Carlo Suarès : La fin du grand mythe II |
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The end of the great myth II
(Extract from Carnet No 2. February 1931) Is Truth Useful? We are all so constructed that we burn to do something for others, to improve the circumstances in which those who struggle suffer, to relieve, to heal. Unless we are selfish monsters, all of us who are in good health, who have no misfortunes, who eat, sleep and warm as we please, and who have free time, want to do something. thing for others, unless they have already given it up for some reason. But, as soon as one of the conditions on which we base our peace and security disappears, as soon as the unhappiness or harshness of life in any form deprives us of the leisure that we gave to others, it is we who ask be rescued. If we could so easily lose ground it is because our balance rested on things external to us. Our being, as we were aware of it, was a construction whose foundations were not based on good soil, but on a heap of things likely to collapse. Now we can only give what we have: the good we dispense could hardly be of a more stable nature than that which we possessed. What we thought constituted our being depended on external and fragile conditions, and its provisional equilibrium had no value in itself. Our true wealth was not this balance: at all times our true wealth is the capacity that we can have to discover a more stable balance than that which we have. If in a provisional balance course, even if it is very unstable, we believe we can help someone, it is obvious and natural that we do our best. But the important thing is not to attribute to this aid a value which it does not have. Later we will realize that if we have come to the rescue in all sincerity and without calculation, we have helped ourselves much more than we have helped others. Because a help that we carry spontaneously and without worrying too much about the loss of balance that it will cause for us (and any action of this nature is at the expense of the balance from which it started) leads us to discover for ourselves a new balance, in the direction of our good. Aid does not have a value in itself that we can appreciate, because, if it comes from a balanced position on unconscious data which made us accept a traditional orthodoxy, a religious belief or an established morality, it will have no other goal than that of propagating this provisional cause of an imperfect equilibrium. Proselytes of a tradition, a confession or a moral do not realize that this law or this faith which they want to consider as remedies are essentially perishable by the very fact that they claim to exist independently of individuals. This metaphysics, this philosophy, this system of the world, this morality claim to have value by themselves, an objective balance. They are therefore all liable to demolish each other, independently of us. The man who, comfortably seated in a system, believes that he is thus helping others, is in fact only distributing ghosts. A serious illusion in this sense is that in which the leaders and pontiffs of religious movements sink when they are invited to seek total liberation. They triumphantly declare that they do not want to abandon men their brothers, that is to say that they want to remain blind with them, and to distribute systems to them. "It is selfish, they say they want to free themselves", without suspecting that they are thus unconsciously defending a building balanced on destructible objects. Their fallacy, both sentimental and theoretical, wreaks the greatest havoc because it appeals to all those for whom it is pleasant to feel both useful and sheltered. To be truly useful, on the contrary, we must abandon the personal illusion of security. The fully liberated man is, personally, neither safe nor in danger, because he no longer has his own existence. Its balance being the ultimate balance, the perfect harmony based on nothing, but only dynamic, it is, of all men on earth, the one who unintentionally is the most useful to others. We will see how it can be useful socially, even from the technical point of view, and how on the other hand the specialist of a technique is only one element of chaos if it is not internally released, because it can very well not knowing where to apply his technique. Let us simply say that whoever becomes the priest of a myth in which he is installed, far from resolving knots of consciousness, far from reducing them to the simplicity of a liquefaction, hardens them by re-plastering them. The temporary balance thus forced is only one more difficulty from which the temporarily relieved victim will have to get rid, serious difficulty, like the effect of a narcotic. Who did "this?" The unconscious world in which everyone has lived since childhood, this world which has bewitched us, which denies us any liberation, is the added terrain, composed of debris, on which we build the faltering edifice of our identity. This identity, the very notion of the "I am", will strive, after being born from the illusion, to make this illusion on which his whole life depends last. This will to last is the cause of suffering, and this suffering forces us to lose balance, and pushes us to constantly seek the final balance, the rock of reality without forms. The "I am" will find all the pretexts to refuse this accomplishment which requires its destruction, and will go so far as to create a personal God in his image, that is to say, to place the sovereign good in what is imperfect by definition. We will come back at length on the different notions of God. From the God of the Bible, the Eternal who speaks, acts and intervenes in a thousand small details of life, to the philosophical notion of Being, from the God of mystics to the