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Passages on Love
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Thursday, 12 July 2007 |
Passages on Love
Passages on Love
Love is the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mysterious of the cosmic forces. After centuries of tentative effort, social institutions have externally diked and canalized it. Taking advantage of this situation, the moralists have tried to submit it to rules. But in constructing their theories they have never got beyond the level of an elementary empiricism influenced by out-of-date conceptions of matter and the relics of old taboos. Socially, in sci ence, business and public affairs, men pretend not to know it, though under the surface it is every where. Huge, ubiquitous and always unsubdued this wild force seems to have defeated all hopes of understanding and governing it. It is therefore al lowed to run everywhere beneath our civilization. We are conscious of it, but all we ask of it is to amuse us, or not to harm us. Is it truly possible for humanity to continue to live and grow without ask ing itself how much truth and energy it is losing by neglecting its incredible power of love? From the standpoint of spiritual evolution, which we here assume, it seems that we can give a name and value to this strange energy of love. Can we not say quite simply that in its essence it is the attraction exercised on each unit of consciousness by the cen ter of the universe in course of taking shape? It calls us to the great union, the realization of which is the only process at present taking place in nature. By this hypothesis, according to which (in agreement with the findings of psychological analysis) love is the primal and universal psychic energy, does not everything become clear around us, both for our minds and our actions? We may try to reconstruct the history of the world from outside by observing the play of atomic, molecular or cellular combina tions in their various processes. We may attempt, still more efficaciously, this same task from within by following the progress made by conscious spon taneity and noting the successive stages achieved. The most telling and profound way of describing the evolution of the universe would undoubtedly be to trace the evolution of love.
In its most primitive forms, when life is scarcely individualized, love is hard to distinguish from mo lecular forces; one might think of it as a matter of chemisms or tactisms. Then little by little it becomes distinct, though still confused for a very long time with the simple function of reproduction. Not till hominization does it at last reveal the secret and manifold virtues of its violence. "Hominized" love is distinct from all other love, because the "spec trum" of its warm and penetrating light is marvelously enriched. No longer only a unique and peri odic attraction directed to material fertility; but an unbounded and continuous possibility of contact through spirit much more than through body; the play of countless subtle antennae seeking one an other in the light and darkness of the soul; the pull towards mutual sensibility and completion, in which preoccupation with preserving the species gradually dissolves in the greater intoxication of two people consummating a world. It is in reality the universe that is pressing on, through woman, towards man. The whole question (the vital question for the earth) is that they shall recognize one another.
If man fails to recognize the true nature, the true object of his love, the confusion is vast and ir remediable. Bent on assuaging a passion intended for the All on an object too small to satisfy it, he will strive to compensate a fundamental imbalance by materialism or an ever increasing multiplicity of ex periments. His efforts will be fruitless and in the eyes of one who can see the inestimable value of the "spiritual quantum 1 ' of man, a terrible waste. But let us put aside any sentimental feelings or virtuous indignation. Let us look very coolly as biologists or engineers, at the lurid atmosphere of our great towns at evening. There, and everywhere else as well, the earth is continually dissipating its most marvelous power. This is pure loss. Earth is burning away, wasted on the empty air. How much energy do you think the spirit of the earth loses in a single night?
If only man would turn and see the reality of the universe shining in the spirit and through the flesh. He would then discover the reason for what has hitherto deceived and perverted his powers of love. Woman stands before him as the lure and symbol of the world. He cannot embrace her except by him self growing, in his turn, to a world scale. And because the world is always growing and always unfinished and always ahead of us, to achieve his love man is engaged in a limitless conquest of the universe and himself. In this sense, man can only attain woman by consummating a union with the universe. Love is a sacred reserve of energy; it is like the blood of spiritual evolution. This is the first revelation we receive from the sense of the earth.
From Human Energy, translated byj. M. Cohen, 32-34
. . . The mutual attraction of the sexes is so funda mental that any explanation of the world (biologi cal, philosophical or religious) that does not suc ceed in finding it a structurally essential place in its system is virtually condemned. To find such a place for sexuality in a cosmic system based on union is particularly easy. But this place must be clearly defined, both for the future and the past. What exactly are the essence and direction of "passionate love" in a universe whose stuff is personality?
In its initial forms, and up to a very high stage in life, sexuality seems identified with propagation. Beings come together to prolong not themselves but what they have gained. So close is the link be tween pairing-off and reproduction that philoso phers like Bergson have seen in it a proof that life has more existence than living beings; and religions as advanced as Christianity have hitherto based al most the whole of their moral code on the child.
