world and people 00:08:49
don't behave as you would wish they would you get out the army all the 00:08:56
police force or the big stick and therefore are those strike you with 00:08:59
somewhat crude you resort to giving lectures 00:09:04
and I mean lectures in the sense of a pie jaw solemn adoration and exhortation 00:09:10
to behave better next time 00:09:16
now let us look at some of the practical consequences of murdering people and 00:09:18
commanding people to love many as a parent says to the child nice children 00:09:26
love their mothers and of course I'm sure you're a nice child you often love 00:09:34
your mother but not because I your mother say so because you really want to 00:09:42
do so because one of the difficulties is none of us in our heart of hearts 00:09:46
respect love which is not freely given 00:09:51
if for example you are an ailing parent and you need to be looked after and you 00:09:55
have a son or daughter who feels dutifully that they should look after 00:10:00
you because after all you've done so much for them but this somehow you're 00:10:04
living with your father or mother prevents you from having a home and a 00:10:09
life of your own 00:10:13
naturally you resent this duty and your parents as well aware that you resented 00:10:14
even if they pretend to ignore it 00:10:19
they therefore feel guilty that they have imposed upon your loyalty and you 00:10:21
in turn can't really discuss from yourself the fact that you hate them for 00:10:26
getting sick even though they couldn't help it 00:10:31
and therefore nobody enjoys the relationship it is a painful duty 00:10:33
carried out and the same thing would naturally happen if after a number of 00:10:38
years having at the altar made a solemn terrible promised that you would love 00:10:43
your wife and husband come what may forever and ever till death do you part 00:10:49
then suddenly you find you really haven't the heart in you to do it 00:10:54
anymore then you feel guilty and that you ought to love your wife family or 00:10:56
whatever and naturally this is a sort of see ASCO as would be obvious if you were 00:11:05
to ask your wife do you really love me and she 00:11:12
going to reply i'm trying very hard to do so you see the difficulty of it is 00:11:14
this you cannot teach a selfish person to be unselfish by any means that is to 00:11:27
say whatever a selfish person does whether it be giving his body to be 00:11:37
burned or giving all that he possesses to the poor he will still do it in a 00:11:44
selfish way of feeling and he will be able to do this with extreme cunning a 00:11:49
model of self-deception and deception of others besides but the consequences of 00:11:56
fake love are almost invariably destructive because they built up 00:12:01
resentment on the part of the person who does the fake loving as well as on the 00:12:07
part of those who are its recipients this is why foreign aid the foreign aid 00:12:13
program has been such a dismal failure now of course you may say that i'm 00:12:18
talking in a very impractical way because you you would say well do we 00:12:25
just have to sit around and wait until we become inwardly converted and then 00:12:29
through the grace of God of some sort of magic how to love and in the meantime do 00:12:34
nothing about it and conduct ourselves selfishly as we feel there is a matter 00:12:39
of fact something to be said for that because the first problem in the whole 00:12:46
of this is honesty and the reason why the Lord God says at the beginning of 00:12:54
things that shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul 00:13:00
and all 00:13:03
my mind is not because of our God is stupid because he's very cover that 00:13:04
which appears to be a commandment is actually a challenge or what is n 00:13:10
Buddhism would be called echo on a spiritual problem because if you 00:13:15
exercise yourself resolute Lee in trying to love God and all your neighbor you 00:13:21
will find that you get more and more tangled up you will realize increasingly 00:13:29
that the reason why you are attempting to obey this as a command is that you 00:13:33
want to be the right kind of person and obviously you want to be the right kind 00:13:38
of person for your own reasons and so if you do in the first place feel selfish 00:13:44
and come to the conclusion as a result of trying various experiments with love 00:13:51
that you love yourself more than anybody else 00:13:56
the proper thing to do is to investigate yourself love to find out why you love 00:14:00
yourself and what you mean by yourself when you say you love yourself for the 00:14:07
reason is this love is not something that is a sort of rare commodity 00:14:13
everybody have it existence is loud but it's like water flowing through a hose 00:14:17
it depends on which direction you point it so everybody has the force running 00:14:26
and maybe the fault of the way in which you find the force of love operating in 00:14:34
you is that you have a passionate like booze or ice cream our automobiles or 00:14:40
good-looking members of the opposite sex or even the same sex but there is love 00:14:49
operating and people of course attend to distinguish between the various kinds of 00:14:55
