Kairissi and Elenchus discuss how lovers' perceptions of existential beauty lead them to ultimate intimacy and oneness  

Editor's prefatory comment:

The following discussion by Kairissi and Elenchus draws upon concepts from Dr. Adler’s Six Great Ideas. I count this book as one of the most important of my life.

READ MORE on the Six Great Ideas page.

the extreme delight of being known and understood as thoroughly as one knows oneself

An excerpt from Andrew Jackson Davis’ “Death And The Afterlife: Eight Lectures On The Summer-Land”:

"In the Summer-Land this ‘language of the heart’ is carried to an inconceivable degree of perfection. For instance, suppose you and [a lost love] should meet — you who have not met for long, lonely years… two persons, meeting face to face, meet also heart to heart, and are forever friends. On Earth it is but the hands, or eyes, or lips that touch and speak. There, it is the indescribably sweet and perfect meeting of soul with soul.

"They thus inhale and thoroughly understand each other. For the first time there sweeps through the gladdened heart the eminent satisfaction of receiving perfect appreciation through the deathless wisdom of a brother, a sister, or a [romantic] companion. Your most secret history is wordlessly told and forever known; the details of your earth-life appreciated, and with all their innumerable bearings upon the shape of your character; and so, too, are comprehended all the steps that have brought you to that position in the upper existence…

"The delightfulness of this conjunction constitutes the beautiful, glorious happiness which diversifies, gladdens, and exalts the inhabitants of the Spheres.”

from Excursions to the Spirit World by Frederick C. Sculthorp:

“There were hundreds of people here [at the social gathering] whose faces I had never seen before, yet I could not see a 'stranger'. We all 'knew' one another. I cannot attempt to explain this."

"When two sincere friends meet on a pleasant plane, each will radiate a thought of pleasure which will be received by the other. Each recipient's pleasure is therefore doubled and the returning thought is consequently doubled. This multiplication of the original thought many times and at electrical speed gives some idea of the happiness on some planes."

"There is a complete absence of 'class', 'sets' or 'cliques'. There are no critical thoughts or lionizing some to the exclusion of others. There are no sects, dogmas, or denominations with their earthly trimmings that have led to so much division and bloodshed throughout history."

I became herself...

Archdeacon Wilberforce, Letters from the Other Side:

"On this side, when I met my beloved ... I became herself - she was transformed into me. All that she knew and felt became the content of my consciousness. All that I had attempted and achieved, all that I had failed to accomplish, yet battled and struggled to complete, was known to her as no words, no thoughts even, as earth uses the terms, could have conveyed. We were one, yet individually our own very separate selves, knowing as we were known, to the full extent of each other's capacity. Capacity is the only limitation in the spiritual realms."

Compare to the following, from Excursions to the Spirit World by Frederick C. Sculthorp:

“So I concentrated my thoughts on her and simply said: ‘Come!’ After a short pause my wife suddenly appeared in the lane walking towards me. I felt very happy at the success of my telepathic call… as she came closer, I noticed that her features were exactly as they had been on earth. Then, as our auras met, there was a transformation. [Her features] were perfection. She was my same companion, but different; yet I knew her better than I had ever done before. I would have recognized her unfailingly, even with my eyes closed, because her whole life and personality were contained within her aura and I could sense the years of her companionship with me. I was also aware that she knew me better than she ever did before. There seemed to be a wonderful harmony between us, for we both uttered the same words of greeting and blessing at the same instant. After that we did not trouble to speak with our lips -- speech was too slow… we were able to exchange thoughts with unbelievable rapidity.”

observer and observed, subject and object, lover and beloved

The following is reprinted from the Krishnamurti lecture of  April 16, 1968:

"What is necessary is a mind that is untortured, a mind that is very clear... to observe, to look: to look at anything without the image of that thing, to look at a cloud without the previous associations with regard to that cloud, to see a flower without the image, the memories, the associations, concerning that flower.

