Transcription
Just to say again, in terms of this dynamic, this ecology of love: the eros, the erotic component in the love, we're saying that the eros will tend, will insist and push and open, in a way that creates more, or discovers more (both, really) in the object that it loves, in the thing that it loves (in this case, nature), will impregnate it, so to speak, through its involvement with psyche, to give imaginal levels to the perception of the object, of nature, of another, and will fabricate more, give complexity and richness and depth and dimensionality to nature, in this case, to the earth, or something, some particular object there. In that, then, eros is encountering, so to speak, a new object, a bigger object, and a more interesting, a richer, more juicy, complex, multidimensional object, a more multidimensional and rich and eventually divine, we're saying, sacred, sense of, experience of nature, in this case, or this other, and that excites eros more, and so there's this mutual enriching, mutual deepening, mutual expanding, and with that the logos, too, the concept, has to expand too.
Now, a couple of things to really point out about this. There may be some objections, but a couple of things. One is that the psyche, through eros, is giving these other dimensions, if you like, we could say. We could realize that the psyche is giving these other dimensions to nature, to earth, and it knows it. I've said in other talks, "seeing image as image," or realizing this is poetic seeing, poetic sensibility, poetic knowing. That's why I use these two words, both of them: the psyche and the perception, through eros and this dynamic, they discover more in the object, other levels in the object, but in a way, they also create that. They discover and create. There's some way of understanding that incorporates both discovery and creation. It's both/and. And somehow, sitting on the cusp there, what allows us to sit on the cusp and include both in our sense of what knowledge is and what happens when we know and encounter something, when we experience anything, what happens in perception, is an understanding of emptiness. It's the understanding of emptiness that allows this discover/create, this kind of incorporation of both of them.
So I'm not talking here about what I'm going to call a New Age style of understanding, where one typically, or it seems to me, there's an assumption that what one perceives or what one conceives of in terms of the way I look at this plant is some kind of objective, independently existing reality, where there isn't an awareness of "I'm fabricating in a certain way. Fabrication of perception is always there," or there isn't an awareness of choosing to see and to sense in a certain way. So I'm not talking about that New Age way, and I'm not really talking about the modernist way of understanding what knowledge is and what perception is, again, where there's an assumption of an objective, independent reality, just very different versions of what that is.
So in and through everything I'm talking about, there is what I believe and conceive to be a more sophisticated philosophy, a philosophy of knowledge, of epistemology, what's called, and ontology, what's real and all that. Something more sophisticated in terms of depth of insight is going on. It's allowed, in the Dharma direction, or from the Dharma direction, it's allowed through the deep understanding of emptiness, so that what opens here in terms of these other dimensions and the multiplicity of dimensions in our perception of nature, our sense of nature, is a valid way of knowing. We realize the psyche is somehow giving this to its object that it loves, to the sense of nature. But it's still a valid way of knowing, and it's valuable, and it gives value. But there's not a naïve realism involved there in any direction. There's something quite sophisticated, a kind of razor's edge between, a razor's edge of emptiness, really, and although the razor's edge, of course, is very thin, it actually allows an enormity of view and a ranging of view. So that's one thing that needs realizing.
A second thing. Someone might be hearing all this, and especially, of course, if you've been exposed to a lot of traditional Dharma teachings, you might get quite nervous here because of the very word 'eros' and its connotations of sexuality and desire and sensuality and all that, and its associations with that. You might think, "Well, when is this eros business, and especially the 'more' in eros, the pothos in eros, when does that not just become greed?" Greed in Dharma conception traditionally is just a kilesa, in the traditional Dharma conception. It's just a kilesa, a defilement. It's a problem. It causes suffering for self and others.
So this is a really important question. What is it, sometimes, that, if you like, constrains or subverts or distorts eros so that it actually becomes greed, and the 'more' in it, the wanting more, the pothos, just ends up being endless greed? Well, there's a lot to say about this. One answer is when the psyche or the imaginal, or the logos, the conceptual framework, either/or or both, are limited in some way, then this actually constrains and subverts the eros, and it will become greed. One obvious example is if the logos, the conceptual framework, of nature is just a one-dimensional physicalism, that kind of view that's the dominant view of modernism -- nothing but meaningless matter, atoms, building blocks, as we talked about before, randomly moving, and through that random movement like a sort of machine, creates what it creates, in terms of the diversities of nature. One-dimensional physicalism, that kind of view, is actually a limited logos, of course.
