The first response to the present: Birth of a self


(Extract from The Psychological Comedy. José Corti Edition 1932)


The stages an ego goes through

In order to study the birth and development of a particular self, let us recall here some definitions, as they result from our presentation.

We call the subconscious the state in which the ego finds itself when it does not doubt its reality . The subconscious is therefore purely and simply the self itself . The ego only exists through the roles it plays. His feeling "I am I" arises from the illusion of his roles; the ego is defined by its roles: "I am I, such-and-such, who does this or that, who has such character, such beliefs, such opinions, etc ..."; we see that apart from a few very rare exceptions, almost everyone is completely under-conscious.

We call conscious only the state in which man finds himself, when he doubts the reality of his ego, therefore the existence of this ego; this state is the opposite of the sub-conscious, and can only appear through the breaches of this, at the place where the self meets another reality than its own.

What we call consciousness therefore results from an effort towards self-awareness : the self gradually becomes aware of being itself, independently of certain roles it plays, their associations and dissociations; by freeing himself from these objects one by one, he affirms that he is a self, even without these objects. Now, we have already seen, and we will see again in detail, that the ego is nothing other than vibrations (associations-dissociations) between two poles, which have taken the body of an entity; therefore the more the self becomes aware of itself, the more it defeats itself: it truly devours itself . Indeed self-awareness is only an illusion, the affirmation "I am I independently of my roles" emanates from self-perception which results from sub-conscious roles, roles which we do not know that are roles, that is to say again that this affirmation emanates from a character who is made up of everything of which he has not yet doubted, from a character who is only partially defeated. The assertion that remains, is based on what is still standing in its crumbling building.

At some point, it may happen that the self's perception of itself has devoured itself enough to overturn the self's notion of its reality, to transfer it into the new reality, of that which is no longer me. The old static pseudo-reality of the ego is swept away by an unleashing of dynamic, impersonal reality, in which the ego has literally exploded under the irresistible push of the dynamic permanence of the world. Wonderful state, which for me appears to be overconscious [1] of lyric, prophetic inspiration, creative joy, state which can go to ecstasy, to a feeling of union with the essence of things . But the union is still only an illusion .

Beyond this "spiritual" experience, beyond genius, lies the terrible border of eternity, the one that Nietzsche wanted, but could not cross. To achieve this, it is still necessary to doubt, to doubt powerfully, and, by decentring, to expel out of the sub-consciousness all that still is likely to feel fear. Because it is a question of jumping into the abyss where entities are lost without remission. Very few achieve this deliverance, not for lack of being able to do so, but because at the last extremity, they are terrified of feeling that they could lose their self, and by clinging to it, they reject eternity.

Those who, on the other hand, have embarked on the supreme adventure, realize that the end is not yet the end, because the ego is tenacious and clings to each pore of the skin, to each drop of blood . It is the time of goodbyes and false starts. Disappointing, irritating period, because we no longer know if we left or if we are still there. But gradually we realize that all the same the choice has been made, and that despite the many oscillations to which we are still subjected, the balance is definitively broken for the benefit of life. We are decentering more and more , like a cloud that dissipates and eventually disappears; the flavor of the eternal becomes permanent; you end up not being there anymore; by no longer conceiving anything in relation to oneself; and at the same time the I did not lose consciousness, it is the consciousness which lost it ; something is there, which is presence, presence in action, the relation of each thing to its essence .

We are going to take a step-by-step look at the progress of a self through all of these stages. It is only later that we will identify the moral and social consequences of this truth, which is the culmination of the whole human kingdom. This truth, because it opposes any hierarchy, any class, is the very essence of the social revolution, and destroys at its base any religious edifice, whatever it may be. And indeed, it is human, only, simply human, it is, beyond all individual consciousness, the end of the nightmare of ignorance, the end of pain, the end of the mythical and religious era, l advent of the conscious era.

At birth, the child is more plastic than the animal

Before going through the stages that we have just indicated, the ego must first be constituted. At birth, the child is a bundle of flesh, the psychological secret of which is well kept. Let us however see if our remarks on the meaning of human beings in the economy of Nature, can lead us to propose a plan of psychological research likely to enlighten us on the reason for being and the outcome of self.

