The evolution of the subjective in nature |
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(Extract from The Psychological Comedy. José Corti Edition 1932) General sketch The subjective: reaction in search of balance We have seen that the subjective has its most distant origin in the reactions which an aggregate undergoes upon contact with what is not itself. However on the one hand, by noting the irreducible permanence of "something", our psychological ceiling obliges us to affirm that this something has an absolute stability, an absolute equilibrium, which keeps it at each instant from rocking into nothing. This balance does not depend on any quantity; the manifested world, we can try to imagine that it will reabsorb itself until it volatilizes, dematerializes, but even such extraordinary efforts of our imagination, would lead to a certain "something", somewhere, power , or in "pralaya" (according to the Hindu term). On the other hand, by leaning on the vestiges of the History of our planet, we see the Earth producing aggregates, bodies or organisms, in need of this stable equilibrium. We have seen that the simplest aggregates, that is to say the most specialized, which are at the bottom of the evolutionary scale, have reactions (chemical, electromagnetic) which depend exclusively on aggregates external to themselves. . A piece of iron reacts to each magnet, to each acid, etc and the inevitability of these reactions destroys each time the balance of the iron aggregate. Iron, an available subject and always consenting, is destroyed by other balances, always the same, and always in the same way. Iron, subject, does not express the permanent equilibrium of the universe, on the contrary, it is a completely specialized expression of "something", therefore an expression which undergoes a determined, specific, precise reaction, and which is governed by this reaction. The set of reactions that all expressions in this category undergo, constitutes the set of natural laws . Since these natural laws are the result of reactions, and since reactions, by their frequency, tend to modify themselves, it is obvious that natural laws are constantly changing. We have said that an aggregate, due to the fact that it has submitted to a particular specialization (lead, tree, or monkey) has become, in relation to universal essence, a kind of dead end, where the germ universal de vie has given up protecting in itself all of its possibilities. This does not mean that the lead, the tree, the monkey, do not possess in them the totality of all that there is, of all that there has been, and of all that there is will have. No, it simply means that these bodies and these organisms could only develop in them a sense of the subjective limited to particular reactions, and dependent on external circumstances. This means that their subjective expresses on the one hand the aspiration towards the absolute equilibrium of total permanence, and on the other hand the renunciation of this absolute. Indeed, only one can adhere to the permanent and absolute equilibrium of "something", the being whose particular equilibrium can no longer be broken by an external shock , in other words the being in whom the subjective is arrived at the end of its curve. The subjective curve in evolution This curve is quite simple to understand. The planet having a beginning and an end, tends, in the time it has to live, to create expressions more and more adequate to its essence. From its origin, the planet belonged, as an aggregate, to the universal and permanent "something"; one day, the antagonistic equilibria, which compete for the globe, will destroy it as a single, that is to say, living, aggregate; but until that day, life on the planet will struggle to create organisms capable of expressing one balance, one direction. This struggle is felt by each aggregate, which reacts, and this reaction culminates in humans in individual consciousness. Indeed, the destruction of each provisional equilibrium (lead, tree, etc.) is caused by the permanent equilibrium of the world. This balance, which is the essence of everything, breaks all things that are not able to adapt at every moment to the dynamic result of the world. That is to say, sooner or later, it breaks everything. Now the Earth is at its origin the result of a similar catastrophe it is a fragment which is detached from an aggregate which could no longer contain it: inside this aggregate, the elements which have come together to compose this globe, expressed a particular equilibrium, incompatible with other equilibria, which had formed in opposition to it. This particular equilibrium having isolated itself, must now develop all that involves the reaction which formed it, since it is free today to do so. His reaction conquered his independence, and this conquest naturally expresses the absolute universal "plus", since it is this "plus" which broke the primitive aggregate which imprisoned him. The development of this reaction is evolution. Evolution is therefore the curve of a reaction, that is to say of the creative phenomenon of the subjective. The outcome of this curve is that of evolution, that is to say that the goal of the subjective is to develop in its entirety, the expression of "more", which is its origin. The creation of new worlds, and consciousness The reaction which creates new worlds by the bursting of worlds in gestation, is a natural law. Whirlpools occur side by side, which become autonomous by the reactions they have on each other. The resulting burst expresses a repulsion for the other fragments about each fragment. This repulsion marks the exit of the subjective from his prenatal period. It is a simple and immediate phenomenon; it represents the first specialization, which is the expression of a new particular, unique reaction. This primitive, formidable, prodigiously dynamic reaction, this bursting, liberated each of the fragments from the implacable resistance which the other fragments opposed to it. This force can now calm down, re-form a new equilibrium in each new aggregate. In the molten planet, certain recomposing vortices slowly calm down, which tend towards a state of permanent equilibrium. The irreducible resistance of "something" breaks one form after another, and gradually directs the subjective towards experiences that will give it stability. Any reaction is only the search for stability. The reaction which caused a world to burst, and which launched spheres into space, is a victory for the stability of "something", over forms in unstable equilibrium [1] . Here, in one of these new universes, here are recomposing new aggregates, which react, therefore which lose their stability, because they seek it . As water rushes from the mountain in search of its stability, the bodies rush towards each other, or move away from each other. But as long as they undergo reactions, their balances will be precarious. They will therefore learn to react as little as possible, to detach themselves as much as possible from outside influences . The reactions will thus learn to modify the subject itself, to model it, until creating a type a little less specialized, therefore a little more stable, therefore a little more free. This creation of freer types, which liberate themselves from the reactions of which the subjective is made, is in short only the condensation of the primitive movement of liberation which created the planet. Non-reaction is the condensation of the reaction . This condensation is a real transition from state. When the reaction of the subject, in search of his balance, models the subject enough so that he widens his balance, makes it a little more stable, gradually appears consciousness. Consciousness is therefore a condensation of the reaction, a transition from reaction to non-reaction, it is the instrument that works to depreciate beings . Consciousness is a change of state in the subject which tears it from the law of simple reactions, which transforms its forced reactions, into I. As soon as the notion of the I intervenes, the subject is no longer entirely determined, but it has an element of freedom, even minimal. This freedom is contained within the limits of its specialization. No organism is ideally adaptable to life. A fortiori, the organism of a very specialized species lacks flexibility, still has an overwhelming percentage of determined reactions. His I is only free to make it oscillate within narrow limits. A dog drools, and can not help drooling each time it is placed, in certain circumstances, in front of food. But within these limits of organic elasticity, a dog, because it has the notion of the I, can have a certain freedom. Evolution seeks balance by breaking balance By freedom, we simply mean the ability that a subject acquires to defend his particular equilibrium. The evolution of bodies and species is the search for this possibility . At first, the body being completely specialized, the subject can in no way protect his balance; but because it tends to protect it, it creates an organism which does it to a certain extent, that is to say, which adapts to circumstances so as not to be at their mercy, and which stiffens against them in order to protect themselves. This results in both adaptation and rigidity (non-adaptation), since the subject strives to protect a particular balance. Evolution tends towards total equilibrium, successively defending particular equilibria which crumble one after the other . It is in the breaking of a particular equilibrium that the greater equilibrium resides, so that at every moment the subject struggles to defend that very thing which will be wrested from it, and the defeat of the subjective is its triumph. The birth of freedom, is the birth of isolated, individual characters, which free the subject from the rigorously determined reactions of the species . This does not mean that these individual reactions are not determined, but they are by causes