ultimate reality as 'a bride adorned for her husband'

One misconception, I think, in defining ultimate reality is that we might tend to see it as a place, a destination of travel, some three-dimensional port-of-call. I believe that ultimate reality is more a state of consciousness than a place for unpacking a suitcase.

I asked my friend, Adrian Smith, JD, to offer discussion on this great question: What is ultimate reality and does love have anything to do with it? Here is Adrian’s insightful response:

We human beings are not very good at figuring out what is real.  Whatever signals are out there pass through many layers and filters of prior conditioning, tradition, prejudice, and emotional compulsion.

Long before quantum mechanics, the German philosopher Husserl said that “All perception is a gamble.” We think we are looking at the world the way it really exists, rather than our own interpretation of it. In philosophy this is called “naive realism.”

Naive realism is responsible for all kinds of fundamentalist ideologies which, taken to an extreme, can cause people to murder each other; other people, however, are not necessarily so perverse or lying or insane, they just perceive the world differently, and once you realize that your own perceptions are gambles you will be more inclined towards understanding this in others.

Different people reading the same book will interpret it differently, although the book remains the same. There will be as many interpretations as there are readers.

There’s a well known Sufi story from the 12th century about a group of blind people trying to figure out what an elephant is. One person would feel the ear and say it’s like a velvet carpet; another would feel the trunk and say no, it’s a hollow pipe; yet another would feel the leg and say it’s a pillar - but no one has the vantage point to see the whole elephant. The totality of experience is never accessible. In the words of the apostle Paul, “we know in part” (I Cor 13:9). Somewhere there exists a whole elephant, but even the rigorously applied scientific method, the burdens and standards of proof in law and the rules of evidence in court, are limited by human fallibility...

What does the ultimate resolution of our painful dilemma look like? It resembles "a bride adorned for her husband.” The ultimate reality, in the view of the writer of Revelation, is “the tabernacle of God with men, and he will dwell with them” (Rev 21). The experience of romantic love most closely resembles that ultimate reality.

In the end, ultimate reality is not a doctrine or an understanding -- it is an ecstatic state.

Editor’s note: I count Adrian’s perceptions here as some of the most important on the Word Gems site. The metaphor of ultimate reality as “a bride adorned for her husband,” I think, is mesmerizingly laden with meaning for us.

In the “Aloneness” article I commented that the apostle Paul employed the Greek word for the “holy of holies” of the ancient Tabernacle to signify the human mind, that is, the place where we meet God. So, too, Revelation 21 selects similar imagery.

Notice in Rev. 21:22, in the eschatological ["final goal" of things], metaphoric city of God, the symbol for ultimate reality – a city “adorned as a bride for her husband” – there is no temple; this is so because the entire city has become a temple, that is, a “holy of holies”; meaning, a day is coming when people will not “go to a temple” or “go to church” to meet God; instead, God will be one with us, close to us, everywhere and in every way.

We will meet God in a ubiquitous way, with “the entire city as our meeting place,” that is, everything we do and see and live will be our meeting place with God. This will come to pass via an elevated level of consciousness, an enlightenment, an evolved new state of humanity, such that, each will "meet God" within the "holy of holies" of one's own mind.

This omnipresent way of meeting with God is like “a bride adorned for her husband.” Ultimate reality, having God very near to our spirits and hearts, John says, is mind-bendingly wonderful, creating for us an ecstasy. It can only be compared to pure, sacred, Twin Soul, romantic love.

I think Adrian is correct when he says that ultimate reality is an “ecstasy.” And I think I was right, earlier, to say that ultimate reality is not a place, a 3-D destination, but a level of consciousness.

Ultimate reality is not, as some on the other side errantly suggest, a “hot water-bottle” world, a mere comfort world, of prettier flowers and greener grass.

But this notion of "prettier flowers and greener grass" just confuses the issue. Ultimate reality has nothing to do with eco-friendly stage-props or pleasant venue; if I were mature and advanced enough, I could experience "ultimate reality" while walking downtown in a busy city.

the most important concept on the Word Gems site

One of my favorite essays is “What we stay alive for.” This is the crux of the matter. We need to come alive, which is primary importance, but, once alive, we need a reason to stay alive. In the writing “500 tape-recorded messages from the other side” we learn of a vast class of people over there who have not yet found their reason to live; as such, they drift into various levels of insanity.

