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The Institute for Research on Unlimited Love was founded in June of 2001 in Cleveland, Ohio, with a generous initial grant from the John Templeton Foundation. It focuses on the science of an expansive, enduring, active love for humanity, as manifested in the lives of people who find energy and joy in serving others. These individuals sometimes report an intimate spiritual experience of vocation or calling, which they perceive as emanating from a God of their own understanding. We study this generative spirituality, drawing on scientific research in dialogue with religious and philosophical thought.
The Institute asserts that love is the crowning glory of every life, for it is the ultimate source of the meaning, dignity, and deep happiness that we mortal and frail creatures seek. Botox, anabolic steroids, human growth hormone to make our children a little taller, and the dubious promises of a fountain of youth - all are for sale but none add to dignity or a deeper happiness. Let us focus our attention less on the external vessel of our bodies, and more on the capacity for a generous love that already lies within us waiting only to be more fully unveiled and actively engaged. Without this love, we are poor even if we do not know it. With this love we become all that we can be. Love is the fundamental dynamic that moves us to “do unto others” in active concern and affection, affirming the significance and worth of every person, including self, without exception. All the goodness of life is nurtured in the soil of love, for love comforts, heals, creates, liberates, and elevates our lives in a way that nothing else can. We either love or suffer. We either love or destroy. We must each make a choice for love if we are to prosper, and we must make this choice deeply each and every day. This is where spiritual practice and belief in an Unlimited Love that surpasses all merely human love can be so valuable. All the seeds of human growth are planted in love. With it we feel blessed, without it we feel cursed. And words alone are not enough, for love is an activity.
A happier life revolves around at least one immaterial good—love. We cannot grasp love like a coin, but this warmth and concern for another is more real and meaningful than anything we can possess. Here is an exercise: Close your eyes and intensely imagine giving a generous smile to the person in your life you love most; then open your eyes and you will feel your heart strangely warmed. Deeper happiness, which is an enduring and unselfish joy, does not lie in worldly power and fame, although a good life will hopefully be recognized and celebrated as such; nor does it lie in extra riches that are divorced from creative giving and service. We may fill up the closet or the house with more and more, only to discover that our lives feel emptier and emptier. The best way to enjoy life is to loosen our grasp on things and be freer to love.
A healthier life revolves around love. The best way to achieve inner balance emotionally and physically is to reach out and help another human being. Washington Irving understood this inner benefit when he wrote, “Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.” To abide in a spirit of love is to abide in a joyful warmth and harmony with oneself. Love is its own emotional and spiritual reward, and no one can take this away—even in the absence of reciprocation. Of course love often does beget love, just as hate usually begets hate. We often find joy in the deeper relationships and connections that love brings into our social lives. But we cannot count on reciprocity, and should not depend on it or even seek it. We have only to love people and hope that they will be inspired to “go and do likewise.” Or, to bring this down to earth, I heard one mother tell her son, “Love and forget about it!” In this freedom from the law of reciprocity love is unbound and happiness just flows like it does for a child immersed in play. It is said, don’t “pay it back,” but “pay it forward.” As a boy, when I was having an off day, my mother would say, “Stevie, why don’t you go out and do something for someone!” And when I went out and helped a neighbour rake leaves or pull a boat out of the bay, I always came home feeling like a million dollars. This was “the helper therapy principle” at work.
A moral life revolves around love. When I think of the personalities of people who engage the world with love, I conclude that love rarely, if ever, stands alone. It brings with it an internal freedom, joy, courage, gratitude, hope, forgiveness, and peace. Love leads into a set of positive emotions that are closely connected and blend together into a unity of virtue. It is impossible to imagine active love not giving rise to liberation from destructive emotions that weigh us down, to a joy and delight in the beloved, to an inner peace and gratification that by its nature precludes harm in emotion, word, intention, or deed. In other words, all of ethics is primed by love, and the moral life is love applied in wisdom.
A resilient life revolves around love. Evil is the absence of love in the same way that poverty is the absence of abundance. When we practice love, whether we be Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindi, Shinto, atheist or theist, we are enjoying our greatest birthright. Without this practice, we may get through life, but we do not live abundantly or do great good. Without love, we cannot get through severe challenges. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his Christmas Eve address of 1941, wondered how men and women could rejoice in the spirit of love in a time of such concerted war against radical evil, with “sons and brothers” endangered. He answered, “Against enemies who preach the principles of hate and practice them, we set our faith in human love and in God’s care for us and all men everywhere.” Only the power of love can overcome the shadowy side of human experience. In really hard times, we either love or die.