love there are good kinds such as divine charity and allegedly bad kind such as 00:15:01
in quotes animals last but it should be understood i think that they're all 00:15:07
forms of the same thing but they differ in rather the same way that the colors 00:15:15
of light of Life Flight divided into the spectrum when passed through a prism so 00:15:21
we might say that the red end of the spectrum of love is dr. Freud's libido 00:15:28
and the violent end of the spectrum of love is up a the what is called divine 00:15:33
lab or divine charity and that in the middle various yellows blues and greens 00:15:41
our friendship human endearment consideration and all that sort of 00:15:45
fellow feeling but it's all the same thing and so the thing is first of all 00:15:51
to get it moving to follow whatever kind of love you have in the first place 00:16:00
because you cannot control of until you have some to control until you have it 00:16:08
running 00:16:14
you've got to get your car running before you could learn how to drive it 00:16:14
he will not become a skillful driver by sitting at a still car in a garage 00:16:18
anymore then you will become a skilled answer if you simply never move your 00:16:22
arms and legs and so the first thing then is to discover what indeed you do 00:16:28
love if anything and you will find there is something and then go into the nature 00:16:36
of that now it's said that selfish people love themselves i would say that 00:16:43
that is really a misunderstanding of the whole thing because yourself is 00:16:52
something that is really impossible to love the various reasons for this but 00:16:57
one obvious reason is that loving oneself is as difficult as kissing your 00:17:02
own lips 00:17:13
oneself when you try to focus on it to love it or to know it is hardly elusive 00:17:15
it always slips away like the pursuit tale of a dog who is trying to get hold 00:17:21
of his own tail so to pursue your own end have some difficulties about it if 00:17:27
you explore what you love when you say you love yourself you will make the 00:17:38
startling discovery that everything you love is something which you thought was 00:17:43
other than yourself even if it be very ordinary thing such as ice cream or 00:17:49
booze in the conventional sense lose is not you 00:17:56
Norris ice cream it certainly it turns into you in a manner of speaking when 00:18:04
you consume it but then you don't have it anymore and so you look around for 00:18:08
more in order to love it once again but so long as you love it you see it's 00:18:13
never you when you not people even however selfishly love them because of 00:18:19
the Pleasant sensations they give to you 00:18:26
still it is somebody else that you love and as you inquire into this as you 00:18:28
follow honestly your own selfishness many interesting transformations begin 00:18:35
to come about in you one of the most interesting transformations of being 00:18:40
directly and honestly selfish in the same way that for example cats are is 00:18:44
that you stop deceiving people a great deal of damage is done in practical 00:18:49
human relations by saying that you love people when what you mean is that you 00:18:55
ought to and you don't really you give the wrong impression and people begin to 00:19:00
expect things of you which you're never going to come through with we have been 00:19:06
taught for example that we often love our enemies now we don't really 00:19:11
understand what it means to love our enemies we think it means 00:19:18
to be charitable towards them in the hope that we will convert them and so 00:19:22
that they wasn't the real reason for nothing enemies is that one needs them 00:19:29
is they're terribly important to you 00:19:35
for example i think that some of you here feel that you belong to a nice set 00:19:39
of people it may be an ordinary kind of bourgeois coterie of present squares or 00:19:46
it may be a church group of sometimes a club or a special cult or just a group 00:19:55
of our friendly drinkers but at any rate you feel that by virtue of membership in 00:20:02
this society you belong to a special in group of nice or saved people now when 00:20:10
you consider what nice people talk about when they sit around the dinner table 00:20:20
and have an opportunity to nurture their connected ego you'll find that the most 00:20:25
fascinating topic of conversation is the nasty people 00:20:31
how awful they are what dreadful things they do and what is it all coming to and 00:20:36
this very very satisfactory condemnatory conversation nature's your ego but 00:20:44
people who do that don't seem to realize that they thereby depend on the nasty 00:20:51
people in order to know that they're nice they are as a matter of fact highly 00:20:57
indebted to them on the other side of the picture of the nasty people it may 00:21:02
be say beatniks opposite the squares or some kind of repressed group it might be 00:21:09
a group of Negroes or Jews or Irish Catholics or Italian Catholics from 00:21:16
anybody who generally gets regarded as being not quite nice day on their side 00:21:21
consider that they really are the best people and could not sure they're 00:21:27
connected ego by blasting the bourgeoisie the squares the wast 00:21:33
