What is human? |
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(Extract from The Psychological Comedy. José Corti Edition 1932) The "I am me" and their problems Let us always return to our double starting point: the "something", and the world as we see it, that is to say on the one hand to what we have called our psychological ceiling, and on the other hand by examining objects, in their relationships with their surroundings and, since it is a question of humans, let us study it under this double aspect. What is human? Why do organisms, endowed with a sense of the subjective so acute that it gives birth to the notion "I am a self", find themselves unable to discover their essence, and the essence of the universe? Why do these organisms, which perceive, which smell, which think, not even know yet the method by means of which they could penetrate into the present and living eternity, in which there are no conflicts? How is it that they even go so far as to deny the existence of the only reality that is? On what have they based their lives, their civilizations, all their activity? Where do they pretend to go, where are they going, since there is no place, no time, no state where we can discover more than the absolute "plus" of the permanent presence of the universe ? These are the questions to be tackled, because the fundamental questions, once resolved, will lay bare the only bases of a human order, bases which up to now have been covered up, hidden, stifled. The myth of the intelligible Our previous reflections already impose on us a point of view and a method. We already know that the human individual, like any other object, must be adequate in the present. When we say "he must", we underline a necessity, an inexorable imposition of the absolute dynamism of the world, which will constantly break and break those of his expressions which will not adapt to him. Humans must submit to the permanence of the universe, under pain of suffering, under pain of seeing all their works destroy themselves. Our method cannot be subjected to all the mythical points of view according to which the intellect, after having disguised the absolute of names, to be supreme, sovereign, absolute, Good, Beautiful, True, or Metaphysical Non-duality, etc declares it intelligible. There is no supreme universal intelligence, supremely intelligible, nor a supreme consciousness accessible to magnified consciousnesses. The intellect can easily declare that the supreme truth is a supreme intellect. If a foot, a stomach could answer it, they would say that the supreme truth is a foot or a supreme stomach. The intellect is the only one to talk, the only one to listen to himself, the only one to approve himself, the only one to give himself certificates of aptitude. Its intelligible absolute is not the least valuable. Intelligence is a quality, concepts are attributes. Qualities and attributes are movements which establish directions, then which move towards these directions, which tend towards them. But the absolute has no kind of direction, it is permanent and present. So everything which tends towards a conquest, towards knowledge, towards the intelligible, is therefore an illusion, and it is on the contrary in the destruction of this illusory march towards knowledge, towards the absolute, that lies the true knowledge [1] . False eternity, or the illusion of opposites If it takes time to reach present eternity, it is because it takes time to destroy time itself. But the truth presents no way of approach. There is therefore no possible reconciliation between our point of view, and the point of view according to which the universe would be based on a central principle, a cosmic intelligence, a universal metaphysical self, which would potentially exist in the individual. According to this last point of view, it would be possible for an attribute, by means of its own infinity to unite with the totality, which would thus be an infinity of infinities, and to achieve this union, an individual would have to develop at his intelligence, his kindness, his personality, in short, a direction, which, upon his return to the bosom of the all-powerful, would subsist as a person, as a direction. This direction thus claims to unify with the eternal, while remaining a direction [2] ; it claims to unite with the universal "something", while maintaining its quality as an independent thing, in which consequently would always subsist, despite its union with the permanence of "something", a sense of separation from what is not permanent but which opposes it like Evil, the unintelligent, etc or which depends on it, that is to say Nature. In other words, this particular direction claims to associate with being, and claims to dissociate from being all that which it is opposed to. Thus the absolute would not be the totality of the opposites, the sum of all the opposites, which constitutes the eternal present without direction, neither cause, nor finality, it would not be the irreducible plenitude of all the pluses and all the less of the universe, but it would be the whole of an infinity of directions, each of which would have thought to eliminate its opposite by simply striking it with unreality. Thus the "Good" management declares that its opposite does not exist in itself: evil is only the lack of good; the directions "Beautiful," "True", "Being", etc, , say the same thing about the ugly, the false, non-being, etc. ; naturally, it is the intellect which invents this Good, this Beautiful, etc and attributes their own existence to them. He can only conceive of life as a duality, in which it is impossible for both terms to claim existence. He thus solves in his favor the problem of his own existence: by identifying with being. What is not personal consciousness is only a deprivation of consciousness, yet personal consciousness is the sense that the ego has of itself, it existing, therefore the supreme existence is supremely conscious! The infinity of infinities that this self struck with illusion can conceive is therefore only