one whose objectively we prove existence, all these notions, we will see that they could not exist if individuals were not deeply rooted in the illusion that their "I" is indestructible. This illusion is the true basis of all operations of their mind. Their "I" is their only reality, especially when they pretend to bring up the notion of being from an objective examination of the world, for how could they do it if they did not pose a priori the reality of their " I "before the unknown of"that"? But instead of solving "that" by becoming it, they claim to bring it back into their own reality "I", by asking themselves "who did this?" "That is to say" who am I who did this? Because they do not conceive of any reality apart from the "I". That "it" takes place by itself, that life is impersonal, it seems absurd, impossible, inconceivable to them, but that a mysteriously supernatural "I", that an "I", exaltation of their own "I", has all done, here they are saved ... This is how the root causes and cosmogonies are invented. But in truth these philosophies deserve to be studied only to free the psychology of those who let themselves be taken in. They are immersed in their myth, the starting point of which is an unresolved equation that is fairly easy to update. Their research is only the development of this unconscious fact. As well, to grant a single principle to a theologian is to grant it all. But this first principle, and the position which it is necessary to take to state it, are only the expression of a myth. We saw in the first notebook how the fundamental problem of man arises when we reduce his data to their essence "I" and "that". We have also just indicated that the Truth, which is the resolution of this equation, is the only stable balance, therefore useful. We would like in these pages to try to show in what this non-mythical Truth resides, in what it does not reside, and what can be its power. Good soil and added ground "Verily, verily, I say unto you, if the grain does not die after it has been thrown into the ground, it remains alone; but if he dies, he bears much fruit." But the grain does not want to die, it wants to continue to live comfortably and indefinitely in the womb of a grain like it, huge and which it calls God. This enormous grain will take it, put it to its right, tell it "you are saved", and during this time life waits for a grain to want not to "save itself", to die to bear fruit. But the grain must die only after it has been thrown into the ground. If he died before, crushed or dried up, his death would also be sterile. The being who says "I", this grain of wheat, must not annihilate itself, but die in the good soil, nor must it seek to become gigantic, to transform itself into a house, believing that the fruit will come when it becomes as big as the world. This is what we usually believe. "I" believe that it can become universal, he wants to pray to God, he wants to find God, he wants to find the Way and the Truth, "I" is ready for anything except to die in good soil. But the soil of the unconscious is very bad soil; the state of hypnosis is worth nothing, bears no fruit. If the grain dies in a myth, in a representation he had made of the Truth it bears no fruit. All that he knew, all that he foresaw in terms of "grain" must die, because the grain with all that belongs to it is not from the world of Truth. He is a possibility of Truth, he is Truth in potential, but Truth is an achievement. In the bad soil the grain, the "I", begins to build, and all the buildings collapse one after the other. But as soon as he finds the right soil he can no longer build, he can only die and bear fruit. His work is then no longer measurable with the measures which adapted to the buildings of earlier, his language is no longer a language of buildings, constructions, scaffolding, it becomes apparently negative: c 'is that in terms of fruiting it has become positive. The "I", absorbed by their constructions, do not see it, do not understand it, have nothing to grasp: the outstretched hands grip only an invisible transparency, and withdraw disappointed. Because these "I" are alone, and are struck with sterility in their isolation. They "remain alone" because they have only one ambition: to remain. They ask that we feed them, that we wear them, that we transport them to eternal life by making them swell, that to their isolation, to "I" we add something, a belief, a dogma, a theology, a philosophy. They want to be encumbered with luggage, intellectual or mystical luggage. Everything must come together around this insatiable, obstinate "I" who will use all the tricks in order to last. We will look for the right soil, we will expose it as best we can, but in terms of fruiting bodies, not in terms of grains which must die. If "I's" do not understand, despite the simplicity, or because of the simplicity of the Truth, we ask them to make the effort to reverse their point of view, and to consider what we say from the point of view grains that are already Dead. Good soil, what we called the purification of the "I", is all that liberates it, what brings it out of unconsciousness. Not all experience is useful Any experience we do in search of the right soil is useful, any experience that does not point us towards it is useless. The "grain that must die" can go painted red, can wander from a cellar to a cabinet. If experience does not bring him a little closer to the right soil, his suffering is of no use to him. Lives can be wasted, entire lives. By what incredible optimism do people claim that everything is useful, that all experience pays off, that all suffering lifts us up? There is sterile suffering, sterile sacrifice. There is the great pity of heroism, tears, sterile agony. Sometimes it would have been