that have become individual . This I begins to have reactions which are specific to it, it becomes a new species all by itself. But from the fact that he applies from then on to protect and make his balance last, (his I, his particular reactions), he opposes the more general equilibrium which he wishes to reach, he opposes his own essence, and his freedom becomes that very thing: that connects him. The subject, the individual who within a particular species, refuses the rigid specialization that the species tends to impose on him, is pushed by his own essence to seek a less specialized, more permanent equilibrium. He then develops in him qualities of adaptation, which for some time make his particular balance and his essence coincide. But this only reinforces the subjective, which does not take long to realize that he paid for his victory with a little more isolation. Feeling better adapted, and having gone as far as possible in the adaptability of his organism, he stiffens around his new conquest, he crystallizes it, he hardens it, in order to protect it and make it permanent. He thus creates a new specialization, which differs from the previous one in that it is less specialized, but more conscious, therefore more isolated in its subjective. Isolation of the subjective The contradiction inherent in the dynamism of absolute equilibrium, according to which the only disruptive force that exists is that of this permanent equilibrium, when it breaks the impermanent equilibria which oppose it, pursues the subjective in all its curve, the forces you to find victories only in defeats, and to seek the universal by isolating yourself more and more. All human history, considered from this point of view, illustrates this contradiction of the I. The I would both find universal balance, and fully maintain his. Hence all its religions, its theological philosophies, its spiritualist monisms, its pantheisms. But these two balances are incompatible. The subjective is a reaction, therefore it is always an opposition to the universal , therefore not only can it never be able to fully adapt to the universal result of "something", but on the contrary, the more organisms become perfected and adapt to life, the more they objectively oppose it, and man, the least specialized organism, ends up isolating himself completely, his I became a self. xsy Each self, strongly selfish, affirmative, voluntary, tends to free more and more its reaction, but also to protect each conquest, by isolating it. This isolation of the subjective tends, according to the usual process, to make the self-centered equilibrium of the self permanent to the detriment of the equilibrium of the universal "something", and can lead the self to a state of inner, self-centered contemplation, in which it encloses itself, imagining itself to contain the world and the universal. State of blissful indifference, of religious selfishness. But the ego, having reached this state of pseudo-universality, when it imagines itself to be fully adherent to life, has built itself a shell, it has truly specialized in what it claims to be a non specialization, it has a creed, an ethics, a ritual, a philosophy, a way of reasoning and feeling, which far from constituting a faculty of constant readjustment to life (adherence to this present moment which at each instant is the result of something) oppose the presence of the present, in the most formal way. The curve of subjective reaction across species leads to a forced error: the search for a stable equilibrium by means of a fixity of reaction, which opposes the dynamic permanence of life. The subjective imagines being able to become fully aware of himself, while remaining subjective, he imagines that the essence of the world is his perfect image: a cosmic self, or a personal god, in short an I at the same time fully aware to be an I and universal. There is obviously a contradiction in terms, because the more the I is I, the more it is isolated. The I supremely I am supremely isolated. We have seen that this fatality is inherent in the very process which transformed specialized reactions into consciousness. Consciousness focuses on the subjective reaction, in order to protect its balance, a balance which each time must be torn from it by the universal permanence which acts only by eruptions, when an object is opposed to it. Consciousness focuses so well on the subjective reaction, that it ends up making it a real entity, the self. This entity has no kind of reality, it is only the last stronghold of the resistance that opposes the permanence of the "something" of the particular balances which by their resistance, tend to create that very which destroys them. . The violent reaction which isolated and projected the planet in space, under the pressure of the inexorable universal permanence now tends, on this planet, to create organisms where in the end this reaction will calm down, and will submit to this same permanence that caused it. But this permanence has never been better served than at the time of the rupture, of the bursting. For an aggregate to perfectly express its essence it must represent the absolute "plus" of the universe, but this "plus" is never so well represented as when it destroys an aggregate. However, as soon as the Earth aggregate was formed, this meant that in this new formation, the universal "plus" was satisfied, without which new disaggregations would have come to demolish this body in formation. The reaction was therefore circumscribed, subject to the universal "plus", and the latter opposed it, it stopped it in its explosion, by the very fact that it had been able to satisfy it perfectly. This contradiction is that of all creation, of all manifestation, of all evolution in general . This contradiction is forced to calm down because the globe has detached itself from the causes of its reaction, but it has slowly calmed down, by successive condensations, by fragmentations, by infinite multiplications of points of resistance, more and more isolated, more and more cornered towards their destruction. These resistances, these reactions, are the residue of the primitive reaction, which now opposes the "more" that stopped it. This residue creates evolution, and finally the "I", more and more individualized, more and more isolated, more and more conscious too, consciousness being only a body assumed by the subjective in its fragmentation, like drops of water that water vapor would assume when condensing. It follows from these remarks that the development of consciousness, which finally creates personal consciousness, is a reaction which tends to oppose the permanent equilibrium of the world. It also follows that the evolution of species has an end, which is the destruction of this resistance. It also follows that this end is brought about by means of an instrument which is consciousness (since it applies to adapting the subject to universal life). It therefore follows that the last act of this resistance is the destruction of the subjective by consciousness itself. Success will only depend on us But can the Earth ever manage to express this limit state? Let us say that apparently it already expresses it here to a certain extent, since we, Earth, we tell ourselves our reason for being. Certainly not all grains give fruit. But natural development is about giving fruit, not stopping on the way. To be accomplished in its raison d'jtre is not a supernatural phenomenon, but the most natural fact that there is, the only truly natural fact. That the Earth goes bankrupt because men, stiffened against eternity, in inhuman resistance, will have sterilized with their own hands, it is possible. It is possible that the Earth, which today howls in the agony of its layers, can only give birth to a stillborn human, too exhausted to live. That on the threshold of great accomplishment, helpless eternity will forever desert this too fragmented globe, too torn on all sides, it is possible. Everything is possible. But we want such an eventuality to be unlikely, from the mere fact that we are considering it. We want the birth to be already there enough, present, alive in us, for it to renew itself and rebound in renovated human natures. Success or failure will depend, after all, on us alone . Our conscience has granted us a certain freedom: we are free to remain in chains, free not to free ourselves. It is not much, but it also means that this ironic freedom is that of suffering and knowing the abyss of despair. Men at the moment do not seem to be without it. But these sufferings are starting to be too foolish to be able to last a long time. Their inconsistency is a good symptom, the conquest of eternity could soon perhaps present itself in its true aspect, that of the simplest common sense. Evolution and natural order The dialectical research of the evolution of the subjective on the globe, showed us that the subjective, which is a reaction, identifies first of all with the permanent essence of things, since it is permanence itself, under its destructive aspect of forms, under its aspect of bursting, of disruptive power. But as and when in the new aggregate, which constitutes the planet, particular aggregates are formed, bodies, species, these strive to make their particular equilibria as durable as possible, and oppose thus to the permanent equilibrium which tends to take possession of them, but by destroying them. Thus the bodies and the species which are at the bottom of the evolutionary scale are at the same time the most in conformity with the permanent essence of things, the most subject to this permanence, since they are unable to isolate themselves in individual entrenched camps, and at the same time, although subject to and conformed to it, they do not express it individually, since precisely they are, individually, each of them, essentially deprived of equilibrium . The regularity, the constancy of their reactions, makes them united with each other. They