The Ultimate Necessity of the “Religion of Love”
By Ohad Pele, Oct 2023
I believe in love.
I believe in the religion of love.
In fact, I don't believe there is anything else that will redeem us humans from self-destruction other than a deep and fundamentally devotional connection to Love as a divine force. Imagine what the world would look like when people feel the sacred power of connection to the divine not by distancing themselves from “the other”, but by overcoming the divisive national tendencies that estrange us from one another.
When I say "the religion of love" I mean it in the devotional sense and not in the political sense of religion. All religions do something great and wonderful for the human soul, before they close and imprison it in a small box with tactics of fear, oppression and separation. Religions connect us to an eternal dimension, a dimension that the human soul longs for because it is an inseparable part of it. Religions give deep meaning to life, precisely because this life in the material world is no longer seen by the believer as everything. For the believer there is an eternal soul, and the soul has reincarnations. There is an afterlife, whether heaven or hell, it doesn’t really matter, the main thing is that our fragile life in the body gets to be included within a much larger perspective. The believer has a much bigger story to be part of, in life and in death.
Much to the chagrin of rational secularists, the human subconscious responds to mythology in a way that no rational explanation can even come close to. Thus, the liberal left will always be weak and powerless against the nationalist "primitive" right, which relies on archetypal religious mythologies. Faced with the colorful and powerful myths of religions, the liberal left will always look pale and impotent. In our brains, a very thin crust of rationality covers over the abyss of mythical beliefs, which rise from the subconscious armed with primal emotions. As long as the speakers of love and peace are coming merely from this thin crust, they will never have a chance against the power of the feelings coming from the irrational depths of our subconscious. To save humanity from itself we must harness the depths of the archetypal unconscious to fuel the profound cultural change that must take place.
Religious beliefs do something good for the human, up until the point where each religion fortifies itself in some fixed dogma, gathers political power, suppresses the self-thinking of its believers, puts them in conflict with themselves, and buries their unique self under a pile of guilt and shame. Religion usually conflicts a person with their inner powerful pulsing of Eros, molds them into shameful obedient subjects, and when needed harnesses their inner frustration against believers of other faiths. Religious wars are wars of passion. Wars of twisted passions and desires which are directed toward the distorted intimacy of battle instead of the healthy intimacy of love.
I am writing these words in the days when an unprecedented bloodbath is taking place in Israel. A bloodbath that was not seen since the Holocaust, accompanied by horrific acts of rape and sadism in the style that was executed by "the Islamic State" some years ago. "The Jews desecrated the Al-Aqsa Mosque," declared the head of Hamas in an attempt to harness the feelings of Muslims all over the world to support the massacre.
The escalation of hatred in the Israeli side was also flamed by religious ideas, under the most fundamentalist Jewish government that has ever ruled the country. Extremists use religious national mythologies to dehumanize the "other" before acts of violence can take place.
Indeed, even today, in the 21st century, religious feelings are still used by war-seeking leaders as a successful way to stoke the fire of hatred and revenge, in a cycle of bloodshed that will never stop, until humanity awakens to even deeper archetypes, that inspire the soul to transcend the futile cycles of revenge. The change must come from the depths of the soul, and not only from the thin rational crust represented by left-wing secularism.
We must find a way to connect with the divine through deep archetypes of Love, forgiveness, compassion, and honor. We must give birth to a new culture, which will build a new civilization on earth, and establish a different relationship not only between people and cultures but between humanity and the earth.
It is possible.
Two days ago I sat down for a spontaneous breakfast with a young woman who fled the religious oppression in Yemen and with a lovely musician from Iran. With an Egyptian intellectual who used to give sermons in mosques until he was freed from religious oppression, a daring woman from Algeria, and a sensitive young man from Saudi Arabia. We sat and talked about love and the devotion to the divine that transcends all religions. I am now sitting and writing in the garden of a dear friend from Syria, after we dined together with three other Palestinian friends, drank great coffee that came from Damascus and swam naked in the pool. From my own experience, I know that we can create an alternative culture on earth, where Love Freedom and Empowerment are at the center.
The "Religion of Love" should make us mad with love, ready for a life of devotion to love. It should motivate us to act from that deep and primal place that motivates the believers of all religions. I would even dare say that the motivating archetypes of the “RoL” must come from an even deeper layer in the human soul, layers that might have been dormant up until now.
If jealousy, hatred, and revenge had any evolutionary logic that helped our ancestors survive in local tribal wars, then this evolutionary advantage has come to its end. Today, in order for humanity as a whole to survive, jealousy, hatred, revenge and national egotism must give way to deeper forces that will allow humanity to move to its next stage, and save itself from destruction. Therefore it is clear to me that there are deeper archetypes hidden in the depths of human subconsciousness that are waiting for the right day to be activated.
That day has arrived.
We must uncover the deep mythology of the "Religion of Love” which is not a religion at all but a divine source that will take humanity to its next step of evolution. The mythology that inspires its devotees to live in a global synergy of sovereign beings.
