Carlo Suarés : There Are

(Revue La Tour de Feu. N 0 36-37. Spring 1952) There are . It is a statement. There is ... this is my basic finding. There is a Universe. There is light. There are lights. There is an Earth with a breathable atmosphere. There is life. There is movement. And, if there is consciousness, of all this, there is a human consciousness in front of all of this, which feels the need to see " there is ", and nothing else. There is , and that's it. There is , and do not go further. Why? Because " there is " is incomprehensible. That there is ... that there is something ... that there is anything, is incomprehensible. The presence of a single grain of sand carries a mystery that confuses the imagination. I penetrate this idea, this contemplation, this stupor. I am so full of it, that there is no place left in my mind for any religion of any kind. Some of my friends, who are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Brahmanists, tell me that their religions are the only true, truly revealed. For each of them, his is a revelation. And when I examine the nature of these "revelations" , I see that the mystery of the mysteries, the " there is " in the pure state, in the unassimilable, unbearable state, has been disguised, cooked, transformed into something something chewable by each religion, in order to divert the minds from the simple observation that we live in an unthinkable world. The mystery of " there is "? But how simple! The Universe, thanks to a doubly mysterious being, was created by the virtue of a triple mystery ... (Didn't you know? Ah, yes that's right). Or: a doubly mysterious being, Brahman, dreams of the Universe; the triple mystery is not creation, it is dream (didn't you know, ask the dreamer for the dragon again? Ah yes, that's true). This is what sums up the false evidences of the so-called revealed religions: they add two mysteries to the mystery, and the childish tales which result from it, lull the spirits into false explanations. The real, immediate, current, constant mystery, here, present, at all hours of the day and the night, there is , is therefore discarded, hidden in the darkness of the sanctuaries, rejected in a past which does not does not exist (the world "was created": since it's done, don't think about it anymore); in a future that does not exist (when you are dead, you will know everything). The less explanatory the explanation, the more convincing it is. There is , at all times, cause and effect, in presence, in the present. And my indestructible lucid will not to go back to sleep in explanations. There is no "primary cause": there is cause, at this very moment, active and lively, as much as it has ever been, since there is . Nothing is effect, everything is cause, since everything is cause of this: there is . I am taught that the Universe has existed for two billion years, and also that it is finished and included in its curvature. So we bring my mind back to the period before these two billion years, which has only existed for two billion years, where there was perhaps nothing, and to the inconceivable, non-space that the notion of a finite Universe may imply. I am not distracted by these considerations: before these two billion years, there was an "there will be", since now there is . "There will be" is another there is . "There will be" is an " there is " because an " there is " in potential is something, it is not nothing. That the Universe is in a state of expansion until one day exploding in the unmanifest - and starting again - these cycles, admitting that they exist, do not confuse my reason more than the unthinkable presence of this grain of sand. The presence of the smallest of objects contains the mysterious totality of the unthinkable. I perceive it and know it, just as everyone can perceive it and know it, thus making the turn of all that men have invented over the centuries to explain the inexplicable and think the unthinkable, and rejecting everything, as childish and unintelligent. Thus, my simplest, most naked observation, the only one which is not disputable, the only universal one: there is ; this observation, which results from my will to perceive it all naked and to prohibit in my mind all the escape routes, all the representations, all the concepts, in short everything that constitutes thought itself; this pure and simple contemplation of the fact " there is ", which can only happen by the acute perception of the impossibility that my reason has to transcend; this act of consciousness, if it is truly stripped, is, in truth, the culmination of all knowledge and all research. This perception is the creative spark which bursts within a spirit suspended in itself, in a state of observation. This finding is neither objective nor subjective. There is , and there is awareness of there is , not awareness of myself finding there is , but awareness emanating from there , finding there is without letting itself be delayed by incidental considerations, like "I ", Or" I am ", or" I think ", or any other invention of the mind because they totally lack interest: there is , suffices, in its fullness. Since men have passed on, from generation to generation, the accounts of their disputes about Knowledge, some claim that the universe is generated by a consciousness, others that consciousness is the product of Nature. During this chimerical fight - which still lasts - they forget that if there is consciousness first or that there is Nature first, or that if there is concomitantly consciousness and nature, or nature and consciousness, we are at the same point, facing the unthinkable there is . Some, believing to "think" consciousness, make the unthinkable disappear behind the scenes, on one side; the others proclaim their irresistible taste for the backstage entrance on the other side. Thus, the agonizing problem of the subjective and the objective, of the observing ego and the observed outside world, exists, as anxiety and as a problem, only when one escapes from the observation: there is , in its nudity. I tell myself ; there is a finding of there is . I do not say to myself: I think there is . I think I see: it is obvious that I see that I see. So, my finding is a thought as a finding, but this finding is not a thought, since the there is is unthinkable. I know why it is unthinkable: it is because there is a continuous space-time that I cannot conceive. I cannot conceive it, because my thought does not exist and functions only by a dissociation of space and time. Just as our light is diffuse, that is to say that the light rays are returned in all directions by the elements of the atmosphere, and still reflected by the objects, thanks to which we see the world around us , this world reflects, returns, diffuses the consciousness that it generates in us - through our experience - rebounds in this consciousness, assumes there forms, representations, images, which are thought. I know that. And, to find out, I have only to examine my thought. One of two things: either it has a content, and this has an experimental, sensory basis, whatever the degree of adaptation of my thought; or it has no content (when I utter unthinkable words, like Absolute, Eternity, Infinity, God, etc.) and this emptiness is nothing other than a representation of myself; prefabricated, then destroyed in the eyes of my conscious consciousness, therefore another thought, "me", based on elements of perception, experience. I conclude from this that the continuous space-time is unthinkable and that, in our system of relations, made of measurable space in units of length and time of clocks, there exist discontinuities, objects and thoughts, whose structure is a dissociation of space and time. Carlo Suarhs.