Consciousness is Everywhere

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Throughout the universe

(by Paul Mulliner)

“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together…. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Spirit. This Spirit is the matrix of all matter” — Max Planck : German theoretical physicist : 1944

We’re living in a time when insights from the front edge of science are being joined with insights from the ancient intuitive wisdom traditions to create a new synthesis, a new worldview fit for the 21st century.

These intuitive insights reveal a different world than that proposed by our current mainstream world-view, in which our separate human brain is thought to somehow generate consciousness.

This shift in understanding is important because it helps us make different choices than we might have previously, choices that can change our life for the better.

And making this shift for ourselves has to do with finding the clarity and intuitive intelligence of the universal consciousness inside us, and allowing it to dissolve some of our habitual thinking.

A key change in our understanding of ourselves emerges from the realization that the cosmic energy field researched by physicists over the past century is also a field of consciousness.

A spacious universal consciousness exists inside all of us and throughout all space everywhere.

And the conscious silence we find inside us when we allow our thinking to dissolve away is the presence of this universal consciousness.

A spacious cosmic consciousness/intelligence is experiencing living as countless life-forms on all the planets that support life throughout the Universe.

A universal consciousness orchestrating photosynthesis and bringing sentient life into being everywhere.

A cosmic field-intelligence transforming itself into the choreographed streaming flows of cell biochemistry we see occurring within all living beings.

Our individual human life has meaning and value in a Universe where all life and consciousness are woven into one continuously evolving whole.

We’re all in this together, every moment of every day we’re connected into a universal organism of conscious awareness that’s evolving and changing as a consequence of our own life.

This view of ourselves as always woven into an evolving and intelligent whole is a long way from the previous way we saw life.

For many people in previous generations, life in an apparently indifferent, meaningless Universe with a brief time to be alive, meant a focus on wealth and attempts to dominate others.

The focus was always on separation.

We can maybe begin to see things differently.

We’re born into this world from within an enduring universal consciousness that’s always here, throughout the birth and death of all of us.

Everything we are while we’re alive is woven into this universal consciousness and remains there as part of the continuously evolving whole.

Life is meaningful and we’re all evolving toward being able to find the clarity and intelligence of cosmic consciousness within ourselves more easily than previously.

Our view of reality, our worldview, is often shaped by our preconceptions and assumptions, and can sometimes be an unconscious prism through which we see the world.

The separatist and materialist worldview that so characterized the 20th century has entered deep into mainstream thinking and acts as a sort of foundational myth, a way of structuring and filtering reality.

Materialist, separation thinking has been obscuring the reality that we’re always connected into a conscious and intelligent Universe.

Positive change is possible, but the most fundamental and difficult change needed is change in our awareness, a change in the way we see the world, each other and our planet.

And this change can begin to happen when we tune in to the conscious silence inside us and find for ourselves the intuitive realization that it’s everywhere, inside all of us.

We’re a spacious universal and cosmic consciousness appearing as a separate person.

A single conscious space exists inside all of us, a universal conscious awareness before it becomes thought.

And when we let our thinking dissolve away, we can become aware of this conscious silence inside us.

Unique personal experiences happen inside each one of us, but our conscious awareness isn’t separate from the whole of cosmic consciousness inside all of us.

And it’s our culturally biased separation from the underlying clarity and wisdom of cosmic consciousness that seems to be causing widespread distress.

And though we were probably never taught how to tune in to the inner conscious silence at school, and our culture seems in any case to regard intuition as irrational or unscientific, despite it being central to the creation of art, poetry and music, the scientific worldview could use a more intuitive perspective.

Scientific research during the last century has shown all ‘material stuff’ to be clusters of tiny wave patterns in a field of nonlocal cosmic energy.

This nonlocality, proven by experiment, reveals the foundational, underlying energy field throughout the Universe to be a single connective space joining everything everywhere into one unified whole.

