SOUL-UNION: WHERE WILL IT LEAD?
We have heard much in recent years of "affinities," and "soul-mates,"
and we are likely to hear much more in the future. So much that is
unsavory and sensational is associated with these two words, that we
almost hesitate to employ them; but that is always the way with Fear.
It builds a high wall between us and Truth, and dares us to scale it.
We accept the challenge.
To begin with, the words are not synonymous, although frequently used
as such. Affinities are based upon mutual interests; mutual tastes and
appetites; mutual stages of development; but these stages of
development may be sense-conscious only; or they may be of a highly
intellectual order. Whatever their basis of mutuality, they tend to
attract upon that plane. Whenever this affinity, established by virtue
of mutual tastes, is on the sense-plane only--that is, when it is
because two persons both like their roast-beef rare; or their whiskey
diluted; or their wine iced--we are apt to find the result in a
mistaken idea of sexual affinity, which wears itself out for the
reasons already stated, because there is no reservoir from which to
draw. The chemistry of the body changes with time and emotional
experiences. Affinity of bodily contact only, resulting from a
congeniality of sense-appetites, is therefore necessarily short lived.
Affinity of intellect is much more lasting, because it approaches a
state higher in the ascent to the spiritual center of the cosmos.
Thought is the parent of speech, or of any external appeal to the
senses. Back of all objectivity is the thought that molded it; but
back of thought is desire; and back of desire is design--cosmic design
we may say--expressing itself discretively; in individuals.
Affinities that are based upon intellectual similarities are of a
finer nature and generally more lasting than those of sense-conscious
attraction only; and it is no uncommon thing to find two persons of
the opposite sex enjoying a protracted friendship or preference for
each others' society which deceives the average on-looker into
thinking that there is also sexual affinity, when as a matter of fact
there may never have been any thought of such relationship.
A few brilliant women in former times, notably Madame de Stael, or
Margaret Fuller, have enjoyed the attentions and apparent devotion of
men for many years without having entered into any more intimate
relationship with them. But these examples have been few in the past,
and have been much commented upon. In the present, such desirable
companionship is becoming much more common and a woman may now be seen
twice with the same man without having the neighbors speculating as
to a suitable name for the baby.
More and more, as women become freed from the necessity to "settle
themselves" in marriage, we find evidences of this intellectual
affinity between the sexes; and more and more, as we get away from the
old thought that a man has but one desire, that of sexual intercourse,
and a woman but one motive, that of enslaving man through his sexual
appetite, we will find that men and women will meet on the plane of
intellectual affinity and not be driven by gossip of outsiders, or by
the force of the race-thought in their own minds, into seeking to
spoil such companionship by a matrimonial alliance, when nature did
not intend it to be so.
A number of years ago, when even the little freedom which human beings
now accord each other in this matter was denied the struggling sexes,
a certain man and woman, who were intellectual companions, married. He
was a writer; she was a physician; which is evidence in itself of a
degree of intellectual power not so common at that time as now; she
was moreover an unusual woman in many ways. They parted after a month
of married life and to the horror and scandal of the entire community,
remained friends. The scandal reached the climax of disapproval and
shocked morality when the man, married again, continued his friendship
with his former wife and later, when a baby came to the couple, the
ex-wife and mutual friend was the attending physician.
The old idea of matrimony held that the husband and wife must be
"yoked" together, so that neither one could exercise any individual
predilection or choice of friends, or recreation, or taste or desire.
And this is still the average idea of a successful marriage. It is an
idea that is not confined to the ignorant, and the narrow-minded. It
is the attitude of society at large, though upon what argument such an
idea is based, must be left to the perverted imagination.
Presumably it is because of that colossal egotism which insists upon
personal ownership. One would expect this tendency to own each other
to have died with the death of the institution of slavery, but it
still exists, and as we have already observed, among those who sit in
the seats of the mighty as well as among the ignorant.
