The Real Object of Our Desire

The journey of ‘The Two and the One’ begins with the awakening of intense sexual attraction – that moment when we're confronted with another person and suddenly, at the deepest and most elemental levels of our being, we are no longer content with ourselves. A vast and consuming desire for this other person takes hold, far exceeding our need for mere social contact. We want to be as physically close to them as possible, and closer still. If we could, we would completely merge with them! The greater or lesser distance we typically maintain with our fellow human beings seems totally inappropriate in this particular case.

Maximum sexual attraction can be understood as the complete absence of disgust. Disgust can be quite subtle. To perceive the other as other is already a mild form of it. The seed of mutual repulsion is sown the moment we draw the line between ‘I’ and ‘you’. The other is explicitly not part of what we take to be the self, nor should they be. We all tacitly agree to be separate, to keep our distance and to exist in relation to each other in a variety of ways. Even with family and friends, closeness has its limits – except in early childhood, when attachment to mother and father is still instinctive and physical. In effect, we agree to be more or less repelled by each other, and normally we don’t mind! However, the stronger romantic feelings and sexual attraction grow, the more untenable the comfortable division of the world into self and non-self becomes.

What fascinates us is not the other as such, but this particular other, as if the attraction were guided by a secret recognition. This suggests that our desire goes beyond the relatively indiscriminate, purely biological sex drive. Still, it is clearly directed towards carnal intimacy. Mental, emotional and social factors may play a role, but erotic love is fundamentally a physical matter, involving, of course, both our gross and subtle bodies. Especially in the sudden shock of ‘love at first sight’, all ‘higher’ considerations are eclipsed, at least momentarily.

That the desire for another’s body can be so overwhelming reveals something profound: love in its temperate forms – affection, companionship, even the deepest altruism – does not fully satisfy the human heart. True satisfaction seems to be attainable only through the union of bodies. Why else would a person's appearance, voice, or scent appeal to us so much more intensely than their ‘inner values’, which we can enjoy without close physical proximity? The physically irresistible other quickly becomes our main interest, if not our obsession. Many of us pour more energy into the pursuit of erotic love than into anything else, because we know, however dimly, that this form of love is uniquely capable of freeing us from the solitary confinement of our individual existence.

As Julius Evola notes in Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex, platonic love can indeed help us grow beyond ourselves, but it cannot provide the actual experience of the rupture and opening of one's being that the revelatory 'trauma of coitus' entails.¹ In this foundational work, Evola offers a rigorous exploration of the transcendental dimensions of erotic love that lie beyond the experiential world of the individual. He points to a radical potential within the erotic encounter:

'[...] 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 when we rush towards each other, even when we seem to chase only pleasure or superficial romance. However fiercely the ego defends the autonomy of the self, one of our deepest longings is for absolute intimacy with another human being, for the transphysiological, transpsychological and above all transpersonal spheres this can open up for us, and for the ultimate end of isolation.

The real object of our desire is not the other person, but the end of duality. It is to awaken with the other in the ecstatic epiphany that what we sought in them is, in truth, our own being, mirrored, intensified, and finally returned to Oneness. The real object of our desire is the One, the One who is no object at all but the singular Subject in which we share and which lovingly projects us into the world and eternally absorbs us back into itself.

In upcoming articles, I will delve deeper into the illusion of duality and present a clear methodology for taking erotic love to a transpersonal level.

Stay tuned!

¹ Evola, J., 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.