are linked together by natural laws, and it is only their whole, independently of individuals, and despite rebelliousness, which expresses the harmonious permanence of the universe. As the evolutionary scale develops, rebellious people who refuse to fully adapt to the specializations of their species, therefore revolt against the natural order. They thus gradually modify this natural order, at the cost of their increasing isolation, then each time they return in their turn to this new order, but which becomes less and less natural, that is to say which moves further in addition to its permanent essence, because an increasing number of particular reactions are added to it . On the other hand, these particular reactions (being themselves less and less prone to lose their own equilibrium, being less and less conditioned by external events), express more and more this very essence from which they detach themselves more and more. more . Finally, man, torn from his essence in a discordant way, opposes natural order to the point of wanting - and sometimes to be able - to destroy it. He goes so far as to imagine that he will be able to carve out a particular permanence, in what, however, will never tolerate the subjective; he foolishly believes he can identify himself as a subject, with the permanence of the universe. This craziest of all illusions is the most distant from the impersonal essence of things, whose dynamic and eternally present totality cannot in any way contain reactions, that is to say, subjective. And yet this aspiration for permanence, which opposes the eternal, is the only way that eternity has to be born . For man, at the point where it is, returning to natural order, returning to eternity, can in no way mean pure and simple submission. On the contrary, so-called spiritual submissions are only a pretext for him to try to drag on as an entity. Established by the ego, as an expression of its desire to last, religions are based on the confusion that the ego commits between the notion that it has of being an isolated entity, and personality, that is, that is, the particular mode by which each isolated self can get rid of this sense of isolation. By creating this confusion, the ego strives to destroy, with all its religions, the only instrument of its liberation, and isolates itself more and more in the false eternity of its personal consciousness. By acting in this way, the ego tends with all its forces to harden this part of itself which corresponds to the shell of the egg, while protecting, it is true, the germ of universal life which it shelters, but also by opposing him with ferocity, at the time of the new birth. The ego, frozen movement The phenomenon of this birth is the last phase of the subjective curve, which curve is determined by the contradiction inherent in its dynamism. And indeed, the subjective solidified in the rigid shell of the ego is only the condensation of a reaction. It has become a static reaction, a frozen movement, which is absolutely absurd . We have seen that the origin of this antinomy is in the very birth of any aggregate, and in particular of the Earth aggregate which occupies us here, since it is the irreducible permanence of the totality of the "Something", which, at some point, broke out within an aggregate that had become heterogeneous. Following this condensation (or explosion) each of the isolated fragments carries the germ of an antinomy, therefore its determinism. Indeed, because this fragment is not fragmented in its turn, it asserts sufficient homogeneity, it satisfies the universal "plus", by expressing a single direction, a single absolutely triumphant equilibrium. However, this balance is nothing other than the survival of a break in balance , of the total reaction, which created the new aggregate, violently, irresistibly. The evolution curve is only the condensation of this antinomy. The last phase of this condensation produces the ego. The culmination of the evolution of species This antinomy is not only the propelling force of the aggregate, it is this aggregate itself, which at its origin expresses what in its essence it is not: a rupture of absolute balance of the permanence of the " Something ". In this new, now constituted world, we have already seen that evolution begins with the suppression of the primitive cause which made its birth necessary. Between the various scattered fragments, a relationship is now established which is determined by this primitive reaction. Indeed, this reaction was more or less violent according to the more or less great violence of the antagonisms, and it placed these aggregates in relations between them, of attraction and repulsion, such that they no longer hamper the meaning universal positive that each aggregate can now express in a particular way. These relationships are conditioned by the reactions of the aggregates between them, and condition them. The primitive cause of reactions, therefore, is not completely suppressed, it has only been suppressed in order to make life possible. This reaction residue can vary and transform, but cannot disappear. It assigns, in each aggregate, a limit to the appeasement of its particular reaction, and establishes a solidarity between the evolutions. The creation of aggregates, and their dispersion, have created a system, in which each aggregate has the absolute freedom of the universal "plus", and is both conditioned by the whole. This set constitutes a unit (within larger sets, etc.) which is made up of deliveries, all conditioned, but all perfect since they are adequate for the universal "plus". This perfection in limitation, this absolute in the relative, is the cause and the finality of each aggregate, planet or man . This cause is the liberation of the permanent dynamism of the world, it is freedom itself, unconditional in essence, total, indestructible, against which the forms which would like to apprehend will always break and will break. This purpose is that of aggregates, which can only be broken by this liberation. Like a boiling mass which gradually calms down, the Earth aggregate creates, by evolution, species which react less and less, that is to say which adapt more and more to this residue of reactions which governs the system . We have already seen that this evolution is the expression of this fact: the primitive reaction, determined by an opposition between the forces external to the aggregate, (become subject) and its individuality, tends to calm down, that is to say -to say that it seeks to compose a permanent balance. The evolution of species is the search for this permanent balance, therefore the creation of species more and more adapted to all circumstances, that is to say less and less specialized, and having more and more a balance interior . The reactions aspire to feel free, that is, they tend to become particular. This tendency is expressed by an individual resistance to specialization, which the species tends, on the contrary, to impose on individuals. This resistance is the evolution seen from its subjective aspect. Each time, it separates some individuals of the species, who refuse to allow themselves to be completely specialized. This refusal is determined by the need to create a more permanent, less conditioned balance. This struggle is the origin of the I. The I is born at a turning point in evolution, when fairly strongly non-specialized organisms are formed, to offer variable reactions to certain analogous phenomena. The I is therefore a change of state of the subjective, caused by a quantity of non-specialization which has become large enough to oppose the medium. Thus the equilibrium which tends towards non-reaction, progresses through the subject's reaction. On the other hand, the specialized species, which is more akin to the primitive reaction than the non-subject is, acts on it in a static manner. Thus the antinomy develops, because each reaction of the subject strengthens the I. The I is a reaction which tends not to react any more, since it tends to regain permanent equilibrium, and lo and behold, precisely, because of this, the I can only develop, since it must react in order not to specialize , and since he can only overcome his reaction by ceasing to be conditioned by specializations. Individual consciousness, or borderline absurdity The development of the I and their reactions which want to be balances, have created personal consciousness, and this consciousness has never ceased to martyr itself in its contradiction, to make every effort to ensure a permanence, this permanence of reaction (since consciousness is a reaction) being its own negation, its destruction. This is how consciousness came to the limit of its absurdity. The conflict, first invisible, then cloudy, then condensed into dream entities, armies of dreams that wage an unrelenting battle, in gigantic mythical and religious nightmares, in which a God of dreams, fights without never ending the to conquer, a dream Satan, in which mad humanity has never ceased to tear itself apart, this conflict has today reached a decisive crisis. This crisis is brought about by the determinism of the civilizations which arose at the second change of state of the subjective, when the I became the me. These civilizations both expressed this change of state, and hastened it towards yet another change, that is to say, they gave forms and expressions to the conflict, and these clarified, identified the contours, hardened the edges. The transition from the I to the me, from consciousness not yet individualized to a consciousness which has become isolated in the entity of a shell, is the last stage of a struggle marked with the seal of the most irremediable absurdity, stage where each gesture does nothing more than express its opposite, where each step that the ego takes to save itself only loses it, and to lose itself save it. In this stage, the ego, this crystallized reaction, this petrified dynamism, is precisely