enough with a simple, attentive and intelligent glance where a whole life was worn out in badly directed efforts. Suffering is always a mistake, it is a rupture of harmony between oneself and the eternal. "Suffering is holy", we hear it said, "suffering is divine", etc ... yes, if we realize that it is only an error, and if it teaches us not to make any more mistakes. To recognize that a sentence has been lost is to seek the Truth elsewhere, therefore to use this sentence by condemning it. On the contrary, the penalty is exalted for fear of sinking into despair. A mother who has exalted herself with big words, who has fed on religious and national prejudices to the point of sending her son to be killed in war, will often prefer to die rather than admit his inhuman error. She will cultivate her suffering by giving it a positive value. She will use her error to reinforce the errors that caused it. She will say "it is not possible that such suffering was in vain", she will become attached to this suffering, she will live with her, she will identify with her, and will make her completely sterile. So too often suffering, for sentimental reasons, and because we refuse to accept the despair of having unnecessarily spoiled what was most precious to us, is not only useless but deepens us into error. We do not accept that life can be so coldly cruel. But it is not life that is cruel, it is error. And if instead of being sentimental about our error, we have the strength to give it its just value, then, by destroying everything that had brought us to the most incredible sacrifices, we will have some chance of discovering the Truth. The unconscious The unconscious makes us act like puppets. He bewitched us long before our own vicissitudes created our particular complications and the pitfalls where our "I" isolates and defends itself. The unconscious belongs to the whole race, to all men, it takes place throughout history, it changes, evolves according to a certain determinism. The whole History is only the dream which crystallizes around him. Men and women are only his instruments. It is irresistible, all powerful, fatal. It imposes destinies. He is Destiny itself. Everyone first identifies with him, then it is only in him and through him that he seeks and finds himself, according to him. Men's knowledge is only its symbols, their deliverances its representations, their evolution its development, their stagnation its immutability. It began to bewitch from the dawn of time. He has been the master for millennia. He created civilizations, he animated them, then he made them die one after the other in a gigantic cycle, or indefinitely last by repeating himself. Today - perhaps the first time in the history of the world - we know that the unconscious must die: it is the birth of the human. The fully aware human, the total human, the liberated human, supreme expression of Universal Life, is born today, arises from myth, and puts an end to myth, for it is "the alfa and the omega ", The beginning and the end. The end of the spell We will patiently research the origin of the spell, and how it has worked throughout history. This seems essential to us, because if we affirm today that it can be broken, it is nevertheless so powerful still, and so thick, that it is the Truth which is invisible. We speak the language of those who have recreated themselves out of time, in a liberated consciousness. On the contrary, the unconscious is time itself, and when we mark its end it is the end of time that we mark. The times are fulfilled, and also the Scriptures of all those who had seen and understood the spell. These are very simple things that everyone can understand. By the power of Truth alone we can understand the raison d'etre of a whole cycle of civilizations, and perceive that this cycle is finished. We can tear ourselves away from Destiny, dominate it, then build, by abandoning the ruins that surround us, the bases of a true civilization. It is essential and urgent that we immediately get out of the nightmare, because the suffering has become disproportionate. The sleeper only has to wake up or die. The unconscious and time We have just said that the unconscious is time itself. It is appropriate here to give a first explanation of these words, which we will complete later on returning to the cosmogonies. For the moment let us say that the human races are, in nature, the point where duality perceives itself, and feels that its two terms are mutually exclusive. The human state as we generally understand it is therefore by definition the expression of an antinomy, but the real human of which we speak is a state in which the antinomy is destroyed. We will therefore be forced to call subhuman the state where the antinomy is not yet resolved, that is to say that of almost everyone. We thus mark that the resolution of the antinomy within the universal does not belong to the supernatural but to the true human, and that from our point of view the supernatural does not exist. Likewise, we cannot call conscious the state that we ordinarily call conscious, because this state rests on the unresolved human antinomy, as on a substratum; it arises from this antinomy, but as a plant emerges from the earth: its roots remain hidden there and nourish the whole plant. What emerges, what is visible, is the mythical "representation" and the role that each plays in it. On the other hand, we call conscious the state in which the antinomy is resolved, and which belongs to what we call the human. The unconscious is the position in which the two unresolved terms of the antinomy are found in individuals and communities. The Myth is the unfolding of these unconscious data which tend towards their resolution; Myth is therefore the becoming of the unsolved