Let us consider at birth a healthy child, of parents who are mature enough to express the notion "I am I". This child is, like any living animal, a composition which results from two living germs, and so on until "the origin of time", as we have seen. What distinguishes the child likely one day to say "I am I" from the other organisms at birth is that despite a certain number of specializations that it still expresses, these do not bother him enough for the 'prevent being immediately shaped by the present moment . This plasticity in the present is very important, and we will explain it immediately.

The more an animal is evolved, the more distraught it is at birth, and unable to make the gestures that provide for its needs; an inferior animal, from its birth, acts exactly as it will act later, it can come and go, feed, shelter, etc ... according to the immemorial mode transmitted to it by the germs of which it is made up; and the more it is lower, the more it is like itself at its birth, that is to say that from its birth, it evolves only very little to reach its development; this one will not bring him very important transformations. From birth, the lower animal is therefore adapted to life, but precisely because of this adaptation, which is the expression of a long past, it is not plastic, it cannot be recreated by the present . Thus the insect, from its birth, acts like a mechanical movement. Admittedly, his adaptability leads him to modify his behavior as soon as the external circumstances change, but this adjustment is only a variation of a theme, of a single theme , always identical to itself, insistent, tenacious, including permanence ends up triumphing over the environment, by using it but only within certain limits, because if the transformations of the environment are too rapid or too important, they exceed the coefficient of elasticity of instinct, and the whole species can be destroyed.

Instinct, or the magic circle that doubt will not cross

This behavior is perfectly explained in our previous chapters. Instinct is a static permanence, a balance obtained by means of triumphant specializations, indestructible specializations, true dead ends of evolution, in which the universal germ, although present in its totality, although infinite, eternal, absolute, is condemned to sing only one song, always the same, susceptible of indefinite variations, but incapable of recreating itself.

The permanence of the instinct is maintained at the expense of the development of consciousness . In a lower species, the subjective, that is to say the result of the particular reactions of a particular form of equilibrium, only oscillates slightly between insurmountable limits. From birth, any individual of this species, expresses this constant reactions clearly, he is unable to get rid of it. Now this constant, because of its limitations, is not yet dissociated from the balance of natural laws (as is the ego). Its static stability indeed participates in the dynamism of the universal "something", since the species is in short only a meeting point, the result of two forces in conflict which have neutralized each other in a happy equilibrium. The terrible pain and the ecstatic joy of fullness do not belong to conformists, but to those who, by their refusal to conform, are the bearers of future species. Nevertheless, the balance of the lower species is harmonious, as is the balance of a solar system. In both cases, this happened: the inner bursting reactions collided with the surrounding reactions, they were stopped by them, and made up with them a balance in which the two terms of duality are ensured not to dissociate .

This fundamental assurance is a stop to the evolution of consciousness, it is the magic circle which stops essential doubt (doubt is no more than a surface phenomenon): the insect, the bird, etc. 'have no doubts about what to do with them; basically, if they already doubt, more than a salt about the shape it will give to its crystals, their instinct however is an indestructible base, a formidable wall of China, which stops doubt, and which delimits it. This basis is that by which the lower species is guaranteed not to feel detached from the universal "plus" , thus assured not to lose the sense of its reason for being. A bird whose nest has been destroyed can be distraught, extremely agitated, but this disarray is only a surface phenomenon which does not affect his instinct, the crystallized past of his species: he does not doubt the necessity to make a nest, etc.

Destroy the natural instinct in children

On the contrary, consider a child who has just been born. Not only is he defenseless, not only is he completely incapable of surviving if we don't constantly take care of him, not only does he manifest no instinct that can in any way get him out of trouble, but more men become civilized , the more they tend to weaken in newborns what could still remain spontaneous in them . The development of nurseries towards which collectivist civilization tends, the constantly increasing intervention of hygienists in the life of newborns, which frees women more and more by establishing that the best possible development of children is obtained in a way scientific and not spontaneously, all this tends more and more to weaken the instinct in the newborn. His diet is not regulated on his appetite, but on his weight; sometimes a child up to five cannot even discern whether he is hungry or not; in any case, in the first months, it was not his hunger that regulated his diet, but a scientific method. A precise environment awaits the child: temperature, air, light, hygiene care, everything is set. Sentimental people, attached to the past and who have not sought the true meaning of man in nature, can deplore the loss of the primitive state, called "natural", they can rave about the superiority of birds and insects, guided by their instincts: they have understood nothing.

