The proletarian, for example—is he not the last cog in the human equation, the lowest symbol of man that ever was? Who can deny that he is infinitely less than the most primitive man? And in what sense is he less? Because he has not enough food, clothing, shelter, security, leisure, learning? Some would like to have us believe that such is the case.
To me it seems that the real diminution of his power and substance has come about through his dividedness. He is without passion and without hope, a pawn in a game whose rules he knows nothing of. “A dehumanized commodity,” Gutkind calls him. “An object waiting for redemption.” No, there are no individuals any longer. There are monstrous tyrants—and the mob, the “masses.”
The progress of humanity is so infinitesimally slow that it almost seems like no progress at all. But there is that which is called “conscience,” which is not an empty concept but a very real factor in the human make-up, and this conscience does indicate the existence of another and a higher urge.
In its negative aspect it makes itself known through fatality, punishment, etc., but in its positive aspect it reveals the existence of an Absolute, of law. It indicates the hidden axis of our vertical life without which the “dreary round of predictable events” would make the world appear like a rat-trap.
As Gutkind rightly says, we have never dared to face the world as we should—or one might say with equal truth that we have never dared to face the world-as-it-is. Why does the word “reality” always have such a sinister, gray, fatalistic ring?
It is the realists—that is to say, the death-eaters—who are responsible for the pall which has come over the word. But the men who are thoroughly wide-awake and completely alive are in reality, and for there reality has always been close to ecstasy, partaking of a life of fulfillment which knows no bounds. Of them only may it be said that they live in the present. Through them is it permitted us to grasp the meaning of timelessness, of eternity which is victory.
It is they who are truly of this world. Their victory is one which each man must win for himself: it is a private and at the same time a universal affair. Nothing which is of value can be handed down, bequeathed, preserved—as with our lamentable treasures of art. What happens must be realized anew by each man.
The history of religions emphasizes the stupendous difficulty which man has in realizing this truth. Truth crystallizes quickly into idolatry, servility, surrender. Everywhere we see life being lived vicariously. And yet life everywhere and at all times for any and everybody is simple, startlingly simple. We live on the edge of the miraculous every minute of our lives. The miracle is in us, and it blossoms forth the moment we lay ourselves open to it.
The miracle of miracles is the stubbornness with which men refuse to open themselves up. Our whole life seems to be nothing but a frantic effort to evade that which is constantly within our grasp. This which is the very reverse of the miraculous is nothing else but FEAR. Man has no other real enemy than this which he carries within him. Somewhere a French poet has written: “No daring is fatal.”
Provided, he should have added, that one is unified. Divided, everything is fatal and leads to catastrophe. This has been the history of mankind, yet no man of vision and integrity has ever accepted it as ordained and ineluctable. Man has the power to renounce and to accept; he can refuse to be a pawn and he can make of himself a god. He holds his fate in his own hands—and not only his own fate, but the fate of the world.
There is a justice which, fortunately, surpasses the comprehension of most men, else the world would go mad immediately. It is at the edge of madness that we attain to a glimpse of the overwhelming truth and simplicity of life. What confounds the mob, when confronted with a great figure, is the simplicity of the man’s behavior.
I repeat, it is the utter simplicity of life which defeats man. He has turned the earth inside out in a frantic effort to attain security, to arrive at wisdom. But he has never really attached himself to the earth, never sufficiently venerated it. He has tried to subjugate when he has had only to observe and enjoy.
Suffering is not the only way to victory—it is a way. And knowledge is the poorest way of all, for it means that only a part of man’s being is struggling forward. The whole man must be there, ready at all times to act (or not to act), to move with the certitude of a sleepwalker, to dare anything because he is convinced that life is now, this very moment, and that it is inexhaustible and unknowable.
Up to the present man has been an embryo, a unique one nevertheless, in that he possesses the power at any moment to leap forth into full being. At one jump he can leap clear of the clockwork, to borrow a phrase of Gutkind’s. I believe it absolutely. I know it to be so from my own experience. All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of experience. Every sign of growth is a revolt against death.
Even death itself, finally, is regarded as the means to another kind of growth. In one form or another man has always regarded death as a portal opening the way to a new and greater life. Man has postponed his real life here on earth for a life to come.
Once he begins to realize that death is present here and now, in each and all of us, and that it is only necessary to open the door to have life immediately and in unqualified abundance and magnificence, what could possess him to withhold, to remain closed, to fear, to kill, to ding to his miserable possessions?
Compared with the splendor and magnificence of that life which we are constantly denying this life which we now lead is a nightmare. Perhaps this alone explains why it is easier to enlist men in the cause of death, why they prefer to be dead heroes, dead saints, dead martyrs in every sense of the word. Life itself has lost its value its attraction.
In a real sense, life is something which has not yet begun. Men are seeking life thirstily, but their eyes are in the back of their heads. Life can only be seized by the whole organism, as something felt, something which demands neither proof nor justification. Nobody can point the way.
Life is, and in this sense a man is or he is not. Life is not an “it” to be grasped by the mind. “Whoever has not been fully alive in this life,” says Gutkind, “will not become so through death.” Or, as Jacob Boehme put it: “Who dies not before he dies is ruined when he dies.” It is the same thing.
This is the Apocalyptic Era when all things will be made manifest unto us. I am not dippy. I have not become what is erroneously called “religious.” I am against all the religions of the world as I am against all the nations of the world and all the teachings of the world.
I speak illogically, intuitively, and with absolute certitude. Nothing will prevent the world from realizing its worst fears—nothing but the elimination of fear itself. The destruction of the world we have foolishly tried to preserve is at hand.
The death which had been rotting away in us secretly and disgracefully must be made manifest, and to a degree never before heard of. As Father Perrault said to “Glory” Conway—“It will be such a storm, my son, as the world has not seen before.
There will be no safety by arms, no help from authority, no answer in science. It will rage till every flower of culture is trampled, and all human things are levelled in a vast chaos . . . The Dark Ages to come will cover the whole world in a single pall; there will be neither escape nor sanctuary, save such as are too secret to be found or too humble to be noticed.” This is the dread prospect which faces us and which is our hope at the same time.
The wheel turns slowly, but it turns and turns, and not even death can arrest it. For death is a part of the endless process. For the time being there is no ceiling; if we are to make a real ascent we must break through the “metaphysical zenith.”
We have remained too long at the level of culture subject to the law of evaporation by which everything freezes into the stagnant flux of civilization. “Our action,” says Gutkind, “must have its root in the mysterious center of our dumb, unconscious being . . . Our ascent must take its start in the depths of the body.”
All about us we see a world in revolt; but revolt is negative, a mere finishing-off process. In the midst of destruction we carry with us also our creation, our hopes, our strength, our urge to be fulfilled. The climate changes as the wheel turns, and what is true for