the infinity of directions which belong to only one of the terms of duality, the self, in opposition to the other term which does is that the negation of the self: the non-self. It is in this usurpation that the greatest idealist philosophers have sunk. The fatal result of such an error , even for the most intelligent theological monism there is, that of Spinoza, is a dissociation between the essence of the world , which becomes a metaphysical abstraction based on the sense of the subjective, and natural phenomena , which are supposed to be only the attributes of this topic. All these systems are indissolubly linked to a mythical pursuit of truth in the succession of time, and their consequences are ethics which oppose the eternal, by assigning directions to men. Knowledge: mutation of the physiological and psychological being Our method, on the contrary, opposes any direction, and consequently, it considers the human being in his physiological and psychic totality, and situates him in the present moment, in his environment, in all its contingencies. And the problem of knowledge will be solved for each of us in a definitive and total way, at the precise moment when in our organic and psychic totality we will have abandoned all direction, all goal, all tendency, all quality, in order to to be vibrators, resonators of the absolute present, which has neither past nor future nor direction, because it is the totality, which is both permanent and essentially dynamic, which is the infinite movement. Knowledge is therefore not accessible by the intellect, it is only accessible when the whole of a human being has conformed to it, and at that time, this being as an individual who has a character, qualities, peculiarities, an entity, an "I am me", has disappeared: it has changed state because of its fullness as an expression. Its past being perfectly accomplished, it is at all times the totality of time, it therefore does not head towards a future, it does not rely on the past, it is and it is not, because the essence and the expression are confused. Knowledge is therefore not accessible by the intellect, it is only accessible when the whole of a human being has conformed to it, and at that time, this being as an individual who has a character, qualities, peculiarities, an entity, an "I am me", has disappeared: it has changed state because of its fullness as an expression. Its past being perfectly accomplished, it is at all times the totality of time, it therefore does not head towards a future, it does not rely on the past, it is and it is not, because the essence and the expression are confused. Human nature is in motion This is why we must seek to understand what is human, and what are these individuals whose all manifestations are so intimately linked to this psychological knot that is the self. Our study therefore assumes a double aspect: man as a physiological organism, and man as a psychic entity. These two aspects will make us understand what is commonly called human nature. They will show us that this nature is essentially changing, and that it must be. They will finally make us understand that at certain stages of its evolution, human nature proceeds by "leaps" , like all that, in nature, undergoes abrupt modifications, following internal pushes. Finally, they will explain to us why we have arrived at a historical moment when such a rupture occurs : in what does this rupture consist; and how we must adapt, in order to submit to this new requirement of universal dialectic. The indefinite succession of what never could have started Let us first consider any human individual, as a whole. Here is an organic being, who thinks, who smells, who acts. Where does it come from? It comes from the union of two germs. It is literally all of these two germs together. It contains these two germs in their entirety. However, each of the two germs which compose it, comes from an organism which in turn contained in its totality two germs, which in their turn were emitted by organisms which contained in their absolute totality two preceding germs, and so on. How far? Let us say for the moment that it is until the origin of time; let us also say that each of us is the sum, the totality of all that has always happened in the totality of time; rather, let us say that each of us contains in its totality the indefinite succession of what has never been able to begin . What could never have started? Certainly. Because if at a given moment on earth, the first organic germ was born, it came from something, then from something else, and these transformations, and these successions of transformations, do nothing for the case. Not only are we the "something", but each of us is the sum, the totality of this "something" through time . Each of us is the fulfillment of eternity, the consumption of the world. But this tree, but this plant, but this dog, but this insect? For them as for us the reasoning is the same. Each of these objects, because it is there, indicates that it alone contains the totality of all times, the indefinite succession of the permanence of the universe. But this piece of metal, this gas, all this inorganic reign, of which certain bodies have so far been indecomposable? Here, the reasoning, although a little different, leads to the same conclusions, because if this piece of lead or gold, if this drop of mercury are there, it is that they possess, in their simplicity, the totality of time, the permanence of "something". These bodies express a certain balance of movement; and if to reach this present equilibrium, the movement has passed through successive phases, through innumerable aspects, that does not change the fact that what is transmitted is the indefinite succession of movement and time . A genesiac God who would have made these bodies arise by an act of his will and his intelligence, would only have transmuted a certain balance, and this myth does not change the case. In other words, all inorganic and organic bodies have within them their entirety, the succession of times, and the consumption of times . They are the living expression of the eternal essence of the world. Going back in imagination in time, or imagining a future, that would be useless to us, because the totality of the universal is present at every moment, and consumed at every moment. Whatever the efforts of our imagination, whatever the myths that we will invent to flee, to escape from this self-sufficient present, we will in no way advance towards its solution. Classification of objects. 