“Because sexual desire is an instinctive process of the brain while love is a conscious process. At the beginning of a relationship, these two processes are closely connected in a way that you can’t distinguish when one happens instinctively and the other occurs consciously.”

“You may fall in love with a woman because her beauty attracts you, and that is an instinctive impulse, which is in fact quite similar to what you feel when you are hungry and appetising food is placed in front of you. The desire to consume that food is therefore an impulse driven by instinct, but you don’t feel love for the food,” she explained.

“Oh … that’s a fresh perspective!” I exclaimed.

“And this is where the problem begins,” Koharu said.

“Here, we don’t have this problem at all because whether there are sexual desires or not, we have already achieved the highest level of love.”

“But in your world Gaia, people don’t fundamentally love each other enough. Their love is still at a very low level. Since you don’t have love as a foundation, pretending to love leads to suffering. Some may claimed that they have ‘fallen out of love’ which is not true because it was never love at all in the first place. What they have wasn’t true love but merely a futile expression to keep a relationship alive. Ultimately, without true love, any sexual desires would have lost its meaningful and beautiful associations.”

“As a result, many different kinds of problems between the two parties would emerge, and their relationship will eventually suffer due to their conflicting thoughts and ideas, incompatible needs, and different points of view,” Koharu added.

“Those problems don’t arise for a couple who shares true love because they would always think positively and hold each other with the highest honour and respect. For example, if the woman whom you love dearly speaks negatively about you, you would be gracious enough not to respond back; instead you might think that she doesn’t have any ill intentions towards you and that she is only trying to guide you to do the right things. On the contrary, if you don’t love that woman at all, you’ll always think and respond negatively to whatever she says. That would certainly end the relationship.”

“That’s why people in your world yearn for love. This is a clear sign that tells you that love has never existed in their relationship from the beginning. They will continue the endless cycle of always searching for new love, clinging on aimlessly at any relationship, struggling to end it when it becomes unsustainable, and starting all over again as they seek out a new love again and again.”

“It’s completely different in this world. We never feel a lack of love. We love each other even before thinking about sex. Making love and having children together is then the only outcome that binds us together more tightly,” Koharu stopped speaking and took my hands.

“My dear, this is true love, not that kind of love that your whole world is seeking. I love you not because we have a sexual relationship, for I have loved you deeply before that. This love will never cease, no matter what happens.”

“I know ….” I responded, without really knowing what to tell her, but I knew that there had to be a deeper meaning behind what she had told me.

“Now we’d better get going. We are already quite behind time. Normally, we would have arrived already, but now we’re only halfway to my Grandpa’s house,” she said.

“Let’s go,” I said and got up on my feet, picked up the peels of the fruits that we had eaten, and heaved the paper rolls on Koharu’s back and my shoulders before commencing our journey again.

The landscape along this part of the route was different to that of the first half of our journey as we walked through a plain surrounded by low hills and began to see some houses. Each time that we passed by a house, we were warmly greeted by the owners and their family members.

“Hello and welcome here!” A man’s voice floated out one of the houses as we were passing. It seemed as if they had waited for us.

“Hello,” Koharu greeted them back.

“Hello,” I spoke with a low voice, feeling slightly embarrassed, when the owner of the house came out to greet us.

“I heard about you three days ago, welcome to our world!” the man said with a smile.

“Thank you, I’m honoured to be a guest in your world,” I answered.

“Please stop by for a chat next time,” said the man, who seemed to sense that we were in a rush. On the way, we met many other families. Each house was situated quite far from another, with some families having six members, while others had only two. However, I didn’t see any family with children or elderly members yet. They all looked youthful and stunningly good-looking.

“It seems that only young people reside here for I haven’t seen any small children or elderly people around,” I asked Koharu after we had passed by another large family.

“You rarely see old people here because their body remains youthful even though they are hundreds of thousand, or even millions of years old,” she replied.

“See that family over there? The person standing in front is two million years old. The other five are around three to seven thousand years old.”

“If you see someone old with a stooped back, white hair, and wrinkled skin, it would be a fair assumption that he or she came from Gaia. However, there are very few of them.”

“Like your dad, Yoshida?” I asked.

“Yes. Even though my dad looks much younger compared to people in your world, he won’t live longer than 200 years because his body cells don’t have the code of youth from birth,” she replied.

“I’m sorry, but if your dad passes away, won’t you miss him?” I asked.

“In our society, we don’t consider death as a separation forever. It’s only the transformation to a new being that suits the soul better. In my father’s case, he needs to transform into a new, more suitable being because his soul would have already entered the highest state of balance.”

“A person dies physically. We can still communicate with the deceased’s soul telepathically all the time. Therefore, whether one is dead or alive, there is no difference. We will only think that he’s on a vacation somewhere.”

“And the most important thing is that this is the last place where all of us can live together in a physical form. One day, he will be reborn into our family to live with us again. But we have to wait for the moment when we can all go back to the source, or, in other words, the place where we originally came from.”

“About the fact that you haven’t seen any children along the way, there are two reasons for that. First, the chance that a soul is born here is rare. It happens only once in a while. Second, children from the age of three to twelve stay with the highly evolved beings in the city, like going to school, to learn the principles of dhamma, the principles of living, and the principles of accessing the universal knowledge. They have to stay there for nine full years,” Koharu explained.

It took us about four to five hours to arrive at a place where the landscape was strangely different than before. There were a lot more stones than soil, and the trees were smaller, but they were beautiful in their own way. It looked like a beautifully designed bonsai garden. Most of the stones were dark red, and some of them were as big as an entire hill.

“After walking around this big rock, we will finally reach my Grandpa’s house,” Koharu said, telling me how much longer we still had to walk.

“It seems not very far from here,” I said.

“It’s not far actually but it’s a bit difficult to walk since there are round stones along the way, so be careful not to slip and fall on one,” Koharu warned.