Editor's note: This is a very important point concerning the "images" created by the ego, which protect it. But it occurs to me that these images come into play not just when we see something in the external world, but also when we "see", mentally, within. In our contemplations of persons and things we also create images which keep them subservient to the ego. We might say that this is the cause, right here, of all of the world's conflicts, as, no matter what we see or think of, it's mentally presented but filtered through "images" which, in some manner, protect the ego, and distort reality in the process. I"m reminded of incredibly insightful comments by mystic Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov, asserting that the great benefit of Twin-Soul love, even more than empyreal pleasures, issues, counter-intuitively, as "freedom from illusion." See more on the "Wedding Song" prologue page.

"Because these associations, these images and memories, create distance between the observer and the observed. And in that distance, the division between the seer and the thing seen, in that division the whole conflict of man exists...

"So one must learn the art of looking, not only at the clouds and the flowers, at the movement of a tree in the wind, but actually looking at ourselves as we are, not saying, 'It is ugly', 'It is beautiful, or 'Is that all?' - all the verbal assertions that one has with regard to oneself. When we can look at ourselves clearly, without the image, then perhaps we shall be able to discover what is true for ourselves. And that truth is not in the realm of thought but of direct perception, in which there is no separation between the observer and the observed. One of the fundamental questions is man's relationship to the ultimate, to the nameless, to what is beyond all words."

Editor's note: Notice the levels of relationship:

(1) man's relationship to "the ultimate"

(2) man's relationship to "the self"

(3) man's relationship to others

In all these, in each case, we tend to erect symbols, images, with which we interact and, in so doing, never approach the reality of the thing in itself. This "distance" between observer and observed, K says, is the root of world conflict.

he's fretting she might not come, praying she'll come, when summer is through

"When The Summer Is Through" (1966)

K. Elenchus, this song exemplifies the “what if” loss-scenarios of the ego. But I really like this old song.

E. I like it, too, but tell us what you see Krissi.

K. It’s a song about two college kids, madly in love, but separated for the summer. He probably has little to worry about, but this doesn’t stop him from imagining the worst.

E. It’s a great example of what might be true love, yet tainted by elements of “distance” and existential separation.

K. Elenchus… I have to admit… this song really hits me hard... It opens up a repressed wound... Back then we were too messed up to think about going to college together but… I have to say… this reminds me of what we lost… and it really hurts…

E. I understand… and all I can say right now is that we’re not the first in history who lost each other in this world, and I have to believe that God and the Guides have made provision for people like us to recapture hearts’ desires in Summerland.

'the Eternal is One, there is nothing else': the parable of the two whirlpools

Elenchus. Our statements concerning “the Eternal is One, there is nothing else” are not easy to understand.

Kairissi. Which is why quantum mechanics’ assertions are also non-intuitive; that, consciousness, not matter, is the ground of all being in the universe, and that everything derives from Universal Consciousness.

E. It’s not intuitive because pretty much everyone is a materialist at heart. It’s really hard not to be; I mean, trees and tables, people and pineapples, all seem very solid to us. And not just solid, but they definitely seem to be “out there,” separate from ourselves, so why shouldn't there be "distance"?

K. We’d like to report to our readers that we’ve encountered what is probably the best analogy to explain “the Eternal is One, there is nothing else”…

E. … and also that everything comes from, is made of, consciousness, Universal Consciousness. Let’s introduce Dr. Kastrup:

Dr. Bernardo Kastrup, PhD philosophy, PhD computer science, for many years worked at CERN, the large hadron collider in Geneva.

E. Given Dr. Kastrup’s credentials, he’s probably the leading spokesman in the world today in terms of explaining the fraudulent doctrine of the primacy of matter.

K. He’s very hard to argue against. His erudition and sharp angle on logic reminds me of this:

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863-1944), On The Art Of Reading: "A very well-informed person is an object of terror." 

K. An "object of terror" because, in the presence of a person of knowledge, one can no longer hide in superstition and illusion.

E. This quote makes me smile, and readers will want to get Kastrup’s books for the full account, but for our purposes here let’s focus on his brilliant analogy of the two whirlpools:

K. Each human being corresponds to a different whirlpool; each person with his or her particular points of view and field of personal consciousness.

