The Real Object of Our Desire

Our exploration begins with the awakening of sexual attraction, with that moment when suddenly, at the deepest and most elemental levels of our being, we are no longer content with ourselves. The desire for another person takes hold of us and far exceeds our need for mere social interpersonal contact. We want to be as physically close to them as possible - and closer still, we want to literally merge with them. As far as this person is concerned the greater or lesser distance that we usually strive to maintain with our fellow human beings seems completely inappropriate.

Maximum attraction involves the complete absence of disgust. Disgust can be very subtle. Perceiving the other as other is a mild form of it. The seed of mutual repulsion is planted as soon as we define ourselves and establish 'I' and 'you'. Normally we are perfectly happy to be I and you, to exist in relation to each other in a variety of ways, and to be bound up in a whole web of such relations. The other is not part of what is taken to be the self, nor should they be. I would say that when we agree to be two and to be many, we automatically agree to be more or less repelled by each other! Even with family members and close friends, we seek physical closeness only to a limited extent (with the exception, of course, of early attachment to mother and father, which is also and above all physical). Something stops us from wanting to blur the line between them and ourselves. But the more physically attracted we become to someone, the more problematic this comfortable division of the world into self and non-self becomes.

It is this particular other that attracts us so magically. So our desire seems to go beyond the relatively indiscriminate, purely biological sex drive. However, it is still directed towards the union of bodies and cannot be satisfied by approaches on other levels. Mental, emotional and social factors may well play a role, but erotic attraction is primarily a physical matter - involving both our gross and our subtle bodies, of course. Especially in so-called love at first sight, all those other factors are completely disregarded, at least temporarily.

The fact that our desire for another's body can be so all-consuming suggests that love in the form of simple affection and general goodwill or even in the form of deep and long-lasting friendship, cannot fully satisfy us. Higher goals seem to be attainable through the union of bodies. Why else would a person's appearance, voice and/or smell appeal to us so much more intensely than their 'inner values', which we can enjoy even without close physical proximity? The irresistible other quickly becomes our main interest, if not our obsession. There is nothing in the world we are prepared to spend so much time and energy on as the pursuit of erotic fulfilment. We seem to know, at least intuitively, that this form of love is uniquely capable of freeing us from the solitary confinement of our individual existence.

As Julius Evola points out in Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex, platonic love can indeed make us grow beyond ourselves, but it cannot provide the actual experience of the rupture and opening of one's being that the 'trauma of coitus' entails.¹ In this work, Evola explores the transcendental dimensions of erotic love that lie beyond the experiential world of the individual:

'[...] we shall verify the possibility of erotic experience leading to a displacement of the boundaries of the ego and to the emergence of profound modes of consciousness. It has been observed that a different rhythm is established in every intense experience of eros, which invests and transports or suspends the normal faculties of an individual and may open vistas onto a different world.'²

I am convinced that it is this extreme, even traumatic experience that we all rush so passionately towards, even when we seem to be pursuing more superficial pleasures. However vehemently the ego insists on the autonomy of the self and its separation from the rest of the world, one of our deepest longings is for absolute intimacy with another human being, for the transphysiological and transpsychological spheres that this can open up for us, and for the ultimate end of isolation. The real object of our desire is to be One.

¹ Julius Evola, Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex (Vermont: Inner Traditions International, 1991), p. 11.

² Evola, Eros and the Mysteries of Love, p.2.