What happens then? What happens then in relationship to nature? What happens is that the eros that's part of the psyche, that is an indispensable aspect of the psyche, it becomes greed. Then you get the growth economy gone mad, without realizing or wanting to acknowledge the finiteness of the earth's resources, the finiteness of the biosphere, the finiteness of what we live in. Back in, I think it was the early 1970s, I think 1972, there was a seminal paper by the Club of Rome called Limits to Growth, I think it was called, actually just pointing out, "Hey, we live on a finite planet, materially. There's a limit to what our atmosphere can handle. There's a limit to material resources that we can dig up out of the earth, etc." Really, really important to recognize that and to voice that. In a way, when greed's gone mad, it doesn't want to see that. There's the insistence on "the economy must grow, the economy, da-da-da-da." Only one way of thinking about economics is that the economy needs to grow. There are limits to growth. That's really, really important.
But in a way, part of the problem with that, or a whole other level of the problem with that, is that because of the one-dimensionality of view and perception of what nature, earth, planet, we and others are, there's nowhere for the eros and the psyche and the logos to expand. There's nowhere to get more, this wanting more. There's nowhere to get more other than at the horizontal level, because the horizontal level is all that exists. There is just the material. Whether it's an individual wanting more, more cars, more houses, more this, more that, more plasma TVs, whatever it is, individual materialism in that sense of a lifestyle, or social materialism, this expansion to get more, it can only go horizontal. It must expand because of the 'more' in the eros, and it can only expand horizontally, and with devastating consequences.
[10:27] But if this whole dynamic, if you like, of eros-psyche-logos is allowed, each aspect of that dynamic -- the eros, the psyche, the logos; the erotic, the imaginal, and the conceptual, if you like -- if those dimensions of our being in relation to nature or in relation to anything are allowed to grow, they're not impeded, they're not hindered or constrained or locked down through some kind of clinging or fixedness of image or fixedness of view, of concept, then there can be a kind of infinite growth, an infinite getting more, discovering more, having more of what eros wants. An infinite growth in that sense, without the greed on the material level. So there are limits on the material level; of course there are. But if the soul's way of knowing, if we put it that way, if the facets of this dynamism of eros-psyche-logos, of the erotic, the imaginal, and the conceptual aspects of the soul -- if the facets of the dynamism of the soul, facets of the dynamism of perception, of the soul's way of knowing, facets of that ecology of love, if they are allowed to expand unhindered, unimpeded by a kind of fixation in terms of view or image or idea, then eros can expand as it wants to, and thrust deeper as it wants to, and open more as it wants to, without its 'more' being a demand on the material level, because it's getting, it's able to get, other kinds of 'more,' more at other dimensions and levels of perception, other levels of fulfilment, of beauty, of nourishment.
Actually, you know, maybe another example would help to make it clearer, this connection between limitations on view, idea, logos, sense, and also on psyche or image, the way limitations on view, if you like, distort or deflect eros into greed. Another example I'm thinking may be more helpful, probably because it's more tangible in one's own life, visible in one's own personal life, at least to some extent. I'm not sure if it's maybe more subtle, but maybe it's more fundamental. I'm not sure. Anyway, another example of the way we can see this working is, I'm thinking of the tendency we can get into as human beings sometimes. Sometimes it can actually dominate our relationship to existence: the tendency to be pulled or driven to accumulate experiences, to kind of collect experiences. People talk quite commonly, there's the phrase a 'bucket list.' A bucket list of things to do or experience before I die. That's quite a common kind of notion that people have in their life, even from quite a young age.
Or more specifically with regard to earth and nature, and not necessarily in relation to dying, we can see sometimes people get into this tendency to want to, or actually to fly all over the world, over a year or several times a year, flying here, there, going on holiday or calling it travelling or whatever, to see and experience this place or that place, or this or that, all around the world. What's going on with the eros there? Okay, what's going on in that example with the eros? Note a few things, notice a few things here. Let's take that example of going on holiday, this place and that. The eros there, or involved in that, actually includes -- even emphasizes -- the sensual, or what we might call the sensual.
So, typically a person wants to travel to this place, experience the cuisine there or whatever, exotic cuisine, despite the fact that you can get most of the stuff in Tesco these days, or your local corner store, if you still have a corner store. But there's this sensual element through the cuisine, through experiencing certain sights, or colours of a sunset in this place, or the vistas, to go experience this beach, swim in this place or that place, whatever. The dimension of the sensual is definitely included and even emphasized.
So it can seem, if we don't really probe deeply this whole question of eros and what it is and what it does, it can seem like that whole movement to want to do all that includes the erotic and is indicative of someone who has a kind of fuller eros in their life (not just sexual, but in terms of their relationship with sensuality). But the eros-psyche-logos dynamic is often limited when there's that kind of propulsion, pull, drive to collect experiences.
We can focus in a little bit: the logos can be limited. Oftentimes, as I said, it's a one-dimensional view of earth, of nature, of materiality -- also self, and we'll get to that. But the logos is limited. Often it's through the one-dimensionality of view. And so the 'more' in the eros, the pothos in the eros, this wanting more, will just go out and out and out, and turn into greed: "I want more and more." And more and more can only go one place: "Next year we'll go there. In the spring we'll go there," etc., whatever it is. You can see this not just in relation to holidaying and travelling. You can see it in relation to food, to anything, really.
