SECRET OF SECRETS: LOVING and BEING LOVED

Self Love,
Brotherly Love,
Divine Love.

11-1-04

It is no longer necessary for modern man to
lead a life of quiet desperation. He can do
something about his dilemma. The secret
waits....

What is this secret? And how can one
discover what it is and learn to use it?

Uell. S. Andersen calls it THE SECRET OF
SECRETS because, strangely enough, it is
within each man and yet can set him free.
It is a secret that is making itself known
over the face of the earth. It has become
the common meeting ground of all religions.
Sri Aurobindo says "It is the one secure and
all reconciling truth which is the very
foundation of the universe." It is this truth
and its application to your own life that is
the theme of THE SECRET OF SECRETS.

The Secret of Secrets, by Uell S. Andersen.
[A modern day mystic, a Master, speaking from
his Soul... giving a brilliant analysis of spirituality
and ascension... eloquent writing style.]

11-2-04

Amazon.com Customer Review... The Secret of Secrets by Uell S. Andersen

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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

Reviewer: Carmen Matthews "Love Books" (San Diego, California)

Rejuvenate Your Life, November 4, 2002

Having read "Three Magic Words," also by U.S. Andersen, I am so impressed that I learned so much more. This is an author who writes non-fictions on the universal subconscious mind. And you can read one of his books, after another, and still learn something new, as I have.

I kept asking myself, while reading this book, "What is the secret of secrets?"

Here are some of the many notes that I paid considerable attention to; and what I wrote in the front pages:

1. Meditate everyday for the purposes of falling in love with God.

2. Follow the 4 steps to mastery (a. concentrate upon your relationship with God; b. Accept God's power; c. Give without expecting rewards; d. Love God more, each day)

3. Dedicate your existence to knowing the love of God. Seek to live in this love, and to return this love.

4. There is opportunity every minute of everyday, throughout your life.

5. Abandon your ego.

6. Seek God with all of your heart and soul, within yourself.

7. Get out of your way and let God move through you!

8. When you seek inward union with God you will reflect that union in every part of your life.

9. Money represents the labor of others. And when you have money you are the trustee of their energies, time and effort.

10. Once you have mastered the courage to face reality, no matter what the problem is, your courage will never leave you.

11. "To love is to know me; my innermost nature; the truth that I am. Through this knowledge enter at once to my being." by Bhagavad-Gita

And for me, the Secret of Secrets is:

1. Whether or not you believe in God, God exists.

2. God is molding you on earth.

3. God molds you by tempering you through pain and ordeal, so that you will awaken to your true spiritual birthright.

4. You are predestined, on a spiritual level, not on a worldly level.

5. Your soul goes through orders to refine and purify your understanding.

6. And it's time to let go of your ego, and to accept the laws of your spirit.

Between every other book that I read, for some time to come, I will continue to read every Uell S. Andersen book, and reread them, until his messages have become as natural a part of me as my need to be nourished.

11-3-04 [Excerpt from SECRET OF SECRETS, by U. S. Andersen] p163

7 LOVING AND BEING LOVED

A candle burns in the depths of the night
And illumines the path and the goal
With the promise of God to redeem with His light
The lost and the fallen through love of each soul

THE POLARITY OF LOVE

Most people when they think of love think of being loved
and seldom of the spiritual act of loving. As a consequence
their idea of love is unreal, one-sided, impossible of
attainment, for being loved is only one pole in the magnetic
field of love, the other is loving; without both there can be
no love at all.

Probably we have grown into this anachronistic state
through over-concern with applause. Modern society sets
great store by the winner, the entertainer, the performer,
and undoubtedly we have grown to measure our social
acceptance by how much admiration is accorded us. We
develop a desire to be loved, not by loving in turn, but
rather by dazzling, outperforming, seeking and holding the
center of attention.

Such false motivations alienate rather than
attract, inspire envy and antagonism rather than love,
but still the majority of people go through life humiliating
others, trying always to beat them, forever insisting on their
own superiority, then wondering why in the world they
are not loved.

11-4-04 p.164

It is possible to win love under false pretenses, but it is
not possible to hold it. One can, by dint of singular physical
attractiveness, personal charm, or great talent, win from
others a profession of adoration, but unless such adoration
is met with sincere lovingness in return, it soon will die.

