/publication/80

Publisher: Inner Traditions International (2003)

224-225

But the problem of responsibility is seen under a different light when one refers to the traditional doctrine that we saw to have been more or less confusedly shadowed by existentialism itself: if one holds on to the idea that whatever one is as a person in the human condition proceeds from an original, prenatal, and pretemporal choice, wherein one willed, in terms of an 'original project' (as Sartre calls it), everything that would define the contents of one's existence. In this case, it is no longer a matter of answering to a Creator, but to something referring to the very dimension of being or transcendence in oneself. The course of existence, though not attributable to the more exterior and already human will of the individual (the person), follows, in principle, a line that has significance for the I, even though still latent or concealed: as an entirety of experiences important not in themselves but for the reactions that they provoke in us, reactions through which that being that one wished to be can be realized. In that case, life in this world cannot be considered as something that one can arbitrarily throw away, nor can it be considered simply as a bad situation in which the only choice is faith or fatalistic resignation (we have seen that, at best, the horizons of modern existentialism end there), or else being locked into a continuous trial of resistance (as happens along the lines of a dark Stoicism, devoid of the background of transcendence). As in an adventure, a mission, a trial, an election, or an experiment, earthly life appears to be something to which one committed oneself before finding oneself in the human condition, accepting in anticipation whatever difficult, miserable, or dramatic aspects it might bring, aspects that are especially likely in an epoch like the present.

168-170

In general, drugs can be divided into four categories: stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens, and narcotics. The first two categories do not concern us; for example, the use of tobacco and alcohol is irrelevant unless it becomes a vice, that is, if it leads to addiction. \nThe third category includes drugs that bring on states in which one experiences various visions and seemingly other worlds of the senses and spirit. On account of these effects, they have also been called 'psychedelics,' under the assumption that the visions project and reveal the hidden contents of the depths of one's own psyche, but are not recognized as such. As a result, physicians have even tried to use drugs like mescaline for a psychic exploration analogous to psychoanalysis. However, when all is reduced to the projection of a psychic substratum, not even experiences of this kind can interest the differentiated man. Leaving aside the perilous contents of the sensations and their artificial paradise, these illusory phantasmagoria do not take one beyond, even if one cannot exclude the possibility that what is acting may not be merely the contents of one's own subconscious, but dark influences that, finding the door open, manifest themselves in these visions. We might even say that those influences, and not the simple substratum repressed by the individual psyche, are responsible for certain impulses that can burst out in these states, even driving some compulsively to commit criminal acts. \nAn effective use of these drugs would presuppose a preliminary 'catharsis,' that is, the proper neutralization of the individual unconscious substratum that is activated; then the images and senses could refer to a spiritual reality of a higher order, rather than being reduced to a subjective, visionary orgy. One should emphasize that the instances of this higher use of drugs were preceded not only by periods of preparation and purification of the subject, but also that the process was properly guided through the contemplation of certain symbols. Sometimes 'consecrations' were also prescribed for protective purposes. There are accounts of certain indigenous communities in Central and South America whose members, only while under the influence of peyote, hear the sculpted figures on ancient temple ruins 'speak,' revealing their meaning in terms of spiritual enlightenment. The importance of the individual's attitude clearly appears from the completely different effects of mescaline on two contemporary writers who have experimented with drugs, Aldous Huxley and R. H. Zaehner. And it is a fact that in the case of hallucinogens like opium and, in part, hashish, this active assumption of the experience that is essential from our point of view is generally excluded. \nThere remains the category of narcotics and of substances that are also used for total anesthesia, whose normal effect is the complete suspension of consciousness. This corresponds to a detachment that would exclude all intermediate 'psychedelic' forms and the insidious, ecstatic, and sensual contents, leaving a void. However, if consciousness were maintained, with the pure I at the center, it could facilitate the opening to a higher reality. But the advantages would be outweighed by the extreme difficulty of any training capable of maintaining detached consciousness. \nIn general, one must keep in mind that drug use even for a spiritual end, that is, to catch glimpses of transcendence, has its price. How drugs produce certain psychic effects has not yet been determined by modern science. It is said that some, like LSD, destroy certain brain cells. One point is certain: Habitual use of drugs brings a certain psychic disorganization; one should substitute for them the power of attaining analogous states through one's own means. Therefore, when one has chosen a path based on the maximum unification of all one's psychic faculties, these drawbacks must be kept firmly in mind.

