Storgic Love

A person perceives another person not as a member of the same animal species but in the Encounter of his or her own inner world with the inner world of the other.

Having an Encounter is not the same as sharing a common living space, verbally interacting in the solidarity of a clan, social group, society, tribe, nation, etc., touching each other, growing used to each other, joining with each other or influencing each other. The Encounter is a supernatural flash of recognition involving the detection or non-detection of oneself in the other and the attraction or repulsion or, more precisely, the simultaneous attraction and repulsion of human souls. The Encounter is the reciprocal mutual extra-temporal penetration and enrichment of people’s human aspects, the involuntary acceptance of something from another, the mutual exchange of vital flows, and constant mutual revivification through these flows –something that is essential for the spiritual life of every person.

All human life is made up of encounters and can be separated into encounters. We live in discrete time structured by encounters. Most people do not know what to do between encounters and live from one encounter to the next. They revive only from the Encounter.

Human wealth and poverty is the wealth and poverty of Encounters in a person's life.

The main purpose of the Encounter is to bring the inner world of man into action. The Encounter launches it. Every spark generated by the Encounter should kindle something in the inner world of man, heat it up, generate working conflicts, and overcome or create something. If this does not occur, the encounter was useless and in vain.

One must learn to treasure the Encounter as such. No encounter, whether realized or just passing, can be abolished. An encounter can last a moment yet have an impact on all one's life. A person is responsible for every encounter –for the Encounter as such – and must see to it that the raw material of spiritual life that the Encounter offers him is not spoiled or left unused.

The Encounter always signifies that someone has entered your life in order to stay there, whether you want it or not. Separation is not an antonym of the Encounter in its metaphysical sense but one of its ploys. Every annulled Encounter is a catastrophe in the metaphysical stratum of human life.

An Encounter can be exhausted or used up in the soul. An exhausted Encounter is one of the most common and, at the same time, most painful experiences of human life. The hidden horror of the exhausted Encounter lies in the fact that no exit exists for it in the human soul. When another person enters through the open door of my soul and dies within it, he remains in my soul. Every exhausted Encounter is a corpse in the human soul.

The "encountering human being" must make a choice, because the very possibility of the Encounter opens up a prospect for him – the prospect of producing something (or someone) in the Encounter that did not exist previously.

The main Encounters in life are key existential events that have supreme value from both the spiritual and the inner (intellectual and emotional) standpoints. The canvas of one's life primarily consists of Encounters – whether face to face or at a distance, whether with contemporaries or people from the past, whether with people or other personalistic spiritual beings.

Friendship is based on the Encounter’s need for the ideal experience of fidelity. The selfassertion of fidelity is the consummate manifestation of the life of the Encounter. We know about the highest form of the Encounter from our need for fidelity and from our experiences of disinterested fidelity in friendship. The latter is the clearest, purest and fullest expression of the very idea of the Encounter. Friendship is the supreme manifestation of the Encounter – of the Encounter as such.

In Friendship, every male human being transcends himself of his own accord. For many men, this is the only lofty non-egoistical experience of life –an experience that makes them want to give rather than to receive. The bright power of Friendship is mysterious insofar as it easily coexists with base motives that govern many other aspects of life.

Friendship is the loftiest and most intense manifestation of the Encounter.

Friendship is the fully realized Encounter and the fully realized ideal of the Encounte r. Friendship is ideal mutuality that does not even require the friends to be compatible. They do not have to hold similar world views or have equal cultural levels and common aesthetic tastes. The friends' interests and temperaments can be totally different. Friends do not necessarily belong to the same nation or even race. Even debased and mentally disabled people can engage in friendship or recognize its value. A friend is a friend just because he is a friend.

People seek friendship, because they sense that the feeling of friendship makes their lives more profound ^*). Friendship is an inner need of man that is just as innate as the need to love and be loved. Friendship is one of the supreme inner needs of man that can be realized on its own. One must only desire friendship and seek it. Friendship only requires that an Encounter for friendship take place. Even that is not always necessary.

The manifest striving to be a friend appears around the age of five. The special value of friendship, the recognition of the sanctity of friendship, and the special attachment to the friend, who becomes more important than parents or anything else for that matter, are the first clear indicators that the ideal faculties of the soul have begun to function in a person, though not autonomously for the time being.

People become friends most often (and most easily) in their adolescence and youth or even in their childhood. Such friendship often lasts a lifetime.

Friendship harbors an enormous wealth of life experience. Man may wel l be created to be a friend. In any case, Friendship may be defined as an Encounter in which the inherent potential of the hostility of the Encounter is reduced to a minimum.

Circumstances, situations and events are just as important for the emergence of friendship as free choice. Friends may have simply sat side by side in school or slept on neighboring cots in the army and felt good together.

Friendship is more mysterious than love. A powerful component of love is the corporal facet that controls the whole process, assures the attraction of the opposite sex, and induces one to fall in love. As to friendship, one apparently enters it of his own accord. Friendship is freer than love - infatuation.

There is the good of Love, on the one hand, and the special wellbeing of Friendship and the wellbeing of one's entire inner world in the state of Friendship, on the other. The emotional and spiritual needs of Love and Friendship are similar and different at the same time. Friendship is, first and foremost, the fidelity of two people to one another. Without fidelity, Love falls apart. Without fidelity, Friendship does not arise.

Friendship is a miracle of human life.

Although one can give his life for a friend, this is not always the result of inner closeness and the inner mutual emotional intensity, proximity and lovingness of friendship ties. Friendship is not the loving fusion of two people. My friend can be a person that is, to all intents and purposes, foreign to me inwardly.

A friend is a close or foreign person that I made my friend. I take upon myself the responsibilities of friendship that do not depend on my friend's merits and that transcend my attitude towards him. Even if we are different as people, I trust him and believe in him as a friend.

The feeling of friendship is akin to Faith. Friendship has spiritual motives. It arises exclusively as a result of the Encounter's desire to see itself in ideal action.

A friend is a person who helps you to carry the burden of life and takes up your cross in addition to his own. In friendship, one joyfully serves another and gets spiritual fulfillment from it. This is not always the case with love. The feeling of fidelity and the feeling of Friendship are spiritual feelings.

Friendship makes people’s spiritual lives more productive, promotes their spiritual growth, and gives their spiritual lives greater energy.

Friendship ennobles you just as religious feeling and the experience of Good and Well-Being.

Friendship goes hand in hand with a sense of honor based on self-respect. Friendship is spiritually aristocratic. It ennobles people. The feeling of friendship is a noble feeling. Ignoble people may have friends yet never experience friendship. Even when they are on the brink of friendship, it ends up in disgrace.

A friend is an ideal experience –perhaps even more ideal than the experience of loveinfatuation, which is always based on something transient and cloying (delight and desire). The ideal experiences of male friendship are often stronger than the ideal experiences of love for a woman and have a lower spiritual status.

It takes work to attain a spiritual status in love. Friendship is spiritual from the start.

The woman plays the leading role in the creation of Love between man and woman but not in Friendship.

Without Friendship, human life would lack a very important instrument of spiritual growth. Without Love, human life would lose its supreme meaning –not because the meaning of human life lies in love but because something is born in love that gives meaning and aim to human life. Love engenders something new and revives people.

Without Love, human life would go on yet lose its supreme meaning: it would come to resemble animal existence.

If one looks at human beings from the standpoint of the Encounter, the man is a being of Friendship, while the woman is a being of Love.

If Life is Love, then human life is Encounter and Love.

Not all Life is Love, yet Love is Life. The reason is not simply that love raises the energy and fullness of life or that it is the most important manifestation of life or that it is an essential aspect and one of the main experiences of life or even that a certain Vitality is adequately expressed in the experience of love. The key point is that the sensation of life and of being alive is tantamount to the sensation of love. Love coincides with the feeling of being alive and thus is tantamount to Vitality .

Love is not a feeling or state but a Vitality in its active form. The fullness, essence and specific nature of a particular type of Vitality are fully expressed in Love. The nature of the Vitality determines the nature of Love.

Love implements co-life, in which the centers of life of two or several people combine and make up a common and unique center that does not negate its constituent centers. Intertwinement is the key notion for the process of the implementation of Love at all levels. A person receives Love in order to return it to him or her that gave it.

Love is the supreme mystery of the inner world of man. Every soul acquires greater fullness and vitality in Love. The mere fact that two people have fallen in love with one another elevates each of them inwardly, makes each of them spiritually higher and deeper than they were before, and leads them to experience Life more fully and deeply. Love revives people and makes them more alive. Such an increase in Vitality is experienced as the greatest good.

Everything that exists is alive, yet not everything that exists feels and cognizes. A living being is a being insofar as it has the sensation and consciousness of life. A living being stands out among living entities insofar as it has the sensation of life and feels itself to be alive (and, in particular, wishes itself good). Love, too, is a sensation of life, yet the desire of good (whether for oneself or for someone in particular or in general) is not love. An animal can desire good for another animal and is ready to sacrifice itself for the latter with all the strength of attachment and sacrifice that is innate to its animal species,yet does it love?

As a sensation of being alive and of life within oneself, love can appear only in a being with a Self – in man. One cannot ascribe love to a being without a Self, i.e., a being without a designated center in itself that contains the free Author of its own self and its own life.

There is no love without the Self. The Self is not necessary to feel lust. Lust is not love. However, if lust contains a Self, then it is not just the striving for copulation but erotic love^*).

One can understand Love only within the doctrine of the Encounter. Love is the mutual exchange of vital energy through a certain inner layer using a channel created by the Encounter.

An Encounter between two persons can take place at different levels. The Encounter between a man and a woman is the highest level of the Encounter that is envisaged by both the worldly and the divine nature of man. The Encounter between a man and a woman is more than an encounter between two people with Selves. On the one hand, it is a mutually enriching Encounter. On the other, it is an Encounter that involves the whole person, who participates in it in the entirety of all the aspects of his or her inner world. There is nothing in a person that cannot participate in the encounter between a man and a woman.

All living beings on Earth have a male nature and a female nature. In the human being these natures become Man and Woman. Man and Woman are the highest and totally unique level of the manifestation of male and female natures. The female nature (yet not the woman) is present in the man, while the male nature (yet not the man) is present in the woman.

Once again, the difference between man and woman lies not in the makeup of their inner world but in its functioning. The man and the woman have different bodies, yet this difference is not just physiological (this aspect is secondary) but lies in the fact that the body governs the inner worlds of the man and the woman differently. His body functions in a male way,and hers in a female way. The unique aspects of the woman as such and the man as such are determined by the flesh. The female flesh skews the woman's inner world towards the sensation of life and love, while the male flesh skews the man's inner world towards the consciousness of life and reason.

Generally speaking, the woman lives more lastingly and profoundly in the Encounter than the man. The Encounter is the main motif of the woman's spiritual life. The woman has the upper hand in the inner world of the Encounter. She plays a key role in the process of the Encounter. The woman is the master of the Encounter. She lives in the Encounter and, as its leader, has greater proficiency in it than the man. This constitutes her advantage and power over the latter. However, a woman's life can be subject to a lot more evil from her Encounters than from the other aspects of her inner life.

In its consciousness of separateness, the inner world of a person, be it a man or a woman, is closed and shut off from other souls by a semitransparent armor that is not easy to pierce. People have to break through to one another – through the flesh, in particular.

Eros is a natural penetrative force without which it would be difficult for the souls of men and women to intertwine. The sexual desire of the flesh is necessary and morally justified as a powerful attractive force that brings bodies together into a single corporal rapturous whole and pierces personal barriers on the way of souls to one another. It is not unchastity that is amoral but sexual obsession in the absence of the striving towards love.

The seemingly unrelenting keenness of human sexual passion serves first and foremost the needs of the human psyche (the lower soul) and afterwards the natural necessity of the propagation of the species. The encounter at a moment of lust is directed where the flesh points –at the object of desire outside oneself. A spiritual eclipse takes place through the other –an eclipse that creates the possibility of entering into the first (erotic) engagement.

The forces of corporal life of two persons are particularly absorbed by each other at the moment when their inner worlds are absorbed by the flesh: the two persons "merge" or join through the flesh, become a single whole in which the energy of psycho-physiological life circulates from one to the other and back.

Only in the human species (and in no other being in nature!) are the special points in the male and female bodies located so adroitly that, in unperverted coitus, the two bodies from tip to toe make up a single circle. In an ecstatic embrace, partners consciously strive to join into a circle.

The meaning of sexual relations does not lie in children or in carnal pleasure. The moral justification of sex is neither carnal pleasure, of course, nor even procreation but bodily interpenetration that facilitates inner contact between the partners and helps to launch the process of spiritual interaction. A child is literally the fruit of the fusion between a man and a woman and the result of their unity in the flesh and through the flesh. Sex for the sake of procreation is just as soulless as sex for carnal pleasure. The conception of a child should become the result of the bodily and spiritual unity of a man and a woman.

The fortress walls of spiritual separatedness begin to break down on their own in bed. It is hard to imagine what would have come of people without this possibility (provided by Nature) of intertwining souls through eros. Even the penetrative force of "platonic" love is driven by erotic energy through the lofty rejection of sexual relations.