Atoms and molecules are connected patterns of vibration in a universal cosmic field that’s everywhere.

Everything is dynamically woven into and correlated with everything else, revealing an apparent intelligent coherence.

How do we explain the unity and coherence of both living cell biochemistry and conscious awareness without assuming the existence of a structuring, arranging and choreographing field-intelligence throughout the Universe?

A universal cosmic intelligence that’s expressing itself through a spatial-orchestration-field both inside the brain, throughout our body and in all space everywhere?

And as we find the conscious silence that’s always present inside us, we can tune in to this universal field and intuitively realize it to be a single, connected space, a universal consciousness.

We can intuitively realize that the conscious awareness inside us is a universal consciousness everywhere, throughout all space and inside all life.

A universal intelligence exists everywhere in the Universe as a primary and fundamental field and it can sometimes seem to be guiding our personal evolution into an ever more conscious awareness of itself.

It guides us through our life with intuitive suggestions for how to proceed with various choices we may need to make, if we tune in to it.

Without this guidance and the sense of trusting in a generous and providential Universe that it helps bring about, we can perhaps begin to feel estranged from life and each other, and express our frustrations in the world in anger and unhappy feelings.

Despite the apparent chaos we can see happening around us, the underlying clarity and wisdom of cosmic consciousness always remains available to us.

We’re making the difficult transition into a new understanding of ourselves as being always woven into a conscious and intelligent Universe.

Paul Mulliner 2022

I’m a writer and digital artist/animator based in London.

Source: https://paul-mulliner.medium.com/intelligence-is-everywhere-e75ec03474e8

Image Paul Mulliner 2022 from a photo by Vidar Nordli-Matheson on Unsplash

Intunen in het Bewuste Universum

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Het vinden van onze eigen verbinding met universele intelligentie

(door Paul Mulliner)

“Voel je je niet eenzaam, het hele universum is in jou” Rumi

“De centrale orde maakt deel uit van zowel het subjectieve als het objectieve rijk” Werner Heisenberg: Nobelprijs voor natuurkunde: 1932

“We moeten onze ogen sluiten en een nieuwe manier van kijken oproepen, een staat van wakker zijn die het geboorterecht is van ons allemaal” Plotinus

Ieder van ons is volledig verweven in het hele bewuste Universum en alles wat leeft.

Dit is niet hoe we de wereld over het algemeen zien.

Een meer gebruikelijke kijk op onze menselijke realiteit is dat we volledig gescheiden zijn van elkaar en de wereld om ons heen.

Dit gevoel van afgescheidenheid kan echter worden opgelost als we aandacht besteden aan de bewuste ruimte in ons.

Wanneer we onze aandacht even binnen in onszelf richten, kunnen we intuïtief beseffen dat er een ruim universeel bewustzijn, de onbeschrijfelijke bron van al het leven bestaat, overal en in ons allemaal.

We kunnen onze intuïtieve verbinding met universeel bewustzijn ontdekken, het kosmische veld van intelligentie en energie dat al het leven in het hele Universum orkestreert en verbindt.

En we kunnen ook de intuïtieve begeleiding ontdekken die in ons leven plaatsvindt wanneer we afstemmen op de onderliggende synchronistische intelligentie van universeel bewustzijn.

Deze intuïtieve inzichten komen voor veel mensen tijdens hun leven vaak spontaan naar boven, maar zijn regelmatig voor ons beschikbaar enkel als we aandacht besteden aan het bewust-zijn in onszelf.

Opmerkelijk genoeg wordt deze mindfulness, het eenvoudige proces van bewust aanwezig zijn en regelmatig onze aandacht richten op de bewuste ruimte in onszelf, niet algemeen toegepast.

Het besef van een intuïtieve verbinding met het bewustzijn in het Universum blijft grotendeels onbekend, zelfs terwijl we op onze planeet met meerdere grote problemen worden geconfronteerd.