It is strange indeed that millions of people become frozen,
isolated in little prisons of their own making because they
need to be loved and cannot find it, when all the while the
tool of their liberation is in their own hands—all they have
to do is love and they will be loved in return.

THE SILVER LINK

The desire for love, the very necessity for love, springs
from the individual's sense of separateness and isolation,
his subconscious memory of a greater, more whole, more
complete state, and his desire to return to that state by fusion
with others.

God has entered into the material body, assumed a
mask in which He appears far less than Himself. In order
to become a particular manifestation, He must be that
particular manifestation, and all during the masquerade there
exists in the depths of each creature an ache, a longing to
return to a pure and absolute state; and this yearning, this
reaching out to encompass all things, this desire to return to
a condition of wholeness, is the longing known as love.

So it often is said that God is love; for in love, in true spiritual
love, all things are united, fused, made one in the essence of
their being, and thus they return to a sense of their original
state, which is perfection and completeness and serenity,
which is God.

Too many of us today are love-blocked. The channel
through our hearts on which lovingness goes out has been
dammed up so that nothing can get through. We make our
way through life as though frozen, unaware of the divinity
of our neighbors, of all those we meet. Where we reach out
a hand to touch them, it is for sensation only, not to console
or sympathize or lend strength, not even to determine what

11-5-04 p.165

stuff they are made of. If we truly touch them, let ourselves
go out in that touch, we soon learn that we not only have
touched them but we have touched God. To open the doors
of your nature and let the spirit of love soar through is to
lend a touch of magic to everyone you meet, to everything
you do.

Life is most exciting, most rewarding to those who
love, who really let the bars down and love. It matters not if
their love is returned, life itself will return it. Life's law is
that only the lover becomes the beloved; there is no other
way.

The man who allows the compassion and mercy of
God to flow unimpeded through his nature, out to others,
to all life, will be showered in return by the lovingness of
life, in abundance, in vigor, in friendship, in joy and happiness,
for he truly has attuned himself to God. By allowing himself
to love, truly love, he penetrates the mystic meaning of
existence, discerns by a kind of communal feeling the
absolute unity of life.

True love's the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven
The silver link, the silken tie
Which heart to heart and mind to mind
In body and in soul can bind.

—Sir Walter Scott

The nature of love springs from the desire of the created
individual to return to a state of primary spiritual unity.
It is the longing of the soul to return to God. From this
desire to unite, to penetrate, to mingle with, to lose one's
identity in, spring the noblest efforts and aspirations of man.

Men become explorers, researchers, students, writers, artists,
philosophers, scientists, all because they seek to know more
about, to better identify themselves with, the world they
find around them and the world they find within. Love
provides impetus for all, and the man who is blocked from
loving is blocked from doing, for the wellspring of life
is dammed up inside him.

11-6-04 p.166

LOVE-BLOCKED

Charles was the kind of man who obviously was out to
take what he wanted. No path was too devious, no means
too unethical to be used to gain the ends he sought. When
asked what those ends were, he replied tersely, "I'm going
to be boss. Nobody is going to tell me what to do. Nobody
is going to push me around." Nobody did either.

Charles was far too big, too tough, too mean for that. But the
pushing around he gave himself was something to behold. He
was like a man surrounded by a ring of wolves. He simply
bristled with aggression. He obviously considered everyone
an opponent and was out to win at any cost. He couldn't
work for anyone. He couldn't muster that much humility.

No one could have put up with his hostility anyway. As a
consequence, he was always in business for himself; in fact,
he WSLS in life for himself. His businesses always fared badly.
Everything would go well for a while, then pretty soon
his customers would start leaving. Finally there would be
nothing to do but close shop and start looking for something
else.

Eight successive failures had only increased Charles's hostility.
By this time he was convinced that there was a conspiracy
afoot to thwart him. He never had a kind word for
anyone, never seemed to like anyone, actually seemed to
dislike all company unless he could find a way to turn it to
his profit. As far as Charles was concerned it was obvious that
he dwelt in an enemy camp, that he was deathly afraid
he might be found out at any moment.

When his last business folded and he had neither the
capital nor the friends to get him started in another, Charles
had come to the end of his rope. He locked himself in his
house and wouldn't answer the door. One day the police
came and took him to jail for a series of petty thefts that
he had committed at night in order to be able to eat.

"I only took what they owed me," he told the judge.

