Love is the supreme and ultimate Mystery of the Universe.

   Nothing in this world is so little understood or so much misunderstood.

   Of all things most beautiful yet terrible, powerful yet fragile, beneficent yet selfish, tender yet savage, tranquil yet tumultuous, eloquent yet mute, brave yet fearful, eternal yet fickle, sincere yet evasive, ideal yet practical, universal yet personal, reverent yet intimate, divine yet human.

   Understand Love--and you have solved the riddle of existence.

   Exalt Love--and you have reached the very heart of religion.

   Welcome Love--and you have opened your arms to the angels.

   Live Love--and you have won the hearts of men.

   Deserve Love--and you have felt the caress of the Infinite Comforter.

   Embody Love--and you have known the utmost joy of the Creator of worlds.

   Trust Love--and you have placed your life in the keeping of Omniscience.

   All the woes of this world arise from either the repression or the perversion of Love. About three-fourths from too little of the right kind, and one-fourth from too much of the wrong kind. The so-called virtuous apportion the three-fourths, the so-called vicious the one-fourth. And it's a question which element is more effective as a woe-producer.

   A pauper is a man who doesn't love his work, not having found it.

   A criminal is a man who doesn't love his finest ideal, having allowed some grosser to usurp its place.

   A reformer is a man who doesn't love Humanity.

   A lawyer is a man who doesn't love Justice.

   A doctor is a man who doesn't love Nature.

   A theologian is a man who doesn't love God.

   You observe I put the reformers, lawyers, doctors and theologians in the same category with the pauper and the criminal. I think they belong about half-way between. They are not so poor as the pauper, nor so honest as the criminal. They none of them know the joy of living. You won't love to live until you live to love.

   Now the reason Love is so generally misunderstood and misapplied is because Love is limitless while every lover is circumscribed by limitations. And we unconsciously confuse our judgment of Love with our opinion of the lover. We can feel, recognize and answer only so much of Love as we ourselves have experienced. Which is oh so little with most of us. We are like children trying to guess the ocean-depths by the amount of spray that moistens the shore where we build our sand-houses.

   I ask no surer judgment of a man than his own judgment of Love. Or a woman either. Because the average woman is as hard, as narrow, as unresponsive as the average man is gross, and clumsy, and disenchanting. The man is mute of soul, the woman of brain and body. Each is a cripple. You can't love either without a shudder. A shudder for you and a tremor for them. The pity of it is that in the depths of every human soul rises feebly an unutterable longing to love and be loved. So that he who fears, degrades or scorns Love fears, degrades or scorns himself. No wonder he is uncomfortable--letting his brain crowd his soul into some dark, unwholesome recess of his being. As a matter of fact, those who ridicule lovers are but trying to hide their envy of lovers. And if you watch closely, you can always see the smile of scorn droop at the corners--as if weeping for the kiss that never came.

   Some one asks: "What is Love?"

   But there is no answer--for such as need ask. Love's only interpreters are Love's exemplars. And to these, words are not necessary. You can feel Love, you can sense Love, you can look Love, you can smile Love, you can touch Love, you can breathe Love, you can live Love;--but you can never tell Love. Love is God. And God is undefinable.

   Men have printed, cut and pasted thousands of labels to designate God. But whenever they thought to affix one, God wasn't there. So they had to take whatever was handy that looked most like God.

   It's the same way with Love. Indeed a religious denomination is a device for measuring how far men have shut Love out of their lives. Did you ever hear of a Protestant rose, a Jewish canary, or a Catholic sunbeam? No more can you call sectarian any human life whose soul is sweet, whose message clear, whose heart radiant. Such a being of effluence you can never limit, never define, never regulate, never standardize, never reduce to tangible terms. All the world is too small to contain the love of a Godlike soul. Think you to constrict the flow of a mountain freshet in Springtime by a few legal, conventional or moral timbers built into the bank. When the surge comes from Up Yonder, snap go the barriers, dyke, dam and all; while the land is whelmed in a turbulent sea of billowy might.

   How many geniuses have loved this way! To be pitifully misunderstood and cruelly condemned. Great elemental natures, filled with a mother-longing too big to be cramped by custom or cowed by opinion, how gloriously they have loved. And how fiendishly been throttled.

   If the few splendid souls that dare love always knew how, the many scant souls that do not dare would awaken to their need. But mistakes are so often confused with motives. And we fear to trust the motives lest we repeat the mistakes.

