There is nothing in human life that is suffered, discussed, described, cheered and sung about as often as love.
There is nothing in human life that is so thoroughly, so lastingly, so fundamentally wrong, misunderstood and misunderstood as love.
The number of separations and divorces is an indication of this in terms of disappointments and misjudgements. However, this also applies to the state of existing partnerships. If you look at them in your immediate surroundings, you may be perplexed as to the stages and final state of the former “love”. Is love what keeps partners together? Where is the state in which he would literally have done anything for her – and where both were endlessly in love with each other? What everyone sees, and what all couples close their eyes to, is that the sacrifice for each other lasts a few months at best (especially for men). Then you live together over the years, full of sympathy and intimacy, but over time more and more side by side. The flash in the pan has died out anyway, but so has the fire. The former attraction has degenerated into weariness. And finally, when things go badly – and this is overwhelmingly often the case – they live against each other. Almost 50 per cent of marriages end in divorce anyway, and a further 40 per cent are perceived to have failed internally. You only have to look around your own social environment. This is the trap for young couples who only have tunnel vision for their own age group. A bitter description of this everyday experience can be found in Leo Tolstoy’s story “The Sonata of the Cross”, chapter 17, in the film drama “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” or in the theatre play “The God of Carnage.” Where has love gone?
Furthermore, the number of men who consume “love” for sale by the hundreds of thousands, nationwide every day, draws attention to the fact that “love” between men and women is perhaps not all that far off. What programmes are in us? Is that love?
The fragility of deep friendships when it comes to tough tests also shows that “love” is not so simple. An old saying goes: “Friends in need / go a thousand to a plumb line.” Since the old unit of measurement, the plumb bob, was only a few grams, it is easy to be sceptical about the reliability of friends in real emergencies. And anyone who has had such experiences knows that this scepticism is all too justified in the reality of everyday life. As the saying goes: “Friendship ends with money.”
Human love
All the variants of love described so far have one thing in common: they are purely human, earthly, worldly forms. There has been no mention of love as our soul sees it, the * love of all and therefore also of enemies. It helps a little when the forefather of Christianity, St Paul, describes it as follows:
“… love is not jealous,
it does not boast or puff itself up. …
it does not seek its own advantage,
it does not allow itself to be provoked,
it bears no grudge against anyone. …
She tolerates everything.”
(1 Cor. 13)
Paul only describes and does not explain; moreover, he only lists what it is not. In any case, he hints at elements of a counter-model to the forms of human love described.
But even these look extraordinarily unworldly, because hardly anyone tolerates everything and refrains from making themselves important and lives for others, sacrificing their possessions and always forgiving everything. But that is exactly what love is, not our human love, but that of the divine soul within us.
Although the latter has few current appearances – apart from a few exceptions – it outlines the meaning and purpose of human life.
Everyone knows that the everyday person does not want to put up with absolutely anything, but seeks confrontation and strikes back when provoked or victimised by misfortune or discord.
Everyone knows that everyday people want to make themselves important and that they do not want to sacrifice their possessions or share, as can be seen in the refugee issue across Europe.
And finally, everyone realises that they do not want to forgive at all, but are unconditionally thirsty for revenge and retribution.
But this is precisely the cause of suffering on our planet. The sole cause of all this agony through illness, job losses, fears of terrorist attacks, dangers on the roads, worries about the well-being of children, the physical and psychological pain caused by career setbacks, separations, divorce proceedings, inferiority complexes, the constant worries caused by unequal treatment, climate dangers, the explosion of xenophobia, the pressure to perform at work, is the ego instinct of self-preservation that unconsciously leads us to all these – it must be said so clearly – animalistic behaviours and their consequences. Human love loves incessantly, but only itself, also in the form of love for children. It is love of form, of the surface, of the visible and also only in the immediate emotional environment. In his allegory of the cave (see chapter 8), Plato describes the physical human being as the shadow of his soul.
A bird flying flat above the ground casts a shadow. When a cat chases this bird’s shadow – or the cone of light from a torch on the wall – this represents human behaviour. It deals with an appearance that corresponds to its perspective instead of the origin. Goethe says unkindly: “You resemble the spirit that you comprehend!”
This is particularly evident in the love of the female body. The instance of love that created this body and the programme of love for it is unknown to people. This is because it overlooks the negative exterior (“Beauty and the Beast”). True love is soul-centred in the form of love for one’s neighbour, and indeed for all neighbours; human love is person-centred and is also limited to those who reciprocate it, which is pure self-interest.
Leo N. Tolstoy describes the human concept of love bitingly:
“But what then is true love understood to be? …
Everyone knows what love is. … It is very simple:
Love is the exclusive preference of one or another above all others.”
(Sonata of the Cross. Chapter 2)
Human love is favoritism, it is friendship. It is instinct-based, thus erotic, and, building on that, likeably emotional. It contains the expansion of egocentrism to the environment with partners, children, parents, friends, etc. This purely human love with eros and philia limits love to feelings and does not observe the Golden Rule. However, man can‘t express true love on his own initiative either, because only the spirit soul in him can accomplish this through him. As long as he does not grant it any influence, does not take note of it, he cannot go one step further and higher, starting from the limited level of preferential feelings. Without the next step of elevation from the earthly to the spiritual level, without the expansion from preferential love to the indiscriminate love of all, fulfillment in life is impossible; without this awareness, it is impossible to overcome suffering and evil in our good-evil world, whether between nations, skin colors, economic competitors, employers and employees, neighbors, or especially between spouses. The spiritual kind of love (agape), the third third, so to speak, has nothing to do with feelings; it is a quality of intellectual understanding, of insight and, above all, of practical implementation.
The opposite of this, the love of the spiritual part of the soul for the other, is – see Paul – neither resentful nor jealous, makes no distinctions (because creation is “very good” without exception, see the function of evil), tolerates everything and is therefore love for everything and thus also love for enemies. As already mentioned, it is a purely intellectual act because it penetrates the surface and advances to the essence of the person, to the spiritual core, and therefore can forgive and understand everything: Jesus shows this very clearly by not bearing a grudge against his torturers who nail him to the cross: “… they know not what they do.” While human preferential love sets limits, the third and highest kind of love is one of overcoming boundaries, without distinction and impersonally.
To put it in a nutshell, true love is indiscriminate, without difference.
