The best way to solve problems caused by misconceptions regarding love is to know completely what a human being is and the conditions for one’s full personal development. As love is an aspect in the life of the person, the better one knows the person, the deeper one can enter into the nature of love, what it implies, its demands, risks, gifts, and the horizons it opens.

But, how can one learn about the human person, how can one get to the bottom of what each of us is? There are a thousand theories about human life, varied and sometimes clashing. There are a multitude of supposedly valid opinions, all wanting to predominate and impose themselves. Is it possible to choose the right path in the midst of this whirlwind of opinions and currents?

THE ROLE OF SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION AS A NEUTRAL POINT OF DEPARTURE

One approach which can serve as a point of departure for such understanding is to follow the discoveries of science. If we take into account only our own opinions, the ideology of a political party, or even the teachings of our religion, we will never find a common platform upon which to discuss because each one has its own strong stand. It is very difficult for people to change their attitudes in ethics, politics and religion, since to a large extent these are determined by a thousand influences and carry sentimental attachments. That is why very competent people hold quite different, and even conflicting ideas on these matters.

Science, on the other hand, has no personal motivation; its research is impartial and should draw the assent of anyone with sufficient knowledge to understand its results. The scientist establishes hypotheses regarding what is real and by experimentation tests whether or not this explanatory project is confirmed. When confirmed it is accepted by the scientific community as a basis for the search for other knowledge, until another, more precise, hypothesis is established. In this way science is a broad common search for the truth regarding what exists.

In fact this research process is limited to certain types of reality. Ethical, political, legal, aesthetic and religions questions cannot be the object of scientific research. Nevertheless, science can provide ethics with basic data regarding human beings to help discover how one should behave in order to develop correctly. This data can provide a meeting point for all who wish to lay the foundations for an ethical consensus regarding the correct path in life.

Premature infants are not fully developed persons if one considers the state of their enzyme and nerve systems. Even those born after nine months, are but half-way through gestation and in a state of immaturity. The Creator arranged this early arrival surely for the mothers’ relief. But there is another, far more weighty reason–so weighty indeed that if we consider it well it is powerful enough to change our whole mentality. That is to enable the new born to complete shaping his or her physiological and psychological being in relation with his or her environment. The baby’s environment is, first and foremost, his or her mother, then the father, older brothers and sisters, the home. Here is where we find the great value of relationship, not as one link supplanted by others in the formation of the human being, but as a constituent factor of the whole. It is not that I exist and afterwards make contact; rather, if I do not make contact I am not living as a person.

Nowadays biologists stress that a "web of affection" must be established between mother and child, an area of protection and shelter. They, therefore, recommend that mothers, if possible, breastfeed and care for their children themselves. Washing a baby is not just making it clean, but protecting it. Breastfeeding is not just nourishment, it is the basis for an ambit of tenderness which is fundamental to all later development of this human being. We have here the first encounter a child establishes in his or her life, the proto-encounter which is primary and model of all those to follow.

Based on this example, the child later will establish other types of encounters: with their environment, people, language, school friends, family traditions, works of culture, and values of every order. One develops according to the quality and quantity of these encounters. If the child is unable to make contact with anything or anyone his or her development will be hindered; he or she will be spiritually asphyxiated and destroyed as a person.

But, what strictly are encounters that make them so important to the constitution, development and perfection of persons? Sometimes we say: "I was walking along and met a friend". We mean we saw him, greeted him, and spoke for a while. But we cannot affirm that we truly encountered him. The encounter is not merely seeing, greeting and talking. When we travel on a crowded bus, we are very close to others, but we do not encounter them. There would be no sense in saying to the person whose elbow is digging into my ribs: "I am going to confide in you." Undoubtedly he would tell me to keep it to myself, because there is no intimacy there. I might add: "But we’re so close. . . ."–indeed we are far too close, but this neither implies nor generates intimacy. On the contrary, it invites aversion: we wish the others could step back. Extreme proximity is not in itself an encounter, even less so impact for which we employ the term: collision.