11-7-04 p.167

"They've stolen from me, tricked me, forced me to live
without food. I was only taking what belonged to me."

That was not the way the judge interpreted it, however,
and Charles was sentenced to six months in the county jail.
He cracked completely at this last outrage, had to be taken
forcibly from the courtroom and restrained in his cell. The
court ordered psychiatric treatment.

When Charles was discharged from prison six months later,
he had changed, but hardly for the better. No longer did
the edge of his aggression and hostility stand out; instead he
seemed absolutely beaten, bereft, without the will or the
urge to strike back. He searched desultorily for a job, but he
didn't seem to really want one. He lived meagerly on
donations provided by a welfare fund.

It was winter, and in the chill evenings Charles grew
accustomed to taking walks. The exercise and the fresh
air stirred him from his lethargy and he began to notice
things, how the smoke rose in stately columns from the factory
chimneys, how the icicles hung like narrow teeth along the
eaves of buildings, how the noise of the city seemed hushed
by a snowfall.

He was crossing a bridge over a small river
one evening, on his way home from his usual walk, when
he heard a cry for help. Peering over the edge of the bridge
he saw the head of a child bobbing on the surface of the
water. Charles threw himself over the rail, into the freezing
river below.

He reached the child all right, and with his last strength
managed to land him on the river bank. By now both would
have lapsed into unconsciousness but for a small gathering
of passers-by who administered first-aid and called an
ambulance.

Charles and the child were taken to a hospital and
each recovered without mishap. The child's parents were
overcome with gratitude. They pressed all sorts of rewards
upon Charles. He smiled at each, but shook his head.

"I've found my own reward," he said. "I couldn't take
anything more. I've learned at last that the only way to help
one's self is to help another."

11-8-04 p.168

When Charles was discharged from the hospital he was
offered a job immediately. He took it and since has
per formed it ably. But most important of all, he has learned to
make friends. He reaches out to people; some dam in him
has been opened and lovingness pours through. He is a
happy man, his years of bitterness and discontent forgotten.

To look up and not down,
To look forward and not back,
To look out and not in, and
To lend a hand.

—Edward Everett Hale

EROTIC LOVE

The most earthy and universal manifestation of divine
love is erotic love. In the attraction between the sexes
rests the underlying drama of life—the yearning of the
differentiated parts of the Supreme to be integrated once
again.

The human being is both aware of himself as an
individual and as a part of something greater. As an
individual he soon finds little of permanence to cling to, and
he casts about for the answer to his existence, seeks endlessly
for his greater Self, the vaster existence in which he has his
true being.

The desire to unite, to fuse, to combine, is his
great subconscious longing to become immortal, to return
once again to a state of wholeness and completeness that
is dimly and only subconsciously remembered.

Such basic underlying motivation readily impels him to unite with a member of the opposite sex, seeking in that union a spiritual fulfillment in which the erotic portion is purely a symbol of the ecstasy and perfection sought by the soul.

Sexual union reproduces the species, carries on the long string of differentiation of the eternal and infinite Divine. Each step in that progression is made possible by the individual seeking his greater Self through union with another, and thus the erotic

11-9-04 p.169

aspect of sexual union has a deep and persistent spiritual
drive which, if ignored, defeats sexual union altogether.

Meister Eckhart wrote, "God and I: we are one. By
knowing God, I take Him to myself. By loving God, I
penetrate Him." This insoluble spiritual mystery, of God inside
one and yet outside one, of the longing to penetrate and be
penetrated by, has its natural material solution in the sexual
act. Yet no solution to spiritual dilemmas will be found
there.

The temporary union achieved by a man and a
woman, no matter how perfect, no matter how tender and
mutual, is a transient thing, an indication perhaps but only
an indication of the rapture to be found when the soul
unites with God.

Nevertheless, the man who commits himself
to celibacy in order to better find God and to better love
God all too often cuts himself off from the primary outlet
of human lovingness and thus suffers an emotional shriveling,
a kind of shrinkage of the soul; and because he no longer
has this common tie of lovingness with others, he fails to
understand others, their humanity and their fallibility, and
no longer can he feel and touch human aspirations and
human suffering, no longer understand himself.

To be sure, one has only to visit the breeding pens of any
farm to convince himself that there is nothing intrinsically
beautiful or uplifting to the soul about sexual intercourse.
The blind brute follows an impulse it neither understands
nor cares to understand, unites with its mate and procreates
the species.