the conquest of a permanence - since the I feel permanent through all the metamorphoses that its ego undergoes - and the impossibility of this permanence, since the subjective is a reaction, that is to say the opposite of permanence. The self has become a fact, which is both there and impossible. And the more obvious, acute, the finding of this fact, the more it becomes unbearable. The more the self is noticed, the more it loses ground in its own abyss. The more he is, the more he loses himself. But before arriving at this abyss of total plenitude, in which the consciousness itself is forced to shatter, the self takes refuge, chased by its essence, in the most obscure entrenchments of the defense system that he organized against himself. Thousands of centuries of evolution have resulted in organisms sufficiently non-specialized physiologically to adapt, as a whole, to external conditions, that is to say that these organisms are able to dominate the circumstances, to conquer them. . The other aspect of this evolution, its psychological aspect, shows us that these organisms have all achieved - each of them, individually - a feeling of permanence as me, throughout their existence. This feeling of permanence emanates, for each of them, from an isolated center which knows itself to be an isolated center, that is to say that each center is a particular equilibrium, which has ended up constituting itself within Nature in opposing it. This opposition, this sense of self, this feeling of being a center, is made up of two notions: the self, and the non-self. The first cannot exist without the second, which is, for the ego, only a negation of what is not it ( what is not me is not me ). This negation is only a reaction of the ego, a constant reaction, a reaction that the ego tries to maintain at all costs since it is not enough to say that it is from it that it derives the notion of his existence: she is truly him. The last struggles Now if this ego was constituted in organisms, it is on the contrary because evolution has tended towards a total equilibrium, that is to say towards a state in which the internal equilibrium of individuals is not nothing other than the cosmic residue of reactions, which governs the planet. This total balance, this fusion of the subjective and the objective, is the culmination of the evolution determined by the creation of the planet. This evolution is limited by the relationships that have been established between the Earth, Sun aggregates, etc. when the burst caused by the universal "plus" has been recomposed a new equilibrium by marking that this "plus" was satisfied. These limits indicate that the transformation of species will go no further than a certain point. This final degree of organic evolution, although limited, is intended to reduce, to completely appease the individual, subjective reaction (become psychological in organisms) of the Earth, so as to harmonize it with the residue of system reactions (laws natural). xsy In other words, the last stage of evolution is a psychological stage, which, by recomposing the attitude, the behavior of organisms, and by recreating their atmosphere (Nature and Society) must complete the organisms and match them, as we grant instruments, to Nature, This last stage is therefore an entire era which opens to us, in which the subjective, carried by historical determinism, must change state, and in which organisms must be recreated, in an environment that no longer pushes them towards physical and psychological specializations. The creation of this era will unfortunately be long and bloody. The object of conquest is consciousness, so that the subconscious (the instrument of "retardation") will defend itself to the extreme limit of all its social, religious, moral and hierarchical, organized forces. The time it will take is the time that the subconscious constantly produces. The most perfect organisms to which all the evolution of a planet tends are, as we have just seen, necessarily imperfect, limited, conditioned by the natural laws which we have called the residue of reactions. These organisms will always react, physiologically, by submitting to these laws. But they must be sufficiently perfected, that is to say adapted to the circumstances, so that their psychological reactions can disappear completely. On the other hand, if a person isolates himself, withdraws for example to a convent, it is because he is psychologically unsuitable; so instead of adapting her organism to life (which means perfecting it), she isolates it and specializes it (which means that she sinks it into a lower kingdom). It is the same for all social and moral specializations, which isolate individuals, imprison them in specific conditions (castes, classes, corporations, etc.). This lack of psychological adaptability is the very essence of the self, since the self far from adhering to each new expression, which life offers at every moment, is only a negation of all that is not its self-affirmation, of all that is not its own center, and an affirmation of its permanence as an isolated center. Thus, in reaching the last stage of its development, the subjective opposes evolution more violently than it has ever done . The struggle of which we spoke above becomes individual and fierce, because if so far the two elements in conflict were universal permanence and successive attempts, hardly conscious, of permanence, now what is opposed to the universal is a permanence that has succeeded : that of the ego, of the ego that feels real, that is convinced that it is being, that has the feeling of being a living entity. Conflict has entered the flesh, into every fiber of beings. These unhappy unreal entities, these characters from their own dream, have only to die. The Psychological Comedy ends in the terror of a Last Judgment. The enemy of its entities is life itself, the inexorable permanence of "something", triumphant, destructive, creative life, impersonal life, calm, harmonious, infinitely serene, which for millennia on this planet, did not stop crushing the unsuitable forms, and which by their incapacity provoked all the revolutions. Universal permanence is stronger than anything. Evolution cannot remain with this unfortunate race of pseudo-permanent entities, deprived of their raison d'jtre. This race can defend itself well. The more she defends the reality of her innumerable selves, the more she will fight (against herself. The world that, to protect her, her subconscious has built around her, collapses, and her innumerable selves stiffen in their last effort. The barriers multiply around men, because the only remedies that these selves can find in their untenable position, is precisely the cause of their evil. The more they suffer, the more they are thrown back on what destroys them, because they are doomed to self-destruction. The masses, made stupid by all the specializations imprinted on their souls of slaves by the so-called spiritual authorities, put on all the uniforms we want, salute the way we want, believe whatever we want, respect and support the most harmful representatives of this subhuman race which affirms the power of the self. This ego, we have now located it in the world economy, we have shown its essence. We can move on to the study of the elements that compose it, and, as spectators of his Psychological Comedy, examine the sets, the costumes and the masks which he uses, to be captivated by his own roles II A study plan Dynamic balance and opposition balance One of the conclusions to which our previous reflections lead is that the evolution of the subjective, in nature, is the product of a contradiction. All evolution is a contradiction, an opposition, which tends towards its destruction as a contradiction, in a new state of synthesis. When the absolute equilibrium of "something" is forced to break a particular aggregate, it is this permanent equilibrium itself which manifests itself by this impulse, much more, which is its essence. At the precise moment of the rupture, we can say that there is an identification between absolute non-equilibrium and absolute equilibrium: the two terms of the antinomy coincide . This fact expresses the highest possible degree of universal equilibrium, since this equilibrium is not a zero, but the end of all antinomies. But as soon as the primitive reaction falls because its cause disappears, and as soon as one of the new aggregates, planet, star, tends to stabilize its equilibrium-rupture under the influence of the residue of reactions (natural laws), its homogeneity (approximate ) primitive breaks immediately. Consequently, in this mass which was more or less homogeneous, and which is not it any more, each new species, each new body in formation, starts to react in a particular way, and each of its reactions is a search for 'particular balance. But here the equilibrium changes completely in direction , and this fact is essential if we are to understand a little while ago how the ego must, at the end of the curve of the subjective, submit to the dynamic equilibrium of "something", instead of wanting to reconcile the static balance of its own shell, and eternity. As soon as dissimilar elements arise in a homogeneous mass, each element becomes the subject of particular reactions, and each body, by accumulating its reactions, changes. This means that with each opposition, the particular reactions, which are movements, only increase, when they are not overcome and destroyed by external vibrations stronger than them . In the long run, among all the reactions that remain, some end up dominating over the others, these are those that have been able to develop in their bodies a certain permanence, which means relative independence, which means non-specialization relative. We therefore see that this tendency towards equilibrium is a tendency towards an equilibrium of opposition , a tendency to develop, in a multitude of antagonistic reactions, islets more