This is the reason why spiritual teachers of antiquity also called it “divine” love, because it is the love of all. But then, of course, the objection immediately arises as to that, how can be a loving father in the face of the terrible suffering, that prevails on earth, not only in developing countries, but in every marriage. The reason has already been given by the teachers of wisdom, from Lao Tse to Buddha, Jesus, Meister Eckhart, Rumi, Baudelaire or Goethe, who have recognised the suffering as the ultimate instrument of the universe to dissuade people from their ego course and to lead them back to the course of love, to the spiritual I in oneself and to the I in the others, in everyone else.
As long as people maintain separation and remain on the selfish level, this is the perfect disintegration in relation to the unity of all being.
“If you want to distinguish false love
from true love,
look, it seeks itself
and ceases in suffering.”
(Angelus Silesius: Cherubinischer Wandermann, Book V, 303)
This becomes clear in the failure of most marriages: they cannot be happy because selflessness and spiritual self-knowledge are lacking. The partners both believe that the other should make them happy, although it can only work the other way round, namely that they themselves make the other happy. In addition, both are convinced that in the event of a break-up, it was always the other person who made the other unhappy. But this is because the partners only see each other as a person; then the law of good and evil comes into effect and leads to the corresponding ups and, above all, downs in the relationship. Only if one partner were to treat the other with an un(!)personal understanding of depth when it comes to behaviour such as cheating would there be a prerequisite for the harmonious existence of the relationship.
“That you don’t love people,
you do so rightly and well,
It is the ‘human’ essence,
that one should love in man.”
(Silesius: Book I, 163)
Furthermore, true love makes no (negative) judgements about people, because it recognises in them the defenceless victims of the self-preservation programme. It does not favour anyone because it sees the unity of spiritual souls behind the surface of diversity. Recognising the unity of diversity then leads to holistic perfection.
It is not possible for the everyday person to love and forgive any neighbour, because the prerequisite would be to strive: “Seek first the kingdom of God … and all else shall be added unto you.” Only letting the power of the soul through can transform people in such a way that their animalistic programme and its manifestations “die daily”.
The principle of love is to do to others what we would like to be done to us – if we were in their situation. The Golden Rule thus shines a spotlight on the behaviour of exclusionists, haters of asylum seekers and those who incite refugees, whose behaviour expresses the lowest level of human civilisation.
Forms of love
The following differentiated definition of love comes from ancient Greece: Eros, Philia and Agape:
Eros:
This image has an empty alt attribute. The file name is 1024px-Agnolo_Bronzino_-Venus_Cupid_Folly_and_Time-_National_Gallery_London-812×1024.jpg
Angelo Bronzino: Allegory of the Triumph of Venus (detail) 1540 Public domain. nationalgallery.org.uk
Eros stands for sensual love, erotic desire. It contains sexuality at its core, but goes beyond it. Its power of attraction encompasses all visual, auditory, tactile, etc. interactions. interactions.
Philia:
This image has an empty alt attribute. The file name is 512px-1873_Pierre_Auguste_Cot_-_Spring.jpg
Pierre Auguste Cot: Le Printemps. (detail) 1873
Appleton Museum of Art. Public domain. Wikimedia Commons.
Sympathy, love in partnership, esteem, friendly togetherness, trusting mutual affection. (In principle, refers not only to the relationship between the sexes, but also to subject areas such as hobbies, sports clubs, voluntary work, science, etc.)
Agape:
This image has an empty alt attribute. The file name is Pelican-in-her-piety.jpg
Pelican-in-her-piety
Relief depicting a pelican tearing open its breast to feed its young with its blood.
Cimetière-Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, Montreal.
GNU Free Documentation Licence. Public domain. Wikimedia Commons.
Agape is selfless, that is, without ego, then without distinction, that is, concerning all, furthermore without emotional attachment and therefore purely in terms of understanding and finally it is geistig (spiritual) and therefore sees through appearances. Agape is love in the sense of striving for unity (a unity like that of the fingers on a hand) and in this respect, love for all “neighbors.”
Consequently, the above Pelikan example is anything but not agape, because the behavior of the pelican is selfless, but on the one hand preferential and not indiscriminate to all pelican chicks. Moreover, it is an action that is instinctive and not conscious, remains on the material surface and can by no means be understood spiritually and by looking through. A maxim of understanding and forgiveness such as “… because they know not what they do” is already excluded because it is also about an animal consciousness limit.
In his fight against the British colonial tyranny, Gandhi acted absolutely selflessly, avoiding any kind of enemy stereotyping – with regard to them as well as to his Islamic competitors – and recognizing the soldiers of the Empire, despite all their inhumane and violent actions, as at least in principle equally created in the image of God, and refraining from any desire for revenge.
A somewhat contrived modern-day example could be taking in an Iraqi or Syrian Islamic refugee (similar to Ukrainian refugees) as a private individual, without paying attention to their religious orientation, being aware of their divine likeness to oneself as well as own (Matthew 22:29: “Love… as yourself”) and, after he has stolen, let’s say, objects from the house, to forgive him (which would not mean, for example, that he would not be prosecuted).
This preliminary categorisation already makes it clear what a fundamental difference there is between eros and philia on the one hand and agape on the other: The first two forms – regardless of further possible differentiations such as platonic love, mania, adoration, etc. – are forms of devotion from an earthly-human perspective, parts of which are purely animalistic. They also contain a benefit factor for the personal ego.
Love in a partnership (sexual and emotional-friendship-partnership) is not a devotion to the You, but despite all infatuation is nothing other than an extended self-love. The my-your structure is not cancelled, except perhaps in the first twelve weeks of being in love, in which the lovers would sacrifice everything, but also everything of themselves, because the I-you consciousness has broken open for a moment and made way for a certain selflessness. But the devil (the ego) always lets you win first.