[17:40] So that's one thing to note. Note also, here, with regard to the eros, and especially with regard to psyche and the way that interacts with eros, notice that it's not that fantasy with eros is a problem. Which is the usual supposition, isn't it? We think when there's eros and there's fantasy, "You're just asking for trouble. That's a disastrous recipe. It's pornography and all the rest of it." We so quickly suppose that eros is a problem, fantasy is a problem, and the combination is an even bigger problem. But here, in these kind of examples, what we're talking about is actually either a kind of absence, or more accurately, a kind of poverty of the imaginal, a psychic poverty, a poverty of the psyche, in relationship to the eros or when it comes in contact with the eros, so that there isn't this opening up, revealing, discovering of other dimensions. The vertical spectrum, the vertical dimension, does not open up. Things are just one-dimensional to us. That's the perception, that's the belief, that's the very sense of things.
So the sense of things is not opening up through the imaginal and through the psyche. And again, the 'more' in the eros, the pothos in the eros, will want more, and it only has one place to go. That kind of very impoverished relationship, or the poverty of psyche in relationship to eros, becomes a problem, not the fact that there is the imagination with eros. Or the problem with the dimension of the psyche in this nexus with eros, the problem is that a fantasy or an image is locked onto and believed as literal. One is not knowing image as image, not seeing image is image. Or again, related to this, we're totally believing the kind of modernist ideal of non-fantasy in relation to perception. We believe that, and there's a kind of realism, basically. But again, it's one-dimensional. So that disregard of fantasy through an actual logos impoverishes the imaginal, the psychic influx or interaction with the eros. Again, one-dimensionality. So in all these ways, we see limits on the logos, limitations on the logos, constrictions, rigidity, and also on the psyche, will mean that the eros gets deflected or distorted, really, into what we might call greed, something unhelpful.
Notice a third thing here. This is quite a subtle point, but a third thing about the way eros is working -- rather, to draw out something implicit in what I said, a subtle distinction about the way eros is working here. Often when people do, nowadays, talk about the necessity to reclaim, rediscover, reincorporate a sense of the sacredness of nature, and to feel and view nature that way, sometimes implicit in that is that out of that view or perception of sacredness of nature comes a kind of respect for nature -- deep respect for nature, which, if you like, kind of inhibits certain ways of relating to nature in terms of exploitation or commodifying or whatever. So that's actually really important to realize, this view of sacredness leading to respect, and that functioning in a kind of inhibitive way, partly in an inhibitive way. That's really crucial. I really want to include that in what I'm saying about the way eros works.
But there's something subtly different in recognizing that eros, when it's allowed, through an allowing, a non-restriction of the psyche and logos, opens a natural dynamic for the soul. We're talking about something that's natural to the dynamic of the soul and of perception, so that rather than any kind of inhibition that's coming out of respect, the eros is just naturally channelled to be able to get the 'more' that it wants in ways that are not exploitative, are not commodifying in any way. So the natural dynamic through the eros and the psyche and the logos that opens up the sense of sacredness just means naturally the behaviour changes. It's not really even to do with any kind of inhibition. It's just the eros is allowed, if you like, full throttle, to have what it wants. But it gets that 'what it wants' and that 'more' at other levels and through the very sense of sacredness.
[24:16] When other levels of perception are opened for us through this involvement, co-feeding, co-constellating, co-deepening of eros-psyche-logos, when other levels of perception beyond the one-dimensional open for us, when we discover/create/find that in others, and that is allowed to have its own kind of infinitude, a way where it just opens and then is there at a certain stage, if you like, or range for a while, and then can open again and again, because neither the eros nor the psyche nor the logos is being limited or constricted or fixed or rigidified, when that can have its kind of endless movement of expansion, then eros will get the 'more' that it wants, but it does so without exploiting earth/nature in any of the ways I've described, without seeing earth/nature or other as a commodity. This applies to 'other' in relationship, it applies to earth/nature, the sense of any other. It gets its 'more' in other ways. It gets other kinds of 'more' than just the accumulation of more experience at one level, at a horizontal level. Other 'mores,' other kinds of 'more,' other 'mores' are available to it, and it gets a fulfilment through that. Actually, other 'mores' become not just available but natural. We relate differently because we see differently. But when the co-involvement and co-fertilization of eros, psyche, or logos is blocked or restricted from any one of those directions, that's when we get the problems. That's when problems occur.
