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Love, Romance and You Know What!  Leo Buscaglia  Bertrand Russell Robert Southwell Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Aurora In high ambition or a thirst of greatness; 'Tis second life, it grows into the soul Warms every vein, and beats in every pulse. Joseph Addison Source unknown Confucius - Analects I think that love is the only spiritual power that can overcome the self-centredness that is inherent in being alive. Love is the thing that makes life possible, or, indeed, tolerable. Love is spontaneous and craves expression through joy, through beauty, through truth, even through tears. Love lives the moment; it's neither lost in yesteryear nor does it crave for tomorrow. Love is NOW! do not find themselves particularly perturbed about death. J Neville Ward - Friday Afternoon The most earthy and universal manifestation of divine love is erotic love. In the attraction between the sexes rests the underlying drama of life - the yearning of the differentiated parts of the Supreme to be integrated once again. The human being is both aware of himself as an individual and as a part of something greater. As an individual he soon finds little of permanence to cling to, and he casts about for the answer to his existence, seeks endlessly for his greater Self, the vaster existence in which he has his true being. The desire to unite, to fuse, to combine, is his great subconscious longing to become immortal, to return once again to a state of wholeness and completeness that is dimly and only subconsciously remembered. Such basic underlying motivation readily impels him to unite with a member of the opposite sex, seeking in that union a spiritual fulfilment in which the erotic portion is purely a symbol of the ecstasy and perfection sought by the soul. Sexual union reproduces the species, carries on the long string of differentiation of the eternal and infinite Divine. Each step in that progression is made possible by the individual seeking his greater Self through union with another, and thus the erotic aspect of sexual union has a deep and persistent spiritual drive which, if ignored, defeats sexual union altogether. In describing her religious ecstasy St Teresa wrote that an angel bearing a long burning spear with a fiery tip "plunged it into my deepest innards. When he drew it out, I thought my entrails would have been drawn out too, and when he left me I glowed in the hot fire of love for God. The pain was so strong, and the sweetness thereof was so passing great, that no one could ever wish to lose it." Bernini's famous sculpture of the saint in the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome captures the moment she describes - and its ambiguity - perfectly. Let this be my parting word, That what I have seen is unsurpassable. I have tasted of the hidden honey of this lotus That expands on the ocean of light, And thus am I blessed. Let this be my parting word. In this playhouse of infinite forms I have had my play
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