by Unknown
Even if we had lost our two friendly couples, our meetings with our wider circle did not dwindle. Quite the opposite, in fact; the high temperature of the past few days made Stefan take a break from his morning occupation for a while and now he very often takes us on one-day trips to the swimming pools of Mendrisio, the flower gardens of Verbania, Lake Lugano, Bellinzona and other times to the coasts of the Italian Riviera, west of Genoa.
Now, as far as Silvia is concerned, she hadn’t come to our meetings in a long time. She said she wanted us to be alone when we met. Both Stefan and Hilda were now aware of what was happening and so, with tear-filled eyes, I confessed everything to them.
They were very happy for us and told me that we made a great couple. I told Stefan that we were planning on going to the Pyrenees for a few days and he whole-heartedly agreed that it was a good decision.
We then talked about how frequent an occurrence “love” was in their age and he told me that the majority doesn’t experience it more than once in a lifetime, or even never, on some rare occasions. I asked him if they consider love-making that isn’t a result of love as unethical. He replied that in no way do they consider it unethical, but it cannot be compared to the true union of love, which is a bit like the Lipvirch. During the old days, throughout the whole era of the Eldere, when the sense of the Lipvirch was still non-existent, physical relationships were based solely on the attraction between the sexes and the assessment of character. But even back then, just like now, many changes of sexual partners weren’t applauded. Then they were more interested in liking the person; the tenderness and spiritual bond came after the natural attraction and appreciation for the human being, whereas here, during the last few centuries, the Valley of the Roses has been arguing–even if some of the Ilectors disagree–that abstinence, especially when it’s a conscious decision, increases spirituality, something reminiscent of the ascetic principles of our times.
Overall, they no longer see love as a battle in which the most cunning wins and the most naïve loses, but as an alliance between equals, without secrets or ulterior motives, an alliance that provides you with the necessary peace of mind to live your life.
“So your morality is only opposed to the very frequent changes of partners,” I remarked.
“Something like that. Too frequent changes are neither common nor applauded in our time. The balance always exists. But ethical issues aren’t always generated by these changes alone” Stefan replied.
He asked me how I would think of Juliet, for example, if now that she has broken up with Axel, she found a new love and went to live with him.
“I’m not referring to a couple of random instances,” I replied. “What would you think if you saw her spending her whole youth changing partners every six months?”
“Even then,” he said, “we wouldn’t consider her unethical or socially inferior. One could characterise her as careless, unlucky, frivolous or very much unable to tame her urges. One could argue that she’d be better off being free and living alone. In any case, if she didn’t have any intention of fooling anyone, her way of life wouldn’t be considered antisocial or immoral. Besides, look at all these young men and women who live alone and seemingly unmarried –and who have officially been Cives for decades now. Does anybody know or has anybody asked them how often they change partners? They may socialise with each other and speak in front of others with the utmost dignity as if nothing is going on between them, but that’s not always the case. And of course, I’d be the last person to blame them. It is not a matter of hypocrisy but a matter of moral superiority of people who do no evil, but, by nature, are not yet capable of making permanent unions. Nobody here goes about revealing their secrets. But I can’t really argue that each and every one of us waits for the Lipvirch patiently, for years and years.”
“Is there something that you do consider immoral? Are you familiar with the concept of immorality?”
“Of course! And whatever is truly immoral is exemplarily punished. In such instances we’re firm. But it’s just that they’re so rare. The people of today get a certain satisfaction from being ethical, without being forced to feel that way. Unlike you, who, if I remember correctly, had a saying that said “the forbidden fruit is always sweeter.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” I replied somewhat miffed, “since essentially nothing for you is forbidden.”
“You’re wrong there,” he responded quietly. “Our society also has certain moral restraints. If, say, when Juliet was living with Axel, she secretly met with another man, that would be considered immoral. But neither Juliet nor someone much more flighty than her would do something like that. All she would have to do is tell her partner. Why should she hide it? People tell each other how they feel and whatever the outcome—acceptance or separation—they have told the truth. In fact, most of the time, acts such as these are forgiven, especially if it’s an infatuation, a moment of passion or a loss of self-control. While, if they hide it, things become complicated and people are plagued by a guilty conscience, which in our times is very difficult to handle.”
I was wondering where he was going with this and very curious to find out.
“Never would a woman be with a man, or vice versa, out of self-interest, just to benefit from them later and not out of love or strong physical attraction,” Stefan said. “Dishonesty is inexcusable and unforgivable. What we want most is to have a calm heart and a calm mind, far from moral uncertainties like jealousy, suspicion or fear. On the other hand, our leaders have put up stricter ethical barriers for young people. Normally, until they become Cives, they’re not allowed to have sexual relationships. And it’s incredible and of great significance how the Ilectors succeeded in establishing the concept of sexual abstinence in the minds of young people at the both tender and difficult age of nineteen. Today, a partner should appreciate directness, love, honesty and respect some moral values—even if it is with some deprivation. The service is therefore simultaneously a test of self-discipline and of sexual abstinence. Only a few violations occur each year and, of course, there is no penalty.”
