Word Gems: Soulmate, Myself: The Perfect Mate: Rose and Rasheed

I met Mistress Rose for the first time, in a humble house surrounded by flowers and trees… When I saw her bright eyes and heard the song of her gentle voice, I said within myself, “Could this woman be capable of evil?... Is this the unfaithful woman? Is this the woman whom I have damned in my thought many times...”

When I sat down Mistress Rose sat with me, seeming to hear my thoughts and not wanting to prolong the struggle between my bewilderment and my doubts. Leaning her lovely head on her white hand, she spoke in a voice like the gentle reed flute,

“I have not met you before, sir. But I have heard the echo of your thoughts and dreams in the mouths of men… I want to open my heart to you… so that you will know the pain in my heart and will, if you desire, tell the people that Rose is not a wicked and unfaithful woman.

“When I was eighteen, fate led me to Rasheed… He fell in love with me and treated me honorably, as people say. He made me his wife and the mistress of his splendid house and its many servants. He dressed me in silk and adorned my head and neck and wrists with jewelry and precious stones. He displayed me in the houses of his friends and acquaintances like some fine gift. He smiled with pride and triumph whenever his peers stared at me with envious pleasure. He raised his head proudly whenever he heard his friends’ wives praise me…

“All that took place before I had awakened from the deep sleep of childhood, before the gods had kindled the spark of love in my heart, before the seeds of emotion and desire sown in my heart had begun to grow. Truly, all of that happened in a time when I still imagined that the ultimate happiness was to wear a beautiful dress that flattered my figure, to ride in a stately carriage, to dress in costly fabrics.

“But when I awoke, aroused by light shining into my eyes, I felt tongues of sacred fire charring and consuming my ribs. As soon as I had awakened, I felt a spiritual hunger gripping and tormenting my soul. I saw my wings flexing on my right and on my left, seeking to bear me up into a heaven of love.

“But then they trembled and drooped, unable to break the chain of law. My body had been shackled before I had known the essence of those chains or the consequences of that law. When I awoke and felt these things, I knew that a woman’s happiness is not to be found in a man’s wealth or in obedience to him, nor even in his generosity and kindness. It is to be found in the love that binds her spirit to his, a love that pours her emotions into his heart, that makes them one limb of the body of life, one word upon the lips of God.

“When this painful truth had become clear to my sight, I felt like a thief in Rasheed’s house, eating his bread and lurking in the darkness of the night. I knew that every day I spent near him was a ghastly lie, a lie that hypocrisy wrote in letters of fire upon my brow for heaven and earth to read, for I could not give him the love of my heart in return for his generosity, nor could I bestow the affection of my soul upon him in payment for his sincerity and goodness.

“Thus, for two long years I remained in that man’s house, envying the meadow larks their freedom, though the daughters of my own kind envied me for the prison in which I lived. Like a mother whose only child has died, I mourned the heart that had been conceived by knowledge, that had been sickened by law, and that died every day of hunger and thirst.

“On one of those black days, I stared from behind the darkness and beheld a diaphanous ray of light shining from my eye upon a [young man] who lived alone with his papers and his books in his small house. I shut my eyes so as not to see that ray and said to my soul, ‘Your lot is the darkness of the tomb. Do not covet the light!’ Then I cried out and heard an exalted song, a song whose sweetness made my limbs tremble and whose purity seized my whole being. I covered my ears and said to my soul, ‘Your lot is hellfire that roars in your ears. Do not desire song!’ I closed my eyes so as not to see and I blocked my ears so as not to hear, but my ears still heard that song, though blocked... I wept like a thirsty man who has seen a sweet spring guarded by wild beasts and who throws himself in the ground to wait and despair.”

Mistress Rose fell silent for a moment and closed her eyes. The past stood before her, and she dared not look me in the face. Once again she spoke:

“Some people come forth from eternity and then return to it without having tasted of true life. They cannot apprehend the essence of a woman’s pain when her soul stands between the man she loves by the decree of heaven and the man to whom she is bound by earthly law. It is a tragedy written with a woman’s blood and tears… [From others’, who do not understand,] anger pours down upon the woman’s head like the fires of hell and fills her ears with blasphemy.