168

I have already pointed out the African polyrhythmic technique: one energy is locked into continuous stasis in order to unleash an energy of a different order. In the inferior ecstaticism of primitive peoples this opens the way for possession by dark powers. I have said that in our case, this different energy should be produced by the response of the 'being' (the Self) to the stimulus The situation created by the reaction to drugs and even alcohol is no different. But this kind of reaction almost never occurs; the reaction to the substance is too strong, rapid, unexpected, and external to be simply experienced, and thus the process cannot involve the 'being.' It is as if a powerful current penetrated the consciousness without requiring assent, leaving the person to merely notice the change of state: he is submerged in this new state, and 'acted on' by it. Thus the true effect, even if not noticed, is a collapse, a lesion of the Self, for all his sense of an exalted life or of a transcendent beatitude or sensuality. \nFor the process to proceed differently, it would go schematically as follows: at the point in which the drug frees energy x in an exterior way, an act of the Self, of 'being' brings its own double energy, x + x, into the current and maintains it up to the end. Similarly, a wave, even if unexpected, serves a skilled swimmer with whom it collides by propelling him beyond it. Thus, there would be no collapse, the negative would be transformed into positive, no condition of passivity would be formed with respect to the drug, the experience in a certain way would be deconditioned, and, as a result, one would not undergo an ecstatic dissolution, devoid of any true opening beyond the individual and only substantiated by sensations. Instead, in certain cases there would be the possibility of coming into contact with a superior dimension of reality, which was the intention of ancient, nonprofane drug use.

139-140

Some have tried to argue a finalistic view of the unprecedented accumulation of energy in the atomic era. Theodor Litt, for example, has suggested that man might realize his own nature in the face of a crisis situation by using his free will, deciding in full responsibility, taking the risk, in one direction or the other. Currently the decision is over the destructive and military use of atomic energy, or its 'constructive,' peaceful use. \nIn an epoch of dissolution, such an idea seems completely abstract and fantastic, typical of intellectuals with no sense of reality. First it presupposes the existence of men who still possess an inner law and sure ideas about what course should really be followed — and this, beyond anything that relates to the purely material world. Second, it presumes that these hypothetical men are the very ones entrusted with the use of the new means of power, in one direction or the other. Both suppositions are chimerical, especially the second. Today's leaders are caught in a tangle of actions and reactions that evade any real control; they obey irrational, collective influences, and are almost always at the service of special interests, ambitions, and material and economic rivalries that leave no room for a decision based on an enlightened freedom, a decision as an 'absolute person.' \nIn fact, even the alternative suggested above, over which our contemporaries agonize so much, may present itself in terms very different from those advanced by a pacifist, progressivist, moralizing humanitarianism. I truly cannot say what the person who still has hope for man should think of the imminence of quasi-apocalyptic destruction. It would certainly force many to face the existential problem in all its nakedness, and subject them to extreme trials; but is this a worse evil than that of mankind's safe, secure, satisfied, and total consignment to the kind of happiness that befits Nietzsche's 'last man': a comfortable consumer civilization of socialized human animals, aided by all the discoveries of science and industry and reproducing demographically in a squirming, catastrophic crescendo?

139

Given this basic situation of a limitation exalted to a method, one can well understand that the consequence of all scientific and technological progress is an inner stagnation or even a return to savagery. Such progress is not accompanied by any inner progress but develops on a plane apart; it does not intersect with man's concrete, existential situation, which instead is left to itself. It is hardly worth mentioning the absurdity or the disarming naivete of that modern social ideology that makes science a sort of substitute for religion, giving it the task of showing man the way to happiness and progress, and sending him on that way. The truth is that man has gained nothing from the progress of science and technology, neither in regard to knowledge (and I have already spoken of that), nor in regard to his own power, and still less in regard to any higher law of conduct. At best, one could make an exception for medicine, but still only on the physical level. As for power, let no one claim that the ability of the hydrogen bomb to destroy an entire metropolis, or the promise of nuclear energy that heralds the 'second industrial revolution,' or the games for grown-up children that are space exploration, have made a single person more potent and superior in himself, in his concrete being. These forms of a mechanical, external, and extrinsic power leave the real human being untouched; he is no more powerful or superior using space missiles than he ever was when using a club, except in its material effects; apart from those he remains as he was, with his passions, his instincts, and his inadequacies.