At the moment of passion, the man loves with his soul from his body and is ready to swear eternal love, believing in it himself. However, as soon as he satiates his body, his soul immediately takes him out of the short-term experience of pseudo-love that had been brought about by his body. In contrast, after entering through the body into a state that is close to erotic love, the female soul often remains in it. Generally speaking, the female body is a lot more closely linked with inner life than the male body. In contrast to the male body, the female body is a lot more willing to carry out the orders of the soul and to serve as the instrument and tool of the soul. The woman's body serves to implement the main goal of her soul: to entwine the man around herself and to entwine herself around him.

The higher standards for female chastity are neither the result of male egoism nor, even less, a sign of the inequality of the sexes. Entwining a man around herself, the woman must entwine herself around him without ever untwining. In principle, the capacity of staying entwined is given to a woman only once. In any case, the capacity of staying entwined is extremely fragile in a woman. If she entwines and untwines a time or two, this capacity breaks down, and the inner mechanism of striving for unity through the flesh begins to malfunction. A woman's flesh does not forget what has happened to her, and she and her very sensuality retain the mark of the man that attracted it onto himself.

In itself, carnal sexuality is impersonal. It can be more or less intense yet does not choose the concrete object of sexuality. Sexual relations, even in the presence of mutual feelings, have nothing to do with love – not account of their baseness but in their essence. Sexual relations are temporary or even short-lived by their very nature. In contrast, all love, including erotic love, is love insofar as it is based on a mutual relationship of Selves that enter into timeless or extra-temporal relations.

The experience of responsibility or its presentiment is part of the experience of the Encounter and love. Erotic love requires a man and a woman to be alone while performing the supreme sacrament of the intertwinement of their bodies. Shame is proper to erotic love. The latter is not shameless for the additional reason that it is implemented by Selves rather than egos or sexual partners.

The power of erotic love is selectively focused. To augment itself, it passionately desires to tap the life energy of the other and to absorb the intensity of his or her life. The freedom of exchanging lives in erotic love takes the form of the mutual freedom of greedily absorbing the psycho-physiological heat of the beloved.

The object of love-infatuation (philic love) evokes the elation of the presentiment of participating in or transferring oneself into the lofty regions of his or her life. One cannot desire to absorb the vitality of this object. The freedom of exchanging lives is implemented here as the freedom of approaching, giving and rendering oneself into the contemplative heights where the metapsychic image of the beloved abides for the loving gaze.

In itself, erotic love is greedy and self-interested. In itself, love-infatuation is disinterested and contemplative. Taken together, both faculties of love, combining and alternating, make up the experience of human self-love. Such love loves with erotic and philic love simultaneously: it takes pleasure in taking the life of the other soul and gets lofty satisfaction from giving its own life.

Love-infatuation (philic love) does not arise as a result of hard inner work. It arises simply because one is human. Philic love does not require the effort of attainment. Gratuitous, it is deified because all the boons of its life sensations are given for free.

Happiness is happiness insofar as it always occurs over and above the psycho-physiological satisfaction derived from relations with one another. Happiness is an experience that arises in philic love from a mutual explosion in the Encounter.

A sort of channel arises between partners, and different kinds of vital energy travel back and forth with the sole aim of increasingly exciting, overexciting, triggering and kindling infatuation. When this process subsides (as it is prone to do) and the channel blocks up, people tend to say that time has destroyed love. In actual fact, this channel is not designed to last a long time. The souls grow weary of vibrating together, and the vibration dies away.

Where does our highest inner striving to be intertwined come from?

Eve was created, because it is "not good" (Gen. 2:18) for a person to become by himself what he is intended to be. A person's inner work is never full-fledged without another person that is "suitable for him". Otherwise a person cannot become a true human being and cannot attain the spiritual bliss and good that are prepared and necessary for him.

In addition to eros, philia, and agape, the Greek language singles out a fourth type of love – storge. This term was used by the Ancient Greeks to refer to family love or the feeling of familial affection. This word apparently also referred to the feeling of kinship as such. We will reinterpret storge here, just as philosophers have long reinterpreted agape, philia and eros.

As an encountering being, man is directed from “his own Self" to "another Self". He has a real need to integrate "his own Self" into another person, "another Self". In the final account, this need leads to the emergence of storge or "one's other Self". People formerly called this "the unity of souls" –the product of storgic feeling.

"One's other Self" is not really even a "Self" but the directedness of one person to another in implemented storge –a directedness that shows that one experiences himself through the other and the other through himself. "One's other Self" emerges in this experience of the other through oneself and of oneself through the other.

A person gives to his storgic beloved the keys of his main vital centers and, as a guarantee of their unity, entrusts his beloved to care for them. He can make do without the latter’s help yet cannot make do without the storgic beloved as such, to whom he can entrust himself. And he waits for this person. He waits not for the alleviation of his own burden but for storgic wellbeing.

When two people are spiritually intertwined like two threads, regardless of whether they are up to the task or not, they attain, through this circumstance alone, a special and incomparable fullness of life, which a person can never attain on his own. The state of the intertwining of souls is a state of such wellbeing and spiritual bliss that no healthy soul could ever refuse it. Storge as such (i.e., independently of its results) is a true good and one of the highest values of life that cannot be replaced by anything else. Every human being desires it.

Storge is innate to man. He who does not strive for storge is not fully human. The human soul feels incomplete and destitute without storge.

In storge, it is not enough to understand and sense each other, to show compassion, to hold common views, or to look in the same direction. One must be in each other as well as making up a single whole.

Ideally, "one's other Self" is one's other experience of life (one's other experience of being alive) in the storgic beloved –his (and my) other views, feelings, life experiences, notions and thoughts. The perfect storgic partner has no solutions or desires of mutual life that are distinct from the solutions and desires of his own life.

All love relations make use of the second person. Love is directed at the "you" of the close relative or the beloved "you" that has been selected among many different "you" for the amorous feeling, say. The beloved "you" does not cease to be a "you" in philic love and becomes "another Self" only if philia grows into storge. In this case, philic love ends, and "you" stops being a beloved "you". "Falling out of love" or the disappearance of amorous love is not inner catastrophe or death but the intended development of the soul's inner life.

"One's other Self" should not become "you" ("another Self"). This would be a serious malfunction of the person’s entire inner world and a storgic catastrophe or despiritualization –a crime of sorts.

The pains of the rupture of philic love can heal. In contrast, a storgic catastrophe is not even a lethal wound but murder.

The perception of one storgic partner by the other storgic partner does not pertain to the first, second or third person. "One's other Self" is not the first person ("I") or "another Self". Neither is it "you" (the person of the Encounter). Nor is it "we" (it is different from "we"). You cannot address the storgic beloved in either the second or the first or the third person.

"One's other Self" is a special grammatical category that is used for only person in the whole world – the storgic beloved.

Not all relations between people can be described by the three grammatical persons. For a son, the father is neither "he" nor "you" nor "I". The son experiences his father and addresses him in the fourth person.

One's storgic beloved –one's other Self – is neither "you" nor "I". He is addressed (and storgic love is experienced) in the fifth person.

A person sees his storgic beloved in the fifth person when he sees himself in him as his "other Self". The storgic beloved is experienced by his beloved in himself in the fifth person as "his other Self".

The inner worlds of the man and the woman fuse in storge. Storge is their fusion into a new and single whole that had not existed up until then. The relations of the storgic partners in this new unity take place in the fifth person.

Man is an encountering being that is capable of storge. He encounters, because he is capable of storge.

When a man says in the fifth person "my other Self," he refers to his other female Self, and vice - versa.

The male and female natures were introduced into earthly Nature with the goal of human storge, of "man and woman". The separation into man and woman is essential for storge and serves its needs. This is more correct than to say that storge exists, because there ex ist man and woman.

The inner worlds of a man and a woman function in a male or female way not for their own right but to work together and produce something in which male and female work combines and engenders new life and new work.

Man and woman were created especially for storge.

Man and woman are two different ways in which the human inner world works. The male and female inner worlds work both separately and together. There is no point of studying their differences and similarities. The question of the separate work of the male or female inner world is secondary. The main thing is their joint work, their unity. The differences and similarities of the two inner worlds exist for the sake of their joint work.

Storge is the implementation of the joint twofold work of the inner worlds of two persons –two as one.

Generally speaking, a person does not understand or badly understands another person. Storge is the only way of understanding clearly what is taking place in the inner world of another person. The special delight taken in perfect mutual understanding is an indicator of the existence of storge.

The principle of collective spiritual life is "don’t do unto others what you don’t want others to do unto you".

The principle of storge is "do what you desire for both yourself and him (or her)". The fusion of the inner worlds of man and woman is a mysterious process. It is impossible to reconstruct it in full. Storgic life is just as vast and diverse as the life of individual persons. Just as every human life, every storge is unusual and unique.

Storge is a special personalistic phenomenon. Storgic life is in dynamic equilibrium with the individual lives making it up. The results of storge differ from the results of an individual non-storgic life.

The storgic life of man has particular merit in the Plan. Storgic love is the only type of spirituality that is directly accessible to everyone. In all the realm of personal and collectivespiritual life, a person gets no higher or more powerful spiritual satisfaction than from the awareness that he is living and going through life together with someone. There is nothing that can be compared with this constant and perfect spiritual joy. The shared conjugal joys of family unity are so sweet and congenial to the soul that they serve as an imperfect image or “crumbs” of storgic paradise. The ideal image of storgic paradise lies within the depths of the male and female souls, leading them to marry.

The ascending life of the Encounter leads to storgic love and storgic spiritual life. The profound motif and goal of love in all its forms is to attain storge.

The storgic spiritual process gives mystic results. It produces a special fruit that is inaccessible to philic and even less to erotic love. Thus erotic and philic love should be considered as preliminary stages on the way to storgic love.

Storge is never attained by itself, compulsively or without effort. It can emerge only when both persons have made the necessary preparatory work. Generally speaking, one must attain storge through a penetrative preparatory pre-storgic stage.

Erotic love and philic love are at the front lines of storgic love. All the powerful work of the Encounter at the erotic and philic levels is done not for its own sake but for the emergence of storge.

The storgic role of sexual relations that result from the natural differences of the sexes is enormous and virtually indispensable. The possibility of attaining the unity of two people through the flesh depends, in turn, on the state of the body as an instrument of the soul. The sexually depraved person risks closing himself off storgically. The purer a person is sexually, the more responsive he usually is and the more easily pierced for prestorgic unity.

Erotic love and the sexual interpenetration of the flesh assist storgic love, which uses them to its own ends to meet the needs of storgic spiritual life. Sex ceases to serve the aims of this life if it is not used to its highest purpose. The piercing instrument of sex easily breaks down, becomes blunt and loses its storgic meaning. Storgic unity is too important, serious and fragile a matter to be put at risk.

To cite Leo Tolstoy's typically succinct definition, "happiness is the satisfaction of the being of man, who lives from birth to death only in this world. The good is the satisfaction of the demands of the eternal essence in man".

The good is not only distinct from happiness but is frequently acquired in unhappiness. Happiness is not a reality but a dream. In any case, it is a brief and exclusive state of the soul rather than its patrimony. In contrast, the good is eternal, indestructible and real.

The state of happiness and the state of good resemble each other in the sensation of the fullness of life that one gets in them. Happiness is mostly the desire of joy for oneself: for example, for people to serve me in soul and deed, to love me, and to give me the possibility of experiencing the satisfaction of loving and the joy of caring. The main point here is not egocentric intentions (the good is also "for oneself") but the indolent inner passiveness of the motif of happiness in contrast to the hardworking inner activity of the state of good.

Confusing the good (the hard-earned state of freedom of the soul) with happiness (a temporary state of elation of the soul, an awareness of the delight of life), a person mistakes the main indicator of the fulfillment of his purpose and mixes up the inner criteria of the proper life –what is "good" and what is "not good" (Gen. 2:18).

No Encounter other than the encounter between man and woman promises "one's own happiness". The hope of attaining "one's own happiness" is part of the paradigm of the Encounter between man and woman. This leads to the ineradicable and extra-empirical longing for mutual happiness, which is never attained.

The desire for storgic good that was put into us from above is no illusion. God sent people into the world to attain storgic good, while we expect and desire a remote and disfigured likeness of this good – the happiness of our psycho-physiological personality, a happiness that cannot last long by the laws of worldly life.

Storgic unity is not happiness but wellbeing. To attain storgic good, man must "take up his cross" and make an effort in life, i.e., suffer, fall, stand up and fall again, anguishing in his soul rather than being happy all the time. Storgic unity feeds on troubles, tribulations and sorrows, which are conditions for attaining the good.

Human souls are closed up and thus must fray their way towards one another in order to enter into storgic relations. Extolled from the beginning of mankind, lofty love-infatuation greatly augments the experience of happiness and powerfully frays the way, allowing souls to approach each other. The happiness of being in love serves (or, at least, should serve) the good of storgic unity.

Love is blind, as a rule; infatuation passes as soon as a person begins to see. In early youth, the desire for love runs ahead of the object of love. Storge is rare among young people. One must first enter into the storgic phase of life. Storge arises in maturity.