“It is a story of pain. Dark nights act it out within the breast of the woman who finds her body chained to the bed of a man she knew as husband before ever she knew the meaning of marriage. She sees her spirit fluttering around another man whom she loves with all the love that is within her spirit and with all the purity and beauty that is within love… It is a terrifying war between the corrupt laws of men and the sacred affections of the heart.

“Yesterday I was driven into this battlefield and nearly died of fear, nearly melted away in tears, but I stood up and cast off [my] timidity… I freed my wings from the bonds of weakness and submission and rose in flight through the air of love and freedom. Now I am happy, near this man. He and I came out from the hand of God as a single spark before the ages began. There is no power in the world able to deny my happiness, for it arose from the embrace of two spirits linked by mutual understanding and overshadowed by love…

“People will tell you that Rose is an unfaithful and treacherous woman who followed the lust of her heart, that she abandoned the man who raised her up to be the mistress of his house. They will tell you that she is an adulterous woman whose polluted hands destroyed the holy diadem of marriage woven for her by religion, that she has taken in its place a filthy crown woven of thorns and hellfire. She has stripped the robe of virtue from her body and put on the clothes of sin and dishonor. They are like empty caves in the valleys, returning the echoes of voices, not understanding their meaning. They do not know the law of God in his creatures.

They do not understand the true significance of religion. They do not know when a man is astray or righteous. With their small eyes they look upon the exterior of acts but do not see their mysteries. In ignorance they judge and in blindness they condemn…

“Woe to him who judges, and woe to him who condemns! It was in the house of Rasheed that I was an adulteress and unfaithful. He made me his bed-partner by decree of custom and tradition, but heaven had not made me his mate by the law of the spirit and affection. Good things he gave me that he might satisfy his desires in my body. Whenever I filled my stomach from them, I was polluted and defiled before my soul and before God. Now I have become pure and chaste, for the law of love has set me free. Now I am good and faithful, for I have renounced selling my body for bread and my days from raiment. Indeed, I was an adulteress and a criminal when the people reckoned me a virtuous wife. Today I have become pure and good, yet they consider me a defiled whore. They judge souls by the standards of bodies and weigh the spirit in material scales.”

Mistress Rose looked toward the window… “Look at these beautiful houses… [Rose proceeds to tell stories of unhappiness in each of the houses; people who live together but do not love each other; people who make a show of morality, but live desperate lives as they seek love from others in the darkness; people “living in the yoke of sinful marriage”; people who crave love and “long for the embrace of death to emancipate.”]

“These palaces – I did not wish to be among their inhabitants. They are graves: I did not wish to be buried alive among these sepulchers. These people – I have been emancipated from their customs. The yoke of their society has been lifted from me, These are the married people who are wedded in body yet loathe each other in spirit… I do not condemn them now; rather, I pity them. I do not hate them; rather, I hate their thoughtless submission to hypocrisy, falsehood, and evil…

“[They] say every sort of wicked thing about me because I sacrificed their friendship to gain my own soul. I left the dark paths of their duplicity… They have exiled me now from their society, yet I am content. Mankind only exiles the one whose large spirit rebels against injustice and tyranny. He who dares not prefer exile to servility is not free in the true and necessary sense of freedom.

“Yesterday I was like an inviting table and Rasheed would come to me whenever he felt a need to taste of it; but our souls remained far apart… Though I tried to submit to what they call ‘my lot,’ I could not. My spirit refused to spend all of life bowing before a fearful idol which they made law. So I broke my bonds, but I did not cast them away until I heard love calling and saw my soul prepared for a journey.

