Higher Self Café v8: The Prerotic Threshold

Posted: September 14, 2025 | Author: Dr. Ernie | Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: dialogue, emotions, identity, love, passion, philosophy, psychology, purpose, religion, self, unity, values |Leave a comment

Continued from Higher Self Café v7: Transcendent Self-Interest in an Age of Abundance

Setting: The Higher Self Café, a timeless coffeehouse perched above the ordinary bustle of life. Twilight drapes the sky beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, a gentle purple hue that holds the promise of dawn without yet yielding to it. At a cozy corner table, four figures from across time and tradition sip their drinks amid the café’s soft murmur:

• James Joyce, eyes alight with poetic mischief;
• Plato, dignified and curious;
• Gregory of Nyssa, serene in monastic robes; and
• Abhinavagupta, smiling with a quiet, mystical joy.

A faint music plays — a melody that seems to hover just before its crescendo, as if even the air is waiting in suspended anticipation.

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Joyce: (swirling a dark espresso in a small cup, his gaze unfocused) There’s a moment… you know, a shimmering moment just before passion ignites. (He pauses, the hint of a smile on his lips.) It’s like the whole world holds its breath. I’ve felt it in art and… elsewhere — the instant before a kiss, or before a poem’s climax. That delicious hovering on the brink of something.

Plato: (leaning back with an intrigued smile) You speak of a threshold of desire, do you not? In my time, I described something similar in our language of eros. It sounds like the soul sensing Beauty before it ever grasps at an earthly form — a longing poised in mid-air. The way a lover might gaze upon a beloved and feel the heart stir, yet remain in wonder rather than possession.

Joyce: (snaps his fingers softly, delighted) Yes! Wonder. Exactly. In my own words, I’ve called it aesthetic arrest — when the mind is held rapt, stilled by a vision of beauty, neither lusting nor loathing, just… enchanted. The shimmer before climax, if you will. The heart caught in a moment of pure poetic intensity, raised above the urge to grab at the pleasure. (He chuckles.) Father Aquinas meet Luigi Galvani — an enchantment of the heart, the Italians called it.

Plato: (nods, eyes brightening) Enchantment of the heart — a fitting phrase. In our symposia, we spoke of Eros as the child of Poros and Penia — of Plenty and Poverty. Longing born of lack, reaching for what it does not have. But here you describe a paradox: a longing that does not reach, not yet. It just is, suspended. A pre-eros, perhaps — prerotic, to use your modern tongue.

Gregory: (his hands wrapped around a steaming cup of tea, speaking gently) A paradox indeed, but a holy one. In my tradition, we have a concept called epektasis — the soul’s unending ascent toward God . Always moving, always desiring, yet never fully satiated because the divine is infinite. “This truly is the vision of God: never to be satisfied in the desire to see Him,” I once wrote. To long unendingly is itself a blessed state. (He glances kindly between Joyce and Plato.) What you describe — this prerotic pause of longing without lust — sounds akin to the soul’s condition when it yearns for the Divine. Suspended desire without grasping.

Abhinavagupta: (tilting his head in agreement, his voice musical and calm) How fascinating — across continents and eras we converge on this. In Kashmir we speak of madhya, the center or luminous pause. It is the gap between breaths or between thoughts — pregnant with spanda, the divine vibration of life. (He places his cup down softly.) When a desire arises but has not yet burst into action or craving, one is in that middle state. In our practice, we cherish it. The yogi finds God in the pause before the next heartbeat, the moment before arousal overtakes the body. It’s a vibrant stillness.

Joyce: (raises an eyebrow, smiling) A vibrant stillness — lovely. You know, that reminds me of something in art. The mind caught in aesthetic arrest feels a radiance, as if a hidden power behind the world shines through the form . A luminous silent stasis, I called it in a book of mine — the instant where beauty’s wholeness and harmony hold you spellbound. It seems we’re all circling the same ineffable experience, each through our own lens.

Plato: (chuckles warmly) It appears so. We might use different names: beauty, God, spanda — but the experience? Perhaps one. For me, the lover of wisdom, it is when the soul recalls the Form of Beauty itself. Think of the ladder of love: one begins with the beauty of a particular body, but rises to see Beauty in all bodies, then to Beauty in the soul, in laws, in knowledge — until finally one glimpses Beauty itself, pure and eternal. That glimpse is fleeting, an instant where you almost touch the eternal but remain an onlooker, arrested in awe. I dare say that is your prerotic state — the cognitive-affective threshold before one either falls back down to earth or ascends higher.

Gregory: (smiling at Plato) And unlike poor Icarus, perhaps it is best not to rush too close to the sun! In yearning for God, we never truly “arrive” in a final sense, yet that is our joy: an eternal approach. Each moment of unsatisfied desire brings a deeper satisfaction in God’s endless mystery. (He stirs his tea thoughtfully.) There is a kind of divine playfulness in this: we are incomplete beings that become fulfilled precisely by reaching beyond our completeness.

Joyce: (with a playful sigh) In more mortal terms — it’s the lover who finds the chase sweeter than the catch, perhaps? The artist who lives in the tension of the unfinished masterpiece, savoring what could be more than what is.

