Friend: My morning inquiry question: Where do universal feelings of love and empathy fall in this journey? Isn’t the inquiry into the root of mind/self, a nihilistic approach?

Anurag: Why are you asking about love? What are you actually: fear, hurt, anger, jealousy, insecurity? Isn’t love an idea created by the mind as an opposite to these feelings. The same mind that has hate, hurt, insecurity etc. is talking about love.

Can love be a construct of mind or is love an absence of all these feelings?

Friend: The notion is that we are all love at the core of our being and bound together by this feeling. Fear, anger etc are all arising out of insecurities of not knowing this love

Anurag: So would you like to start with a notion? How is it different from any other notion of your mind? Like Self, God etc.

Friend: Yes everything has to start with a notion, but in love’s case, it is a deeper feeling beyond the thought of mind

Anurag: Who says so? Thought?

Friend: It is an experience which mind can sometimes not explain through thought.

Anurag: So is experience different from notion?

Friend: Not all feelings can be explained via thoughts or the mind

Anurag: All notions, feelings, thoughts are nothing but thought. An experience is a feeling stored in memory as thought.

Friend: Hmm…

Anurag: What you call love is an experience stored in your memory.

Friend: Yes with you…Is Bhakti a notion…?

Anurag: Bhakti for what?

Friend: Let’s say the unknown Divine

Anurag: Unknown is unknown right? How can you have bhakti for something unknown? The mind translates the unknown into some form of known to worship that symbol or word or image or idea.

Friend: Isn’t everything unknown

Anurag: Whatever is known is not the unknown.

Friend: What is known

Anurag: Any thought, feeling, experience, you know is not the unknown. For example you know suffering, conflict etc.

Friend: It’s known to me but it’s relative

Anurag: Relative to what?

Friend: Relative to me. My thoughts and feelings are not known to you

Anurag: I have fear, so do you. My thought is the same as yours, otherwise we can never even converse

Friend: What I fear, you might not fear, and vice versa

Anurag: I am not talking about particular fears. I am talking about fear per se. Everyone knows fear. Everyone knows sorrow, everyone knows anger.

Friend: True. Everything animate has fear and that’s critical for evolution.

Anurag: Are you justifying fear? Fear causes suffering, conflict, violence. Fear causes possessiveness which comes in the way of your universal love 🙂

Friend: Not justifying fear, but if there is no fear of death, how will species survive and grow…?

Anurag: So are we talking about survival? Is that what we are inquiring into? Fear of death?

Friend: Isn’t everything about survival

Anurag: Ask yourself? I am very clear that the body is going to die.

Friend: What will not die..

Anurag: Why are we asking this question?

Anurag: Are we afraid of dying?

Friend: At a conscious level I am not scared of dying but, perhaps at a subconscious level. More than my own death, I have a fear of death of my near and dear ones…

Anurag: Right. So what is afraid of dying at the subconscious level?

Friend: Don’t know. Perhaps just the attachment to the body…

Anurag: Death of your near one’s is not attachment to your body.

Friend: That was at subconscious level

Anurag: Right. I am asking about this level only. What is afraid?

Friend: Death of near ones is different…

Anurag: Ok. Sir! Both are attachments isn’t it? Attachment to body, attachment to near one’s…

Friend: yes

Anurag: So where is attachment? What is causing attachment?

Friend: It’s origin is in the mind and it translates into a feeling

Anurag: True!

Anurag: What is mind?

Friend: Collection of thoughts

Anurag: True

Anurag: So till there is thought, there is attachment, till there is attachment, there is fear, till there is fear, there is no love!

Friend: So for love to exist, there has to be no thought…

Anurag: Isn’t it? I mean psychological thought. Not the technical thought one uses to do functional things in life like going from here to there, learn maths etc. The property of psychological thought is movement way from pain, and movement towards pleasure. It stores all feeling as memory.

Friend: How many types of thought are there? Psychological. Technical?

Anurag: Two types. One which is for use in practical/technical tasks, and one which should actually not be operating at all – the psychological thought.

Friend: Is this not another semantic..Another school of thought, classifying thoughts into two types

Anurag: No. You can see for yourself. If all thought is gone, I can’t even talk to you. I need a language to talk. I need to learn this language.

Anurag: If all thought is gone, you are in coma !

Friend: Is it (psychological thought) not what is referred as Kleshas…

Anurag: Give it any name. I use the term “psychological thought” so that anyone in the world can understand.

Friend: Hmm..

Anurag: So the ending of psychological thought is the beginning of love. The death of psychological thought is the beginning of love. Love cannot exist till psychological thought with it’s property of attachment and aversion exists.

Friend: A lot of thoughts are embedded at a sub-conscious level for eg: waking up and brushing teeth or driving car on a busy traffic road. At the same time thoughts of fear aversion etc are also embedded at a sub conscious level. So you mean to say both practical and psychological thoughts can be at both conscious and sub conscious levels

Anurag: Yes. Atheletes know the practical/technical subconscious very well. So do mathematicians, artists, scientists..… Knowledge has no limits. Science has no limits…..

Friend: True

Anurag: So freedom from psychological thought, is what we are talking about.

Friend: Yes..

Anurag: This freedom can go along with technical thought. Right now psychological thought uses and abuses the technical thought…..thus we have the world as it is.

Friend: It sounds so simple and yet difficult to implement

Anurag: Ha.ha.ha. That means you understand me. You will have more questions on this if you reflect on our dialogue today. Notice….we are always moving from fact to fact. No imagination here. And in the clear examination or facts there is insight into the nature of thought.

Anurag: This could be our next dialogue: “What are the difficulties?”

Friend: Yes sure…

Friend: Anyways I am off to Bhubaneswar today to spend some time in the farm. Growing some fruits and vegetables and quite time in the midst of nature.

Anurag: I am jay

Friend: Maybe someday we will get to meet, and hopefully, in the midst of nature, an ideal setting to inquire.

Anurag: Touchwood! By the way I have been touching wood for a long time now

Friend: Yes I know about your interest in carpentry

Friend: I cut a log of wood the first time, few months back while working in the farm..😊

Friend: Ok, until our next dialogue…khuda Hafiz…Nature’s call to get back to work

Anurag: Great! Take care