Life-infatuation –life as infatuation –is a special state of life. We define it as a kind of "prestorgic state" of the inner world of man. People usually use the word "love" to refer to a pre -storgic regime of the functioning of their inner world. At all times, the theme of love in art has been the theme of the human experience of different pre-storgic storms and deceptions. No other state of human life has been described so vividly and diversely as this. Pre-storge has no value in itself, however. Man's inherent need to cultivate the pre-storgic state ultimately aims to attain a storgic state of life.

The fire of philic love is needed, as a rule, to kindle storgic love. The pre -storgic state of life is a shoot out of which the storgic tree should grow. However, "should grow" does not necessarily mean “will grow.” Pre-storge does not necessarily lead to storge. One can spend one's entire life going from the delight of one philic love to another yet be a complete failure from the standpoint of storge.

People usually consider sublime feelings to be poetically inspiring feelings and passions. In reality, sublime feelings are feelings that do not blow their own horn. They are quiet feelings –not towards a mistress but towards a wife with whom one has lived for decades.

The prelude to storge – the philic pre-storge of storgic love –is a highly seductive state. Many people are willing to spend their entire lives in pre-storgic arousal without thinking about the state that follows. Pre-storge can last for years yet not "forever," contrary to what some people desire. It inevitably comes to an end. It either disappears or transforms into storge. However, it never replaces the latter but only announces it, invokes it and prepares for it.

In pre-storgic excitement, a poet sings the song of life and love with all his soul and all its power. He imagines that the magical sounds of this song invite him to the joy of the feast of life. Of course, they entice him – yet not to a feast but to the hard labor of storge. The storgic call should resound (and be heard!) in pre-storge. The happiness of pre-storge should precede the good of storge and serve to implement it. Otherwise the sound of pre-storge is not the triumphant cry of the breach of fortress walls separating souls butthe noise of a burst bubble or of a shot into nowhere.

People say that you cannot understand "love". This is indeed the case with respect to pre -storgic love, because pre-storge is an intermediary state –something that is transitional and still unformed, something that has announced yet not implemented itself, something that is only a promise and often a false promise. Far from always striving for storge, pre-storge tries to implement it only when it is not wrapped up in itself and when it is consciously oriented on evolving into the former.

As pre-storge, philic love has a lawful place in human life. However, people have created a cult of philic love, turning it into a goal and value in itself, degrading it and making it incapable of turning into storge.

The non-orientation (or, more precisely, the non-obligatory orientation) of philic love on storge is one of the misconceptions of human existence. This misconception is cultivated by art, which creates models for emulation and for reproduction through emulation.

Pre-storgic behavior differs from storgic behavior properly speaking insofar as storge strives for unity, while pre-storge is interested in mutuality or in the influence of the other on oneself or of oneself on the other. The pre-storge of infatuation is possible with many people that one encounters on the path of life, while storge is, generally speaking, possible with only a single person.

The male animal is attracted by the smell of the female. A man is attracted by the image of the woman. Philically, he is attracted by the female philic (or, more precisely, philic and erotic) image. Storgically, he is bound by the woman's storgic image, to which he presents his male storgic image.

The philic and erotic image is not the same thing as the image of one's other Self. They announce themselves differently and are selective in different ways.

The storgic image is not an image of a person that can be captured by a photographer. In the mutually reciprocal storgic movement, minor details are important, even if no one else sees them: seemingly secondary movements, expressions, and glimmers that storgically attract the partner's attention. They contain an aroma of the sensation and consciousness of life of the storgic partner.

Although the storgic image shines through the visible hull, it is not perceived by the eyes but is made out in the outward appearance by the heart's intuitive vision. The insight into storge is the insight into outward appearance. This is a mystery rather than a whim of male or female fantasy.

The heart's storgic aesthetics often do not coincide with psychological, physiological and aesthetic perception. A woman may not be to a man’s taste yet nonetheless irresistibly attract his heart by her storgic beauty, which seems to be created especially for him. Everyone has his or her own aesthetics of the storgic image that can neither be transferred nor inculcated. Nor do they disappear over time.

The storgic momentum is sexually disinterested and is often extinguished by sexual self-interest. The beauty of the female image is important for pre-storgic games that do not necessarily lead to storge. A man's storgic woman does not need to arouse him philically and erotically. In storge, he looks not for beauty but for somebody of his own, his own special female image or some of its special expressions and traits that suggest that this image has something important and desirable for storge.

Usually, a man perceives his storgic image of a woman as a womb in which it is good to live, which his soul desires, and into which he must make his way so as to feel at home there. Nevertheless, he does not set himself the goal of partaking in the woman’s inner world. He looks for his female image that, from the start, contains (and shows) something that can attract his storgic will and seeks the latter's "storgic place" that is expecting him and only him. The male storgic will is always the will to occupy the woman's storgic place. Nevertheless, it is the woman that strives to raise the Encounter to the storgic level. This profound female desire is irrational.

The important thing for the storgic partner is not that he lives in the other partner but that the other lives in him. I experience the image that penetrates into me "as myself," I sense it as my own, I cannot help but open myself to it,and I love and pity it "as my own self".

One pities the storgic beloved as one pities one's own self. I cannot live without him or her in me. Storge is not for my own self and not for me to feel good but for something different.

I have received a storgic image that is intended for the encounter with my storgic beloved, and his or her storgic image is also within me. My storgic beloved carries in him or her both the image of the person that can become his or her storgic beloved and his or her own storgic image. All of these images must be in harmony between themselves and make up a single whole.

One's own storgic image actively expects the encounter with the storgic beloved and emanates a launching signal in all directions, summoning him or her to approach. A person carries the image of his other Self in him or herself as a mother bears a child. This image strives to be realized and leads to storgic presentiment, storgic desire and storgic pressure. It cannot be described but can only be divined with the help of storgic intuition during the encounter.

I know not figuratively but for sure that "my other half" lives on Earth at the same time as I. I seek to meet her yet do not know where to go and do not know what she is like before I see her. In my life,I am urged to go somewhere and find someone I do not know. All the same, I go and sometimes even find her!

A person seeks the storgic encounter with all his heart and keeps expecting it at any moment. To wait and search with such intense presentiment and constant expectation and delay is quite a torment. How can one avoid making a mistake in a state of such excruciating longing? It is a miracle that the storgic encounter takes place at all. Indeed, the miracle is not that the encounter takes place but that the storgic intuition functions correctly in the endless series of encounters that constantly promise and beckon. Moreover, it functions independently of me: someone whispers to me , "Here she is!" It is also astonishing that storgic recognition can take place not at first sight and not during the first encounter and not even during the first year of acquaintanceship. You may not hear anything for a long time and then suddenly perceive a voice within yourself, realize the storgic value of the encounter, and recognize that it is storgic. This voice comes both from within and from without.

Someone carefully saw it to it that our encounter took place and that we recognized each other. Who is it? Neither I nor the other person, but someone else.

The image of the storgic beloved in me and my storgic image in him or her should correspond, be two halves of a single whole image and derive from the latter. It is this whole unworldly storgic image that directs the search for the storgic encounter and guides its choice. It was implanted in us from the start and thus belongs to someone who existed before us and who placed the storgic images inside us.

Although it would be incorrect to say that you can become friends with anyone, friendship is not selective. In contrast, storge is extremely selective. A friend is someone to whom you are true rather than someone whom you love and with whom you are one. A friend is in no way "your other Self".

You can put your life down for a friend. At the same time, you cannot help but put all of your being down for your storgic beloved.

A friend does not have to be constantly present. In contrast, the absence of the storgic beloved is always a torment similarto that experienced by an orphan. It is unnatural.

Friendship is the most sublime manifestation of human existence as such. Storge is a manifestation of both human and mystic life.

Friendship is something that is given and grows stronger over the years. Storge starts from the lowest stages and ascends upwards, going from the appearance of storge in human life to divine storge at the height of the realization of the Divine Plan.

Friendship is an Encounter in this life only. Storge is an Encounter both in this life and in posthuman life.

Friendship is the supreme manifestation of the inner life of the Encounter. Storge is the spiritual life of the Encounter – storgic spiritual life. Storge is a special class of phenomena of spiritual life, some of whose qual ities are new and inaccessible to the spiritual life of the individual. The result of storge is qualitatively different.

The more a married couple lives together, the closer it becomes and the more used to each other. However, this is not storgic growth but the consolidation of conjugal kinship ties. The augmentation of conjugal closeness just as the strengthening of friendship is a form of inner growth.

Storge is not given at once. Storge always emerges in the process of growing –storgic spiritual growth.

Storgic growth is a great mystery not only of man's inner life but also of his spiritual life. It is deeply connected with the process of man's spiritual ascent. Storgic growth is just as important in storgic spiritual life as spiritual growth. Storgic growth and spiritual growth are the fundamental motives and driving forces of all human life. Any moment that passes without the growth of one or the other is lifeless for a soul.

Storgic growth is the growth not of mutuality but of the mutual penetration, mutual involvement and mutual absorption of one inner world by the other until they constitute in all areas a single life with two perspectives.

Storgic growth requires spending spiritual energy on each other and receiving it from each other. Storgic growth is mutually produced in joint twofold spiritual work and in hidden joint spirituality that the man's and woman's souls create, consolidate and put into action.

The immobility or cessation of storgic growth is fraught with the same consequences in storgic spiritual life as the cessation of growth in any other kind of spiritual life. The acceleration of storgic growth revives a person's soul just as the acceleration of spiritual growth. In both cases, the descent begins not after a breakdown or catastrophe but after the deceleration of growth that leads to stagnation. A storgically motionless couple is not necessarily devoid of storgic good but lacks the good of storgic growth.

What is true for spiritual growth is equally true for storgic growth. The storgic good increases only during storgic growth. If there is no storgic growth, the storgic good does not exist and cannot be preserved. If it stays on one level, it becomes depleted and decreases. To receive and preserve storgic good, one must not just preserve the existing level of storge but consolidate and augment it (storgic growth). This naturally calls for passing from one stage of storgic ascent to the next.

A simple and unmistakable indicator of emerging storge is its increase over time. No matter how bright the honeymoon was, the feeling of love –storgic love – should be fuller, deeper and even keener 30 years later.

The descent begins not when storgic proximity disappears but when it stops growing. Alienation, opposition, infidelity of all kinds, self-interest, and the souls' avoidance of each other, foreboding the collapse of the storgic relationship, begin when the process of storgic growth stops.

Numerous and often difficult obstacles inevitably and necessarily occur on the path of all spiritual growth. In the same way, many difficulties, contortions and dramas of mutual life are needed to produce storge and storgic spiritual growth. A person must obtain the storgic good himself. It is not enough to enter into a storgic relationship. One must manage to preserve it in real-life conditions that constantly put it to the test. Life tests the storgic relationship just as any other spiritual ascent. Tribulations of all kinds as well as family members, relatives and other people keep trying to destroy the storgic good.

The storgic image points to the fifth person, "one's other Self," and offers it for storge, often without realizing what troubles and difficulties are involved in attaining the storgic goal. Some aspects of the inner world may be unsuitable for storgic goals and even oppose them. Overcoming obstacles to storgic growth such as differences in cultural tastes, psychological incompatibility and corporal rejection are sometimes part of the effort of storge and sometimes superfluous to it.

What opposes storge can serve to steel and strengthen it. Overcoming the inevitable trials and obstacles accelerates storgic growth. This includes above all the trial of taking up the cross of one's other Self (his or her everyday cross or the cross that unexpectedly became his or her lot), which cannot be avoided and that always exists in storgic life. Another is the storgic trial by faith, when one is summoned to believe the other even when there are no visible reasons to trust him or her and when no one else does.

The eternal dream of husband and wife is to die together, suddenly and at the same moment. This is not granted to man. The main storgic trial in store for a person is to serve the beloved in his or her terminal illness and part with him or her when death puts an end to their intertwinement. Dying first, one partner puts his cross of death on the other.

Much of what was not finished in storgic life is completed in the final period of mutual life on earth. He who remains alive takes upon himself the burden of the terminal agony of whom he cannot live without. This suffering is capable of changing the posthumous fate of the storgic beloved.

A man and a woman in storgic intertwinement lead their own special lives. A man cannot fully understand a woman's life, and vice-versa. She is not "me," and "I" am not her. We do not always have the same life states and moods or the same thoughts and feelings. In storgic co-life, each engages in his or her own activities, loves or does not love in his or her own way, and feels with different intensity and even differently than the storgic beloved. Simply on account of our human individuality, we are never what our other Self literally understands us to be.

A person that I could call “my other Self" should not exist at all in principle. The very possibility of perceiving in the fifth person and recognizing another person (especially of the opposite sex) to be one's own Self is an inexplicable mystery. Although the existence of a storgic relation may be evident, it is impossible to study the joint life of storgic partners from without in order to find the inner grounds of their storge. For the outside observer, storge is a false experience and condition. Nevertheless, no state of life is more authentic or more sought by man as such.