1. The relationship between an object and the universal "plus"; 2. The relationships between objects Let us examine these organisms, and these inorganic bodies, as they appear to us. If the essence of the world is always present everywhere, why do we see so many differences between bodies, how will we classify these bodies, and how, among all these manifestations, will we define the human? Another question arises: how can we think that the essence of the universe is whole at all times in each element of the universe, and at the same time think that objects have no intrinsic value, that we must to consider each thing according to the universal positive power which it expresses more or less, that we should attribute a meaning and a reason to it only according to this positive sign? If everything is in everything, how can an object ever oppose its essence until it is broken by it? We are led to study objects in the relationships they have with their inner movement, and objects in the relationships they have with each other. For example, here is a tree, here is a man: 1 0. What relationship is there between this tree and the universal essence, between this man and the essence that is in him? 2. What meaning, one in relation to the other, have these two expressions of the same essence? 1. a) Struggle between various balances or disintegration. - The answer to the first question is quite simple, and results from what we have already said. The tree can have or not have its full of sap, man can be developed to the maximum of his possibilities, or can be diminished physically and psychologically by unfavorable living conditions. Likewise this iron object can be in good condition, or altered by rust until it is destroyed, etc. An individual, an object, contains in them all of time, the essence of the universe, but only d 'temporarily. When an organism wears out, when an individual is hampered in its development, it means that among the elements that make up this aggregate, some come together in a certain equilibrium, and others come together in a different equilibrium. One, two, a hundred dissociations occur within an equilibrium which until then was relatively stable, and different groups of elements enter into struggle, which each always expresses the universal essence, but in a particular way, which opposes others. As soon as an object begins to express, by internal dissociations, no longer the predominance of a single equilibrium, but a struggle between different forms of equilibrium which compete for predominance, this object disintegrates. b) Fullness, or unique balance - As a consequence of these reflections, we will say for example that when two parts of hydrogen meet a part of oxygen, these provisional equilibria of the universal essence that are oxygen and hydrogen, come together to compose a new equilibrium , which is not a combination of two equilibria, but which is a new and absolutely unique equilibrium, a simple equilibrium. Likewise when two germs merge to create a new organism, it is the combination of the two, under a unique equilibrium; it is not a mixture of two equilibria. Thus, each living organism, a tree, an animal, a man, is in its essence a simple equilibrium, a particular and unique form of equilibrium [3]. We will therefore say of this man or this ant that they more or less express their essence and their reason for being, that they are more or less close to absolute perfection, depending on whether they are more or less the representation of '' one and only balance, unaltered by balances which are foreign to him . c) Provisional eternity. - In short, if it is true that the whole is in everything, it is not true that each aggregate can always express this all in a unique way. It is on this uniqueness of expression that the life of this aggregate depends . An aggregate, torn apart by multiple expressions, eventually disintegrates. An aggregate in which one balance irresistibly prevails, is close to its fullness. An ideal aggregate would only be constituted by a single equilibrium, it would then be fullness, the universal totality in action, because it would express during the few rapid moments or centuries that an object can last, the unaltered universal "plus", the absolute equilibrium in which there are no conflicts. An object is eternal for the short time when, between its external form and the particular equilibrium which it is capable of expressing, there are no failures. This tree, as an object, is eternal if it is so full of sap that it could not be more, while this same tree, as sap, is eternal, even if it is moribund. Every organism must tend towards its fullness of sap, and achieving this fullness is its purpose as an organism. As soon as he arrives at this fullness, at this identification with his sap, he becomes the supreme expression of life, which, because it is particular and fleeting, is none the less total and absolute, and then, in as an absolute expression, during these moments of fullness, this organism no longer has any purpose . This is how an individual can tend towards the eternal present, by destroying in him the obstacles, the foreign balances which are interposed between him object and sap, between him transitory expression, and him essence. If he does not achieve this simplification, it is not through the fault of the eternal present, which can only be there in its totality always and everywhere, but through the fault of innumerable interventions, in the individual unique, of balances in conflict. To understand the nature of these interferences, to free oneself , to identify with the particular and unique balance that each individual has as a single organism, that is eternity. 