Going back to when I said there's a void in terms of sacredness, and a void in terms of how we think of love and all that, what are the consequences? They're absolutely devastating. What happens in relation to anything, whether that's a partner, or a husband, or a wife, or something, or someone, or nature, anything? What happens in relation to anything, when any one or more of the erotic, imaginal, or conceptual facets of our being, when any one or more of those, in relation to any thing, are constrained or limited or fixed or locked down? What happens when they're not allowed, their movement and their growth, and their mutual fertilization and impregnation? What happens to our love for this person, in this relationship, this marriage or whatever it is that lasts? What happens there? What happens to the love?
What happens to the view, the sense, and the experience of that thing, whether it's a person or partner, whether it's ourselves? This also applies to our self. Eros-psyche-logos get locked down, or hindered, or stuck in relation to the self and the view of the self. Whether it's in relation to anything -- other, self, world, nature; same with Dharma -- what happens when these things, one of them or others, get stuck, fixed, hindered in relation to our view and our sense of what the Dharma is? Or of what eros is? Or of what the soul or psyche is? Or of what conceptuality is, if I only have a limited view of conceptuality and concepts that are possible? What happens to the love, what happens to the very sense, the very experience and view of whatever it is that we actually care about?
There can be a lot of care, just as in a relationship -- I care about this person; something's happened, though, over time, in my relationship with this person, and the eros has gone. Something has locked down the eros, stagnated it, or it's lost its life. Something in that fertility of the dynamic and the movement of the dynamic, that involvement of eros-psyche-logos and the way they can impregnate each other and grow together, something's got stuck there, and it's affected how I see my partner, how I see nature, how I see myself, how I see the Dharma. Whatever it's in relationship to, it's got stuck. Still the care there. But something's got limited. And a level of vitality and enrichment and growth has gone. Gone from that relationship, gone from that perception, gone from that love.
[30:03] So if we talk about -- I mean, if we even dare to use such a phrase as 'the fullness of love,' which, again, is probably not even a possibility; it's a direction. The fullness of love. We can point out, we can say a few things. As I said before, it needs not just feeling but action. The fullness of love needs feeling and action. It needs to manifest in our behaviour, in what comes out of the mouth, and what the body does, gestures, acts of kindness. So fullness of love needs not just feeling but action. We said before it needs not just mettā but it also needs eros, the fullness of love, or moving towards the fullness of love, opening up the fullness of love.
Both mettā and eros -- there are other aspects of love, but just today, just emphasizing these -- both mettā and eros, they will tend towards spreading out horizontally, a fullness horizontally. They will spread. The mettā, we talked about this, will spread just by virtue of the aspiration, the ideal image of mettā -- the idea of it is universal; there's a spread, universal, unconditional, to everything, everyone. So mettā will tend to spread horizontally. Eros will also tend to spread, because in this mutual impregnation and growth of the eros, the psyche, the logos, there will be a spilling over, a spreading out into what I call 'cosmopoesis.' The sense and the view that is enriched of whatever this thing is or person that I love begins then spreading out naturally. As I said, the psyche, the imaginal is expanding in that, the logos, the conceptual framework, the ideas expanded, the eros grows in that, and it spreads that view -- whatever view or perception one has arrived at at a certain time, that begins to spread horizontally, to the environment, to the world, to nature, to the cosmos. So both eros and mettā spread horizontally.
The fullness of love, again, if we just dwell with that possibility or that direction, and again, whether this is towards a person or towards nature, it must involve heart, of course. And it must involve soul. By 'soul,' I'm using that word interchangeably with 'psyche.' That involves the imaginal faculty. And it involves the logos, the conceptual framework, the conceiving of what it is that I love. So fullness of love involves not just heart but soul as well, psyche, imagination, logos, the imaginal, the idea and the conception of what it is that I love. In that, in the involvement of soul, as we've said, that opens up this vertical dimension, the multiplicity of other dimensions of perception. That's part of the involvement of soul as part of the fullness of love; it's a necessary aspect, along with heart, of the fullness of love. As I said before, mettā and eros do that in slightly different ways, in different directions, if you like. Mettā will open up the vertical dimensions in a more universal way; the divinity there is more universal. There's a simplification of objects, unity, oneness, etc., whereas eros retains the particulars in its sense of the divine. It complicates, it fabricates, and it retains the particularities.
If we stay with that fullness of love, the fullness of love, related to what we just said and this whole dynamic or ecology of love, the fullness of love needs a sense of mystery. The object, the thing, the person that I love, whether it's nature or whatever, it needs to retain a level of the mysterious, a level of unfathomability, of undefinability. It's almost like that mystery/unfathomability/undefinability is then space for eros to move into in this expansion, space for eros-psyche-logos to move into. There has to be space, like a womb. There has to be space where something can grow, something can get fertilized. That's also attractive -- it gives the pothos in the eros something: "Oh, there's more here. I can probe deeper. I can penetrate deeper. I can open up to more." Because eros needs, as I said, to be able to penetrate and to open to more.
