I woke up this morning and the thought of love was in my mind. I asked myself: what does love really mean?  To answer my own question I wrote this essay. To love is to join with the loved one and in so doing eliminate ones existential alones and its pain; to love is to give one’s self peace and happiness and give to those one loves ones peace and happiness. Enjoy.

LOVE IS GIVING PEACE AND JOY TO YOUR SELF (AND TO THOSE YOU LOVE)

Ozodi Thomas Osuji

The word love is probably one of the most frequently used words in the English speaking world.  What does love really mean?

Let me begin by talking about phrases I heard so much that I was confused by them.  My pastor would say: love is giving; giving is receiving; you only give to yourself and so on.  I really did not understand what she was talking about and did not have the courage to go ask her what she meant by those seeming mysterious phrases. It is one of those situations where I did not do what common sense would ask me to do: ask the lady minister to explain herself.  I am supposing that there is a reason why I did not ask her. A part of my mind probably wanted me to think about those phrases and come to my own understanding of what they mean. Some people, ministers included, are poetic and express nice sounding poetic verses but may not have an explanation that satisfies those of us who are not poetic, who prefer to talk in prose. Thus, I thought about what the lady minister was saying.  In this paper I will explain what love means to me.

It is said that to love is to give.  What does that mean? Here is how I see it.  I see me as lonely and by projective identification with you I also see you and all people as lonely (in psychoanalysis there is a defense mechanism called projective identification; this is projection of what is in one to other persons; this is how we know what other people feel; in this instance I feel lonely and project it to other persons and say that they also feel lonely; this works when we take the way we think as the way other people think, which, by and large, tends to be true but could be untrue). I see me as excruciatingly lonely. I project and see human beings as excruciatingly lonely (the so-called sensitive persons, introverts tend to be overtly aware of their loneliness whereas extroverts tend to repress it and seem not lonely but deep down are as lonely as introverts are).

I see us as thrown into a world that does not seem to care for us. We are born alone, live alone and die alone; there does not seem to be a higher force caring for our welfare and this produces a sense of aloneness in us.  This existential sense of aloneness gives us tremendous fear and anxiety.

LOVE REDUCES LONELINESS

Because I see me as alone and see you as alone I can reduce our loneliness by loving you. How so? It is because to love is to join, unite, associate with, connect with etc.  When I love you I join you, I unite with you. To love is to unite, to join with the person one loves.

If I love you hence unite with you I reduce your sense of aloneness for now you feel joined with at least with one human being. I too feel joined with you and reduce my own existential aloneness feeling. There is strength in numbers, they say.

To love you which is to unite with you and reduce your aloneness and reduce my alones is therefore not only giving something of value to you but to me. By giving you love (reduction of your existential aloneness) I reduce my own existential aloneness; thus, to love you, to give to you is to love me, to give to me.

When I give you love I really give me love.  What I give to you is what I receive; what I give to you is what I give to me. Hence the expression giving is receiving; I receive what I give.  Hence the expression you only give to yourself for in giving you love I have given me love. In giving you love hence reducing your loneliness I have reduced my loneliness.

This means that to love another human being is really a selfish act!  It is selfish because in giving to you I give to me. If I give to me (in giving to you) that is, selfish, is it not?  I am, of course, employing the term selfishness in a positive light here.

THE METAPHYSICS OF LOVE

At the metaphysical level there is only one self (my metaphysics is largely shaped by Hinduism and A course in miracles; if you have not studied those it may seem strange to you). There is only one self in the universe (many verses, many songs, unified songs).

God (who is creative) created his son by extending his oneself to his son.  God (extender) and his son (extended) are one. God and his son share one self; God and his son also share one mind (mind is the means of thinking of both father and son). There is no space and gap between God and his son; where God ends and his son begins is nowhere; God is in his son and his son is in him; they share one self and are one self.

God created his son. He did so by giving his son all of his self (so that all of God is now in the son…you can never see God outside the sons of God; see the Christian Gospel according to John 14: 5-10).

