Thirty-five years later he felt that world events as well as his studies had only served to reinforce these convictions: 'Hate begets hate, violence engenders violence, hypocrisy is answered by hypocrisy, war generates war, and love creates love'. He goes on: Unselfish love has enormous creative and therapeutic potentialities, far greater than most people think. Love is a life-giving force, necessary for physical, mental and moral health. Altruistic persons live longer than egoistic individuals. Children deprived of love tend to become vitally, morally and socially defective. Love is the most powerful antidote against criminal, morbid and suicidal tendencies; against hate, fear and psychoneuroses. It is an indispensable condition for deep and lasting happiness. It is goodness and freedom at their loftiest. It is the finest and most powerful educational force for the ennoblement of humanity.' There are the conclusions of the book in a nutshell. They reflect the teaching of the great sages, ancient and modern; they are the core of Christianity and of the teaching of Beinsa Douno (Peter Deunov) in the twentieth century - he spoke about the advent of a culture of love and based his approach on the three cardinal principles of Love, Wisdom and Truth. Likewise, Abraham Maslow and Roberto Assagioli developed positive psychologies; and Viktor Frankl wrote about the power of love during his time in Auschwitz. Sorokin, however, provides the most exhaustive analysis of the ways and power of love in this book.

The book is divided into five parts. The first considers love: its aspects, dimensions, production, transformation and power; the second the structure of creative personality; the third the ways of altruistic growth; the fourth techniques of altruistic transformation of persons and groups; and the fifth the tragedy and transcendence of tribal altruism. Sorokin's approach is broadly socio-psychological, with a profound understanding of the higher reaches of consciousness. In his introduction, Stephen Post shows how Sorokin inherits a special Russian tradition associated with, among others, Dostoevsky, Kropotkin, Solovyov and Berdyaev. All of these thinkers pursued integral knowledge and sobornost (all-togetherness) and therefore recognised our natural capacity for mutual assistance and co-operation.

Sorokin goes further, by considering seven aspects of love: religious, ethical, ontological, physical, biological, psychological and social. Although he focuses principally on the last two dimensions, his treatment is underpinned by the religious aspect identifying love with a Higher Presence, the ethical aspect as goodness and the ontological aspect as a 'unifying, integrating, harmonising, creative energy or power'. Indeed Gandhi is quoted as saying that love is basically not an emotional but an ontological power, a thought that corresponds to two of Beinsa Douno's levels of love, namely love as a force in the mind and as a principle in the spirit. These are unfamiliar but essential thoughts in our culture. At the psychological level, love tends towards identification with its object, thus transferring the centre of personal gravity from the self; Sorokin identifies love with goodness and therefore with altruism; also with freedom and beauty, fearlessness and therefore power. Socially, as mentioned above, love is represented by solidarity, mutual aid and co-operation.

Sorokin's next chapter is devoted to an analysis of its five dimensions, namely intensity, extensivity, duration, purity and adequacy to its subjective purpose. These are qualitative and indeed energetic characteristics that are inter-related in various ways and are expressed in the arts where beauty can inspire to goodness. Here Beethoven is quoted: 'Music is the sole incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge, which comprehends mankind. It gives prophetic vision and... heavenly wisdom'. Sorokin then considers ways in which love energy - which he regards as an essential commodity for any society - can be accumulated and distributed.

It is instructive to reflect on the kinds of energy being generated by our current social systems and to relate their effects to Sorokin's plan for individuals, social institutions and culture. In this sense, our sensate culture prizes power and wealth, largely based on Darwinian notions of struggle and competition. Correspondingly, he observes, sensate minds 'emphatically disbelieve the power of love, sacrifice, friendship, co-operation, the call of duty, unselfish search for truth, goodness and beauty. They appear to us as something epiphenomenal and illusory.' Or even 'idealistic bosh' as he graphically puts it! This view is shown to be demonstrably false by the inspiring stories that follow these assertions and which clearly show the creative power of love.