Velen van ons leven nog steeds met een mentaliteit die we geërfd hebben uit het verleden, een gemeenschappelijk wereldbeeld voor veel mensen vandaag, dat het leven ziet door het prisma van afscheiding, stelt dat materie de enige realiteit in de wereld is, en niet erkennen wat geen directe tactiele of visuele ervaring is.

Dit historische wereldbeeld gaat ervan uit dat bewustzijn wordt gegenereerd door ons afzonderlijke menselijke brein in plaats van te bestaan als een universeel kosmisch veld waarop ons brein afstemt en waar we allemaal aan deelnemen.

Deze overtuigende culturele normen en wijze van kijken zijn zo diep in ons verankerd dat ze onze manier van leven in de wereld blijven vervormen.

We blijven aandringen op het primaat van de materie en de scheiding van alle dingen van elkaar, ondanks het feit dat natuurkundigen al bijna een eeuw weten dat alle ‘materiële dingen’ eigenlijk bestaan uit clusters van kleine golfpatronen in een gebied van kosmische energie.

Het loslaten van het denken in afgescheidendheid gebeurt wanneer we ons bewust worden van de bewuste ruimte in ons die vóór alle gedachten bestaat.

Regelmatig mindfulness beoefenen is een goede manier om onze eigen verbinding te vinden met het evoluerende kosmische bewustzijn dat ons allemaal samenbrengt.

Door hier en nu bewust aanwezig te zijn, kunnen we het denken oplossen dat soms in ons opkomt om ons van de wereld en van elkaar te scheiden.

Als we alleen aandacht besteden aan onze gedachten, en nooit aandacht schenken aan de ene bewuste ruimte in ons allemaal waar onze gedachten uit voortkomen, kunnen we het contact met iets cruciaals voor ons welzijn verliezen.

We zijn de levende menselijke uitdrukkingen van een onbeperkt bewustzijn dat door het hele Universum bestaat, een onuitsprekelijke bewuste ruimte die zichzelf transformeert in de nauwkeurig georkestreerde biochemie van ons lichaam, waardoor we als mens kunnen leven.

We zijn hier op deze planeet, niet als gevolg van een willekeurig kosmisch ongeluk, maar omdat een veld van universeel bewustzijn en energie zichzelf voortdurend transformeert in al het leven in het hele Universum.

Dit ruimtelijke kosmische intelligentie-organisme is het primaire materiaal van het Universum en alles wat leeft is er een continu gegenereerde uitdrukking van, een trillingsverandering van zichzelf waardoor het zichtbaar en tastbaar wordt als bomen, bloemen, mensen en al het leven overal.

Een enkel kosmisch veld van bewustzijn drukt zichzelf uit als alle materiële vorm en alle ervaring van die vorm.

Net als een driedimensionale muziek die van moment tot moment zichtbaar wordt, komen de vloeiende stromen van kleine trillingsresonanties die we beschrijven als celbiochemie, voortdurend tevoorschijn uit een veld van kosmische energie en bewustzijn, en verschijnen als levende celbiochemie en levende wezens.

Triljoenen nauwkeurig georkestreerde biochemische reacties vinden elk moment in ons menselijk lichaam plaats, zodat we ons leven als mens kunnen ervaren.

We horen hier op planeet Aarde thuis, en ieder van ons heeft een inherente verbinding met het bewustzijn in het Universum.

Elk van ons is een intrinsiek en essentieel onderdeel van het levende kosmische netwerk van bewustzijn, intelligentie en energie dat alle levende wezens overal in het hele Universum samenbrengt in een enkel coherent organisme.

Het regelmatig beoefenen van mindfulness is een goede manier om onze eigen verbinding te vinden met dit zich ontwikkelende kosmische bewustzijn dat ons allemaal samenbrengt.

