The Love Testament

Tenth Perspective

Love as the Power-to-Will

1st Set
1 Love is willed, either consciously or unconsciously.
2 Love is harmonious between persons when the unity of purpose between them prevails; it is
conflictual when this unity of purpose is unbalanced. This conflict initiates separateness,
dispersion, clash of interests, and so forth. In conflict, the parties suffer diffusion; are fragmented;
and so become less effective together, but usually separately.
3 Love, when it is harmonious between persons, impart power of effect; or, in a word, power.
4 The more love – or, the more at one we are with another, or others – the more harmony; and the
more harmony, the more power.
5 Love, then, imparts power. The more we are imbued with power, the more energy we extend; and
since the expenditure of energy is simply more power to will, love, then, from a variant perspective,
is the power to will.
6 We will – consciously, unconsciously, instinctively – to be at one (unite) with another so to be more
than we are apart from that other; which is to say, to intake more power into our being – to be this
power apart from will: our self-will. Those who are quite satisfied with their self-will, and to its extent
of power it affords them, have no need to unite with another other than for the purpose of inflating
their own self being.
7 The sense, the feeling, of love is power in action.
8 The more love extended, the more power accrued.
9 The more power the more effect.
10 The more effective one becomes, the more invincible.
11 The more invincible one becomes the more to power itself one becomes.
12 The more power itself one becomes, the more immortal. The more immortal, the less mortal; and
so closer to death in or out of life.
13 The more love we impart, the more love we are.
14 The more love we are, the more will-less we are – that is, the less we love with a human will.
15 The less we love with a human-will; the more we love with a love-will.
16 The more we love willlessly: as the love-will, the more we become everything.
17 The more we are everything, the more we know and understand everything.
18 Nietzsche’s will to power is the will to love the meaning of will, apart from loving, willing, particulars.
The power to will is to reach will-itself, is the meaning of will: the Great Will, as D.H. Lawrence calls
it.

2nd Set

Having established that Love is the bond of (all) unity, this bond has some manner of power that
wills the unity of all things, the power that draws, or at- tracts, all things together, and apart, in
place, form, and act (function). Accordingly, we can conceive of this bond as the power-to-will all
things in unity.
We are transcendently the power to will; we are psychologically the will to Power – to use
Nietzsche’s phrase.
We are that Power which binds the world together as One in Meaning.
The power to will courses through every fiber, every cell, every molecule, every atom, every quark,
of every … of my body and mind.
The power to will activates every act of willing, every motivation, every intention, every conscious,
subconscious, unconscious, movement of the mind.
An act of will ensues from the Power to will.
That we can and do will this or that ensues from the Power to will.
This Power that wills everything willable does not cause acts of will; rather they ensue from this
Power of their own accord, so to speak. An analogy: the ocean itself does not cause its waves; but
that waves form as manifestations of the ocean’s infinite configurations and conditions. Each wave
is itself the ocean, only in infinite forms. So relatedly, acts of will (waves) are in reality formations of
the Power (ocean) that takes on various forms resulting from exterior physical factors (wind,
rotation of the earth, etc.). Similarly, an act of will cannot be separated from the Power that wills it.
But as with the ocean analogy in which exterior conditions (wind) cause the wave formations –
what are the exterior conditions that cause the Power will to will this or that – besides the natural
physical conditions of any given body (organic or otherwise). It seems that the natural conditions
govern the Power to will. Or is it true the other way around: that the power to will governs natural
conditions? And if so, how? Could it be that all willing, organic and nonorganic (Schopenhauer) is
directed toward the Power inherent to each act of will (Nietzsche) – that all things will Power. In
which case, each act of will is in reality, is ultimately, the Power that wills? – the Power of will
enfolds and infolds on itself infinitely and eternally, to speak in terms of physics.
In which case, Nietzsche was right in that everything wills power; or as I would put it, everything
wills to be Power; that is to say, its ultimate identity; which is to say further, that everything is
ultimately the Power to will – only, as manifestations of that Power: as the wave to the ocean, as
energy to mass and vice versa.
How do we make practical sense of all this metaphysics? Or otherwise put, of what significance
does it have for us? What does it indicate? Well, it indicates an infinity of events and relationships
beyond what we conceive as cause and effect; which signifies a non-reality beyond reality as we
perceive and conceive of it; and which provides for us starting point of recognizing and working
toward, a practicality making conscious and articulate our intuition within and beyond our reason.
We have to plumb, reach into the infinite, to make it known as finite – make the wave “know” that it
is the ocean; not a part of it, but as a form
of it.