The exchange of rings is characteristic of the character of a marriage or partnership: it is by no means primarily about devotion to the other person, but about an alliance of convenience for mutual benefit. The catch is that the mutual dependencies that arise in the process become more and more dominant over time. The depth and extent of mutual sympathy are usually secondary. Eros and philia relate to the ego. “If you love me, you fulfil my wishes”, says the woman to the man at some point. And almost everyone experiences over the course of time that despite eros and philia, something is missing, that the similarities are wearing thin. This is because the longing for unity and perfection (“better half”) is slowly but surely eaten up by the desire for autonomy (to use another word for ego) and self-realisation – often at the expense of the partner. Human “love” is a kind of flash in the pan, it fades, then leads to weariness and finally ends, as Tolstoy describes in the 17th chapter of “The Sonata of the Cross” and can still be seen in front of every divorce judge today:
“So this is how we lived. The relationship became more and more tense, the animosity grew, and finally we had reached the point where the animosity was not aroused by differences of opinion, but that the animosity led to differences of opinion. Whatever she might say, I disagreed with her in advance, and so did she. … There were clashes and outbursts of hatred over the coffee, the tablecloth, the car, a wrongly played card at bridge – all things that had no meaning for one or the other. … I sometimes saw her pouring herself tea, tapping her foot, putting the spoon to her mouth, slurping down the liquid, and I hated her for it like the worst crime. … It would have been horrible to live like that if we had realised our situation; but we didn’t realise or see it.
So we lived in an eternal fog without realising the situation we were in. And if that hadn’t happened, which it eventually did, I would have continued to live like that into my old age and still thought on my deathbed that I had a good life behind me, not consistently good, but not bad either, a life like everyone lives. I would never have recognised the abyss of unhappiness and shameful love in which I was floundering. We were two convicts forged on a chain, hating each other, poisoning each other’s lives and trying hard not to see it. I didn’t realise then that out of a hundred married couples, ninety-nine were living in the same hell as me, and that it couldn’t be any other way.”
Just how timeless, modern and topical this description is can be seen in such adaptations as the Polanski film “The God of Carnage” or the French production “The Economics of Love”. The theme is so universal that Tolstoy could almost have been the screenwriter of these films.
Then there is the trap of interdependence, which Rumi describes as follows: “Tie two birds together tightly: They will not be able to fly, even though they now have four wings.”
People love wrongly because they limit themselves to eros and philia and live without agape. This is why marriages and love relationships lead to emptiness, desolation, dullness and all too often to strife, rejection and separation. World literature is full of descriptions of the suffering that humanly understood love repeatedly entangles itself in. Classics include Lolita, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, Love in the Time of Cholera and many more. In film history, films such as “The Last Tango in Paris”, “Lady Chatterley” or “Doctor Shivago” show this. Casablanca” is a certain exception due to the selfless decision of the protagonist. Nowadays, it is the endless soap operas from “Dallas” to “Storm of Love” that show the eternally painful ups and downs of so-called love. As the saying goes: “Packs fight and packs get along.” But all too often they don’t get along. Spiritually characterised love does not know this rollercoaster of tension and relaxation, arguments, misunderstandings and reconciliation with clenched teeth, and it does not know packs either.
In contrast to these forms of love, agape is something else. It is the love of the divine soul in man – descended into the consciousness of the seeker – towards the spirit soul in the other person, in every other person. It has nothing to do with affection, understanding and sympathy for the person, the external human being, but is directed exclusively at the divine core within them: “God does not look at the person” ( Romans 2:11; Acts 10:34; James 2:1).
It does not bypass material love, but combines with it and ennobles it because it contains no ego content, is therefore selfless and is primarily there for the other person. Some of this became visible in the early days of the wave of refugees in 2015. When selfless love is joined by love that looks through, spiritual love dominates without losing the magic of erotic and partnership-based love. On the contrary, it takes up these areas of human experience and changes them in the sense of refinement and fulfilment. Consciousness is expanded as the differences between men and women diminish, as women increasingly take on male parts and men female parts on the material level and as they become more aware of their unity on the spiritual level. The more the opposites crumble away, the more love emerges, which knows no favouritism because it loves everything in the sense that it recognises the divine behind everything.
True love
You can eat in two ways: One can eat “towards oneself”, i.e. satisfy hunger and thereby devote oneself primarily to self-centred enjoyment. But you can also literally eat gratefully with every bite, in a sense “away from yourself”, opening the connection to your soul. The removal of self-centredness is the transformation of material eating to the spiritual level. This is also the difference between humans and animals.
The effects of agape can be remotely sensed when you savour the food in your mouth during a tasty meal and at the same time think of it gratefully as a divine gift: then you notice that the taste loses its intensity on the one hand, but at the same time manifests itself as a sensation of deeper joy through the loving care of the soul.
In principle, it is the same with sex: you can seek your own orgiastic satisfaction or understand the act as a lead to the connection of the divine souls. The latter is meant by expanding the animalistic side of the act upwards and understanding it in such a way that it makes heaven on earth visible. This happens by thanking the divine soul in the partner during the caresses. Then what Paul implies in Romans 11 happens, namely that if the beginning is holy, the whole is holy. Christianity calls this connection the “first fruits” in many places.
Sex is not only a practice, but also a symbol. The whole genital area, the caresses and the passionate union are also concepts of creation and point to the union with the Creator – in the other. The same applies to partnership and marriage. In this respect, physical sex can be an image of union on a higher level, namely that of souls. Through the pleasure of it, sex can lead to the realisation of its essence, to the creator of pleasure, i.e. to the answer to the question of why there is this wonderful pleasure for humans at all, which animals do not know. But selfishness prevents us from finding true love in sex.
The destructive potential of the exclusively physical version can be seen everywhere, both in food and in sex. A blatant cinematic depiction of this can be found in the film “The Big Eat”: In the final scene, the protagonist lies on a table, is masturbated and stuffed with cake at the same time, and dies in the process. The reference to the practice of sex or eating in an animalistic manner leading to death is clear. The myriad of cookery shows, flat-rate brothels, exploding obesity and Aids send their regards.
Another essential characteristic of love, as it is meant in the sense of the great wisdom writings, is to look beyond outward appearance. This is not included in the original ancient Greek concept of agape! It means that, from the perspective of the soul, this true love is also directed at the soul of the other person, not just at the body as the bearer of this soul. It is not the love of the outer (shell) person for the shell of the other (shell) person, but the love of the person for the soul and the love of the soul for the other soul behind the shell. That is why human love is emotional, while the love of the soul is intellectual, a process of cognition and not emotional. The true love of the soul does not mean building up sympathy for enemies, but “only” recognising them spiritually.
The depersonalised communication of the soul always leads to harmony. However, it does not remain isolated on this level, but radiates to the other two areas of philia and eroticism, involves them and elevates them. In this respect, this love looks beyond all the negative aspects of personality – which is what separates people – and concentrates on what is intrinsic and unifying in them.
“Stop demanding human love ..,
and the certainty of oneness will be promoted.”
