Unconditional Love — Agape Beyond All Conditions
Unconditional love (Agape, Karuna, Prema) — love that does not depend on the behavior, attractiveness, or reciprocity of its object — is universally identified as the highest form of love and the closest human analog to divine love.
Unconditional love is the love that continues when conditions are removed — when the beloved is no longer young, no longer successful, no longer grateful, no longer lovable by ordinary standards. Every wisdom tradition distinguishes this from conditional love (Eros — desire, Storge — familial affection, Philia — friendship) by its unconditional character: it is not extinguished by the failure of its conditions. The Christian Agape, the Buddhist Metta (loving-kindness), the Sufi Ishq (divine love), the Vedantic Prema (divine love) all point toward this same reality: a love that loves even the unlovable, that blesses even the one who curses, that remains constant through all the changes of circumstance and behavior. This is not weakness or lack of discernment but the highest strength: it requires the full dissolution of ego's conditional preferences and the emergence of a love that participates in the fundamental relatedness of all existence.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson's Positivity Resonance theory demonstrates that genuine moments of shared positive emotion produce physiological synchrony between individuals — a scientific description of what mystics have always described as the experience of unconditional love: the temporary dissolution of the boundary between self and other.
Bible, 1 Corinthians