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The Power of Love Among People

Chapter 6 from Mystic Path to Cosmic Power

We have seen that everything in our day can be used for self-enrichment.
In this chapter we will discover the mystical way to healthy human relations
which lead to that supreme state called love. These principles present you
with entirely new ways for living in self-harmony while living with others.

Ask fifty people for their definition of love and you receive fifty different
answers. Obviously, love is not something that the conditioned human mind
can discover through personal viewpoints. Human reasoning can have
opinions and attitudes about love, but only a spiritually attuned mind can
know.

The mystics have a practical system for getting at the truth about anything,
including love. It can be termed the “Not this and not that” method. By
systematically discarding everything that love is not, we finally arrive at
what it is – just as gold is left after clearing the pebbles.

Love is not dependency, idolization, sentimentality, craving, or physical

attraction. Human relationships based on these attributes are strained,
reading to break apart at any moment.
 Genuine love does not start with an emotion. It begins with a state of
consciousness, of clear awareness, of a deep understanding of both the self
and the other person. Then, the emotions arising from this are legitimate,
natural fruit. Tenderness and affection are among them. When an emotion
comes first, it is not genuine love, only a counterfeit, which is really craving,
or passion, or a wish to flee from an unwanted self into the other person.

Mystical love cannot be based on desire or craving. People sometimes

say, “I have a painful craving for a certain person of the opposite sex whom
I cannot have. How can I relieve my mind of this torture?”

“Try to see that the craving is not based on actual qualities of the other
person, but rather in your idealistic imagination of him. He represents
something you need, perhaps strength, or security, or affection. But this
ideal is merely a need in you which you mistakenly assume is a reality in
him. Try to see this. As you succeed, you will be astonished at how
differently you see this so-called ideal person. He or she has not changed;
you have.”
The Maiden at the Stream

A remarkable feature of mystical love is that it is both deeply personal, yet

unattached. To unknowing people it often appears cold and blunt. But
beneath the surface, it is warm, caring, responsive. It is the nature of
authentic love to ignore the external impressions it makes on others,
favorable or unfavorable. It does not care what people think; it does what its
very compassionate nature impels it to do. Exterior show belongs to pseudo-
love, motivated by self-glory in hope of attracting public praise.

The story is told of two disciples of mysticism who were returning one
afternoon to their monastery. They came to a bridgeless stream where a
pretty maiden sought to cross. When the first disciple announced his
intention of carrying her across, his shocked companion objected. “No! We
are sworn to purity. It violates our vows to even touch a woman.” Ignoring
the objection, the first disciple boldly picked the woman up, waded across
the stream, set her down and went on his way. For the next several miles, he
was indignantly accused of conduct unbecoming a disciple. Finally, the first
man turned to his companion and remarked, “Look. I left that woman back
at the stream – you are still carrying her.”
 Love is like that. It does what it sees to do and lets it go at that. “Perfect
kindness acts without thinking of kindness.” (Lao-Tse)

Love is a state of psychic understanding. Lack of love is lack of

comprehension. What must we understand? Take fear. The New
Testament states that perfect love casts out fear. Fear arises in human
relations whenever we want something from someone and worry that we
won’t get it. The mystic-man has no fear because he has no demands upon
others; he lives bountifully from his Kingdom of Heaven within. A love
relationship is impossible when based on demand, subtle or obvious. Such
pseudo-love is merely a bargain: “You be nice to me and I’ll be nice to you,
but, if you cease to please me, I’ll go away.” The mystic life has none of
that. It is an entirely different world.

The Mystic’s Compassion

How does the mystic see humanity? In an entirely different way from
ordinary men and women. It is profitable for us also to see people from a
mystic viewpoint. The enlightened mystic sees human beings as little
children. The children are sometimes nice and sometimes not so nice. If
they behave badly, he knows it is because they have not as yet made contact
with their spiritual being within.

He sees them as secret sufferers, for that is always the condition of little
children in spiritual darkness. He has great compassion toward them,
knowing the price they must continue to pay until they use their very
suffering as a liberating teacher. He is like a father who hears his child call
out in distress when they are separated in a crowd. While knowing that the
distress is genuine, he also knows that the child need only look in the right
direction to make everything all right.