By ourselves, we could not live in a state of storge where each person experiences the other through himself and himself through the other. Storge can take place with the help of a certain powerful force that comes from within, as if from in between two storgic partners, yet does not belong to them.

The acceleration of spiritual growth is the main condition for the sustainability of all spiritual growth. My other Self is my thoughts, feelings and desires in my storgic beloved. All of them are the object of unbounded storgic spiritual growth. At first sight,this may seem impossible in view of the excessive cluttering of the inner world with all kinds of foreign (anti or non-storgic) vital desires.

If storgic growth was simply the result of the efforts of storgic partners, it could not accelerate or be sustainable or durable. This clearly shows that the storgic partners are not the only participants in storgic spiritual growth. Generally speaking, sustainable storgic spiritual growth is produced not so much by storgic partners as by someone through them.

The direct relationship between two people is temporal and destroyed by death. Howeve r, when one of the storgic partners dies before the other, the storgic relationship continues. The partner that is still alive feels the presence of the defunct in his or her life yet also knows – knows for real – that they are and will continue to be together just as before. This is not a conjecture, a self-delusion, a mirage or a dream but a bright feeling that suffuses the remaining years of the life of the partner that was destined to leave this world last.

There is no doubt about the authenticity of such mutual communication. The storgic partners did not and do not part not because they are tied into a magic knot but because somebody else keeps them together – one partner in this world and the other in the other world. This “somebody” must therefore live both here and there.

Each storgic partner leads his or her own personal life. In addition, they lead a third mutual life, in which the different aspects of their inner worlds only participate. Not two but three personalities take part in storge. The third personality is not a being of relation or transformation but a mystic being that subordinates the personalities of the storgic partners and implements the storgic relation through himself.

Between storgic partners (in contrast to other encounters and other human mutual inner states) there exists a supplementary force of mutual attraction that originates not in one or the other storgic partner but in a third source.

The subject of human storgic spiritual life is the person himself and his storgic being –his cherub.

Many people live with the more or less intense sensation that someone out there is destined to unite with them into a new storgic whole. Choosing a single human being as his storgic partner and denying proximity to others, a person selects with whom he will be united from now on and in life in general – in present and future life, in worldly and otherworldly life. Human life consists precisely of this choice and selection. The perspicacity of this choice is the fundamental problem of a person's storgic life.

According to the innate feeling of storge, the person with whom I am destined to be united in future life exists somewhere in the world. This is not a presentiment but a type of knowledge. I know not only about his or her existence but also about my unity with him or her in storge.

The idea of storge is that, in the interaction of two, there appears a third that connects the first and the second. My other Self is a person that belongs to the same storgic trinomial as myself –to the new spiritual being that we engender together. Nothing like that exists in physiological sexual life or the psychic life of the Self.

We are simply outlining here the new concepts that we are introducing to give a preliminary idea of them. To clarify their essence,it is necessary to describe many new conceptual layers. An attempt to understand the nature of the storgic being is made in the second volume of The Emergence and Transfiguration of Man.

The storgic being has a key meaning and purpose and permeates the entire implementation of the Plan from the initial self-induced storge of man to Divine storge at the final stage of the Plan.

The pathos of storge lies neither in one person serving another nor in two persons fusing but in two persons fusing with a third and jointly serving a third that transcends both of them. To expect my storgic beloved to give his or her life up for me means expecting that he or she will give it up not only for me alone but also for our storgic being.

The storgic partner senses the presence of the force of the storgic being as a force that does not depend on the intensity (or weakness) of his feelings that launched the storge. The power of the storgic being does not belong to the storgic partner. It cannot be replaced or abolished by him and only augments over the years, becoming invincible.

Storge is the involvement of the third participant of storge, the storgic being, in the joint inner life of a man and a woman. The higher the level of storge, the more the storgic relation is based on free will. This allows the higher subjects of storgic spiritual life to become involved in the storgic spiritual process together with human souls (the lower human subjects of storgic spiritual life).

Storge calls for mutual complementarity and mutual augmentation in the joint life à trois together with the third member –one's storgic being.

“Encountering man” encounters insofar as he produces in the course of his life something that is not initially included in it and that appears in the process of life. The main fruit of the Encounter is the newly engendered storgic being. It does not appear in one's life at birth but is created (or summoned) in the process of life and is not removed or destroyed after death.

In itself, the spiritual intertwinement of a man and a woman is temporary and dissolves in the course of life or after death. Moreover, a man and a woman cannot unite in each other or in one of them (either the man or the woman) – this would result in a man encompassing a woman or a woman encompassing a man. For durable and eternal unity, a man and a woman need an indestructible and non-mortal mutual vessel –a third being that would incorporate both of them. The storgic being encompasses and unites the man and the woman. The indestructible spiritual intertwinement of man and woman takes place in the storgic being. In The Emergence and Transfiguration of Man, we will describe where this being comes from in storgic intertwinemen.

Properly speaking, the storgic being does not leave the field of non-mortal life in which it exists. The two partners that bring themselves into the storgic being attain personal non-mortality in it.

The storgic being is not the fruit of the romantic imagination. The eternal human sensation of one's other half isthe presentiment of the storgic being within oneself. Storge is the participation in intertwinement of two beings directed at each other with a third (storgic) being that appears in human life in addition to parental higher souls.

The spiritual status of the storgic being is higher than the status of the souls that summoned it towards themselves. In storge each person acquires a higher fullness of being insofar as he becomes part of the essentially more complete life of the storgic being.

Storge is marked not only by the striving towards one another but also by the joint striving towards a third being. This striving best and most fully expresses the nature of storge. "One's other Self" is not a double, replica or copy of oneself. It is given through the third subject of storge that is tied to "one's other Self". Storge is a particular kind of closeness that both the man and the woman need, because the storgic being needs it and inscribes itself into it.

Even if two people are very close and similar and have very harmonious and joyous relations, the storgic being shall not necessarily enter their joint life. At a given moment, all three must come into such contact with each other and unite in such a special and ineffable way that they generate a threefold resonance. Storge cannot be realized without the storgic being, even if both partners deeply strive for it. Storge without the storgic being is a spark that cannot kindle and set on fire.

The human soul naturally desires to attain what it receives at the summit of life. The soul strives for the summit and only for the summit. The striving for storge is the striving for the non-mortal storgic being and for its evocation, elicitation and attraction to oneself. The dream of one's own storge manifests the ideal striving of the higher soul for the storgic being.

Two beings, a man and a woman, insert themselves into a third (storgic) being that is homogeneous to them. The storgic being is not just the connecting link between the two or just their sum but both their connecting link and their sum as well as their highest point that, elevating them, brings them together from two sides into a third being where "one's own Self" and "one's other Self" are included in a threefold unity in which something of the inner world of the man and the inner world of the woman are combined in an unfused yet indivisible manner.

The storgic love of the man and the woman strives for the storgic being. Storgic love leads to the storgic being, evokes it and suffuses it. Love is selective, as it tries to guess with whom it should evoke the storgic being, unite with it, and enter into it.

The storgic striving is not the striving towards being integrated with one another but the striving for a common sensation and awareness of life and for having a whole life in common. In order to be together always –to be together in a meta-human sense –one must be together "à trois" together with the storgic being, to be in it and to be it.

Storgic spiritual life is a Love life in which the storgic being participates.

The results of the entire storgic process are concentrated in the storgic being. Storgic partners work not so much for their own sake as for their storgic being and for its development, enriching both themselves and it. Storge is necessary for developing the storgic being. The storgic being is the main subject of the storgic process and its main beneficiary.

The storgic being is the vehicle of the value experience of the love of one person for another. It incorporates the most holy and sacred aspects of love that cannot be scorned, that must be present constantly and at each moment, and that must confirm their presence with the feeling of storgic love.

Successful storge is evidenced by a sense of constant elation from the presence of "my other Self" in me and in my life, next to and together with “my own Self.” The elation of taking one's other Self into oneself and serving it like my own Self announces and attests the arrival of the storgic being.

The presence of the storgic being in one's life and even the presentiment of this presence brings elation into one's inner world. When the storgic being enters, it overwhelms man's entire being. Man welcomes the storgic being with rapture. It makes a person's whole life more intense, including the life of his or her body. The storgic being revives and augments the fullness and quality of a person's life, including his wellbeing and happiness.

The inclusion of the storgic being in the union of man and woman serves to bless this union and give it a sacral status.

Gender duality in the world of man exists in the form of the storgic being and storgic love.

The secret of gender lies in love. The unity of sexes in earthly nature serves the goal of reproduction and the continuation of the species. The unity of sexes in storge serves to reunite and to connect the disparate into a single whole (going as far as fusion). The storgic process is opposite to reproduction.

The man, the woman and the child they beget are together temporarily and in the physiological sense. The man, the woman and the storgic being are together always and in the storgic spiritual sense. The storgic being is an offspring that is born from the man and the woman, taking something from them. Storge and the storgic being require not any pair of people but precisely a man and a woman, who are solely capable of begetting offspring together and nurturing them. The storgic being reacts to the love of a man and a woman and draws life from it rather than from its surrogate or from friendship. Storgic love is necessary for the life of the storgic being.

Male and female natures cannot fuse in human existence per se. They fuse only in a being with superhuman existence – the storgic being.

Storgic partners live like two cherries that hang together and whose cores are connected by the stem of the storgic being. Each stem is connected through the tree branch with other stems on which pairs of cherries hang. This is a topic in its own right that we discuss in detail in The Emergence and Transfiguration of Man.

Storgic partners see the storgic being in each other's eyes – and love one another. When they stop seeing it, their love ceases.

A person waits for the storgic being to enter him. As soon as it appears, it becomes essential to him. So essential that he cannot live without it.

The storgic being does not belong to the individual or to two storgic partners. They only hold it by its opposite sides. And they do not always manage to hang onto it.

The storgic being itself strives to be bound between two people, and they have to keep it in place from two sides. This is the main task of people in storgic love. When the binding force of the storgic being weakens (which inevitably occurs from time to time) and its alienation is not perceived by the partners as a distress signal, it begins to distance itself further to the point of rupture that is then effectuated by the partners themselves.

One never knows when the storgic being will leave its place. It sometimes suffices that one of the two partners let his or her end go. When the storgic being abandons a couple, it leaves behind not a vacant but an empty (used up) place that is no longer capable of housing another storgic being. The drama of storgic love is the drama of the storgic being in man.

We do not know why the storgic being decides to come to us or to abandon us. People in general and, all the more, a concrete person never know how the storgic being participates in the spheres for whose sake it enters a soul. This does not mean that the question of why and how a storgic being comes out of its abode and enters a concrete person is always a mystery.

Man's inner world makes the situation of the Encounter of man and woman insurmountably attractive for the storgic being and brings the storgic being into action.

The storgic being is poorly protected in people. Its willpower is insufficient for reinforcing the durability of storge and maintaining man and woman in the storgic process. Man's free will may contradict the will of the storgic being and overcome it.

Infatuation often violates storge and intrudes into it. Infatuation and storge belong to different life currents. One flows independently of the other like movement on opposite river banks.

The storgic being renders itself to the man and woman of its choice. It is on the front lines and passionately strives to leap into combat without paying much attention to its rear flank.

By the will of the storgic being, one higher soul unites with another higher soul.

People can never be strangers to one another in the storgic being. They either participate in the Encounter and the storgic spiritual process or not. Some people have not met for storge, while others have met for storge and are ready to undertake the joint labor of storge.

Interaction and especially storgically effective interaction through the storgic being can arise even when there is no particular closeness in the desires of the Selves or mutual physical satisfaction or anything else that could assist storge at different levels of the inner world. All of this may be irrelevant in comparison to the storgic attraction that emanates from the storgic being. Nothing –no mismatches or oppositions –can obstruct the realization of storge if the storgic being wants it.

The inner world of man provides for the fundamental possibility of the appearance of storge thanks of the efforts of the storgic being. The storgic being exerts its storgic will, and the matter is settled. In principle, the striving for unity through the storgic being should be rewarded by storge. Most often, storge appears as a reward for the work of the storgic will per se. Storge is both the reward and the pure outcome of the storgic wills of both partners.

The storgic being realizes the state of the intertwinement of souls. This intertwinement is necessary not for its own sake but for something else.

The storgic spiritual process that proceeds at the will of the storgic being resembles the process of a potter making a vessel on his wheel. Two hands (the storgic wills of the man and the woman) manufacture the vessel together. Then it is filled with what it was intended to contain.

The storgic Self acts in the Structures of both man and woman. However, female storge is not age dependent, while male storge greatly weakens by the age of 40 and usually disappears altogether by the age of 50. Apparently the storgic being resists the male storgic will. At the same time, a man may retain his striving for storge to the end of his life.

According to the Russian expression, a couple in perfect harmony "lives soul in soul". How exact and true!

The storgic Encounter takes place to integrate the other into one’s inner world, and oneself into his or hers. A serious collective effort would be needed to develop the doctrine of storge. One can try to make a typology of storge, yet it will always be provisional. A single storgic process contains several phenomena and currents that are both dependent on one another and independent to a certain degree. Each of them produces its own results.