Yet even here the master hand can be seen, irresistibly
guiding each created being into union with another in
order to express a wholeness that is absent from each
solitary thing.

The force of union, that gigantic power that carries
with it the tides of progress and life, is made manifest here
on earth through the sexual union of male and female,
as if God in his plan of infinite progression and manifold
manifestation has laid his hand on the brow of each creature,
saying, "Seek thou thine opposite; in union thou wilt be
guided to thy true self."

11-10-04 p.170

THE SEARCH FOR THE BELOVED

Sexual union is the most rewarding and at the same time
the most frustrating of all human experiences. We are drawn
to it like moths to a flame, irresistibly, with a compulsion
that lies deep in the subconscious memory of race and specie,
and we can no more fight its force and drive than we can
blot out the light of the sun, and we cannot deny it without
living a lie.

Each of us carries in his secret heart, perhaps
without ever having examined it, the image of his beloved.
Oftentimes it is a trite and unworldly thing, overly idealistic,
unreal in the sense that it is impossible of realization, as
when a young girl, for example, envisages her knight in
shining armor.

Yet each of us finds her knight in shining
armor, his fair maiden in distress if only we are able to look
upon God's created world as it actually is and not as it is
distorted to us through the eyes of the ego. We are drawn
to love in order to become whole, in order to find in union
a completeness that we do not know in solitary existence.

And for a while we find it, perhaps only for a moment,
sometimes for a day, it we are very lucky for months, even
years, but in the end it disappears, for we have fixed our
lovingness upon the flesh and made it transient. We cannot
finally be fulfilled in loving or being loved unless our ultimate
lover and beloved of God.

The Don Juan who flits from woman to woman is not
so much seeking endless conquest as he is trying eternally
to find fulfillment in his quest for the beloved. Always in the
sight of a new and attractive face, a kindly manner, an outgoing lovingness he fancies he has found that magic alchemy
that will transform his life, give him a reason for existence,
bolster his ego into the giant and invincible thing he would
like it to be.

He comes together with an object for his love, and
in union he is deluded for a while that his search is ended,
that the beloved has been found. But, alas, all too soon the
magic deserts him; he finds the object of his adoration to

11-11-04 p.171

be human too, imperfect, subject to sin and error and sadness,
and he deserts her, takes up the quest anew, a quest
that never will be fulfilled short of its being focused upon
the Divine, short of its being a search for God.

The pleasures of the flesh will not satisfy it, nor even provide forgetfulness for more than a moment, and the longing of the
soul to be reunited with its entire being, with its true Self, with
its Lord and Master, remains with the soul always until that
longing is eased by divine union.

SEXUAL UNION

There is, of course, a physical side to sex. There is a basic
biological urge in each male to inseminate each female,
just as there is a basic biological urge in each female to entice
all males to compete for her. Though these urges exist in
subconscious and instinctive areas and to all intents and
purposes are purely animalistic, it is no good throwing up our
hands and saying that they are abnormal or denying that
they exist at all.

They exist for the purpose of procreating the species,
and the manner in which they exist is to insure
that the best and most hardy examples of the breed achieve
union and have offspring. This method of choice is apparent
throughout all nature; why should it not exist in the human
also?

Though it is obvious that giving free vent to such
urges in our modern society could hardly result in anything
but chaos for the individual, such sociological implications
in no way invalidate the urges themselves or make them
criminal or explain them away.

Let us recognize that we climb the ladder of progress by
restraint and by discipline, and that the same problems
exist in the saint as in the sinner. The man who achieves
sufficient control over himself to be able to channel his
urges and energies into constructive action on the behalf
of himself and society has learned the secret of success.

All energies are God-given, given to express
in the manifold individualization of the Divine a constant
refinement, an ever-upward and ever-outward realization of

11-12-04 p.172

a constantly sought perfection. He who gives over his works
and his energies to God need worry no longer about being
overcome by wrong action. His energies will be channeled
along the path of the greatest good for all, and his security
lies in his own faith and love.

All the things of the enlightened man's life take on new
and heightened significance. He finds in the sex act a spiritual
union that adds to the sum of its rapture, to the totality of
its ecstasy by opening planes and areas of experience that
before were only vaguely hinted at.