But things look very different from the point of view to which the analysis of a structurally convergent cosmos has brought us. That the dominant function of sexuality was at first to assure the preser vation of the species is indisputable. This was so until the state of personality was established in man. But from the critical moment of hominization, an other more essential role was developed for love, a role of which we are seemingly only just beginning to feel the importance; I mean the necessary synthe sis of the two principles, male and female, in the building of the human personality. No moralist or psychologist has ever doubted that these partners find a mutual completion in the play of their repro ductive function. But hitherto this has been re garded only as a secondary effect, linked as an acces sory to the principal phenomenon of reproduction. In obedience to the laws of the personal universe, the importance of these factors is tending, if I am not mistaken, to be reversed. Man and woman for the child, still and for so long as life on earth has not reached maturity. But man and woman for one an other increasingly and for ever.
In order to establish the truth of this picture, I cannot do otherwise or better than resort to the sole criterion that has guided our progress throughout this study: that is to say, bring the theory into the most perfect possible coherence with a vaster realm of reality. If man and woman were, I will say, princi pally for the child, then the role and power of love would diminish as human individuality is achieved, and the density of population on the earth is reach ing saturation point. But if man and woman are principally for one another, then we imagine that with the growth of humanization they will feel an increasing need to draw closer. Now our experi ence proves that this is the actual state of things and that the other is not. It must therefore be explained. In the hypothesis here accepted of a universe in process of personalization, the fact that love is in creasing instead of diminishing in the course of hominization has a very natural explanation, and ex tension into the future. In the human individual, as we have already said, evolution does not close on itself, but continues further towards a more perfect concentration, linked with further differentiation, also obtained by union. Woman is for man, we should say, precisely the end that is capable of releasing this forward movement. Through woman and woman alone, man can escape from the isola tion in which, even if perfected, he would still be in danger of being enclosed. Hence it is no longer strictly correct to say that the mesh of the universe is, in our experience, the thinking monad. The com plete human molecule is already around us: a more synthesized element and more spiritualized from the start, than the individual personality. It is a duality, comprising masculine and feminine together.
Here the cosmic role of sexuality appears in its full breadth. And here at the same time, the rules appear which will guide us in the mastery of that terrifying energy, in which the power that causes the universe to converge on itself passes through us.
The first of these rules is that love, in conformity with the general laws of creative union, contributes to the spiritual differentiations of the two beings which it brings together. The one must not absorb the other nor, still less, should the two lose them selves in the enjoyments of physical possession, which would signify a lapse into plurality and return to nothingness. This is current experience, but can only be properly understood in the context of spiritmatter. Love is an adventure and a conquest. It survives and develops like the universe itself only by perpetual discovery. The only right love is that between couples whose passion leads them tx'h, one through the other, to a higher possession of their being. The gravity of offenses against love therefore is not that they outrage some sort of mod esty or virtue. It is that they fritter away, by neglect or lust, the universe's reserves of personalization. This wastage is the true explanation of the disorders of "impurity." And at a higher degree in the devel opment of union this same wastage occurs in a sub tler form, changing love into a joint egoism.
. . . When two beings between whom a great love is possible manage to meet among a swarm of other beings, they tend immediately to enclose them selves in the jealous possession of their mutual gain. Impelled by the fulfillment that has engulfed them, they try instinctively to shut themselves into one another, to the exclusion of the rest. And even if they succeed in overcoming the voluptuous tempta tions of absorption and repose, they attempt to re serve the promises of the future for their mutual discovery, as if they constituted a two-person universe.
Now after all that we have said about the proba ble structure of the spirit, it is clear that this dream is only a dangerous illusion. In virtue of the same principle that compelled " simple" personal ele ments to complete themselves in the pair, the pair in its turn must pursue the achievements that its growth requires beyond itself. And in two ways. On the one hand it must look outside itself for group ings of the same order with which to associate with a view to centering itself further. . . . On the other hand, the center towards which the two lovers con verge by uniting must manifest its personality at the very heart of the circle in which their union wishes to isolate itself. Without coming out of itself, the pair will find its equilibrium only in a third being ahead of it. What name must we give to this mysterious "intruder"?
For so long as the sexualized elements of the world had not reached the stage of personality, progeny alone could represent the reality in which the authors of generation in some way prolonged themselves. But as soon as love came into play, no longer only between parents but between two per sons, the final goal necessarily appeared more or less indistinctly ahead of the lovers, the place at which not only their race but their personality would be at once preserved and completed. Then the "fall forward/* of which we have already fol lowed the adventures, begins once more. Stage by stage it must go on till the end of the world. And finally it is the total center itself, much more than the child, that appears necessary for the consolida tion of love. Love is a three-term function: man, woman, and God. Its whole perfection and success are bound up with the harmonious balance of these three elements.
From Human Energy, translated by J. M. Cohen, 72-76
... A real nobility of passion lends wings and that is why the best test for gauging the sublimity of a love would be to note how decisively it develops in the direction of a greater freedom of spirit. The more spiritual the affection, the less it sucks up into itself and the stronger its impulse towards action.