“I left the house of Rasheed like a prisoner freed from his prison, leaving behind me jewelry, clothing, servants, and carriages. I came to my beloved’s house, a place empty of ornaments but full of spirit. I know that I have done nothing that was not right and obligatory, for heaven did not will that I should cut off my wings with my own hand and throw myself into the ashes, hiding my head in my arms, pouring out the last of my life with my tears, while saying, ‘This is my lot in life.’ Heaven does not wish me to spend my life crying out in pain in the nights, saying, ‘When will the dawn come?’ Yet when the dawn came, I would say, ‘When will this day end?’ Heaven did not wish man to be unhappy, for it is placed in the depths of his being a longing for happiness – for through man’s happiness God is glorified.

“This is my story, O man. This is my justification before heaven and earth. I repeat it, I sing it out, but men block their ears and do not hear, for they fear revolution in their spirits, they fear that the pillars of their society will be shaken and it will fall upon their heads…

“I have done nothing that was not willed by a soul that God split off from His own Self. I have followed only the call of the heart and echo of the angel’s song…”

The door opened and a... man with a handsome face came in. A magical light shone from his eyes and a slight smile was on his lips. Rose took his arm with complete affection... Thus I knew that he was the [young man] for whom she had renounced the world and defied laws and conventions… Before me I saw a single celestial spirit in two bodies, handsome in their youth and clothed in union.

The god of love stood between them, spreading his wings to shelter them from people’s criticism and censure. I found total mutual understanding shining from two luminous faces made bright by sincerity, bathed in purity. For the first time in my life, I saw the vision of happiness raised between a man and a woman who had been repudiated by religion and driven out by the law…

I left that humble house, a house that emotions had made a temple of love and affection… I [then] remembered Rasheed and saw once more the agony of his despair and unhappiness. I thought, “He is a wronged and wretched man, but does heaven hear him if he stands before it complaining of Rose? Did that woman sin against him when she left him and followed her own freedom? Or was he the one who sinned against her when he subjugated her body by marriage before her spirit inclined itself toward love? Which of the two is the wrongdoer and which the one wronged?

“[If Rose had remained in Rasheed’s house, she could have indulged her passions,] sated her desires in secret with besotted young men willing to destroy themselves as slaves to her beauty, as martyrs to their lust for her. [And, living thusly, but remaining in Rasheed’s house, society would have deemed her as ‘moral.’] This is the truth than human society despises and the law denies.

“But is it permissible for a woman to make her husband’s misery the price of her happiness?” My own soul answered me, “Is it allowable for a man to enslave his wife’s affections for his own happiness?”

I kept on walking with the voice of Mistress Rose echoing in my ears. When I reached the edge of the city, the sun was setting on the fields as the orchards put on the veil of silence and repose and the birds chanted the evening prayer. I stood in thought, then whispered,

“Before the throne of freedom these trees rejoice in their dalliance with the breeze. Before its majesty they take pleasure in the rays of the sun and the moon. The sparrows sing their secrets in the ears of freedom, and along the streams they flutter about the hems of its robe. The flowers pour their perfumed breaths into the air of freedom, and they smile before its eyes at the coming of the morn. All that is on the earth lives by the law of its nature. From the nature of its law it seeks the splendor and the delights of freedom. But men are forbidden this goodness because they have entrusted their divine spirits to a worldly and limited law. They have subjected their bodies and souls to a single harsh law. For their desires and emotions they have raised a narrow and frightful prison, and for their hearts and minds they have dug a deep and gloomy grave.

Whenever one arises among them and sets himself apart from their society and laws, they say, “This is a wicked rebel, worthy of banishment, a defiled sinner who merits death.”

But is man to continue a slave to his corrupt laws until the end of the ages, or will time free him to live by the spirit and for the spirit? Will man continue to stare at the dust, or will he turn his eyes toward the sun so as not to see his shadow among the thorns and skulls?

the trees rejoice... the sparrows sing... the flowers pour...

Editor's note: This concluding section, Gibran's appeal to nature, reminds us of Jesus' phrase, "Consider the lilies of the field." The contrast is stark. All about us we see nature rejoicing, nature exulting, nature simply flowing in the energies of life and joy. Only Man, with his ego-driven definitions of morality, lives a hypocritical life, out of step with all creation, that grand expression of the mind of God.

