Karl Jaspers once wrote, “A look at the beloved is like a
look at Being itself.” I never forgot that bit. It is in the rapture of love,
of Being in the grip of it that we gift presence to an ‘Other’. Latour called
it a form of renewal. He has reiterated time and again that religious
affirmation has been lost on those who go through the motions of ritual without
consciously ‘renewing’ the love that makes gift of presence possible. He likened
it to “love-speak” in couples. I think everybody would agree that humans
innately know when a partner’s love-speak is sincere. It’s when these words
evoke chills or the hair on the back of your neck stands up; that filling of absolute
affirmation when your lover expresses words of love. Likewise, we also know, sometimes inexplicably, when these
same words are counterfeit. There are times when loves-speak is said without
the feeling of renewal.
It’s utter affirmation of sincerity that we should strive
for in our religious ritual. It’s that renewal that is the basis for ideas of
the ‘alchemical wedding’ and marrying the Sophia in godhead. Our religious
rites are designed to evoke ‘love-speak’ and in doing so grant metaphysics of presence
to our deities. But often times, religious ritual is a monotonous droning of
liturgy and unfelt, unconscientious habits that fail in delivering the
evocation of presence. Being cannot erupt into existence without a conscious interaction
between Man and the beloved. It is these interactions that Couliano described
as Eros and should be the goal of any so-called religious person.
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