E. But here's where the fun begins. The whirlpools are not exactly stand-alone entities. These "bodies" are not substantive at all but only apparently so. And they might seem to exist "separately" in a vast ocean but, in reality, are connected, as each merely expresses, in a unique way, the underlying medium which is the ocean.

K. Each whirlpool is made of the same water, comes from the same source; so it is with apparently individual human minds.

E. Kastrup points out that these whirlpools-as-people are neither truly separate nor substantive but are "just undulations - disturbances - of the medium," be it the ocean or Universal Mind.

K. His thought-provoking definition of reality is a collection of "excitations" of Universal Consciousness.

E. This "parable of the two whirlpools" helps us visualize the meaning of "brains exist within consciousness" rather than "consciousness existing within brains."

beauty is not in the thing

Jiddu Krishnamurti, September 24, 1967, London: “Like love, beauty is not the cultivation of thought. A thing of beauty is not beauty. Beauty is not in the thing, in the building, in the person; but there is that beauty which is not the result of conditioning, in which thought in no way interferes.”

The sense of beauty is an opinion, a judgment, concerning the good and the true.

Beauty issues not from one's “hardware” but “software,” the “programming.”

See more discussion in the “waves” article.

K. I just realized something. Almost every John-and-Mary couple offer testimony that “the fever” of bodily allure is very temporary.

E. “…ever since the fire went out.”

K. But – “beauty is not in the thing.” One's sense of beauty is a judgment about the goodness of an object in question. When couples in the world declare that sex appeal quickly erodes, this just means that they no longer see each other as beautiful. The fantasy-balloon has been popped, and they now realize that “you are not the one to make me happy.”

E. Many of them, at this point of awareness, don’t even want sex from the other anymore; they don’t want to touch each other so much, and now they may opt for separate beds or separate rooms.

K. But, in the real love, it’s not that way.

Restatement:

What does it mean to discover your true mate by way of “no you and no me”?

These difficult concepts will remain unclear until “the heavens unfurl” as private revelation. Nevertheless, though mere words cannot properly convey, let us try one more time to explain the ineffable; at least, the rim of it.

We listen to the thousands of love songs and some of them speak to us on a deep level. We are well taken by phrases such as “angel baby,” “dream lover,” “I can hear music,” “love changes everything,” “truly, madly, deeply,” “crazy arms,” “my girl,” “who could ask for anything more,” “can’t help falling in love,” oh, what a night,” “this magic moment,” “earth angel,” “I will always love you” – we could go on.

I love all of these, hard to pick a favorite, but - "this magic moment" by Jay and The Americans is really something: "so different and so new, unlike any other, until I met you, and then it happened, it took me by surprise, I knew that you felt it too, by the look in your eyes." (sighing)

However - ask anyone and they’ll tell you their favorite all-time love songs, and, back in the day, when they were in love, they associated these sweetest romantic phrases, set to music, with a certain special one, the object of their affections.

Almost everyone started this way, thrilled to these songs, these magical phrases; and almost everyone believed that they would be the exception, they would be one to find true love, though the older crowd was already denying it.

And yet, fast forward, even just a little in life, and we find that it wasn’t enough. These sweetest romantic concepts, and all of the resultant affirmations of belief in love, did not take us to a desired destination of “living happily ever after.”

And the question becomes: How could we have felt all that we did, all of that headiness, that sense of swooning and staggering, the brimming-to-the-top feelings of intoxicated love, how could we have been taken captive by love’s “promised land” of all desires satisfied, but then, somewhere along the way, to have lost, or failed to gain, what we thought was in the offing? How is that possible? And, not just for one, or a few, but, essentially, the whole world.

Obviously, there’s something wrong, either with the system, or with us, or probably both.

