What the purely masculine principle in the being determines
1595. The "masculine" principle in its pure form thus determines that beings, apart from the "parental love" mentioned above, can have no interest beyond serving themselves.No interest in any creation or manifestation that is not intended either directly or indirectly to serve its originator more than any other being can possibly arise in the being through the "masculine" principle.The manifestation of true, unselfish "neighbourly love" is thus completely impossible for the one hundred per cent one-poled "masculine" state and in the physical and mental organic structure based on it.Fortunately, however, the eternal laws that determine life ensure that such a "masculine" being cannot live alone.They determine that the experience of life is not merely a matter of obtaining food and defending or protecting oneself from becoming food for one's fellow beings, but is also, out of vital necessity, based on the satisfaction of a sexual desire.What is a sexual desire?It is a mental hunger.In the midst of its desire for physical food, therefore, the purely "masculine" being has also a hunger for mental food.While physical hunger consists of the desire for "matter" from which the being can build up and maintain its physical organism, sexual or mental hunger consists of a desire for "life".By virtue of its organic, masculine structure, this being desires a particular form of "life" that is adapted to this structure, a form of "life" with which it can enhance and maintain its own "life".The object of this desired life is to achieve intimate, physical and mental union or fusion with a being of the opposite sex, which culminates in the sexual act we call "intercourse".Just as physical hunger is the result of an organic function that produces the desire for the food or nutrition essential to the maintenance of the physical organism, the sexual desire for union with or the experience of being one with a being of the opposite sex is the result of a specific organic function by means of which the being maintains or nourishes its mental side, its joy in living and the fire of its consciousness, quite apart from the fact that this process also determines the reproduction of the body and consciousness of the species on the physical plane.