The finite is to know its infinity: the temporal is to know its eternity.
And what is the infinity of the finite? And what is the eternity of the temporal? In a word: Meaning!
– the Meaning that orders and binds the world as it is.
If all this is the case – which I suppose it indisputably is – then it is the case that we are
everything: infinitely eternal, eternally infinite. And this is our immortality-the Being of everything –
our spirituality. And though we shudder to let go of our mortality, our immortality is our mortality
extended eternally, infinitely. Would you rather be the wave of the ocean itself? The wave has its
dynamic existence of its own for its “moment in the sun.” for it represents form-motion-in-time-its
own “parallel universe” and is supreme; yet it just as soon infolds itself back to its original totality
with or without waves.
As each wave has its own indivisibly, but temporal individuality, its own form of the ocean, so we,
as humans – and all else – are indivisibly forms (formations) of the eternal-infinity of the Power that
wills all forms of existence with meaning – in other words, the power to will.
And as the larger wave returns to its original state (as ocean w/o waves), so upon our death, we
return to our original state as Power-to-Will-with-meaning. In other words our body stops living –
which is the basis of our particular form (wave) of the “ocean” as the Power to will Meaning.

In familiar terms, we call this “power-to-will “meaning” as “existence,” “essence,” the one, “Love,”
the absolute” “The supreme being – And of course, the most common term, God.

3rd SET

The power-to-will initiates all thought and imagery.
It is the prime mover of all mind activities.
It is that which activates all mental activities since it is an aspect of the universal Mind.
It initiates everything mental: intellectual, psychological, surreal – and physical – from the “interior”
of the atom to all matter earthbound and cosmic.
It is the source of all that “thinks.”
It ranges from the severest degradation to the highest sublimity, from the worst horror to the
highest wonderment from the ignorance to the deepest wisdom, from the grossest pleasure to the
purest bliss, from the unconscious to the subconscious to the preconscious to the conscious, to the
transconscious.
It’s universal: It goes from here to infinity, from now to eternity.
What is this “It”? – The Power-to-will.
There it is. I have “nabbed,” have tracked, in a phrase the Source of all willing from human to
nonhuman, from animate to inanimate .
“I willed not to think, or to think, of X” means that some power activated that particular willed
choice. It is that power which activates my particular choice which normally chooses that which
offers the great- est pleasure or good.
It continues to initiate willing all my mental and physical functions, whether I’m aware of them or
not.
So long as there is willing in my mind, there is the power to will in my being.
It is like an unknown Presence that is always “there” in the background initiating our willing that is
ever continuous alive or dead.
The thought of the Will to power is not the actual will to power. It is that which sparks the thought,
which we can never quite put our finger on, can never quite catch it “on the run.” It eludes us ever.
It is always one step ahead of our willing, so to speak.
We tend to think that it is the object of desire that prompts, initiates, our willing that object, and
consequently, the whole train of thoughts to attain that object; when in fact, the object is just the
medium that accesses the power which initiates the desire (will) for that object. The Power-to-will
anticipates the object of desire.
Some of us are more “in tune” with the power that wills than the willing to that power, that is, all that
we will for our good. (Nietzsche’s “will to power”).
The Power-to-will is ever in both the state of potentiality to will this or that (everything), and
actuality in willing this or that (everything) continually without end – (and without beginning?)
The Power-to-will is the potentiality that wills all things into actuality; and actuality is that (all things)
which actualizes the potentiality of the Power-to-will.
The Power-to-will precedes will; and will proceeds from the Power-to-will.
But if that is the case, then it seems – from the standpoint of reason – that the abstractness
(purity) of the Power-to-will is in time, subject to temporality (before and after): It is the cause of
willing, and willing is the effect of It.
Yet this poses a conundrum.
Is the actuality (willing this or that) within the potentiality of the Power-to-will? In which case,
there would be no before or after, no separation, but rather an eternal-infinite identity, exchange, as
one and the same “reality”.
Essentially, metaphysically, that could very well be the case; but phenom- enally, there would be
the temporal cause-effect, potentiality-actuality state of affairs. The former mystic-spiritual-void of
this matter of the Power-to-will remains just that, and nothing more can be propounded about it
except the silence of mystic wonderment; whereas when we speak of It in phenomenal-rational
terms, then we can expostulate in terms of potentiality-actuality, cause (first cause, that is)- effect,
precedes-proceeds, and the like.
And it is the latter case of which I expostulate this mysterium of the Power-to-will. This approach
proffers us the image rather than the substance of It. Still, better the image than nothing.
The Power-to-will is that which actualizes the will to power.
The Will-to-power is potentiality turned actual; or, otherwise stated, is potentiality that actualizes the
phenomenal world.
The Power-to-will does not itself will; it precedes and actualizes will (all willing: animate and
inanimate)).
The Power-to-will pervades everything both matter and energy, both real and unreal, both within
and without. There is no real, essential, separation between my body here and now and that which
is outside my body: your body, all bodies (matter). As Lennon sings, “Your outside is in and your
inside is out” It is the old analogy of water bubbles in the ocean: exteriorly, we’re all separate