Adler's subhuman theory (individual psychology)

Psychologists have noted this inferiority of the child. Adler based on this observation the whole theory of individual psychology, but, not having understood the reason for this phenomenon, he envisaged it as a cause, whose effect is a desire for compensation, which is not satisfied only by feeling useful. Making this compensation useful is the goal of "individual psychology", with, as a result, the submission of Adler's disciple to an established social and moral order, and the adaptation of the child to this retrograde, reactionary, ferocious order . The child is literally modeled, adapted, therefore mutilated for the benefit of the subhuman species, for the benefit of a static equilibrium, which claims not to want to take into account the creative geniuses . Such a hideous distortion of a half-truth is a striking example of the considerable harm that a science can do to humans that is not based on true knowledge.

We realize, in fact, that the starting point of "individual psychology" is the following static observation: the child is from birth in a state of inferiority. This observation is exact, but no observation, even the most simple, can be objective, if one does not take into account the movement of the object in relation to its environment, and its meaning in relation to the eternal permanence of the world.

Specialization opposes the present

The case of the child is only the summit of a progression, and this progression is indeed that of evolution, as we have studied it. The species, in striving to conquer an ever more stable equilibrium, always less dependent on external circumstances, are pushed to break their specializations (through the intermediary of a minority likely to be freed from it), and these successive conquests are in turn in turn consolidated by new specializations, which strive to make each new balance permanent, by limiting it, still conditioning it to the outside world, despite its freedoms. This limitation is a constant reaction . In similar circumstances, individuals of a lower species react much more uniformly than individuals of a higher species. What does that mean ?

Consider any point on the globe at a particular time. This point, at that time, is influenced by objects, beings, atmospheric circumstances, cosmic radiation, electromagnetic forces, in short by an innumerable number of conflicting movements, which are linked to other movements. , and these to others, to encompass the entire universe. At this point that we are considering, the resultant of all these movements is what we have called the positive resultant of the universe, the resultant which naturally varies constantly, which is reborn at each instant of itself, which at each instant has consumed all the past, which at every moment is the eternal present, the eternal, always new permanence of the world.

At this point that we are considering, let us pass successively under the fire of this resultant that is the present, individuals of different species. Let us first consider an individual of a very primitive species, who has only a few reactions, simple, determined, precise, who is therefore extremely specialized. This individual will only be sensitive to modifications of the universal resultant under which he finds himself, if this modification comes to meet his own specialty. He remains indifferent to everything else in the present. Its equilibrium depends strictly on certain determined external facts, outside of which the greatest cataclysms leave it indifferent. For this individual, nothing ever happens, as long as he does not meet a certain determined element which will destroy his balance; on the other hand, this element by its mere presence, automatically destroys the static stability of the specialized individual, without the latter being able to defend themselves in any way. So the individual of the highly specialized species, far from perceiving the totality of the present, is only sensitive to certain particular elements that the present can bring him. An eminently conditioned and unstable state, which evolution is striving to conquer .

By breaking such a specific reaction, such a well-defined constant, the individual acquires a greater internal equilibrium, because he henceforth avoids being the slave of this particular reaction, conditioned by foreign factors; moreover, it is more open to the perception of the present, since it becomes sensitive to more extensive variations. This greater sensitivity, this wider perception, indicates that the individual develops in him the capacity to resonate more and more under the influence of universal permanence, the only one which is truly in equilibrium, because it is only dynamic , because it is the consumption of the past.

As and when pushed by a desire for stability, aggregates renounce their static equilibrium made of automatisms, in favor of an ever increasing grip of the present moment, they destroy this fact, piece by piece , the whole defense system that had been built around their own past, which tended to extend their past indefinitely over time.

Routing species reactions in humans

In the evolution of the subjective, this submission to the dynamic equilibrium of the world occurs at the birth of the human species. We see, in fact, a breakdown of balance occurring in man at the expense of his static equilibrium, at the expense of specific constants that would have wanted to be maintained. The child who is born does not manage to oppose the dynamic result of the present moment, and this despite what remains of hereditary specializations. These are crushed, carried away. The human being inherits first and above all from an inability to make a reaction of species dominate, and this because he is sufficiently non-specialized to have saved in him all the possibilities to which the universal germ can claim on our planet, as conditioned by the natural laws of our universe .

