Posted: Jun 1, 2008, 4:07 PM CST
"Don't be afraid that your life will end,
Be afraid that it will never begin."
quoted from ealier thread page 2
The mutual attraction of the sexes is so fundamental that any explanation of the world( biological, philosophical or religious) that does not succeed 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 level in life, sexuality seems only identified with propagation. Beings come together to prolong not themselves but what they have gained. So close is the link between pairing-off and reproduction that philosophers 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 almost 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 preservation of the species is indisputable. This was so until the 'state' of personality was established in man. But from the critical moment of hominization, another 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 synthesis 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 reproductive functions. But hitherto this has been regarded only as a secondary effect, linked as an accessory to the principle phenomenon of reproduction. In obedience to the laws of the personal universe, the importance of these factors is tending to be reverse. 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 another increasingly and forever.
For so long as the sexualized elements of the world has 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 persons, 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'. Stage by stage it must go on till the end of time and of our world. And finally it is the total center itself, much more than the child, that appears necessary for the consolidation of love. Love is a three-way term function: man, woman, and God. Its whole perfection and success are bound up with the harmonious balance of these three elements...or so, as I see it...