solid than the others, less dependent, more adapted, better armed. It is towards a balance of stability and isolation, towards a static balance of conservation that each particular reaction (which becomes experience) tends. As soon as dissimilar elements arise in a homogeneous mass, each element becomes the subject of particular reactions, and each body, by accumulating its reactions, changes. This means that with each opposition, the particular reactions, which are movements, only increase, when they are not overcome and destroyed by external vibrations stronger than them . In the long run, among all the reactions that remain, some end up dominating over the others, these are those that have been able to develop in their bodies a certain permanence, which means relative independence, which means non-specialization relative. We therefore see that this tendency towards equilibrium is a tendency towards an equilibrium of opposition , a tendency to develop, in a multitude of antagonistic reactions, islets more solid than the others, less dependent, more adapted, better armed. It is towards a balance of stability and isolation, towards a static balance of conservation that each particular reaction (which becomes experience) tends. Specialize not to specialize But here we see clearly how the two terms - now largely dissociated - of the opposition that is the movement act. Because each defense, each new security, each new combat organ which ensures independence from surrounding reactions, in short each conquest of specialization, is a new isolation. Isolation is itself a specialization: total and necessary contradiction. This is how a species struggles to survive: it forges its organic weapons, and thus tends to stifle evolution in a dead end. Only individuals who will take advantage of these weapons forged by the species will be able to give birth to new species, until they turn against it. Birth of organic life. Desire Thus, in search of its own balance, the subjective is increasingly dissociated from the universal. As soon as accumulated reactions manage to modify the bodies enough for the search for their particular equilibrium to triumph over external pressures, this victory, having broken down, so to speak, the enemy front, is expressed by an advance, and it is birth of organic life, of reproduction. At this moment, the subjective which was only physical and chemical reactions, undergoes a change of state, it becomes, (although quite unconsciously at the beginning) the I and its reaction becomes desire. At this change of state, the struggle becomes clearer between the two equilibria in opposite directions. On the one hand, the universal "plus" tends to keep the subject constantly in balance, to make him stumble without stopping, to adapt it in short more and more to the dynamism of life, and on the other On the other hand, the subject tends to develop, to establish more and more his particular and static balance. The pole that opposes desire: fear The subject is therefore constantly caught between two opposite vibrations: a break in equilibrium which ultimately only tends to an absolute permanence of equilibrium, and the consolidation of a particular equilibrium, which only tends at the end of counts only to a specialization, that is to say to a rupture. Now, not only is the subject caught between these two opposing poles, but it is absolutely nothing other than the sum of their reactions. The I is the set of reactions which develop between the two terms of the contradiction that is movement, and which dissociate them more and more. These two poles here assume the aspect of a dynamic equilibrium and a static equilibrium. The dynamic impulse of desire is therefore opposed by a static resistance to conservation: fear is opposed to desire . The I is therefore the whole of desire and fear. Desire is the perception that a certain particular equilibrium has of its insufficiency and the movement which brings this equilibrium to complete itself. It is the feeling that something is missing, and this feeling is therefore a rupture of balance which makes the subject stumble, which incites him to acquisitions, to conquests, to developments. But as soon as the unexplored regions, which he has arrived at by developing new capacities, open up to him, the imperative arises for him to make these new capacities permanent, so as not to be overwhelmed by his new positions. Instinct, which had pushed the subject to keep the dynamic balance of its essence at the expense of its particular static balance, now pushes it to keep its particular balance at the expense of its essence . Thus the impulse of desire is a reaction whose direction is identified with the "plus" sign of the universe, and the cessation caused by fear, on the other hand, opposes this sign: fear is negative. If the subject, driven by his positive desire, did not meet the resistance of fear, he would simply be destroyed, because he would develop no permanence in him, he could not overcome any specialization. Predominance of one balance over the other: gender Let us note here that in the subject, which is the sum of the vibrations between the static equilibrium and the dynamic equilibrium, one of these two poles always prevails (at this stage at least) over the other. If the I was a perfect ambivalence of reactions, it would not move. If the balance between its two equilibria was total, their sum would be zero, there would be no more reactions, therefore no more subjects, and finally more of me. Therefore, any subject necessarily expresses one pole more than the other. The subject in which the dynamic balance predominates is male; the one in which static equilibrium predominates is female. The male is a rupture of centrifugal balance, the female recomposes a provisional balance, under the push of a centripetal force [2] . Permanence is established: the self Whatever the varieties of the I, they never stop growing, thanks to the evolution of the species. By development of the I, we mean to say that the conflict between the two poles continues to become clearer and to increase in intensity . Indeed, each vibration, in one direction or the other, only reinforces its own pole, therefore calling, by compensation, an equivalent reaction, in the opposite pole. This process is that of condensation. The conflict is gradually brought to saturation, and at a given moment, the dissociation between the two poles assumes a form, where this dissociation (the I) was not yet precise enough to take shape. This new change of state is the birth of the self entity. At that moment, the I expresses that the antinomy has assumed a body, saying "I am a self". Just as the I was born from the moment that bodies had, in the form of organisms, conquered sufficient permanence on their environment, the ego is born from the moment that this permanence is established. The appearance of man indicates that organisms already have in them sufficient non-specialization, that these organisms already have in them the capacity to agree with the cosmic residue of reactions, that they no longer need, in in short, to undergo significant organic modifications, because they are flexible enough to adapt to circumstances, that is to say to dominate them. This conquest of organic stability tends to calm organic fear, therefore to stop the evolution of species, which has reached its physiological ends . This organic fear was the defense system that always trapped species in specializations; it was the resistance that stemmed the conquest of non-specialization, which each time took refuge behind what still remained of non-specialization to conquer. In short, it was "retardation", this retardation which we then find in the psychological development of man, and which is the basis of all the Mythical Comedy that the subconscious has been playing since the origin of time. Now that with the appearance of men a sufficient organic non-specialization is acquired, the conflict between the two equilibria assumes a form, and moves towards its crisis. Fear and "delay" go beyond the physiological domain into the psychological domain. All the civilizations that men have founded on the reality of their selves, are so far only the stages of their journey towards this final crisis, which must destroy all of their millennial notions. This push is inexorable, but the resistance is so violent, that it is incumbent on us today to predict the end of this Comedy. This end is opposed to all the cultural heritage of men, from the traditional heritage of Asian metaphysics, to the most revolutionary philosophies which had not yet had the time to question and to demolish the fundamental rock resistance, reaction, delay, self. In reaching here the central object of our study, the ego, we must already approach it, not from the point of view of the ego itself, its knowledge and its desires, but by making an effort to penetrate on the contrary , despite himself, in a reality from which he will be forever excluded. The meeting point Universal permanence, essentially non-permanent in all its elements, is opposed to any particular permanence. In it, there can be no dissociation subject object. The permanence of the self would only be the permanence of this dissociation. The subject, under the aspect of the I, has already reached an extreme degree of intensity. The evolution of species (and of the subjective) is a drop in potential between what remains of the individual reaction of the planet, and the residue of the sidereal reactions. Between the origin, dominated only by the reaction of the planet, and the end dominated only by the interdependence of the aggregates of a system, there is a point where the two reactions coincide, it is the highest point of the curve of evolution. At this meeting point the two terms which had dissociated, recompose, unite, no longer under their primitive aspect of cosmic bursting, but in a harmonious and peaceful way, although dynamic. What