Speaker 1: Perfect love. The children of Light who abide in the
Kingdom of Heaven see the universe in all that it contains,
as the manifestation of one law, the law of love.
They see love as the molding, sustaining, protecting, and perfecting
power imminent in all things animate and inanimate. To them,
love is not merely and only a rule of life.
It is the law of life. It is life itself.
Knowing this, they order their whole life in accordance with love,
not regarding their own personality. By thus practicing obedience to
the highest, to divine love, they become conscious partakers of
the power of love, and so arrive at perfect freedom
as masters of destiny. The universe is preserved because love
is at the heart of it. Love is the only
preservative power. Whilst there is hatred in the heart of man,
he imagines the law to be cruel. But when his
heart is mellowed by compassion and love, he perceives that
the law is infinite kindness. So kind is the law
that it protects man from his own ignorance. Man, in
his puny efforts to subvert the law by attaching undue
importance to his own little personality, brings upon himself such
trains of suffering that he is at last compelled, in
the depth of his afflictions to seek for wisdom, and
finding wisdom, he finds love and knows it as the
law of his being, the law of the universe. Love
does not punish Man punishes himself by his own hatred,
by striving to preserve evil, which has no life by
which to preserve itself, and by trying to subvert love,
which can neither be overcome nor destroyed, being the substance
of life. When a man burns himself, does he accuse
the fire. Therefore, when a man suffers, let him look
for some ignorance or disobedience within himself. Love is perfect harmony,
pure bliss, and contains therefore no element of suffering. Let
a man think no thought and do no act which
is not in accordance with pure love, and suffering shall
no more trouble him. If a man would know love
and partake of its undying bliss, he must practice it
in his heart. He must become love. He who always
acts from the spirit of love, is never deserted, is
never left in a dilemma or difficulty. For love, impersonal
love is both knowledge and power. He who has learned
how to love has learned how to master every difficulty,
how to transmute every failure into success, to clothe every
event and condition in the garments of blessedness and beauty.
The way to love is by self mastery. In traveling
that way, a man builds himself up in knowledge. As
he proceeds. Arriving at love, he enters into full possession
of body and mind by right of the divine power
which he has earned. Perfect love casteth out fear. To
know love is to know that there is no harmful
power in the whole universe. Even sin itself, which the
worldly and unbelieving imagine is so unconquerable, is known as
a very weak and perishable thing that shrinks away and
disappears before the compelling power of good. Perfect love is
perfect harmlessness, and he who has destroyed in himself all
thoughts of harm and all desire to harm, receives the
universal protection and knows himself to be invincible. Perfect love
is perfect patience. Anger and irritability cannot dwell with it
nor come near it. It sweetens every bitter occasion with
the perfume of holiness and transmutes trial into divine strength.
Complaint is foreign to it. He who loves bewields nothing,
but accepts all things and conditions as heavenly guests. He
is therefore constantly blessed, and sorrow does not overtake him.
Perfect love is perfect trust. He who has destroyed the
desire to grasp can never be troubled with the fear
of loss. Loss and gain are alike foreign to him.
Steadfastly maintaining a loving attitude of mind toward all and
pursuing in the performance of his duties a constant and
loving activity, love protects him and evermore supplies him in
fullest measure with all that he needs. Perfect love is
perfect power. The wisely loving heart commands, without exercising any authority,
all things that all men obey. Him who obeys the
highest he thinks, and low he has already accomplished. He
speaks and behold A world hangs upon his simple utterances.
He has harmonized his thoughts with the imperishable and unconquerable forces,
and for him, weakness and uncertainty are no more. His
every thought is a purpose, his every act is an accomplishment.
He moves with the great law, not setting his puny
personal will against it, and he thus becomes a channel
through which the divine power can flow in unimpeded and
beneficent expression. He has thus become power itself. Perfect love
is perfect wisdom. The man who loves all is the
man who knows all. Having thoroughly learned the lessons of
his own heart, he knows the task and trials of
other hearts, and adapts himself to them gently and without ostentation.
Love illuminates the intellect. Without it, the intellect is blind
and cold and lifeless. Love succeeds where the intellect fails,
sees where the intellect is blind, knows where the intellect
is ignorant. Reason is only completed in love, and is
ultimately absorbed in it. Love is the supreme reality in
the universe, and as such it contains all truth, infinite tenderness,
and folds and cherishes the universe. Therefore, it is the
wise man, gentle and childlike and tender hearted. He sees
that the one thing which all creatures need is love,
and he gives it unstintingly. He knows that all occasions
require the adjusting power of love, and he ceases from harshness.
To the eye of love, all things are revealed not
as an infinity of complex events, but in the light
of eternal principles, out of which spring all cause and effects,
and back into which they return. God is Love. Therefore,
then love is nothing more than perfect. He who would
find pure knowledge, let him find pure love. Perfect love
is perfect peace. He who dwells with it has completed
his pilgrimage in the underworld of sorrow, with mine calm
and heart at rest. He has banished the shadows of
grief and knows the deathless life. If thou wouldst perfect
thyself in knowledge, perfect thyself in love, if thou wouldst
reach the highest ceaselessly cultivate a loving and compassionate heart,