By Stephen Russell-Lacy.
This is the second script of a series of 6 podcasts asking how we can link ourselves with love and light. One of the great questions of life. In this episode the question arises, if love and light are universal, are they therefore transcendent?
Although we want to look after ourselves, we are also interested in the needs of our family, friends and wider community. We care for what happens to them and want to understand what would be good for them. We love to see things work out well.
Seeing people in the light of love means realising their difficulty, and how to do something about it. Light thrown on their quandary illuminates your understanding. You are not so much in the dark. You now know how to help them.
In other words, we find love and light are at the heart of what is good. This is found in the wise compassion of the carer, the sensible altruism of the community volunteer, the tender affection of the nursing mother, the love of social justice of the idealist.
No wonder then love and light is becoming a popular saying. People will ask for others to send love and light for troubling situations. You might hear others use the phrase as a greeting.
Perception of the universality of love and light
Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so does not awareness of transcendence depend on the individual? Not everybody believes that when their deepest feelings are moved, that they are connecting with a universal spirit of life.
Some may suppose that feeling with love is just an emotion of the heart and seeing in light simply a thought of the head. Or does love and light also exist universally in their own right inspiring your feelings and thoughts? Is it from beyond you as well as experienced within you?
In this transcendent sense of a spirit behind the universe, love and light would create many good things across the world – support, comfort, well-being. In fact, I would suggest they are both present within all good aspects of human character such as courage, patience, endurance, altruism, wisdom, and in all mature loving relationships. Are they not also reflected in good and valued craft work and art?
If so, we can perhaps better appreciate ideas about the All of love and light, the Infinity of love and light, the Power of love and light. The One love and light. Consequently, isn’t love and light the missing phrase? I would suggest it is the universal thing that makes you tick. It is what is ultimately real. Belief in its power can give hope for your own difficulties.
“When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.” (Jimi Hendrix)
May I suggest that to recognise the universal meaning of spirit, you need to elevate your mind. To go beyond the limitations of what is material in time and space. For me then Love and light can be seen as the motivating energy and creative design behind existence.
Loving wisdom
A loving wisdom has been envisioned and commonly reported in the near-death experience which Raymond Moody studied. He looked at those people, who had a close shave with death. Such a person typically reports meeting a supreme Being of Light. People with a Christian background often describe this as God or Jesus. Those with other religious backgrounds may use the name Buddha or Allah. But some have said that it is neither God nor Jesus, but someone very holy nonetheless. No matter what called, the being is said to radiate total love and understanding. So much so, that most people want to be with this Being forever. They sense a light at the end of the tunnel in which they can place their hope.
In his books, spiritual philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg, calls love and light divine love and wisdom. These are two sides of the same coin so to speak. The goodness of love needs wisdom for guidance and the truth of wisdom needs love for its energy. Good feelings without wisdom can descend into mere sentimentality. True ideas without love become heartless, cold and judgmental.
The sun’s radiation
One way to envisage the way both go together is the heat and light that radiate together from the sun. They come from the sun and shine in the world. To grow, plants require both heat and light. Likewise, I would suggest we each need to receive love and wisdom within our soul from our spiritual source: this inner goodness is both within us and from beyond us.
Swedenborg had a vision of what he saw as love and wisdom. He wrote that recently dead people were conscious and walking in what he called the spiritual world. They first turned towards the east, where they saw the sun shining in its strength. They asked about that sun. Could they see the same sun that they knew in their life in the world? It had the same height above them and the same size. They say that it was likewise fiery and had the same colour. It also gave off heat and light.
Apparently, this sun was not the sun of the natural world: it was the sun of the spiritual world: its essence was pure love. Swedenborg reported that the Lord, was in the middle of it. Furthermore, in giving off light and heat, the Divine radiated universally presence. Hence, we find the Divine as all-knowing and all-powerful, in both the natural and spiritual worlds.
Copyright 2021 Stephen Russell-Lacy
Author of Heart, Head & Hands Swedenborg’s perspective on emotional problems