Door onze aandacht naar binnen te richten, kunnen we de verschuiving maken van afgescheidenheid naar heelheid, en onszelf intuïtief realiseren als unieke menselijke uitdrukkingen van één onbeperkt kosmisch bewustzijn, in plaats van onszelf als afgescheiden en alleen te zien.

Wanneer we aandacht besteden aan deze innerlijke bewuste ruimte, gaan wij in het op en het brengt inzicht en intuïties die eruit voortkomen in ons bewustzijn.

Sommige van deze inzichten en intuïties kunnen ons helpen onze eigen manier te vinden om bij te dragen aan het oplossen van enkele van de problemen die voortkomen uit de verschillende wereldwijde crises waarmee we nu worden geconfronteerd.

Zowel de pandemie van 2020 als de klimaatverandering herinneren ons eraan hoe klein de planeet werkelijk is en hoe we allemaal betrokken zijn bij het tot stand brengen van productieve verandering.

De realiteit van het leven in een afzonderlijk menselijk lichaam staat gewoonlijk zo centraal in onze mind dat het ons ervan overtuigt dat ons bewust-zijn ook gescheiden is.

Door onze aandacht enkele ogenblikken op de innerlijke kern van onszelf te richten, wordt deze illusie voorzichtig opgelost.

We kunnen intuïtief het diepste en meest universele bewustzijn realiseren dat in ons allemaal bestaat, het bewustzijn dat alle ogenschijnlijke scheiding tussen ons oplost.

In plaats van onszelf als afgescheiden en alleen te zien, kunnen we onszelf beginnen te zien als de levende uitdrukking van één zich ontwikkelend bewustzijnsveld in ons allemaal, en in alle ruimte overal.

Een enkel kosmisch veld van bewustzijn drukt zichzelf uit als alle materiële vorm en alle ervaring van die vorm.

We zijn de levende uitdrukkingen van een universele kosmische intelligentie die zichzelf transformeert in ons menselijk lichaam voor de duur van een mensenleven.

Paul Mulliner  2020

Tuning in to the Conscious Universe

Finding our own connection into the universal intelligence

“Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside of you” Rumi

“The central order is part of the subjective as well as the objective realm” Werner Heisenberg : Nobel prize in Physics : 1932

“We must close our eyes and invoke a new manner of seeing, a wakefulness that is the birthright of us all ” Plotinus

Each one of us is entirely woven into the whole conscious Universe and everything that lives.

This isn’t how we generally see the world.

A more usual take on our human reality is that we’re entirely separate from each other and the world around us.

This sense of separation can be dissolved however, when we pay attention to the conscious space inside us.

When we momentarily focus our attention inside ourselves, we can realize intuitively that a spacious universal awareness, the inexpressible source of all life, exists everywhere, and inside all of us.

We can discover our intuitive connection into universal consciousness, the cosmic field of intelligence and energy that orchestrates and joins all life throughout the Universe.

And we can also discover the intuitive guidance that happens in our life when we tune in to the underlying synchronistic intelligence of universal consciousness.

These intuitive insights often emerge spontaneously for many people during their life, but are only regularly available to us when we pay attention to the conscious awareness inside ourselves.

Remarkably though, this mindfulness, the simple process of being consciously present and regularly focusing our attention in the conscious space inside ourselves, isn’t widely practiced.

The realization of an intuitive connection into consciousness in the Universe remains largely unknown, even while we face multiple large issues on our planet.

Many of us are still living with a mindset we inherit from the past, a common worldview for many people today, that sees life through the prism of separation, holds that matter is the only reality in the world, and offers no recognition of anything that’s not an immediate tactile or visual experience.

This historical worldview assumes consciousness to be generated by our separate human brain rather than existing as a universal cosmic field our brain tunes into and we all participate in.

These persuasive cultural norms and ways of seeing are so deeply embedded in us that they continue to distort our way of living in the world.

We continue to insist on the primacy of matter and the separation of all things from each other, despite the fact that, for nearly a century, researchers in physics have known that all ‘material stuff’ actually consists of clusters of tiny wave patterns in a field of cosmic energy.