bubbles; but interiorly we’re all of the same substance –water; and when we burst, we all become
the same ocean; which we were in the first place.

4th Set

The Power-to-Power as The God (Love) Within

(As Spoken to My Wife)

Now I’m not a hundred percent sure that I have this down; but it could very well be, what
I’m going to say.
Remember 10 years ago when we first got together in the car-just before we got together
actually-and we talked about being able to reach the transcendent, eternal, part of us by our
own means: by just like triggering into it rather than through yogic practices, meditative
sessions, or drug-induced altered consciousness; or through purity of soul, or ethical virtue,
or fasting, or sensory deprivation, and the like, before one can be spiritually worthy before
communing with that eternal part of us.
It just automatically came out of me back then, and we both knew, between us, that this
“triggering in” through our mind rather than through practices was not only possible but that
it had to be. it always seemed that that would be my final push, the final striving, in my later
years to reach that, if it were even possible. The idea was that this eternal experience would
be one that happened whenever you wanted to more than once or twice in a lifetime beyond
our control.
Well it looks like it’s here; the beginnings of it anyway. You know, I have my overall
metaphysical, mystic, transcendent wisdom, of Meaning, as the ultimate of things in its most
abstract form, whether that meaning be a principle, a power, or whatever it may be; but
within that meaning is the meaning of the world right down to the meaning of a grain of
sand. And Love is a manifestation of it, the unifying aspect of it, that holds everything
together from inanimate to animate matter from the atomic particles in a grain of sand to
plants, to animals, to human beings-that’s what we call Love in human terms.
But there’s also a phrase that has always been kind of on the periphery of my mental
meanderings that came to me in a flash back in 1969, 23 years ago; and that is the power
to will that you’ve heard me speak of on and off over the years. It always returns to my
mind “out of nowhere”, so to speak; yet I didn’t quite know what to do with; how it fit into the
scheme of my developing human-transcendent wisdom.
Of course, Nietzsche’s will to power makes very good sense to me because, yes, we will
for power; not necessarily brute, physical power, but moral power, ego power, intellectual
power, spiritual power – what- ever direction it takes, the more power we have, the more
control of our lives, the more we experience of life and of the universe; the broader we are,
the more transcendent we are. Now the power to will is the converse of the will to power. In
the will to power, we will to that power; whereas my phrase, power to will, which – by the
way, I came to that phrase before I had even read Nietzsche – relates to the very power
towards which we will; which is that ultimate principle that makes it possible to actually will,
whatever that power is.