Abhinavagupta: The potential rather than the consummation. (He nods vigorously.) In Tantra, we sometimes speak of holding the energy at its peak without release — because in that holding, one steps into a heightened consciousness. It’s like a bowstring drawn taut: the energy vibrates, humming with possibility, but the arrow hasn’t flown yet. In that hum, one can hear the universe.

(A brief hush falls as each of them reflects. The café’s background music plays a few soft notes that climb toward a resolution but then gently subside, never quite finishing the phrase. At a nearby table, a young couple shares a silent gaze, their hands almost touching but not quite — a tender tension lingering in the air. The four thinkers notice and smile knowingly before continuing.)

Plato: (gesturing subtly toward the couple) Look there — even without words, they illustrate our point. See how they dwell in that sweet uncertainty? The moment before the kiss, as you said, Joyce. Their eyes are filled with longing, but also wonder.

Joyce: (softly, almost reverently) The shimmering air between two lovers about to embrace… It holds more poetry than any consummated act. Once they kiss, the tension dissolves, the spell breaks. But now — now they are suspended in enchantment.

Gregory: It is as if time has paused for them. (He closes his eyes briefly, smiling.) Such pauses are sacramental, in a way. In the Christian mystic’s path, there are moments of divine pause where one feels God so intensely that one dare not move or speak. Not that God isn’t always there — but in these moments our awareness catches up to truth. The bride in the Song of Songs says, “I am faint with love,” as she waits for her Beloved at the door — a holy lovesickness, unfulfilled and therefore unending.

Abhinavagupta: (opens his palms upward, eyes shining) In my tradition, we have a practice of focusing on exactly that kind of moment. One of our texts says: “Between two breaths, in that tiny interval — Bhairava (the Divine) is revealed.” When the breath pauses, the mind falls silent, and one experiences the spanda at the heart of reality. It’s a bit like catching the soundless sound, the ring of a bell after the bell has been struck and the sound is fading. That fading moment contains a trace of the infinite.

Joyce: (laughs quietly into his cup) The soundless sound… I love that. (He winks at Abhinavagupta.) You know, you and I — a mystic from the East and a lapsed Catholic wordsmith from Ireland — we both seem obsessed with the gaps between things: between breaths, between thoughts, between the notes of a song, between the lines of a poem.

Abhinavagupta: Indeed! The madhya, the gap, is holy. One might say the synapse is holy too — the tiny gap between nerve cells where a spark jumps. Life is happening even in what seems like emptiness. (He takes a slow breath.) The prerotic is exactly such a gap in life’s fabric — charged emptiness. The desire is there, alive, but unattached, unconsummated.

Plato: (tapping a finger on the table, as if lecturing gently) And in that unattached desire, we find a pure form of longing. It’s not yet muddied by bodily urge or fear or the scramble to own the object of love. It is longing as a guiding star — pointing the soul upward. In the Phaedrus I likened the soul to a charioteer with winged horses: when we see true beauty, the soul’s wings start to grow again. In this prerotic state, those wings quiver, ready to unfurl. The soul remembers a greatness beyond itself.

Gregory: (points upward with one finger, smiling) Our wings quiver — what a wonderful image, Plato. For me it is as if the soul is forever pulled by a divine gravity. We are oriented toward Transcendence by nature, as a plant seeks the sun. That tug, that metaphysical pull toward what is higher, is present in every moment of yearning. Particularly in these threshold moments before action, we sense it unmistakably. We feel both our incompleteness and the possibility of fullness looming just beyond.

Joyce: And being human is to live in that dynamic, isn’t it? Tension between what we are and what we ache for. We are creatures of the in-between. (He raises his cup as if in a toast.) Here’s to liminality — the betwixt and between, where all the poetry happens!

Plato: (grinning) I’ll drink to that, though I might phrase it differently. To be human is to be a lover — in Greek, a philo-sopher, a lover of wisdom, never fully wise. Always seeking. We stand on the threshold of divinity, midway between beast and god, longing upwards. The prerotic longing, the love that hasn’t fallen into mere lust, is perhaps the purest form of Eros.

Abhinavagupta: Yes! Eros in its pure state — desire as a spiritual force, not yet dissipated. In Sanskrit, iccha-shakti, the power of will or desire, is one of the facets of the Divine. When iccha (will/desire) is held in that poised state, it becomes a door to samadhi (union). In other words, the very energy of longing can carry you to enlightenment if you neither suppress it nor mindlessly indulge it, but hold it with awareness.

Gregory: (regarding Abhinavagupta with interest) That resonates with me, though we use different terms. We say grace can elevate natural human love into divine love. The key is not to extinguish longing but to transfigure it. When a desire is suspended in prayer or contemplation, one finds that the longing becomes the answer in a way. The reaching is the arriving, because in reaching out for God, we are already in communion with Him.

Joyce: (running a hand through his hair) Ah, but let me play the skeptic for a moment, gentlemen. There is something undeniably human about also wanting fulfilment, isn’t there? All this talk of endless longing — beautiful, yes, but one could say it’s also bittersweet. What of the person who aches and aches and is never fulfilled — is that really the fullness of being human? Is the prerotic state enough? Or must it eventually flower into something tangible?