2 a) The effort towards non-specialization. - So this is the nature of the relationships between things and their essence, relationships that will be the subject of our meticulous analysis, as far as the human individual is concerned. But if the eternity of a tree is in the sap, that of a diamond in its absolute purity of simple body, in what does that of man reside? Here we tackle our second question, that of the relationships between objects, that of the definition of the human in relation to Nature . Of all living things on the globe, man is the most complex, the most advanced. How can we define this evolution? In the following way: man is the least specialized being on this planet. Indeed the study of existing species, and The study of embryology, show that species are specializations, and that the types that readjust themselves to create new species, are those who refused to freeze in these successive specializations. b) Physiological specializations. - If the human germ passes before being born by all animal forms, it is precisely because it does not stop . Thus Nature tends to create organisms more and more apt not to specialize, that is to say organisms which maintain, which guard, which protect in them all their latent possibilities . Some of these possibilities are destroyed due to each specialization, so the most advanced organizations are those which can still aspire to all the possibilities, because they refused to specialize. Man can make more varied gestures than those of any animal, he can adapt to the most diverse conditions. A comparison that everyone can make, between man and any other being on earth, shows that man is the least specialized of organisms. It can emit sounds that vary infinitely, while an animal can only vary the sounds it emits very little. Generally speaking, the human organs, nervous system, etc., are less specialized than those of animals. An animal specializes in certain gestures; its reactions are all the more specialized as it is less advanced. This scale of organic evolution is found even within the human race. Primitives are the most specialized men, in their behavior, their aptitudes, their reactions, etc. We can thus say that man does not descend from the monkey, but from what has not become a monkey, and so on, that is to say, that in the succession of centuries, each new species has been created by a succession of refusals, revolts, which certain individuals opposed to specializations, which if they had triumphed over them, would have at any time stopped the evolution of the planet in a dead end. When a specialization has triumphed over an individual, that individual, whoever he may be, can no longer improve except within the limits of this specialization, and everything that exceeds these limits is forever prohibited to him [4] . c) The mythical Comedy . - On this theme, men played, represented on the world stage, a mythical Comedy dictated to them by their unconscious. At each instant of this drama, the Earth itself imposed on men, by violence, its inescapable necessity of evolution, and at each instant, men were the puppets of an absolutely necessary role, which pushed them to delay by all possible means, the fall of the universal into specializations. If indeed humans can today aspire to the universal, it is because at all times, and without failing, men, instruments oblivious to Nature, have delayed their birth. This "retardation" of the eternal is the inherent contradiction in evolution, and this contradiction is its inner dynamism. When we understand it, we also understand the whole history of humanity. In the light of this "delay", we have studied totemizations, religious myths, the Eternal God, in his dual role of "retarder" and stimulant, and revolutions, whose role is to wrest power to those whose role is to be massacred rather than giving up dominating. The strength it takes to overcome this delay is what proves the legitimacy of the new species, because "delay" acts, as we have said, by contradiction, that is to say that it protects the germ alive until it breaks its hull, or dies suffocated. If he dies, this means that he was not strong enough to overcome the specialization that his defender who had become his enemy wanted to impose on him. If he died, he was not authentic. d) Psychological specializations . - It is not only physiologically that man is the least specialized being, but also psychologically. This is obvious. The psychological development of a species goes hand in hand with its physiological development. These two developments are only two aspects of a single phenomenon. Whenever in Nature an aggregate, a specialization, a particular balance of the universal essence of life is formed, this aggregate, lead, tree or man, behaves in a particular way in relation to the surrounding world. This behavior in turn reacts on the aggregate, and the sum of these reactions constitutes its subjective world. Thus, although metals are not conscious in the usual sense of the word, recent studies by the Hindu scholar Bose prove that they react to certain stimulants. A metal plate can, depending on the case, act as if it were undergoing an excitation, or on the contrary as if it fell asleep, etc. The origin of species, like the origin of the subjective, must be sought in the aggregates the simpler, more specialized in nature. It is even in the simplest bodies, which chemically manifest their affinities and their repulsions, that one must study the effort that universal life makes to create aggregates as unskilled as possible. The subjective, which arises in the chemical and electromagnetic fields, and which is expressed by all electrical phenomena, etc. is the set of reactions by which two or more equilibria are transformed into a unique equilibrium (creation of new bodies, creation of new species). Man's destiny The human species being physiologically and psychologically the least