All right. so that’s the intellectual background of what I’m about to tell you. Now you know,
over the years in my transcendent session, I’m always striving to reach the ultimate of
everything, the oneness, the meaning. I use all these terms in an attempt to click into It
somehow or other; and I’ve even used the Power to will concept in the past on and off; but
nothing much happens. I’ve tried to go the Zen way of not thinking of anything; and other
means in vain. And you know I’ve had two ultimate pure-conscious experiences; but they
just happened to me; I don’t know where they came from. I had no control over them. But
what we’re talking about is that we do have control over this blessing, this beatitude; so how
do we go about that? How do we trigger into this Vastness in us?
Well, coming right to the matter hand now, the other night, having awakened at 3:30 in
the morning, and not being able to get back to sleep, I started getting my mind into a
transcendent mode-I almost always do that a little before I fall asleep. And the power to will
came to me again; and so I thought, let’s try that again. In the past when I’ve tried this
thought of the power to will, it does blank out my mind of, however momentarily, of my own
thoughts. When I think of the meaning of the word “power” in the phrase “power to will,” my
mind tries to get into that power, which is a purity, which is not willing at all; it’s that which
determines the willing, whether it is conscious or unconscious or instinctual willing,
whatever it may be.
So, this time, the other night, I did go into a sense of blanking out everything except this
purity; but it doesn’t last long; my mind always comes back to my willing this or that thought
or image.
But something happened this time that I got into that state of power, the power to will; that
means I tried to get into that state in which determines my willing. In which case, I don’t
deliberately, or intentionally will any thought or feeling; and I just kind of blank them out as
much as I can, and suspend my mind into it. Well, I was going through that process, and
something new happened to me, that came to me that this is the answer! the way into this
pure state of our eternality through this sense of power to will!. Not just power; it makes no
connection to anything mystic; it’s remote, it’s distinct, it’s out there; like the Zen people who
say don’t think of anything, empty your mind of all contents, and you’ll be in touch with
what’s pure. But something essential is missing in such a practice; there’s no connection to
the emptying your mind with the pure state; whereas with the power to will, there is a
connection: your willing is your thinking mind, and the power to will is that which makes you
think. So there is a relation- ship between the mind and the soul, so to speak. You have to
back out of that deliberate conscious think- ing and try to blend into this power which makes
you think. And be doing that, you’re in contact with this Power.
As I was going into it, however momentarily-each time I would come out of it and start
thinking again; and I’d repeat the phrase, power-to-will, power-to-will, trying to get back into
an empty state of mind-consciously speaking, of course – I got these odd surrealistic
images, like two teddy bears floating together in the sky, stranger faces, and so forth. I’ve
told you often in the past about that twilight time just before I’m about to fall asleep, I’d see
all these psychedelic imagery of the oddest swirling colors and shapes, and faces of things
and animals and human beings that would just be there without my evoking them. And I
never was one whose normal imagination functioned in such wild imagery. And do you re-
member when I would tell you that I would hear such tremendous classical unheard of
music in my head before I would fall asleep; and I have no sense of musicianship other than

