I called to interview him, and also to thank him. The spirit of his book jibes in lots of ways with what I am learning from Science and Health about love's nature and demands. Unlimited Love has made me more alert to specific ways that I can help others. For instance, when a friend called recently, I test-drove the form of love that Professor Post calls companionship, which involves "attentive listening." Post, Unlimited Love, p. 6 . Rather than multi-tasking, I stopped what I was doing. I really listened. I became spiritually focused, and that enabled me to provide prayerful counsel, consistent with my study of Christian Science, that comforted my friend and reassured him of divine Love's total control of the situation. When I returned to my work, I, too, felt restored. Sure enough, as Professor Post affirms, in keeping with the wisdom of worldwide religious and spiritual traditions, by giving myself I had discovered myself. By loving, I felt loved. Yes, "to give is to live." Ibid., p. 3 .
Mary Baker Eddy explained in Science and Health, published in 1875, that divine Love and God are synonymous. In Miscellaneous Writings, she described God as "the great Physician." Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896, p. 151. It strikes me that you're not far from reaching the same conclusion.
No, I'm not. I would raise a point of distinction insofar as I use standard allopathic care, and so in that sense I'm not as committed to a metaphysical idealism as Mary Baker Eddy. But what I think is important is that she clearly discovered an empirical truth, in that love does heal. There is such a thing as a Higher Love, and it is a healing force. The Bible passage that I like is, "God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them." I John 4:16 (NRSV).
I'm very attracted to Rembrandt's drawings of Jesus and his healings of all those imperiled individuals, whether they're mentally ill or physically devastated. What you see there is a symphony to the power of love, right? The power of that love can be viewed metaphysically, and I lean that way; but even if one just takes it as human expression, the reality is that love heals. Christian Science practitioners heal through prayer in love. Physicians may have technical competence, but if they do not have the dynamic of love, then they'll never be healers. All healers are people of love.
There's a lot of scientific information now about the importance of other-regarding or altruistic love and physical health. You have all these studies about how stress causes illness—stress that is related to self-referring negative emotions like rage, hatred, anger, envy, jealousy, fear. People realize that one's mental state and emotion and spirituality are relevant to physical outcome. A beautiful passage in the New Testament says, "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear ..." I John 4:18. I think the more we are loved and the more we love, the more we then set aside these negative emotions, and we are then open to a perception of a Higher Love in the universe. And that gives us meaning, but it also gives us health.
How can someone feel the presence of divine Love more in their life and express unlimited love for all humanity?
In the giving of self lies the unsought discovery of self. That's so important. And in general, the phenomenology of love involves what I would call attentive presence, which is usually best expressed in the details. There's an old saying: God is in the details. Love is in the details. So it's in the little things—eye contact, facial expression, tone of voice. People of unlimited love know when to put a hand on someone's shoulder in a comforting way. They know how to express love in terms of compassion and forgiveness and care and celebration, and all its values and manifestation. They are emotionally intelligent. The people of unlimited love are folks who are moving mountains—Dag Hammarskjöld seeking to ensure peace in the Congo at the start of the 1960s, Paul Farmer helping with AIDS in the third world today. I'm all for it. But often, the deepest expression and the true test of love is in the minutia of affirmation.
Also, the person of unlimited love is great to be around. They have a kind of palpable radiance, an effervescence. It's really a buoyancy—where the human substrate, perhaps in consort with divine Love, somehow is brought into its fullness.
Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am." You imply, "I love, therefore I am." At the same time, you emphasize that love and thinking go together, that love is smart.
That's right. Love isn't mushy. It isn't just being nice. Unlimited love means one needs to be willing to make the necessary confrontation with destructive and self-destructive behaviors. It has to lead through courage and strength, and be intelligent and effective in restraining evil. The children of love have to be as wise as the children of darkness, but they can have none of their malice. So just as people of malice can be incredibly cunning and procedurally effective, similarly, people of love have to cultivate that kind of efficiency.
Some of the great people of love—like, German pastor and theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, or Martin Luther King, Jr., or Mohandas K. Gandhi—they're the ones who are first to speak out about radical injustice. People of love are the first to bring destructive and harmful actions to light. They honestly confront evil rather than acquiesce. They recognize that the opposite of love is not just hate, jealousy, and anger; it's also apathy, which often takes the form of law-abiding self-interest. But one doesn't take on the responsibility of correcting radical injustice lightly. One has to be very cautious and have great wisdom and courage.
What's the intersection between individual lives of love and a global community that's free from contempt, hatred, and injustice?
That raises the big question, What is spirituality? To me, there is no spiritual transformation of any value that doesn't come through growth in love. Therefore, all meaningful spirituality is love. Spirituality is really this notion of loving others as others, and getting to a point where one realizes that in fact this kind of love is animating. It's basic to meaning and to life and to goodness. It is the underlying reality.
And spirituality doesn't just have individual consequences. Given our common fate on a common planet, given the emergence of technologies of destruction—both biological and nuclear—we need to realize the great dream of reconciliatory love. It's essential. The only hope, the only option, whether it's for our children or grandchildren, is going to be convergence around unlimited love.
Professor Post e-mailed to tell me that he picked up a copy of Science and Health after our conversation and that he plans "to highlight ... all the passages on love, which I see are plentiful." He added this: "By the way, I think that Mary Baker Eddy had divine Love right. As I have been reading bits and pieces of her book, she really did identify God with Love, so it seems that healing through prayer is really healing through an appeal to—and a related manifestation of—Love. She was quite elegant on this point."