Now he comes to his beloved in reverence, in humility,
knowing as he penetrates flesh he penetrates spirit also,
finding in possessing and being possessed a wholeness,
a togetherness, a oneness, that increases his knowledge
of the Divine.

From the microcosm of the sex act he senses, radiating
out on all sides into the outermost reaches of infinity,
that power and permanence and rapture and joy that
only can emanate from God.

So he comes to his beloved spiritually as well as physically; he
knows the Divine in his beloved as he knows the Divine in
himself; the two mingle and are one.

Thy soul I know not from thy body, nor
Thee from myself, neither our love from God.
—Dante Gabriel Rossetti

SELF-LOVE

The true nature of love is made manifest through God's
love for man; and the yearning of differentiated parts to be
once more integrated in the whole has its first outgrowth
in the drama of male and female, in their coming together,
in their union, in the procreation that results.

But as the awakening self becomes more aware, develops
ego, divides itself from others and from God, there is born
that thing of vanity and delusion—self-love. Self-love is the
preening ego parading before the mirror of its own vanity,
posturing this way and that, examining itself from all sides,
seeking itsown approval by a standard of comparison with others.

11-13-04 p.173

The ego seeks to assure itself that it is better than those it sees
about it. Accordingly, its opinion of itself is never the same as
its opinion of the next fellow, but always better or worse.

Since it is not equal-souled to events, to victory and defeat,
to gain and loss, it analyzes all things in terms of whether
they benefit or obstruct. Thus it never sees things and
people in their true light, but always in the coloration of
personal vanity. Self-love blinds, deludes, narrows the world
to the small egoistic self, is the most immature of all
concepts.

This absolute egoistic concern of one's self for one's
self is natural only to infants. To be hung up in self-love,
never to progress beyond it, is to be an infant for life,
emotionally, mentally, perceptually.

Yet self-love is a natural and necessary step in the ladder of
progress by which the Divine marches toward ever-greater
and more complete expression as a created tiling. Evolving
life awakens to the knowledge of itself long before it awakens
to the knowledge of its sustaining source, and seeing itself
becomes enamored of itself, and ego and vanity are born.

Vanity and ego may be deluding forms, hiding for the
moment life's true meaning, but they are natural evolvements
of the discovery of self, and the discovery of self is
predecessor to the discovery of God.

The enlightened man leaves behind self-love when he
becomes aware that his surface nature is not his true self
and his body is not his true self and that the animating
presence which moves him to act, which thinks, wills,
and exists within him, is common to all men, to all life.

Knowing this, he abandons self-love, leaves the shell
of the ego as his ripened soul bursts outward into
a more universal awareness, and his sustaining and
nurturing fount becomes the love of God. So he abandons
the small self and takes up his existence in the great Self.

Self-love is the love of the awakening infant enamored of
his image as reflected in the eyes of others. He is the center
of all attention, and his little world revolves around his every
need. From this concern with self he grows to understand

11-14-04 p.174

others, for only by knowing his own feelings is it possible for
him to understand their feelings. In this way he matures, his
love grows outward from the limitations of his egoistic nature
and encompasses the outer world as well. Then he seeks an
object for his love. Then he finds his mother.

MOTHER LOVE

In this first outpouring of love from the self to something
other than the self the growing child finds a pure object of
adoration, uncritical, never rejecting, accepting, yielding
all. This sense of being loved despite his faults, of being
desired no matter how poor his performance, how ignoble
his actions, leaves a deep psychological mark on the growing
child, so that in adulthood, perhaps long after mother and
home have ceased to be, the mere mention of either, in
conversation or song, can bring tears to the eyes of a hardened
sinner.

He recalls a time when he was loved for himself,
not for what he might become or promised to be. He was
.the beloved, and he had nothing to do but accept that love.
He loved in return, of course, but only according to his
mood or according to how much love was tendered him.

The simple fact of existence was all that was necessary to be
loved; lie had no tasks to perform, no walls to scale, no
citadels to storm, nothing to win. He was loved because he
was alive, and this condition, lie falsely assumed, would be
his permanent status in life.

Nothing on earth is more necessary in the evolving scheme
of things than the love of mother for child; constant care
and uncritical devotion are essential in getting the helpless
infant to a state of independence. But where the child is
unable to shake off the psychological need for his mother's
love he is unable to mature to adulthood, cannot find the
resources within himself to cope with the problems and
vicissitudes of life.