On the “Prologue” page of “The Wedding Song” we review various testimonies speaking to the reality of Twin Souls. The mystic Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov, however, better than others, intuitively grasped the sense of importance to be accorded Twin love as vital component of the spiritual mind of wisdom.

“The soul ... is itself only one-half of a complete being. For each of us there is a counterpartal [person] of the opposite polarity. And our pilgrimage towards emancipation [from illusion] consists in drawing ever nearer to this balancing factor ... so that, in the end, [while retaining sacred individuality,] we become [effectively One Person,] a male-female being in whom the positive and negative forces are in perfect equilibrium, reflecting the nature of the Male-Female Creator. Only through the perfect union of two souls of the opposite sex can that blending of forces be achieved which brings freedom from illusion and the full experience of Reality.”

Aivanhov gets it exactly right. It’s only through the union of destined Twins that a complete “freedom from illusion and full experience of Reality” might be achieved. Notice the emphasis. We might have expected to hear of "a complete happiness" but instead "a complete freedom from illusion" is presented as central concept.

Why is Twin Soul love the doorway to ultimate wisdom, evolvement, and spiritual vision? - because it reflects the highest expression of ultimate reality, the subsuming influence and dominion of Mother-Father God.

The concept of “highest reality” brings to mind once again “the 500 tape-recordings from the other side.” Among these one finds the occasional testimony from those who were famous during their Earth sojourn; accomplished individuals – scientists, statesmen, and the like – they continue some of their work in Summerland.

However, concerning their personal lives, many of these did not live moralistically, and as they spoke one discerned that this attitude of using others for one’s private pleasure had not yet been expunged from their spirits. There was a certain “hollowness” and “brittleness” to their viewpoint.

Despite great accomplishments, one is left with an impression that they had not yet met “ultimate reality”, were still quite materialistic in their thinking. And this is what Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov is getting at when he says that true love is the doorway to freedom from illusion, an illusion of materialistic perspective; instead, authentic romance becomes portal to full experience of highest wisdom.

It would have to be this way as true love is not only part of the divine mind but reflects the highest domain of "what is" - the dual female-male energies - a closer attunement with, the hegemonic and "singular pervasive" reality that is, Mother-Father God. There is reason why ancient Spirit Guides refer to divinity in this manner.

See a 5-part writing on "Freedom From Illusion."

'you have not come to the arctic regions, you cannot be perfected without it'

Troubadour Spirit-Guide Margaret: “[Twin Soul] love is the atmosphere of this life [in Summerland]. You have not come to the arctic regions, but to the region where [romantic] love is a pervading influence, warming all hearts. No spirit can find its most perfect development who misses from his life the experience which [romantic] love can give him. If he has lived a loveless life on Earth, the possibility is still reserved for him here. The certainty will come to him in the future. His being cannot be perfected without it.”

The quest to experience true love is no optional side-trip. Without success in this area, eventually, we will suffer "existential crisis," and fail to properly engage the "terrors of living forever." Some time ago, I wrote several paragraphs on the subject of "no one there to fill your desire." They're included as a kind of footnote to the "What We Stay Alive For" essay, but allow me to offer this writing here in closing:

"no one there can fill your desire"

We were meant to live in community. We yearn for the company of friends and neighbors, supporting each other in life. So strong is this wish for brotherhood and sisterhood that, at times, as Father Chardin mused, it reaches almost to the level of “sensual longing.” Even so, affable association and cordial friend - none of this pleasant conviviality - can fill one’s desire.

Neither avuncular favor nor maternal warmth, not even a large kindred gathering, an immersion into familial goodwill and amity, can fill one's desire. Even in that affectionate crowd of doting loved ones, a plenary session of fervent smiles, well-wishes, and hugs all around, you will still find yourself - if only subliminally, that vague uneasy sense of - missing someone.

