"True Love is far greater than anything that could be called personal. True Love is a non-personal miracle. It is the nature of reality itself. It is the natural and spontaneous expression of the undivided self……
Intuition of this degree of Love magnetically draws the individual toward it, and at the same time, causes fear to arise. This Love is seeking the dissolution of all separateness, all me-ness, all self concern…..
Love cares not for the me, it cares only for that which is true, undivided and whole.When the me dissolves, when it surrenders itself to a unity far greater than anything the mind can comprehend, that is Love…..
Non-personal Love is not a feeling, yet within it there can be, and there is, feeling and emotion. But the feeling and emotion are not derived from a personal me. The feeling and emotion are derived from the absence of a personal me…..
‘There is profound responsibility in being Love,’ …more than the mind could imagine or hold up under. If most human beings truly realized the impact that they have on the whole, they’d be crushed by the realization of it.”
— Adyashanti
“The Impact of Awakening”
"Only familiarity with the thought of death creates true, inward freedom from material things. The ambition, greed, love of power, lust for security that we keep in our hearts, that shackles us to this life in chains of bondage, cannot in the long run deceive the person who looks death in the face.
Rather, by contemplating our end and the futility of so many of our pursuits, we eventually can be purified and delivered from our baser selves, from material things, as well as from the fear and hatred and jealousy that isolate us from our fellow men and women.
So how can our normal lives and interactions be transformed? By regarding, in moments of deepest concentration, our own lives and those who are part of our lives as though we already had lost them to death, only to receive them back for a little while.
The person who dares to live his life in this way, with death before his eyes, the person who receives life back bit by bit and lives as though it did not belong to him by right but has been bestowed upon him as a temporary gift, such a person has much freedom and peace of mind because he has come a long way in overcoming death."
-- Albert Schweitzer was a theologian, philosopher, organist, and mission doctor in equatorial Africa, who received the 1952 Nobel Prize for Peace for his efforts in behalf of “the Brotherhood of Nations.”
"Respect for life, overcoming coarser impulses and hollow doctrines, leads the individual to live in the service of other people and of every living creature. In contemplation of the will-to-life, respect for the life of others becomes the highest principle and the defining purpose of humanity.
Such was the theory which Schweitzer sought to put into practice in his own life. According to some authors, Schweitzer's thought, and specifically his development of reverence for life, was influenced by Indian religious thought and in particular the Jain principle of ahimsa, or non-violence. Albert Schweitzer has noted the contribution of Indian influence in his book Indian Thought and Its Development:
'The laying down of the commandment to not kill and to not damage is one of the greatest events in the spiritual history of mankind. Starting from its principle, founded on world and life denial, of abstention from action, ancient Indian thought – and this is a period when in other respects ethics have not progressed very far – reaches the tremendous discovery that ethics know no bounds. So far as we know, this is for the first time clearly expressed by Jainism.' ~ Wikipedia
Photo s-- Albert Schweitzer
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