A Taste For Undifferentiated Oneness

When I was a junior in college I read a freshman theme written by a girl named Betsy, whom I didn’t know. From that theme I knew at once that she was the one I should marry. That was a sort of subliminal knowledge that coexisted with a lot of other considerations that contradicted it. For example I was “going with” another girl – Sheila – who was by all conventional standards a perfect match for me. And indeed, I was very drawn to Sheila. But there was something quite special about the girl who wrote the English composition. She described an intense moment of experience she had while wading out into a swimming area in an ocean Bay. It was nothing she could have made up, nor would she have had any reason for doing so. Having had such an experience was not then, any more than it is now, a reason to be socially esteemed.

Betsy was a somewhat shy and socially awkward girl who was reasonably, but not outstandingly attractive by conventional Hollywood standards. Sheila, by comparison was a knockout. But Betsy knew about Atman and Brahman. Even if she had never heard of them, she knew about them. That fact was more important to me than any other fact or combination of facts. Only I did not fully grasp that at that time.

We became friends immediately but it was three years later before I suggested to her that we should go through this life together. She had reservations – not because she didn’t want to be with me because she had some problems that she feared would make my life difficult. She did not adapt well to the reality of her family and her society and saw the difficulty between her and these social groups as being her fault. As she caused them suffering she would cause me suffering. I saw the conflicts between her and the rest of her life as deriving from a fundamentally different understanding of reality. It was a political conflict – as are many conflicts that are treated as though they are derived from psychological problems of the younger less powerful member of the group. I had no such issues with her. I knew that our primary understandings of life were the same – and that whatever differences we might encounter could be managed. Relationship shattering issues just were not going to emerge.

My bonding with Wall was similar in an odd way with my bonding to Betsy. It had to do with the love of God – of the One – or whatever it was that modern life murdered. (To quote Nietzsche on the subject, “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?”) With this difference between wall and Carol: With Carroll the attraction had to do with the fact that we both had experienced in a spontaneous way a oneness with something which we believed to be the absolute. With Wall our bond and to do with the absence of God in modern culture. We both grieved God – Intensely.

Once you have an intense taste of the undifferentiated oneness certain political alignments and fundamental life goals are no longer possible. You will not, for example, see the purpose of your life being to claw your way to the top of the hierarchy of wealth, influence and renown that structures most of our social institutions.

So what about sex? I am torn here. It’s really a private matter. Yet I feel that my essay demands I touch on it in some way. So let me do that. My descriptions will be a bit abstract – but, I think, accurate.

There are two levels to sex. Or perhaps I should say domains of sex – because I don’t want to suggest that one of these “levels” is superior to the other. The whole point of my metaphysics is that unity and individuation are two equally important poles of Being.

When you are with someone who is centered in individuated oneness, everything is sex. That’s the unitive bond. You have sex with every part of your body and with every entity you encounter and to which you give your attention. Your eyes unify you with the bugs in the grass and your toes with the sand on the beach. That’s how we were with each other.

But what about the other pole – all that stuff that most people would have in mind when they heard the term sex. Well, again my approach will be abstract in a way that may prove disappointing to people who are looking for something a little more steamy. But let me tell you about what I now considered to have been our wedding night.

One day the opportunity to use the apartment of a friend overnight came to us. It was an important night for us but I feel strongly disinclined to describe it in detail – and am sure Carol would be even more strongly disinclined to do so. Yet there was something about that night that is an important part of my autobiography. So how should I handle this?

In the 1950s movie directors had a different way of handling sex scenes. The man and the woman (which was always the relationship under consideration) would perform some act that was understood by the audience as a preliminary to foreplay. It might not be more than the man unbuttoning his shirt while he looked longingly at the woman. And then the bedroom door was shut and that was that. All else was left to the imagination of the moviegoer.

The ancient Greeks had a similar way of dealing with highly violent scenes. They occurred offstage and were described by the chorus. These evasions of scenes that were deemed to be too graphic worked well for anyone who had a reasonable capacity for fantasizing.

So I will close the door on all that happened there – except for two general points which can be described in a very abstract manner. The first point is that it was more like the show and tell that two children might engage in the lovemaking of experienced adults. That is how it should be. Despite being in our early 20s neither of us was very experienced. The second point is that I felt no need to prove myself. Betsy loved me and I loved her. Nothing about our sexual prowess, or lack thereof, was going to alter that basic fact. Therefore I was under no pressure to perform. And that was wonderful. We had a fine and fascinating night together, and on the real level of things, that was our wedding night.