is this meeting point? We have seen that the reaction of the planet aggregate, broken up into an infinite multitude of reactions, creates species, which express a contradiction the more they are more advanced. When the I becomes the entity myself, the individuals are so well non-specialized, they are so adapted to life, that thanks to all their knowledge they feel completely isolated in themselves. It is in this isolation that the meeting of the two dissociated terms must occur. The negative pole of the ego: the intellect. He associates with fear We have seen that the I is a set of vibrations between two dissociated poles. When these vibrations become very intense, the I, which has become the self, can only become more and more intense still, until it becomes aware of itself. He has the notion of his permanence, "I am always me". From this notion arises the intellect. Until then, the I had only desires which projected it outside of itself, and fears which consolidated its positions, and it oscillated between these two poles. All of these oscillations (experience) now allow the self to develop its intellect. It is very important to note that the intellect can only emanate from an I that feels permanent. It rests on the permanence of the ego, like an object rests on a table. It allows the subject to abstract and reason. The observer, after having studied the universe, compared, deduced, experienced, withdraws from the concrete world, isolates himself in abstraction, remaining seated in himself, within his permanence as an entity [ 3] . The intellect is therefore the result of individual isolation. Pushed to get lost, to go out of oneself by the force of one's desires, pushed to find oneself, to build a stronghold by one's conservative fear, the I ended up conquering and isolating oneself, by being the organism more adapted to the present moment, therefore the most adequate to the "more" which results at each instant of the universe, but it paid for this adaptability by the negation of any adaptation: the isolated ego, is opposed to the rest of the universe as soon as the organism is completed. From its birth, the intellect is a valet in the pay of the ego and its isolation. As long as the ego aspires to immortality, the intellect can only lend itself to its will to isolation, and indeed, is it not the simple outcome of all the fears, of all the barriers that have created the me, isolating it? If the intellect can be used for the observation of the world, for science, for the organization of life, if it can establish relationships between things and people, it can never guide the self towards knowledge, in this domain he can only be guided by the ego to prove to him overabundantly his immortality. The intellect will finally have to free itself, as we will see. For the moment it plays, in relation to the self, the same role that fear plays in relation to the self. He stops his centrifugal momentum, he sets milestones, barriers, borders, he scrupulously obeys the burning desire that the ego does not get lost, to last in the eternity of time, to nestle its individual and static permanence in the wonderful, impersonal, dynamic permanence of the world. Thus, in self-knowledge, the intellect is as negative as fear, and is constantly associated with it. The results of this association are religions [4] . The positive pole of the ego: doubt; associate with love The positive pole of movement, in opposition to the intellect, develops in the self the instrument, which combined with desire, will finally awaken the self to reality. This instrument is doubt . Doubt is essentially positive, because it pushes the ego to break its static equilibrium for the benefit of reality. Doubt, at the beginning of our presentation, triggered the event ("I said there is something") thanks to which the I who sought found himself on the threshold of knowledge. Doubt is the awakening of consciousness. We have often talked about dreams, and the fact that a dream character does not doubt the fantastic universe in which he is located. Likewise, the person who has given up doubting has only gone back to sleep; as for the one who never doubted, she simply never woke up. Total doubt is the only way to absolute permanence, because it mercilessly destroys all attempts at partial permanence where the self takes refuge. Doubt and desire oppose faith and intellect its valet, in the struggle between the "more" and the "less", between the eternity of the present moment, and the refuges of the chased self. The double victory This fight between the faculties of the self must end in a double victory. Love has conquered one after the other all the objects of love, it has freed itself from it; he found himself outside of all objects, in their essence; he became permanent and free. Before victory, love kept losing its positive sign at every moment, drowning it in the negative of fear. The fear of losing the object of his love was the feeling that replaced and destroyed love. This was no more than an "attachment", that is to say the opposite of positive centrifugal desire. The self kept transforming its desire to lose itself, which its essence aroused in it, a desire to find itself. The emptiness he felt in perceiving his antinomic nature, far from wanting to fight it, by destroying the cause, which is the ego himself, he tried to fill it by strengthening one pole and then the other of his inner contradiction. To victory, the intellect is also transformed. Until then, he was the servant of the self, now he puts himself at the service of doubt. Until then, intellect has been a weapon used by the privileged, those whose selves felt very important. The ruling castes, served by philosophers and theologians, had managed to organize a hierarchical world, the castes of which were kept in specialized functions. The intellect had organized everything, explained everything. The hierarchical machine did not lack a cog, The supreme being, god, the cosmic self, in short the absolute power of the hierarchy, had become the very object of the intellect, and the intellect the exclusive prerogative of a few "elected", that is to say a few vain exploiters. But this exclusivity of the Churches could not prevent some free men from putting their intellect at the service of doubt. Science was the strongest. Despite the self, the intellect in the service of positive doubt, created a positive, revolutionary world. Thus, according to the constant law of contradictory egoes, everything became meaning behind. The negative intellect, solidly supported by the reality of the ego, did positive work, and by associating itself with doubt in spite of the ego, led the world to its final revolution; and to this work opposed with all their strength all the ministers of all cults, in the name of love, love which should have meant abandoning the reality of the self, but which, associated with egotism of the powerful, was only a mask of their fear. The faculties, at the death of the ego Love and fear, intellect and doubt are the two four-sided poles of the self and its works. When the self disappears as an entity; when at the end of the curve of its evolution, the subjective finally unites its two poles and finds through the permanence of what is no longer an entity, the dynamic permanence of the world; then the two faculties, by merging, purify themselves: fear is overcome, but also doubt. They are overcome by emptiness, because in the yawning chasm of the limitless, where the self has vanished, if fear no longer exists it is not because the one who was afraid has become brave, but it is because it no longer exists. It is not the object of fear that has disappeared, but the subject that was afraid. And likewise, if the doubt no longer exists, it is not because the one who doubted has finally found a solid refuge, but quite simply because he is no longer there . We will see later how the unique faculty which results from the fusion of the faculties of the self can be described. Let us simply indicate here that the attributions of love and intellect change their meaning there. Instead of pretending to solve by intellect the "problems of the universe", and to make flow from this false knowledge, which is metaphysics, of so-called love relationships with his fellow men, man realizes that the solution to his ultimate problem is found only in an act of love, and that relationships between men must be of intelligence . The result of the two faculties is a totality, where love and intellect give way to a lucidity constantly adapted to contingencies and constantly creating new values. The intellect, become love, releases from each instant, before it runs out, the knowledge it offers. This wisdom has nothing to do with traditions; it is at every moment the new result of all past centuries . Love, become intelligence, discovers in everything, in each person, not an object of attachment, but the permanent essence of all that is impermanent. This love is the transmission, through what passes, of what remains. The wealth that Nature grants to me Let us not forget the situation of the self, as we have already studied them in their double environment, Nature and Society. The ego is the affirmation only of individuals who have achieved sufficient biological development. We have already seen (and we will come back to this question) that prehistoric men were pre-individualized, in the sense that their I, their sense of the subjective, could not condense enough to assert "I am a me, an entity isolated, detached from all of yo u. At this prehistoric stage some human beings still exist. They are so unaware that the reality of their group outweighs their own. Within an "us", and within the limits of this circle, they feel many individual desires, but their intellect is still only embryonic , because it only reflects the ideas of their group. Although this description may relate to (almost) everyone, and especially to the sheep of all