equation, and Time, as we define it today, is only this becoming, and therefore no longer exists when the resolution has occurred. We therefore see that the state that we ordinarily call conscious is only the becoming of the unconscious. We therefore do not consider, for the moment, time outside the human unconscious; we will call time the concept of duration. This notion emanates from the mythical becoming, it is this becoming itself. We leave aside, for the moment, the states of Nature in which duality has not posed to itself the problem of antinomy. We will provisionally call a non-conscious state (mineral, vegetable, animal) that where duality has not been transposed into a mythical representation whose characters are individualized "I". We will return later to pre-mythical and non-conscious time, as a modality of the manifested universe. We reserve for the moment the words unconscious and time to human individuals, isolated in their "I", which, because of their isolation, are therefore the reason for being and the consequence both of Myth, of the notion of duration , and that of becoming. The Great Myth The unconscious is transmitted to the usual consciousness of men in symbolic forms. These symbols and all the relationships which are established between them constitute dramas which are played endlessly. These dramas are myths. We therefore call myths of real facts and real situations, transmitted by the unconscious in symbolic forms. The Great Myth is the theme that gave birth to the isolated individual consciousness. Any individual for whom the "I" is separated from the other "I" within an antinomy participates in this primordial Myth of separation. This Myth therefore concerns everyone, because it has bewitched everyone. One can only get rid of the Myth by breaking the sense of individual separation. We would like to make its hypnotic power tangible in order to encourage liberation. As soon as we know that a certain gesture, which is familiar to us, belongs to the Myth and not to us, it falls from us like an inanimate mechanism. Let us not be afraid of destroying everything on which our pseudo-entity was based, because what is likely to collapse under us, has no value: by definition Life is indestructible, and only Life is precious. "I am Life" said those who identified with it, those on whom we have "built" the most religions. This Life which contains birth and death is a reality which, when everything falls apart, can finally emerge. The dream To understand what "the end of time" is, we need to trace "the origin of time". For this we will appeal to the analogy of the dream, but by saying right away that our lives of men and women are not like dreams, but are really dreams. In a dream the consciousness of the sleeper is fragmented and one of the fragments usurps the identity of the sleeper, his "I". These fragments of consciousness may not know each other, they play roles, they are characters who are agitated in a universe of their own: the dream. The cause of the dream is the same as that which created the characters. The dream is inseparable from these characters: what is played out, drama or comedy, is the direct consequence of their characters. For example, if the character who usurped the "I" is the symbol of an inability of the sleeper, of insufficiency, of an original vice, he struggles, in his dream, in order to catch a train who by definition will leave without him, or he tries to escape from brigands, without, by definition, being able to flee. What constitutes the true nature of the nightmare is not the elements which the dream borrows, but the "lack" of something, around which the dream crystallizes. Whether it's a train to catch, brigands to flee, or just clothes to go out and you can't find, the dream is the same. The real character is imperfection; the character who plays the role is the symbol of this imperfection; and the dream is a dramatic representation that crystallizes around him. The dream is the consequence of the character. Since this dream is the representation of a certain incapacity, the character will hurry, fight, make desperate efforts, and will not succeed since precisely it is the symbol of an incapacity. However if we, human characters of a dream which we make, manage to understand that we are only the pseudo-entities which caused it, our attitude compared to the dream will change. We are dream characters because each of us is an isolated fragment of consciousness. Each man believes to be an isolated "entity", he suffers from his isolation, he notes that this isolation puts him in front of all the antinomies most impossible to resolve, he confusedly feels that this isolation is not "natural", that nothing in nature is struck by this curse, that the primitive man is not it, perhaps he feels that Christ, that the Buddha are not. Below him the average man observes the joy of one nature, above him the joy of reconquered unity. He, an isolated character, struggles to correct his dream, which by definition he cannot change, since this dream, whether he knows it or not, is created by him. Its isolation is the original vice around which the dream crystallized. In his nightmare he can run well, fight, try to master the elements that hide from him, fight against all difficulties: these will arise again, intact, indefinitely. One after the other, he can try all the weapons of this dream, ambition, possession, love, metaphysics or indifference: nothing will help: this dream is the representation of his imperfection ( his sense of isolation), he can never dominate it except by suppressing the cause of the dream, this primordial imperfection. As long as he bases his hopes on objects that the dream gives him, as long as he does not completely detach himself from this unconscious