(Tao Te King, 19)
Looking away can actually also be an element of purely worldly love. Every newly married couple knows this. However, since the spiritual dimension is missing, it does not last too long.
A symbol of depersonalised love is the story “Beauty and the Beast” (“La belle et la bȇte”), in which the beauty begins to love the monster because she senses through her intuition that the repulsive surface is not what this appearance makes her believe. She does not love the exterior, but looks past it and senses the essence that radiates from behind the façade.
The fairy tale also shows this symbolism through the kissing of the toad, the overcoming of the surface fixation.
As a result, the opposites and barriers are cancelled, there is no longer an essential (!) difference between me and you, me and you and between mine and yours, between my face and that of the toad. This is the entry into the destiny of man or his learning goal: egocentrism is penetrated, neighbourly love is opened up on the higher spiritual level and taking is replaced by giving. It is the exit from our seemingly hopeless life and love in the vale of tears. Such attempts can be observed several times in human history, for example with the Cathars or the original Quakers.
The love relationship in a traditional marriage, for example, is anything but true, i.e. spiritual love, because it is neither selfless nor does it detract from the surface level of the person. It is an exchange based on reciprocity. The exclusively selfish principle is replaced by a shared selfish one, does not dispense with mine and yours and eats up the other person in the long run through the expansiveness and insatiability of the ego (“I can’t get no satisfaction”). In addition, the partners are constantly trying to dominate or use each other or to prevent this from happening.
Any kind of togetherness jeopardises the ego with its unconscious concept of separateness and independent individuality. This is why in a couple relationship it is always torn between the search for completeness, which each partner seeks in the other, and self-assertion.
The opinionated (usually male) ego wants to triumph, it also wants to profit instead of sacrificing itself. These are the reasons for disappointment, emptiness and the endless and innumerable misunderstandings, hostilities, disagreements and other misfortunes in this kind of love: the two principle characteristics of true love – selflessness and hindsight – are suppressed by the rule of the ego. And the power of the general trance of living in a purely material world, which does not recognise the actual world of divine consciousness and its possibilities of action (see Chapter 8), reaches so far that one learns nothing even in a second, third, fourth or even eighth marriage. All attempts at improvement on a non-spiritual level are not sustainable and remain unsuccessful. Relationships regularly fail due to weariness, because husband and wife only see each other as husband and wife instead of looking behind the surface and thereby allowing the soul’s powers to unfold. Without spiritual awareness, the ego wins.
Everyone wants to be loved, but few want to love. And of those who do love, many do so in order to be loved. It is – unconsciously – a deal for them. And it doesn’t work either, by the way. The principle of sowing and reaping applies. If you don’t sow love first, you shouldn’t be surprised if there is no harvest. People wait for love and are surprised that none comes. They have to wait forever because love is what you bring in first. The woman must show the man the way. People want to reap without having sown. Gandhi loved his people, as you can see from the fact that he did nothing for himself and everything for them. They saw day after day that he suffered for them and how much he sacrificed his existence for them, and that is why they in turn loved him: “Bapu” (father).
The second characteristic of true love besides hindsight, selflessness, is expressed in motherly love. It leads close to the intended goal because, although it does not disregard the personal level, it is mostly self-denying because it subordinates its own well-being to that of the child.
Nevertheless, part of motherly love is still preferential love, because there is no awareness of the spiritual unity of all children.
It also often happens that motherly love mistakes its exaggerated caring for love, although it ultimately only serves self-realisation and is by no means selfless. Especially in the middle classes, care replaces love. There, mothers want to come into their own in and through the child and fear more for their own reputation than for the child in serious crises: The daughter of the head doctor is left behind in sixth grade? That can’t be allowed to happen, and that’s why she is sent to boarding school without any consideration for her well-being, but with a great deal of consideration for the reputation and therefore well-being of her parents. The same applies to so-called helicopter parents who, through their excessive caring behaviour, seem to want to realise their child, but in reality want to realise themselves, their credo, in the child.
For some philosophers, healers and theologians, the apparent impossibility of depersonalised and selfless love means that striving for this way of life, especially practising love for enemies, is so far removed from our human capacity that it should be left to God and we should keep our hands off it. For them, it is inconceivable that a field chaplain in Afghanistan could invite those gathered to pray for the Taliban too, if he heeded the commandment to love one’s enemies from the Sermon on the Mount.
The apparent inaccessibility can begin to be resolved if one realises that this kind of love has nothing to do with emotions, feelings and sympathies. As already mentioned, it is an intellectual realisation of the following facts:
(a) The hostility of the “enemy” is a product of the – unconscious – biological primal instincts of self-preservation and thus of territorial defence and fear of strangers. Man is nothing other than the practically defenceless victim of these instincts, his animal heritage. He cannot do otherwise at this point in time, and therefore does not know what he is doing.
(b) His own divine identity is identical with that of the “enemy”, apart from its individual form.
(c) I am united with him (and all other “neighbours”) by the spiritual unity of souls, even if my consciousness has a different contour to his. The common essence of the two souls is the same, just as the different fingers of the hand are animated by the same blood stream.
Recognising this same essence in the other is true love, that of the spiritual soul: there are plenty of apples on the tree, but only one life. There is no real you, only a superficial one. Hindu wisdom says:
“For he who understands the meaning of life
as that which is inherent in everything,
does not revile his self in the other self.
He thus walks the path to the heights.”
(Bhagavad Gita XIII, 28)
In Islamic Sufi wisdom, Rumi recounts this in his inimitable poetic way:
“Someone knocks on the door of a friend. Through the door, the friend asked who was there. The man replied: “It’s me.” The friend turned him away with the words: “Get lost! There’s no room for barbarians in my house.”
The man left and stayed away for a year. The pain of separation burned within him. He was purified by this fire. Finally, he came back and knocked again. His friend asked again: “Who’s there?” The man replied: “It’s you at the door!” The friend opened the door: “Since you are me, come in!”
(Mesnevi I, 3065-3075)
Christianity sums it up succinctly: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” If everyone loved everyone else as unconditionally as they love themselves, the world would be saved immediately. True love of neighbour means seeing the soul of every other person in the awareness of their own. In fairy tales, this form of the Golden Rule is expressed with the metaphor of “kissing the toad”. Behind the surface is the prince. If you look through the exterior and recognise God in it, imperfection, i.e. all hostility, is suppressed.