   Love is infinitely more than any one human's conception of Love. And we must fix this fact in mind before assuming to discuss Love.

   Love is more than affection. Affection calls for some specific object of endearment, and vanishes with the object; Love lavishes itself impartially on the whole world. Affection is personal, changeable, transient; Love is universal, steadfast, eternal. Affection asks to be cherished quite as much as to cherish; Love asks nothing but the privilege of loving. Affection twines itself most closely about human relationships; Love finds its fullest fruition beyond the human race.

   Love is more than sympathy. Sympathy deplores, pities, or commiserates. Love understands. And understanding never does any of these things. Love feels more than any mortal can feel-- more of rapture, more of anguish. But Love is silent through it all. For Love knows that just to be understood is the finest, sweetest, rarest kind of sympathy treasured by the human soul. You may suffer with the sufferer--but only that he may in turn rejoice with you. And if you have not learned to smile while suffering--better steel yourself and not suffer.

   Love is more than service. How many a harried housewife and irritable mother needs to learn this lesson. To minister to the body is often to stultify the soul. Rents in the heart are more costly than rents in a garment. And physical ease may be secured at the price of spiritual unrest. To inspire our fellows to trust, help and develop themselves--this is a higher service than running errands or prosecuting the weekly sweep. Many an anxious Martha waits in vain for the reward of her material forethought, while some sweet-faced Mary receives the blessing that follows only the outpouring of the heart.

   Love is more than loyalty. Love is the one expansive force irresistible. So that of all created beings, lovers must grow. And if they cannot grow together, they must grow apart. Loyalty is the exalting of person above principle; Love is the overshadowing of person by principle. A kind of incomplete loving may hold together a very young soul and a very old soul unawakened. But when the awakening comes, they will separate as night from day. The young soul will probably possess mental acumen--for only young souls glory in that sort of thing. And the old soul will probably be simple, natural, childlike--for only old souls are wise enough to be themselves. The world therefore, being very young indeed, will laud the blind loyalty of the infant soul, while disparaging the far-sighted sincerity of the experienced soul.

   In the five years I have been unfolding, I have entered and outgrown that many circles of friends. The few friends I have now I was not ready for then; the many friends I had then are not ready for me now. And so we part--I, at least, with a smile and a Godspeed. The mission of friendship is to teach us how dearly we may cherish something without wanting to own it. How many of us are learning that we cannot, must not own our friends? It is easy to smile when Love comes--easy and beautiful. But when Love goes--never from the soul, only from the brain or the body--then it is not so easy. Yet more beautiful. The Love that lets is the rarest and most precious. Nor is this sacrifice. Love is Love that asks neither recognition nor return--but that gets both. We can never really lose what or whom we have really loved.

   Love is more than passion. Love between sweethearts cannot live without passion. This every woman needs to feel. But Love between sweethearts cannot live on passion alone. And this every man needs to feel. Passion born in the soul is divine. Passion born in the brain or the body is abortive--humanly abortive. Nature says "Be utterly passionate--but be pure first." Humanity says "You should not be passionate. For if you are, you cannot be pure."

   It is perhaps true that women are not passionate because men are not pure. It is no less true that men are not pure because women are not passionate. To be natural is to be both. Men force Love--and are impure. Women repress Love--and are impure. There is no choice.

   And yet, being a man, I cannot help seeing more vividly the grossness of men's mistakes in the relation of soul to sex. How few men can send their souls through the thrill of their touch! How many women long for lovers who can. No man ever realizes that tenderness is power till he learns how to caress his sweetheart.

   The reason men's bodies fail to attract women is that men's bodies fail to express men's souls. And your sweetheart must have your soul first. You satisfy the soul of a woman--and all of her is yours. Neglect or insult her soul--and none of her is yours. You complain she is cold, artificial, uninteresting? No, not that. You are coarse. You are stupid. You are unfeeling. You are too much man. And not enough baby, not enough woman, not enough god.

   I believe in the absolute abandon of Love. But I also believe that reverence without freedom is less of an evil than freedom without reverence. Freedom is always a possibility to be achieved; while reverence, once lost, can never be recovered. A "Freelover" is a person so heterogeneous he hasn't any other half. So he goes about searching for an assortment of fractions wherewith to complete his own deficiencies. Every pure woman should shrink from him as from a viper.

   Truth lies half-way between the ascetic and the Freelover.