The first individual reaction, origin of the self

Because of this defeat of the reactions of species, as soon as the two germs which will become a human being come together in a single aggregate, the very first reaction which this new aggregate undergoes belongs to it in its own right , because in it prevails over all the constants specific, the resonance at the present moment (time, space), of a present which is unique for each human being. It is from this first reaction, unique for each, that we must seek the origin of the self, its nature, its conflicts with the species, its individual dream . Its reactions are added to each other, to ultimately form this unreal object that is an entity, an object that can only resolve its absurdity by self-destruction. As we will see in detail, this self-destruction is Knowledge.

When the constant, static reaction of an aggregate is defeated, when it has definitively lost its equilibrium in favor of permanent dynamism, there occurs in this aggregate (the human being) a dissociation of the two poles of the antinomy of movement . His subjective, static reaction was drawn into the great dynamic current of the present moment. The outside world no longer acts on a constant to transform it more or less, but prints like extremely plastic wax, in the organism in formation . The ideal condition for this organism would be an extreme flexibility that would never be at fault, a total plasticity that would make it adhere to the renewal of the universe at all times. This perfect condition is indeed the only possible outcome of all psychological comedy, possible and necessary outcome, that each human being must strive to understand, if he wants to break the spell of his subconscious.

This plasticity, in which no crystallized form of the past subsists, is possible despite the obvious limitations of any human organism. We have seen, in fact, that all evolution necessarily results in limited organisms. It is impossible for any development to result in completely non-specialized organizations. Such an absolute is inconceivable. But organisms are sufficiently non-specialized as soon as they can be the resonators of their universe. This occurs when evolution creates types whose first subjective reactions are dominated by the present moment, instead of being dominated by a specific constant .

Where duality becomes an antinomy

But it is here that the dissociation of the terms of duality takes place, which at this moment, and at this moment only, become contradictory . Indeed, the individual in whom this change of state has not yet occurred, is a duality, a movement which results from his own internal contradiction, this being pre-existing in the individual. This individual is only a repetition, barely modified (or not at all) of this movement in equilibrium, similar to a wheel which turns on itself, and which illustrates very well the instinct of insects.

But as soon as sufficient non-specialization saves in the individual enough possibilities so that he can no longer oppose to the dynamic equilibrium of the world the resistance of his own static reaction, then the two terms of duality are entrained in the sense of the strongest, and begin to act in the same direction, and consequently to create their subjective counterpart by sculpting it (at every moment, like a sculptor his land) in the organism itself . The atavistic reaction, the subjective constant, being dragged into the universal "plus", here that suddenly there seems to be something missing on this subject, it has lost ground, and indeed, it is projected in a dynamic adventure, which pushes him at every moment to fill his own void, to create the counterpart of his own movement. This consideration will be his self.

The ego will always strive to fill the void, to constitute the median on which the subject, who has lost his raison d'étre, will want to find it.

Naturally, the situation of this I, projected in its new state, is complicated by the fact that it still has many specializations, which will not take long to considerably strengthen the social milieu and education, to the point of destroying in it its capacity. to adhere to the present, to the point of transforming it into a vulgar mechanical, into a repetition of the past. These impositions of the collective subconscious on the individual are called by him. The subjective driven in a dynamic race which opposes it and which tends to destroy it, calls for its aid the median of specific reactions of the species, the constants abandoned, exceeded, but which it needs to fill the emptiness created in him by the defeat of his static equilibrium. He therefore finds himself in the need to react constantly, and to invent at every moment a new adaptation, which will endeavor to oppose with exactitude the universal sense which acts on it. It is this opposition which will henceforth replace the lost static equilibrium, and which will constitute the negative pole of duality . Thus is born the antinomy, since the two poles become opposites, since they seek to oppose as exactly as possible, to be as much as possible two equal forces and of opposite signs.

The antinomy is self-awareness. This will only be complete when the antinomy is brought to a climax which will break it. But this destruction will therefore also be his. Consciousness tends towards this destruction since it tends towards equilibrium. Balance will be obtained when the subject vibrates in a perfect way under the ever-changing pressure of universal dynamism, because then it will become one with it, and the subject-object distinction will no longer exist . But before understanding and then accepting this natural outcome of these unreal objects that are their selves, men will prefer to endure their nightmares for centuries.

