Bridge to Unity
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"Maya, do you think it's more important for a person's life, to love, or to be loved?"
"In my opinion, it is definitely more important to love, if that love is not generated by some need to be loved, or to possess, or control what is loved. In my view, non-egotistical love is reverence. When I have my little mystical ecstasies, I feel love for everything; that love doesn't seem to be coming from me, it just Is; I don't seem to be there. I vanish into love. That is the most sublime level of consciousness and what I intend to dedicate the rest of my transient existence to. When I lapse back into that level of consciousness in which I feel like an individual person, I still have considerable difficulty in not desiring what I love, as you have just witnessed. Perhaps, if I work with those individuals who are about to go from Diversity to Unity, my love of Unity will increase. In my view, love at that level of consciousness, is Unity.”
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About the Book
This allegorical narrative portrays the timeless debate over the perspectives of unity and diversity as a Jewish psychiatry resident and a Hindu psychiatry resident become involved in each other’s lives. A Christian faculty psychiatrist supervises their mystical encounter. In this West meets East interaction, science and the psychology of reverence become inextricably entwined in the biological, social and psychological aspects of the individuals involved as well as in the complex medical field of psychiatry. Case histories of various patients are used to demonstrate the complexity of attempting to clearly distinguish between cognition and emotions. Frames of reverence and frames of reference are portrayed as being continually fraught with illusions, and even delusions, as the characters seek to establish some logical format that will bridge perspectives of unity and diversity.
About the Author
Dr. Wilford W. Spradlin, received his B.A. and M.D. degrees from the University of Virginia, interned at the Royal Victoria Hospital of McGill University and completed his residency training at Duke University where he later became a member of the faculty. In 1978, Dr. Spradlin accepted the position of Chair at the University of Virginia Department of Psychiatry. At his retirement in 1997, Dr. Spradlin was awarded the W. W. Spradlin Chair of Psychiatric Medicine and the title of Professor Emeritus. His scientific publications include Human Biosociology and The Search for Certainty, by Springer-Verlag. Presently, Dr. Spradlin continues to teach and supervise residents. He and his co-author, Susan Renee, pursue their shared interest in the bio-psycho-social foundations of human behavior with emphasis on the psychological, philosophical and religious aspects of reverential phenomena. www.wilford-spradlin-writings.com and www.susan-renee-novels.com