congregations, we must distinguish the individuals who, although they feel "I am I", submit to the group, from those who for congenital insufficiencies can never manage to say to themselves "I am a self, I am an entity". Let us establish that every average individual, of any race, has in him, at his birth, the possibility of saying to himself one day "I am I". Now consider one of these individuals at birth. Even before birth, he is specialized, determined by the two germs that are him. These germs, it is true, go back, as we have seen, to the origin of time, therefore contain the totality of evolution, and the primordial germ in its totality. But this primordial germ is there differentiated, specialized: each child is born with race characters, and with a particular inheritance; it carries in itself characters acquired by groups, and characters acquired by individuals of these groups. Each is a unique ramification, stemming from ramifications. From birth, children of common parents may not be alike. Among the multitude of ancestral characters, one or the other predominate, or characters that cannot be traced. Some children are strikingly like people in their group, others stand out, they are less dominated by group specializations, they are more individual. But despite these differences, these particular disadvantages and advantages, we establish for each of them the following proposition: the fact that an organism is, at birth, physically evolved enough to be able to say one day "I am I" (if we grants it normal development), this fact alone indicates that this organism possesses, in spite of its specializations, a non-specialization which may suffice for it, in the course of its normal life, to break the frameworks of the subjective, and to absorb its consciousness in the essence of thingsu . Indeed, the planet does not need to create more evolved organisms than those which have arrived at "I am I". It does not need organizations capable of saying "I am a god, I am a superman". "I am me" is enough for the whole evolution of the globe. This means that the subject-object antinomy, static equilibrium-dynamic equilibrium, duration-eternity, etc., etc., has reached its crisis, in its last state, beyond which it can only burst, and cause it to burst. the whole curve of the subjective, in the eternal present, cause and end of this planet and its creations. Thus, every human being who is born, as long as he is capable of this simple assertion "I am I", carries within him the possibility of being much more than the God whom he will learn to invoke: eternity present. That is the wealth that Nature gives him at birth. Let us now see what gifts his second milieu, society, gives him. The gift society makes to me Society has been made, for centuries, of beings like him, who because they felt, each individually, "I am I", immediately made every effort to establish the permanence of these selves. Now a little fact, small but constant, fatal, inevitable, and therefore unbearably ironic, disturbs the permanent permanence of these gathered selves: death. Birth and death contradict their feeling of permanence. Between this mysterious origin and this mysterious end, there is a permanence, the ego, which knows that it is the ego, which cannot bear to be no more. It is isolated, so it is negative since it is missing something ( it is less something ). He therefore builds his dream, his mythical universe, on his negative expressions: fear, and the fact of not doubting. These two data are those of nightmares (in dreams, there is no doubt about the authenticity of the dream) [5] . Now, socially, these two negative expressions are associated: 1 0. Fear arms the species, it protects it by developing its specializations, by establishing it in a balance as static as possible, by endeavoring to destroy any individual who would be the carrier of the future species. These specializations, applied to beings who are not sufficiently specialized to be able to adapt to everything, not only create all possible psychological barriers, of races, castes, religions, classes, interests, prejudices, etc ... but tend to literally reject man in physical specializations, attributing them to him as social functions: trades, corporations, in India the dharma of castes, etc. are supposed to lead each individual towards his perfection. Treacherous error: beware of those who let themselves be taken in, because society, by specializing it, destroys in it the germ of future species . 2 0. The non-doubt, that is to say faith, submission, obedience, acceptance in short of this sub-conscious dream of fear, gives a body to the dream, puts it on reality, the sits in authority, in tradition, in conformism. Thus, faith consolidates the whimsical universe created by fear, while calming fear. The vicious circle has closed, the self is caught in its own creation. A social danger: the man who no longer has me It is in this sub-conscious universe that each being is born and grows capable of saying one day "I am I", and of understanding that this self is only an unreality. Society is ruthless for those devoured by the flame of conscience. Consciousness can only destroy the self, this comedy character. The social is in a hurry to impose its conformisms on whom the adventure attempts not to know who it is . It establishes each in a framework, in a family, in a social state, in a name, a profession, a group, a confession, a faith, ideas, enthusiasms, hatreds, opinions, in a hierarchy of time and of space, within borders, otherwise he might not know who he is . It would be terrible for the social, this man freed from his race, his nature, his culture, his country, this man who would no longer have me. Because it would be the destroyer of the whole edifice of dreams, in which the community aspires to stop. So that's the starting point for any individual. He is internally urged to see himself, that is to say to strip himself, to dissociate his entity from the roles and costumes imposed on him by the social, and on the other hand the social tends to identify him with these roles and to these costumes. The social imprint on his brain: "you are Pierre, Paul, a carpenter, a mother, a proletarian, a bourgeois". The individual tends to assert"I am an entity, independently of all this; if I were nothing of all that, I would still be something". The social shapes it, kneads it, truly creates it, since the ego is only the role that this ego plays , but behind its mask, its disguise, its learned role, the ego tends to say "I am myself anyway". Now, what does this observation signify, if not that the ego begins to doubt its own reality? We have already seen at the beginning of this talk that you only notice something when you doubt its reality. Not to notice is not to be aware. To see oneself, to say "I am I", that means that one begins to dissociate oneself from one's role. This role is the sub-conscious, that is all that we have not yet doubted. Like actors in the theater, who have gone mad, would identify with their roles, and believe themselves to be kings, queens, Hamlet, M. Jourdain, men define their selves by the characters and attributions of their roles. These characters act, come and go, speak, have ideas, but they are subconscious. The group that formed them wants them to remain in this state of sub-consciousness, because as long as they do not doubt the reality of these roles, of their selves, they are the creators and supporters of the order that have precisely established all of me in order to feel real. As soon as the I emerges from his sub-consciousness just enough to say "I am I", that is to say to see himself, this finding, which is a doubt, scares him. He is afraid, because he has doubted his reality, but he does not realize that this fear comes from a doubt. He no longer wants to lose ground, he no longer wants to run the risk of being no more; therefore he makes every effort to prove to himself that this self is real, that this self is being, that this self is imperishable. He takes refuge in a congregation, and feels "saved". In congregations everyone needs to feel the faith of others around them. Thus appease the fear and the doubt. But if this ego, rejecting all fear, does not fear one day reaching the worst extremes, of losing itself, of dancing over the abyss, of rushing into the void, "of having no more place to rest her head " ; in short, if, driven by the magnificent dynamism of absolute doubt, he does not fear to dissociate his "being" from everything, from everything, absolutely; to emerge each time; to reject its old associations; to reject the new traps which all the objects of the world set for him to associate it with them; to destroy the new entity which is rebuilt on the ruins of the collapsing entity; if this me, transformed into an incandescent torch, ruthlessly burns all that is it, to prove itself that it was not yet him, then one day, becoming supremely conscious, and finding nothing more to associate with, this what remains of it leaps entirely into the eternal flame which consumes everything except the eternal, and, being dead as an entity, it is only life. To reach this final accomplishment, the ego must reject all the truths that are offered to it, it must not obey anyone, it must be rebellious, it must be freed from all imposition, from all spiritual authority, from all belief, of any doctrine, of any ideal, of any conformism, and of any acquired idea. He must not allow himself to be dominated by any moral law either. All these conformisms, whether intellectual or sentimental, tend in fact only to one thing: to stop the ego in its positive impulse of doubt, in its liberating self-destruction, in its search for eternal dynamic equilibrium, by persuading it to seek his eternal salvation, his own entity. All religious and social morals tend to destroy entirely the positive, dynamic aspect of each self, by promising it a static duration (by itself? By means of its children, considered