A couple who had married on the ground of intellectual affinity lived
together most congenially for a period of twelve years, although they
agreed that sexual affinity was lacking in their relationship. They
agreed that there was another phase of mating, and that should either
come to the point where freedom was desirable, it would be given
without resentment or anger. They both decided, that perfect candor
and honesty with each other on this score was a higher type of
civilization than that which prevails where mutual deceit is the rule.
True to their compact, when the wife met the one whom she believed to
be the one man who answered the call of her soul, the husband gave her
up, retaining her friendship, and the memory of an intellectual
companionship unmarred by the horrors of dispute and deceit and
disruption. But he incurred the severest criticism from Society, which
is as yet composed of the animal-man, rather than the man-god, and the
animal-man (meaning woman as well) knows no higher code of morality
than that which he vaingloriously terms "defense of his honor." By
exactly what process of reasoning a man can imagine his honor defended
or appeased by shooting his rival, is, we admit, beyond our power to
fathom. But such is the basis of the unwritten law, in which civilized
man vents his remaining savagery.
Affinity-marriages, then, are not synonymous with soul-mating. And
while we contend that affinity marriages, based upon at least some
degree of mutuality, are a step higher in social development than were
the alliances of the old regime, where a man's social or domestic
exigencies required a wife or a housekeeper, or both-in-one; where
woman must marry whomsoever asked her, or be pitied and scorned as an
"old maid," still affinity-marriages are not the final union, and must
go through an evolutionary phase.
Affinity-marriages are eligible to disruption. Happily, we trust,
these disruptions will in the course of time be devoid of hatred and
mutual recriminations and abuse. Certainly they will be, as they
evolve from the plane of sense-consciousness to that of intellectual
affinities. Moreover, they stand a much better chance of permanency
than has maintained during the past, before the word affinity was
heard so frequently as it is now.
The general impression is abroad in the land, that it is only since
women became economically independent that disruption of the marriage
bonds has become so general. It is true that divorces are much more
frequent since women have become, to a great extent, economically
independent; but that only means that the parties to the marriage have
been set free. The disruptions are not more, it is only the evidences.
And it is at the _evidence_ of marital unhappiness that all the
criticism is directed.
If the criticism were directed against the condition that divorce
tells us of, instead of against the divorce itself, the first aid to
the injured would be to establish a social order wherein an equal
moral standard for both sexes should be the rule, and where a mother
is recognized, and respected and honored in the name of motherhood,
whether she is a wife or not.
This suggestion will of course be met with a shocked gasp from many.
The cry that "Society will be disorganized" and our "moral code become
chaotic" will go up from the self-constituted keepers of public
morality. But is our morality so tender that it needs protection? Are
our social conditions so ideal that they cannot be improved? If they
are, then nothing can besmirch them. If they are not, they must first
be demolished, before they are rebuilt.
The limited mortal mind is always terribly afraid of a change. Not one
single improvement has ever been suggested, from mechanics to morals,
that has not been met with that ever-ready fear-thought, that the
whole universe is going to the eternal bow-wows, if the slightest
change in established institutions is made. And despite it all, we go
on year after year, improving. "Self-improvement" is the watch-word of
the Century. If "self-improvement," then social improvement. Mankind
is still in the making, as far as external conditions are concerned.
The complaint goes up from every side, that women refuse motherhood.
Girls who have been carefully reared, brought up in the most orthodox
movement, are heard to openly, unashamed, announce their intention of
finding a rich husband and not, emphatically, _not_ having any
children.
May this not be Nature's revenge upon our inhuman treatment of girls
who become mothers without first becoming wives?
We are wont to refer to unmarried mothers as "unfortunates" and
"ruined." But in what does the misfortune consist, and wherein are
they ruined?
Is a woman ever unfortunate if she gives birth to a child because she
has loved, and because she loves the child? Is she ruined in any way
except that she becomes the target for our inhumanity; our well-nigh
unforgivable stupidity?
The world, and especially women, owe a debt of gratitude to a certain
famous woman who, by her force of character; her defiant self-respect
in the face of social criticism, because she had a child and no
husband, has wrung from the unwilling public the highest place
accorded any actress in this or any previous age. This artist's
well-known reply to an openly expressed criticism of her is worthy of
perpetuation. "Ah, so!" she said, "true I have a son and no husband,
but you women have husbands and lovers, and no children!"
