The connection precedes the separation; it's Eros, then Thanatos. Eros is the god of symbiosis, the desire of two bodies to live together, one inside the other such that they constitute a "genuine two-in-one." This joining, this entering and holding, occurs in the midst of bodies that remain unjoined. These two that constitute a corporate one, were, previous to their joining, two of many. There is, oh Monks, a living body composed of many who are not united, a body with no center, and thus no horizon. What is the experience of this living body? Show me the face you had before you were conceived.

The two bodies that are joined in love are stuck together till death do them part. A body of experience that is a manyness is shrunk down to a body of experience that is a foursome. Desire is confined to moving in and out, expelling and being expelled. Desire is caught in a feedback loop. The impersonal representation of the oedipus complex is the nuclear cell.

We are always forming unions, abandoning them, and forming new unions, always coupling, always copulating. Eros is Thanatos; join and separate, join and separate, until . . . . Paradise leads inevitably to the fall as conception leads to birth. The fall from paradise is traumatic, one never gets over the wound, and yet there is this compulsion to repeat it. The way out is the way in is the way out and the way forward is the way backward is the way forward.