Because he feels that his share in life is to be
uncritically loved, he cannot bring himself to make
the effort required to earn love, to merit it because of his

11-15-04 p.175

behavior toward others or because of tasks performed in
their behalf. Consequently lie spends a great deal of time
bewailing the fact that lie is ill-treated and nobody
appreciates him and people keep doing him bad turns. It is he
himself who is out of step with the world; if he is not loved
it is because he loves nobody but himself.

He is like a sponge, drawing in endlessly all affection but
yielding none back. He supports no one, seeks always to
be supported. He is a lichen on the tree of energy. He
attaches himself like a parasite to those he knows and feeds
upon the free flowing of their affection until natural imbalance
causes a cessation.

The two kinds of people on earth that I mean
Are the people who lift and the people who lean.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Be a lifter and not a leaner. Give over your strength and
energies to the Divine; love Him, love His created things,
love your fellow man. You will be loved in return. God will
love you, and in that love you will find such warmth and
joy as will buoy you to the zenith of the heavens. Seek not
to hold on to that which must be let go.

The uncritical love of mother for child must not be carried
into adult life, but gradually must be replaced by a mature
love between individuals, one that can be sustained only by
a sincere affection on both sides, each meriting the other.
And seek not to inject mother-love into adult relationships;
such relationships are doomed to failure for they are based
upon unreality.

Love lives only by being both given and received,
and soon dies if either movement is withdrawn. For
essentially love is a borrowing from God of a small
part of His nature for use upon earth.

It is a coming together of spiritual elements that in fusion
exceed themselves. It is a borrowing and a lending of strength
and energy, the better to build the race. It is aspiration and achievement, hope and fulfillment, longing and union. It is the
Divine revealing Himself in humanity.

11-16-04 p.176

TOO MUCH MOTHER

Two people were truly concerned about Tom—his wife
and his doctor—but his mother thought he was wonderful. She
just couldn't understand what the fuss was about. So what
if Tommy drank a little and had some trouble holding
jobs? He was young yet, he'd get it out of his system. Why, it
only showed he was spirited, independent, that was all.

She was bitter at his wife for not upholding his actions, at his
doctor for suggesting psychiatric treatment. Tom had been
cited twice for drunken driving, had nearly killed an aged
pedestrian, had been fired from seven consecutive jobs,
holding the longest ten months. He was thirty-four years
old, the father of three children.

His case was a classic example of arrested emotional
development. He had reveled so long in his mother's love
that he just couldn't face a critical world. Each time he met
any attitude other than complete approval, he was provoked
immediately to temperamental displays of sulkiness, bitterness,
and retribution.

One of his superiors said of him, "He's capable all right, but
such a child. He rages and broods like a two-year-old. During
the time he was in my department we were in a constant state
of upheaval. I simply had to get rid of him."

Everybody had to get rid of Tom. Only his mother could
stand him. Even his wife was fed up, standing by only out
of compassion. When Tom's doctor suggested psychiatry,
Tom told him to "go jump out the window," seemed pained
when the doctor didn't. At last Tom came to trial for driving
while drunk and seriously injuring an elderly lady.

The evidence was incontrovertible. He was found guilty and
sentenced to eleven months in jail. His doctor intervened,
however, and suggested that Tom was willing to undergo
psychiatric treatment if put on probation. When questioned
by the judge, Tom agreed, and sentence was suspended.
Better the head shrinker, Tom told his wife, than eleven

11-17-04 p.177

months behind bars. He settled down to psychiatric therapy
three times a week. He had no job, no friends, and his
wife was on the verge of leaving him. He thought everyone
was mad—except mother, of course.

Mother stayed right by his side. She insisted he come live
with her, and when the psychiatrist flatly refused his
permission, she inveigled Tom's wife into putting her up in
their home.

The psychiatrist realized he had lost the first skirmish,
but he doubly resolved to win the war. He made it
a mandatory part of Tom's therapy that he spend three
afternoons a week at an athletic club. No mamma's boy,
he assumed, could manage such a program unchanged.

One afternoon Tom was invited into a handball game.
He had a partner, and they played two opponents. When the
game went badly, Tom accused his opponents of cheating.
When his partner remonstrated with him, he accused him
of being in a conspiracy to make him look bad. Nobody
could calm him down. the three others went quietly to the
showers, Tom following, shouting recriminations.