For those who are first time visitors to the Institute website and do not know of me, a few brief words of introduction. I became interested in this topic while a youth at St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire. There I was able to learn about the agape love politics and theology of Howard Thurman, Benjamin Elijah Mays, and Martin Luther King, Jr., all associated with Morehouse College, from my African-American teacher Rev. John T. Walker, who went on to become Dean of the National Cathedral. I continued with college study focused on the biology and evolution of altruism, and afterwards, with the then nascent research into the ways in which receiving compassionate love impacts the strength of the immune system. I eventually wrote my Ph.D. dissertation (1983) at the University of Chicago Divinity School on the ways in which other-regarding love contributes to a deeper form of happiness that includes the shedding of tears for the neediest. I have stayed mostly focused on the study of love, whether in the context of phenomenological philosophy, theological ethics, compassionate health care, biomedical ethics, the life and social sciences, or the treatment of the cognitively disabled.
For the Institute to be born, I had to have the good fortune or knowing a truly wonderful man, a humble Presbyterian investor by the name of Sir John Templeton. Sir John allowed the Institute to borrow its name from his book entitled Pure Unlimited Love: An Eternal Creative Force and Blessing Taught by All Religions (2000). Sir John urged all religions to think of God primarily as Unlimited Love for all persons without exception. He understood that religions can bring out the very best in people, but also the very worst. Deeply concerned with the ways in which religious arrogance and group egoism can lead to violence, Sir John proposed as an alternative that we acknowledge how little we know about the nature of ultimate reality, and draw on the best methods of science to gradually gain insights into the perennial questions that animate spiritual and religious life. He was interested in new approaches to the study of Unlimited Love, which he thought of not just in interpersonal terms, but as the underlying reality of the universe. It was Sir John who provided the initial grant to found the Institute. The rest is history, as they say, a small portion of which I will now summarize.
The First Seven Years (2001-2008)
The Institute is now beginning the second seven-year period of a 21-year plan (2001-2022). In its first decade (2001-2008), the Institute funded 60 scientific studies in a highly competitive, peer-reviewed process that followed the national dissemination of several Requests for Proposals, two of which were developed in collaboration with the Fetzer Institute. Projects were completed at many universities including Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, Emory, Chicago, and Case Western Reserve University. The questions being addressed were broad, and generally included not only the best scientific methodologies, but a dialogue between scientists and experts in religious thought. 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 events 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?
In 2004 an international course competition for college and university professors attracted many applicants, from which 11 course awards were distributed after careful peer review. More than 20 of the science and theology faculty teaching these courses gathered at the Claremont School of Theology in April of 2005 to begin preparation of a text book to be used in future courses around the world. In addition, course awards have been made to secondary schools across the United States to support curricula on science and religion focused on the capacity of benevolent love. Many of these courses are now offered yearly.
Recognized internationally, the Institute’s achievements gained coverage in nearly 600 newspapers and magazines. These include the New York Times, Psychology Today, “O” Magazine, ABC 20/20, the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Utne Reader. The Institute has been featured on more than 120 radio talk shows, including the NPR Christmas Eve Talk of the Nation, Weekend Edition, Mehmet Oz, and the Dennis Prager Show. It was selected for a week of lectures at the Chautauqua Institution (August 22-26, 2005) on topic of unselfish love, spirituality and the brain, and returned in August of 2007. An estimated 700 people from 33 countries attended our conference entitled Works of Love: Scientific and Religious Perspectives on Altruism in 2003, convened with the Metanexus Institute at Villanova University, and similar numbers attended a conference in June of 2007.
In 2007 the Institute moved forward with a co-sponsored five-year project at the Center for Law and Religion at Emory University School of Law. This project brings together an estimated 25 leading national scholars and researchers in the social sciences, humanities, ethics, and religion to consider the deeper meanings of happiness and their bearing on how we pursue happiness in the modern world. The Institute also moved ahead in support of two research projects on religious tolerance and the Golden Rule under the direction of Dr. Jacob Neusner and Dr. Bruce Chilton through the Bard College Institute for Advanced Theology. In addition, the Institute provided a pilot grant to Dr. Maria Pagano for a program that examines the health impact of helping others in self-help movements (the 12th step of the 12 steps). Finally, five research projects continued to assess the impact of helping behavior on the mental and physical health of adolescents.
Outcomes from researchers funded by the Institute were featured in a successful popular book (1997, Broadway Books) entitled Why Good Things Happen to Good People: How to Live a Longer, Healthier, Happier Life by the Simple Act of Giving. I structured this book around my several decades of research and writing on the ten major expressions or “ways” of generous love for others, and developed a scientific scale to measure the ways and domains of love with Michael E. McCullough, Ph.D., of the University of Miami. (My co-author for this book was the distinguished science writer Jill Neimark; the Foreword was written by the renowned African-American, Rev. Otis Moss, Jr. – see www.whygoodthingshappen.com). I simultaneously published a collection of strictly technical scientific papers by the various researchers themselves, entitled Altruism and Health: Perspectives from Empirical Research (Oxford University Press, June 2007). Institute-funded researchers published an estimated 50 books themselves. Among the distinguished and well-reviewed works published are Michael E. McCullough’s Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct (Josey-Bass, 2008), Margaret M. Poloma’s and Ralph W. Hood’s Blood and Fire: Godly Love in a Pentecostal Emerging Church (New York University Press, 2008), Robert Wuthnow’s Saving America: Faith-Based Services and the Future of Civil Society (Princeton University Press, 2004), Courtney Cowart’s An American Awakening: From Ground Zero to Katrina – The People We Are Free to Be (Seabury Books, 2008), and Yudit Kornberg Greenberg’s The Encyclopedia of Love in the World Religions, 2 volumes (ABC-CLIO Reference, 2008). An estimated 300 significant research articles have appeared in peer-reviewed academic journals.