I asked him at which stage of life a woman decides to become a mother.
“I couldn’t possibly answer that accurately. The same as in your time, sometimes sooner, sometimes later. It depends on their temperament and on luck… There are many factors involved. Our case with Hilda is among the most common. Most of the times it takes three to four trial partnerships, born either from the Lipvirch or from strong attraction in order to find “The One”. Usually the first partnerships are shorter and may not even last year. Then they become more stable. With a little luck, three or four switches between freedom and cohabitation with someone are enough for the person to acquire a more mature mentality, which enables experience and knowledge to do their job and maybe give their later relationship the form of a lifelong bond.”
He then spoke so derogatorily about our time and its “values”: adultery, lack of straightforwardness and loyalty, everyday dishonesty, fraud, prostitution, the exploitation of weakness and poverty, perversions, violence, crimes of “honour” and sick passions. I didn’t know where to hide. He even considered the wedding ceremonies of past times as indecent: the gathering of the people, the fun, the comments, the teasing and… well… what came after: the more intimate moments of the couple.
“Our conscience and our innate moral compass complement the gap of those abolished institutions very efficiently and so, every partnership and cohabitation is based on and defined by pride and honour. Whether a great disappointment, a new love or unbridgeable differences in beliefs and characters can sever the bond is irrelevant. Besides,” he concluded, “didn’t the same thing happen in your time, regardless of legal limitations?” I had nothing to say.
I then asked him what happened the first night that the partners become Cives-citizens. That must be the night when they totally go wild, I figured, and reasonably, after so much restraint. I was wrong.
“That is indeed what us
ed to happen… Several hundred years ago, though. Physical attraction still played the most important role and that night was seen as the call of nature for the young. But it’s been a long, long time since then. Things have changed. I’m not saying that nobody makes love that night, but those who do are mostly the couples who met during their service and decided to consummate their love on their first day as citizens. The vast majority, however, doesn’t. Some wait months, even years, until they find a suitable mate, long after they burn their white stole, the symbol of their purity, on their night when their service ends.”
Stefan stared into space as if pondering the past.
“I, too, had a night like this, you know…” he said. “Such a thrill! On the one hand the whole world is opening in front of you that night, and on the other, you finally become entitled to the magical sense of love-making. Unforgettable years…”
His eyes filled with tears. I was startled. He continued, obviously moved. “Even that song that we sing that night means a great deal to me… to us... All the inhabitants of the earth have been singing it for over thirteen hundred years. We all learn it at school, boys and girls. I know that it hasn’t got great lyrics but still, have you got any idea how that simple and somewhat flat old melody echoes in our ears, in our souls? Have you paid attention to the lyrics? “In the light of your nineteen years, the swallows come and the flower buds opened early”. Or the other one; “Life’s a rosy dream that now begins. Sing it.”
He was now speaking with utmost enthusiasm. I didn’t interrupt him of course. “A relatively few generations after yours, after the puritanical movements began to disappear and Flessing and Kirchof found the remedy for your terrible illness, the nightmare ended and things started to change in the way in which parents spoke to their children about love and sex. There was no longer need to speak to them about risks and precautions. Instead, they spoke to them about the anticipation of a great happiness which, if they were patient enough to wait for the right time and the right person, would be theirs to enjoy—in moderation—for the rest of their lives.
As the generations passed, the idea that this level-headed, ethical and unmarred happiness is better to come after the fulfilment of duty, became part of their social awareness. That was after the service had been considerably reduced. That’s when they started giving the white stoles to the adolescents. In fact, they were told: ‘No one will force you to fulfil your two-year service in the glothners. If you refuse there is no penalty. Just consider that the Universal Commonwealth needs you.’”
And indeed, as Stefan told me, no one left. And that way they corrected the injustice of our time that associated the “fulfilment of duty” with retirement, which came at an age when happiness could not be bought with the finest gold.
They considered the age of fifteen as the key stage in one’s life. They believed that it was then when the new horizons in human esoterism are opened. It was then when everything changed in the eyes of a person since, from that point on, the soul took over and saw things differently. In fact, he told me that “the eyes start to well up more easily”.
I told him that if they think the same didn’t happen in our time as well, they were very much mistaken. He answered me that he was referring to the rule and not the exception: “The exceptions don’t define an era… the rule does.”
“Yes, but you just told me that the limitations helped in our time because otherwise the situation got out of hand and reached the point of promiscuity. You said it yourself that we needed restrictions since we were ‘practically uncivilised’.”
“Sometimes I’m under the impression that you and I cannot communicate, that we don’t speak the same language. And yet that’s normal since we come from different eras, different cultures, and different ways of thinking. I wonder how much of what I’m telling you, you truly understand. You talk about ‘the justifiable’ and ‘the necessary’, without thinking about the effect they all had on humanity, regardless of their appropriateness at the time. They had created for you a world that was surrounded by a grey sky and inhabited by dead souls. Did you ever think about how many innocent people of the minority had been constantly—and for thousands of years—paying for the laws designed by the majority, just because your leaders couldn’t enact individual laws? And are you sure that you’d be truly happy in the absence of laws and restrictions? Or is there something else to blame for your unhappiness; something deeper, something hidden that was actually the reason why laws became necessary in the first place?”