Storgic experiences are key experiences of the inner world of man. Man’s entire being participates in storgic interaction.

There is something in a woman's body that cannot live without a man's body and vice -versa. This is not so much sexual craving as a special facet of the flesh that is designed for the emergence of what the Bible calls "one flesh" – the husband-and-wife.

"The two shall become one flesh". The sexual dependence of the sexes harbors a mystery that is connected to the intertwinement of flesh with flesh and of the bodily life of one with the bodily life of the other. This leads to the emergence of co-flesh,in which the nature of the being of the other sex is experienced not as "mine" but as "my own". "My" body is another (or foreign) body that is in my possession. "My own" body belongs to me (and I to it) just as my proper body. The important thing here is the (possibly) fleeting yet mutual and simultaneous experience by the woman of the male flesh as her own and by the man of the female flesh as his own. The "storge of the body" awaits the man and the woman when, in expectation of it (rather than for animal pleasure or its anticipation), they strive to experience each others' bodies as their own. The "one flesh" arises in eros to the accompaniment of the joint melody of philia when it is not for the sake of eros or philia but for storge. The "one flesh" – one for two – spontaneously arises in the storgic process and even conditions this process in a special type of storge called self-induced storge.

Storge lies at the root of the Plan for man and thus must be attainable, if not effortlessly or automatically, then at least by itself and in a natural fashion on the condition, first of all, that it is launched; secondly, that it is not disrupted; and, thirdly, that it is at all possible in a given couple.

Self-induced storge is the most natural and widespread type of storgic intertwinement that has been most often implemented by people across the ages.

The "one flesh," the common destiny and the approaching movement of a man and a woman create such an intertwinement both above and below that the storgic being appears by itself on account of the state of things and of mutual readiness, because two people have lived together for a long period of time and amassed a lot in themselves together and now have many things in common. Decades or (more rarely) years pass for this to occur.

In self-induced storge, storgic forces are primarily spent on bringing the Selves towards each other. However, self-induced storge is not produced by the storgic being, which does not exist yet. The sensation of the storgic partner ("one's other Self") in self-induced storge is not the sensation of the life of the storgic being but the sensation of "one's Self" in the other.

Self-induced storge is accompanied by emotions whose fullness and intensity approach the loftiest emotions of friendship, which is also based on the approach of "Selves" through souls.

In self-induced storge, the storgic being comes into play only at the end of the storgic process. The development of self-induced storge is a movement towards the formation of the storgic being.

In self-induced storge, the interaction between man and woman spontaneously leads to the boundary beyond which the process of full-fledged (threefold) storge begins.

The storgic being does not participate in the process of self-induced storge. When the storgic being begins to act, self-induced storge gives way to the process that follows it.

The storgic being is born in self-induced storge. The storgic being created in self-induced storge is non-mortal and lives its own superhuman life yet does not hide from man and is constantly ready to enter into him to realize new storge in human life.

The realization of storge in its basic form is important in its own right. For this reason, chance and even incidental factors that have no subsequent importance give the process of love a spontaneous rather than a planned nature. This is apparently grounded in the foundations of the amorous feeling itself.

Human life strives for storge and remains in a state of its constant expectation. This expectation is implemented either in storge or in a special state of storgicity.

We should distinguish between storge and storgicity (storgic interrelations).

Many people meet year after year in the company of their youth. These relations sometimes lead to friendship and sometimes not. People look for the mutual affection of the Encounter, and they get together in orderto enter a special state of storgicity towards one another.

The entry of the storgic being into the initial storgic disposition of self-induced storge is one of the principal mysteries of human life. The fetus develops out of the storgic embryo in this disposition (cf. The Emergence and Transfiguration of Man, Part 23). This does not always happen – not even in every long-term marriage.

Self-induced storge does not appear instantaneously. One first needs to enter a state of storgicity in the Encounter and then work on the storgic being. The appearance of self-induced storge is preceded by a long period of conjugal storgicity that antedates the participation of the storgic being.

The close relations of two people of different genders are marked by a special intimacy of interpenetration. Two people, who may not have even needed each other psychologically at first, met and embarked on a journey together. Storgic relations arise on their own from the mutual journey through life and the mutual struggle, suffering, joy,and forbearance towards one another.

The process of storgic relations can also be launched without pre-storge.

A husband and wife that have lived together for years begin to resemble each other not only in manners but also in facial traits – even if self-induced storge does not occur. They are together. They are joined through their bodies and intertwined through smell, warmth, sounds and visual perception. It suffices to know the warmth of her body, the feeling of her skin, the smell of her perfume and the sound of her breathing to intertwine with her into a single whole in which not just bodies but also souls come together. The constant presence of one person in the life of another creates the situation of storgic contact.

Far from all married couples that attain conjugal storgicity ultimately gain a storgic being and enter into storge properly speaking. Most of them remain in a state of preliminary storgicity –a sort of preparatory storge. The lowest storgic good – the good of the contact of higher souls – can generally be attained without particular effort and is theoretically accessible to all. A good half of mankind is unable to rise beyond this self-induced stage of storgic development. A great many married couples become storgically beloved relatives. Their kin love differs from other types of self-love insofar as it links up with storgic love.

In contrast to storge, the state of preliminary storgicity can be attained at any age – 40, 60 or even later.

Storgicity as such is a key human quality with regard to the implementation of the Plan.

Love your neighbor as yourself, i.e., as your other Self, is the precise formula of storgic love. Yet the most important question here is what one means by one's "neighbor". In sentimental 19th -century Christianity, the "neighbor" in this commandment was understood as man in general. In the 20th century, the neighbor was taken to refer particularly to a "foreign" person –e.g., a person belonging to a certain "minority". Medieval people understood the neighbor as a person belonging to their confession. The neighbor in the Torah was a member of one's own people –a neighbor in the collective inner sense. The Torah called upon you to love every member of your own people as if he or she were your storgic partner or your other Self.

Love your neighbor as yourself is a storgic principle that sets down the highest degree of the collective spiritual unity of a people.

In personal storgic spiritual life (the co-life of one's Self and one's other Self), the storgic partner or neighbor is created through difficult and complex psychological work. When people co-feel, co-think and co-act in collective spiritual national life, the neighbor is set down and defined by the storgic unity of the people.

"Love your neighbor as yourself" is the ideal form of the storgic interrelations of a nation. However, the demands of storgic collective spiritual love are notimpossible ideal demands. Strong storgic national love is essential for the full-fledged life of the nation.

The love for your neighbor as yourself is a storgic national feeling.

Each national soul is marked by a distinct psycho-physiological affinity of countrymen. Each national soul has its own cultural affinity. Each national soul has a special (Russian, German, French, etc.) kind of storgicity. It preserves through the centuries its own way of experiencing the joy and pain of one's neighbor, its own image of affectionateness, decency, friendliness, psychological responsibility and compassion – and, of course, its own particular style of selflessness in all its forms from simple politeness and courtesy in everyday communication to the loftiest manifestations of self-sacrifice.

National storgicity is strengthened by a common view of life, a common faith, traditional ethical standards for social life and collective spiritual power.

The storgic proximity of a nation does not stem from the common life and ethnic solidarity of souls and their cohabitation and coexistence. In storgic proximity, the irrational sensation of one's people as the collectiveinner neighbor arises and functions. This sensation calls for self-sacrifice out of the feeling of inner responsibility for this neighbor.

The feeling of the storgic neighbor includes the feeling of fairness and is experienced by the storgic conscience, which calls for mutual inner responsibility and self-sacrifice.

Every person harbors an image of his or her national storgic neighbor –of the "real Russian" if you are Russian or of the "real Georgian" if you are Georgian. This is not the image of another person but an image of your own self in the life of your people. This image is idealistic by nature: it contains everything that every person in the nation loves, storgically desires and expects.

The demands of storgic collectivespiritual love are not impossible idealistic demands. Fullfledged national life requires strong storgic collectivenational love.

The storgicity of the national soul is not genetic. It exists insofar as the national soul exists and only when it exists. The nation turns into a mass not on account of the baseness of interests or the deafness to its ideological leaders but as a result of the disappearance of its storgicity.

The Russian nation, at least in the state that Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky found it, is particularly attractive thanks to its radiant storgicity that it apparently does not notice, flaunt or value in itself. Nevertheless, it comes (or used to come?) to the fore in everything.

The storgicity of Russian commoners is extremely touching, organic and full-fledged. It is the country's main asset. Russian people find it hard to live without storgic life, without experiencing the feeling of one's neighbors. They get drunk at times to overcome their inhibitions and experience storgic proximity. They are wary of people who do not drink and do not want to get a feeling of storgic proximity by weakening their selfhood through alcoholic relaxation. There are many different kinds of drunks in Russia, including charming drunks that you do not find in any other nation.

The attitude towards criminals and the compassion towards them as fallen, outcast and persecuted neighbors, just as the attitude towards beggars, cripples and wretched people, is clearly influenced by the storgic conscience of the Russian people. The same is true of communal “social leveling trends" in the Russian nation that derive from its understanding of fairness and are therefore storgically unabolishable. One must keep this in mind. In his time,Stolypin was right when he tried to destroy peasant communes for the sake of the economic and political development of the country, yet Leo Tolstoy was also right to criticize him for destroying the collectiveinner health of the nation.

One should distinguish between forced storgic growth and free storgic spiritual growth. Free storgic growth requires the willing participation of the cherub.

Forced storgic growth takes place at all stages of storge (except the highest). Yet only selfinduced storge is founded upon it. Thus anyone can engage in the labor of self-induced storge in any healthy inner state of life.

Forced storgic growth in self-induced storge aims to give a greater fullness of life to a man and a woman that have entered the initial intertwinement of their inner worlds. In comparison to free growth, it has a short range. Anyone participating in the forced storgic growth of self-induced storge strives to attain the highest possible state that has been set for him. The work of forced growth in self-induced storge is confined to one's inner world and one's Self.

In contrast, storgic work in free growth focuses not so much on one's own inner world as on the inner world of one's storgic partner. This takes the form of service, nurturing, self-sacrifice and, of course, storgic love itself, in which two people freely and joyously intertwine with one another.

In its pure form, free storgic growth is possible thanks to the interaction through the storgic being. In such interaction, the partners learn free storgic growth and bring about an acceleration of storgic growth per se that is necessary for the greatest activation of the will of the storgic being.

As a rule,free storgic growth eventually slows down. A good means of preserving storge and augmenting the storgic good is to participate in collective national life, which assures and actively promotes the acceleration of storgic growth. Self-induced storge becomes extremely problematic without collective national storgicity. The fruits of self-induced storge grow out of the collective inner storge of a nation.

Souls must approach each other for storge. When the inner world of one person is tightly closed from the inner world of another by the separating boundaries of each individual, souls usually approach each other through the penetrative force of infatuation. Philia desires storge and wants to elevate infatuation to storgic heights. Infatuation shows the storgic striving of the soul the way to another heart, pointing to an image and proposing it. It is extremely difficult for storge to materialize without philic emotions.

Pre-storgic infatuation is necessary for penetrating another soul and creating room for storge – creating a channel that would link the higher souls of a man and a woman. The storgic place in the female soul cannot remain empty and insistently demands fulfillment. It is so difficult to withstand such pressure that a woman sometimes offers this place to the first comer – to anyone who will take it.

Storge is the unification of higher souls. It is difficult for a soul to find by itself the other soul with which it should and must be storgically together. Striving for storgic intertwinement, people often become disappointed in each other on account of the blindness of their souls.

Different types of storge surrogates appear, because storge is set in motion in a preliminary fashion or on account of impatience yet without sufficient grounds for the soul. An encounter sends the signal for storge and sets in motion what can be set in motion at the given (and possibly very ill-suited) moment.

Storge may fail, because the process goes awry: one did not live together for long enough or destructive philic forces intervened or life separated the two persons or they made a mistake en route or something was lacking or an accident took place or there was a fatal misunderstanding and so on and so forth.

However, storge may also fail, because the higher souls are unable to be in storge with their storgic being. The storgic partner may become "foreign" immediately or years after, not being intended for me or for anyone else for that matter. Storge always "turns out" to be something and may turn out to be "foreign storge".

Foreign storge arises first and foremost when a man and a woman have undertaken storge in vain. Although both of them may well be capable of full-fledged storgic proximity and may go to great efforts, nothing comes of it, because they are not suited for each other and have mistaken their partner for someone that he or she is not. All the conditions for implementing full-fledged storge may well be present, yet it remains unattainable on account of hidden alienation or incompatibility. She may well not be meant to become his storgic partner – and vice-versa. And there is nothing you can do about it.

One may say that another Self acts in storge – your other Self. Or that your own Self acts – only another "your Self". In foreign storge, it is your own Self and "your foreign Self" that act. The latter is next to you and together with you yet incapable of being in full-fledged storge with you.

In foreign storge, people live as a couple. Foreign storge always involves a couple that was unable to enter into storge in the final account (when triple storge turned out to be impossible).

Foreign storge is not tripartite but bipartite storge –storge without a storgic being. This is the most widespread type of storgic relationship. In the best of cases, foreign storge leads to storgic relations without the storgic being. In the worst of cases, it leads to dark storge.