representation to finally understand the true nature of his being, he will not take a step forward, his suffering will be useless. Dream time Time, we said, is only the fragmentation of consciousness. Consciousness-one, fully aware, is not taken by time, it is released from it, because it has consumed it. But an isolated fragment of consciousness, which, because of its isolation is imperfect and limited, is no more than the unconscious toy of time, of time which is separation. Here again the dream shows us how time is created, because each dream creates a time of its own. In a nightmare the consciousness of the sleeper is fragmented into enemy pieces, that is to say that the fragmentation was done very deeply because the pieces do not recognize each other, cannot assume that they belong to the same consciousness. So the nightmare which in reality may have lasted a fragment of a second gives the impression of having lasted for hours: the deeper the isolation of the fragments, the longer the time. On the contrary, certain dreams where our being, by a kind of revelation, seems to make contact with the essence of itself beyond the usual isolation in which we find ourselves, strike us with their indescribable, overwhelming, unforgettable intensity, mark us for all the rest of our existence of a dazzling reality, without it being possible for us to attribute any duration to this contact. It is the same with these characters that are men: they are taken by time for the good reason that they make it, by definition. Each individual's time has its own unit of measure, which varies according to whether he feels more or less isolated, time which can be endless, which can be "eternal hell", if the element of consciousness is isolated completely, or which on the contrary can accelerate in a formidable way, which in a few minutes can see rushing to him hundreds of centuries to come, which can be "consumed" completely until being at the same time the beginning and end. We can see from this what a mistake it is to place in the future a redemption, a salvation, a paradise, a liberation, perfection. "I am not advanced enough," it is thought, or "I await grace", or "I will be saved", or I will find "my master", or "the moksha". All this means: "I will continue to make time, I have not made enough yet". Which again means: "I will continue to isolate myself, I am not yet isolated enough". By placing its deliverance in the future, it is therefore placed precisely where no deliverance can ever occur. If the men, dream characters, not only understood that the dream (the world as they undergo it) is the consequence of their imperfection, but that the "time" it takes them to "search" is precisely the illusion which prolongs this dream, such despair would seize them that they would come out of it instantly. Astonishment But let's return to the spell, and here again the dream allows us to understand certain bases: what is most striking in a deep dream is the inability to be surprised. The "I" which usurped the totality of the usual "I" of the sleeper (and this is how each individual we meet says "I" while believing to say something), this "I", the more it is immersed in his isolation, the less he is able to be surprised. We have already spoken of this quality of astonishment, but we come back to the same things several times in different ways. This nightmare "I" is not surprised at anything, although his world is absurd, implausible, impossible. We wake up saying that we had a stupid dream, but while we were dreaming we found it completely natural. This is how the people who find themselves in the most incredible, the most insane situations, are precisely those who accept these situations without being surprised, without conceiving their perfect insanity. Entire crowds, nations, continents, can be caught up in such hypnosis without the obvious collective insanity popping up in anyone's eyes. For example: we are suffering, everyone tells us gravely, from a production crisis. But if we have produced so much it would be an opportunity or never to quietly consume all this wealth without having to work anymore: no, each country is in revolution because it has too much of something, everyone is ruined because of "overproduction". The nightmare has become so deep, the isolation of each human consciousness so total, that all these dream characters have come to be surprised at nothing. All these crazy people, when you tell them that they will only emerge from the nightmare when they wake up, tell you that you are dreaming. They have a "practical spirit", that is to say, they are waiting for the catastrophe that they cannot avoid. But while waiting, they persist in proposing remedies which themselves belong to the dream, and which therefore do nothing. The Useful Truth We come back to saying that only Truth is useful, because it is outside the dream which is vitiated in its essence. If one of the characters in the dream wakes up and understands that it was only the symbol of an imperfection, here it dissolves, it disappears, because it no longer has any reason to be: In its place is born the awareness of awakening, a consciousness whose nature is completely new, whose nature far from being able to adapt to dreams destroys it. The awakened consciousness apprehends the dream in its totality. The individual freed from the nightmare no longer seeks to impose his particular dream, to replace one dream with another dream, but because he has pierced all illusions, he enters Truth, and therefore he gives birth to it in the world. A revolution greater than those of all time, the revolution of eternity, opens to us by tearing apart the last veil of time. Outside of her there is no life. La fin du grand mythe II at a par Carlo Suarés - 3e millinaire |