He told me more, much more: how love wasn’t a humble and insignificant thing and how we were too inferior for it, too insignificant to grasp its beauty and superiority. “Just as the work of Valmandel or Larsen will always be monumental, no matter if there come dark times when people won’t understand and appreciate poetry and music.” And he hadn’t finished…
“The worst thing about your spiritual leaders back then—and by spiritual leaders I mean your teachers, parents, lawmakers, priests and writers—is that they had no problem blocking your sources of pure spiritual joy. And do you know what that means, Andreas? Do you know that these “enthusiasms” (and he used the Greek word for it) are manifestations, aspects of the Samith, nearly as important as art? What would you say about someone who destroyed Praxiteles’ Hermes or our own Nostalgic Green-eyed Lady by Nichefelt? There was a systematic tendency to suppress any form of joy in your time.”
I struggled not to smile with his childlike way of thinking. “I wish that was our only problem, my dear Stefan… We had so many things that troubled us, so many responsibilities, privations, unnecessary worries: dependence, poverty, addictions, and uncertainty about the future… There were millions of problems that couldn’t be solved and millions of needs that couldn’t be satisfied just by smelling the flowers and looking at the stars. You may now have all the time you want to observe, think about and analyse everything, but back then, we couldn’t even tell they were missing…”
But he wouldn’t agree with me.
“Don’t say that, he complained. And don’t say that you didn’t think about them and that you couldn’t tell if they were missing. Joy is the food of the soul. Can you realise that? The violent, everyday suppression of any spiritual or emotional inclination, even if you couldn’t see how harmful it was, was gradually and cumulatively breaking every chord of joy you had in you. So no, letting your soul die before it’s time, little by little, is not acceptable. This artificial, premature inner aging of yours was a great and unjust loss for our kind, a lot greater than you can imagine. The conditions under which you lived your daily life and the social conventions that prevailed were bluntly stealing what was given to humans by creation and whose complete meaning we just felt and realised: the smile of God.”
He once again made an allusion to the findings of the Volkic Knowledge and to the “timid glimmer” of the Samith. Strange as it may seem, this is their view of the Lipvirch: it is the experiencing of a higher spiritual life and the access to the divine—on the path to the Samith—but via a whole different way from meditation, religion, art or world view.
“That’s why no elderly person would ever mock the ideals of the youth, nowadays; because older people have their own ideals and wouldn’t want anyone to come and insult or disrespect them. Besides, we ultimately know that there is one, common origin and source of all ideals, despite the vast—but superficial—differences amongst them.”
Later, however, he admitted that the spiritual wealth of their youth was not only due to heredity or tradition and that it was not entirely inherent either; proper guidance and education from the family, schools and the glothners stood as a very helpful assistant.
OLD AND NEW LOVES: THEIR WAY OF SEPARATION
26-XI
Sometimes I wonder if their current perceptions and new social conditions are really capable of protecting their hearts from pain and they have truly managed to attain true happiness through them. From what I’ve seen, not only have they not acquired t
he long-sought “serenity of mind and soul”, but all too often they also seem to come across the same problems in their emotional lives, the same profound pain, the same dramatic dilemmas and internal conflicts that we suffered in our own time. And let’s say I believe what Stefan said, that is, that the old, violent passions and the “dramatic solutions” of our time have completely ceased to exist. I’ve heard with my own ears about cases when a strong, new love has come into conflict with long-standing partnerships and strong emotional bonds, disrupting the affection between the couple, their shared memories and dreams and their shared lives
What happens then in such cases? There is no rule, no penalty, no apparent solution. It seems that in such matters there is no “must” or “mustn’t”. There are tears and emotions on both sides. And then they sit and wonder what they are doing. Stefan argues in that incidents like these the most frequent thing is each party leaves the decision-making to the other. But is this a product of altruism or an attempt to avoid responsibility for the happiness of their loved one? Stefan says—and it’d be very nice if it were true—that very often in such cases the companions feel for their loved ones what parents feel for their children: the same love and emotion. Putting themselves and their feelings aside, they try to see what’s best for their partner and act in such a way so as to avoid getting in the way of their happiness. “Nowadays, we have a highly developed sense of caring and understanding for our fellow men.” he said, “It’s one of the most distinctive features of our mentality. The exact opposite, that is, of the selfishness and the instincts of primitive times.”
If, on the other hand, you ask the Valley, they’ll tell you that the most important thing is the stability of the partnership. They strongly disprove of fervent passions and love affairs that bluntly and hastily come to break long-term and refined emotional bonds. However, they advise the “old loves” not to be afraid of a true, genuine Lipvirch, if they ever happen to come across it… It can do no harm to civilised people with spiritual courtesy who, above all and everybody else, respect themselves. They advise them to embrace it and see where it takes them. Of course, the final outcome of such a conflict, with thousands of different factors each time, differs from case to case. Sometimes the new love ends up only testing the strength and resistance of the old one and soon fades away defeated.