“You are loved,” the mystic never ceases to proclaim, “far more than you
think.”

Where ordinary man habitually blames and accuses others, the mystic has
none of it. He knows why people behave as they do; he has no illusions that
people could behave better if only their circumstances were different. He
knows that wickedness is performed mechanically, unconsciously, by
hypnotized people who think they are awake. Do you, he asks, blame an
automobile for loosing its breaks and crashing into a building? No, you
understand that an automobile does not know what it does to itself and to
others.

But make no mistake, the mystic is not soft. He coddles no one. He is the
toughest teacher on earth. Love won’t permit him to let others get away
with it. The truth must be told at all costs, no matter who it hurts or how
much. While not blaming a human machine for running wild, he insists that
it cease to be a machine and turn into its birthright as a conscious human
being.

George Gurdjieff once remarked that true love consists in aiding another’s
development all the while knowing full well that the other person may snap
at the extended helping hand. The loving person must willingly take the
hostility of those he tries to help, just as a ranger takes the snarls of a bear
with a thorn in its foot.

The spiritual man’s compassion springs from his insight into things as they
are. Not only does he know that a New World exists but he dwells in it.

“How utterly satisfying it is to know that, in spite of all

Appearances in the familiar world, nevertheless when this
Light shines it is all seen to be good – unutterably good. In
The dimness of our normal state of consciousness we see strife
And struggle, suffering and injustice, evil and torture, anguish
Failure. But when the veils are withdrawn in a moment of
Insight, the mystics, with no dissentient voice, speak of the
Omnipresent overflowing Joy at the heart of things, of
“unbounded glorious Love.” (Raynor C. Johnson)

Twenty Special Secrets

1. When two people meet, the price always goes to the one with the most
self-insight. He will be calmer, more confident, more at ease with the
other.

2. Never permit the behavior of other people to tell you how to feel.
3. Pay little attention to what people say or do. Instead, try to see their
innermost motive for speaking and acting. (Now, apply this very
same rule to yourself and you become an enlightened person!)

4. Any friendship requiring the submission of your original nature and

dignity to another person is all wrong.

5. Mystically speaking, there is no difference between you and another

person. This is why we cannot hurt another without hurting ourselves,
nor help another without helping ourselves.

6. When we are free of all unnecessary desires toward other people, we

can never be deceived or hurt.

7. You take a giant step toward psychological maturity when you refuse
to angrily defend yourself against unjust slander. For one thing,
resistance disturbs your own peace of mind.

8. You understand others to the exact degree that you really understand
yourself. Work for more self-knowledge.

9. Do not be afraid to fully experience everything that happens to you in

your human relations, especially the pains and disappointments. Do
this and everything becomes clear at last.

10. The individual who really knows what it means to love has no anxiety
when his love is unseen or rejected.

11. If you painfully lose a valuable friend, do not rush out for a
replacement. Such action prevents you from examining your
heartache and breaking free of it.

12. Do not be afraid to be a nobody in the social world. This is a deeper

and richer truth than appears on the surface.

13. Every unpleasant experience with another person is an opportunity to

see people as they are, not as we mistakenly idealize them. The more
unpleasant the other person is, them ore he can teach you.
 14. You can be so wonderfully free from a sense of injury and injustice
that you are surprised when you hear others complain of them.

15. We cannot recognize a virtue in another person that we do not possess

in ourselves. It takes a truly loving and patient person to recognize
those virtues in another.

16. Do not mistake desire for love. Desire leaves home in a frantic
search for one gratification after another. Love is at home with itself.

17. There are parts of you that want the loving life and parts that do not.
Place yourself on the side of your positive forces; do all you can to aid
and encourage them.

18. You must stop living so timidly, from fixed fears of what others will
think of you and of what you will think of them.

19. Do not contrive to be a loving person; work to be a real person. Being

real is being loving.

20. The greatest love you could ever offer to another is to so transform
your inner life that others are attracted to your genuine example of
goodness.
Answers to Questions About Love

“I know I behave unlovingly at times. How can I break the pattern?