We would not have it understood that we commend this woman's example,
and criticise that of the woman to whom she referred. We do not regard
child-bearing as the end and aim of woman's mission. It has been said
that the first duty of Man is to perpetuate the species, but
observation should convince us that in all too many instances the
first duty of the individual would be to refrain from such a crime
against posterity.
We neither criticise nor advise the adoption of the position of a
husbandless mother; nor that of the women who are childless wives. We
endorse any woman's insistence upon her right to self-respect; and we
insist that a better civilization cannot come without permitting the
greatest degree of personal liberty in matters pertaining to the
sex-relation, and, above and beyond all, without conceding to the
unmarried mother the same respect that we accord to the married one,
when she is otherwise worthy of our respect. It certainly takes
courage for a defenseless woman to bear a fatherless child, in a
hypocritical world.
The normal woman does not live who would not rather be safely and
happily married to the man whom her soul tells her exists somewhere in
the universe, than to be battling with the problem of existence,
alone. When she is so married, we need not fear that the marriage will
be disrupted. Until she is so married, no power on earth can, and no
power in Heaven will, prevent the disruptions, although man's laws may
temporarily obstruct the evidence of such disruption.
What we have already said will make it clear, that our contention is
that affinities are not necessarily soul-mates; that, in fact, we may
have many and various kinds of affinities, but no one can possibly
have more than one soul-mate.
Mates are two entities composing a pair. They are the two halves that
make a whole. Unlike what we know of affinities, they are not merely
similar; nor yet opposite, so that they attract each other because of
curiosity or dissimiliarity.
They belong to each other because together they complete a perfect
balance. Each supplies in the exact proportion required for balance
the qualities lacking in the other.
In the event of such union, instinctive procreation will cease, and
re-generation will begin. They will consciously beget souls, instead
of merely providing bodies for souls to manifest upon this external
plane of consciousness.
Bodily contact is not essential to this phase of sex-union, because
the real conjunction is between the interior natures; and the interior
nature exists independently of the physical organism.
Already the race-thought is beginning to realize interiorly. This is
manifest in the daily press; in music and drama; and in all the
avenues of the senses. That intangible, elusive but potential thing
called "character" forms the gist of editorial advice. Everywhere we
note a tendency to look below the appearance of things, and to fathom
the depths of psychological analysis. For the first time in centuries
the race-thought seeks the underlying cause for specific effects,
instead of, as heretofore, being satisfied to deal with effects only,
suppressing those that are unpleasant and extolling those that seem
agreeable.
The scientist expresses it thus: "Nature is giving up her secrets to
man." The metaphysician puts it this way: "The soul of man is
unveiling, and soon we shall know each other in Truth." The
religionist has long looked for a time when, as prophesied by St.
Paul, who was above all things a spiritually-conscious person, "we
shall see each other face to face; not as now through a glass,
darkly."
This tendency to "get behind the scenes" as it were, to penetrate the
crust of mere outward semblance, and to reveal the interior nature,
may be seen even in the fashions of our clothes. Despite thunders of
denunciation from the self-constituted keepers of our morals, who are
not yet free from the bondage of traditional ideas of virtue and
"respectability," women have insisted upon freedom of the body in
dress until at last the uncorseted, short-skirted, thinly-clad woman
excites little adverse comment. The fact has at last established
itself that the female form has legs.