The second part discusses the structure of creative personality, and will be of special interest to Network readers. It is based on a fourfold model of the human being, namely the unconscious, the bioconscious, the socioconscious and the supraconscious (not, incidentally, a word recognised by the MS Word spell-checker!). This last is the most significant for Sorokin's thesis, and he recognises that it 'goes against the dominant materialistic and mechanistic metaphysics'. However, a thorough consideration reveals that supraconscious intuition is the source of humanity's greatest achievements in all fields of creative activity, which he then proceeds to analyse in detail - mathematics, science, technology, the fine arts, philosophy, social sciences, religion, ethics and even ESP. The question then becomes: how to maximise the role of the supraconscious and integrate it into our lives and ethics.

The third part - ways of altruistic growth - begins with the evidence for equating the supraconscious with supreme love, which is the testimony of mystics through the ages. Moreover, spiritual techniques are not designed to enhance the development of the conscious mind, but rather its alignment with the supraconscious. The rest of this part is devoted to explaining his theory of three kinds of altruists: the first are the 'fortunate' altruists who develop their talent from an early age; the second are 'late-converted or catastrophic' altruists whose life is turned upside-down before they reorient; then there is an intermediary type. In each case a new integration and self-identification is required, which can be a long and difficult process. In the past, this has involved an over-dualistic mortification of the flesh, but in any event there has to be a degree of reorientation of biological drives.

The fourth part turns to techniques of altruistic transformations of both people and groups. There are many dimensions to this, but they all involve a new reintegration of the ego, values and therefore conduct, as mentioned above. There are also many contexts, from self-isolation to community living and altruistic living in the ordinary world. There is no single procedure that works for all, but the process has both inner and outer aspects in terms of self-identification with altruistic values and a rearrangement of one's group affiliations to reflect this. Sorokin then considers no fewer than 26 techniques, illustrating these from history and contemporary life. Thus, Gandhi and Schweitzer (whose Bach I am listening to as I write) are mentioned often along with heroes and heroines from the past. A separate chapter is devoted to Patanjali's and other yogas, including that of Sri Aurobindo, then to monastic techniques and 'psychoanalysis'.

The final part integrates the foregoing analysis into a grand vision, asking how we can collectively move beyond tribal egoism to universal altruism. Sorokin does not underestimate the challenge, but argues that it is vital to move in the direction of a culture of love if we are to remain viable as a species. If unselfish love is confined within a group, as Reinhold Niebuhr warned in his Moral Man and Immoral Society, then other groups remain outsiders. The terrible irony is that universal altruists have been regarded as 'subversive enemies' by tribal altruists: witness Jesus, Socrates and Gandhi. So the solution is evidently 'extension of everybody's altruistic conduct far beyond the membership of his own groups, eventually over the whole of mankind' (italics in original).

We evidently still have a long way to go when our systems are geared to the ultimately self-defeating 'peace through power', entailing 'deterrence, coercion, exploitation and destruction of the "enemy" by all means available'. This picture of 'carnivorous tribal competition' is only too familiar! Sorokin proposes instead a 'constructive rivalry in creativity, love and humility' not as a utopian luxury but rather the 'sternest necessity'. This brings him back to the crucial role of the supraconscious where it is an axiom that 'unselfish and creative love is the supreme moral value'. This means first a widespread recognition of the existence and centrality of the supraconscious in the model of the mind of the human being, currently widely defined only in terms of Sorokin's other three categories of unconscious, bioconscious and socioconscious. Next, it means a common acknowledgement of love in Sorokin's various senses, as the supreme moral value as our ethical touchstone. He sums up: 'emanating from the supraconscious, validated by logical reasons and confirmed a posteriori by sensory experience, the universal sublime love is the supreme values around which all moral values can be integrated into one ethical system valid for the whole of humanity.' (p. 486)

So, he concludes, we have a choice before us: 'either to continue [our] predatory policies of individual and tribal selfishness that lead to inevitable doom, or to embark upon the policies of universal solidarity that brings humanity to the aspired for heaven on earth.' Even a long review can do scant justice to the depth and range of this great and inspiring book that speaks to the fundamental needs of our time. I can only urge readers to study it for themselves and support its vision in their own lives as I do in mine.