The ego locks itself in its sub-consciousness

The illusion of these entities is prodigious; their reality seems to them so indisputable, so obvious, that they have based on it all their civilizations in their smallest details. By examining it, we see indeed that the ego is a vicious circle, a truly magic circle, and that it is absolutely impossible for it to resolve itself. It can only be shattered by bursting. But the only thought that a man may one day find himself deprived of his ego, the only thought that it is possible for a man to no longer be an "entity", seems as fantastic as the history of man who had lost his shadow; we are willing to go very far, to imagine that human perfection consists in possessing a self as sublimated as possible; but from there to admit the total disappearance of the entity, there is an essential difference, because a sublime ego is always an entity, and its new qualities have not even started its illusion, they have only modified it .

We do not believe in this human outcome. This outcome is, however, the only one that is possible. Readers who wish to follow our presentations may discover this state in which the entity dissolves, a state which is neither pathological, mystical, occult, supernatural in any way, but which is, on the contrary, very natural, and according to our definition, the only one that is truly human. We have already said further that death does nothing. On death, the ego, which has been created by the organism, loses its last chance to be fulfilled, if it has not already lost it.

We have attributed to the human organism in formation, reactions which are completely particular to it, reactions unique in the history of the world, and that for each individual, since each is found from its conception, in circumstances which are quite special, and since it is plastic enough to answer them . Constants of race, sex, etc., will hamper the individual in the search for his achievement, but not to the point of making him fail, if he is determined to overcome them. If he almost never manages to overcome them, it is mainly because of the pressure exerted on him by the subconscious mass which surrounds him, and which leads him into the abysses of religions, established morals, ancestral traditions, seeking, by all possible means, to frighten him. By a real backward step imposed by the lifting of all the dead en masse, the ego renounces its own dynamism, Knowledge, the creative adventure that solicits it, and it sterilizes itself slowly but definitively, in its shell .

The alterations of the pure antinomy that is the ego constitute the temperament, the type, the character, the qualities of the individual. These qualities are made up of hereditary constants and individual reactions, so intermingled that it will be very difficult for me to get rid of them. And indeed, it will only get rid of it by seeing its own entity melt until it no longer exists!

Reversal: the specific constants are grafted onto the ego

When an undeveloped aggregate undergoes an external influence, its reactions are limited to variations on simple and constant themes, which will not change the very nature of the aggregate. On the other hand, when this aggregate is a human body in formation, its first reactions are original, and therefore they knead the aggregate, they truly form its essence. It is on this compound of original reactions that the remains of hereditary automatism are grafted by an inverted process. So, before in the evolution of species, duality becomes an antinomy, the original reactions are grafted onto the constants; afterwards, it is the opposite: the constants are grafted onto the original reactions. The sum of the original reactions will create the illusion of the entity, as we have said.

Birth trauma and astrology

But the first truly peculiar reaction can never be prenatal; it can only occur when the organism becomes an isolated unit: at birth. At birth therefore, two phenomena occur: on the one hand the birth shock (trauma) whose reaction definitively creates the ego, this psychological entity which will not appear until much later, but which from that moment will begin to to develop; on the other hand, the new aggregate eminently sensitive to the present moment, by falling into a very particular point of time and space, receives an imprint so deep on this point, that it is truly determined. This last observation results from all that has been said above. This shows that astrology, far from being an absurdity, corresponds to a real fact. As to whether or not what is practiced under this name is correct, it is not within our competence.

The reactions that the child undergoes when coming into the world under the influence of the shock of birth and the result of the present forces, fill the void (this being the ego) left by the reactions, very weakened, of the species. These are so small that he will have to learn everything , because he can no longer use any of his senses. All that he will feel, will perceive, all that he will be able to do, will be the result of a strictly individual reeducation, everything, up to certain fundamental organic acts.

These first individual reactions constitute, so to speak, the foundations of the edifice of the ego, foundations both psychological and physiological. They will act as crystallizers, who will dress each future event in a specific costume. They will give form to each element of which the entity will be composed. This will therefore have its own crystallization constant, like a chemical body which always geometrizes according to determined forms. Each human individual therefore has his own modality, a style unique in the world . This particular disposition is the result and the development of what has in particular the reactions of the individual. This provision is therefore all the more developed as the individual is not hindered, in what is unique, by the social environment. Now, let us not forget that this arrangement indicates an antinomic state of movement, since its essence lies in the fact that the organism vibrates in response to the outside world.

The breaking point of the antinomy

Does this antinomy, in its dialectical course, tend the individual movement? The former are so dangerous to me that their sole purpose is to make it impossible . This goal is the main goal of religions, metaphysics, spiritual authorities in general, established morals.