This fact was only half suspected before; men have always wanted to
see exactly what was beneath those long flowing skirts; and woman has
always known that she possessed at least one trump card, in the game
of enslaving man to become what modern slang has so aptly labeled her
"meal-ticket." She could always keep him guessing as to whether or not
she had legs; and the average man, be it known, possesses a fund of
curiosity far in excess of that which is proverbially ascribed to
woman. Men have been known to pay the highest price, even to donning
the matrimonial yoke, to satisfy their curiosity. Women have always
known this, and the worldly wise mother has besought her marriageable
daughter to "keep her skirts well over her ankles" if she hoped to
secure a man as a permanent banker! It does sound crude expressed
thus, but this is the basis upon which at least nine-tenths of the
respectable marriages of society are consummated. And this is the
standard which the short-sighted keepers of public morals would have
us retain. They would force women to act as though their bodies are
vile. They would keep the mind encumbered with the corpse of an idea
of modesty, from which the spirit has long since fled. The spirit has
fled from it because it was a false idea of modesty; because it was
founded upon the idea that woman was an instrument of the devil
himself, and that to look upon her naked form was in itself wicked,
and only permitted to poor man as a concession to his own innate
defilement.
The good Church at one time, not so far distant, refused to admit
women to the communion table in the "holy sacrament." A fine chance
has any sacrament of being holy, with one half of it missing!
The old idea of womanly modesty consisted of blushing with shame and
embarrassment if by chance her ankles became exposed to the interested
and curious gaze of a male. Notwithstanding this ideal of modesty, the
designing and beguiling female managed to arrange just such a
contretemps every time there was an eligible male within sight; if
discovered, she either assumed a look of infantile innocence, or she
took the opportunity to coax a becoming blush.
To be sure, this does not accurately describe all women of "the good
old days." There was the other type.
Nature manifests in extremes. There was the type, fitting ancestors to
those women of to-day who are outraged and shocked at the present-day
fashions, which actually disclose the fact that women are
anatomatically endowed with legs and hips, quite in defiance of man's
inherited predilection for making this discovery under conditions that
would pamper to his satiating sex-appetite. They, poor creatures, were
dreadfully ashamed of being women, and they did all that was possible
to conceal the fact. They, doubtless, would gladly have amputated
their legs, if the ministers had so decreed, and they apologized to
the world every time an unforseen circumstance uncovered a portion of
these offensive legs. In fact, they denied the existence of "said
members," and alluded to them tentatively and with modest hesitation,
as "limbs."
"But," some will exclaim, "we cannot see any possible connection
between a regenerated race, and a fashion which permits the display of
the female figure upon the public streets, where men who are as yet
un-regenerated, and licentious, may leer and pass vile remarks, and
suggest lustful thoughts."
Few can see any connection between our so-called practical, everyday
life, and the spiritual life. They look upon the spiritual life as
something remote; something in the dim and ever and ever distant
future. The spiritual life is supposed to be so negative that we
postpone living it, as long as we possibly can; and whereas the human
family has prayed and prayed, for Lo! these many ages: "Thy kingdom
come upon earth," they apparently have not had the slightest idea that
God would take them at their word.
They are like the old darky who called upon "de Lawd to strike him
dead if he was not telling the truth," when as a matter of fact he was
lying roundly. At that moment a bricklayer on the building above where
Rastus was standing, dropped a brick, which struck the old darkey on
the head, and he exclaimed "What's de matter, good Lawd, caint
you'all take a joke?"
The Kingdom of God, from all records, whether orthodox or heterodox,
has been described as the abode of angels; and angels have been
pictured as nearly nude as our silly "morality" would permit. No one
has as yet suggested that we compel the angels to wear hoopskirts,
although "September Morn" has been compelled, by police regulation, to
don a sweater.
The spiritual life awaits our cognizance, just behind the transparent
veil of our limited mortal consciousness. This is the message of the
"unveiling" of the female form. This is the time of woman's revealment
of true modesty; true ideals. The Female Principle, representing the
spiritual element in nature, hitherto shut in; covered up; hidden--is
coming out.
Men must learn to be able to look upon the female form without spasms
of either lustful desires; or contemptuous indifference.
There was a time when the presence of a female office-force in the
business section of a city was the signal for unwarranted familiarity
on the part of some of the male members of a corporation. There was a
time, when women first invaded the ranks of the "down-town" business
centers, that a woman's appointment to a responsible position rested
upon her claims to feminine attractiveness. Now, the only question
asked is, "Is she efficient?"