He challenged the smallest of the three to a fight, and when the
fight was declined, struck him anyway. In the ensuing struggle
he fell against a wash basin, striking his head and losing
consciousness. When lie failed to revive, a doctor was
summoned and diagnosed a brain concussion. Tom was
removed to a hospital where he hovered on the brink of death.

Both Tom's physician and psychiatrist were in constant
attendance at the hospital, but there was little either could
do. Tom's breathing was raspy, his pulse irregular, and he
did not regain consciousness. A blood clot on the brain
was causing increasing pressure and seemed certain to bring
death eventually. A surgeon was called in to perform an
operation.

Tom was removed to the operating room, where,
just before the anesthetic was administered, he sat bolt
upright on the operating table and stated quite clearly, "I
made a mistake. I'm equal. Not better, not worse, but
equal." He lay back on the table then and relapsed into
unconsciousness. The operation was performed.

11-18-04 p.178

Three days passed while Tom's life hung in the balance.
On the fourth day he showed a definite improvement, on the
fifth he was pronounced out of danger. Thereafter his
improvement was rapid. For some time he showed a
tendency to slur his speech, but gradually his articulation
cleared.

More than his physical improvement, his remarkable
mental and spiritual transformation was apparent to everyone.
No longer did he complain, recriminate, sulk, appear
bitter or morose, but presented a pleasant face to all,
exhibited a compassion and concern for others he had not
shown in his whole life.

When his mother attempted to monopolize his time,
soothe him, placate him, sympathize with him, assure
him of Ins bad fortune, he shook her off. She was
uncomprehending, couldn't understand what had happened.

"Don't you love me anymore. Tommy?" she asked.

"Yes," he said. "I love you, mother. But I love God even
more. When you're close to dying I guess you see things
clearly, and for a while I understood that God was in me
and in you and in everybody, and that all I had to do to
become immortal was to love Him.

That's what I'm doing now, loving God, in everybody I see.
I want your love, mother. I want to deserve it. But I don't
want to be protected. Can you understand that?"

She didn't quite understand it, but she sensed she couldn't
change it. "I guess so. Tommy," she said.

He smiled at her. He didn't need it now, but at last he
had her permission to become a man.

BROTHERLY LOVE

So the growing child matures beyond the egoistic sense
of always being the beloved into an awareness that the world
is peopled with others a great deal like him.

He sees that in each of them exists a consciousness possessed
of like urges, desires, problems, a consciousness which, though invisible, he senses to be the same as his own. Seeing this, he opens

11-19-04 p.179

the doors of his own nature and reaches out with spiritual
hands to meet others. When he does, his egoistic sense of
isolation is shattered forever and he realizes once and for all
that he is striding across life in the company of many brothers.

Brotherly love closely approaches divine love, for it is a
gathering together of the Divine's differentiated spirit, it is
a beholding and an awareness of self by self, a mutual
knowledge of common kinship with the master spirit of all
creation. Who loves another gets outside himself, feels
the vaster reaches of his true spiritual being and thus is
able to perceive God more clearly in himself as well as
others.

True brotherly love does not relate from surface to surface
but rather from center to center. Outwardly your neighbor
is a great deal different from you—taller, shorter, thinner,
fatter, of different ethnical extraction, perhaps different
religious training. But these physical characteristics, these
mental characteristics, and hereditary traits are surface things,
a cloak only, a sort of outer wall that conceals the real person
from view.

You never will truly love another by seeking
desirable surface traits. The surface man is a false man, does
not even exist, and in attempting to relate to him you face
the completely frustrating task of establishing rapport with
a ghost. He is there today and gone tomorrow, and he never
returns in the exact same way you knew him today.

People who establish relationships from surface to surface
forever are being wounded by a loved one's betrayal. They
seem unable to realize that their relationship was false to begin
with and that there was no betrayal at all but simply an acting
in accord with the true nature of the individual, a nature they
never realized existed because they never had penetrated
beneath the surface.

Our divorce courts are full of people who have established
relationships from surface to surface. The only true and
lasting love between people comes from their relating center
to center, from spirit to spirit, and when this happens, each
in the other perceives himself, perceives the Divine.

11-20-04 p.180

RELATING SPIRITUALLY

Brotherly love is a love between equals, and one who relates
from surface to surface never achieves it. He is always
in the position of fancying himself better than or inferior to
those he meets, and with his fancied inferiors he is haughty
or arbitrary or condescending, while with his fancied superiors
he is fawning or belligerent or frozen. Occasionally he
makes what appears to be a friendship with someone far
inferior to himself.