What, then, is encounter? It is urgent that we know, for this is what turns us into people and enables us to develop fully. All of us come from a personal encounter and are destined to establish other encounters. Nothing is so important in our life as encounters, but hardly anyone stops to explain exactly what, strictly speaking, is an encounter. It is a mingling of two realities to their mutual enrichment. I have certain possibilities of explaining a topic; you have others; I give you mine and you give me yours. We take them both up actively and develop a dialogue: This is an encounter. You and I join together to generate something new: an exchange of opinions, of ideas and feelings; clarification of a subject; perhaps the development of our friendship. This dialogue is something new and fertile which has grown from joining together the ambits of our lives. I say ambits because you and I are not mere objects; but realities endowed with the power of initiative. We can begin a dialogue, communicate our ideas to others and receive theirs in return.

A person extends far beyond the boundaries of his or her bodily field, which can be measured, weighed, or analyzed scientifically. The person as such is not limited by his or her body, but extends further. One influences others and is influenced by them, retains the past and plans the future, skims over events or probes their meaning. Note this well: a person is a field of reality, an ambit. One is corporeal, and because of this one’s activity is subject to certain limits. But, since persons are spiritual, they can go far beyond their bodily limitations.

The human body has the same conditions as an object: it can be located, measured, weighed, touched and scientifically analyzed. But it is not reducible to an object, because it forms a vital part of the person. The body is an expression of the whole person. When I tell a joke and you smile, in that smile I see your whole person looking at me. The whole person vibrates within the body. Nowadays, it is not possible that we first know the body and then infer that inside there is a spiritual reality; body and spirit form a unit that cannot be separated. Hence, it is unfair to state that man "has" a body: the body is not a mere object and cannot be an object of possession or disposal. A human person is bodily or corporeal at the same time and for the same reason that he or she is a person.

From all this we draw the decisive conclusion that encounters takes place between ambits, not objects. Whereas objects are juxtaposed or collide but do not meet, only ambits can intermingle, offer each other possibilities and take up those which are offered.

This offer can be made by people, but also by certain realities which are neither people nor mere objects. A piano is an object: it can be measured, weighed, played, moved . . . , but it is also an instrument which offers the pianist possibilities for creating musical forms. When the piano is joined with the pianist as an ambit forming a field of possibilities for creating music an encounter takes place, the fruits of which are a new ambit; namely the musical piece played. Similarly, a boat is an object, but also an ambit: it offers possibilities for conversing, going for a trip, sailing and fishing. It is the same with the sea, which offers us possibilities of sailing, swimming and fishing. Hence, when a boat takes to sea for the first time, there is an impact, which on a higher level is an encounter. Consequently, the launching of a boat is a symbolic act which is followed by a banquet.

This discovery of ambits opens up the possibility of creating a multitude of encounters in our life, not only with people, but with non-personal realities which take them beyond being mere objects. Human life is enriched when we learn to see people and even many objects as ambits. On the other hand, human life is depleted when we tend to consider all beings as objects, as mere means towards our ends. This idea of encounter sheds much light upon love.

We now know what an encounter is, and consequently that human life should be a web of encounters to be extended indefinitely. But, how is an encounter constituted? If it is neither by mere impact nor by juxtaposition, but an intermingling of ambits giving place in turn to another ambit, it must be difficult to achieve. Offering one’s own possibilities to another person implies opening one’s spirit and generosity, a wish to share and to create something together. Taking the possibilities which the other offers me implies, for my part, a capacity for listening and the humility to admit that I am in need of help.

In an amorous encounter, the lovers must offer frankly all the possibilities which make up their being. If I do not show myself to you as I am, when you notice this you realize that I do not wish to make you a gift of my real person, but only of a false copy. I hide something of myself and keep something back. This lack of honesty on my part makes you mistrust my promises of love. You then close in on yourself and are unable to give yourself sincerely. By not giving ourselves to one another, we cannot intermingle the ambits of our life and do not encounter each other. We may feel an erotic hunger for each other due to a largely superficial liking. This hunger possibly may lead to "intimacy" in the sense of sexual relations, but this is merely bodily and does not engender true friendship because it is not an encounter.