. . . Love stands as the threshold of another uni verse. Beyond the vibrations that are familiar to us, the rainbow of its merging colors is constantly and vigorously extending; but, for all the charm of the tints in the lower ranges, it is only in the direction of the " ultra* * that the creation of light makes real progress. It is in those invisible we might almost say immaterial areas that we can look for true initi ation into unity. The depths we attribute to matter are no more than the reflection from the heights of spirit.
All human experience and thought, I believe, show that this is undeniable.
... I have come to the point where, it seems to me, two phases in the creative transformation of human love are emerging for me. During a first phase of humanity, man and woman concentrate upon the physical act of giving and the concern for reproduction: at the same time a growing nimbus of spiritual exchanges is gradually being built up around this fundamental act. At first this nimbus was no more than an imperceptible fringe; slowly, and yet ever more clearly, there is a shift, and the fruitfulness and mystery of union move into that zone: and it is on that side that the balance finally gives way and comes to rest. At that very moment, how ever, the center of physical union from which the light was radiating is found to be incapable of ac cepting any further intensification. The focus of at traction suddenly shifts further and further end lessly, indeed ahead. If the lovers are to be able to continue to increase their mutual possession in spirit, they have to turn away from the body and look for one another in God. Virginity rests upon chastity as thought rests upon life: each is arrived at through a reversal of direction, or by passing through one unique point.
Such a transformation, of course, cannot be effected instantaneously on the surface of the earth: time is essential. When you heat water, the whole volume does not turn into steam at once the "liq uid phase" and the "gaseous phase" are found to gether for some time, and this must necessarily be so. Nevertheless, that duality covers but one single developing event the direction and "dignity" of which are shared by the whole. Thus, at the present moment, physical union still retains its value and necessity for the human race; but its spiritual quality is now defined by the higher type of union to which it has served as the preliminary and which it now fosters. Within the noosphere, love is now undergoing a "change of state"; and it is in this new direction that mankind's collective entry into God is being organized.
This is how I see the evolution of chastity.
There is no theoretical difficulty about this trans formation of love. All that is needed to effect it is that the appeal of the personal divine center be felt with such intensity that it overcomes the natural attraction whose pull would tend prematurely to fling together the pairs of human monads.
From the practical point of view, however, I must confess that the suggestion presents such difficulty that what I have written here would be dismissed by nine people out of ten as overly ingenuous or even wildly extravagant. Does not universal experience show conclusively that spiritual loves have always come to a sordid end? Man is made to keep his feet firmly on the ground flight has always been be yond our dreams. . . .
I am quite sure about my answer; yes, there have been madmen with such a dream, and that is why we have now conquered the air. What paralyzes life is lack of faith and lack of courage. The difficulty lies not in solving problems but in expressing them cor rectly; and we can now see that it is biologically undeniable that unless we harness passion to the service of spirit there can be no progress. Sooner or later, then, and in spite of all our incredulity, the world will take this step because the greater truth always prevails and the greater good emerges in the end.
The day will come when, after mastering the ether, the winds, the tides, gravity, we shall master the energies of love, for God. And then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have made fire his servant.
From The Evolution of Chastity (unpublished), translated by Rene Hague
And this means but one thing, Lord; that through the whole width and breadth of the Real, through all its past and through all that it will become, through all that I undergo and all that I do, through all that I am bound by, through every enterprise, through my whole life's work, I can make my way to you, be one with you, and progress endlessly in that union.
With a fullness no man has conceived you real ized, through your incarnation, love's threefold dream: to be so enveloped in the object of love as to be absorbed in it endlessly to intensify its pres ence and, without ever knowing surfeit, to be lost in it.
I pray that Christ's influence, spiritually substan tial, physically mortifying, may ever spread wider among all beings, and that thence it may pour down upon me and bring me life.
I pray that this brief and limited contact with the sacramental species may introduce me to a universal
and eternal communion with Christ, with his omnioperant will and his boundless mystical body.
From Writings in Time of War, translated by Ren Hague, 217-218
What I cry out for, like every being, with my whole life and all my earthly passion, is something very different from an equal to cherish: it is a God to adore.
To adore . . . That means to lose oneself in the unfathomable, to plunge into the inexhaustible, to find peace in the incorruptible, to be absorbed in defined immensity, to offer oneself to the fire and the transparency, to annihilate oneself in proportion as one becomes more deliberately conscious of one self, and to give of one's deepest to that whose depth has no end. Whom, then, can we adore?
The more man becomes man, the more will he become prey to a need, a need that is always more explicit, more subtle and more magnificent, the need to adore.
