Love, the Law of Life

The existence within man of such a spirit of mutual help is a patent fact; but from the point of view of the inner life it cannot be called a highly refined, abounding life. It is mechanical and superficial. We must rise from this level up to the level of psychic love. Take, for example, sexual love. Nothing is more easily awakened than sexual desire. Yet, woman is subject to menstruation, conception, weakness, illness, and other uncombatable conditions, at which times she is unable to satisfy the sexual desire of man. But when, in spite of these obstacles a husband feels bound to love his wife, it is because a psychic love constrains him. Where a husband, apart from sexual desire, loves his wife and respects her personality, he exhibits a love which is higher than the mere physical.

Kuriyagawa Hakuson has said, “A love surpassing sexual desire comes into being. It may be called passionate love.’ This passion is not sexual love, for unless desire becomes stronger and more psychic, true passionate love does not arise. I agree with Hakuson’s view of passionate love. We must all rise from physical to psychic love. If the Japanese people could awaken to psychic love, they would quickly abolish the system of licensed prostitution. This system will not be destroyed merely by campaigns to remove licensed quarters, by free retirement, or by laws for the protection of prostitutes. More basic than such superficial movements is the fundamental necessity of refining men’s love, of awakening them to advance from physical to psychic love. Choosing a wife only for the purpose of satisfying the physical passion is not true love. The wife thus chosen is no more than a prostitute; and the man is not a husband. In such a union there is nothing wholesome. In the same way, 2 woman who enters into a union which does not depend on psychic love, is only selling her body.

We must rise, then, from the lower to the higher love. Unless we mount up from the plane of the physical to the higher plane of the psychic, we cannot attain to true love. But in speaking thus, I do not mean to say that psychic love is the highest kind of love: it is not. It is the first step up toward the love which is based upon freedom of conscience. Psychic love leads us thither.

All psychic love, of course, is not passionate love. There is the love that is based on tastes and on learning, and there is also the love between individuals in groups which are drawn together by community of interests in social amusements and the arts. These are forms of psychic love, but they can be enjoyed only in cases where there is harmony with the social nature of the group. Individuals who are unduly retarded, as well as those who are too advanced, are not tolerated in this plane of psychic love: if one is somewhat too advanced, it is a case of so-called ‘“‘dangerous thought,” while if too retarded, it is denominated “‘criminal’’; and in a purely psychic society neither of these can exist.

Our modern life stands on a certain conscious level. To illustrate, it is generally known that a telephone call is made in a certain manner, and a mental plane in which the telephone is made the center, is constructed. Then, upon this plane of common sense are maintained various combinations, economies, and cultures. That is to say, an individual’s entrance into a group is conditioned upon every one in the group maintaining a certain conscious unity; but if a mischievous boy abuses the telephone, the officials will take measures against the boy’s household as offenders.

Psychic love, which has no place for the unduly advanced or for moral laggards, can hardly be considered a well developed love. Here, then, we must rise to the third level, to the love that is third in order of emergence.

The third plane of love is that of love based upon conscience.

When the great cosmic will begins to stir in our souls—that will which leads us to train those who are too retarded and repress those who are too advanced for the unificative system; to shun neither of these groups, but seek to have each individual do his best to keep step with the others and advance together, even though there be cases when we find it very difficult to love—there arises spontaneously the resolve to forget personal regard and go on loving the fallen to the utmost. I may be walking on a highway with -an enemy on my right and a sinner on my left, but if I have the abounding spirit that will make me walk along with them without accusing them, and even, if necessary, stop my own advance and freely exert myself on behalf of sinner and enemy, then I may be said to have mounted up from psychic to conscientious love.

A person witnessing such expression of conscientious + love may ask, ‘‘Is that not futile? Can limited human strength maintain such love?” Quite true: if I endeavored thus perfectly to love in my own strength alone, it would indeed be impossible; but if I can draw upon a supply of power from a Being greater ~ than I hidden within me, then I can do perfectly what is humanly impossible—even service to my enemy. _

Yes, it is not I who loves the sinner; it is God, who. first loves us and then perfects within us the love which loves sinners. If there were no redemption and no resurrection in the cosmos, the effort to love sinners and enemies would in the end be futile; but when I perceive a power and a law in the cosmos which work through me for enemies and sinners, then I know that; my efforts will never be in vain.

-God’s redemption does not come down miraculously from heaven: it flows through human channels. God bestows his uplifting power upon the weak and the powerless, but invariably He works through human agents. It is a fundamental principle that if there is anywhere in the universe a single flaw, the whole universe suffers; just as in the human body suppuration in one part causes pain throughout the body, and if the condition is allowed to persist, the final result is the destruction of the whole body.

If there were only one sinner in the universe, all | creation would suffer sorrow and pain—God and [| © alike would suffer, and thereupon would be born | spontaneously the energy which lifts up the sinner. / A wound on the little finger, as compared with the whole body, is a small thing; but when we remember that the continued bleeding of the little finger would eventually exhaust all the blood, we cannot view lightly the blood of the little finger. However, when Wwe are wounded, the red corpuscles of the blood spontaneously sacrifice themselves, stanch the flow, and prevent the loss of all the blood. We need to. learn a lesson from the sacrifice of the red corpuscles.

God’s energy is expended upon very insignificant sinners, and humanity wearies itself on behalf of its defectives. In both are to be seen the principle of the red corpuscles of the blood.