In Omega’s “preface” I presented the research of Dr. Elizabeth Vandiver, a classical mythologist. Professor Vandiver explains that Aphrodite – or Venus to the Romans – is commonly viewed today as the “goddess of love.” But this is not correct, she said. The ancient Greeks would have worshiped her as “goddess of sexual passion”; or, more accurately, goddess of sexual insanity. Vandiver said that if we were to ask an ancient Greek, “Do you believe in Aphrodite?” they would say, “Of course I believe in Aphrodite.” But, the professor clarified, what the speaker would have meant is, “Of course I believe in the madness of sexual passion. We see it everywhere. Everyone goes crazy when they’re in love and can’t think straight.”

The ancient Greeks, Vandiver asserts, would have considered sexual passion as a form of temporary imbalance of mind, which bio-attraction might flee from one as quickly as it came. To build a life, a settled married life, of children, business, wealth accumulation, and family legacy on the broken reed of sexual passion, sexual madness, was, to the Greeks, the height of folly. They weren't all wrong.

But let’s reconsider our question. How can one feel, all that one feels, so “truly, madly, deeply,” to have all that sweetness, proclaimed in thousands of love songs, to have experienced "this magic moment" feeling so real and so insistent, but then to have it fall flat, about as quickly as it came. What is wrong with us?

Well, from one perspective, there’s nothing wrong with us. We're fine. What we feel, in principle, is not so different from what all mammals feel, what all “beasts of the field” experience, when Mother Nature comes calling and decides it’s time to perpetuate the species. This is a program that’s worked well enough over the millennia to “bear fruit and replenish the earth.” Dr. Niko Tinbergen won a Nobel Prize talking about this (see more on the “love” page).

Our problem with love is that we cannot approach it as do our feathered and furred brethren. It’s all in a day's work for them, just doing their duty, but we have this other situation going on called being “made in the image” that insists we are to move higher and become more. Until we agree, agree with ourselves, to fully enter this program we will discover ourselves to be on the wrong side of destiny.

All this is rather more than "met a new boy last night in the neighborhood, something tells me I'm into something good." She might very well be into something good, but more will be required of her before there's capital appreciation on what she believes to be a good long-term investment.

Our task is to “learn to live as the gods.” This will include a few incidentals such as accessing an elevated level of consciousness allowing for "no you and no me". As Kairissi would say, "oh, that little thing."

E. I just understood something more clearly.

K. It’s always exciting to receive a “spark” of insight.

E. About 15 years ago, when I was first learning of the “true self,” one of the great teachers in this area -- I won’t mention his name right now – said something that I now perceive to be incorrect.

K. (sighing) It’s wonderful, isn’t it, Elenchus – as we walk this path of enlightenment, it’s quite possible to overtake the understanding of original teachers. God has no favorite kids, and anyone can learn and zoom ahead, if they want to.

E. He was talking about how we can come to know God’s energy in all of creation – in a tree, a cloud, and of course, persons. And then he said, but there will be one special person who will reflect your love more perfectly than others. This seemed very reasonable to me, but as I was walking in the woods today, and as I viewed trees and clouds, and then thought of you, I suddenly realized that what he said years ago is not correct.

K. I think we’d all like to know this finely nuanced distinction.

E. As we’ve come to see, love retains the element of “subject and object,” “lover and beloved.” The intervening “distance” is room for the ego to make mischief of planting doubt and dissatisfaction, fear of loss and worries about measuring up. And so, as we now understand, love is not the highest virtue but must give way to sacred oneness, the state of consciousness of “no you and no me.”

K. Spell this out for us in terms of that “one special person.”

E. We can experience “no you and no me” with the physical creation. This is somewhat common when we stand in awe of the midnight sky – we meld with it. And we can do this, too. with a tree, a cloud, or a pet. But in these examples of no “subject and object”, the melding, shall we say, is not top-shelf.

K. (softly) That ultimate sense of oneness would be reserved just for your one-and-only.

E. Of course. And so I would modify the old dictum of “one who will reflect your love more perfectly than others” and make it “there is one special person with whom your spirit will blend most perfectly, in a manner and to a degree not possible with any other element of creation.” Like answers to like.