Letting go of separation thinking happens when we become aware of the conscious space inside us that exists prior to all thought.

Practicing mindfulness regularly is a good way to find our own connection into the evolving cosmic consciousness that joins all of us together.

Being consciously present here and now, helps us dissolve the thinking that sometimes emerges inside us to separate us from the world and each other.

If we only pay attention to our thoughts, and never pay attention to the one conscious space inside all of us that our thoughts emerge from, we can lose touch with something crucial to our well-being.

We’re the living human expressions of an unlimited consciousness existing throughout the Universe, an inexpressible conscious space transforming itself into the precisely orchestrated biochemistry of our bodies, allowing us to live life as a human being.

We’re here on this planet, not as a consequence of a random cosmic accident, but because a field of universal consciousness and energy is continuously transforming itself into all life throughout the Universe.

This spatial cosmic intelligence-organism is the primary stuff of the Universe and everything that lives is a continuously generated expression of it, a vibrational altering of itself that allows it to become visible and touchable as trees, flowers, human beings and all life everywhere.

A single cosmic field of consciousness is expressing itself as all material form and all experience of that form.

Like a three-dimensional music becoming visible moment by moment, the streaming flows of tiny vibrational resonances we describe as cell biochemistry, are emerging continuously out of a field of cosmic energy and consciousness, and coming into appearance as living-cell biochemistry and living beings.

Trillions of precisely orchestrated biochemical reactions are occurring throughout our human body every moment, just so we can experience our life as a human being.

We belong here on planet Earth, and each one of us has an inherent connection into consciousness in the Universe.

Each one of is an intrinsic and essential part of the living cosmic network of consciousness, intelligence and energy that joins all living beings everywhere into a single coherent organism throughout the Universe.

Practicing mindfulness regularly is a good way to find our own connection into this evolving cosmic consciousness that joins all of us together.

Focusing our attention inwardly helps us make the shift from separation to wholeness, and intuitively realize ourselves as unique human expressions of one unlimited cosmic consciousness, rather than seeing ourselves as separate and alone.

When we pay attention to this inner conscious space, it dissolves us into itself and brings insight and intuitions emerging from it into our awareness.

Some of these insights and intuitions may help us find our own way to contribute to solving some of the problems emerging from the several global crises we now face.

Both the 2020 pandemic and climate change remind us how small the planet really is and how we’re all involved together in bringing about productive change.

The reality of living in a separate human body is usually so at the center of our mind that it persuades us that our conscious awareness is also separate.

A few moments focusing our attention in the inner core of ourselves tends to gently dissolve this illusion.

We can intuitively realize the deepest and most universal consciousness that exists inside all of us, the conscious awareness that dissolves all apparent separation between us.

Rather than seeing ourselves as separate and alone, we can begin to see ourselves as the living expressions of one evolving field of consciousness inside all of us, and in all space everywhere.

A single cosmic field of consciousness is expressing itself as all material form and all experience of that form.

We’re the living expressions of a universal cosmic intelligence that’s transforming itself into our human body for the duration of a human life.

Paul Mulliner  2020

https://medium.com/mindfully-speaking/tuning-in-to-the-conscious-universe-84ca6c960657

Image: photo by David Clode on Unsplash

Liefhebben, een kunst, een kunde van Erich Fromm

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De naam van Erich Fromm komt me bekend voor en dan zie ik een artikel met fragmenten uit zijn boek over een kunst van liefhebben. Het gaat niet enkel over relaties, het gaat over brede menselijke roep om afgescheidenheid te overstijgen (“overcoming separateness”). Eerst staan hier citaten in het Nederlands, het fragment zelf is in het Engels.

“Er is bijna geen activiteit, geen onderneming, die gestart wordt met zo verschrikkelijk veel hoop en verwachtingen en die toch zo vaak mislukt, als de liefde.”

