Love is an Allegory

The perceived took pleasure in the embrace of the conceived, but saw not its face.

While that is all very well, my love, I fear it is a lost cause.  The question begs:  can the world of the divine ever know of the world of the mundane, and the latter the former?

_{My dear!  After so many years, is it your intention to reveal to me, now, that you are devoid of belief?  When you see my visage in your dreams, am I no different than I am now?  Yes, my form may be shakier, and in its dream state, your mind may not curve the light into my physical likeness quite right, but the concept of me"those things that I have chosen to live and die for"manifest.  And, is it not those concepts, which are intangible to you but in your dream state, that have caused you to love me so?  Is it not those concepts that differentiate me from the rest"qualify me as a person?  It is behind"beyond"your ever so lovely closed eyes that you see me in my realest state.  In that world of conceiving, far beyond the one we perceive now, you encounter the heart, theessence, of me.  When you wake, your mind is clouded; you will remember only those mundane aspects of me"the curve of my lip, the dip of my lashes.  This is proof, you see, that there is a heaven"a something undefinable but inescapable that rests just at the periphery of our consciousness.  Only in death, however, can your ability to see, truly see, like the dwellers of Plato's allegorical cave, come alive.  In death, mind transcends body.}

Do you claim that the physical body is an encumbrance to the breathing of the soul?  How can mind"the soul, you say"function without body?  What is intuition but a slight hue at the edge of one's vision"a color, that one would not be capable of perceiving without physical eyes?

_{You have made your mistake in considering intuition as the culmination of cues:  a putting two-and-two together, which it is not.  Intuition must not be equated with realization.  Intuition is the eyes knowing there is light, simply because they are eyes, rather than learning of color.  An inherent belief of the other's existence is shared by the mind and heart, because they exist to serve the other; because of the other; as a function of the other.  When the mind transcends to heaven, it will relinquish the body, but not the knowing of the heart, and vice versa.}

Ah, but I beg to differ.  It is not the idea that creates the organism, but the accumulation of cues!  While our human hearts and minds may be considered beautiful in their complexity, they were born of necessity.  Eyes do not know the light, hands do not know feeling"even mind does not know ideas.  Instead, these creations, products of chance and selection, exist to receive these things.  I am sorry, love, but your ideals, like your physical form, stem not from your soul, but a series of adaptations chance has forced you to oblige"necessity.  Furthermore, if the mind, associated with the soul, is everlasting, as you say, then it is a sort of infinity"a function where all answers abound.  Meanwhile, the body and the individual, which you claim to be mortal and therefore definite, yield a life with only one answer:  a single number"a hint at the existence of infinity.  This would leave, then, nonexistence to be undefined; a function without sensible answer.  This is what you claim.  I claim this:  earthbound existence is the perfect oxymoron.  A function with one answer, where infinity and indefiniteness are unachievable.  Answer me, what is the usefulness"the function, in your words"of an equation whose answer is undefined, or whose answer is all numbers?  They have no function.  Because we perceive life, the answer, we exist, the equation.  Thus, in the presence of life, the individual is conceivable.  In that divine kingdom of yours, you cannot conceive the living.  Tell me, my love, what is the equation to an infinite answer?

_{You are cruel, my dear, and you have no belief.  Yet, there is a difference between emptiness and yearning.  You compare immortality to nonexistence, but are incorrect.  An equation is undefined for a particular answer, not all.  Life is characterized not only by the things that are, but the things that arenot.  Nonetheless, you are not past saving, for you are correct when you claim that the equation"the individual"is denoted by the answer.  In death, in infiniteness and immortality, I, the infinite answer, will find you, the sole number, in my midst.  And you, you will be able to acknowledge me and all the numbers in my infinite, divine being.  You will notice me in the flowers whose hue match the tint of your lips, the waterfall whose morning dew is scattered upon your tear-ridden face, the sun which makes you radiant"and, far (infinitely far!) away but not away at all, I will acknowledge you.}

It is by chance that those roses match my lips.  Pseudo Dionysius claimed that God is ineffable"in a sense, I believe him.  I am a point upon the continuous line of life, a line with a single set of answers.  All the while, you are that infinite function which, if heaven exists, has Earth as its limit.  Your course, in immortality, will never touch mine, or contain any of its answers.  You will be not in the flowers, perhaps just beyond"

_{Love, do you believe in God?}

I find it difficult, and am entertaining your argument for my heart's sake.  Via positivo and via negativo, they are Dionysius's words.  His theory, though, is not unlike mine:  rooted in his heart.  Outside of the positivo and negativo rests God, that infinitely small space between what he is and what he is not.  If he is correct, we will not meet.  Wipe your tears, love, for being apart is not what you or I, in our lovely existence, should fear.  Oh, the fear in my heart, it blossoms from the suggestion that this infinitely small space is so small it does not exist.  I hazard that Pseudo-Dionysius, like me, knew this, and shrouded it in what we all shroud emptiness in"beauty.       

_{No.  If God did not exist, we would not exist.  How would we have come to be"how would I have come to know your terrible, questioning heart?  Everything has its cause, and this idea of you that extends beyond your physical beauty and even your individuality, in Avicenna's words, is the necessary existent.  You are something greater than you are because it is conceivable.  You and I, we were made in the image of what we are"your lips the image of those flowers.}

We were made in nothing's image.  If truth must be spoken, I do not believe in God.  I believe Earth itself to be divine simply because it is entropic.  Is it not more beautiful to think that my lips match the color of those flowers only by chance, not some divine hand?  Imagine the billions of events that may have happened to make them so perfectly matched, that have made us, made today!  Like all things whole and perfect, the universe is circular.  Cause creates effect creates cause once more.  God"if it exists"resides not outside of this, but within it.  We live in arbitrary relativity.  Here is a heaven, where our souls can meet as well as entropy has allowed them to.  If a part of you transcends in death"and it is not beyond my belief that it may"it will be changed.  No, forgive me.  It is not your soul that may be changed, but the world relative to it.  It will forget (forgive) me.

_{In your eyes, I will dissipate, like Democritus.}

Yes.  And, in yours, I will remain, your Persephone.

_{Two truths.}

One true.

Author's Note

I wrote this in place of an essay for my humanities class at the end of our philosophers unit in senior year. When compared to the rest of my writing, this is unique in terms of style. Any critique is welcome.