I love music overall. Where did all that come from? It never happened until my middle years.
It’s been always the most fascinating unresolved mystery to me – until now, it seems.
So I thought the other night, This is what the surrealists were trying to reach, and were
able to, individually in a temporary manner. Their minds were attuned to that altered, surreal
state of consciousness, and they wrote and drew about it. But then it would have to become
contrived after a while, because apparently no one has been able to stay in that altered
state continuously-shy of mind-altering drugs, that is. Much the same with me in different
periods of my writing and reflecting life. At one time I was in a period of nature poetry writing
when the verses just poured out of me, with hardly an effort at all except for polishing. And
then it was over; and I never have been able to write such poetry again; and it would be
contrived of me to try to. At another time in my life, I was in a dream analysis phase, and I
remembered and recorded practically all of my dreams, and made some amazing
discoveries. Yet that period ended, and I hardly ever remember, except fragmentarily, my
dreams any more.
To return to my course of thought. It’s one thing to say I want to empty my mind and
reach this power in me; but you can’t just do that; you have to know what you’re doing – and
what you’re doing is being in contact with the eternal flow, the meaning, of everything; the
power that makes everything exist, that is existence. And I also understood for the first time
Kazanzakis writings about the blood of our ancestors flowing in our veins; and that we must
use every drop of that blood to try to make God conscious of itself in us and through us.
God is screaming in each of us to be known. We must justify everyone’s past existence with
all its suffering and cruelties to make God conscious through us. Now I understand what he
meant.
Relatedly, in this power to will – this Power – is the meaning of everything; and in this
meaning is everything that has ever been. And it’s a flow; and everything and everybody is
there – not physically, but in structural form, a potentiality, as I see it. And in this flow – just
imagine, now; of course this is speculation, in a way; but in this flow is everything that has
ever been, that will ever be, and ever is. And you get in contact with it, in one sense, you
might see individual ” figments of your imagination”; and in another sense, you might see –
and I use “see” in the sense of our so-called third eye – everything in one totality, in all
possibilities, then being in this flow, this Power, is just pure, sheer, power because our
minds cannot go into that bare abstraction so much, we see surreal images; all of a sudden
a person will appear some- thing or someone that you’ve never seen before, or a past event
of your own life, and so on forever.
So, it’s like, in this Power that wills everything is everything, is the whole world. And if we
can just click into it, we become that world either in a individual mode of mental forms or a
universal mode of form- lessness – a pure state of consciousness or power. This is where
you come from, where you are, where you’re going to be, where everything meets into one,
the eye of the needle.
I thought, If all this is true, what a salvation for people. So if we’re able to get into this
universal flow, this eternal reality, and to begin its understanding, and its development in
ourselves and in others, you can go into this world when you’re suffering, when you don’t
want to be here, you just shift into this other world. You know that at night, when the day is
over, however humdrum, or terrible, your life may be; that at night, when you’re alone, after
the kids and spouse are asleep, you can enter your world: a world that is eternally real, and

so more real than the shadow reflection of it. I’m reminded of Lennon’s lines in his gorgeous
song “Across the Universe”: Nothing’s gonna change my world. He knew.
So if we knew that this transcendent world, Power, was more real than this life, and that
we could just shift into that world whenever we wanted, that would give us a strength to
carry on; would give a meaning to our lives, that my particular meaning is the same
meaning as the meaning of the world.
My wife: “Sort of like the edge of reality?”
The edge of reality?
My wife: “Between this reality and the other? Where you were? Where you went?
Where you saw all these things?”
To me that’s the eternal reality, that oneness, that we experience now and then; that’s
that bliss state, the pure-consciousness, the psychedelic, the surrealistic, the mystic
experiences, the LSD experience, the near-death experiences, and so on. And you wonder,
how can this eternal reality be all these things, when it is one. Perhaps many people just get
an intimation of it, because of their particular cast of mind. But It’s everything; and according
to one’s particular mind and experiences and physiology and receptivity is how one will
experience it. Now, I’m able to experience some of the surrealistic imagery inherent to this
power; but I’m not too interested in that phase of this universal reality; I want to get right to
the totality of everything without imagery. That’s the way my mind works; but depending on
my condition at a particular time, I will see surrealistic imagery.
So all this stems from this phrase “power to will,” which has been with me since 1969 and
has never left me. And when Nietzsche wrote that the essence of the world is the will to
power; well , he just missed it a little bit; but he certainly was closer to the truth than
everybody else. Yet, the phrase “will to power” seems, so cold, so remote, there is no
aesthetic beauty to it. How can one use that phrase as a metaphysical, spiritual, mystical
medium to inspire you and evoke your ultimate being. The same holds for my “power to
will’: it doesn’t sound beautiful like God or transcendence, or spirit. Yet, beauty is not
enough to help us reach our meaning, to shift us into our ultimate reality. These beautiful
words have no living meaning here and now; and so we cannot sustain our sense of It, let
alone make contact with it. On the other hand, we can see the effect of power right in front
of us in those waves washing ashore; we can feel the effect our willing as soon as we focus
our minds to it. The will to power has living, conscious meaning, as does the power to will,
even though it’s more remote than the former. How? We can connect with the will to power
because in our willing we experience a sense of power if we succeed in that willing. More
remotely, however, with the power to will, we sense that something causes our willing
beyond all psychological and physiological reasons …
That then is my revelation the other night.
My wife: “Can you sum it up for me?”
That the concept “power” in the phrase” the power to will” is the eternal flow and meaning
of every- thing, which is in our minds, in our brain cells. And being there, we can somehow
shift into; but no one knows how: it either happens to you or it doesn’t. What I’m saying is
that the WORD, language, is our bridge between eternity and life. So, if that’s true, then
through the word, we must be able to channel into the meaning of power. So I have come to
the word-complex the power to will; which to me, through development, can transfer me, us,
into that world. That’s the answer to back then when we got together that we said one day

