In fact, to be perfectly honest, it sounds not only like Stefanie did not lose "love", she may well have perfected what Christians refer to as agape. I mean, compare what she wrote with:



And if that's the case, it's simply tragic that so many Christians are so averse to meditation!

For eleven years I lived in an Altered State Of Consciousness, so I had plenty of time to examine all its nooks and crannies ... and I found much that was murky and dirty lurking around in the outer darkness. [...] I spent the first three years swanning along in a state of ‘Oneness with everything’. I was Love Agapé and Divine Compassion all rolled up into one ... and my reward for being the latest ‘Saviour Of Humankind’ was to be able to live in ‘Rapturous Bliss’, ‘Ineffable Ecstasy’ and ‘Exalted Euphoria’. However, my native intelligence would not let me get away with anything false and I soon found enough to make me start suspecting something very serious was wrong with Spiritual Enlightenment. To start off with was the inescapable fact that I had a ‘Sense Of Mission’ to bring ‘Peace and Love’ to a suffering humanity – I was driven to spread ‘The Word’ and to disseminate ‘The Truth’ – and this imposition did not sit well with me. In my fourth year I started to question the efficacy of Divine Compassion as a means of resolving sorrow once and for all. As a palliative for suffering it was beyond compare – it superseded pity, sympathy and empathy by a mile – but it remained forever a panacea only. Consolation for sorrow, no matter how divine that solace may be, is not a cure that lasts.
The Altered State of Consciousness – in particular, spiritual enlightenment – needs to be talked about and exposed for what it is so that nobody need venture up that blind alley ever again. There is another way and another goal. The main trouble with the enlightenment is that whilst the ego dissolves, the identity as a soul remains intact. No longer identifying as a personal ego-bound identity, one then identifies as an impersonal soul-bound identity – ‘I am That’, ‘I am God’, ‘I am The Supreme’, ‘I am The Absolute’ and so on. This is the delusion , the mirage, the deception ... and it is extremely difficult to see it for oneself, for one is in an august state. This second identity – the second ‘I’ of Ramana Maharshi fame – is a difficult one to shake, maybe more difficult than the first; for who is brave enough to voluntarily give up fame and fortune, reverence and worship, status and security?
One has to be scrupulously honest with oneself to go all the way and no longer be a someone, a somebody of importance. One faces extinction; ‘I ’ will cease to be, there will be no ‘being’ whatsoever, no ‘presence’ at all. It is impossible to imagine, not only the complete and utter cessation of ‘me’ in ‘my’ entirety, but the end of any ‘Ultimate Being’ or ‘Absolute Presence’ in any way, shape or form. It means that no one or no thing is in charge of the universe ... that there is no ‘Ultimate Authority’. It means that all values are but human values, with no absolute values at all to fall back upon. It is impossible for ‘me’ to conceive that without a wayward ‘me’ there is no need for any values whatsoever ... or an ‘Ultimate Authority’.
Thus I find myself here, in the world as-it-is. A vast stillness lies all around, a perfection that is abounding with purity. Beneficence, an active kindness, overflows in all directions, imbuing everything with unimaginable fairytale-like quality. For me to be able to be here at all is a blessing that only ‘I’ could grant, because nobody else could do it for me. I am full of admiration for the ‘me’ that dared to do such a thing. I owe all that I experience now to ‘me’. I salute ‘my’ audacity. And what an adventure it was ... and still is.

My experiences on an uninhabited island in the tropics off the north-eastern Australian seaboard came after being in India [...] It was there I finally discovered that it was Spiritual Enlightenment that was at fault and that I could ‘purify’ myself via these ‘Tried and True’ means until the moon turned blue ... to no avail.
The first of these experiences occurred at maybe three in the morning (I had no watch) and was accompanied by a sense of dread the likes of which I had never experienced even in a war-zone – made all the more acute because I had not experienced fear for four years (I was living in a state of Divine Compassion and Love Agapé which protected me from malice and the underlying fear). [...] It seemed so extreme that the physical body must surely die for the attainment of it.
To put it into a physical analogy, it was as if I were to gather up my meagre belongings, eradicate all marks of my stay on the island, and paddle away over the horizon, all the while not knowing whence I go ... and vanish without a trace, never to be seen again. [...] The autological self by whatever name would cease to ‘be’, there would be no ‘spirit’, no ‘presence’, no ‘being’ at all. This was more than death of the ego, which is a major event by any definition; this was total annihilation. No ego, no soul – no self, no Self – no more Heavenly Rapture, Love Agapé, Divine Bliss and so on. Only oblivion. It was not at all attractive, not at all alluring, not at all desirable ... yet I knew I was going to do it, sooner or later, because it was the ultimate condition and herein lay the secret to the ‘Mystery of Life’.
It was to take seven more years to eventuate ... but that is another story.