Plato: (scratches his chin) A fair question. In my philosophy, every longing seeks its telos, its proper end. Eros ultimately seeks the eternal Beauty — that is a kind of fulfillment, though not in a finite way. Perhaps the trouble comes when we confuse where the fulfillment lies. If one mistakes a fleeting pleasure for the ultimate, then yes, one ends up frustrated. But if one recognizes that the sweet ache itself is directing one to a higher object… then the journey is the reward, in a sense.

Abhinavagupta: In the East, we sometimes say: the journey and the destination are one. The longing, when experienced with full consciousness, is itself a form of bliss. I think of it like music — the anticipation of the resolution is what gives melody its sweetness. If every chord resolved instantly, there’d be no music, just a flat sound. The tension makes it beautiful. So yes, the prerotic is bittersweet, but therein lies its rasa, its flavor of bliss. We call that shanta rasa — the peace that underlies all emotions, even longing.

Joyce: (nodding slowly, a smile curling) I do know that feeling. The artist in me has felt a strange peace dwelling under the wildest passions. When writing, sometimes I’d chase a perfect line, a perfect image, never quite catching it. Frustrating on the surface, perhaps, but it kept me alive, on fire, day after day. Inhabit that fire too long and it almost becomes a cool companion — a guiding light. You might say I found a certain fulfillment in the pursuit, though the poem remained unwritten or the love unrequited.

Gregory: And perhaps that cool fire is the truest fulfillment man can know this side of eternity. Anything we grasp completely slips away — pleasures wane, knowledge raises more questions, kisses end. But the prerotic longing… (he closes his eyes briefly) that can be perpetual, an ever-renewed wellspring. It keeps us open, ever striving, ever growing. In that openness and growth, we taste the Divine Life, which is inexhaustible.

Plato: Well said. The fullness of being human, then, might lie not in having all desires satisfied — that would make us static, more like gods (or perhaps like stones!). Instead, our fullness is in our dynamic incompleteness. We are full because we are not full, if that makes sense. (He laughs at himself.) The prerotic state is a perfect emblem of this: desire alive but not chained to a consumable object, an openness toward something more.

Joyce: (grinning broadly now) Dynamic incompleteness — oh, that does appeal. Sounds like the sort of paradox I’d put in a novel.

Abhinavagupta: (joins in laughter) It’s the kind of paradox sages in India have long loved too. Emptiness is fullness, desire that doesn’t seek to own is bliss, movement at rest. (He counts on his fingers playfully.) We’re dealing in Zen koans now, my friends! But all to get at a truth that perhaps only poetry or metaphor can convey.

Joyce: And convey it we shall. Perhaps we ought to define this prerotic state together — weave our perspectives into one tapestry. What is it, then, this threshold we’ve been marveling at?

Plato: (clearing his throat as if addressing an Academy) Let me attempt a start: The prerotic is the soul’s pause at the precipice of desire. It is longing held in gentle check — the moment the soul senses Beauty or Truth but has not yet tried to seize it.

Gregory: (continuing seamlessly) It is the sacred longing that leaves one open-handed. One does not clutch or consume, but beholds and yearns. In that openness, one is drawn upward — an ascent without end.

Abhinavagupta: (with a poetic cadence) Prerotic is the luminous midpoint — madhya — where every inhale has not yet become exhale. It is stillness pulsing with potential. The divine spanda trembles there, inviting union not by grasping, but by surrender into awe.

Joyce: (finishing, his Irish lilt soft) It’s the aesthetic enchantment that arrests the heart — the shimmer before the kiss, the silence right before the symphony’s peak. A radiant suspension where we feel most alive, because we are stretched between what we are and what we seek.

(They all fall quiet, letting their shared words settle. The description they wove seems to hang in the air like a delicate fragrance. The young couple has quietly left, hand in hand, their fate unknown but their earlier glow still somehow present in the room. Outside, the purple twilight has deepened, inching toward night yet lingering in that day’s-last-light as if reluctant to let go.)

Plato: (raising his ceramic cup with a smile) To longing, the finest teacher of the soul.

Gregory: (lifting his tea) To the threshold, where we meet the Divine in our reach.

Abhinavagupta: (holding up his cup) To the madhya, the sacred middle, source of creativity and insight.

Joyce: (clinking his cup gently against each of theirs) And to the prerotic shimmer that makes us fully human — incomplete, yearning, and therefore brimming with life.

All: (in unison, softly) Cheers — to the prerotic, and the fullness found in our longing.

(They drink together, a gentle laughter rising among them. The camera of our imagination pulls back: the Higher Self Café is aglow with a golden light, four silhouettes in camaraderie amid books and coffee. In that timeless evening, their words continue to hum like a plucked string, resonating in the stillness. The conversation, like the prerotic itself, has no definite end — it trails off into a thoughtful silence, each of them gazing with contentment into the distance, as beyond the window twilight holds its breath, savoring the last tremble of light on the horizon.)

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