Agape Love

Excerpted from an essay originally written by Dr. Edgar Mitchell & Bob Staretz

Throughout the ages great spiritual teachers from all traditions have spoken of reality being a limitless, transcendent and holistic consciousness. Partly as a result of the legacy of the French philosopher Descartes in the 16th century and the separations of the domains of religious and scientific thought and inquiry, the spiritual view of reality has all but been ignored by modern science until very recently. Yet, our spiritual teachers have taught us for millennia that we all have the ability to experience transcendent states of awareness and intentionality (so called spiritually transformative experiences or epiphanies) and that they are demonstrably resident in the human condition. These states are now beginning to be understood as fundamental properties of our consciousness.

We are finally beginning to recognize that these states have been visited and utilized for millennia by both our ancestors and contemporaries. These enlightened individuals have been called by many names including avatars, mystics, sages, saints, gurus and shamans. By whatever name they have been called, all held a similar world view and advocated oneness, unconditional love, living harmoniously with nature and one’s fellow humans and recognizing the interconnectedness and interdependence of all creation.

Everywhere we look all things in nature exist and work together in total balance, resonance and harmony, the whole and all of nature’s parts interact as one. When looking at it from this perspective, one is drawn to the obvious conclusion that the organizing principle of the Cosmos is agape love. This ultimate form of love, known since ancient Greek times, as the totally unconditional love that accepts all things as they exist in nature without regard to conditions, expectations, short comings, flaws or faults. All things in the cosmos without exception respond favorably to agape love. It is, therefore, easy to conclude that it is the organizing principle for all of creation.

As a consequence, the recognition of the interconnectedness of all things, the time has come for the paradigm of “every man for himself” fueled by greed, scarcity and survival must be supplanted by the paradigm “all for one and one for all” driven by the spirit of harmony, altruism and unity. All of humanity must come to understand that we really are only as strong as our weakest link; that what we do to others we do to ourselves; that literally “what comes around goes around”. When this realization comes about solutions to every major threat, problem or challenge we face will likely quickly find their remedy.

For millennia, many of the great philosophers, sages, mystics, shamans and wise men taught that life’s true meaning and purpose is to love all things unconditionally and to accept all exactly as it is presented to us without conditions. One does not have to look very far to see that this operating principle, agape love, is found everywhere in nature. Since it is nature to all living things is to live in harmony with the natural world as it is, so it is for humanity to return to our roots to learn, to grow and to evolve into a state where one becomes the complete manifestation of this organizing principle.

In modern times, those who undergo a spiritually transformative experience such as a mystical state induced by a psychedelic experience, a near death experience or something similar will attest that, after they have integrated their profound experience that loving each other and all of nature is the central reason for our existence. This message is a recurring theme, not just in these experiences, but in the belief systems of all of the world’s major religions. As we have seen it is also the primary message of all the wisdom seekers of the last several millennia.

Truth of this understanding, though hard to come by, can be found as embedded elements in ancient teachings as far back as Confucius. An early version of the “Golden Rule” is attributed to him as its original source: “What you do not wish for yourself, do not unto others,” or stated another way, “Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself.”

Confucius lived about 2500 years ago yet his words are still relevant and applicable today even though they were formulated and articulated so very long ago. Perhaps his teachings provide an enduring framework for human nature and behavior, which, if achieved and expressed, would result in the creation of a much better world, one which would know more joy than suffering, more plenty than lack, more peace than conflict, and more harmony than discord.

Still today, we still grossly misperceive the nature of reality and our relationship to it, and to ourselves. We cling to our false or incomplete knowledge, beliefs, values, paradigms, and perceptions. These misperceptions account for nearly all of the problems our species is encountering including the harm we are doing to ourselves and to all the co-inhabitants of our home, planet Earth. If we really understood nature in a deep sense, most if not all of the challenges currently afflicting humankind would likely be resolved in short order.

Many current world crises, including energy consumption, inadequate health care, resource scarcity and consumption, rampant malnutrition, environmental degradation, climate change, and violent conflict between countries, ideologies, regions and religions, technological overreach, are not isolated events. Growing evidence suggests that myriad misunderstood phenomena in nature be they physical, mental, or spiritual, may be best explainable by a framework that treats all things and events in the world as interdependent components of an inseparable whole or Oneness.

Science certainly recognizes that if humanity is to survive and thrive in the future we must live in harmony with nature and among ourselves. We cannot destroy the environment that we evolved from and look to for supporting ourselves without it. To thrive and survive well into the future we must go further and fully explore the implications of the hypothesis of interconnectedness and Oneness.

In order to create the fundamental shift in consciousness necessary to preserve our civilization, our goal must be to fully integrate the reductionist, and prevailing and purely materialistic view, characterized by classical Newtonian science, with the holistic view emerging out of all promising disciplines in a manner that also recognized a oneness of enlightened consciousness and transcendent states of awareness as the fundamental aspect of reality. Once this happens this holistic view can then be applied to the macroscopic world including living systems, social and cultural phenomena.

Just as modern man displaced Neanderthal man, so too must modern man evolve to the next level of further knowledge, sophistication and evolution, which we call “Homo Noeticus”. Indicators abound that time is running out on what is now called “post modernism”. We must swiftly evolve to the next level by eradicating pervasive ignorance concerning who we really are and what our true destiny should be. We must recognize that the current behaviors and practices of global civilization are not sustainable or face the extreme likelihood of mass chaos and destruction, if not extinction all together. Indeed, some have called this “as the need for a conscious evolution” as we move into the future.

Sometimes evolution occurs voluntarily by choice prompted by invention, discovery or epiphany. Other times, evolution occurs involuntarily, forcibly and painfully where change is resisted and fought, but change comes nevertheless through chaotic upheaval, disaster and cataclysmic crises, often times involving a massive amount of death and destruction, such as the Dark Ages following the fall of the Roman Empire.

Humankind’s next phase of evolution will be more of a conscious evolution in thought, knowledge, awareness and spirituality than one involving our biology or physiology. It will likely be an evolution in consciousness triggered by a dramatic change in perceptions, values, beliefs and attitudes leading to a profound resultant shift in human behavior. And it will be grounded in the unconditional love for all things; agape love...