The Institute for Research on Unlimited Love: (No Kidding!)

[Bathsheba]

I was just listening to ABC radio's interview with spokesperson Dr. Stephen Post.... at first I thought it was some kind of joke... apparently it's the real deal.

Here is an extract from the site:

With support from the Templeton Foundation, the Institute has funded nearly 70 scientific research projects at universities including Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, Emory, and Case Western Reserve University. The questions being addressed are important to us all. How, for example, can we raise children who shape their lives around unselfish love and the service of humanity? How can we develop cultural and educational environments that foster such behavior? Is it true that kind and benevolent people generally experience higher levels of well-being, happiness, and health? How can love be made more lasting in marriage and family life? How do individuals whose loved ones have been killed or maimed manage not to succumb to hatred? Where do love and justice converge? Is unselfish love - understood evolutionarily, developmentally, and spiritually - the deeper and most fulfilling ground of human nature? How do catastrophies like 9/11 or the tsunami wave elicit such compassionate responses? Can we better understand rescuers who put their lives on the line for perfect strangers? Is love the "Ground of Being" that philosophers and mystics speak of perennially? What can we learn about the human spiritual perception of Unlimited Love that seems to enliven and quicken our benevolent emotions?

The Institute for Research on Unlimited Love was founded in June of 2001 with a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation. Sir John was kind enough to allow the Institute to borrow its name from his book entitled Pure Unlimited Love: An Eternal Creative Force and Blessing Taught by All Religions (2000). Throughout his life Sir John has urged all religions to think of God primarily in terms of Unlimited Love for all persons without exception, and he has proposed a "humility theology" in which we recognize how very little we really do know about spiritual realities. Deeply concerned with the ways in which human arrogance and group egoism can lead to religious violence, Sir John has proposed that we acknowledge how little we know, and that we draw on the best methods of science to gradually help us gain insights into the great perennial questions that animate spiritual and religious belief and practice. Often, Sir John has suggested that progress will come from learning as much as we possibly can about such things as gratitude, joy, purpose, optimism, forgiveness, creativity, awe, unselfish giving, altruism and love. And in particular, he has asked us to study deeply about love as the Ultimate Reality of all existence and of all human goodness.

It may seem odd that, in a time when rage, fragmentation and violence are so visible in our world, we should come together around such a hopeful topic. Yet we have no choice but to make progress in our understanding and practice of a love that acknowledges for all humanity the absolutely full significance that we otherwise acknowledge only for ourselves, or for those most like us.

Immense and complex questions resonate with all of us: How can we learn to love our neighbor even when he or she can give nothing in return, or is not a member of our group? Do benevolent people experience higher levels of psychological well-being? Are they healthier? Do they live longer? How can love be made more lasting in marriage and family life? How can we raise caring children? What can we learn from the lives of truly generous individuals? Where does spirituality fit in? What is the link between love justice? Is it true that in the giving of self lies the unsought for discovery of self? Is unselfish love the deeper and most fulfilling ground of human nature? Is it even the "ground of being" as mystical traditions have suggested?

Further reading HERE (Institute site)

I'm impressed

[nickel]

Thanks Bathsheba - it does sound like a joke doesn't it! I'll have to check it out. Hopefully they will be able to write an instruction manual on raising selfless, kind, loving kids soon...I'd be first in line.