Kairissi. This section from “The Beloved” is among the very greatest expressions of romantic literature in all history. Its offering of wisdom and understanding into the nature of true love I find breathtakingly insightful.

Elenchus. Every paragraph pours forth a penetrating analysis of what it means to know sacred eros.

K. Ellus, there is so much here. I’d like to comment on almost every word, but we should avoid that. Tell me, how can we summarize and speak to the essence of Gibran’s message?

E. One thing comes to mind: the word “love” itself is a bankrupt term in our society. It’s become virtually meaningless.

E. Look how we’ve corrupted the word: we speak of “I love this coffee,” or “I love this book,” or “I really love that movie or that song.”

K. It’s like the concept of God – it can mean whatever people want it to mean, reflecting their own passions.

E. So, when we say, “I love this or that” – “this baseball team” or “that trip to Florida”…

E. Yes, well, that’s part of the big issue here. When society says “I love this or that,” all people are really saying is that “love” points to an "object of desire." We like something. We say it’s good, and therefore we “love” it. Mortimer Adler explained it to us.

K. And so, when Rasheed said he “loved” Rose, all he meant was that he saw her naked body as an “inviting table” where he would come to feast whenever “he felt the need to taste” of her.

E. Her naked body was right in there with the coffee and movies and the baseball team he liked.

E. I would say we shouldn’t use the word “love” to denote “object of desire.”

K. I can see that part of the confusion here is a poverty of language. We need more words for “love.”

E. When John Adams wrote to his son John Quincy about the boy’s education, he said that the Greek language was the most perfect that civilization had devised. In many cases, Greek will offer more finely-nuanced examples of a concept; for example, Greek has four or five different words for what English lumps together in the single term “love.”

E. Having several words for different shades of meaning avoids the problem of using the same word to express approval, for example, for a large farm tractor as opposed to a pretty woman’s naked body.

E. (small smile) Let me get back to my speech. In Greek, there’s a separate word for love of brothers and sisters; a separate word for the pleasures of the body; a separate word for reverence toward God and others.

K. God will much appreciate not being grouped together with your favorite cappuccino.

E. Right. And so, if our language were more nuanced and differentiated, people wouldn’t get away with calling things “love” that, to my way of thinking, have no business being called “love.”

K. Rasheed would have congratulated himself that what he gave Rose was “love” – all the nice dresses and jewelry, and the fancy carriage, and the big mansion…

K. And notice how Gibran frames this: “Good things [Rasheed] gave me that he might satisfy his desires in my body.” This is the “buying and selling,” the business negotiations of “giving and receiving” that the Troubadour Guides of “The Wedding Song” condemned.

E. And right here is where people burst their buttons, eyes start to bulge, and apoplexy sets in. They don’t want to hear that it’s not ok to marry a pretty girl just to feast at the table of her naked body. They don’t want to hear that the great Spirit Guides have called this "love," this merchandizing of a pretty woman’s naked body, is just another term for legalized prostitution.

K. Rasheed would have called it “love” – his “buying and selling” of sex in the market-place.

E. I think there’s a reason why we don’t have more words for “love.” It’s easier, more sanitary, more respectable, to hide one’s malfeasance, this merchandizing of bodies, under the "respectable" term “love.” It’s a propaganda game that society plays. We call it “love” to hide our sins of sexual avarice.

K. In a larger sense, it represents the world's version of morality, which is no authentic morality at all, but only a regulation of the pursuit of low-level pleasure. And talk about bursting buttons and apoplexy, look what happened when Rose began to live an authentic life! – all the neighbors brought out the long knives for her. And why? Because she became a living symbol and advertisement of the lies they were living. She became a threat, to all of society, in its “buying and selling” of female bodies. She escaped the plantation, and the remaining chained slaves felt it to be unfair for her to go free while they continued in misery.