The gulf between such people is extremely marked, is typified
by the romantic cowboy and his dull but devoted sidekick.
Western writers unwittingly have made the romantic cowboy
an egoist who relates from surface to surface and cannot make
lasting friendships with anyone but an inferior who will accept
all and endure all to receive his favors.

The man who relates from surface to surface is afraid of equals,
at the very least is extremely uncomfortable around them. To
him they are always competitors, and his immediate and only
reaction to them is how to beat them or in other ways prove
himself their superior. Small wonder he makes few friendships.

In any case, equality never is perceived surface to surface,
for true surface equality does not exist. Only a relationship
from center to center unmasks the spiritual sameness of
people, allows them to perceive their brotherhood.

In Exodus, God reveals his name to Moses, "I am becoming that
which I am becoming," and this characteristic of the Divine,
that He enters into each of His creations and becomes that
thing, complete and entire, gives a basic spiritual equality
and undifferentiated spiritual sameness to everything that
exists.

Know that there dwells in your neighbor the same
animating Presence that resides within yourself, an ageless,
deathless, birthless sense of "I," always the same in all
creatures, not altered by entering the body, not changed by
conflict, victory, or defeat, but witness only, triumphant
always, untouched by the moment, never completely at home

11-21-04 p.181

in the body, but existing truly in infinity, in eternity. Who
sees the immortal in every creature loves every creature as he
loves God.

To love is to know me
My innermost nature
The truth that I am
Through this knowledge enter
At once to my being.

—Bhagavad-Gita

DIVINE LOVE

Divine love is mature love, the most refined feeling and
highest spiritual understanding possible to man. To accept
God is to know God, and to know Him is to love Him. In
love for the Ineffable, in self-exceeding through divine
seeking, the individual arrives at a position of spiritual
wholeness with all life, a place of peace and perfect equality
that "passeth all understanding."

Here is the true Kingdom of Heaven, a kind of divine
consciousness that descends into the soul by special
dispensation of the Supreme, a gift restricted to those
who love God with all their hearts and all their souls
and all their minds.

Here is the divine alchemy that transmutes human clay into
something noble and indestructible, that makes from baser
substance a precious spiritual distillation, lending new color
and form to the entire world, to all existence.

Here is the key, which, when known and understood, unlocks
the secret door in the wall of separateness and allows the Self to circulate freely through all existences. Thus through divine love does the soul mold itself into an image of its beloved, achieve infinity and
immortality inasmuch as its perception of the Divine is clear.

By breaking through the wall of separateness the soul
mingles and absorbs, takes on a new and greater identity,
forsakes the limitations of the delusive ego and begins to expand
its awareness to meet the Supreme. This spiritual maturation

11-22-04 p.182

is the end and the beginning, the alpha and omega of
existence. Nothing more is going on in life than that God's
created existences, lost in nature and absorbed in their
limited being, should find their way back to Him.

Love is the path and the way; not the limited self-seeking
love of the individual for the group, but rather the love of the
person for his Creator, the individual for the Divine, the man
for God.

Only in this manner does the true import and
significance of love manifest in the life of the individual.
Only in this way does its inner alchemy transmute the entire
existence into a divine fire with a divine purpose.

PENETRATING THE WALL

In all things, then, the individual must attempt penetration
of the wall of separateness that stands between himself
and others. He must turn his eyes away from the delusiveness
of surface differences and look beyond this veil into the
inner core of spiritual being.

There he will meet himself, there he will find that one infinite,
eternal, animating presence that resides in all things, that is not
different from being in different bodies but inhabits all with the
same spiritual equality; for only one Creator has made all things
from His substance, and nothing is lost or destroyed when
created things vanish.

To arrive at this state of spiritual identification with
others is to truly know the love of God. This divine love is
apparent always in the life and affairs of the person who has
cast off the deluding mask of ego and with humility but with
a sense of destiny has aligned himself with the Divine.

When a man looks into his most secret heart and examines
the contents there, he soon shucks off the useless trappings
of his little self, establishes a new spiritual center of gravity,
sees his brotherhood with all men, his sonship of God. There
in the recesses of his being, in complete retreat from
the world and its strivings, he discovers himself anew.

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