you you you said uh 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 um peaceful thought it fills me with anxiety oh I love 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 might be God fills me with panic um and it reminds me of time in
my student days when I was quite depressed and I I started imagine I was the only real thing in the universe and that was such an incredibly low uh lonely place to be and I suppose I get I'm getting Echoes of that possibly I don't know and and 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 lay my anxieties okay all right where to start um let's start with the way I
Define love yeah because I think that's really at the core could be your question and then we can we can follow it from there I 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 dissolve 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 the the felt sense of Oneness yeah it may be I've probably never loved enough to really
explain it but um but but have you not felt at least to a degree W 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 well that that may be so but we'll come to that in a minute yeah 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 the it's not just the intuition just so you know
that that that noise in the background they're growling we got a family of Howa monkeys living in the trees just next to the property they're very vocal this morning I can't hear them so yeah I'm in cost R um yeah I would suggest that that that feeling of love the feeling of of Oneness it is not just the intuition but the felt sense the felt recognition that the deepest level our being is one now that does deny the fact that at the level of our bodies and Minds we are separate and therefore related I I
would suggest that love is not a relationship between two people it's the collapse of relationship the collapse of Separation that that's why we like love because we don't like being separate to be separate is a lonely place it is the reason we we we like love is because in the experience of love we our felt sense of Separation dissolves and 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 or or friendship that's what's so beautiful about what Yogananda said about friendship being I'm paraph I'm paraphrasing I said friendship is the highest experience highest expression of love was what he meant was love the absence of relationship the absence of separation is expressed in friendship now friendship requires two people with their differences and and that's a 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 the H so I would suggest that the fact that there my suggestion that there is just one being and that we are all that is is not a lonely place to be on the contrary to be a separate self that is a lonely place to be yes because if we feel I am a separate self cut off from all it related to all other selves then that is a place for loneliness for anxiet for for for for anxiety the the suggestion that we are all the one being
is the remedy for loneliness there's there 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 orbe it we cannot reach them I'm alone in my apartment there are all these people out there all these 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 its nature is said to be loved that so there's it's all alone but not lonely I will try and let all that sink in yeah yeah now 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 that is indeed that you're absolutely right um I mean if I start thinking that I think my God you know um reminds me of something my brother said
to me years and years ago he said um sometimes I'm haunted by the fear that I might live forever yeah yeah yeah yeah that was the fear of the ego yes can you imagine the ego living forever that that would be terrifying yes but to what is suggested by this understanding is not that I the ego will live forever no but that I being am Eternal and 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
only self that that indeed would be a lonely Place yeah yeah but that's not what is being suggested yeah yes I think that's where my misunderstanding is really yes yes yeah yeah thank you R nice to nice to see you again cheers
