What is Love? (Part Two)

              Trying to answer the question ‘what is love’ in a philosophical context  goes back at least as far as Ancient Greece. Socrates was asking exactly the same types of questions – what is justice, what is courage, what is love, what is beauty – and so on. Wittgenstein in his later work philosophical investigations also tackled these questions, with considerably more success that Socrates it must be said. Many people think these questions have now been philosophically resolved. And in some respects they have been. However Wittgenstein was answering these questions within a certain historical and philosophical context. He was basically trying to elucidate how it is that we are able to understand each other and how language works. He succeeded on one level but arguably not to the extent that is often accredited to him (much more on this later!) However my basic point here is that I am aware of the Wittgenstein ‘solutions’ to these types of question , but as I stated in my previous post, my arguments weren’t specifically directed on how we define words and how we can communicate with each other. My concern is how our everyday concept of love relates to the idea of love espoused by spiritually orientated people, and particularly those who have had near death experiences. So Wittgenstein arguments don’t concern me at present. (But they certainly will in future posts.)

            Another aspect of this subject that should be talked about is how the spiritual conception of love differs from that typically espoused by religions. It is the latter that is much more deeply engrained in the general psyche of people. It accords with our intuitions far better than the spiritual notion of what unconditional love is, and how we can make it manifest in our lives. We generally believe that the route to becoming more godly is to suppress all human tendencies that run contrary to what it means to exhibit love. It becomes more like a battle of will. Those who are 'good' people have simply made more effort to tame their unloving urges. What makes them good supposedly is the amount of effort they have put in to be good people. There is of course the view that some people are inherently evil, but religious institutions and our justice systems do presuppose (with the exception of mentally ill people) that it is within anyone’s ability to control their behaviour no matter how strong the urge to do wrong things are. I do not disagree with this view. People should make an effort not to commit bad acts. And we need to punish those who commit crimes. But I am relating this with my current understanding of what spirituality says regarding this issue. The basic idea in spirituality is not a mere suppression of negative traits but becoming aware of our true spiritual nature and bringing our true nature of unconditional love into our human lives. Of course this takes effort. But there is a big difference between this and the standard non-spiritual view of what it means to endeavour to be more godly. The first view automatically lends itself to the idea that there are good people and bad people. The bad people may not be intrinsically bad. But they are bad in the sense that they haven’t used their free will to overcome bad character traits. In extreme cases this leads to the idea that there are evil people. This is something that spirituality flat out denies. I intend to write a future post on what is wrong with this long held notion of good bad and evil when I get round to it, but for now I am simply highlighting the contrast between the spiritual and non-spiritual viewpoints on this matter.       

                  In the spiritual view we are all equally good. Since we are all fundamentally spiritual beings, and spiritual beings by nature are unconditionally loving, then the degree that we bring our spiritual nature into our lives is essentially the degree we will exhibit and experience genuine unconditional love. There is nothing wrong with trying to become a better person by affiliation with a religion, or simply making an effort to become a better person by controlling bad character traits. But spiritually adds to this by suggesting that we have the intrinsic capability to tap into our true nature as spiritual beings and use this also in our quest to become more loving people. It is  then not simply a battle of will to overcome bad character traits and suppress negative impulses but also an endeavour to invoke our true nature as spiritual beings.