What is the Principle Quality or Feeling of the Universe?
(Chapter 8)
Our observation shows that our planet Earth is providing a smooth ride around the solar system while providing for all our needs 365 days a year, regardless of how we are treating it in return. We see this with our Sun, whose core goes through the 27,000,000°F fusion process to create photons that reach the Earth in 28 minutes, providing energy that plants and other inhabitants transform to be further used by all of Earth’s inhabitants. And the Sun doesn’t offer this energy upon certain conditions of how we will use it. As we see the Sun and Earth as modeling the sharing of resources without expectation, we can view them as models of unconditional love. We also can observe this quality in dogs. They consume maybe 1/10th of what a human does, and they create maybe 100 times more unconditional love as they are tuned with this greater, self-organizing, loving system that we are all a part of.
One reason spiritual experiences are one of the most advanced and unique experiences of human beings, and through these experiences we can discover the overall feeling of the universe. Spiritual experiences come through various modalities including immense suffering, near death experiences, via dance or trance states, deep meditation or focus, intense physical activity, and by consuming psychedelic compounds. A quality that is shared between these states is that a person can experience the loss of their illusive separation, and they experience an awareness of being one with the greater network. In this stage, there is an immense feeling of love, peace, and calm.
Unconditional love is a most enjoyable human experience and is the pinnacle of the emotional part of the cognition process. After all, most spiritual beliefs hold that the fabric of the universe is made of love and that the primary duty of human beings is to recognize and manifest this concept as the ultimate goal of the spiritual journey. In his work The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell shows how most mythical stories of human beings are telling us that the main purpose of creation is the manifestation of unconditional love. In Christianity, for example, these values found their physical embodiment in Jesus Christ’s experience and his core beliefs. On the other hand, the self-serving, protective nature of our linear perception codes our judgments with blame, guilt, and hate. Thinking in terms of blame hinders our ability to forgive, which is an inherent quality of unconditional love.
The mythology of Sufism also states that the creator is love, and it wanted to manifest itself in physical form, so it created angels. But these angels could not feel and suffer the pain that accompanies love. So it created human beings, who are capable of feeling and suffering, to manifest this ultimate goal of creation. In this way, humans are seen as capable of experiencing a more vast spectrum of divine love. This teaching ultimately embodies itself in a great number of Sufis’ personal life experiences. The values were explored in the poetry of love, inspired by the experiences of Rumi, a renowned Persian poet and Sufi mystic born in 1207, and a century later in the work of Hafez, “a Muslim, Persian-speaking sage whose collection of love poetry rivals only Mawlana Rumi in terms of its popularity and influence” (Omid Safi).
Through Love all that is bitter will sweeten.
Through Love all that is copper will be gold.
Through Love all dregs will turn to purest wine.
Through Love all pain will turn to medicine.
Through Love the dead will all become alive.
Through Love the king will turn into a slave!
—Rumi