The son of God, like his father, is creative. The son of God created his own sons. The sons of the son of God in turn create their own sons. This way creation begins in God and continues through his sons.

Creation actually has no beginning and no end, for there was no time that God and his son did not exist (in the Christian bible, Genesis 1: 26 God said: let us make man in our image…who was God talking to if his son was not already with him?).

You and I are the sons of God. God created us. He gave all of himself to us. He gave us his creative power. With his creative power we create our own children. We give our children the creative power of God in us and with it they create their own children. Thus, creation continues forever and ever.

In eternity, what folks call heaven, God and his sons are eternally creative, extending their kingdom of peace and joy.

In eternity, aka heaven, God knows himself to be in his sons and his sons know themselves to be in their father; there is no sense of separation between father and sons.  God the father gives to his sons as if he is giving to himself for his sons are parts of his one self.  God’s sons knowing that they are part of their father give to their father and to themselves for they know that they all are one and giving to any one of them is giving to one’s self.

This is the true meaning of love: giving to others who are one’s self hence giving to one’s self.  When one loves other persons one has loved ones whole self hence one only loves one’s self. To love is to give to other persons hence to give to one.  To love is to be selfish.

THE DELUSION OF SEPARATION; BELIEF THAT LOVE IS GIVING SOMETHING TO OTHERS

Deluded persons think that they are separated from other persons and from God (can the part be separated from the whole and its other parts, impossible). Believing in the insanity of separation they think that to give to other people, to love other people is to give something of value to others who are not themselves; they do not realize that to love is to love their complete self. Thus, these misguided children of God come to see loving other people as not loving themselves. Thus, we hate other people thinking that we can hate them and not hate ourselves.

Since other people are parts of our shared oneself to hate other people is literally to hate ourselves.  You are part of my self. If I love you I love me; if I hate you I hate me.  If I hate you to hate me (though I think that I can hate you and love me, this is impossible since you and I are one self) I am then insane.

The world is an insane place for it is a place where those who are oneself come to believe that they are separated into different selves and that they can hate other selves and not hate themselves. We think that we can give away our hate. No, we can only receive our hate.

Look around you and see the world that hate made. You hate people and hate yourself. (If you prefer literal prose, when you hate me and other people you make me and other people feel angry at you and pay you back with our own hatred of you. If you hate folks they would hate you.)

If you give folks hatred you receive hatred from them. This amounts to the same as saying what you give is what you receive, is it not? Give love and you receive love; give hate and you receive hate.

TO LOVE IS TO BE HAPPY AND PEACEFUL

If I give you love, which amounts to giving me love (and receive love from you) I feel happy. Loving persons are happy persons (common sense tells us that much).

If I give you hatred I give me hatred (if I hate you, you will hate me).  Giving hatred is receiving hatred hence being unhappy (common sense also tells us that much…sometimes the thinking of spirit agrees with the thinking of man).

Common sense tells us that if we give love and receive love that we will be happy and peaceful; that if we give hatred and receive hatred that we will be unhappy and live in a conflicted environment.

If it is true that we seek peace and joy why then don’t we do what common sense asks us to do: love all people? Why do we hate people knowing that they would in turn hate us and we reap unhappiness and social conflict?

It is because we are not sane; we are insane! Only the insane would not do the right thing; only the insane does not love. The sane person loves all people at all times and lives in peace and joy.

Since we live in a world where we do not love people hence receive conflict and lack of joy we live in an insane world. The world is literally an insane place. It is insane because those who live in it are deluded (psychosis, the technical name for insanity, is characterized by the presence of delusion and hallucination).  We are all insane because to be in the world of insanity we must be insane!

What is sanity and what is insanity? Sanity is the truth of the eternal union of God and his son (God has one son, you and I). In truth God (the whole) and his sons (parts of the whole) are eternally unified; they are one and always are in each other. Separation of the son from the father or one son from another son is impossible. The truth is the eternal union of God and his creation.