K. (smiling) No you and no me! – what happened to us?

E. (smiling) We're just gone in the “union of spirits” of “The Wedding Song.” We became “something never seen before” – the sacred One Person.

K. Elenchus, it occurs to me that the reason why we see things more clearly when we enter the state of “no you and no me” is because, as we’ve said, what we are as “persons” is not a stand-alone entity before God.

E. This can be confusing because the Little Me Ego constantly preaches separateness.

K. It has its own agenda. But in reality we’re extensions of God, each of us a subdivision of Universal Consciousness, and not separate at all.

E. As Dr. Kastrup said, we’re like whirlpools in the same pond.

K. And so there really is “no you and no me” but only an illusion of separateness. No wonder we see more clearly when we mystically enter “no you and no me.”

E. It’s funny, the very word “individual” means “undivided”.

K. That is strange because we use that word to indicate “separate,” which is the very opposite of its literal meaning.

E. And the word “person,” too, means “mask”; again, the separateness is just a mask we wear.

K. Another false reading.

E. And so, what would you say, Kriss – what are we exactly?

K. Well, we have this sense of a thing called “I”, or a perception of self-awareness.

E. The term “ego” itself means “I” and imparts a feeling of self.

K. And "self" is accurate, but only to an extent. We are separate, but not as stand-alone entities, only “wholly owned subsidiaries of a parent corporation.”

E. I like that.

K. We say that we have “consciousness,” we say that we have “life.” But we have nothing of and by ourselves for what we have derives from a central Source.

E. From a larger perspective, it’s more accurate to say that we, not have but, “are” consciousness and life; because, beside these, there is no “me”.

K. We’re falling deeper down the rabbit-hole here, but when we say that we have self-awareness, a sense of “I,” this would mean, I take it, that the essence of Universal Consciousness is a perception that “I exist.”

E. Kriss, it’s noteworthy that one of the famous names of God in the Bible is “I am that I am," the self-existent one.

K. The original writer or shaman of that document channeled this information from higher sources. It's one of the accurate things in the Bible. And so we, as derivatives of God, experiencing a sense of “I am,” are in fact affirming that we're part of Universal Consciousness.

E. And how would you define “life”?

K. Fundamentally, what we call “life” is not a product of chemicals interacting – these merely sustain and perpetuate, but cannot originate.

E. They are editors not authors.

K. Yes, very good, editors not authors. And so it seems that “life”, necessarily so, is inherent within, or naturally flows from, Universal Consciousness, along with self-awareness. All these are indissolubly united, with no division possible.

E. You can’t have awareness without life. Can we have life without consciousness?

K. Many would say that consciousness resides only with higher-order entities. But maybe this isn’t totally true as even a stone, filled with the "life" of quantum activity, “knows” its place in the cosmic order. (See more discussion in "The Wedding Song".) But I think Dr. Sheldrake was onto something when he said that “consciousness is a quantum field of possibility.”

E. We confuse the definition of “life” with things like heart-beats and blood flow, but there are entities in worlds beyond ours, more alive than we, who don’t necessarily have heart-beats.

K. Mortals are prejudiced in favor of bodily definitions. But as we look at the issue more closely, the heart-beats and blood-flow are just a transient feature for lower-level creatures. The real essence of life has to do with Sheldrake’s “quantum field of possibility.”

E. What would you say this means for us still weighed down with the mortal body?

K. I think it means that each of us is a vast field of “no upper limit”, unbounded potential for growth – growth toward emulating Source.

E. We’re waiting for you to say, “oh, that little thing.”

K. I was getting to that.

materialists preach a gospel of 'many pretty fish in the sea', but how do we know they're not right

In the world we hear banter like, “oh, that girl you liked is now with someone else – ‘the fish that got away’ – but don’t worry, there are many pretty fish in the sea.”

Well, it’s true, there are many pretty fish in the sea – but is this the correct way of searching for true love? Why shouldn't it be along the lines, as the Beatles sang, “I need somebody to love, could it be anybody?” Why couldn't it be any nice girl with a pretty face?

