In a discussion group we came to the subject of universal love. A term that is generally always associated with saints and healers and is seen as a necessary quality for their work. Now, in this discussion group, for none, really none of the ten participants was it desirable to follow a universal love or they considered it simply impossible. Maybe they considered it as an – if at all! – ideal. They were really against this idea. I was surprised. Not everyone had to feel called to it. But I had not expected this categorical rejection and almost aggressive aversion to it. And when one of the participants brought Mother Teresa into the discussion and accused her of egoistic motives for her actions (“ …Mother Teresa was only in Calcutta because she personally pulled something out of it…“) I became really thoughtful. I asked myself, „Do we even understand each other correctly? Do we even agree on what universal love means? “ I realized that the participants in this round were speaking from their first person, their thing life, and their ideas of the mind. They did not get beyond that in their perceptions. The Mother Teresa example was familiar to me from personal experience. At that time I was 17 years old and my first girlfriend said to me, mutatis mutandis, „Do you love me because I am me or because it is good for you to be with me?“ So put another way: Do you love me for myself, or aren’t there selfish motives involved there? Now it is usually the case that one naturally also benefits emotionally from a loved one and this is also a reason why one is with them. As an honest partner, I confirmed this to her, of course, and before I could interject a supplementary „...but of course that doesn’t….“ could interject, the thunderstorm broke over me…. Well…
The participants had this idea of an attitude independent of their own personal condition when they thought of universal love. I have to love everyone! I have to show love and positive feelings to everyone, even if he is a bad guy. Everyone I have to smile at and like. I have to be nice to everyone. To everyone I have to be as if he were my dearest person. And that also completely selfless. – A horrible idea! Rightly so. Whoever tries to do this willfully will eventually snap and then have additional feelings of guilt because of his apparent inability to live up to his unfulfillable ideas of universal love. The participants saw in the concept of universal love only a compulsion. A compulsion that brings something to the other person and takes something from themselves. Something from which they could draw nothing. Another constraint, in addition to the many other constraints in their lives, in which they must give while others receive through them. Unlike the other compulsions, however, with this one they could choose whether or not to do it to themselves. – No. This was not what is meant by universal love….
Universal love‘ is just a word. It is a word to express something that cannot be expressed. Perhaps it comes close to the feeling one can have. A tender feeling. A foreboding. „It’s like…..love…“ Like the encoded sightings in the soul journeys or dreams. „It seems like... a kind of …..maybe……..love(?) ……“ A hint of a presentiment. And yet as a concept miles past the truth….
That which is called universal love is one of the unchanging eternal truths that we can experience from our soul sense. It is the knowledge that we all and everything have a common root, that we are never alone. That we are always protected, because we are all one! It is the experience of the unity in the beyond on the inconceivable level of our soul, which is described laboriously with the term of the universal love! It is perceptible in the silence. If we have opened ourselves a little and pass the tree in front of our house, touch it briefly and feel it: „We are one. You are protected. We watch over you. Be without worry. We love You.“ It pours into us and we think, „This is like….maybe ….love.“ and yet it is…it is…nothing.(?)…“ And maybe tears come and we don’t know why. And that then is soul knowledge. Unprovable, non-expressible knowledge (read: faith). Eternal knowledge, which the intellect cannot reach. Unfortunately.
Now that doesn’t mean I have to be nice to everyone and put on my polite Sunday face, no matter what kind of person I’m facing. Nevertheless, I love him. But differently. I know that we are one. But not now in the material world, when he gets cheeky with me and I as a person am also ego. Maybe I would give everything of me to save him. Maybe I would also let him die…. One has nothing to do with the other. Our spiritual unity exists in other categories.
Mother Teresa had received a call. She has recognized eternal truths which have dissolved the ego feeling. The ridiculous worldly little I with its little sensitivities and desires for recognition and exaltation certainly no longer played a role with her… If we should have reached this egolessness at some point, then we no longer ask ourselves whether we can draw something out of anything. We no longer weigh whether the one receives more than we do. There is no more compulsion for us, because compulsion always presupposes the compelled and the compelled. In egolessness or ego poverty there is no more I and also no more others. There we have everything and there is no feeling of lack anymore, which creates aversions in us and forces us to fight for our „right“. Only we cannot reach this state willingly and if we as human beings in pain cannot smile at our tormentor, then that is so and we do not have to force ourselves to do so. Nevertheless, we should always keep the existence of universal love in mind.