In foreign storge, the storgic being is absent from the very start and, most importantly, can never be present. Foreign storge is foreign for the simple reason that it lacks a storgic being despite the existence of loving relations. The storgic being does not see this love or sees disparities in it that are overlooked by the partners themselves.

Although many of the processes that take place in self-induced storge also take place in foreign storge, the storgic being does not appear in the latter.

No one is immune to foreign storge. It is not a failure that constantly threatens the storgic process or a fiasco but the unsuccessful choice of the storgic partner. Two people have erroneously selected each other for storge. Foreign storge involves two storgically incompatible people.

The right idea is always an idea that has been correctly divined. In the same way, “one’s other Self” is an “other Self” that has been storgically divined correctly. The storgic partner is either divined or not during the Encounter.

Foreign storge is incorrectly divined storge. The correct recognition of the storgic partner is a key task of human life as such. The storgic being is not a blind participant in storge but a participant with vision and thus with willpower. The right storgic choice can be made when the storgic being itself secretly participates in this choice.

Naturally, the storgic being participates in divining one’s storgic partner not by saying “it’s him!” or “it’s her!” but by creating (surreptitiously and beforehand) a storgic intuition and a more or less distinct (though fanciful) image of one’s storgic partner.

Although this applies to both men and women, it is particularly true of women, who are more tightly connected to their storgic being than men. A woman needs to have a male image suggested by her storgic being and preserves it until she meets her man. She would not recognize him otherwise.

The true storgic male image usually competes in the woman’s soul with a false storgic image that is created by the psycho-physiological tastes of her female Selfhood and her female passions and tastes. These images do not coincide in general, and the woman must make a choice, which is a difficult and dangerous task.

Foreign storge is an error of storgic recognition or a storgic error, in which the participants choose the potentially wrong storgic partner for themselves and try to implement storge with him or her. They could (and should) have been in their own storge yet have found themselves in foreign storge instead.

The Encounter in foreign storge can serve different goals such as family life with children or without, joint struggle, mutual aid and assistance or even mutual creation. However, it can never serve the appearance or development of one’s own storgic being.

Foreign storge is not something unfinished, unformed or disrupted but an initial storgic error. Storge has been implemented, yet it is not one’s own. Many people live in foreign storge without realizing it or admitting it to themselves. One can grow very attached to something “foreign.” Yet it never becomes “your own”.

THIS FRAGMENT NOT TRANSLATED.

You can leave this life without ever realizing what kind of storge marked your joint life. Foreign storge most often manifests itself at a moment of storgic trial, which may never occur. One should not think that the storge was different before the trial and then became foreign. On the contrary, it was always foreign yet has become patently foreign now.

For a man, foreign storge usually manifests itself when he realizes that his spiritual life cannot find an echo in the woman’s soul. For a woman, foreign storge usually comes to the fore when she sees that there is nothing that she can absorb from the male higher soul, no matter how much she tries.

To tell whether storge is foreign or your own, one must create a difference of spiritual potentials within it, a spiritual voltage that puts it to the test of spiritual growth, making it disintegrate and disclose itself. One of the storgic partners makes a powerful spurt of spiritual growth and rises to a higher spiritual level that the other partner cannot attain by himself. It turns out that, in one of the central aspects of life (that has always existed before and has now become apparent), the partners do not merely have different views or develop differently but do not correspond to each other. Their alienation is not the result of a situation in which something impedes them but of the fact that they are foreign to one another, even though they love and are very much attached to each other.

Each person has his own level of intolerance of foreign storge. At a certain level of alienation, it becomes impossible to live together. You can make something foreign less foreign at the expense of tremendous effort. Foreign storge sometimes passes unnoticed. You can also conceal foreign storge from yourself or your storgic partner. You can “bypass” foreign storge to prevent it from becoming evident or destructive. You can make a “marriage agreement” that provides for foreign storge in conjugal life. Foreign storge is not something pre-storgic, however. It is developed storge, in which a storgic catastrophe is possible.

People do not know how to search for a partner to implement tripartite storge. They dream of finding him or her but do not know how to do it. They lack the necessary know-how as well as clear-cut notions about the unconditional spiritual value of storge and about the fact that storge is a lawful and intrinsic aspect of spiritual life –storgic spiritual life.

Each couple has its own storgic tensile force. Like a blind elemental force, this force keeps pulling the bow string tighter and tighter with no regard for where and at whom the arrow will fly and for what reason. Foreign storge is a fairly high level of storgic unity between a man and a woman. And it arises through a long and inexorable storgic process.

Foreign storge is one of the inevitable results of storgic work per se. We mortals may consider foreign storge to be a self-delusion of sorts. However, in human life, a storgic result is foreseen from above. This result is attained in one way or another. Storge is included in God’s Plan for man, and foreign storge does not contradict this Plan. It is impossible not to create storge of some sort. Proper storge always arises amid a sea of foreign storge, and this is apparently enough.

Numerous rooms, designs and purposes exist at different levels of the inner world of man. All of them are reserved for people (and, possibly, not just people) that one encounters in life. Each of them occupies his or her own room – separately or together with others. The rooms are all different: dark and light, large and small, nailed up, walk-through, open, for permanent or temporary residence, for childhood friends, for one's mother, wife, neighbor, director, teacher, student or hero. There are so many rooms that a human life is not enough to fill them all. A person sometimes does not even suspect of the existence of a room that he particularly needs. Or he looks for it without ever finding it. Certain special-purpose rooms or rooms intended especially forsomeone are created or destroyed in the course of life. The richness of a person's inner world depends to a considerable degree on his or her occupied rooms and the people that have settled in them.

There are very few luxury rooms on the upper floor. One of them, when empty, distinctly calls upon people to enter, yet someone who directly or indirectly wants to enter this room of storge must settle in the entrance hall and the first-floor rooms and pass through a series of walk-through rooms, in each of which he or she can get stuck without ever becoming "one's other Self". This is a long and difficult endeavor for which a lifetime may not suffice.

Another room on the upper floor does not (unlike the first) announce itself ahead of time, does not open up its doors for everyone to enter and, generally speaking, does not disclose itself until "one's other Self" settles in it – the other Self that is designated and destined exclusively for it. This is the room of the storge of revelation. A person knows that it exists yet only gains this knowledge together with the person that settles in it. The doors of the enfilade of rooms seem to open up on their own before "one's other Self," who immediately finds the room of the storge of revelation and settles in it. One can evict someone who settles in the room of the storge of revelation only by destroying it.

Storgic revelation indicates that the storgic being has come to life of its own accord in interpersonal life.

The storge of revelation is a mysterious phenomenon, because it is conceived and, to a large extent, implemented by the free will of the storgic being, which thirsts for self-realization and authoritatively intertwines the two people that it selects.

Ordinary storge passes through many successive stages until it finally becomes mature storge at an advanced age. In contrast, the storge of revelation does not need to pass through stages: it sets in at once, as if it had always existed and now finds a way of manifesting itself and launching storgic growth.

The storge of revelation is an undeniable though extremely rare existential phenomenon. The fact that people find each other for the storge of revelation is almost a miracle. Their lives are specially organized in such a way as to make the storge of revelation possible.

One often lets the storge of revelation pass by, because pre-storgic love has already arisen for someone that life presented at the right moment. The storge of revelation occurs only once – once in a lifetime. It is offered only once and is implemented only a single time.

Every human soul consciously and partly subconsciously dreams about the storge of revelation. The storge of revelation is true love that every human being longs for.

The storge of revelation is such a positive and (mystically and metaphysically) significant phenomenon of human life that it does not evoke any questions of good and evil or of happiness and unhappiness. Everything grows pale beside the storge of revelation.

In itself, the human storgic will aims to attain the greatest possible result. All higher souls –the higher soul as such – seek the storge of revelation. The philic emotion in pre-storge also calls for the storge of revelation. Every human being waits for the storge of revelation. The storge of revelation is everyone's dream.

The storge of revelation differs from other types of storge by the instantaneity of its appearance. The storgic partner is immediately recognized by a separate trait of his – the timbre or modulations of his voice, his smile or his bearing. Although everyone sees this trait, it is storgic for one person only. And it may or may not correspond to the latter’s taste for male or female beauty.

In the explosive process that is launched with the storge of revelation, the storgic being comes into action immediately and to the greatest possible extent. It has been waiting for this moment.

Other types of storge are implemented gradually and step by step by transferring the contents of the life of one higher soul to another. A person is prepared for storge, gradually gaining speed. Storge is realized in much the same way as a building is constructed and settled.

The storge of revelation is the best starting point for implementing storge. One has no need to gain speed in the storge of revelation. The Encounter of the storge of revelation occurs as if it had already taken place ages ago. It already exists and is predestined to appear by storgic fate. It only needs to manifest itself again. In the process, it renovates or replaces something, removes the building material, and takes down the scaffolding. At the moment of such an Encounter, both the man and the woman clearly realize that "I am yours". Every person waits for this intently and, for this reason, often mistakes his desires for reality.

Every person lives in the presentiment of the life of the storgic being in himself and together with his other Self. This presentiment is usually called love.

Infatuation is not only penetration and preparation, as we said earlier, but also the presentiment of the storgic being. During infatuation, a person calls on the storgic being, sends signals to it, and summons it to come and settle in him. During infatuation, the man and the woman invoke the storgic being, yet it does not always reply to their call.

Strange though it may seem, the arrival of the storgic being does not hinder repeated infatuation. The latter seems to call the storgic being not in order to be heard but to experience time and again the ecstasy of calling.

Infatuation is often lived as the storge of revelation, pretends to be the storge of revelation, and believes in it itself, experiencing storgic feelings that do not exist. Love-infatuation knows how to feign the storge of revelation. Such pseudo-storge of revelation falls apart sooner or later, yet people do not admit it and continue to feign storge. This is also common in foreign storge.

Just as all pretence, pseudo-storge is not lies and deceit but a real experience –an experience of something that does not exist, somewhat like pain in an amputated leg.

The pseudo-storge of revelation is free, irresponsible and passionate, because it bears the storgic being as a presentiment. Partners readily and joyously accept the notion (announcement) of a third being, for this promises such intense feelings and such bliss in love that have never existed, will never exist and can hardly exist.

Men and women live in the allure of the implementation of storge. This is legitimate, just as is the fact that they rarely attain it. What we called pre-storge above is most often pseudo-storge, which announces itself prematurely and at an impossibly high level. In the subsequent process of hard-earned storge, this may prove fruitful or not. Yet it is always detrimental for the storge of revelation, because the storgic being does not participate in pseudo-storge.

Parting is a banal and everyday affair, while a storgic catastrophe belongs to the mystic and metastructural world.

The storge of revelation is a risky venture. Entering into the storge of revelation, a person recognizes subconsciously and in the depths of his soul his personal responsibility and knows and senses that parting is unimaginable and totally impossible. The storgic catastrophe occurs unexpectedly and to one's total bewilderment. Every storge calls for a lot of conscious and purposeful effort to avoid approaching the line beyond which the storgic catastrophe occurs. Every storge is attained and preserved through hard work.

There are anti-storgic women that are unable to enter into storge, do not want it and reject it. There are also non-storgic women that have difficulties entering into storge regardless of their relations with the storgic being. Women of a third type are storgically abandoned: they are not connected to a specific storgic being yet are capable of bearing it within themselves. A fourth type of storgic women strives for storge and knows how to create it.

The phenomena of spiritual life should be studied not bottom-up, as other natural phenomena, but top-down. To understand ordinary phenomena of spiritual life, one should first understand higherlevel phenomena, even if they are unique. Storge, just as all spiritual phenomena, should be first studied in its highest forms.

The storge of man and woman is the highest form of the Encounter. The highest level of storge is Co-Itinerancy. Co-Itinerancy is the joint ascent of personal spiritual and storgic spiritual life of a man and a woman.

People in the state of Co-Itinerancy have the richest and most full-fledged storgic spiritual life. Co-itinerant storge is the full measure of human storgic spiritual life. Co-itinerant storge is created by coitinerant women – the highest class of storgic women.

The co-itinerant woman creates Co-Itinerancy with a highly spiritual man. It is impossible to speak about Co-Itinerancy without first speaking about the man's Path of Ascent. We will describe the ascent of women in Co-Itinerancy after clarifying the Paths of Ascent of man in the next section about the principles and stages of human personal spiritual life.

Let us make a few preliminary remarks.

Most women are suited for storge. However, the general unpreparedness of women for CoItinerancy is even greater than the male unpreparedness for the Path of personal spiritual life. Women that can implement Co-Itinerancy are extremely rare. A co-itinerant woman is born, not made. Nevertheless, she needs to work hard to become co-itinerant. A co-itinerant woman is not one in a hundred thousand or a certain "type" but is singular and unique.

Not all storge strives for Co-Itinerancy. Only a co-itinerant woman can enter into Co-Itinerancy. Co-Itinerancy is a very special type of female spirituality – the highest type of all.