The world's success record here is not comforting. On these pages we submit that such philosophy becomes formula, at best, for the lackluster marriage and, at worst, Ann Lander’s ranks of “the miserably married.” In fact, some of the prettiest faces in Hollywood suffer the most with marriage break-ups.

But if the precept of “many pretty fish in the sea” does not reflect highest reality, how do we know this to be the case?

In support of “one particular girl for one particular boy” is the confirming testimony of a great many teachers on the other side, and in this world. See “The Wedding Song” Prologue page.

And while this is valuable attestation, in the final analysis, words from others will not substantially convince, even if we want to believe. We need more. What is that “more”?

On this page you are reading one of a cluster of several articles which speak to a concealed, non-material, aspect to romantic love: the topics under review include the esoteric labels of “no you and no me,” “existential beauty,” “touching foreheads in the Dazzling Darkness,” “the rest of God,” “consonance with the whole,” the mystical experience – all these, from various angles, address the issue of “one particular girl for one particular boy”.

However, once again, mere words, writings filled with them, cannot assuage the doubts of the deeper person. But here’s what will.

Finding your true mate is more a function of first finding yourself, your “true self.” And when you do, as you sharpen the focus of the “internal radar,” at the right time, when she crosses your “hidden guidance field,” the inner soul energies, possibly, long dormant, will suddenly rise from the ancient depths, even against your will, launching skyward, like Poseidon missiles on target - and you will no longer need to ask the question, “How can I find my true love among an ocean of pretty fish?”

It will be more than obvious. You may forget your name and where you live, but you will not suffer confusion concerning the veracity of “one particular girl for one particular boy”. And a million years from now, along with each intervening day, you will still recall, and thrill to, that first moment when you “came alive” - to her.

‘no distance,’ ‘no you and no me’, and the future of erotic love in Summerland

K. Elenchus, I’d like to offer a brief summary statement – primarily on the concept of “distance” – but also extend this somewhat.

E. I think “distance” is an extremely important idea and we’ve hardly begun to mine the riches with it.

K. It’s really a mystical experience (ME) and so, for lovers, we can’t just go and access it, like a couple deciding to make love. Eliminating “distance” creates “no you and no me” and, therefore, results in an eroticism far superseding physical love-making but it can’t be accessed just by going to bed.

E. You and I virtually stumbled into this ME -- totally by accident, weren’t looking for it -- and since that time we’ve thought a lot about it, and we’ve wondered how it can be regenerated.

K. What I’m seeing is that the ME of “no distance” is the future of erotic love for advanced beings. Now, we were not advanced beings when we had this, but somehow we were granted the experience – I don’t know -- maybe so that we could talk about it here and introduce the concept. But, once one has had this, you’re never the same again; and I don't mean it's like the first time two have sex; it's way far above that.

E. I’ll share something. You and I have talked about getting married in Summerland, having our “first chance” to be together as it all fell apart for us so quickly when we were teenagers. We won’t speak to that again right now, but, my point is, we’ve talked about what we’d like to experience during a honeymoon. And as I imagine the thrill and joy of having that, sometimes, to my surprise, I find myself sort of feeling down in my spirits, and I’ve wondered why. But then it finally came to me, what the real problem was in these imaginings. It has something to do with the “distance.”

K. I think I understand. When we imagine a future wedding night, even if it’s in Summerland, we automatically gravitate toward traditional concepts of physical love.

E. And that’s the difficulty here – even if two are Twins -- because no physical love can get rid of the “distance.”

K. This is such an important concept. We’re not saying that a traditional honeymoon and wedding night would be a problem, it’s just that, it wouldn’t help us to feel love and joy all the way “to the top” of what we yearn to feel.

E. It’s pretty incredible. Two can be Twin Souls, but if they approach their marital love on a common physical basis, they’re going to run into the same problem of feeling “empty” pretty soon, just as any John and Mary off the street, because nothing physical can satisfy spiritual beings.

K. This is so important to understand. What we need – and maybe we'll have to wait to get advice on this in Summerland but – what we need is to learn how to access that first ME that started our whole “opening of the eyes”. We don’t know how to do that on demand, but I’m betting that there are advanced Guides over there who do know how to do this, and so we’ll have to investigate.

