Sally had felt a new thrill the
last few months. Getting close to twenty-nine years old, she knew that the
soul-mate might appear at any moment. Among the Nameless, the twenties were
given over to profound meditation and the inner arts. It was logical, you had to
know who you were, before you’d know who it was, that had “fallen in love”
with another. The teaching among the Nameless was that soul-mates intertwined
their personalities across lifetimes; nay, across solar cycles! Since the two
personalities had become intertwined, having grown around one another, there was
little to no chance of misidentification, if you waited until the mind was
mature. In the world they still thought they could find the soul-mate in the
late teens or early twenties, but Sally thought they were obviously lost in
body-identification, victims of their hormones. That’s all the animals did for
meaning their whole life, find a mate and raise babies. The rebirth of the soul
meant a higher option is available for the intelligent beings, and without
meditation during the twenties no one knows himself or herself enough to begin
to judge the personality of another, if it is really the soul-mate or not.
To Sally’s knowledge, none of the
Nameless had ever missed the soul-mate, and once together the couples were like
rocks of fidelity. They found themselves capable of differentiating the
love-power, so that Eros, love for the soul-mate, was totally separable in
practice from the love for other community members, which was of a chaste but
sweet and powerful variety. About half the population, male and female, did not
find a soul-mate, and they liked to boast about their condition. God had
designed this option into creation, that some follow the soul-mate ideal, but
others choose the path of total freedom. It is a consequence of spiritual
nature. There is sweetness in male and female meeting, but a different potential
is the totally free state, transferring all Eros into love for God and other
souls.
All of this took place in a situation
of total asparshana, or non-touching. It is a simple but saving idea, that if
you never touched anyone, a male could feel love for other males, and a female
for other females, and there is no potential for impropriety. Growing up with
this ideal too, Sally found her thoughts were easily controlled, so that she
rejoiced in community living, finding she could think of a few hundred people
she knew directly as “dear ones.” It takes time to develop those
relationships. You see a little bit of personality here, another little bit on
another day. Some people she saw only occasionally, but she found her mind was
powerful enough to form a mental model for them, so that she could feel some
tender love for them. In that mental model, she felt like her hands were tied
behind her back, or like they disappeared into nothingness. There was no
implication of touching, as she felt love. She liked to be in their presence. It
was a big thrill, though she was aware that signs of anger would blacken
everything, and cut out the heart of ecstasy from the situation. Sally had only
heard about anger, from stories about the world of egos.
“Without living in community,”
Sally thought, “how would we ever get to know anyone? Where would the fun
go?” But one needs a certain power to live like that. Kurt had called it the
“totally inoffensive personality.” If getting angry for a wrong reason is
not possible for you, then you can enter higher regions of awareness, and
delight builds onto delight. But in the world among egos, they mistook this
powerful state for the weakest state, tamas. The only thing an angel could get
in the world was abuse. Jesus said to turn the other cheek, but they just hit
you twice as hard, laughing in glee at your discomfiture and grief.
To find the soul-mate, the
cooperation of the Transmigrator was generally required, so that the male and
female are not born on opposite sides of the planet in very difficult
circumstances—though sometimes this too could be seen to be overcome. Then,
you had to trust in the divine within and around yourself, that the soul-mate
condition is a totally holy thing blessed by God, and that then your deepest
core (or Atman), and the deepest core in all those around you, would gradually
work around a magnificent and thrilling reunion with the soul-mate, from the
last life. There was a surprising mobility in the communes, particularly as the
young men approached the age of thirty, when many of them felt a fierce
restlessness, that could result in wide travel.
Unlike in the world, often it was the
female who initiated contact, seeing who she thought might be her beloved, as he
traveled from commune to commune, sharing in the local work. Then there would be
a long courtship, with at least a year of no touching at all, then at least a
year of only mild touching, holding hands or a peck on the cheek. Sally knew
this was the best way, and the happiest time, for romances among the Nameless
were deep in the emotions, the body mostly interfering with spiritual awareness
of the situation. Sometimes in the first six months of the no-touching dates,
the couple would discover a misidentification had been made, but it was to the
credit of the people that in the majority of cases the couple was mature enough
to recognize one another from deep signs given in early conversations, before
the initiation of courtship. Daily meditation seemed to give everyone this
power, that you were very serious about life and ecstasy, and wouldn’t come
down from those states and make any move in reaction to the senses.