specialized species on the planet, this position must therefore be an indication to him about his destiny. The instrument of this destiny must be consciousness. Can we believe that these men that we see and that all of us are the highest expression of universal life that the Earth can ever give birth to? Such a belief would be absurd, because if, physiologically, we are adapted enough to life, psychologically we have so many barriers, we are so narrow, so specialized, and so far from our essence, that we are left to wonder if the human race is viable, or if it will exterminate itself. Now these psychological barriers (formed by the unconscious) we can destroy them . By means of the individual reactions which each specimen of the present human species undergoes, a new psychological kingdom must be born, brought about by those of individuals who will break their specializations. The instrument is subjective since it is a reaction of individuals. We will see that the psychic and physiological domains are so intimately linked, so indissoluble, that we can never separate them except for the convenience of discourse. The human is only at birth Before arriving at our total definition of the human, we should ask ourselves a question here. Paleontological studies have traced man far back in time; the few centuries that we thought we had already lived have become many millennia. Is the species not already in decline, and perhaps even on the verge of extinction, rather than on the verge of giving birth to a new species? To this we respond that current astronomical studies grant life on the planet a period that will last several million times longer than the historical and prehistoric eras together have lasted. Now if we compare this possible duration of humanity, to the average duration of a man's life, and if we think that in a life, of sixty years, a man does not have in all and for all that of a few million minutes, we see that in proportion to what he still has time to live, the human race has only appeared on the globe for several minutes only! It is more correct to think that humanity has not yet had time to open its eyes, than it would be, correct to believe that humanity is already in decline. The world is young, the human is not yet quite there But what would this physiological and psychic non-specialization tend to be, what would be its limits, what would be its meaning? From the organic point of view, it tends to create organisms perfectly adapted to all the circumstances and to the variations of Nature, individuals having tamed their environment, that is to say having established with it a relationship such as a minimum of effort produces a sufficient return to ensure their existence. Men, freed from work and masters of the elements, no longer being forced to specialize their bodies, to mutilate themselves in order to survive, will already be a new species unknown to this day. Then, the human races, having broken down their barriers, will mix more. Then one day very distant, already psychically complete beings, will create the definitive race [5] . But if physiological evolution can only take place through generations, from the psychological point of view we have reached a point where Nature can and must take a leap, because consciousness can and must today today go around its walls, and destroy them because they have simply become impossible. Their existence is impossible. The human must break his pre-natal shell. We will analyze this need in detail. The entity that says "I am I", and that can only say it because of its peculiarities, its specializations, disappears as soon as these limitations fall. It is in this psychological fact that the birth of the true human appears, in relation to which all the entities which say "I am I" are only subhuman. The Human Here we come to the final definition of human. If we called this new species whose consciousness is capable of reabsorbing the ego superhuman, we would thereby indicate a completion reserved for a few elite people, and by doing so, we would be glorifying a certain number of me, contradicting ourselves, since 'on the threshold of the human, we say that the ego must die. In addition, we would indicate by this that the human is less than what he can become, while we strongly affirm that the human as a whole is already there, for each , by the very fact that each believes himself real in as an entity, because this illusion already indicates sufficient maturity, and the need for a birth. Our analysis of the individual I will prove this last assertion. At every moment of life on the planet, a new species is being born by refusing the specializations that the environment would like to impose on it. Everyone is always invited to this constant and eternal birth. This birth has no limits. It is made up of all those who break their chains. It is made of each revolt, of each emancipation. The total of his deliverances is human. The human is not a simple step towards total revolt, it is not any degree of specialization, it has an absolute value. Those who give up their possibilities to confine themselves to a specialized prison, those who shelter the shell of their entity in ideas, beliefs, opinions, social distinctions, affections, ideals, these betray the human. By what right would they usurp this name? If they like to stop on the way, to die sclerotic, calcified like too hard shells, why should we call this death human? To justify the betrayal? To please us in the pity of human weakness, which absolves everything? There is no human weakness, there are only subhuman, or rather prehuman, weaknesses. The human, at every moment of history, is best expressed by those who best come closer to the absolute universal. The total human is universal. It is no less than that, never. Each new species inherits, must inherit this name: it is, each time, the provisional human, it is what we could do best as human, for the moment. The minute after its advent, a new deliverance still forces us to an effort: our balance was still only