as its extension, etc ... static materialism and spiritualism lead to similar consequences). The conflict is gigantic between the groups organized in order to establish the selves in the belief in their reality, and the selves who refuse to submit, who want to be accomplished by consuming themselves. The words here are so well reversed, their meaning is so well distorted, that what is "life" for some is only "dead" for others, and vice versa. We can hardly dwell in this talk on this conflict. We will analyze it in our Moral Comedy. But before indicating in detail the process of the liberation of the self, we think that it is not useless to clarify once again the meaning of this liberation. The fundamental - tragic - mistake is to confuse personality with the notion that we have of being a separate entity . - I am I, said the believer of some ideal, to me what will happen? - Reassure yourself, said moral or spiritual authority, this very personal notion that you have of being yourself, you will cultivate it, and even in a pleasant way. You will nest it in a divinity, or in a social, hierarchical chief, who also say "I am I", and who, in their bosom, will preserve, by dominating them, and uniting with them, all the "I follow m ewho will have fled [6] . But for that you will do what I will order you: you will believe, you will obey, you will think in the way that I tell you, you will make the gestures that here, you will recite the texts that here. If you do not obey me, your self will not be destroyed, but from the moment you die, it will be tortured without forgiveness, forever, always, without anyone being able to ever obtain your forgiveness, nor comfort you (or I will immerse you in prison, etc ... in the social). So we give the ego elephantiasis. An illusory gift, for the notion of me is an antinomy, and behold, this antinomy, if we imagine it to be as large as the cosmos, if we call it God, will never be anything but a "Principle" dissociated from its own universe. But the ego does not see what is childish in all its religions. He submits to spiritual authorities, he submits to conformism, and this submission precisely destroys his possibility of liberation, that is to say his true personality, and strengthens until his death the character me in an inexorable role and ridiculous. If we understand, on the other hand, that each individual is an absolutely unique phenomenon in the history of the world, and that consequently the notion that he has of being a self is the result of a quantity of elements, of experiences, etc which belong only to him, we see immediately that, to be delivered, each one must reject associations which are unique to him . This very special way that everyone has to free themselves, the fact that each self, like an agglomerate of nodes, can only be undone by undoing the nodes that compose it, and no other, that is it the personality. On the contrary, by protecting this ego, by re-plastering it so as not to undo it, on the pretext that personality is the notion that we have of being me, we destroy what we have in particular, that is- that is, the only way out. The conflicts we have witnessed in our time mark the ferocious will of the ego to resist the onslaught of life, at the historical moment when life forces the subjective to change state, to break the shells of the ego, to s 'accomplish. All those who, by focusing on the permanence of their ego, oppose, under the pretext of personality, the collectivist civilization which will ultimately triumph, do not understand that it is on the contrary this civilization, which they fight, which will release the personalities. We are witnessing everywhere struggles between organized powers, which seek to wrest so-called spiritual domination over the masses. Recently, a conflict between the Pope and a personal dictator whose rallying cry "ours" indicates enough that his conception of the State is only an amplification of the notion "I am me", has shown us so far. where can the submission of the masses go, of all these selves, who, to establish their static permanence, accept out of fear, to make all the gestures we want, and to submit whole, heart, body and brain, to all the roles you want. Having exposed the general data of our Psychological Comedy, we will now follow step by step the I who no longer wants to be a self, in the conquest of his deliverance. [1] FORMATION OF THE EARTH GLOBE . - Recent scientific theories, which make the planet result from a double process (1 0 bursting of the primitive celestial body into innumerable fragments, 2 0 condensation, around the most important fragments, of Cosmic dust and debris) only confirm our description (which only attaches to very broad lines, moreover). [2] SEXUAL COMEDY . - We can only specify here the origin of the Sexual Comedy, as it appears in our method. This origin is that of the I itself. The sexual push is identified with the breakdown of balance which makes the I move. Sexuality played a preponderant role in the formation of individual I's (totemizations, etc.). The curve of the subjective has its sexual aspect, the history of the I in search of knowledge can be described under this aspect; and one day we will see how the final outcome of the subjective is also a sexual outcome, a resolution of the sexual drive in a new combination. Psychoanalysis explained an unknown, the I, by another unknown, sex. The building she has built so far may be temporarily useful, but its foundations do not rest on the deep ground. It is true that psychoanalysis does not pretend to solve the ultimate problems. To reconstruct psychoanalysis on the right soil, we will have to examine it with our method. [3] INTELLECT . - This word is opposed to that of Knowledge as the static and the passive are opposed to the dynamic and the active. It only expresses the status quo of the "me" who refuses to progress. Kant, the quintessential philosopher of the status quo, calls it Understanding ; the Categories table in the Critique of Pure Reason is a perfect description. Decentralized man, doubting the intellect, can then only know it, determine its entirely provisional function, and use it as a simple technique. Here is the antinomy which constitutes the essence of the intellect: thanks to the intellect, I can imagine, at the same instant, several possible actions (this door: the possibility of going out; this pen, the possibility of writing, etc.); among these possible actions I will accomplish only one at a given instant; the rest will be sacrificed; the intellect is therefore first and foremost the (illusory) expression of free will. On the other hand, the intellect never knows anything but past actions; he knows them according to a mechanistic determinism . The intellect oscillates between the two illusory poles of free will and mechanism: indeterminate future or determined past. Its freedom, no more than its necessity, is never present. The intellect carries with it, like any provisional equilibrium, the seeds of its destruction. He can, by the sole resources of his logic, make this judgment: "the past is no more; the future is not yet". But the man who would have the courage to think this double truism, to live it, would be returned to the current reality (that is to say, of the act and the instant ), and "his intellect would not belong to him now no more than her body. [4] INTELLECT AND ME . - We are opposed to this: "if the intellect can only rest on the reality of the ego, it could not demonstrate the unreality of the ego, as this book proposes to do. In addition, it is indisputable that today many people have already been intellectually freed from the spell of the self, and its religion s. I will answer this by generalizing the sentence in the previous note, about the decentralized man . The intellect accepts to play to establish the non-reality of the ego, only after having transferred this reality in the affective and sensual domains, emotions, love, art, passions, ambitions, etc ... domains where it declares itself incompetent, where he refuses to enter, which he refuses to doubt. This transfer of the reality of the ego only reinforces its illusion, its center, by making it invisible. The ego, thus sheltered, then plays to identify with the intellect, and to prove to itself its unreality, and this only for the purpose of giving itself an intellectual excitement, sensations which are the me in the perception that he has of himself . Taking Descartes' absurd assertion to the extreme, he experiences this "I am not, therefore I am". What Descartes did for objects (I doubt objects, therefore I am), he does for himself, having become his own object. Conclusion: need to break all the centers around which the ego is reconstituted, in all areas without exception, and only then, use the intellect as a simple technique. This book will not destroy me, but offers them this technique. [5] All myths, without exception, all religions in their entirety (creeds, theologies, metaphysics, morals, cults) and in general all symbols whatever they are, religious, occult, artistic, social, etc are only constructions which the unconscious raises not to wake up, but to protect its sleep . Around each liberation, each awakening attempt, he hastily builds up his symbols, to plunge humanity (the sleeper) back into sleep: foundation of religions, etc. This is a generalization of the Freudian thesis of dreams, which we apply to the whole of humanity, throughout its history (by giving new definitions to consciousness) and will constitute one of the leit-motives of our Religious Comedy. [6] The average little gentleman, whose country produces all the time "the greatest men in the world", is a part of these great men: exaltation, by proxy, of his little self. Same process, exalted to the extreme, for God. Carlo Suares : Works in French : Carlo Suares Fondation + 3rd Millenaire L'évolution du subjectif dans la nature par Carlo Suarés - 3e millinaire |