Human beings have no power to develop at will. Those who would advance are held back by the sins of their forbears. A crime perpetrated by an individual in some far-away corner of the globe affects the whole of mankind. As the water of the Sumida River joins with the waters of the Pacific, so the defects, the sufferings, of every individual become the defects and the agonies of the whole world of men. Therefore, if we wish to live complete human lives, we must begin to atone for the sins of others. God, in order to perfect His own life upon the earth, saves beings who are imperfect. In order to accomplish this He first arouses in men the spirit of sacrifice.

To every one of the sixteen hundred millions of humanity there is granted more or less of the life of conscience. Some are not aware of it, but it cannot be denied that among them all there exists a hidden love that is neither physical nor psychic. Indeed, « everyone possesses the spirit which says, “I will sac- | rifice, though I do suffer loss.”

After the Tokyo earthquake there came a contribution of relief funds from a famine district in Finland —a, perfect example of this kind of love. Those people were quite unrelated to us by blood and were suffering from famine more than were the people of Tokyo; but they sent their contribution from afar, and their action becomes a revelation of a great, deep love “for the sake of the communal existence of humanity.” Through love there is at work an activity which would reform the defects of mankind. It is not the love between blood relations; nor is it sexual passion, nor authority. It is indeed the motion of the unseen cosmic will. Only through the moving power of the great cosmic will can the regenerative energy become operative for purifying sinful men and giving them power to advance. When we feel the working of this great principle, we comprehend the law stated by Jesus: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains a single grain; but if it dies, it bears rich fruit.”

We say redemption is from God, but if there is no \ perfecting of God’s work in the universe, then there is nothing in the world so absurd as men giving their lives in sacrifice. However, if men can by making a — small sacrifice, bring about the accomplishment of a | far greater work, such sacrifice is truly noble and of © real worth. If our sacrificial death contributes toward | the greater Divine Life and progress, we shall never | seek to flee from the pangs of death. at

Jesus’ love for mankind had its inception in this broad point of view; and unless men advance to this point, the perfecting of human love cannot be expected. If we loved only those related to us by flesh and blood, we should be quite willing to kill or do as we please with those not related to us. Furthermore, if love is merely of psychic origin, then those who can labor will oppress those who cannot; the well-to-do will despise the beggars; and men will illtreat women and children.

But there is a significance in the existence of every “being in the world. God never creates anything useless. A baby, though at present a burden, will, a few decades hence, render some great service; and the man now old and dependent has done a great work in the past. Thinking thus, we see that there can be no justification for taking a person’s life, be he crippled or disabled or whatever he be. There is no reason why we should love those who bestow gifts upon us and kill those who do not. That in the battle for existence only the strong should win and their victory be acknowledged, is, for men who are striving to bring God’s work upon earth to its perfection, absolutely unthinkable. From such considerations as the foregoing arises the necessity for our effort to lift up, to restore, to make atonement for, men who live by low moral standards and even those regarded commonly as most insignificant and worthless. This effort is, indeed, creative

The effort to become famous does not entail great exertion, but the task of lifting fallen folk up to a plane higher than one’s own, demands untold exertion; and therein is the power of creative

If men say, as Nietzsche does, that no one loves the weak, the world as a whole will never become better.

In order truly to strengthen mankind the weak must first be made strong, ugliness be changed to beauty, and evil be replaced by goodness. The power that works such transformations is that of re-creation. It is the art above all arts, the device that infuses new light and life into marred souls and creates them afresh. Can there be in the world such a potent regenerative activity? It is easy to model a beautiful form in clay, but how difficult to take a woman, befouled with sins, scorned by the world, ignored, and weeping, and refashion her into the likeness of a new”

‘child of God. If this be not the highest human art, what then may it be? It is the very essence of the art of life.

The love of Jesus, which tenderly lifted up a prostrate vile harlot, breathed love into her and poured out compassion upon her—that is true love for humanity. It is different absolutely from passion: it is the same love which in the beginning created the cosmos. God’s power is at work; His electric energy passes into the consciences of men, melting them as in a white-hot crucible, and sinful souls and human derelicts emerge as re-created souls. This is rebirth, resurrection; it is creation; it is religion.

Religion is not weak self-satisfaction. Would-be religious people who take selfish satisfaction merely in dressing up in their best clothes and going to worship at church on Sunday have no genuine religion. If that is what is called Christianity, then there is nothing else as weak as Christianity.

True religion, true Christianity, is nothing else than _ameans of life. It is the entrance of God’s power into sinful souls. If it be not courageous, sturdy, and burning like a flame, it is not real religion. It must dare to rise bravely, though it must suffer, though it must be fated even to bear a cross. |

Jesus said, ‘““He who will not take his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.”’ Without the determination to bear suffering, it is impossible to enter into the new creation. The sculptor, though poor, buys marble. The man who would implant in © his generation the religion-of conscience must first resolve to sacrifice everything; and the man lacking this resolution need not try to follow Jesus, for Jesus will not count him a disciple. But, in order to create a world in which there is no stain or blemish, no clash | of classes, no oppression, but all participating in an organic relation, like flower, stem, and root, with not one man hating another, it is necessary to go forward loving both enemies and sinners. To this end, man must bear suffering gladly. This is the way of the cross.