faltering, the absolute was not yet there. If we call human some mode of provisional equilibrium, we should reject ourselves towards a mythical "divine" or "superhuman", and indicate them as direction and become men whose only possible completion can only be on the contrary a present without direction. If we limit the human to this unconscious race in time, we would declare this fact: "if the planet wants to create new species it is its business, I am not". And indeed, at every moment the expanded consciences proclaim a human a little more true, a little less mythical than the one from which they are freed, but we, by opposing these spurts of life, we would say all the most common places false and most comforting: "you will not change human nature; There's nothing new under the sun; man can never know his reason for being, etc ..., etc ... " But human nature is dynamic and changes constantly, but everything is always new under the sun, but the human is its own reason for being. It follows from these remarks, that the life of the planet tends at every moment to create types as little specialized as possible, whose subjective sense tends more and more towards a perfect balance. Perfection is the essence of things . Here we are forced to say that the human is the universal essence of things, since if the expressions of life tend to adapt as best as possible to this essence, these expressions, on this planet, can only arise from us. The balance sought by the subjective The absolute and eternal permanence of the "something" that is the universe, is expressed in each world in formation (and our planet is still only in formation) by shaky equilibria and breaks in equilibrium. aggregates. Each particular vortex, each body, each organism, tends to maintain an impossible balance. The more this body is specialized, the more these reactions are determined by contingencies: a metal always reacts the same way under similar conditions. The balance of each thing being determined by the effort produced on this thing by its own reactions to the outside world, it is obvious that the more this body is specialized, the more this balance is unstable. Indeed, this balance does not depend on him, but on contingencies. The subjective therefore tends to create a balance which does not depend on the outside world. The evolution of species tends towards this balance ; in other words, the positive, dynamic, eternal equilibrium of "something" tends to be expressed in species, and this positive eternity is what stimulates evolution. For the planet, as for any organism, the full development of life consists in the creation of a self-sufficient expression, which would be its own equilibrium, an expression which would embody the totality of stable equilibrium and eternal of "something", that is to say its essence. For the planet, this fugitive and eternal balance can only be obtained by individuals whose subjective is no longer created by reactions that depend on the outside world, because these reactions would precisely destroy the stability of this balance, but by individuals whose the subjective has been transformed, dissolved, destroyed, within universal permanence. This bursting of the subjective in permanence, is the reason for human being [6] . Adaptation to life However, only the individual who is completely adapted to life can manage to taste this absolute, independent balance, whose existence is not conditioned by anything, that is to say the individual who does not oppose any resistance to the universal , that is to say again, the individual in whom no longer can any particular reaction occur in contact with the outside world. It is of such an individual that we say that he is not specialized at all. A piece of metal is not free or not to maintain its equilibrium in the presence of an acid: it rushes towards it, and its equilibrium is immediately altered. A rutting animal expresses a similar disruption of balance. The highly individualized man, however brilliant he may be, also only expresses a disruption of balance. But in the piece of metal, in the animal, as in the man of genius, this permanence is nevertheless there in its totality. If the subject is not able to find his balance in this permanence, it is because it is impossible for him to adapt his particular and transitory balance to the eternal balance of the world. The whole evolution is made up of attempts to adapt between these two contradictory equilibria. Each time, the particular balance is destroyed by the universal "plus". Man will have to learn to give up fighting against this inexorable "plus", not to try to reconcile the irreconcilable . It is not a question of saving any part of yourself, whatever it is, in immortality, but of overcoming suffering and ignorance. Immortality, in any form, cannot belong to the smallest part of what made up the balance of the individual. All the equilibria will always be destroyed, but evolution tends to create bodies whose transient equilibrium will be able to abdicate before the permanent equilibrium of "something". Identifying ourselves with a particular equilibrium, made up of reactions, is identifying ourselves with something that can only be destroyed. Our aspirations, our desires, our possessions, and ultimately our death, will always destroy this particular balance. Death will recompose other things, new combinations from which we will be banished. But to abandon our particular equilibrium, to subject it to the permanence of "something" is to replace our identity by a synthesis of the subjective and the objective, which perceives itself. Any particular equilibrium, accessible to reactions, is an open stronghold, accessible to foreign equilibria, which sooner or later will disintegrate it. Every particular equilibrium is made up of a center, the subject, and the rest of the world, the object. In the balance of the world which is its permanence, only "something" exists, which contains neither subject nor object. The life of the planet puts pressure on us The life of the planet at no time will