“Nauw verwant met deze factor is een tweede karakteristiek kenmerk van de hedendaagse samenleving. We leven in een cultuur van consumentisme, waar de voornaamste drijfveer van onze activiteit schijnt te bestaan uit het opwekken danwel bevredigen van kooplust, uit het verlangen een voor beide partijen gunstige ruil te doen.”

“Als een mens slechts één ander mens liefheeft en onverschillig is tegenover de rest van zijn medemensen, dan is zijn liefde geen liefde maar een symbiotische binding of een vernieuwd egoïsme.”

“Concentratie in de verhouding tot anderen betekent in de eerste plaats dat men kan luisteren.”

Over Erich Fromm

Duits-Amerikaans cultuurpsycholoog en filosoof. Een der belangrijkste vertegenwoordigers van de ‘Frankfurter Schule’. Vluchtte in 1934 uit Hitler-Duistland naar de VS waar hij aan vele universiteiten doceerde en directeur werd van het instituut voor psychoanalyse in Mexico-City. Hoofdthema in zijn werk is de dwingende invloed van de sociaal-culturele omgeving op de behoeften van het individu. In 1947 verscheen ‘Escape from Freedom’ en ‘Man for himself’. Later volgden ‘The sane society’ (1955) en ‘The anatomy of human destructiveness’ (1975). Fromm stelde de ziekmakende vervreemding van de mens in de moderne tijd aan de kaak en pleitte voor zelfontplooiing.

Bron: https://citaten.net/zoeken/erich_fromm/liefhebben%2C_een_kunst%2C_een_kunde.html

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THE ART OF LOVING, BY ERICH FROMM – EXTRACTS

Love is not a sentiment which can be easily indulged in by anyone, regardless of the level of maturity reached by him. All his attempts for love are bound to fail, unless he tries most actively to develop his total personality, so as to achieve a productive orientation; that satisfaction in individual love cannot be attained without the capacity to love one’s neighbour, without true humility, courage, faith and discipline. In a culture in which these qualities are rare, the attainment of the capacity to love must remain a rare achievement. Or – anyone can ask himself how many TRULY loving persons he has known?

If two people who have been strangers, as all of us are, suddenly let the wall between them break down, and feel close, feel one, this moment of oneness is one of the most exhilarating, most exciting experiences in life.
 

It is all the more wonderful and miraculous for persons who have been shut off, isolated, without love. This miracle of sudden intimacy is often facilitated if it is combined with, or initiated by, sexual attraction and consummation. However, this type of love is by its very nature not lasting.
 

The two persons become well acquainted, their intimacy loses more and more of its miraculous character, until their antagonism, their disappointments, their mutual boredom kill whatever is left of the initial excitement. Yet, in the beginning they do not know all this: in fact, they take the intensity of the infatuation, this being “crazy” about each other, for proof of the intensity of their love, while it may only prove the degree of their preceding loneliness. There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love. If this were the case with any other activity, people would be eager to know the reasons for the failure, and to learn how one could do better – or they would give up the activity.

The first thing we have to learn is that love is an art, just as living is an art; if we want to learn how to love we must proceed in the same way we have to proceed if we want to learn any other art. Maybe here lies the answer to the question of why people in our culture try so rarely to learn this art, in spite of their obvious failures: in spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power – almost all our energy is used for learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learn the art of loving.
 

Could it be that only these things are considered worthy of being learned with which one can earn money or prestige, and that love, which ONLY profits the soul, but is profitless in the modern sense, is a luxury we have no right to spend much energy on?

Man can only go forward by developing his reason, by finding a new harmony, a human one, instead of the prehuman harmony which is irretrievably lost.
 

Man is gifted with reason; he is life being aware of itself. This awareness of himself as a separate entity, the awareness of his own short life span, of the fact that he will die before those whom he loves, or they before him, the awareness of his aloneness and separateness, of his helplessness before the forces of nature and of society, all this makes his separate, disunited existence an unbearable prison. He would become insane could he not liberate himself from this prison and reach out, unite himself in some form or other with others, with the world outside.

