Universal Love
The recognition of that which cannot be experienced as a conceptualised internal limited object such as a thought, feeling, sensation or perception, or a limited external thing such as a tree, house or another body, is still experienced as the very experiencing of these objectifiable experiences. This subjective experiencing of objective experiences that at first "hides" behind the objective experiences we pay so much attention to, though it cannot be touched, tasted, heard, seen, smelt or named in any way, is nevertheless real. It is experienced quite directly as soon as we allow our awareness to become aware of it (of course, it is not an "it" as such!). As we allow ourselves to experience this experiencing, it naturally comes out of its hiding place, and we recognise it as clearly as we would recognise an object.
This is quite a different experience from thinking or conceptualisation or imagining or visualisation. They are still object experiences. It is quite different to emotions or bodily sensations. They are still objective experiences. It's not a trick of the mind that creates this experience of experiencing or, to put in other words, awareness of being aware or, even more basically, the recognition of non-objectifiable reality.
At first, it may be hard for us to distinguish between the pleasure of experiencing objective experiences and the pleasure of experiencing subjective non-objective experiencing. Psychology (with no reference to the concept of awareness) sees happiness and wellbeing as the attainment of objective experiences that fulfil needs. It appears at first to be true that when we attain a need, we feel happy, and when one isn't achieved, we feel anxious. However, on closer examination of this experience, we see that it wasn't the object we needed and finally got that somehow transmitted happiness to us in some mysterious way. Clearly, our happiness in meeting the need comes from inside us.
This should make it clear to us that objects cannot give us happiness. If we rely on them to do so, we will forever be at their mercy and all such objects, whether in the form of a living or non-living, are totally transitory. In this case, we will find that our mood rises and falls like the waves on an ocean, and we are forever caught in an exhausting cycle of trying to source happiness from transient objects. Psychologists do not like the word happiness because it is classified as a nominalisation – a word with no essential meaning. Such terms can and indeed are used manipulatively by commercial and non-commercial interests to exploit the vulnerable by inducing a mental trance state in people, which leaves them open to manipulation. However, the word is defined negatively as an absence of anxiety or worse emotional states. It is the space that we all know when we experience it, but as we try to explain it soon recognise it is impossible to do so adequately. Nevertheless, it is real, and we know it when we experience it.
So here, the word happiness becomes synonymous with the experience of subjective experiencing. We give the name to the experience that arises from feeling no sense of anxiety and lack in our mind and body. This occurs naturally as we turn to recognise the reality of our experiencing or awareness. Whatever words we use to describe this experience are inadequate – they are not a thing but qualities. Of course, the one quality that perhaps everyone can agree on could be an acceptable description, beyond more prosaic descriptions of "happiness" or "wellbeing" or "presence" or "awareness", etc., is Love. Recognising the reality of our non-objectifiable experiencing gives rise to the quality we universally describe as Love. Though he is dead now and this recording is very old and takes some concentration to hear, I recommend listening to this lecture on Love by one of the world's greatest sages of ancient wisdom. Manly P Hall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhagSHDCk6Q&t=14s. Once we feel the perfume of Love pervading our mind, body, and life, we experience this perfume pervading what we thought of previously as separate objects and come to see that they are not separate at all.
We experience a profound intimacy with all other objects, whether those inner ones of thoughts and feelings and sensations or perceptions of outer ones and ultimately recognise they are all occurring as events within the field of our Love. For this reason, in the final analysis, all sages and teachers refer to the fundamental glue of all existence is Love. Feeling full of love and facing life is a very different experience to seeking the qualities of happiness and love outside yourself. You still have to meet needs and take part in life but you do so with the gift of happiness already attained.