E. In “The Beloved” we encounter Gibran’s famous phrase “the sinful marriage.” It doesn’t matter if the majority applauds and the Nice Young Man at Church offers blessing concerning the merchandizing of female bodies, it’s still “sin” in the eyes of Heaven; or, as Spirit Guide Margaret has it, "a blasphemy against the holy spirit of love."

K. But, Ellus, if “love” as “object of desire” has its limitations, how would you define love? – I mean, the real love.

E. Let’s listen to Rose for this. “[My true mate and I] came out from the hand of God as a single spark before the ages began… the love that makes them one limb of the body of life, one word upon the lips of God.” In other words, true love is oneness, affinity, unity.

K. Rose said that she couldn’t manufacture a sense of oneness with Rasheed. She wanted to. She tried very hard to make it work. But she could not drum it up by will-power or feel the oneness that was not there:

“I tried, futilely I tried, to learn to [feel] love [for] him, but I could not, for love is a power that creates our hearts. Our hearts cannot create [authentic romantic] love. Then I prayed and bowed before heaven in the silence of the night. My supplications and prayers could not engender a spiritual affection in the depths of my heart to draw me near to [Rasheed]. [True] Love descends into our spirits by a decree of God, not by human intention.

E. It is one of the great societal myths of marriage that love can be massaged into reality by “working on” one's relationship. Gibran, in another writing, most emphatically states, and is absolutely correct, that a thousand years of effort will not create romantic oneness if it is not there right from the start. This is a true statement, although, it should be said, that lovers can delay their joy and linger in blindness if the ego is allowed to have its way.

E. I don’t like that definition, either. The Greeks had a separate word for this, “agape” – and this altruism should not be thrown into the hopper with a favorite library or a nice pair of shoes we "love." It’s a misuse of language.

K. In “The Wedding Song” the author spent some little time explaining that, while love is oneness, there are grades of this sense of connectedness, ranging from an affinity with all creation, to what we feel toward animals and fellow humans, but not to exclude the Twin Soul mate.

E. Yes, of course, and there is this sense of universal love, but let’s keep in mind, again, that it’s all based on oneness and affinity. Charitable works – properly conceived, and not just grandstanding and vote-buying -- naturally issues from a sense of oneness but the altruism itself is not oneness, as such.

K. Earlier we spoke of “kindness” as an extension of perceiving others as members of our “kind” or group.

E. That’s another way of saying it. And so, strictly speaking, to avoid confusion, we should not call charitable works “love” as good works naturally issue from a sense of oneness, but are not “love,” per se.

E. Notice how she says that some people have never experienced the true love. A sense of oneness might infuse our spirits to perceive a connectedness with all creation, but the highest expression of affinity is the Twin Soul sense of “One Person.” Most people – in this world and the next -- have never experienced what this means. And because most people, even in the next world, have not experienced the true love, the Twin love, and because they have heard of the importance of love, they will tend to speak of charitable works as the highest form of love – they do this in their blindness, not yet having known the overwhelming magnitude of what it means to be truly in love with an eternal Twin mate.

K. That is amazing. This means that -- possibly inadvertently -- there’s a kind of propaganda effort in play regarding the meaning of “love”. In this world, “love” is unwarrantedly linked to the merchandizing of female bodies. And often, in the next world, it's misconstrued by those who have not experienced the Twin “One Person,” and so it will be said that “love” is charitable works; they will even say that this is the highest love -- but this is very wrong. As we discussed with Day Star and Big Water, true love is about "being" not "doing."

E. “Love” makes the world go round -- in both worlds – even, in bad definitions of love.

K. This issue of “some people have never experienced the true love” is pressing on my spirit. We need to say a little more about this.

K. I’m disgusted by the image of Rasheed viewing Rose as a table where he might feast and gorge himself. It's so demeaning. And it’s things like this that give romantic love a bad name, make it something animal-like. And, of course, this is just our old friend Mother Nature doing her duty to perpetuate the species, and she never gives up. But this conception of romance as purely of the earth, base, and animal-like, infects even teachers on the other side. And it makes them denigrate romantic love as something to grow out of, something to get over, and “when we’re more spiritual” we’ll leave all that animal-impulse behind, in the gutter where it belongs.