The experience of separateness arouses anxiety; it is, indeed, the source of all anxiety. Being separate means being cut off, without any capacity to use my human powers. Beyond that, it arouses shame and the feeling of guilt. This experience of guilt and shame in separateness is expressed in the Biblical story of Adam and Eve… whereby recognising their separateness they remain strangers, because they have not yet learned to love each other; Adam defends himself by blaming Eve rather than trying to defend her.

The deepest need of man, then, is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness. The absolute failure to achieve this aim means insanity, because the panic of complete isolation can be overcome only by such a radical withdrawal from the world outside that the feeling of separation disappears – because the world outside, from which one is separated, has disappeared.

In society the union with the group is the prevalent way of overcoming separateness. It is a union in which the individual self disappears to a large extent, and where the aim is to belong to the herd. If I am like everybody else, if I have no feelings or thoughts which make me different, if I conform in custom, dress, ideas, to the pattern of the group, I am saved; saved from the frightening experience of aloneness.
 

The dictatorial systems use threats and terror to induce this conformity; the democratic countries – suggestion and propaganda. But in spite of this difference the democratic societies show an overwhelming degree of conformity. The reason lies in the fact that there has to be an answer to the quest for union, and if there is no other or better way, then the union of herd conformity becomes the predominant one. One can only understand the fear to be different, the fear to be only a few steps away from the herd, if one understands the depths of the need not to be separated.

Most people are not even aware of their need to conform. They live under the illusion that they follow their own ideas and inclinations, that they are individualists, that they have arrived at their opinions as the result of their own thinking – and that it just happens that their ideas are the same as of the majority. The consensus of all serves as a proof for the correctness of “their” ideas. Since there is still a need to feel some individuality, such a need is satisfied with regard to minor differences; the initials on the handbag or sweater, the belonging to the Democrat rather than the Republican party, to the Elks instead of the Shriners become the expression of individual differences. The advertising slogan of “it is different” shows up this pathetic need for difference, when in reality there is hardly any left.

Union by conformity is not intense and violent; it is calm, dictated by routine, and for this very reason often is insufficient to pacify the anxiety of separateness. The incidence of alcoholism, drug addiction, compulsive sexualism, and suicide in contemporary society are symptoms of this relative failure of herd conformity.

This desire for interpersonal fusion is the most powerful striving in man. It is the most fundamental passion, it is the force which keeps the human race together. The failure to achieve it means insanity or destruction – self destruction or the destruction of others. Without love humanity could not exist.
 

Mature love is union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity, one’s individuality. Love is an active power in man, a power which breaks through the walls which separate man from his fellow men, which unites him with others; love makes him overcome the sense of isolation and separateness, yet permits him to be himself, to retain his integrity. In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.

Spinoza arrives at the conclusion that virtue and power are one and the same. Envy, jealousy, ambition towards any kind of greed are passions; love is an action, the practice of human power, which can be practised only in freedom and never as a result of a compulsion.
 

Love is primarily giving, not receiving. Giving is the highest expression of potency. Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness.
 

Whoever is capable of giving himself is rich. He experiences himself as one who can confer of himself to others. He gives of himself, of the most precious thing he has, he gives of his life. He gives what is live in him; he gives his joy, his interest, his understanding, his knowledge, his humour, his sadness, he gives of all the expressions and manifestations of that which is alive in him.
 

In thus giving of his life, he enriches the other person, he enhances the others sense of aliveness by enhancing his own sense of aliveness. In giving he cannot help bringing something to life in the other person, and this which is brought to life reflects back to him and they both share in the joy of what they have brought to life.
 

Love is a power which produces love. You can exchange love only for love, confidence for confidence, etc. If you wish to enjoy art, you must be an artistically trained person; if you wish to have an influence on other people you must be a person who has a really stimulating and furthering influence on other people.
 

