What Kind of Love?

Ian Fearn was an Anglican priest who passed to spirit in 1957 and I shall be publishing various writings of his over the next few weeks. These are the words of Cyril Scott who knew him well: "Ian Fearn stands out in this troubled century as a unique personality, an inspired thinker and an altruist in the noblest sense of that word. Yet although he has now gone from the earth plane, we who enjoyed the privilege of knowing him in his physical form are confident that he will inspire the continuance of the work he started, and will continue to watch over it from the Spirit planes where he now has his being."
His writings continue to be published by The New Renasence Trust to whom I am indebted for permission to reproduce some of them in this blog.


LOVE IS AN OMNIBUS WORD. It covers a vast range of human relationship, for which the Greeks, for instance, had different names. The evangelist, John, was referring to the highest form of love, agape, when he said: ‘There is no fear in love; perfect love casteth out fear’. In much of our love for others there is fear - fear of loss and fear of separation.

What kind of love is it that we have for the person from whom we dread to be separated; it may be a husband, a wife, children, parent or friend? Why do we fear separation from them? Is it because they constitute some part of our ego, and we would therefore feel depleted and adrift without them?

Surely if we cannot live without the visible presence of another, there must be something wrong with our so-called love. If we have really begun to love - not merely to have affection, or to respond to sexual attraction, but to love – then we have begun to Live. Indeed, Love in its highest meaning is synonymous with Life.

If we really love anyone we Live with them. This does not mean that we demand their physical presence. For we know that Love is essentially of the Spirit, and that physical absence is not spiritual separation.

To take an analogy: We have learned through our everyday use of radio and television that there is an invisible connection between the transmitting station and the set in our room. They may be many miles apart, many walls and other barriers seemingly obstruct, and there appears to be no way through; yet those waves somehow find a way. Love is at least as sure in its working as the radio wave. The form of the loved one may be far off, but Love will find a way, though distance may seem to divide. Separation is the deceptiveness of existence, where space is an assumed certainty. Today even matter-of-fact science is causing us to change our old ideas about space and time. In any case, they only seem to exist to our five mortal senses; they do not exist in the realm of Life, and therefore not where there is Love.

Where there is Love, we can rest assured that there is actually no separation.

Here again we come to our question: What kind of love have we for the person without whom we say we cannot live? Do we desire to have them near at hand, at our beck and call, so that we can depend on them to make up for our own deficiencies, or to gratify us in some way or other? If we cannot do without the physical presence of the one we say we love, we can be sure that we have not yet known the Love that alone can bridge the gulf of separation.

When we come to think of it, the root of the trouble is really in the self that says: ‘I cannot do without the one I care for so dearly’. How much do we genuinely care for them if we demand that they always be with us? It takes two sides to make a marriage, or a friendship, but unless each side can prove they are sufficient of an entity to have enough life to do without raids upon the other’s vitality, they can just obliterate the word ‘Love’ from their vocabulary.

Once we learn to love, we shall have no cause to worry.

And this is true, even when we have to face what we most dread - the apparent separation of death. Though the poet says: ‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’, surely it is even better to have so loved that we cannot lose.

It is only the power of the Love ‘that seeketh not her own’ that can triumph over the widespread fear of destruction so prevalent in the world today. For even if our bodies should be blown to pieces, the substance that Love has built will prove indestructible. We and our loved ones can rest assured that the consciousness we have made in the quality of Love is invincible; and in this Love there is no separation.


© New Renasence Trust (Registered Charity No 256640)