That is why there is no such thing as “the” love. There are two, the love of friends and the love of enemies. As Tolstoy sarcastically emphasises, the love of friends is a preference and thus contains exclusions, while spiritual love does the opposite and loves everyone in an inclusive way. Human love is the marginalising love of friends, spiritual love is the unifying love of enemies. The latter makes no distinction as to the nature of people.
Gender love
What is the purpose of love between the sexes? People think that it is there to find happiness and to be happy. But it’s the other way round. The purpose of love between the sexes is to make you happy. Only very few (men) have experienced that they only become happy through this “diversions”.
Eros and Philia are the steps that we need in order to learn spiritualisation, i.e. higher development of consciousness, and at the same time to enjoy the joy that is associated with them.
What is the point of living together if it remains under the primacy of the ego and, as long as humanity exists, no substantial changes can be seen in the eternal misunderstandings, disputes, crises and wars of the roses? The primacy of the ego means that everything always remains at the level of people. And there can be no true love between people, but mainly quarrels, arguments, friction, jealousy, possessiveness and perpetual fights, interrupted in favourable cases by peaceful and harmonious phases.
Without spiritual “Gnothi se auton”, partner love remains on the ego level and is unstable because love in one’s own direction dominates. In the ego world, there can be no lasting love in the direction away from oneself towards the partner: A loving couple on the ego level takes the path of ego-love, which, as I said, leads from being for each other to being with each other and next to each other to being against each other.
The meaning of loving coexistence is that the human ego, which only revolves around itself and consists exclusively of self-orientation, is given the chance to step out of its limitation to the ego and recognise the importance of the partner. Such an expansion of consciousness goes hand in hand with an increasing overcoming of apparent duality. There are probably very few partnerships in which one partner can justifiably say that their partner’s well-being is their priority and they put their own behind them. Then, for example, there could no longer be any jealousy because it is ruled out by tolerance and a focus on the other person’s well-being. The prerequisite, however, is a spiritual foundation, without which this kind of overcoming of ego limitation would not be possible.
Perfection is part of the “image of God” to which every human being has been created. This includes the union of male and female characteristics. Initially, this has nothing to do with man and woman. “Male” and “female” are definitions that have their origins in ancient Chinese Taoism. Characteristics such as activity or a willingness to take risks are described as “masculine”, while “feminine” refers to restraint or the ability to communicate, which in principle occurs in both men and women, albeit more concentrated in the respective gender. This does not affect the fact that it is initially about the masculine and feminine sides of oneself.
♂ ♀
Activity —Restraint
Outpouring — Receiving
Logic —Intuition
Light — Warmth
Wisdom — Love
This does not mean that women have no wisdom and men have no love. Rather, it is about the distribution of the individual qualities first to the two poles of the person in their androgyny (Gen. 1:27) and then to the mutual inspiration.
The sunbeam brings light and warmth. Without light, plant, animal and human life cannot develop, no matter how favourable the temperatures are. Without warmth, there can be no life even in the brightest light. Only from both factors together can life flourish. When the individual develops these two fundamental sides of man in the individual in roughly equal measure, he is on the path to individual perfection. This means that the woman develops her masculine dispositions such as determined activity and spiritual wisdom and the man develops his feminine dispositions such as receptivity, devotion and the ability to love. Then the man with developed feminine dispositions and the woman with developed masculine dispositions mature into a common whole – with women retaining more and more feminine parts and men retaining more and more masculine parts.
The combination of these two incomplete potentials can continue to develop towards completion through reciprocal pre-living, just as the combination of electricity (♂) and magnetism (♀) unfolds into the great power of electromagnetism. This marks the beginning of the restoration of the complete “image.”
Love of enemies
If I manage to visualise the fact that I kissed the toad while the ‘enemy’ is standing in front of me, red in the face with rage, hurling hateful insults at me, a miracle will happen. If I remain calm and refrain from an explosive counter-reaction to his provocation with an inner mild smile (of understanding my and his spiritual (!) likeness), his aggression subsides – albeit slowly – and he turns away. The ego-normal reaction of revenge and payback disappears. Our likeness is recognised by reason, that is, by understanding our spiritual unity (like the fingers of the hand) and by applying this striving for unity, called love. In this, one-sidedness is enough! This is the deep meaning of fairy tales with kissing the toad or the monster beast, because through the kiss the ‘prince’ appears, becomes visible, that is, the actual inner being of the person.
Love of strangers or even love of enemies does not mean building emotional bonds or friendship with opponents. The intellectual process relates to the spiritual view, the view of one’s spiritual core – through and beyond external appearances. This, and only this, and only then does it lead to the ability of everlasting forgiveness. The prerequisite is to have recognised oneself as this being within, that is, to become aware of the divinity within oneself. Jewish wisdom calls this ‘likeness’ (Genesis 1:27). Everything else then comes ‘by itself’, or rather, from the self.
Looking beyond the surface is not as unrealistic as it appears at first glance. In fact, everyone is familiar with it: in the first months of new love, each of the partners is only too willing to look past all the strange idiosyncrasies of the other. It is indeed love that makes one blind to negative aspects, as is the case in Beauty and the Beast. However, this overlooking still remains on the horizontal level and is not yet a spiritual insight through matter. But it is a step that makes the transfer to the deeper spiritual dimension understandable.
Love for one’s enemies is not originally a personal trait; it is the breakthrough of the soul’s power. But there is also a personal element. The achievement of the person consists of having made the decision based on rational knowledge at the ‘mixer lever’ after all, consciously letting it through, recognising the emerging ego impulse and blocking it and keeping it that way. This can only happen if we have created the conditions through meditation, thereby opening the channel.
In this crucial test of our emotional strength, we must succeed in maintaining control over the hateful thoughts and in directing our reaction in the sense described above. This does not happen spontaneously, but only at a certain level of spiritual development. It is easy to recognise when the time has come: when a situation as described above must be mastered. This, in turn, only occurs when a) a corresponding meditative competence has been achieved through patient practice and b) as a result, there is an initial experience of God, however it may be. Then you have succeeded in breaking through the barrier of distraction by the earthly ego behaviour patterns of tit-for-tat. Then the stream of liberated soul power pours into your life.