_That which she is, in her interior nature, is the final test of her
power._ When men have become inured to the knowledge, so long
concealed, that women have legs and that there is no more
seductiveness in them than in their faces, the love of man for woman
will undergo the same evolution that his estimate of her business
efficiency has undergone. He will judge her by what she is in her
interior nature; and his sexual desires, now manifested distractedly
in mere love of the female, will become concentrated in love of the
one woman to whom his soul turns in irresistible sex-attraction, as
unerringly as the needle turns to the pole to which it is magnetized.
Is this fact so unmanifest? Does not everything point to it?
A few years ago, a man and a woman could not pass a day together in
mutual conversation, and interest, without encroachment upon the one
emotion which they were supposed to hold in common--sexual attraction.
That was indeed the whole sum and substance of communication between
the two sexes, if we may except the rare instances which history has
made much of, because of their rarity--women of the French salons, who
have become famous for their wit and beauty, in neither of which
attributes did they outstrip the average self-supporting woman of
today.
But custom has slowly, but perceptibly, established the possibility of
a frank and non-sentimental companionship between the male and the
female, and the result is that both are much more clear as to the true
character of their sentiments toward each other. Neither is blinded
by the force of undifferentiated sex-attraction.
There must be some specific basis of mutual love; hence we have the
vogue of the "affinity," and by the term is instantly recognized a
special force of attraction, independent of undifferentiated sex
alone. It is known that there is at least an assumption of an interior
attraction, and we insist that affinity marriages, however incomplete
as yet, are still superior in motive to that of mere marriage, where
it is a case of _a_ male and _a_ female, united by propinquity; family
considerations; commercial interests; class association; or what not.
Affinities at least have the grace to presuppose a special
sex-attraction. They argue for the ultimate goal of special and
permanent selection, even if they fail to reach it.
That there will be many failures during the journey from the
sense-conscious life, to the soul-conscious life, is a foregone
conclusion. The pathway of Love has always been a thorny one, but
those who are on the high ground may look across into the rose-strewn
garden, and know that the little god is aiming his arrows at the
interior nature of those whom he would unite. He is not blind. His
sight is illumined and he sees that the soul can unite only with its
mate. True it is that "the course of true love never did run smooth,"
but let us hope that the time is coming when it will be less thorny.
_There are no mismates in soul-union._
This truth is the "secret of secrets" of the Hermetics. It is the
hidden wisdom of the initiates; the alchemical mysteries of the
Ancients. It is told to us in the fairy story of the Sleeping
Princess--a story which is found in the folk-lore of every country of
the globe. It is the philosopher's stone, which when found, opens the
door to all wisdoms.
_There can be no mismates in soul-union._
Neither can there be any sexual "temptation," or desire outside of
this union, when once found.
"But never shall he faint or fall
Who lists to hear, o'er every fate,
The sweeter and the higher call
Of his true mate.
I hear it wheresoe'er I rove;
She holds me safe from shame or sin;
The holy temple of her love
I worship in."
A time when "the twain shall be" virtually, "one flesh" and the
"outside as the inside" is not a chimerical dream.
When the physical body is as much reverenced as is the spiritual; when
in fact, the soul is revealed (unveiled) to our mortal consciousness;
when the mind has been freed from its load of prejudices and fears and
doubts and belief in sin; then we shall, indeed, truly see each other.
We do not see each other now, unless perhaps we have developed that
spiritual insight which is not blinded by appearances, but which
contacts the interior nature. But the revealing, the uncovering
process has begun. We have come to the time so long anticipated; so
earnestly promised, when "naked and unashamed" we should "re-enter the
lost Paradise."
Well, the women, God bless them, are as naked as the tender morality
of our police officials will permit and as unashamed as it is possible
to be with the handicap of a puritanical ancestry, which was so
evil-minded as to suspect God himself of sin when He formed the
"wicked" body.
Prudists may howl; and legislators may legislate; but the course of
the Cosmic Law which would free us and bestow upon us Peace and Love
and Happiness without stint, has never been stopped, although it has
been obstructed.
Let us examine some points of the Hidden Wisdom, in the light of this
postulate, and see if the conclusion is not warranted.