Co-Itinerancy is target-specific, and a co-itinerant woman is also target-specific. Co-Itinerancy is not prescribed but given, and, for this reason, Co-Itinerancy is possible with only one specific woman.

THIS FRAGMENT NOT TRANSLATED.

THIS FRAGMENT NOT TRANSLATED.

THIS FRAGMENT NOT TRANSLATED.

THIS FRAGMENT NOT TRANSLATED.

THIS FRAGMENT NOT TRANSLATED.

THIS FRAGMENT NOT TRANSLATED.

There can be several Encounters suitable for storge in a person's lifetime. However, CoItinerancy, just as the storge of revelation, is implemented only once, if at all. However, the Encounter for Co-Itinerancy is not necessarily given to a person as the storge of revelation and is not something inevitable. One must first try not to miss it and then to implement it.

It is important to choose whom you love, yet it also important to love whom you choose .

Just as there is the love of love and the love for love as such and for a human being as such, there is also the love for storgic love. The love for storgic love (cherubic love) is the feeling of the presence of the cherub in oneself before the storgic encounter takes place.

Cherubic love always accompanies the storge of revelation and Co-Itinerancy.

The love for storgic love can become stronger than storgic love itself. Cherubic love is one of the very few key values of life: it is an absolute value of the spiritual life of man. If such love is experienced by both partners, there is no way back. The return to the initial non-storgic state is possible only through a storgic catastrophe.

Storgic spiritual life is more powerful in a woman than in a man. A woman's storgic intuition is stronger, clearer, more reliable, more productive and faster. This is quite understandable: a man is a participant in storge rather than the vehicle of storge. He is usually the second person in storge –a follower rather than a leader.

The female soul is connected to a storgic being from the start. By himself, a man cannot bind himself to the cherub. He can make a woman engage in a storgic relationship, bind her and her cherub to himself and launch the implementation of storge. However, it is the woman that allows her storgic being to engage in love (or not).

The good of a woman's spiritual life is storgic growth. The acceleration of storgic growth depends on both storgic will and the possibilities of the woman's soul, as well as on the richness, energy and personal spiritual state of the man that the woman has allowed into her and with whom she has entered into storgic union. The drama of a woman's fate on the Path is that the man is not always capable of enriching her spiritually. A woman can compensate for a man's inner insufficiency to a certain extent, yet storgic growth cannot be assured for long by the woman alone. No woman is capable of working storgically for herself and for her man at the same time.

No matter whether a woman wants it or not, her soul is always in someone's hands or passes from person to person. As a creature of Love,she always needs a man to satisfy her profound need of spiritually clinging to someone – whether to her father, her brother, her husband, her hero or her idol. If she has no one to cling to, she has no reason to live.

A woman's soul hungers for a man. Her body craves for children. To sate her soul and satisfy her body, she looks for an abode, i.e., a home and a family –her home, her family and thus herfate^*). The work of her soul is based on freedom, while fate is associated with constraint. The soul essentially functions as a vehicle of fate. Generally speaking, the woman is inseparable from her fate. A woman's fate primarily consists of her encounters. Her husbands, her children and everyone that she has loved, cared for, and worried about, are part of the whole picture that she takes with her from this life.

The signs of fate are given to her in the stream of encounters that consists of countless fortuities. These fortuities themselves and the life stream of encounters tend to organize a woman's fate, augmenting the compulsory nature of her itinerant existence. For a woman, Fate and Encounter are virtually the same. She may turn out to be unworthy of her own fate or be unable to bear it.

It is seldom possible to understand and discuss a woman's soul as such, outside the context of her individual fate. A woman's soul is usually indissolubly connected with her fate and incorporated into it. For this reason, one can judge her soul only together with her fate. A woman with a lofty soul may have a mean fate that belittles her. In contrast, a lofty fate may be proposed to a base soul, either elevating it or debasing it even more.

A person as a unity is constituted through his or her entire life. However, men and women are "constituted" differently. A man is the totality of tribulations and states of his entire life. A woman is the totality (refracted through her) of all the people that she has encountered in her whole life and let into her soul. It is no surprise that a man recalls himself, while a woman recalls the things that happened to her, other people in relation to her, her biography, and the biography of her soul – the events of her life (that always leave a mark on the soul), her encounters, her collisions, her relations and her service.

From time immemorial, people respect women that primarily care for others (or at least seem to do so) and disdain lonely and childless women that have no female role to pl ay in life. The woman’s soul has the need to worry: a woman is alive so long as she worries about someone. This is her storgic trait.

The most important things for a woman are reliability, stability, protection, and the safety of existence –all the conditions that facilitate the task of caring. She is attentive to what is taking place around her as a school of real life. The feeling of danger, the apprehension of ill tidings, and a sense for the bad, the unsteady, the unreliable and the foreign are female merits recognized by the woman herself. She makes use of cunning and scheming for the purposes of protecting and preserving. Most women feel guilty not about failing to do something good but only about the occurrence of something bad that they had not managed to avert. This is another female storgic trait.

A woman does everything she can to become an abode and to put the abode of her hands and soul at the disposal of everyone that fate has entrusted her with –in particular, her children. Blessed is the man and the husband that knows what the inner abode of a beloved woman is all about.

A woman provides a man with security and hope. A woman has always been expected to be selfsacrificing, reliable and true. However, given that Eve guarded Adam while he culti vated, the expectations for the female functions of guarding and preserving depend on the male capacity of and activeness in cultivating. A man that has no goals that are inaccessible to the woman and that devotes himself to worldly goods, prosperity and existence (all of these are conditions of good guardianship) inevitably becomes the woman's breadwinning appendix and a male expression of female life tenets. It matters little here whether the man has male power, will and strength. Together with the woman, he lives on earth in a womanly way. In such a case, the woman's soul has virtually nothing to gain from the male soul. This is pleasant for a lazy soul yet lethal for a woman whose soul strives to realize its predestination.

The woman is a guardian. This means that she cannot exist alone without the thing that she is guarding with her soul. This may simply be the past: women remember what has happened a lot better than men and are keepers of the past and of memory. The woman's role is to be keepers of life in all its forms: past, present and future, individual, family and societal. This is yet another female storgic trait.

The woman is the last bulwark of the national soul and its character, tenets and traditions. This explains the staunch female conservatism that is essential for the stability and successive continuity of the nation. She must transmit from generation to generation the beliefs and ethical values that she received. The national soul and women are dependent on one another: women are more inserted into the collective soul than men, although they participate in the collective soul differently than the latter. The national soul protects a woman and makes her steadfast in life. The woman herself relies on the ethical law of the collective soul, and this law relies on her. She requires a national soul that gives her clear commands. More than men, women give strength to the conscience of the collectivesoul. They are the guardians of moral actions without being their arbitrators.

At the same time, the growth of spiritual consciousness and free spiritual work in society take place virtually without women, who guard the national soul and preserve it from disintegration.

Love often turns into hatred. There is a single step from the peak of storgic union to the abyss of storgic anti-love. Yet what a terrible and incomprehensible step it is!

Different factors and circumstances can turn a friend into a stranger and a wife into just a woman. Nevertheless, it is a completely different case when mutual life suddenly becomes anti-life: when a friend turns not into a stranger but into an anti-friend. The possibility of love turning into hatred and of a friend into an enemy/anti-friend indicates that our soul is capable of exchanging the radiant storgic spirituality that it experiences in storgic love into dark storgic spirituality that it experiences in storgic hatred.

The inner life can catch on dark storgic fire: in it, a person burns with the same power and the same freedom as in the fire of storgic love. People are just as loyal to dark storge as to storgic love and just as ready to give up their lives for it. A soul longs and strives to satisfy its need for dark storge just as much as its need for light storge. This is true despite the fact that the state of storgic anti-love is one of the vilest and most excruciating states of the soul.

Dark philic hatred focuses on the image of the enemy. It is the hatred of the enemy – of the stranger or foreign person. Dark storgic hatred is directed at one's own friend or neighbor who turns into a dark storgic partner. Brother against brother, daughter against mother, and the Ukrainian against the Russian are just a few typical examples of dark storge.

Storgic love requires the recognition of oneself in the other. Similarly, dark storge requires the recognition of one's anti-friend in the other. He becomes "one's other Self" with a minus sign. The dark storgic anti-partner, just as the storgic partner, is experienced in the fifth person.

One can respect a friend. However, one only experiences loathing for the dark storgic partner. Dark storgic loathing is one of the most terrible feelings a person can have.

A person's significance is determined by a fraction whose denominator is the person's opinion of himself and whose numerator is what he is in actual fact. It is easiest to raise your self-esteem through hatred – in particular, hatred of people that are close to you in one way or another or better to some extent. This is somewhat like jumping over a vaulting horse. Dark storgic loathing raises the denominator to the skies and casts the numerator into an abyss, greatly lowering the significance of a person. There is a special type of hatred towards a real or imaginary opponent who serves as an object that one must surpass.

Another difference between dark storge and dark philia is that dark storge is not just hatred but also the love for hatred. An enemy is characterized by the feeling of hatred towards him. Dark storge is marked by the love for the hatred of the anti-friend.

Dark storge includes dark philia. In contrast, dark philia does not include dark storge. Dark philia serves and caters to dark storge.

Hatred is an aberration of self-esteem. It is impossible to remain in a state of dark philia forever. A fit of anger or indignation eventually dies down. Although dark storge sometimes subsides, it usually lasts forever. The reason is that dark storge is part of storgic rather than philic life.

Dark storge usually arises from the dissolution of realized storge or storgicity, though not always. Dark storgic motives arise from the dissolution of every close relation, whether friendship, kin affiliation, national ties or infatuation.

Just as there exist storge and storgicity, there also exist dark storge and dark storgicity towards a person who was or may have become a storgic partner. Dark storgicity can arise towards a competitor at the workplace, a fellow writer or artist, or a more successful opponent in love. It can be experienced by a provincial inhabitant towards an inhabitant of the capital. There is also the dark storge of a man with mediocre talents towards a genius that occupies the place that the mediocre man would have liked to occupy in his imagination. The envy for one's neighbor is a type of dark storgic feeling.

In foreign storge, storgic feelings are secretly mixed with dark storgic feelings. Foreign storge constantly risks turning into dark storge.

Dark storge never arises from the breakup of the storge of revelation, however.

Antisemitism is the dark storge of other nations towards the collectivesoul of Israel. The Jews live in a totally incomprehensible national mode that is alien and extremely suspicious (as if they come from another planet). The Jews seem suspicious to everyone, and this is one of the reasons why they often become the object of dark storge. The vector of the dark storge of antisemitism is supported by the suspiciousness of collectiveinner spirits to the collective inner spirit and deep national being of Israel.

One can give different explanations for what triggers and augments antisemitism (and how), yet it would be naïve to think that they are the causes of this eternal phenomenon of dark storge.

One can understand and explain the genesis and causes of the philic feeling of hatred. This is a purely human phenomenon. As to dissolved storgic love, it may or may not turn into dark storge. This process is irrational. Dark storge is irrational and poorly understood. The causes of dark storge are literally unfounded.

The true reason for the emergence of dark storge is the inner need for dark storge. Antisemitism gives an outlet for the dark storgic need of the human soul, whi ch finds a means of satisfaction. Moreover, every collectivespiritual power believes that it is unstable without dark storge.

The pernicious influence of dark storge on a person's life has not been fully appreciated. Dark storge is not simply an element of life but a diabolic phenomenon –perhaps the only diabolic phenomenon of human life.

All bad things in human life are mixed in one way or another with the good. The only exception is dark storge. Dark storge does not and cannot have any good consequences. The only way to overcome it is to suppress it. However, this process does not facilitate growth in any way. Dark storge has no bright meaning. It destroys everything it touches.

At the same time, dark storge is a great temptation for the human soul – even more than bright storge. The replacement of storgic love by storgic hatred gives much greater pleasure than one had ever known in storgic love. Inspired by dark storge, one can make revolutions and destroy the lives of one's dearest people. Dark storge was at the root of the fall of Byzantium and the destruction first of Tsarist Russia and then of the Soviet Union.

Dark storge is a mortal illness of the soul – the personal soul and the collectivesoul. The mass dementia of a nation infected with dark storge is the worst thing that can happen to the national soul.

Most terribly of all, the loftiest (and, in particular, storgic) elements of the soul can turn into dark storge in the course of life. Another terrible fact is that destructive dark storge is easily aroused in a person and in the national soul.

There should never have been any dark storge in the inner world of a person realizing the Divine Plan – all the more so as such a person should have been prepared for it. Nevertheless, it arises. Where does it come from and why is it needed?

Adam violated God's interdiction on account of philic love. His son Cain killed his brother Abel (his successful competitor with regard to God's favor) on account of dark storge. God himself addressed Cain, the first-born human being on Earth, and explained the situation of earthly life in which he found himself after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden precisely in view of the dark storge within him.

In response to Cain's dark storgic dementia (he thought that he was being deprived of his primogeniture and, as a result, "Cain was very angry, and the expression on his face fell," Gen. 4:5), the Lord told him, "sin (khatat) crouches at the door. Its desire is for you, but you are to rule over it" (Gen. 4:7).