An ‘enemy’ is actually a tester who appears to trigger or advance my spiritual state or progress, my ability to love, and to test that of the ‘enemy’ at the same time. However, it may happen that the person of the ‘enemy’ is so stubborn that love, i.e. my non-reaction to his hatred, does not penetrate his ego barrier. Then something else happens: he will eventually disappear from my personal sphere. Until that happens, there may still be one or two confrontations of this kind – for the sake of the opportunities and further development for both of us – until, in the event of his stubborn resistance, he is gone.
Love of enemies does not mean to excuse, overlook or tolerate the misdeeds of enemies. Love of enemies consists of deep insight and understanding. Everything else in the concrete dealings with the enemies is another matter, and that is up to my inner guidance.
From this it follows that Kant was mistaken in his view that the ‘thing in itself’ is impossible to recognise. But that is the fate of philosophers who want to solve problems exclusively with reason and fail because they completely misunderstand reason, namely as an autonomous and decisive instance of mature human beings. In fact, however, it is nothing more than an instrument, a willing servant, initially exclusively of the hidden self-preservation instinct of man, his ego. But for philosophers, it would be all too embarrassing to acknowledge their ‘God’, reason, as a mere means to the end of collective and individual survival. That is why they steer well clear of any attempt to somehow analyse or even understand Kant’s ‘thing in itself’, the spiritual essence of man, his likeness. What makes it more difficult to recognise the character of the mind, however, is that it is, of course, also an indispensable means of implementing the spiritual-intuitive guidance, which in turn usually only conveys decision and direction, but often not the concrete implementation, for which understanding and reason are essential.
He who has achieved love of enemies has realised the union of the outer and inner man. It is the expedition of the mind to the soul, the subject of the Odyssey. The Odyssey is, by the way, anything but a strange journey, but rather a sophisticated spiritual course with stations that cover all relevant factors of the daily ego-death.
The state of consciousness of love for one’s enemies does not come about suddenly. It only builds up slowly through long training and many experiences. Remarque describes a first step towards loving one’s enemy in his World War novel ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’: On the Western Front in the First World War, the German hero of the novel lands in a shell crater during an assault, into which a French soldier also jumps shortly afterwards during a counterattack. In close combat, the German stabs the Frenchman with his bayonet. During the Frenchman’s agony, which lasts for two days, Paul Bäumer recognises from his photos and letters home that he has not killed an enemy, but a human being like himself. Although the event does not yet touch the spiritual level, it is nevertheless a decisive step towards breaking up the human order of preferential love of friends and the erroneous idea of the enemy. It brings light into consciousness. It is therefore no wonder that the work ended up being burned by the Nazis.
If all human love is in reality a form of disguised self-love and a form of bartering, then the kind of love taught by Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tse and many others is the only true love, because only this love reflects the actual meaning of the word, namely the striving for union and unity with all and everything, with friends and enemies, with creation as a whole, including ‘evil’ and therefore without exception (see Gen. 1,31 and chap. 3). Through spiritual self-knowledge, it brings about the increasing elimination of the contradictions between ‘I’ and ‘you’ and the recognition of the unity (!) of the seemingly opposite poles. A battery also consists not only of different but even opposite poles and yet it is a unit. It is then the real and not just superficial interest in the well-being of the other (see Gandhi in chapter 11 in his dealings with the South African enemies in the government). The source of all evil, the self-preservation instinct, is thereby eliminated. That is why the Buddha also condemns the eye-for-an-eye principle, which people still follow automatically and unconditionally.
‘Never in this world is
enmity ended by enmity;
enmity comes about through non-enmity,
through non-enmity enmity ceases.’ (Buddha: Dhammapada, 5)
It follows that spiritual love also requires unconditional and comprehensive forgiveness. The kinds of love that people use are the cause of all the suffering on our planet, and only serve to reinforce it. The only purpose of the wisdom writings of Plato, Plotinus, Epictetus, John, Shankara, Nanak, Mohammed, Maimonides, Rumi, Meister Eckhart, Angelus Silesius and many others is to call for the opposite of what people do every day: they disregard everything that would lead them out of the hamster wheel of general suffering, namely everything that expresses non-unity. It would be a great misunderstanding, for example, to see the champions of non-unity, i.e. the advocates of nationalism and fascism, with their terms such as ‘subhumans’, ‘wogs’, ‘Alis’, ‘remigration’, etc., etc., as the opposite pole to the love of one’s enemies: Because everyone is a representative of some kind of opposite pole and adversary, whether in politics, in the churches, in the world of work or especially in the neighbourhood and with the nasty ex. In relation to the Nazis, there is no fundamental difference; it is ‘only’ a question of quantity. That is why Jesus tries to pull down our eye patches when he says that we should first remove the beams from our own eyes before we take care of the splinters in the eyes of others (neighbour, ex, Nazi, competitor, etc.). With this kind of love, we will remain in our valley of tears, as we have been for thousands of years. That is why there may yet be a Third, Fourth and Fifth World War, as well as a further intensification of the burning of coal and oil and all the other misdeeds we are committing against our planet, until we recognise the beam in ourselves.
In this respect, there is hardly any true love on this planet. There is only the love that people believe in, and that neither disregards the person nor is selfless. The entire human existence is a contradiction to true love: people love ‘the darkness more than the light.’ (John 3:19)
The Danish religious philosopher Sören Kierkegaard puts it this way: if the lover saw that he was loved by her and at the same time realised that her love would be harmful to her, he could not make the sacrifice of breaking off the relationship for her sake. And if the beloved saw that the relationship would ruin the lover by destroying his individuality, her love (philia) would not have the strength to make this sacrifice (Kierkegaard: The Works of Love, II,4). Only true, self-sacrificing love could make this sacrifice. An example of this can be found in the libretto of Verdi’s opera ‘La Traviata’ (‘The Wayward Woman’) in the – conditional – selfless renunciation of the prostitute Violetta. But there are also enough earthly and concrete examples of devoted behaviour, such as that of the Virgin of Orléans, Gandhi, Mandela, Martin L. King, the Scholl siblings, etc., etc., not to mention the countless examples of self-sacrificing development workers, refugee rescuers, firefighters, disaster and accident relief workers, etc. These people, guided by true love – albeit mostly unconsciously – are the counterpart to those who, unconsciously guided by the instinct of self-preservation, drive past hundreds of people apparently injured by the side of the road or step over the unconscious people lying in front of an ATM instead of taking care of them. That is why Christianity has the parable of the Good Samaritan, which plays no role for today’s Christians and paves the way for the next flood disasters, wildfires, massacres and world wars.