   He who frowns at sex never felt its ecstacy; he who jests at sex never felt its sanctity. Sex cannot be enjoyed and used to the full until you have sublimised it to the fineness of the rapture of religion. Such a wedding needs no trousseau or bridal party. The Recording Angel issues no marriage certificates. Betrothals in Heaven are authorized by Instinct, sanctified by Love, consummated by Abandon, and witnessed by Silence. Such a ceremony is lawless, wordless, thoughtless.

   But before a marriage can be made in Heaven, both the lovers must have lived there long enough to become naturalized. This makes the cases so rare we really don't need to consider them. Besides, mere earth-dwellers wouldn't understand them anyway.

   Love is more than wisdom. Only those wise enough to be loving are loving enough to be wise. The wisest people in this world are children, poets, idealists, and virgin mothers. Their wisdom isn't the college kind to be sure--it's the kind God gave them. You never found God studying at college or compiling facts from a library. God's enlightenment shines straight through the heart and soul; it hasn't time to filter through that miasmic mass of judicial jelly we call a brain.

   Love and light begin with the same letter. And end with the same thrill. Your complexion will be whiter if you always stay in a darkened room. But the child of Nature risks even a little sunburn in order to be out-of-doors. Wisdom counselled Love--"See these scars and be cautious." Love replied--"You show the scars--and regret them ? You never loved!"

   Love may wound. But Love always leaves a soothing balm that makes you feel better than before the hurt. The dearest memento in my possession is a little scar once impressed on my flesh by Some One I love.

   Love though is not all transcendental or sentimental. Love is pre-eminently practical. It does things. Being Infinite Energy, it must. Every great success is but the growth of a great love. Love for an individual, or for an ideal, or for the Infinite. And the size of your success always measures the size of the thing you love. Love your family--and your success will be to supply its wants. Love your country--and your success will be to administer public office. Love your race--and your success will be to immortalize your name in business, art or invention. Love your Spirit Source--and your success will be to incarnate Its splendor for the emulation of mankind.

   Human knowledge may instruct. Human prestige may support. But Love alone both illumines and empowers. And the origin of Love is superhuman--whether you like the word or not.

   Having taken this bare glimpse of the province of Love, let us inquire how its expression is enhanced by means of the Conquest Fast.

   1. The Conquest Fast restores the solar plexus to its natural state. A human can't love normally with an abnormal solar plexus, this being the emotional brain. Now you won't find a perfect solar plexus save in about two individuals; a little child uncivilized by wrong clothing, food and thought, and a man just completing a protracted Fast. Everybody else is stuffed inside and choked outside. And the delicate nerve-centre you need to love with is disabled, poisoned, benumbed.

   You may have tried to "wake the solar plexus" by breathing exercises, "affirmations," and so forth. Good. All good. But you'll have to heal that dilated stomach, reduce that enlarged liver, quiet that inflamed digestive tract, before your affection-dynamo can put itself in working order.

   The very process of digestion is quickened by the act of loving. It is the soul that assimilates food--not the body. And the more you love, the less food does the soul need to retain its mortal habiliment. Thus a wee lunch of bread, cheese and kisses is physiologically more wholesome, more strengthening, more satisfying than any table-d'hôte dinner in a table-d'hôte atmosphere. Particularly if you and your sweetheart prepare the little meal together, then eat it in an upper room of a cottage built on a mountain-peak, or facing the placid stretch of the sea.

   Indeed the only time a self-conscious soul cares not to eat alone is when his really truly sweetheart is by his side. She is not company--she is his own heart and flesh.

   2. The Conquest Fast eliminates alien elements. Love finds two chief hindrances to its natural expression; food-poison in the body and fact-poison in the brain. We swallow what custom feeds us, we believe what superstition tells us. As a result we are either too pale to love passionately--as on a woman's diet of tea and charlotte russe; or too dense to love purely--as on a man's diet of sirloin and French fry; or at least too confused to love spontaneously--as on anybody's diet either of romantic or of "scientific" literature, both being misleading.

   Nothing but a long Fast will clear out all this rubbish, and enable a human to love like the god-animal that a human is. It clarifies both brain and body. In so doing, it liberates the soul for fresh activity.

   3. The Conquest Fast brightens the individual aura and certifies the individual vibration. So-called "mismating" in marriage is but the constant attrition of undeveloped or insincere individuals. The soul that has found itself rings true. The soul that answers the vibration must also ring true. When these two mate, we have an affinity--a marriage made in Heaven, whether on earth or not.