E. The benefit we have is that we know that this exists. We’ve experienced it, one time, and so we know that it can be brought up from the depths by some process of “going within.” But we can’t say too much more right now.

K. This entire area of “no distance,” “no you and no me,” “no subject and object” is a vast field of future study.

E. And it's the basis for extreme feelings of erotic love – even without bodies in contact; in fact, as we learned, it has nothing to do with a "union of bodies."

K. Well, we know, this makes no sense to the average John and Mary out there, and we can’t “bottle and sell this” quite yet, not even for ourselves, but we do know -- because we've been there -- that this is the future of erotic love for advanced spirit-beings.

K. Elenchus, may I offer a very short postscript to our discussion?

E. Please.

K. What I have to say is a natural outgrowth of our conclusions concerning “distance.” Even so, there’s a troubling element to it, and John and Mary will not enjoy hearing it.

E. (silence)

K. We said, that is, we came to realize, that nothing physical can ultimately satisfy a spiritual being. We said that an emphasis on an outward beauty could manifest as a sense of “emptiness,” very early in the marriage, and might inflict its existential revenge even during the honeymoon. But here is the inferential corollary that many cannot accept, at least, until mired in marital misery:

The more one focuses on outward beauty and the purely animal pleasures -- if that's all you have -- the faster a sense of well-being will flee from us. The more one runs after the “perfect measurements” of body parts, sexual image, and mere bio-chemical stimulation, the more psychologically isolated and dysfunctional, the more out of touch and disoriented one becomes, not just from the essential personhood of one’s bed partner, a dehumanizing filter of vision, but a separation from and loss of one’s own true self and soul.

K. There is a reason why Spirit Guide Margaret said that couples merchandizing and abusing each other in this way send more people to the Dark Realms than any other single factor. Much could be said here, but we’ve already said it in many hundreds of pages of discussion. However, there’s a certain shock-value to be known by codifying and formulating as corollary.

Life In Two Spheres, or Scenes in the Summerland, by Hudson Tuttle, channeled testimony from the other side. The speaker of the following is known as "the ancient Sage," a resident of Summerland for nearly 3000 years:

A newcomer to Summerland confesses that he had foolishly lost his true love when they were teens. He speaks to the Sage concerning how, during his Earth-life, he never recovered from this profound grief of losing her:

The Sage: "You are guilty?"

"Guilty! yes, a vile, guilty wretch! … I suffered so much, [but] recognized [the] punishment as just … [because] I loved a maiden, and she loved me. We played and sang together in our childhood, and in our youth our lot was always cast together. She was confiding, unaffected... She was always what she appeared.”

Editor’s note: The girl of his youth interacted authentically with him, wasn't trying to get anything from him but wanted only him; she confided, shared secrets of her life, spoke unaffectedly, never flirted, never played a role, but “was always what she appeared.” However, the boy, not knowing his own mind well enough at the time, was led away by infatuations, a false “ideal.”

“At length I saw [another girl, or girls, whom I foolishly believed to be] the ideal of my dreams. She made me forget my first love…” Very quickly, however, the mere passions of biology deserted him, so-called “love vanished, and I was miserable.” The girl of his youth, his true love, in her grief of losing him, made bad decisions for her life, and died prematurely.

“Oh, to think of this! To remember the pleasant days we passed together [in our youths] – that I, in whom she had placed her confidence, should cause her death, intensifies my suffering."

The Sage: "Human affection is more precious than diamonds; and he who crushes [it] is severely punished [in a natural way, by resultant suffering].”

"I was ignorant of the injury I was inflicting; I knew not [that] unanswered affections recoiled with such force. I supposed love [to be] but a transient passion, soon and easily subdued."