people are going to be able to get to that Power, that universal flow. Why shouldn’t that be,
if that’s what we essentially are?
Yet, in a way, I still have doubts that all this that I’m saying won’t hold up; because, when
I tried yesterday and this morning to shift into this Power to will, very little happened. I was
tried, true, but nonetheless, I feel I should be able to. I’m afraid that this is just another
phase of my searching.
My wife: “No, I don’t think so.
I know I’m going to have to be trained to it, I’m going to have to work at it; it’s not that’s
just going to just happen. But at least I have a goal. It’s not just a goal that I want to empty
my mind to reach God. No, it’s not that easy. I want to empty my mind to reach God, yes,
but what is “God?” My answer: the Power-to-will. Fine. I can connect with that; it has
meaning. That’s the whole thing: everything has to have meaning to us in order for us to
connect with something to understand it. And if everything has to have meaning to us, that
is because everything in fact does have meaning, is meaning essentially, ourselves
obviously included. The power to will has meaning in this life and the other reality: the
willing and the power to will. something gives us the power to will. I mean, we can think “Oh,
well, that is all chemistry and physiology and psychology.” But, whatever it is, that power,
that makes atoms and electrons spin in structure and order and into form from the
microscopic to the macroscopic, that unifies everything, that keeps everything in motion is –
that is something that makes one pause, makes one wonder, makes one contemplate that
beyond the movement, the flux, of everything into that which means that movement, is the
power that causes it all.
So the power to will, that phrase, however cold and abstract and unaesthetic it may
seem, it is…
My wife: is one of the keys. …
It’s the key. so far as semantics are concerned, the Power to will is another psychological
perspective or interpretation for Meaning, as it is for Love. In religious terms, we can
consider Meaning as the Father, Love as the son, and Power to will as the holy spirit – three
as one. Meaning is the metaphysical aspect of eternity; Love is the human, unifying aspect
of eternity; and Power to will is the mystic aspect of eternity. It is through the Power to will
that we make contact, shift into eternal, universal reality; it is the holy spirit working in us as
individuals, separate from all other individuals, however loved they may be by us, whatever
meaning they or anything has to our lives. The Power-to-will is the individual bridge, or as
you said the edge, from here to eternity, to use that beautiful phrase; because of its
workings in us as living and as eternal. similarly with Meaning and Love, of course, except
the former is mostly of the intellect, reason, and the later is mostly of the psychological:
personal and interpersonal.
So, it is a matter of the Word: words that have living, individual meaning to us in relation
to our eternal nature. Relatedly, such abstract words as God, spirit, the absolute, Brahmin,
and the like – they don’t click us into the universal flow. Similarly with such a word as OM
that the Indians chant in order to deliver them from life. True, it may have holy, sacred,
mystic connotations; but it has no other meaning than holy, sacred, and whatever else; and
these words do not have much meaning in this life as a bridges to eternity. These words are
descriptions. But descriptions of what? something holy and sacred. But what is holy and

sacred? God, Spirit, etc. But what is God, spirit, and the like? We don’t know. and so we
have come around in a circle.
But Power has meaning to us as the impetus underlying willing; and willing has meaning
that we can know and recognize the impulse of everything that is in motion.

Tenth Perspective

Love as the Power-to-Will

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