RESPONDENT: Is there something more you could say; could you provide more detail about this ‘stepping out’? I would for one to like to know the details about what was in your mind; what went through your mind (or outside or your mind) while you were in total isolation on the island, and how that relates to what/where you are now, that is if you feel so inclined to share.
RICHARD: Basically it was because of my intense urge to evince and demonstrate whatever was possible for this universe to manifest that I was looking into both Universal Compassion and Love Agapé to see what they are made up off. I was busy with these matters because I seemed to be driven by some force to spread ‘The Word’ and that had never been my intention all those years ago when I first had what is known as a pure consciousness experience (PCE). This peak experience initiated my incursion into all matters metaphysical, culminating in the ‘death’ of my ego and catapulting me into the sacred. My intent back then had been to cleanse myself of all that is detrimental to personal happiness and interpersonal harmony ... in other words: peace on earth in our life-time. Instead of that rather simple ambition, I found that I was impelled on an odyssey to be the latest ‘Saviour of Humankind’ in a long list of enlightened ‘Beings’ ... and this imposition did not sit well with me, as they have all failed in their ‘Divine Work’. After something like five thousand years of recorded history, ‘humanity’ was nowhere nearer to peace and harmony than before. Indeed, because of the much-touted Love and Compassion, much Hatred and Bloodshed had followed in their wake. This abysmal fate was something I wish to avoid repeating, whatever the personal cost in terms of losing the much-prized ‘State Of ‘Being’.
My diagnosis was simple: If I am driven by some force – no matter how Good that force be – then I am not actually free.

An actual freedom from the human condition is different from Enlightenment in that it is most definitely substantial: there is no transcendence, for I have neither sorrow nor malice anywhere at all to rise above via sublimation. They have vanished entirely, leaving me both blithesome and benign – carefree and harmless – which leads to a most remarkable state of affairs. The chief characteristics of Enlightenment – Union with the Divine (by any name), Universal Compassion, Love Agapé, Ineffable Bliss and Rapture, The Truth, Timelessness, Spacelessness, Formlessness, Immortality, Aloneness, Oneness, Pacifism, Surrender, Trust, Beauty, Goodness and so on – being redundant in this totally new condition, are no longer extant. Herein lies the unmistakable distinction between this condition, which I call actual freedom, and the Enlightened State: I am no longer driven by a Divine Sense Of Mission to bring The Truth, Universal Love and Divine Compassion to the world. I am free to speak with whomsoever is genuinely interested in solving the ‘Mystery of Life’ and becoming totally free of the Human Condition. For succinctness and clarity I can summarise it as follows:
[...]
The primary cause of all the wars and murders and rapes and tortures and domestic violence and child abuse and suicides and so on is the instinctual passions which give rise to malice and sorrow and the antidotally generated pacifiers of love and compassion which, if sublimated and transcended, give rise to Love Agapé and Divine Compassion. This ‘Tried and True’ solution to all the ills of humankind lies within the ‘Human Condition’ and, as it has had 3,000 to 5,000 years to demonstrate its efficacy, can be discarded as being the ‘Tried and Failed’.
[...]
Love Agape and Divine Compassion are not ‘practical’ at all ... to practice pacifism and surrender is to allow the bully-boys to rule the world.
[...]
Only a psychological and/or psychic entity needs the connection of relationship in order to create a synthetic intimacy – usually via the bridge of love and compassion – and manifest the delusion that separation has ended.
[...]
Not only is ‘a Love Agape and a Divine Compassion’ non-pacifistic and warlike ... any brand of non-human (sacred, divine, unconditional, and so on) love and compassion has left much bloodshed and hatred in its wake. This is because the diabolical underpins the divine.

Thanks BP.

But presumably that still leaves room for a deep difference between what those masters on the one hand, and regular Joes on the other "experience" (quoted on purpose), yes?

For example, it sounds perfectly plausible to me that my (regular Joe) experience of fear could be fundamentally different from theirs. I see a snake in the path and I experience fear. The fear grows, and panic arises. Pain, suffering, etc. Normal, everyday fear. Yuck.

When they see the snake, however, there are some really pretty profound differences. First of all, since they have managed to achieve anatta, then while they will still be able to acknowledge that, in so many words, "Yes, there's fear in the room", they're not experiencing "I am afraid", because they're not experiencing "I". And so, second, if the pain and suffering that I (Robert) experienced when I saw the snake are a result of the fact that I see the pain as somehow being "mine" or attached to "me", then they simply won't experience that pain and suffering.

I'm just speculating here, and it may sound like I'm asserting but I'm really asking. Does that sound credible to you?

Thanks Florian. Very useful. Picking up on one specific point:

Do you see the fact that you have those preferences as part of you not being finished yet? Or, maybe better put, do you envisage those preferences disappearing as you develop in skill?

The reason I ask is that it has for a long time puzzled me as to why there appears to be an asymmetry in the universe when it comes to pleasure versus pain (in all their forms -- calm/rage, love/aversion, and so on). Why does pain feel "bad" and pleasure feel "good"? What *is* that kind of bad and good? Or, in this context, what are the grounds for there even being a "preference"?

It -- the pain/pleasure asymmetry -- has something of the same flavor as the time direction asymmetry in physics. There's currently no convincing explanation as to why time seems to move in the direction it does -- most if not all of the physics works equally well backwards as well as forwards.

When I then encountered Buddhism and talk of no-self and loss of craving and attachment, I began to wonder if there may be a clue in there (to the pain/pleasure asymmetry, not the physics forward-time/backward-time one). I wondered if at very high levels of attainment one would become genuinely indifferent to which (if either) one experienced.