(I am assuming that the reader is a Christian or apostate Christian, so, when I feel it germane I will cite a passage from the bible. In that light, see John 14: 8-10. And Phillip said to him, Jesus, show us the father so that we may see him.  And Jesus said to him, haven’t I been with you for long for you to ask to see the father; to see the son is to see the father for the father is in the son and the son is in the father; you cannot see the father outside the son!)

Insanity is the son’s belief that he is separated from his father and from his brothers. Our world is a place of separation. Look around you and you see separation; you see a world of space, time and matter. We see space between us; we see time between us (as Einstein correctly pointed out, space and time is one variable hence space-time is the correct term).  We use matter (atoms, that is, protons, neutrons and electrons) to construct our bodies. In bodies we believe that we are separated from each other and from God. In the world we have the illusion that we are separated from each other and from God.

But separation is impossible; we are ideas in the mind of God; ideas cannot leave their source; thus, we remain as God created us, ideas in his mind and in each other’s minds.  We remain unified with God and with each other.

This truth notwithstanding, we believe in separation. What we believe seems real to us; what we believe we see; belief precedes seeing. We believe in separation and see a world of separation and seem to live in a world of separation.

Belief in what is not true is delusion disorder; to believe in separation, a thing that cannot exist (if separation existed the universe would collapse today…where we see empty space are particles; there is no such thing as empty space; everything is joined even in the material universe…as physics concept of non-locality shows, particles are entangled and if you affect one others in the universe instantaneously respond to it) is to be deluded.

The world is a place where those in it believe in separation and because all of them believe in separation what they believe in seem true to them (a shared dream seems real to the dreamers even if it is not real).

Yet separation is not true. Therefore, the world is a place of delusion disorder; the world is a place of mass psychosis (we are actually hallucinating when we see other people in bodies, see a world of space and time for those do not in fact exist…space, time and matter are all illusions we employ to make separation seem real to us).

What exists, in fact, is the world of spiritual union, the formless union of God and his children as one self; where we see this world of matter, space and time there is no such place.

All these sound occultist and mystical; nevertheless, you can verify them; how? Let go of this world right now and experience the world of unified spirit self…you do so by loving all people as yourself, by letting go of your ego separated self and not defending your ego and body, by being defenseless, as Jesus was when he was attacked.

FORGIVENESS AND DEFENSELESSNESS AS PATH TO RETURNING TO THE KNOWLEDGE OF ONENESS

Jesus was a man like any of us; at some point during his sojourn on earth, in the psychosis of separation, space, time and matter, he realized that he and all creation is one and that what he does to other people he did to his one shared self and that what other people did to him they did to themselves.  If other people attacked him they attacked themselves, if they loved him they loved themselves; if he loved other people he loved himself and if he attacked other people he attacked his self. Thus, when other people attacked him he accepted that he attacked his self.  Therefore, he did not defend himself.

Why should he defend himself when he attacked himself (when other people attacked him)? He became defenseless to other people’s attack on him (his attack on him). In not defending against perceived external attack he realized that the world is his dream where he, the one son of God separated from his father and brothers, denied that they are one and projected his brothers out and sees them as not him.

In the dream, he made some of his projected out dream figures to attack the dream figure he identified with, Emmanuel Ben Joseph. He is in all the dream figures so if they attacked him he attacked himself.

If all his attackers are dream figures then they do not exist and have not attacked him; for dreams do not exist, dreams are not real.

Dream attackers seem to have killed a dream figure called Jesus but since dreams are not real what is done in them has not been done. Thus, no one attacked Jesus’ real self; no one killed his real self.

Jesus’ real self is the son of God, Christ; no one can kill his real self for it is in God hence is eternal. Those in the dream, deluded selves believed that they attacked and killed the dream figure called Jesus but he knew himself as the eternal Christ and thus was not killed.

In the empirical universe, the world of appearances and dream, the attackers seem to have killed Jesus, buried him and in three days he resurrected from death.

First, he appeared to his apostles in his light body (Christians call it glorified body, purified body, incorruptible body) and finally returned to existing in formless body, the self he shares with God and all his brothers…however, he can voluntarily take on light form to appear to people in forms.