“Whenever it happens, do not agree with it internally. Supreme

Knowledge within each of us speaks reprovingly whenever we act without
love. Listen to that voice, not to your harsh behavior. A person can go on
for months or years under the hypnosis of the unkindly false self, but by
constantly disagreeing with it, the pattern changes. Observe your unkind
behavior. Refuse to accept it as your real self. Gradually, you bring exterior
action into line with the loving interior, just as a good father influences his
unruly son for good.”

“Why is it so shocking to lose someone we love?”

“Because it brings us face to face with our own emptiness. If the marriage
falls apart, or the sweetheart goes away, the sufferer’s first urge is to find a
replacement to fill the void. You do this because you are scared, insecure,
you feel unwanted and unloved. But, even if you find a replacement, it does
nothing for you, not really. The trembling is still there, only covered up. If
a break-up occurs, examine your own driving need to find security in a
replacement. Insight reveals that it can do nothing for you. Then, beyond
that shocking fact you make an amazing discovery: You see that the only
security is in the truth itself. From that point on, all your relationships with
the opposite sex are entirely different. Because there is no fear, there is
genuine love.”

“How can I get people to act as I wish?”

“You must have no ideas whatever as to how people should behave toward
you. You want them to turn left. They turn right. You hope they do this.
They do that. Why do you get hurt? Not because of what people do but
because you have demanded they should do as you wish. Abolish all
demands; then, people can behave any way they like while you remain at
peace.”

“What happens when a self-aware person meets one still in psychic

slumber? I mean, is it possible for them to love each other, for instance,
when man meets woman?”

“A self-aware person can love a non-aware person, but the reverse is

impossible. Two conscious human beings can exchange love, but two
unawakened people cannot. How can they exchange a love they don’t have?
Love comes with awakening. Hypnotized people can only give what they
call love, for example, mutual flattery. Their relationship is based on desire,
not love. This is easily observed. Notice how quickly the so-called love
turns to resentment when a particular desire is denied or thwarted.”

How to Develop Love-Capacity

“Why all this contradiction in people? We talk so much about love but
behave just the opposite.”

“Most talk about love is just that – talk. A man must behave according to
his level of psychic development. No one can possibly behave on a higher
level of love than the level he actually occupies. But remember, human
beings are very cunning with exterior appearances of love, so don’t be
fooled. By self-work, a man can raise his love-level. Then, he will behave
differently, with more genuine compassion. That is an objective of the
Mystic Path. We want to uplift our compassion by raising our spiritual
level.”

“You once said that we develop our love-capacity by patiently enduring

unloving words and actions from others. How?”

“Be willing to give up immediate and unhealthy pleasures for long-term

riches. You may get an immediate sensation of pleasure by snapping back at
an unkind person, but, if you do, you have lost a great opportunity for
advancing your inner self. Instead, discover why you needed to snap back.
You will discover your action sprang from the touchy ego-self. That very
observation in itself weakens the ego.”

“I used to think that my whirlpool of social activities sprang from my love

of people, from wanting to help them and to be with them. But now I feel
oppressed by all these maddening involvements and wonder why I
continue.”

“You do them not because they mean anything to you but because they
distract you from your inner blankness. You just don’t know what else to do
with yourself. Pull out. Do it gradually if you like, but, for your mental and
spiritual health, pull out. Get off by yourself and ask yourself whether you
really want this kind of life. Honest inquiry will produce a tremendous sign
of relief. Now, you are starting to enjoy your life, for you are no longer
sacrificing it to frantic involvements.”

“Why are human relations so painful? What can we do to ease the stress
and anxiety?”

“In previous discussions, we saw that suffering is destroyed by bringing it

up from the unconscious to the conscious level. Connect this with your
human relations. Try to see how much pain you have because of
unconscious hopes, demands, expectations, fears, and desires toward others.
You want them to act in a way that pleases you. You desire friendship,
conversation, sex, and so on. Try to see – really work at it – try to see that
these very desires cause your pain, for you fear their failure. Now, can you
abandon them? If so, suffering is impossible. You experience a fantastic
relief, just like breaking through an entangling net.”
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