know-nothings or whoever they may be 00:21:38
and so far the collective ego of the non squares the squares and extremely 00:21:40
necessary if they were to disappear tomorrow 00:21:44
many of us would lose the cause 00:21:48
now the many to begin to become aware of this is rather embarrassing 00:21:51
it's of course humorous and I'm glad that you see this because it once you 00:22:01
begin to realize how much you depend on an enemy or an outsider or a group of 00:22:10
damage people is to speak from your own group of saved people and so you begin 00:22:16
to realize that if you're connected ego or yourself 00:22:21
depends on your being on the in here but you can only be on the end with relation 00:22:26
to something that is out and since the in and the out are inseparable if there 00:22:31
is to be any in or any out you something to discover that yourself is bigger than 00:22:36
you thought it was it includes the other and you can't do without it you this 00:22:41
brings about a fundamental change in the understanding of the meaning and nature 00:22:54
of self and thereupon they become a change of attitude to other people even 00:23:00
if you continue with some form or opposition to them and disapproval of 00:23:14
them when then you are honestly clear with yourself what you like and what you 00:23:21
dislike and then at the smooth things that work together to defined as being 00:23:30
not yourself your love which is what you are begins to express itself quite 00:23:35
naturally and unaffectedly in a wider way now to trust one self to be capable 00:23:45
of love to bring up love in other words too 00:23:54
function in a social way and in a creative way is to take a risk 00:23:57
it's a gamble because you may not come through with it and in the same way when 00:24:07
you fall in love with somebody else or you form an association with somebody 00:24:13
else and you trust them they may as a matter of fact not fulfill your 00:24:17
expectations but that risk has to be taken the alternatives to taking that 00:24:23
risk is much worse than trusting and being deceived when you say I will not 00:24:32
trust other people and i will not trust myself 00:24:43
what do you have to do you have to resort to force you have to employ 00:24:47
stacks of policemen to protect you and god only knows what makes you think you 00:24:56
can trust them and 00:25:02
you have to hold a club over yourself all the time and say no no my nature is 00:25:07
way would animal reverse fallen grounded and sin so that as a matter of fact what 00:25:16
happens when you refuse to take the gamble of trusting yourself to be 00:25:26
capable of love you become like a person if you will excuse this extremely 00:25:31
graphic but nevertheless relevance in li who cannot trust themselves to have 00:25:36
bowel movement many children learn this from parents who do not trust them and 00:25:43
think that they ought to have these movements in rhythm with the clock 00:25:50
this is a different kind of rhythm the rhythm of the organism so people cannot 00:25:55
trust themselves to do this endlessly take laxatives as a result of which 00:25:59
their whole elimination system gets fouled up needing more laxatives and so 00:26:04
on and so forth 00:26:09
exactly the same thing happens with people who can't trust themselves go to 00:26:10
sleep have to take all kinds of pills and so also with people who can't trust 00:26:13
themselves to love and have to take all sorts of artificial and surgical met 00:26:18
measures to produce the effect of love for saving face they get more 00:26:24
progressively incapable of loving at all and they create turmoil and 00:26:31
misunderstanding and chaos in human society in other words to live together 00:26:36
you have to take risks there will be disappointments and failures and 00:26:44
disasters as a result of taking these risks but in the long run it will work 00:26:53
out my point is that if you don't take the results will be so much worse than 00:26:58
any kind of wild Aniki that could be conceived you see here we are now as a 00:27:05
highly disciplined human race 00:27:13
with all kinds of rules and religions and what are we about to do to ourselves 00:27:15
completely to pieces is this freedom what was this all a good gamble because 00:27:24
you see in tying up loving knots and becoming capable incapable of it you 00:27:32
can't destroy this energy you turn it when you will when you won't love it you 00:27:39
won't let it out the thing comes out in the form of self-destruction the 00:27:43
alternative to self-love in other words self-destruction because you won't take 00:27:48
the risk our loving yourself properly you will be compelled instead to destroy 00:27:54
yourself 00:28:00
so which would you rather have 00:28:01
would you rather have a human race which isn't always very well controlled and 00:28:05
sometimes runs amok a little bit but on the whole continues to exist with a good 00:28:14
deal of honesty and delight when delight is available or would you rather have 00:28:20
the whole human race blown to pieces and cleaned off the planet reducing the 00:28:25
whole thing to a nice scoured rock with no dirty disease on it called life 00:28:30