Among the Nameless, a pure
non-touching courtship often drove the couple into high ecstatic states, and
both poetry and a vast and varied entertainment came out of that. Infinite the
varieties of romance, among the infinitely variable people! All that initial
romance was about imagining interactions with the beloved, what he would say if
she said this, what kind of glow she would gain after a walk, presented with a
bouquet of flowers. You get ecstatic thinking about the ecstasy of the other,
and you are eager to establish the links between personality, before attempting
any merely physical gestures of affection. That’s how it was among the
Nameless. You wanted the solid mental bond, then there might be some
hand-holding and kissing. It takes at least a year to establish that mental
bond, if the personalities and situations are complex ones. Many couples chose
to extend that yearlong period of no-touching, which was generally regarded as a
minimum. Everyone understood that period is in many ways the happiest and
sweetest, where the mind and emotions are explored in profound ways, without any
hindrance of the body.
Romance, like other relationships, is
two spirits interacting. The body is the house of spirit, and the faculty of
touching is the “dark sense,” communicating almost no information about the
personality of the other. It is better not to be driven by the sense of touch,
but the authorities who had spoken to the human race in ages past, had not been
able to penetrate with this message. The Nameless had a crunching capacity
against physical contagion, that was difficult to explain. What seemed
impossible throughout human history was very easy and natural to them. If you
are deeply enjoying the spiritual presence of the beloved, you are simply too
overwhelmed with emotion to think also of activating the body, to try to add
touching to the mix of experience. You want to see him or her and how he or she
is going to react, and you want to see that face exploding in raptures. After a
year, you know what it means to be with him or her, and in that stable context
the couple may attempt to hold hands occasionally, when walking in the forest.
Among the Nameless, romance was a
passion for the presence of the other. It ended up having little to do with
touching, though an occasional caress had its place in that relationship. These
are the places the Nameless allowed touching, among proven soul-mates, for
children under the age of six, then for dancing and other “sporting”
interactions. If you were out playing soccer and bumped into someone, what of
it? But there were no hugs between friends, no pats on the back, no kisses
unless between soul-mates, and not even shaking hands. Like other aspects of
life among the Nameless, it took a certain power. But if you are standing firm
in mental models for the personalities of those around you, touching interferes,
because of its lack of information. If two people shake hands, it is suddenly
two bodies touching, but inwardly you had been trying to assess the personality.
The personalities of the Nameless tended to be magnificent. The people lived in
many ways above their bodies, not within them.
In the “other world,” marriage
was the death of romance. In all human history, they had not produced one play,
novel, or movie, about a happy marriage, and they were also so benighted that
they hadn’t understood the lack meant there was something wrong with their
romantic ideal. The Nameless by contrast developed a living flame of passion
that extended throughout the lifetime, as they strove for an eternal romance,
passing easily from lifetime to lifetime. Then when they reached old age they
felt confident their passion was so intense, and their system to well-designed,
that in the next lifetime they’d meet without any incidents of infidelity;
which in the other world, are the dating scene.
Anyway Sally was alive with
anticipation, that she knew was Atman-activated. Feeling that she was a
heterosexual, and had not made the choice of eternal freedom like the
supersexuals, she eyed the young men passing through her commune carefully. She
could wait years like this; it was in the female potency. She knew also that
when she espied her soul-mate, he might be fancying himself a supersexual.
That’s how it was among the males. They like their freedom, and most of the
heterosexual males are convinced in their twenties they have made the choice for
the eternally free state, where no energies are tied up around a “significant
other.” She hoped it would be so, because a man arrayed like that in his mind
is the most faithful of all. It was her role to convince him they had such a
bond from many lifetimes ago, and if at first he seemed dubious, he would
eventually be swayed, and if not, conceiving himself a supersexual he would be
safe. Thinking he had no soul-mate, he was certain to reject the wrong ones,
even if he rejected the right one also for a brief time! This aspect formed the
core of many romantic adventures, found in literature. The man leaves the
community, rejecting the advances of the woman, but he has second thoughts and
misgivings. He thought he was totally pure, the eternally free! But she calls
him back. He remembers her presence was like sweet perfume, and finds his soul
was really on the opposite track, a heterosexual. In accord with God’s plan,
he’ll take his freedom with a female by his side, a special bond in a world
flooded with many friends.