Does love have an origin? Is it the origin, the source, possibly even the source of consciousness itself, awakened consciousness? Does love arise from self-love as it was thought at the origins of psychoanalysis? If one's self-love is the reflection of the love of another, who is that Other originally? Who could first love without being loved by another? It seems that this question at least locates that love must either exist in itself as the whole or the absolute origin; or that the dynamics of some dialectic in the genesis of consciousness originates love as an interdependency or mutuality.
In Christian thought, Jesus is necessary as the one who loves unconditionally without necessarily having been loved, except of course, by God or by Mary, but not by another human being, given God and Mary are not human or ordinarily "human." Both God and Mary transcend the human insofar as they transcend sexuality. But Jesus, as the one who forsakes the needs of the world as primary, still loves unconditionally without desire or expectation. Jesus loves the world as the child loves the world, as a joy indistinguishable from self. Thus his invocation to love thy neighbor as thyself where self is the Oneness of the world, the Real. The One so loved is beautiful, endlessly joyous and free. Love is the "revelation of the freedom of the Other."
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