The word khatat used in this verse of the Book of Genesis has the same root consonants as the word khet 'sin', yet khatatin the Lord's commandment to Cain does not literally mean the same thing as sin.

Khatatis what precedes and produces sin (khet), and thisis why it can and should be controlled. The verb rovets 'crouches' in this phrase is only employed with regard to livestock in Hebrew. Khatatis not any temptation or sin that, like a wild beast, does not wait for permission to enter the place where his prey is. It is dark storge, which, like livestock, lives where it is allowed to. Khatatis the source of the "sinful temptation" that leads to the sin of killing one's brother. It is something that engenders dark storge in the human soul.

Dark storge does not hide but stands at the entrance to the human soul and waits for a good occasion and excuse to gain control of it. The soul is receptive to it and readily enters a state of dark storge. Sometimes, it experiences as much joy from dark storge within itself as it should get from bright storge.

Dark storge is a mysterious, obscure and widespread phenomenon. Is it intrinsic to man as such?

Dark storge can gain control of you at any moment. It is always near, yet it never forces itself upon you or breaks down the door into your inner world. It only enters when the door opens before it and when you allow it to come in of your own accord. The trigger mechanism of dark storge is always cocked and ready to fire in the soul. This is how things stand, and they cannot be otherwise. Dark storge conditions human life on Earth. This is what God explained to Cain.

The dark storgic feeling is Cain's feeling in man. Cain killed his brother. He could have refrained from doing so, yet the dark storge would have remained in him. "But you are to rule over it", i.e., you should not allow it to enter, even if violently provoked.

In punishment, Cain became a fugitive and a wanderer, i.e., he was stripped of the possibility of entering into dark or bright storge with anyone.

There are relations in human life that seem to exclude betrayal: parents and children, brothers and sisters, friends, and storgic partners. Dark storge often arises as a result of betrayal. Betrayal leading to dark storge is a common situation in private life. The same thing occurs in public life, yet it is less apparent. A revolution, no matter how morally or socially justified it is, is a kind of national betrayal.

The spirit of betrayal is always present in dark storge. Inner betrayal is a trait of all dark storge. Nevertheless, dark storge is a deeper existential phenomenon than betrayal. Betrayal is the typical outer guise of dark storge. In a certain sense, dark storge conceals betrayal. In his dark storgic feelings, a person strivesto elevate himself above the person he betrayed. He vilifies the latter, augmenting betrayal. In turn, betrayal keeps fueling dark storge and does not allow it to die away.

Dark storge is an organic part of the criminal world. This world constantly lives in a state of dark storge. The criminal element is particularly well suited for expressing the dark storgic state of life. The criminal world cannot do without dark storge. The latter is a condition of its existence. The criminal world becomes a world under the impact of dark storgic feelings, lives off them, and is supported by them. All the values and notions of the criminal world are suffused with dark storge.

People usually believe that one’s activities come first, then one’s way of life, and finally one’s values and worldview. I dare say that things are different with criminoids. Their worldview is based on a need for dark storge – for experiencing and implementing it. This inspires their way of life, which leads, in turn, to their activities.

Criminoids are not a psychological deviation but a particular human type with a particular makeup of the inner world. Criminoids are a particular kind of people that are vehicles of dark storge. Criminoids recognize other criminoids at first sight. They can get along or destroy each other. Any person who enters the criminal world must accept its dark storge.

The emergence of dark storge in public life is terrible and mysterious. This is the worst possible evil and calamity in human society. Dark storge is not specially invoked into human life but appears on its own and infects people. How does the infection spread? It spreads not through ideologists and politicians struggling for power and money and not on battlefields of any kind but, first and foremost, through criminoids that have obtained the freedom of action and self-expression.

Different classes in a state and different peoples in an ethnic group can live together for ages. There may be conflicts, of course, but no dark storge. Then special circumstances arise, and dark storge appears. Somebody inspires it.

Dark storge is not hatred or anger accompanying a struggle. An enemy is not the same as a dark storgic partner. Brothers can become enemies or dark storgic partners.

The criminal revolution of the 1990s in Russia showed how easily the criminal world merges with those who are supposed to fight it. They are the same people. They are neighbors connected by dark storgic relations in the most overt form – a form that is even more overt than the dark storge between the White and Red movements during the Russian Civil War.

If public dark storge appears, you can be sure that criminoids were its moving spirits. Whenever exceptional circumstances (such as civil war or national dementia) arise, dark storge is very rapidly engendered by criminoids. As soon as they get freedom of action and come out into the open (rather than acting out of the underground), they incite people to join them or infect them with dark storge. The dark storgic disease tends to live on for a long time even when its source disappears.

The object of dark storge may be one's friend, brother or father. Despite all its hatred, war is usually devoid of dark storge. In a war, you must win or even destroy your opponent. In contrast, dark storge calls for humiliating, debasing, dehumanizing and trampling your opponent underfoot. There are a lot of Sdomic elements here.

The criminoid element is usually considered to be something secondary –an accompaniment to historical events, which it can color yet not influence decisively. This is not entirely true. And, even if it is, it is not because things are that way but because the historical period of the criminoid element has not yet come.

Storge is spiritual life between man and woman on the side of the Encounter. The existence of homosexuality rejects a necessary condition of the storgic process – gender. Homosexuals cannot engage in storge. Storge is foreign to them. Moreover, homosexuality, which is based on an aversion to women and involves unnatural sexuality, takes an aggressive stance against natural sexuality. This is more than just anti-storgicity. In all its bodily and psychological manifestations, homosexuality strives to pervert the natural sexual need. For this reason (among many others), it is suffused with a dark storgic feeling towards everything that engenders storge.

A homosexual couple is not simply a non-storgic entity that cannot engage in storge: it is an antistorgic entity. Homosexual experiences cannot lead through the Encounter to the higher soul; thus they castrate storgic spiritual life.

Homosexuality is darkly storgic by its very nature and by the deeply negative attitude of homosexuals towards storge, which is possible only between a man and a woman. The dark storge of homosexuality contradicts the human striving to realize the Divine Plan.

Storge leads to the synergy of deep layers of inner life and to the highest fullness of the latter in human beings. In collectiveinner storge, a person surpasses himself. More than anything else, this serves to consolidate collective inner life.

The motif of dark storge is included in collectiveinner life as such. Dark collective inner storgicity compels one to love his hatred as his own self.

Dark storge lies in wait for a nation and can overcome it at a moment of spiritual weakness – especially during revolution and civil war.

The spirits of revolution are the same everywhere. One does not have to search for them. They are dark storgic spirits. They make use of different types of contemporary slogans calling for the struggle for freedom, equality, brotherhood, social justice, democracy, human rights, national identity, communism and the world order. The Parisian crowd that brought the Jacobins to power was drunk with dark storge against priests and aristocrats. The same thing was true of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Dark storge also played a major role in the events of 1991 in Russia.

All the revolutions and ensuing civil wars are darkly storgic. Collective national dark storgic feelings intensify on the eve of civil war. This derives from the very nature of dark storgic desires. One cannot proclaim the ideas generated by dark storge without calling for revolution and civil war. All the revolutions of the Modern Era began in this way.

Today, all cultured Russian people are once again taking such a stance on current events as if they were longing for civil war. With regard to dark storge, they are already in a state of civil war. They may well get it.

By its very nature, public dark storge engenders civil war and, by its very existence, incites people to engage in it. Social, national or religious division is just a mechanism and an excuse for dark storge to realize itself. The object of dark storge may be a class or other ethnic entity or something illusory or semi-imaginary. Generally speaking, the spirits of revolution live in a dark storgic land of fantasy rather than in reality.

Collectivespiritual dark storge has to be painstakingly cultivated by dark cultural means. Dark philia comes over the national soul like a fire, making it burn with dark storge.

The twenty-first century may well become the century of dark storge. All Russians that were abandoned by Yeltsin’s government in the former Soviet republics experienced the pressure of dark storge kindled by nationalism. Russians have not ceased to be Ukrainians or Ukrainians Russians, yet they are increasingly becoming dark storgic Ukrainians or Russians. The entire Middle East and some North and South African countries have been infected with dark storge. Some European and North American countries are next in line. The most unexpected combinations may arise here.

Dark storge naturally emerges in every civil war(even in a feudal system), yet it subsides after the end of the war or a change of government. As a result,dark storge does not take root in the nation. Russian class-based civil war was unique insofar as the winners continued to cultivate dark storge in peacetime on a permanent basis.

Dark storge is not an inherent part of the socialist system as such. However, its inculcation in the Soviet Union was initially motivated by a practice of social engineering that was implemented for ideological reasons. Soviet people absorbed dark storge from childhood: in their education and worldview, they became people of societal dark storge.

The main vice of Soviet socialism and its misfortune and downfall was the fact that this system was based on dark storge. The immense danger of inculcating dark storge can be seen from the fact that its traces are still visible in the attitudes of people that had been born shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Dark storge was one of the key aspects of this immense country in the 1930s and 1940s. It predominated during certain periods, turning people into a community for which the collectiveinner feeling of the neighbor was replaced by an affinity based on storgic hatred. Towards whom? Towards the “enemy,” of course. Naturally, one often spoke about foreign enemies and international imperialists, yet, in actual fact, the arrow of dark storge was always aimed at the domestic enemy –the dark storgic neighbor.

From the standpoint of dark storge, this “enemy” is not a stranger but a neighbor and one’s countryman to whom the bright feeling of neighborly love should spread. It is not enough (and not so important really) to identify who the “enemy” is. The main thing is to find him among one’s closest people –one’s father, husband, brother or friend.

The recognition of the “enemy” in one’s neighbor is a storgic encounter in negative form. The “enemy” is the neighbor that must be done away with after his higher soul is stripped of all its vestments. This is the reason why unmasking became a cult activity. People were forced to renounce their parents, children, wife and friends. Punitive agencies are holy in a dark storgic society, for they unmask enemies, who are said to be everywhere. State security is the main source of dark storgic spirituality. Storgic hatred in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s was considered to be a mark of honor – the highest spiritual merit of all citizens loyal to the regime. People were told not to relent in their dark storgic hatred even for a moment! This is how children were educated and adults reeducated.

The atmosphere of general wariness that overcame an enormous country in a short period of time and the search for “enemies” among one’s neighbors resulted in the defamation of the bright storgic feeling of friendship and its replacement by compulsory “comradeship” in storgic hatred. Only in such collectiveinner conditions was it possible to organize mass starvation and implement dekulakization and collectivization that uprooted the nation and annihilated the guardians of national storge – the Russian peasantry.

By the agapic feeling proclaimed in the sixth commandment of the Sermon on the Mount, you should love the enemy that hates you. In contrast, the apex of dark storge is the hatred towards friends that you love. Such a worldview is, of course, best expressed by Pavlik Morozov, the ten-year-old boy who was carried away by Soviet storgic hatred towards his father.

Dark storge became the foundation of morals. It was not immorality but a sort of public moral monstrosity. Thanks to storgic dualism, love and hatred towards one and the same person can coexist in the soul. For Soviet people, love was a private matter, while dark storgic loathing was a public affair.

The dark storgic totalitarian consciousness is not “black and white.” Dark storgic feeling cannot experience “white” –it only experiences “black.” For it, “white” is something that is totally “non-black.” In the Kingdom of Dark Storge, one must not simply defame all that is bright while preserving some kind of veracity but turn all that is bright into the darkest black. The more coarsely this is done, the better.

All that is white must be called black, and vice-versa, not for the sake of tricking people or of deceit as such but as philic support for dark storgic solidarity. In this dark solidarity, one cannot call a righteous man a sinner – that would be unconvincing. To persuade the dark storgic feeling, one must say that he is an outright rascal. In the Kingdom of Dark Storge, one does not become “black” but is declared to be so. Here one is expected to hate his beloved friend, if he is declared to be an “enemy”.

The key word of the 1930s, “vigilance”, expressed the rule of dark storge with great literary precision. One understood “vigilance” to mean not only the search for “enemies” among one’s neighbors but also the search for objects of collectiveinner hatred of all kinds. In the 1930s, the atmosphere of total intimidation catalyzed the psychological life of national souls to an extent that is usually seen only in wartime. The regime gave anyone who wanted to satisfy his dark storgic need the opportunity to do so by submitting a denunciation to the all-powerful secret police. This dark storgic need turned out to be incredibly strong in people at the time...

“Total fear” naturally existed in a society that was consolidated by dark storge. For that generation, the fear of the secret police combined both dark storgic and psychological horror. This was the fear of becoming the target of super-personal and collective storgic hatred that emanated from the collective inter-psychic force. The hypnotic force of this fear was so great that stripped even the most courageous people of their willpower, ability to think and capacity to protest.

Soviet dark storge in its pure state existed in the late 1920s and 1930s. Subsequently, during the years of struggle with a real enemy, it receded into the background. After the war, the regime tried to revive dark storge (the campaign against “cosmopolitism”).

Dark storge abated after Stalin’s death, only to resurface unexpectedly in the second half of the 1980s in a paradoxical and terrifying form. Then something extraordinary began, and we can still hardly understand it.