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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity


 

Ultimate Reality:

Who Could Ask For Anything More?

 


 

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The Beloved satisfies all human desires...

 

Mick Jagger,
God Gave Me Everything I Want (2001)
 
"you can see it in a woman's eyes, you can hear it your lover's sighs, and I feel it in the love you show to me, God gave me everything I want" 

  

 

Jay and The Americans,
This Magic Moment (1969)

"sweeter than wine, softer than a summer night, everything I wanted" 

 

The Happenings,
I Got Rhythm (1967)
 
"I got starlight, I got sweet dreams, I got my girl, who could ask for anything more, I got good times, no more bad times, I got my girl, who could ask for anything more, I got rhythm, I got music, I got my girl, who could ask for, who could ask for more"

 

 

 

K. Ellus, this whole subject of ultimate reality is compelling. We can’t put it in a test-tube and analyze it by the scientific method.

E. Some of the great philosophers, like Teilhard de Chardin with his “Omega Point,” have attempted to peer into the distant future of Man’s destiny.

K. And all that is helpful, but I don’t think there is a single, fixed destiny for us. I think “made in the image” means that we’ll keep improving and evolving endlessly. Further, I don’t think scientists and technicians are the best sources to define ultimate reality. I believe the intuiters, the mystics and spiritual teachers, will help us more here.

E. And the poets and songwriters.

K. Well, yes – all these rely on deeper intuition as avenue to “the truth.”

E. And what is that final “truth,” My Love?

K. I can’t give you a crisp definition. I don’t think words alone can capture the fullness.

E. We now make statements which were used in the “Bible article”; that, no book, no printed page or discourse, could ever encapsulate the totality of “the truth.”

K. The poets in their ecstatic visions, it seems, have come closest to knowing ultimate reality. But having glimpsed the empyreal domain, they are brought back down to Earth by having to communicate with the broken tools of mere words.

E. Words are just signposts, not the reality itself. What we’re saying is that any brief glimpse of ultimate reality is for a particular percipient alone. It’s non-transferable. You have to get your own mystical vision.

K. It’s like reading about falling in love, which might be tantalizing. But you’ll never really know how honey tastes until you actually experience it.

E. Explain yourself to our readers, Kriss.

K. “God gave me everything I want”; “this magic moment, everything I wanted”; and “I got my girl, who could ask for anything more?” – all this stands in sharpest contrast to the Greeks’ “pleonexia,” the incessant and mad desire for more and more, with nothing ever satisfying the heart and mind.

E. We look around us and see a world utterly drunk in a frenzied pursuit of materialism, an acquisitiveness that knows no end, all in service of sating the disquietude within which never calms down and forever whines, “I don’t have enough, because I am not enough.”

K. But in the midst of all that existential chaos, we finds poets and songwriters, so anomalously, proclaiming, “God gave me everything I want”; “this magic moment, everything I wanted”; and “I got my girl, who could ask for anything more?”

E. Somebody is mistaken.

K. It's the great disconnect. How can you have joyful hearts, virtually shouting from rooftops, not just that they’ve found something nice and good, but that they've found everything,” so much so that even a thought of asking for more becomes superfluous?

E. Contrast this with the pronouncements of the “hot-water bottle” crowd.

K. They’re just like anyone else in this dysfunctional world, always wanting more and more – the greener grass and brighter flowers, and never being satisfied, never feeling that “God gave me everything I want.”

E. It is very strange this perception of true love. Tolle speaks of common eros as a wanting, a craving, a hunger for the body of another. And there’s nothing wrong with that, per se, but if that’s all you have then you’re headed for trouble.

K. The craving and hunger, if you have enough money and power, leads to Marlon Brando’s comment, “women coming in the front door and going out the back window.” It will never be enough.

E. As we’ve said, the problem is “structural” not of “content.” The dysfunctional ego thinks more content will “make me happy,” but instead it makes you feel more empty.

K. It’s just as the apostle Paul said – “more lost and lonely than ever,” even with all the sex in the world.

E. And yet here we have poets and songwriters who get it right, ecstatically offering proclamation, “God gave me everything I want”; “this magic moment, everything I wanted”; and “I got my girl, who could ask for anything more?”

K. True love is not founded upon an evanescent chemical feast in the brain. True love is part of Universal Consciousness.

E. The mind of God.

K. That’s right. And as we’ve discussed, the mind of God represents a “singular pervasive reality.” It’s all there is. It’s everything. It fills the universe. It has no opposite. It’s a permanent level of being in which one lives.

E. There was a time, in my youth, when I knew two or three “perfect girls.” And sometimes late at night I still find myself astounded that they could not have been more for me. I access the old feelings and discover, beneath it all, an emptiness, a hollowness. I sense the “hole in my heart” and I want to fill it with “content.” I imagine them - surely! - being able to “make me happy” with all of the fine attributes of womanly beauty and grace. But, all I get is this persistent perception of "not enough."

K. (silence)

E. And then I compare all that with how I feel about you… and it’s so strange… it’s hard to put into words… but when I think of you it’s no longer about an appetite that needs filling; there’s no more “hole in my heart.” There’s just a “singular pervasive reality” of wholeness and fullness, of joy and peace. But none of this makes sense to the materialistic mind.

K. Elenchus, we are learning that true love, fundamentally, has little to do with the animal pleasures of the body. They’re important, and we’ll not want to give them up, but that’s not what this is about. With the real love we come very close to ultimate reality, the final evolutionary stage of humankind. In the future, at some “Omega Point,” we might have the ability to change into pure energy, and our talents might multiply greatly; but there is an aspect of human development that we can access right now; such that, even if we live a billion years, we'll never need more than what we might feel this moment.

E. I have experienced this with you, and I know it's true. To achieve a mindset of “God gave me everything I want”; “this magic moment, everything I wanted”; and “I got my girl, who could ask for anything more?” is the end of all agitated striving, of all human dysphoria. It is ultimate reality in terms of what we want most; a delicious sense of oneness, wholeness, and integration… and it comes to us in the person of one’s sacred beloved.

 

 

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