True love, which can only be expressed by turning to one’s ‘neighbour’, is anything but overwhelming. On the contrary, it can be realised very well and, above all, is essential for the liberation of man from the vicious circle of pride, jealousy, greed, malice, fear, hatred, aggression, greed and worry, because it overcomes the ego. True love, the credo of spiritual unity, is death to the ego, because it would destroy the ego’s credo of separateness (‘asylum seeker’, ‘stupid’, the evil neighbour, and thousands of other pejorative insults). That is why the splinter in the eye of the other is so existentially important for the ego, because without this splinter the ego could not unload its own beams anywhere. It would have no excuses for its own weaknesses and mistakes and thus no possibility of projection onto ‘others’ anymore.
Abraham Lincoln’s prayer is meaningful, that ‘… it is not God who is on our side, but we who are on His.’ With this, he describes the location of our human love and the direction in which our further development must go. Only when we recognise our love for our partner, for our father and mother, for our brothers and sisters and for our good friends as forms of self-love, because they are occupied by human sympathies, considerations of use and pangs of conscience, and when we then include love of our enemies, can we find a way out of suffering. Only then will our world change. The initial intellectual conquest of animal ego instincts through understanding the function of selflessness (the only genuine and guaranteed self-preservation) leads to the spiritual supplementation and refinement of the material forms of philia and eros, and through them, the completion, elevation, spiritualisation and fulfilment of true love.
There is a simple reason why this true love is disqualified as unattainable from many sides and quite prominently by religious organisations: for the ego in man, this kind of love would bring out the image (Gen. 1:27). If we were to practise and implement in our lives giving, understanding (for example, with regard to burglars, refugees, people with a different skin colour), forgiving and unselfish, non-demanding love, it would mean the death of the internal ego programme and the victory of the internal love programme, as well as that of the church organisations. This would eliminate intolerance, boundless greed, aggression and existential fear. It would mean overcoming our animal heritage of egocentrism, and at the same time it would be true self-preservation and the fulfilment of our human mission, the meaning of our existence, divine self-knowledge with indiscriminate love (Matt. 22 f.).
The Russian writer F. M. Dostoyevsky suggests how to overcome the stranglehold of the ego by writing:
“Brothers, […] love your neighbour even in his sin,
for only such love would be an image of God’s love,
for such is already similar to God’s love
and stands above love on earth.
Love all of God’s creation, the whole universe
like every grain of sand on earth. …
Only when you will love every thing,
will you grasp the divine secret in things.‘
(The Brothers Karamasov. VI,3)
Centuries before the Gospel, Hindu wisdom emphasises in the Bhagavad Gita:
’And whoever, with a controlled mind,
approaches all beings with equanimity
and strives for the good of all…
who does no evil to any being,
who is compassionate and loving,
free from selfishness and the delusion of the ego, …
who remains the same with friend and foe,
equanimous to fame and disgrace,…
I will soon become his saviour…
(12th canto, 4,7,13,18)
Kierkegaard at least manages to summarise half of the matter in a memorable formula:
‘Love does not seek its own.’
(The Act of Love, volume 2, 4th speech)
Since such abstract summaries always need concretisation in order to be comprehensible, he describes this one side of love’s selflessness as follows: love prefers to express itself in such a way that its gift appears to be the property of the recipient. This is because the greatest benefit is to help another to stand alone. True love makes itself invisible. The helper must be able to hide. The lover has thus become God’s co-worker, as is his destiny. If the act of love is noticed, the helper has not helped properly. The author does not make his reasoning clear. However, remaining invisible at least means consciously avoiding the attention and recognition of others as much as possible, thus denying the ego its nourishment. Examples of this by no means unrealistic connection can be seen in the film ‘Amélie’.
But Kierkegaard does not say that the ability to ‘not seek one’s own’ requires a prerequisite: without the ability to see through it, his correct insight remains without consequence, because the reason and insight are missing, why one should renounce one’s own. But that’s the way they are, the philosophers who don’t know the nature of reason and intuition and want to solve everything exclusively with reason.
A reliable measuring instrument for true love is when we treat others, all others, as we would like to be treated if we were in their place. This Golden Rule can be found in all cultures at all times as a central ethical formula. If it were we ourselves who had to flee from tanks, artillery, bombing, torture, rape, murder and war as war refugees, would we want to be rejected, threatened or persecuted? 14 million Germans found themselves in this situation in 1944/45, which the book ‘Kalte Heimat’ (‘Cold Homeland’) describes in a scientifically sober manner.
A particularly meaningful – if somewhat abstract – symbol for the indiscriminate way in which all people are viewed, which was used above all by Rumi, is the sun:
(1) It shines on everyone equally. It makes no distinctions and does not shine only on one person’s garden and not on that of their neighbour. It makes no distinction between good and evil people, between black and white, between Jews and Palestinians, between war refugees and neo-Nazis.
(2) You can only look at it directly through a filter, but you can see through this veil (!) of appearance and grasp it.
(3) She does not place any value on reciprocation in her radiance. This corresponds to the ability of unrequited love.
(4) She gives light and warmth. On the interpersonal level, this corresponds to knowledge and love. True love is not possible without knowledge. You can only love what you know.
True love flows out from the person – because it is within him – and not towards him. When a man is abandoned by his wife, whom he loves above all else, and his main loving behaviour consists of wanting her to be as well as possible and releasing her, that is true love. Everyone knows that the basic behaviour of people in such a case consists of the exact opposite.
Those who practise spiritual love learn to place it above earthly laws. This does not mean disregarding road signs or not paying taxes. But just as an ambulance races through a red light, you lose respect for the laws of the ego. You sit as a black person on a bench reserved for whites, you hide Jewish fellow citizens from the concentration camp, you protect refugees from administrative arbitrariness, provided that your inner voice tells you to, etc.
Another central element of true love is forgiveness. Forgiveness is love. Forgiveness understands that the suffering I have been subjected to comes from the actions of a counterpart who, in turn, was and is a defenceless victim of his own overpowering instinct for self-preservation. Forgiveness understands that the perpetrator is not the cause of the suffering he has inflicted on me, but the messenger of the evil that arises from our shared universal ego structure.