In what does this rupture towards which the individual movement tends consist? The first individual reactions constitute, for this movement, a substratum on which will be superimposed all the subsequent reactions . Indeed, as soon as birth, and the point of time-space where it occurs, create and determine the embryo of this ego, the individual is no longer able to respond to the succession of moments present with as much of flexibility than at the beginning, since it has truly become its first embodied reactions. Consequently, the variations of the cosmic resultant, will meet in him a particular mode which will assimilate them, which will give them its own form. In other words, the present moment will be, from the first moment, distorted, projected into the past of that moment . This past is the origin of the individual subconscious. It is this past which, by accumulating, repeating its standard form, automatically flowing into the mold of its particular crystallization each new external contribution, will build the self, the entity. This entity will therefore be a building slowly, patiently, constantly built on an antinomy. This entity will hide this antinomy from itself, and will fight in the most savage way not to update it, because the only perception of this completely naked antinomy is a lightning flash, which in a thousandth of a second, can destroy from top to bottom the whole edifice of the self and even sometimes kill the individual stiffly (if immediate madness does not come to protect the organism)

This death of the ego, vaguely glimpsed by men like Jesus (at least, the inconsistent accounts of his disciples seem to indicate it to us), does not seem to have been understood yet in conscious terms. We will see later, how this truth was distorted, and used for the benefit of the static permanence of the ego and of the social order established on it, by mystics and religions . This undistorted truth is fundamentally revolutionary, and its social consequences are incalculable. We will therefore study it carefully.

Why the antinomy must be resolved Why does the antinomy tend to break, to disappear?

At the birth of the ego, the curve of the subjective has reached the point of dissociating the subjective and the objective, to the point of obliging the subjective to be recreated, to resume birth in new and particular reactions , but the very fact that these first vibrations are reactions which emanate from the aggregate, which are opposed to the outside world, which are the counterpart of it, this absolutely necessary fact, reconstructing around oneself a structure which is moving further and further away from the present, who seeks to dominate the permanent and changing dynamism of the world, his own static permanence, which with great reinforcement of automation he erects as an entity. The curve of the subjective, from now on, can no longer resolve, and reach its fulfillment, by creating on the planet in a mechanical way, new species. It can only be resolved in human individuals willing to seek the dynamic permanence of the world, which they had lost from the origin of their self [2] , and willing to destroy, for this purpose, the static permanence of this self . The new state towards which Nature tends, its new reign, is a change of psychological state. Physiologically, evolution is sufficient, because the entity ego is there.

The origin of the subconscious, that is to say the origin of time, is precisely at this breaking point that is the birth of the ego, where the subjective has changed state in contact with the instant present, which is eternity. This point occurred in the race, in the far distant places, during the period when for centuries war against the Gods and the Titans, the mythical representatives of the ego that condensed on the globe, and the groups of individuals, son of Nature, in which duality had not yet broken into two irreducible poles. This breaking point occurred for each of us at birth, marking us with the mythical seal of Time .

But the sap of the Earth leaves us no respite. In a prodigious struggle against Nature, the closed shells that are the ego, have built for centuries a fantastic, delusional, essentially contradictory universe. This fight against Nature is a natural phenomenon. Each ego shelters in itself, in the depths of its substance, the eternal instant from which it comes, this adherence to the eternal instant from which it is the counterpart, therefore the negation . He shelters it like an eggshell shelters future life which will one day break it. Phenomenon both collective and individual: we have entered an era, perhaps longer and more painful than that of the wars of the Gods and the Titans: the era of wars between the Human and the divine, between consciousness and the myth, between the present and the past. If the Human is already born, the subconscious is far from being still overcome, and the ego in compact masses, in terrible congregations, rise everywhere to fight against life.

It is impossible, however, that the curve of the subjective stops halfway to absolute permanence. You might as well ask the torrents not to seek the sea. It is a question of finding a harmonious and absolutely permanent balance. It is therefore a question of pushing towards its fulfillment the dissociation which has occurred in the subjective, and not of attributing to this dissociation (the self) a reality in itself, a reality of being, spiritual and material possessions , etc The goal is the following: to adhere all the time in a perfect way to the present moment, so as to find there the only possible permanence, that of the universal "something", which is constantly renewed, which is unceasingly the total result of a completely consumed past, which is without beginning or end, without cause or finality. This absolute exists in everything, since it is the result of everything. It exists psychologically in us, because the starting point of our self, its birth, was a response to its pressure.