Editor's note: Imagine the emotional train-wreck for a young girl who had trusted, had emptied her secret heart to, a young boy, only to see him cavalierly wander away, and toss her away, in pursuit of some pretty face.

when the mountains are crushed to vapor, the holy and authentic romantic love will still be there

The Sage: "Cause and effect will eternally operate; and punishment must necessarily follow crime [against holy, destined romance]… [True] love is not [just] a passion, neither is it transitory, but it is the uniting of two souls into one; and unions founded on [this] basis will exist, growing stronger and more intricate, when [a] mountain shall have changed to vapor and passed away. This is true marriage - an eternal union of soul, thought, and being. Passion is secondary, and will perish with the conditions on which it depends, but spiritual love is as lasting as time, and develops more and more in the Spirit-world. It seeks one object…

Editor’s note: The male, truly in love, “seeks one object” for his desire. Not just one woman in the sense of “any woman” to whom exclusive fealty is offered, but “one particular woman.” See Dr. Campbell’s comments.

“It seeks one object, and clings to it, through life and death, and puts forth its immortal bloom a thousand ages hence [that is, he will still feel the same though a thousand summers might pass]."

Restatement: The concept of psychological “distance” is extremely important but difficult to understand for those who’ve not experienced it. Whenever there is “subject and object,” including “lover and beloved,” then “distance” remains.

This is so even for those intensely absorbed in the intimacy of love. What does “distance” mean for those compellingly associated? It means that, in this “distance”, the ego has room to inject disturbing memories laden with doubt, hurt feelings, accusations of past untrustworthiness, and the like. One might be plagued with these dismaying images of one’s partner even in the midst of intense love.

These might be images of actual misdeeds of the past, or imagined ones, or the images might be of potential loss in the future, a fear of betrayal or "you have failed to make me happy". As long as there is “distance” then the ego will use this psychological sense of separation to create negativity.

And this is why love is not the highest virtue, but must surrender the crown to ultimate oneness, a state of “no you and no me,” wherein “distance” does not exist. In this most sublime state, lover and beloved "become each other."

Editor's note:

Adrian Smith commented on the above writing plus the "mystical experience" article: 

"I relate to [these writings] on a very deep level. I have felt for a long time (and written about this in my book), that there is another way of knowing, independent of intellect, reason, or evidence, infinitely more reliable, yet completely illusive when trying to convey the experience to anyone else. Those who speak of it know it not. In this life we can never be completely certain of anything. Jurors are counseled to decide beyond a reasonable doubt but not beyond any doubt. Most knowledge arrives second hand and, as you point out, this is true of the psychic who is only a conduit. Paul preferred this mystic experience above the psychic gifts which were more attractive and glamorous to the uninitiated. The mystical experience by contrast conveys a level of certitude which is beyond any doubt, but this is entirely personal. Nevertheless, true mystics will encounter each other speaking the same language and coming from the same country though separated in space and time. It seems that our love of life is intimately bound up with gender and the experience of romantic attraction illustrates ecstatic union with the Divine. I was just reading about an ancient demon god that compelled its victims to change their gender. Perhaps we are witnessing a return of the old gods."

Editor's last word:

Strange to say, love, per se, is not the zenith of the levels of consciousness. It’s close, but there’s something else. Love retains a sense of “subject and object”, lover and beloved, and therefore a duality is maintained, barring us from total oneness. What’s needed is what Krishnamurti called a “total field” of perception in which “subject and object” melt away. This is what Elenchus briefly glimpsed and entered during his initial mystical encounter with his Twin. See K's "valentine's day, 1969" lecture wherein he speaks of "total field."

See, too, Dr. Hawkins’ levels of consciousness. He gets it right. Love is near but not at the very top of the roster.

This "rest of God," this freedom from the tyranny of the ego, this overwhelming sense of the oneness of all things, represents an “Omega Point” maturity. It occurs in one timeless moment of cosmic clarity, not 100,000 lives as the foolish and pernicious doctrine of reincarnation preaches. See 90 short articles discussing the error and fraud of “R”.

Also see “the 500 tape-recorded messages from the other side” which reveals an entire class of millions over there who dearly, but unrequitedly, hope for “R” – because they have no concept of what Elenchus and Kairissi were given to know.