The Second Seven Years (2009-2015)
The summer of 2008 marked the conclusion of the first seven-year period of the Institute, during which time it was housed in Cleveland. My day job there was in the School of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University, where I had served as Professor of Bioethics, Philosophy and Religion since 1988. In July of 2008, however, I took a new full-time faculty position at Stony Brook University in New York. The Institute is now located at my home in Setauket, New York, with a post office box in the village of Stony Brook (P.O. Box 1516, Stony Brook, New York 11790). Unattached to any university, the Institute can be effectively managed on Sunday afternoons on a pro bono basis. No Institute business is conducted at the university, where I devote each weekday (7:30 am to 5 pm) exclusively to the challenging and exciting task of building the university Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics.
During this period of seven years, the Institute will be involved in the continuation of three scientific projects, each of which began in 2007 or early 2008. First, there is the 2007 project on Love and the Pursuit of Happiness, located and fully administered at the Center for Law and Religion at Emory University School of Law, under the leadership of Professor Philip Reynolds, a theologian at Emory’s Candler School of Theology. Second, the Institute is co-sponsoring the Flame of Love Project with Margaret Poloma, Matthew Lee, and John Green, located and fully administered at the University Akron (see www.GodlyLoveProject.org). This project focuses in on the perceptions and experiences of Godly love, including a national survey that for the first time will clarify the pervasiveness of such experiences across American society. Finally, there is the Helping Others Project, focusing on the 12th step in Alcoholics Anonymous, directed by Maria Pagano, and located and fully administered at Case Western Reserve University. These projects will continue on for several years, and then require extensive manuscript preparation and publication. They are only made possible by the generosity of the John Templeton Foundation. This is a time of deepening reflection and writing in our national network of researchers and theologians.
In 2013 the Institute will begin to focus entirely on the translation of existing worldwide research on compassion and love into institutional structures. We live in a culture where it is not always easy to choose love, especially in dysfunctional environments. Yes, there are those people who suddenly “see the light” of love and convert from hatred and indifference to warmth and light. How much easier it would be, and how much more reliable, if we could create institutions and environments from families to schools, from the workplace to the neighbourhood, from media to computer games, from government to communities of faith, from hospitals to assisted living centers, where love is consistently expected, encouraged, modeled, effectively applied, rewarded and celebrated. In other words, we need to translate the power of love into the world, starting with how we raise our children and ending with how we die.
The Third Seven Years (2016-2022)
During this final phase, the Institute will continue a strong focus on institutional translation. Otherwise, focus will be placed on life-transforming experiences of divine love in relation to enhanced actions on behalf of “the neighbour,” who is everyone. This has been a core theme since the inception of the Institute, and it is the one most consistent with Sir John’s vision.
Non-Profit Status
The Institute for Research on Unlimited Love filed for formation as a public benefit corporation under the laws of the state of Ohio in June of 2001 and remains an Ohio corporation. It is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The Institute is also registered with the State of New York.
Thank you very much.
Stephen G. Post, Ph.D., President
PO Box 1516
Stony Brook, New York 11790
post@stephengpost.com
216-926-9244
“You are leading one of the most significant initiatives of this generation. The connection between research and application cannot be over-emphasized. Thank you!”
— Pastor Otis Moss, Jr., Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Morehouse College
“Stephen Post has contributed more than anyone else to the dialogue concerning the scientific and health implications of altruistic and generous behavior. His leadership has spearheaded an exciting new area of research. The field has the strong potential to change people’s lives in a healthy way.”
— Gregory L. Fricchione, M.D., Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School,
and Associate Chief of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital
“Isn’t is wonderful to do science on a topic that is socially relevant and can make a difference in the world?”
— Professor Paul Wink, Department of Psychology, Wellesley College
Click here to read about Recently Funded Projects
In an effort to further enhance the rapidly growing network of researchers focusing on topics such as altruism, altruistic love, kindness, compassion, and "unlimited" love, the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love has established "Works of Love", a high-quality electronic newsletter. The newsletter is written by Stephen G. Post, President of the Institute, and sent monthly.
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