Married people sometimes confess that they live together and have normal "intimate" relations, but are not "friends". Here intimacy refers to a merely corporal gesture which is not a living expression of personal intimacy, an intermingling of two personal ambits.

A personal ambit is not reduced to the bodily sphere taken superficially, nor to all that we commonly understand as a love life, with its mutual attraction, yearning for sexual union, and pleasurable feelings. Instead a personal ambit covers the whole field of reality we evoke when we pronounce a name: such as John or Mary. John sees Mary as a pretty face, a shapely figure, a pleasant smile. He enjoys being with her, conversing, accompanying her; he dreams of being with her in a more intense, sexual way. Undoubtedly he will promise her eternal love. What is the value of this expression? John may be quite sincere, yet his love can be extremely poor. Does it mean for him a personal encounter with all that implies, or is it reduced to a passing relationship, as pleasurable as possible, but with no intermingling of his personal ambit with Mary’s? This is the decisive issue. The human person is "a being of encounter", which as an encounter, is based on a certain measure of personal love.

If John declares that he loves Mary, when in reality what he loves are the qualities which he finds pleasing, then he loves himself and the delight and enchantment these qualities produce in him. If these wane or disappear, due to time or illness, or no longer seem pleasant because his senses are dulled by repetition of the stimulants, John will say that the love has disappeared. In fact, this love never existed for the other person, but only for himself. The sexual attraction was only erotic hunger. One who is attracted to another person in order to satisfy one’s own hunger never reaches that person; one does not form any personal ties with the other, who is reduced to a means for one’s own ends. Here one does not abandon one’s solitude: The erotic exchange is reduced to an exchange of two solitudes, it is a self-interested union which is very far from personal love.

One who gives oneself up to eroticism is searching to fulfill one’s needs, whereas the person who loves gives all one has. These are opposing attitudes; and what is decisive in human life is always the attitude one adopts. This basic option determines everything, as will be seen in another chapter.

Let us review the steps taken. We have distinguished ambits from objects, and concluded that an encounter is an intermingling of ambits. This intermingling presupposes love, which requires the decision to join with the other person as such, not only with some of their qualities. If I love only some quality in a person, I stay within my egoistic solitude; where eroticism starts from egoism, love comes from generosity.

We know the origin of these two forms of relationship, but where do they lead, what are their consequences? We will look at this fully in the next chapter when describing the process of vertigo and ecstasy. Here we will say only that eroticism produces, first, feelings of exaltation or euphoria, and then disappointment, sadness, bitterness and desperation, whereas ecstasy incites exultation, enjoyment, enthusiasm, happiness, peace, protection, and rejoicing. These are the affectionate reactions produced in one’s soul by the process of vertigo and ecstasy. Ecstasy is the basis for the highest of unities; vertigo destroys all elevated forms of unity.

We are now deep into the study of how to establish a personal encounter and how this is made impossible. This analysis reveals the laws governing the development and the disruption of personal life. If we know these laws, we can foresee what will happen to us when we adopt one of these attitudes over the other: egoism or generosity.

Have you ever asked yourself why we encounter each other? Obviously it is because we see values in the other person. These values attract us so that we approach each other. And for what do we approach each other: is it to take these values as means for our satisfaction or as a revelation of a person whom we would like to know? From this alternative emerges two possibilities: that of delivering ourselves up either to vertigo or to ecstasy. This is the major crossroad: if we accept fully what this means we will become fully mature, for we will have the power of discernment. That is the concern of the following chapter.

If we reflect on the meaning of a love life, we find that love’s target is to establish unselfish unity between people. Such unity is made impossible by egoism, but is fostered by the wish to serve. This is skillfully pointed out by José María Cabodevilla in his Carta de la Caridad (Letter of Charity).

1. Cf. "Medicina y actividad creadora," Rev. de Occidente (Madrid, 1964). El hombre como encuentro (Madrid: Alfaguara, 1973). Violencia y ternura (Madrid: Ed. Prensa Española, 1977).

2. Cf. Society and Sanity (New York: Herder, 1963).

3. Op. cit. (Madrid: BAC, 1966), p. 270-277.