   In short, if your soul is a blue, a white, or a yellow, yet too weak and dim to be itself, you may take on the muddy brown of the personalities about you. Then when you come to love, you and the brown will be hopelessly mixed. And while you are working out the darker tinge that is really not you, your sweetheart will become disenchanted.

   Now an extreme Fast separates you from all that is not you. It puts you on a new basis with the world. It does in reality what the orthodox churchman claims "conversion" will do. It alienates you from unreal friendship, and attracts to you the genuine. It identifies the desires of your heart with the dictates of your "conscience"--whatever and wherever that hypothesis may be. It makes Love synonymous with life. Because the fuller the life, the fuller the love.

   4. The Conquest Fast invests the real with the ideal. No chasm in life is so hard to bridge as Love's hiatus between the ideal and the real. We love the ideal symbolized in a friend, but we think we love the mere personality. Then when the human side disappoints, we lose faith in the divine. I think there is nothing sadder than to see the capacity for belief in a lovely woman crushed to atoms because the trust in her girlish ideal has been shattered. An ideal is only a trellis whereon our affections may flower. To serve its purpose it must be outgrown. Should our love-nature be less aspiring than that of the morning-glory?

   Now a mystic is never cast down by the destruction or desertion of the tangible. The breath of his life is the inspiration of the Unseen. The Conquest Fast should make you at least somewhat of a mystic. Enough so as to prevent your substituting the real for the ideal, or ever expecting ultimate satisfaction from sense-delights. You cannot divorce ideal from real, any more than you can cleave sun from shadow. But you can learn this: that while comfort seeks the shade, growth demands the sunlight. Yet in Love, as in Nature, the shade cannot lessen a flower's chlorophyll. Nor the sun bestow those dewy sweets of dawn or twilight. Love's repose forever alternates with Love's fever. Thus also the leaning on the real with the straining toward the ideal.

   5. The Conquest Fast equates personal and universal. To be able to love Some One, love with all your heart, mind, soul and body--then to say good-bye if need be at the foot of the mountain, and go up alone to meet God; this is the ideal.

   The all-round lover forgets the world in loving his sweetheart ; then forgets his sweetheart in loving the world; then forgets both in loving the Infinite.

   She may call him unreasonable in the third forgetting. She will surely call him cruel in the second. But he mustn't mind-- if she weren't limited some way, she wouldn't do for his sweetheart.

   Nothing teaches non-attachment so vividly as the Conquest Fast. It reveals the twin-necessity of utter absorption and utter separation. All man one moment, all god the next; this is the pendulum through which symmetry swings. The pious folk won't understand the first extreme, nor the worldly folk the second. But symmetry is never understood.

   To be understood is to be defined. To be defined is to be limited. I am Limitless.

   6. The Conquest Fast expands the love-nature. I always loved the hills, the sea, and the stars. Loved them more than I loved mortals. But before my long Fast, the hills came first, the sea next, and the stars last.

   The order is reversed now. My love has largely outgrown the earthly ambition of the hills, and has merged into the heavenly calm of the eternal altitudes.

   That is not all. Every tiny thing that grows has become my next of kin. The animals of the forest are more my friends than the humans of the city. I do not need the companionship of men. Indeed, only he understands fellowship who is never lonely when alone. I am my own inspiration--if you but let me be myself.

   It is the lesser loves that fail to satisfy. And the sooner we express the largest love of which we are capable, the sooner will we realize health, happiness and the dauntlessness of sincerity.

   7. The Conquest Fast reveals the divinity of Love. I used to be very intolerant toward the sinner. But I had not suffered enough, then. We never do understand the sinner until we ourselves have felt we must love, yet do not know what or how. Then we discover what salvation means--not a moral repentance, but a physical and mental regeneration.

   He who loves wrongly because he must love is more Godlike than he who appears righteous because he cannot love. And when, through this long Fast, you have come close enough to the Heart of God, you will feel how every Love-impulse that animates us thrilled first from that Infinite Heart. Henceforth there is just one work for you--to reveal men to themselves, that they may love always and utterly as their souls impel. No stoppage in brain or body, no restraint from outside, no error from ignorance, no hesitation from fear.

   Only Love, pure, powerful and perfect, as it shines in the sun, blossoms in the flower, laughs in the brook, sings in the bird, dreams in the star, soothes in the silence, and beckons in the blush immortal of a loving woman's cheek.