(I am generally amazed at those who call themselves Christians and have not seen Jesus Christ and yet believe in him!  All you need to do to have Christ vision is do what Jesus Christ asked you to do: love all people and forgive all people. The fact that you have not seen Jesus means that you have not done what Jesus asked you to do: love all and forgive all. If you loved and forgave all, now, you would see the living son of God in light form. However, to see him, have Christ vision, you must meet the condition of heaven before you enter heaven. Heaven is love; those who separated from heaven, from love do not want to love. To return to heaven is to love all people. How do I know all these to be true? For all you know I could be another religious hustler deceiving you, but deceiving you for what since I do not need your money or praise?  Cynicism and skepticism is sometimes needed but why don’t you do what Jesus asked you to do to see if he is not for real? Love all, forgive all, don’t just talk about it, do it and do it now, for the salvation of the world lies in your loving and forgiving the world.)

A BIT ON AFRICANS

Whereas this paper is meant for the general human public, since in the empirical world I am African I will digress to make points that are specifically for Africans. As I see them, Africans are not a loving people; they actually believe that separation is real and that if they love you they have given love away; they do not realize that to give to seeming others is to give to themselves.

Thus, Africans sold their brothers into slavery without realizing that they have enslaved themselves (for as we do to others we do to ourselves…like fools they only blame those they sold their brothers to, white folks, they don’t even blame Arabs to whom they sold more Africans to than to white folks, but look at them, they live the most cursed existence on planet earth).

Africans must learn that what they do to other persons they have literally, not figuratively done to themselves. Sell your brothers and rationalize it all you want but you have sold yourself.

See, these days many Africans are coming to America; they think that they are coming to paradise but they are coming to be enslaved and don’t know it!

Joseph’s brothers sold him to Egypt. In the long run famine made them come to Egypt to buy food only to end up joining Joseph as slaves. (See Genesis chapters 38-50.)

At the present, poverty in Africa makes Africans come to America as economic refugees, seeking food; actually, what is happening is that they have come to join their brothers, African Americans, as slaves. The new Israelites have come to the proverbial Egypt to be enslaved!

The good news is that from this new slavery, Africans will learn that what they do to others they do to themselves.

If you love other people you love you; if you hate other people you hate you. If one African tribe screws others it has screwed itself. Hausas and Yorubas make life difficult for Igbos (Igbos are royal pain in the ass, pardon my French); now look at them, are they prospering or are they living even worse than the Igbos they screw?  They are to learn to love Igbos and in doing so love themselves; by the same token, Igbos must learn to love Hausas and Yorubas and in so doing love themselves. What we do to other persons we do to ourselves.

Human beings are the children of God. God is love. His children are love. But they have deluded themselves into believing that they are no longer love, that they are hate. But they remain as their father created them, love; for they cannot separate from their father and from each other; ideas leave not their source.

We are created as love and remain as love. But we can mask our loving nature, pull a veil over the face of Christ (Christ is any son of God who chooses to love all his brothers and their father) and act hatefully. But when we remove the blocks to the awareness of love we see the love that is always already there. We always live in the presence of love while perceiving lovlessness all around us.

Only love exists. Indeed, even hateful acts from other people are masked love. Other people’s attacks on you offer you the opportunity to forgive them, in the poetic language of A course in miracles, another chance to choose again; in the past you chose hate, now to choose love. To forgive them is to love them.  Hausas attacked Igbos (they killed Igbos). If Igbos forgive them, that means that Igbos have loved them. All our brothers’ attacks on us are their calls for us to help them, which is to love them, to teach them to love us. A call for love must be answered with love, not hate (counter attack).

In forgiving those who hated them Igbos love Hausas and in loving Hausas since they and Hausas are one they love themselves.

In hating their so-called enemies they hate themselves. In loving all people hence loving themselves they live in peace and joy.

In seeking vengeance, in bearing grievances and seeking revenge for the wrong done to them they live in hatred and hence in pain and conflict.