O thou soul of my soul

Mourning the loss of his Elizabeth, Robert Browning in Prospice [“to look forward”] soars in high-flight, addressing her, O thou soul of my soul. Many in the history of literature have spoken of woman as the life of man, but never so poignantly and felicitously. And if one’s soul could shelter a soul of its own, what would this signify? - nothing less than epicenter of meaning, purpose, and “what we stay alive for.” And so, with O thou soul of my soul, we glimpse a remedy for "no one there can fill your desire."

unlawful savior and covenant

John and Mary cannot fill each other’s desire; "besotting infatuation” with illegitimate savior, the “ill-fitting covenant,” the settled-for second or third choice, albeit sprinkled with ecclesiastical blessing, cannot fill one's desire.

Their problem is spiritual in nature, with biological impulse and instinctual response unable to offer solution. Only two souls in love, two created for each other, can fill the unremitting existential void, two spirits longing for authentic union.

the great harmonia

There are three bases for marriage: biological, psychological, spiritual. Andrew Jackson Davis offered analysis in his seminal work “The Great Harmonia.” The vast majority wed for the wrong reasons and, in so doing, counterfeit and debase what was meant to be, what Spirit Guide Margaret called, the holiest of human endeavors; even the Pope decried this merchandizing of human flesh.

super stimuli

Biological attractors animate the majority, licensing Niko Tinbergen’s “super stimuli,” mere temporary fever, a boiling of animal inclination. Psychological drivers, too, incite to riot not a few: here we find marriage as antidote to fears of never finding happiness, apprehensions of disgrace and not being chosen, terrors of facing old age alone.

All this defines what passes for marriage in our world, but none of it is honored in the “better neighborhoods” of Summerland. It is only the spiritual marriage, the coming together of Twin Souls, which is recognized in the courts of heaven.

true love: of the soul, not body

“The Wedding Song” speaks of a “calling of the heart.” It is a desperate cry of the hidden person, a cry in the night - the long dark night of the soul; a cry to be answered only by a “union of spirits," the authentic accord of mind touching mind. In this "knowing as one knows oneself," the secret desolation within begins to recede.

True love is rooted in the soul, not the body, and therefore only things of the eternal soul will endure; things of the flesh begin dying at the moment of birth. And unless one's affections represent an extension of the soul's purposes, there will be no enduring romantic relationship. This rule stands unmoved and inviolable.

existential beauty, consummate mystical experience, freedom from illusion, full experience of reality

The once “blind poet,” with her “lumbering, ponderous, helpless knowledge of books,” when true love came knocking, suddenly grasped the total field of what it means to be human. It is “not to eat and drink," Elizabeth exclaimed, "but to feel the life in you, down all the fibres of being, passionately and joyfully.”

Yes, "to feel the life in you"; as such, this life, this “truth, is a living thing,” and when it becomes energized with the advent of the sacred beloved -- the "existential beauty," a "consonance with the whole," the consummate mystical experience -- it will not only pulsate with warming vitality at the core of being but brings “freedom from illusion” and offers “the full experience of reality.”

more than one dared wish for

There is but one particular girl to fill his desire; he offers her the same exclusive gift. They find each other in the Dazzling Darkness. Together then, as darling companions, adventuring through eternal life sharing all experiences, they enter a sense of wholeness and completeness attained, of meaning and purpose actualized; of sacred destiny realized, of soul-pledges deliciously satisfied.

They inhabit perceptions of "coming home," of the utterly familiar, of "you are more than I dared wish for," of extreme delight, of "you are just like me," of "soulmate, myself." All this, indeed, issues as final answer to the "calling of the heart," an emergence from the abyss of aloneness, as it fills, to the top, the pleadings of unexpressed yearning, the indictments of unquieted passions.

ready communion and unbroken fellowship, minds in ecstatic union

With greater maturity, we perceive identities revealed - who’s who and for whom. And in that day of sightedness, minds created for each other will live in rapturous and euphoric union; an emulation of the joyous spirit of the Divine Parent(s).

This ecstasy of ready communion and unbroken fellowship, of sharing all things as darling companions, of "the great relief of having you to talk to," of love "not for a reason," removes the terror of eternal life, provides impetus to unfold the soul's hidden potential, finally satisfies and fills beseeching human desire, and becomes ultimate reason to stay alive for.

Editor's last word:

See further discussion of “ultimate reality” and it’s converse, “ultimate illusion,” in the articles on Mattie and Reuben, Anne and Gilbert, Mary and Abraham, and Tilly and Viktor.