never stop putting pressure on our bodies, to make them taste universal permanence. The sap grows everywhere, and the human race is like a tree which must learn to guide itself. The natural state of a tree is one in which the sap is not hindered in its development. The tree throws, groping in all directions, its roots which gradually orient and develop so as to give it as much sap as possible. When a root is wrong, it atrophies and dies against the stones, and the sap goes elsewhere. The conscience of men can also orient them by mistake towards the least of life, rather than towards the more. The conscience then gropes, blindly, like a root underground, to find life. These trial and error are painful. The natural state is where the pain has stopped. The natural state is where the sap goes, and the most natural state of all is where the tree is healthy and well nourished. The natural state of men is therefore the state of perfection. Any state that remains below perfection is unnatural. The most natural man you can imagine is the man who embodies eternity. The most natural state for men in their totality, is that where the sum of suffering is the smallest, and the sum of happiness the greatest. At every moment, the most natural, the most human man, is the one whose equilibrium is the most independent of contingencies, the closest to the universal, the best identified with human sap. Such a man, the most natural expression of the race, is the one who best nourishes the human plant, that is to say the one in whom there remain neither barriers nor obstacles, which would come between a man who let him be, and him. This is what is natural, it is not the exploitation of everyone by everyone, which transforms each human being into a cancer cell. We are natural and human only to the extent that we abdicate our particular balance, and essentially corruptible, to the benefit of the permanence of the world. The Buddha, Jesus, Lenin, are much more natural expressions of the human race, than we all are, with our scaffolding around our collapsing entities. The religions, and the philosophies of becoming, which would like to direct us towards this natural state, by placing it outside our limits, are only subterfuges of our unconscious, absolutions to our cowardice. Far from establishing superhuman, divine, mythological, moral, moralizing, ideal, unconscious and stupid barriers between perfection and us, we simply return to the natural order of things, and we will find both our raison d'jtre, and the raison d'jtre of the whole human race. Returning to the natural order means ceasing to attribute intrinsic values ??to things, but considering each thing according to the positive power of universal equilibrium, which it more or less expresses. By assigning each thing a meaning and a reason for being according to this positive sign, we will know the true value of each thing, and this knowledge is the knowledge of the absolute. If we discover from an expression that it adapts to the most universal, we will be its ally; if we discover that it opposes this permanent equilibrium, we will know that it must be destroyed. This discernment will be the eternal value which will serve as the basis for our conduct. We will act. We will not be lovers of discourses on the eternal. We will be the revolutionary ferment of the world, and our revolution will not stop before the entrenched camps of our self. By acting, as far as our I is concerned, so as to keep only what is in harmony with the permanence of the universe, we will break what is opposed to this positive dynamism, and will break us ourselves , entities. We will act in accordance with our most irreducible psychological datum (there is something) and this way of acting will be, for us the most natural and the healthiest. To place the human below the eternal, thus to strip itself of its own essence, and then to try to move towards it, and to direct the others, it is to sink into a total contradiction, in the dark religious night, in exploitation in all its forms, in the mythical unconscious. The day when the Earth would shelter only men thus dissociated from their essence, it would be sterilized forever. The human race, arrested in its tracks, struck with paralysis by the fear of revolutions, would have mutilated with its own hands, and would have killed the germ of life, universal and undifferentiated, of which it has custody . But life is the strongest, and the world is already announcing the dazzling birth of humans, which Earth has waited for so long. On the threshold of this decisive passage, the Last Judgment of the Great Myth demands of us that by abolishing Time we bring up all the dead to recreate them in the living present. Today, for the first time in its history, the evolution of the planet is clearly expressed through depersonalized human consciousness. She develops her new reigns with complete lucidity, and invites us to this adventure. The reality of the present moment is expressed here without veils; it disembowels these puppets that are the human selves, they pierce them, it reduces them to dust. It is this surgical psychology that will now draw our full attention. [1] "ITS INTELLIGIBLE ABSOLUTE HAS NOT THE LOWEST VALUE". - This would be the place to make the trial of such systems, given as materialists and which begin to pose reality as unknowable, and give the material universe foundations in an impenetrable that they defend themselves from ever penetrating, thus circumscribe their materialism within the limits they impose on knowledge. These materialists can only come to one day or another agree with theists, except that they will be more reserved than the latter. No materialism which envelops and resolves in its totality this substance which, under one name or another, is just waiting to reappear. This substance had to be crossed, perceived until it was no longer distinguishable from what perceived it. We claim that Hegel's system is the only one that allowed Karl Marx to found his philosophy without leaving anything transcendent