In the Book of Jonah, God explains to Jonah that the essence of love is to labour for something and to make something grow, that love and labour are inseparable. One loves that for which one labours, and one labours for that which one loves.
 

Care and concern imply another aspect of love. Today responsibility is often meant to denote duty, something imposed on one from the outside. But responsibility, in its TRUE sense, is an entirely voluntary act; it is my response to the needs of others. The loving person responds.
 

Responsibility could easily deteriorate into domination and possessiveness, were it not for a third component of love, respect. Respect is not fear or awe; it denotes the ability to see a person as he/she is, to be aware of the unique individuality. Respect means the concern that the other person should grow and unfold as they are. Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation. I want the loved person to grow and unfold for their own sake, and not for the purpose of serving me. If I love the other person, I feel one with him or her, but with them as they are, not as I need them to be as an object for my use. It is clear that respect is only possible if I have achieved independence, without having to exploit anyone else. Respect exists only on the basis of freedom, for love is the child of freedom, never that of domination.
 

To respect a person is not possible without knowing him; care and responsibility would be blind if they were not guided by knowledge.
 

Knowledge would be empty if it were not motivated by concern. There are many layers of knowledge; the knowledge which is an aspect of love is one which does not stay at the periphery, but penetrates to the core. It is possible only when I can transcend the concern for myself and see the other person in his own terms.

Care, responsibility, respect and knowledge are mutually interdependent. They are a syndrome of attitudes which are to be found in the mature person; that is the person who develops his own powers productively, who wants only to have that which he has worked for, who has given up narcissistic dreams of omniscience and omnipotence, who has acquired humility based on inner strength which only genuine productive activity can give.

If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. Yet most people believe that love is constituted by the object, not by the faculty. In fact, they even believe that it is proof of the intensity of their love when they do not love anybody except the “loved” person. This is the same fallacy which I have already mentioned above. Because one does not see that love is an activity, a power of the soul, one believes that all that is necessary to find is the right object – and that everything goes by itself afterward. This attitude can be compared to that of the man who wants to paint but who, instead of learning the art, claims that he just has to wait for the right object – and that he will paint beautifully when he finds it. If I truly love one person I love all persons, I love the world, I love life. If I can say to somebody else, “I love you,” I must be able to say, “I love in you everybody, I love through you the world, I love in you also myself.”

The most fundamental kind of love, which underlies all types of love, is brotherly love. By this I mean the sense of responsibility, care, respect, knowledge of any other human being, the wish to further his life. This is the kind of love the Bible speaks about when it says: Love your neighbour as yourself. Brotherly love is love for all human beings; it is characterized by its very lack of exclusiveness. If I have developed the capacity for love, then I cannot help loving my brothers. In brotherly love there is the experience of union with the whole of mankind, of human solidarity. Brotherly love is based on the experience that we’re all one.
 

The differences in talents, intelligence, knowledge are negligible in comparison with the identity of the human core common to all men. In order to experience this identity, it is necessary to penetrate from the periphery to the core. If I perceive in another person mainly the surface, I perceive mainly differences, that which separates us. If I penetrate to the core, I perceive our identity, the fact of out brotherhood.

Love of the helpless, the poor and the stranger, are the beginning of brotherly love. To love one’s flesh and blood is no achievement. The animal loves its young and cares for them. Only in the love of those who do not serve a purpose, does love begin to unfold. Compassion implies the element of knowledge and identification. “You know the heart of the stranger,” says the Bible, “for you were strangers in the land of Egypt;… therefore love the stranger!”

The greatest impediment of mankind is not disease … it is despair.

Extracts from – The Art of Loving – By Erich Fromm

Source: https://neo-ren.com/the-art-of-loving-by-erich-fromm-extracts/#more-546

Foto: Katja Linders on Flickr