Love:Question for Monists

"Love is omni-inclusive, progressively exquisite, understanding and tender and compassionately attuned to other than self."

R.Buckminster Fuller.

I quite like these words of Fuller's on love. However, it raises a question.
The words 'attuned to other then self' in particular.

If this definition of love is right, then how can love exist in the context of the One Brahman - if it is everything, then what 'other than self' would there be to love?
If the only reality is the One Self, then clearly there can't be 'other than self'.

Seems like there might be some contradiction somewhere.

The easy way out is to dismiss Fuller as a crank, and his words as incorrect. But I think if so, we'd need to come up with a better definition.

 

Maybe the "self" he is talking about is the body. He refers to love as omni-inclusive. It can be said that it pertains to this idea that lover cannot be faithful to one single entity.
If I claim I love my wife, and hate Osama Bin Laden, it would just not be love at all. God is love, maybe we can even say that if we love , we actually celebrate God and establish the fact that everything is Narayana and his maya.

 

Oh but snake, he is right! And as that attunement grows, does it now lead us towards oneness? Like the beautiful old couples that complete each other's sentences... Like the the trees that grow so close their trunks unite...
And as that attunement grows, do you not start seeing aspects of the beloved in everything? Out of love for the beloved, one loves her brother and her dog and her father's house, due to their association with her. And as the attunement grows, you can feel her in the air you breathe, because her breath too mingles in it. And that air sustains all the trees and animals in the world, so they all carry a little piece of the beloved. And thus we come to see her alone in everything within and outside... Perfect attunement with her and with everything.

 

"Love is all and love is everyone...."

 

Nice replies folks.

Just obtained a new CD by Galaxy - it begins with these words: "love is the ultimate experience".

I'd tend to agree with that.

 

When you love someone you become kind of one with her or him.


And in unconditional love , one loves everything, which means that one becomes one with everything. Sounds like monism, doesn't it.

 

masteurbation is the purest form of love according to advaita

 

Not really like monism. The idea of a 'one' who loves 'everything' imples a duality.

If Swami Nikhilanada is correct in defining the belief's of monism that 'reality is one without a second' there could be no 'everything' to love. Only the one, with no object of love existing separately from it.

If there is only one Self - there can't be, by definition, anything outside that one Self for it to love.

Seems Chief Cowpie is nearer the mark.

 

Just copy & pasted this from Jedi's thread Siddhanta Tattva Vindu

It says the same thing as Nikhilanada's 'one without a second'.

 

That is the ultimate culminating intensity of love where all barriers divinding the lover and the beloved are broken and shattered and rendered void, and all becomes one.
As long as one loves someone as the other, that love is finite and incomplete. Only when the self identification with the lover is total is love fufilled.

 

And how is that possibe. In masturbation you are having sexual pleasure with yourself . There is no love involved.

 

And how is there a duality , when in unconditional love, one becomes one with everything. There exists only one. Nothing else.

And this is the reason why enlightened masters who have become one with brahman loves unconditionally.

Then perhaps you should follow his 'wisdom' like him. Any way I think that is your only option for sexual release.

 

So if love then continues, it would be self love - or self reflective love, not love 'attuned to the other' -

What I'm wondering is this: can love exist without duality?

Sexual love can lead to a kind of merging at it's highest intensity - a temporary merging, but certainly a loss of feeling the boundaries of the ego in quite such a rigid way as normal.

With devotional practices too, there can be an experience of being 'lost' in the form of the divine you are worshipping - a kind of suspension of the ego.

If consciousness were resolved into a pure state with no object but itself, clearly there couldn't be a duality - so 'love' would be .....well, I don't think I could say what, but something different from what we generally understand by it.

 

I don't think you have penetrated the wisdom of the chief.....

You said a 'one that loves everything' 1=one 2 = everything. Duality.

 

So you have indeed. And thats what you are doing at the moment. Naughty,naughty.........

I said that one loves everything, that means the one becomes one with everything. So there is only one left.There is no lover and beloved. Because they have become one. Hence no duality.

 

And so 'love' in that case isn't 'compassionatly attuned to other than self'.

 

The false self or ego disappears , and there is only oneness.

 

So the Chief is right.

 

Lol! How we get caught up in the web of words. Rather than look at a painting of the ocean, let us plunge ourselves into it and experience it for ourselves.

 

Lets all chant hare krishna and be happy