behind him. We do not pretend to exhibit it here. Let us simply say that the Absolute of Hegel is immanent, much more, that it evaporates in analysis and that it marks above all a position of the mind less and less necessary as the style given birth by the previous philosophies. I will allow myself to refer the reader to Weber's work on European philosophy which, while deserving of strong criticism for the oblivion in which he leaves Karl Marx, exposes very well the system which allowed it to build his philosophy, which is ours today. For those who will not use Weber I will say here that we all fully agree with regard to the following principles: Reason is not a human faculty, a set of principles, rules according to which we think things. It is the code according to which being is produced, is constituted, flourishes. It is both subjective faculty and objective reality. It is in us as essence and norm of thought. It is in things as essence and law of their evolution. Thinking can only be thinking things, and thinking is already acting . The Absolute is not transcendent in relation to things, it is the process which makes them appear. It is therefore not the Absolute . And also: Nothing is not wrapped in our thinking. For our thought, too, is material; and weighs with all its might in our will to objectify the ego, prior to this bias of communist disintegration of the ego. - JB [2] ETERNITY. - This word can and must be stripped of any metaphysical or mystical character. Eternity, or adherence to the present, consists in thinking simply, but with the whole being , and not only with the abstract logic of the understanding: the past is no longer; the future is not yet. Poetry, freed from individualism, can give a taste of the eternal present. Such, often, the poetry "desensitization of the universe" by Paul Eluard. Bousquet also reminded us of these lines by Rimbaud: "She is found What? Eternity. It's the sea gone With the sun. " But so far it is Hindu music, absolutely purged of individualism, "objective" music, which has given me the flavor closest to that of the eternal present. Sometimes, adherence to the present occurs in an individual in spite of himself, by a biological accident that is poorly explained. The "me" which continues to live receives intolerable anguish; he immediately seeks to explain by his own resources, for fear of perishing, this adherence to the present. In a flash, it is always this explanation which is formed: "I adhere to this moment because I am used to it, I have already experienced it, I recognize it ... I remember being there exactly in the same situation, doing the same thing, I remember every little detail and even that I also had the same feeling of anxiety, and the same memory of the same moment !! and so on and on. This phenomenon is well known to psychologists under the name of paramnesia or false recognition. I have rarely met men who do not remember having experienced it. Adherence to the present acquired by the conscious dissolution of the "ego" leads to the same feeling of presence, of intimacy with the world at all times - but then this consciousness is lasting and is no longer subject to anxiety. Eternity is voluntary paramnesia. Analogous phenomena, when the explanation is transposed into the universal order and in metaphysical terms, can be the origin of myths such as: reminiscence of a previous life, eternal return , etc. [3] BALANCE . - Dialectical determinism is already beginning, in modern science, to supplant the pure and simple mechanism. The notion of statistical law is already a route to dialectical law; it is not yet in the sense that it must appeal to an indeterminacy of elementary phenomena, the basis of all global phenomenon. Thus, let two bodies A and B combine to give a third; the reaction between A and B does not happen all at once, all of a sudden. Each atom of A can behave towards the atoms of B which it meets in a multitude of different ways; and nothing can predict how it will behave; but here plays the "law of large numbers" (as in games of chance); precisely because of this apparent indeterminacy there will be no more atoms which will have behaved in such a way than atoms which will have behaved in another, and the total reaction will result in a constant equilibrium (I schematize a lot the 'example). [4] SPECIALIZATION. - Sociologists will say: "since the earliest historical times, men have become more and more specialized: either by the formation of castes, or by adaptation to various techniques. Nowadays, although the machinery tends to transform the worker into a simple unskilled maneuver, a host of trades remain where specializations are only increasing . It is true that the forces of inertia, of retardation, both social and individual, are expressed in this way. Ultimately, this development would lead to the anthill. In our time, when man begins to wake up, the tendency to the insect reacts strongly; it is expressed by the kind of "rationalization" which reigns in the USA. Mechanism, here, is only a pretext: it is not yet demonstrated that men "knowing how to do everything, ... universally developed" (Lenin) should be unable to use machines. To tell the truth, our unhappy civilization can only serve machines. If she does not sacrifice the insect to man, too bad for her. [5] "We will move on to education, instruction and the training of universally prepared and developed men, of men who know how to do everything ..." - Lenin. [6] WILL TO KNOW . - The Intuition of all this appears in the will to know. And what is knowing? Without pretending to build definitions myself, I would say that in my opinion to know is to give the universe as a whole a body of truth which would have drawn its transparency from the illusion that we are an individual. The ego, often diverted from the mission it has to give itself, being only the direction imposed on research (temporarily). Carlo Suares : Works in French : Carlo Suares Fondation + 3rd Millenaire Qu'est-ce que c'est que l'humain ? par Carlo Suarés - 3e millinaire |