State of birth The state of ignorance of man comes from static constructions which seek to establish themselves on this response, stifled in the past. This buried answer remains in us; it is an inner cry, an anguish, which can be defined as follows: it is the particular way in which each of us has been recreated at birth by the eternal dynamism of the world. Now, and this is one of the most criminal errors of religions, this particular response, this personal birth, is constantly demolished by the ego, that is to say by everything that wants to suffocate it by building its static house, that is to say, by all that constitutes the notion that we have of being ego .

Let us imagine a man freed from all this static scaffolding of the ego (we will see later how he can do it). He would find a perpetual state of conscious birth , the plastic, flexible state of the being who perceives the presence of the moment; and this state, which would no longer be stifled at all times by the crystallized deposits of Time, would be a dynamic resonance of every moment at each of their presences, a resonance therefore as fast, as eternal as the succession of the instant, but peculiar to the individual. The personality of the individual would no longer be himself, but the way in which this individual would recreate himself at every moment , it would be the unique curve of his new reactions, of his reactions which are henceforth in perfect harmony with the present, would not be more to speak of reactions, but particular and impersonal expressions of creative life in one point . This individual would be at all times the consumption of all his past, therefore of the past of the whole race, therefore of the past of all times and of all universes. He would be absent from himself and present in the world , in perfect contact with the things whose true value, essence, names they bear with regard to eternity , he would discern with certainty . But it would have become invisible to itself, in the sense that it could no longer be located in the universe of entities that say "I am me". This assertion would no longer have any meaning for him, and the entire universe built on this assertion would have vanished like a dream. Animated by an incessant movement of propulsion, which would be none other than the "plus" of the universe, this individual would be the very embodiment of this eternal permanence, and would no longer know whether he is "personal" or not, because the qualities with which personalities are related belong to the world which for him would no longer be.

The natural outcome

Such would be the natural and normal outcome of a self that the social environment would help in its realization. It would develop according to its unique tendencies, it would start by accumulating particular reactions on each other, it would associate with objects, then dissociate from them (according to a process that we will study, and of which we have already spoken above) he would doubt, he would love, he would be adventurous, he would still doubt without any fear, or rather by facing fear and doubt. He would build on his antinomic foundations, on the contradiction which is himself, a magnificent and absurd edifice, and this edifice, his ego, at its maturity would be so full of experience, so heavy with fruit, that it would open of itself under the weight of eternity. He would do so gradually, as experience freed him from the associations he had contracted with objects which he believed to be himself. These successive liberations, made of more and more frequent contacts with the present would put face to face in him the two opposite and irreducible poles of duality: by means of this process, the antinomy having become aware of itself by its development, would destroy itself because of this development.

Naturally, the innumerable black congregations of the horse dealers of eternity have only one goal: to prevent this human achievement and bliss. They mutilate, they castrate, they amputate, they destroy the human rag by rag, by imposing on him with terror all possible conformisms, creeds, prayers, rituals, gestures, costumes, uniforms. When life is dead, when it is replaced by automatisms in imitation of pontiffs and deities, the petrified selves, having calmed down and their fear and their doubt, proclaim themselves saved and immortal.

But there is not all the danger. Religious myths are sometimes surprisingly subtle. To feel real, beautiful, powerful, the self can do without churches and even nationalism . Doesn't he have innumerable appetites, unlimited ambitions, doesn't he have art, science, the public good, philosophy, love? Doesn't he have the talent, the genius, and all the heroic values ??that for millennia proved him right? Doesn't he have entire civilizations that are based on him at his disposal? And if these civilizations are in crisis, well, he will modify them, he will make them evolve, but by safeguarding their essential base, he, the self. However, it is unfortunate for him that all his efforts only lead to his final judgment.

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[1] Or "surreal" Only an under-conscious individual can be "ssurreal".

[2] The self, from its origin has lost something. His unconscious knows this well. It is said in the form of stories, of dreams. Creation of the myths of original sin, of the lost paradise, etc (the self knows that it has lost something, that it "committen a fault", the myth is created by the unconscious so that this truth remains hidden).




Carlo Suares : Works in French : Carlo Suares Fondation + 3rd Millenaire
Carlo Suarés : La première réponse au présent : Naissance d'un moi