Disperse, O Jesus, the clouds with your lightning! Show yourself to us as the Mighty, the Radiant, the Risen! Come to us once again as the Pantocrator who filled the solitude of the cupolas in the ancient basilicas! Nothing less than this Parousia is needed
to counterbalance and dominate in our hearts the glory of the world that is coming into view. And so that we should triumph over the world with you, come to us clothed in the glory of the world.
From Le Milieu Divin, translated by Bernard Wall, 117-118
... For the last century, without greatly noticing it, we have been undergoing a remarkable transformation in the range of intellect. To discover and know has always been a deep tendency of our nature. Can we not recognize it already in caveman? But it is only yesterday that this essential need to know has become explicit and changed into a vital, autono mous function, taking precedence in our lives over our preoccupation with food and drink. Now, if I am not mistaken, this phenomenon of the individualization of our highest psychological functions is not only far from having reached its limits in the field of pure thought, but is also tending to develop in a neighboring realm, which has remained practi cally undefined and unexplored: the "terra ignota" of the affections and love.
Paradoxically, love (I understand love here in the strict sense of "passion"), despite (or perhaps pre cisely because of) its ubiquity and violence, has hith erto been excluded from any rational systematizationof the energy of man. Empirically, morality has succeeded more or less successfully in codifying its practice with a view to the maintenance and mate rial propagation of the race. But has anyone seri ously thought that beneath this turbulent power (which is nevertheless well known to be the inspirer of genius, the arts, and all poetry) a formidable creative urge has remained in reserve, and that man will only be truly man from the day when he has not only checked, but transformed, utilized, and liber ated it? Today, for our century, avid to lose no energy and to control the most intimate psychologi cal mechanism, light seems to be beginning to break. Love, like thought, is still in full growth in the noosphere. The excess of its growing energies over the daily diminishing needs of human propaga tion becomes every day more manifest. And love is therefore tending in a purely hominized form, to fill a much larger function than the simple urge to re production. Between man and woman a specific and mutual power of spiritual sensitization and fertiliza tion is probably still slumbering. It demands to be released, so that it may flow irresistibly towards the true and beautiful. Its awakening is certain. Expan sion, I have said, of an ancient power. The expres sion is undoubtedly too weak. Beyond a certain degree of sublimation spiritualized love, by the boundless possibilities of intuition and communica tion it contains, penetrates the unknown; it will in our sight take its place, in the mysterious future, with the group of new faculties and consciousnesses that is awaiting us.
. . . Union, the true upward union in the spirit, ends by establishing the elements it dominates in their own perfection. Union differentiates. In virtue of this fundamental principle, elementary personali ties can, and can only affirm themselves by acceding to a psychic unity or higher soul. But this always on one condition: that the higher center to which they come to join without mingling together has its own autonomous reality. Since there is no fusion or dissolu tion of the elementary personalities the center in which they join must necessarily be distinct from them, that is to say have its own personality.
Hence we have the following formula for the supreme goal towards which human energy is tend ing: an organic plurality the elements of which find the consummation of their own personality in a paroxysm of mutual union and limpidity: the whole body being supported by the unifying influence of a distinct center of super-personalization.
This last condition or qualification has considera ble importance. It demonstrates that the noosphere in fact physically requires, for its maintenance and functioning, the existence in the universe of a true pole of psychic convergence: a center different from all the other centers which it " super-centers 1 ' by assimilation: a personality distinct from all the per sonalities it perfects by uniting with them. The world would not function if there did not exist, somewhere ahead in time and space, "a cosmic point Omega" of total synthesis.
Consideration of this Omega will allow us to define more completely in a concluding chapter, the hidden nature of what we have till now called vaguely enough, "human energy/*
LOVE, A HIGHER FORM OF HUMAN ENERGY
... In us and around us, we have been able to conclude, the world *s units are continually and in creasingly personalizing, by approaching a goal of unification, itself personal; in such a way that the world's essential energy definitely radiates from this goal and finally flows back towards it; having con fusedly set the cosmic mass in motion, it emerges from it to form the noosphere.
What name should we give to an influence of this sort?
Only one is possible: love.
Love is by definition the word we use for attractions of a personal nature. Since once the universe has become a thinking one everything in the last resort moves in and towards personality, it is necessarily love, a kind of love, which forms and will increasingly form, in its pure state, the material of human energy.
Is it possible to verify a posteriori this conclusion which is imposed on us a priori by the conditions of functioning and maintenance of the thinking activ ity of the earth's surface?
Yes, I believe so. And in two different ways.
Psychologically first, by observing that love carried to a certain degree of universality by a perception of the center Omega is the only power capable of totalizing the possibilities of human action without internal contradictions.
Then historically, by observing that such a universal love actually presents itself to our experience as the highest term of a transformation already begun in the mass of the noosphere.
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