Love as forgiveness sounds infinitely difficult and there is a reason for this: an everyday person cannot love and cannot forgive, that is, the animal-material part of their identity cannot. The programme does not allow it; it prescribes unconditional retaliation. Only the love of the divine identity in us can love. To the extent that we have cleared the way for it, we can love selflessly. This is shown by Jesus on the cross through his behaviour towards the soldiers who tortured him and nailed him to the cross: ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’ Although we have suffered a loss in the human sense as a result of forgiveness, anyone who has mastered this self-overcoming, or more precisely, I-overcoming, experiences that only then does the fullness of love begin to flow properly and only then do the ideal partners for this phase of life come into being. For then the egoism of retaliation has been pushed aside and must increasingly ‘die daily’. Conflicts no longer have any consequences due to the ability to forgive fundamentally. Those who have forgiven are themselves freed from disapproval, blame and rejection.
Those who cannot forgive, e.g. their partner’s infidelity, cannot love or only love themselves. How many women have suffered from this typical mistake all their lives and later regretted it endlessly.
Being able to forgive oneself is important. The insight that at the time in question I did not know what I was doing, but was an unconscious victim of the (self-preservation) instinct, plays a decisive role here. In addition, there is the condition of remorse, i.e. the intention to improve. This is symbolically expressed by the criminal to the right of the cross.
Forgiving does not mean justifying wrongs or letting them pass, it consists ‘only’ of understanding.
Forgiving love is the opposite of a partnership without spiritual awareness, in which there is no awareness of one’s own divine identity and thus selfishness rules, demanding and not giving – and if it does give, then as an investment. In contrast to this is love, which always gives and never demands, and does not invest either. It also allows itself to be exploited, endures and hands over the solution of this situation to its soul.
Love for strangers and enemies is not possible from a purely human consciousness of love for friends, because our animal heritage, in contrast to true love, is tied to self-preservation, to feelings and to good and evil, to the merits and especially the faults of fellow human beings and partners. That is why all religions call for ‘repentance’. This term usually seems to imply restitution, punishment, conversion or regret; but it should be understood as a change of direction without judgement, a change of course similar to a satnav. It is a change of direction in the sense of ‘recalculation’, i.e. in the direction of non-self-preservation, which means devotion. (The literal translation of the Greek call to repentance, ‘Metanoeite!’, is ‘Turn around’).
Einstein once remarked, ‘A new kind of thinking is necessary if humanity wants to continue to live.’ However, he does not make it clear where the reorientation of thinking should begin. Yet it would be easy to define formally: it is mostly about doing the exact opposite of what our everyday consciousness tells us to do, because it almost exclusively follows self-preservation.
When both partners have gained this insight, inner and outer harmony are perfected. There is no longer any interest in reciprocation or recognition, the human tendency to focus on external appearances is overlooked, and the interaction between Eros, Philia and Agape is characterised by fulfilment. Without spiritual awareness on both sides – and at least one person with insight – it is not exactly easy to maintain a fully harmonious relationship, but if the light is strong enough in one person, the ego parts in the other must dwindle.
An example of human devotion: A friend of mine who had enthusiastically organised a youth camp came back exhausted after a strenuous week. The project had been a success and had gone well. After the children had been picked up by their parents, she complained bitterly that she had not received a word of thanks. She had thus allowed the ego, with its incessant pursuit of recognition, to override selfless devotion, thereby fending off the influence of the soul. For her, devotion was still a deal. (True love is giving without expecting anything in return, because it is only superficially directed at people. It is in fact an act of realising the soul and therefore only an approximation of unity with God (within) and people. That is the difference between the horizontal and vertical direction of love.) Her reaction was not surprising, as she was a person who could not be surpassed in selfishness, although she herself was convinced that she was the most devoted and self-sacrificing person far and wide. She did not understand that her devotion, for example in relation to her partnership, was not a sacrifice but an investment to bind or keep her attractive partner. Consequently, she was later abandoned by him. And as for the missing words of thanks, a spiritual person does not need them, because he knows that reward comes from the soul, is due to it and is of greater abundance than external feedback.
To the extent that we love humanly, we are subject to the principle of good and evil, for example in our partnership. What leads to suffering is the separation of misguided love away from the image of God. However, to the extent that we can see through this – and that means consciousness of perfection – there is no more evil, cannot be. Since we are only ever on the path, we are still subject to temptations and defeats. But the very first experiences in the spiritual dimension give the seeker a clear idea of the liberation from the ego and the sweetness of spiritual life. Even if the price to be paid for this is high, due to the trials. But the price of everyday life is also high, without any perspective.
‘God can only be found through love, not through earthly love, but through divine love.’
(Mahatma Gandhi: The Religion of Truth. P. 202)
Spiritual love, unselfish and spiritual love in the image of God, is the sure way to eliminate misery, constant worry and need. Whatever emanates from us will be answered accordingly. Then we no longer need to chase after any goal, any longing or any hope, because everything lies in the hand of our own consciousness.
The principle of love
All living things happen out of love and are love. This may sound rather far-fetched in view of the cruelties and hatred in the world. But when a person decides to blame, condemn, despise or hate others, it is only because of a misunderstood and misdirected love, namely the love for oneself, for one’s own hatred and for one’s own violence, etc., but principally out of love as the striving for union with its object, in this case the ego.
Personal incompleteness always seeks a kind of perfection through union. Love is the energy of turning towards and uniting, and the cruelties – including the good deeds of do-gooders – are done out of love for self-centredness: My ego also seeks unity, but unity with my body, my ideology, my heroic deeds. Nationalists want a trouble-free, pure perfection of their ‘national’ body, Hindus and Muslims want uniformity and unity within their group because they believe that they can create harmony through this kind of ‘purity’. But Sunnis cannot get along with Shiites, Protestants with Catholics, and Hindus with Muslims. And the marriage partner strives for mutual devotion and unity under his or her interpretation.
If the decision is made in favour of genuine love of one’s neighbour, then this is the love not of the soul of the instincts but of the soul of the spirit. If it has fallen in the other direction for hatred, it is the love of the self-preservation ego, of the ego consciousness, which loves its mind and its qualities, for the preservation of which it does everything. People do not have the choice to love or not to love, but only whether or not to open themselves to the influence from the inside-above. It is the choice between destruction below (instinct soul) and perfection (spirit soul). This can be clearly seen in the destruction of the foundations of life, in (civil) wars and, on the individual level, in the way we treat each other in marriages and partnerships. The conditions on ‘Planet Earth’ are there to learn to truly love.
Translated by deepL