E. This is just a warmed-over version of the church's old song, "nice girls don't." How would you answer them?

K. First of all I would say, just as with those on the Earth, many people in Summerland have not yet experienced the true love. This being so, they will naturally associate romance with images of Rasheed viewing Rose as a good steak to eat. And on this count of dehumanization, they are correct, because it is demeaning and has no place in the spirit of an advanced person. But here’s the fulcrum of the confusion. Not all sexuality, not all desire to share bodily love, is prompted by Mother Nature.

K. When Mother Nature incites people to enjoy bodily pleasure, it’s very indiscriminate: Mary will “settle” for John to get what her instincts require of her, so she can have a family with that "white picket fence"; and John, like Brando’s testimony in “Listen To Me, Marlon,” would just love to have a long parade of naked women “coming in the front door and going out the back window.”

K. This kind of so-called love is extremely indiscriminate. It just follows base passion and mammalian instinct, it's just bull-in-the-pasture stuff with any available heifer.

E. But Madame Destiny, the impetus of soul-based romance, is not fueled by animal spirits.

K. What people don’t understand is that Madame Destiny can lead lovers to be more wild for each other in bodily sex than Rasheed at his hungriest ever thought about being – but, with one major difference. True lovers will do this only with each other. For them, bodily love is a representation of their inner meeting-of-the-minds, a union of spirits, a nexus of hearts, a picture of their One Person status, a microcosm of Mother-Father God, and therefore romance for them is utterly discriminate. And this is why there will always be, even a million years from now, among authentic lovers, a desire and craving to express their love bodily.

K. Thank you, and we must close this discussion, though I wish we could say more; however, I would like to offer a final word to the “Marys” of the world. The authentic path of Rose is not an optional journey. And there is no advantage to delay your change in itinerary. Because virtually 100% of the marriages of this world are not based on spiritual principles, they will suffer dissolution, if not before, then upon entrance to the “real world,” Summerland. It is not possible to build an enduring relationship, in the next world, upon the ephemeral and fleeting bull-in-the-pasture passions of any egocentric Rasheed.

And therefore, to the "Marys" of the world allow me say: My Dears, how unwise we are in our youths... as Rose reminded us... what sagacity shall save young women, at a green 18 or 23, to guide us into an eternal love? Our systemic failings of immaturity, so predictable, so programmed, should become a punch-line of a joke, a memorized line in a farce or comedy, if it weren't all so tragic.

But our time of enlightenment is now at hand. Be of good courage then, and, with Rose as your “patron saint,” do what you must in order to live authentically. Your eternal life in Summerland is a very long time, and you will want to arrange things properly, starting now; to delay only tarnishes your spirit. In Summerland, gone will be that dark time, for millennia, during which men created laws and society to satisfy base animal-impulse, to corral females as "pleasure principles," with no care given to the inner life of Woman.

Any conception of marriage as primarily -- I say "primarily" as the true love allows for an abundance of physical aspect -- any conception of marriage that focuses primarily on male license to devour you, as choice steak or hearty meal, is a most seriously flawed view of the "One Person" sacrament. This materialistic construct of marriage can end only in existential crisis, a dire despair and haunting sense of emptiness. The thought of any man, like the many Rasheeds of the world, who believes he has a divine right to "feast at the table" of your body, according to his whims, has no place or part in the real love or the coming real world.

Remember, for each one of you, somewhere in the universe, there awaits your real and true mate, who, like Rose's true mate, a thoughtful and clear-eyed “young man with his books and papers,” longs to love you in a true way; and not just for your body - such will not be uppermost in his mind; trust me on this - but, he will yearn, with utmost yearning and longing, for the darling companionship of your beautiful mind and glorious inner person.

The authentic eternal love is equated with “true life.” This life, this coming alive to ourselves and the “inner riches,” is part of a spiritual evolutionary process. For more on this, see the capstone article of “The Wedding Song,” an “Earthrise Restatement.”