Love Is the Collapse of Relationship

You said just a few minutes ago, there's just this one vast, infinite being. And I know that for most people, that's a very comforting and peaceful thought. It fills me with anxiety. Oh, I love that. I love the thousand things. I love the multiplicity and variety of the universe, and of the people in it. And the idea that we're already just one thing fills me with, as I say, a mixture of anxiety and claustrophobia. Okay, the idea that I might be God fills me with panic. It reminds me of a time in my student days when I was quite depressed. And I started imagining I was the only real thing in the universe. And that was such an incredibly low, lowly place to be. And I suppose I get I'm getting echoes of that possibly, I don't know. And I, I don't know how you love someone if they're really just yourself. Doesn't love need a subject and an object? Maybe it doesn't. Obviously, it doesn't. Anyway, can you do anything to allay my anxiety? Okay. All right, where to start? Let's start with the way I define love. Yeah. Because I think that's really at the core question. And we can we can follow it from there. I would suggest, Richard, that when you love someone, when we love someone, we feel that we are one with them, that the sense of separation, normally, we, we feel separate from one another, subject object, I would suggest that the experience of love is, is the collapse of the subject object relationship. In other words, that the felt sense of oneness. Yeah, it may be I probably never loved enough to really. But, but, but have you not felt that, at least to a degree, with with someone that you've loved deeply? Have you not felt? I feel one with you? Yes, although but I'm still fascinated by the little things about them that are different from me. But that may be so. And then we'll come to that in a minute. We're just talking about the felt sense of love. What is the felt sense of love? I would suggest, yes, that the felt sense of love is that it's not just the intuition. Just so you know that that that noise in the background, they're growling, we've got a family of howler monkeys living in the trees just next to the property. They're very vocal this morning. I'm in Costa Rica. Yeah, I would suggest that that that feeling of love, the feeling of oneness is not just the intuition, but the felt sense, the felt recognition that at the deepest level, our being is one. And that does deny the fact that at the level of our bodies and minds, we are separate and therefore related. I would suggest that love is not a relationship between two people. It's the collapse of relationship, the collapse of separation. That's why we like love. Because we don't like being separate to be separate is only place it is. The reason we we we like love is because in the experience of love, we have felt sense of separation dissolves. In relation to another, we feel that at the deepest level, we are one. Now, that felt sense of oneness can be expressed in relationship in friendship. But the love itself is not a relationship. Love is the collapse of relationship. Relationship is an expression of friendship. That's what's so beautiful about what Yogananda said about friendship being I'm paraphrasing, I said, friendship is the highest experience, the highest expression of love was what you went to love, the absence of relationship, the absence of separation is expressed in friendship. Friendship requires two people with their differences. And that's, as you say, it's a beautiful thing, all the fascinating, interesting, maddening differences we have with each other that requires there to be separation. But what is it that we are celebrating in friendship? What do we enjoy in friendship? It's so I would suggest that the fact that they're my suggestion that there is just one being and that we are all that is not a lonely place to be on the contrary, to be a separate self. That is a lonely place to be. Because if we feel I am a separate self, cut off from or be it related to all other selves, then that is a place for loneliness or anxiety. The suggestion that we are all the one being is the remedy for loneliness that there's, there's no question of the one being, the one being is all alone. But not lonely, because to be lonely, there has to be an other when whenever you feel lonely. Whenever we feel lonely, we always feel, we always feel the presence of the other. Loneliness requires the other, albeit, we cannot reach them. I'm alone, my apartment, there are all these people out there, others, but I feel cut off from them. Yeah, I'm not in relationship with any of them. Therefore, I feel lonely. In other words, the feeling of loneliness requires the other. But for being, there is no other. That's why it's nature is said to be love. So there's, it's all alone, but not lonely. No, I'm sure. I mean, I think my problem is that, you know, I imagine my little ego is everything. And that's a very lonely place. That is indeed. You're absolutely right. I mean, if I start thinking that reminds me of something my brother said to me years and years ago. He said, sometimes I'm haunted by the fear that I might live forever. Yeah. That was the fear of the ego. Yes. Can you imagine living forever? That would be terrifying? Yes. But what is suggested by this understanding is not that I the ego will live forever. But that I being an eternal the ego appropriates that idea, misunderstands it and thinks, Oh my goodness, does that mean I'm going to live forever? Does that mean I'm God? Does that mean I'm the self that exists? That would be a lonely place. Yeah. Yeah. That's not what is being suggested. Yeah. Yes. I think that's what my misunderstanding is. Yes. Thank you. Nice to nice to see you again.