It’s been ten years now since the film Her appeared in which Jaquim Phoenix, a lonely man, fell in love with the operating system inside his computer, in particular with the voice of Scarlett Johansson which embodied it. Since that time, according to a recent article in the New York Times, it has been reported that more and more people are likewise attempting to have some sort of close personal relationships with the personification inherent in digital technologies, even replacing what might be close relationships with others in the real world with less perilous digital ones. Obviously, with the recent growth of artificial intelligence in our society, it would appear that this trend is almost sure to continue and even  grow.

However, as predictable as this development in our current digital age is, even as it might be seen by many as being strange and potentially even pathological, at the same time it does appear that it does in fact beg the question of what a close personal relationship, particularly a love relationship, actually means. To this end, there is of course the full spectrum of close personal, love relationships between two people, all the way from the most casual to the most intense and meaningful. Yet, at the same time, there is one term in particular, one that may in fact be in danger of being significantly misused, that has been employed to identify the most intense and meaningful of close personal relationships, which is that of soul mate.

Soul Mate has been used in the past to define all manner of close personal relationships, particularly romantic ones; from an intense sexual relationship; to a best friend for whom one has intense feelings of caring; to one with whom has a certain sympatico which one doesn’t have with anyone else; to even a close personal friend for whom one has special feelings and with whom one occasionally has physical relations. At the same time, however, it seems possible that none of these close relationships when applied to the term soul mate goes far enough in getting at the potentially mystical nature of being in love.

That is, might it be possible that two people who are soul mates, so to speak, both inhabit together some otherworldly place that neither is fully aware of, yet at the same time, they still experience the intensity of that reality during their life in this world? That of course puts the term in an infinitely broader context, one which might seem to have few boundaries. It also takes the love of another person to whom one feels that he or she is vitally connected in this way into a whole mystical area where the experience of love for someone else and the search for a larger, more expansive consciousness conceivably become one and the same.

The 2006 film Pan’s Labyrinth told the story of a young girl who, during the time of fascist Spain which she was caught up in, experienced a number of mystical, otherworldly encounters which came to influence her behavior in this world, those being directed from the mystical, otherworldly kingdom which she inhabited before her earthly life began, and to which she was destined to return. Therefore, relative to the idea of two people who love each other actually being soul mates, one might begin to wonder, even as far-fetched and unreal as the idea might seem, if such a thing is actually possible. That two people might indeed be connected in some otherworldly place which, even though they might not be aware that this is occurring, this connection still affects their lives in this world.

Of course, in this new age world in which we now live, there are all kinds of supposedly mystical dynamics that take place in the world of astrology, fortune telling, and the like. Yet still it seems that it might be possible for two people to be connected inside some otherworldly consciousness which has nothing to do with the hocus pocus world of all these new age pursuits, which makes the entire dynamic much more real and much more meaningful; simply because it might in fact be a genuine part of human consciousness. Now that, it seems, would be exciting.