137-138

This, then, is the state of affairs: Modern science has led to a prodigious increase of information about phenomena in formerly unexplored or neglected fields, but in so doing it has not brought man any closer to the depths of reality, but has rather distanced and estranged him from them; and what nature 'really' is, according to science, escapes any concrete intuition. From this point of view, the latest science has no advantage over earlier, materialistic science. The atoms of yesteryear and the mechanistic conception of the universe at least allowed one to represent something, in however primitive a fashion; but the entities of the latest mathematical physics serve to represent absolutely nothing. They are simply the stitches of a net that has been fabricated and perfected not for the sake of knowing in a concrete, intuitive, and living sense — the only sense that would matter to an undegenerate humanity — but in order to gain an ever greater power, yet still an external one, over nature, whose depths remain closed to man and as mysterious as ever. Nature's mysteries have simply been covered over, and attention diverted from them by the spectacular successes of technology and industry, where one no longer tries to know the world, but to change it for the purposes of an earthbound humanity — following the program explicitly laid out by Karl Marx. \nI will repeat that it is a fraud to speak of a spiritual value in today's science, just because instead of matter, it talks about energy, or because it sees mass as 'coagulated radiations' or a sort of 'congealed light,' and because it considers spaces of more than three dimensions. None of that has any existence outside the theories of specialists in purely abstract mathematical notions. When these notions are substituted for those of earlier physics, they still change nothing of modern man's effective experience of the world. This substitution of one hypothesis for another does not concern real existence, but only interests minds given to pointless divagations. After it has been said that energy, not matter, exists, that we live not in a Euclidean, three-dimensional space but in a curved space of four or more dimensions, and so forth, things remain as they were; my actual experience has not changed a whit, and the significance of what I see — light, the sun, fire, seas, sky, flowering plants, dying beings — the ultimate significance of every process and phenomenon is no more transparent to me. One cannot begin to speak of transcendence, of a deepened knowledge in spiritual or truly intellectual terms. One can only speak of a quantitative extension of notions about other sectors of the external world, which aside from practical utility has only curiosity value. \nIn every other respect, modern science has made reality more alien and inaccessible to men of today than it ever was in the era of materialism and so-called classical physics. And it is infinitely more alien and inaccessible than it was to men of other civilizations and even to primitive peoples. It is a cliche that the modern scientific vision has desacralized the world, and the world desacralized by scientific knowledge has become one of the existential elements that make up modern man, all the more so to the degree that he is 'civilized.' Ever since he has been subject to compulsory education, his mind has been stuffed with 'positive' scientific notions; he cannot avoid seeing in a soulless light everything that surrounds him, and therefore acts destructively.\n

122-123

It is no wonder that today's man feels a need for physical reintegration, relaxation of nerves, and invigoration of the body away from the environment of large, modern cities. For this reason, natural living, the culture of the body, and even certain types of individual sport may be useful. Things appear otherwise, however, when people start to claim that some kind of spiritual factor is involved; that is, when it is thought that natural surroundings and physical strength make a man feel closer to himself than in the experiences and tensions of civilized life, and above all when it is supposed that physical sensations of well- being and comfort have any profound significance, or anything to do with human integrity considered from a higher point of view. \nApart from that position, which leads to the 'animal ideal' and modern naturalism, I deplore the general confusion of a 'return to origins' with a return to Mother Earth and even to Nature. Although it has often been misapplied, that theological doctrine that holds that a purely natural state for man has never existed is still legitimate; at the beginning he was placed in a supranatural state from which he has now fallen. In fact, for the true type of man, it can never be a question of those origins and that 'mother' wherein the individual cannot differentiate himself from his fellow men, or even from the animals. Every return to nature is a regressive phenomenon, including any protest in the name of instinctual rights, the unconscious, the flesh, life uninhibited by the intellect, and so forth. The man who becomes 'natural' in this way has in reality become denatured.

109-110

Originally persona signified 'mask': the mask that ancient actors wore in playing a given part, in incarnating a given personage. Thereby the mask possessed something typical, nonindividual, especially in the case of divine masks and even more clearly when used in many archaic rites. At this point I can resume and apply the ideas of the preceding chapter about the dual structure of the being: the 'person' is that which the man presents concretely and sensibly in the world, in the position he occupies, but always signifying a form of expression and manifestation of a higher principle in which the true center of being is to be recognized, and on which falls, or should fall, the accent of the Self. \nA 'mask' is something very precise, delineated, and structured. So man as person (= mask) is already differentiated thereby from the mere individual; he has a form, is himself, and belongs to himself. Consequently, whenever a civilization has had a traditional character, the values of the 'person' have made of it a world of quality, diversity, and types. And the natural consequence has been a system of organic, differentiated, and hierarchical relationships: something that cannot be said of mass regimes, but also not of regimes of individualism, of 'values of the personality,' or of real or pretended democracy. \nLike the individual, the person itself is in a certain sense closed to the external world, and in relation to it, all the existential situations whose legitimacy we have already recognized can be of value in the present age. Unlike the individual, the person is not closed to the above. The personal being is not himself, but has himself (like the relation between the actor and his part): it is presence to that which he is, not coalescence with that which he is. Moreover, a kind of antinomy is brought to light: in order to be truly such, the person needs a reference to something more than personal. When this reference is absent, the person transforms itself into an 'individual,' and individualism and subjectivism come into play.\n

107-108

In fact, in the West there has been a collusion between individualism, subjectivism, and 'personality' that goes back to the Renaissance period and which developed in the light of that 'discovery of man' exalted by antitraditional historiography. Historians have carefully ignored, or considered as positive, the counterpart, that is, the more or less conscious and complete separation from transcendence. All the splendor and power of 'creativity' of that period should not blind us to this basic tendency. Schuon has clarified the true state of affairs regarding the artistic realm as follows: 'Speaking in human terms, certain Renaissance artists are without a doubt great, but their grandeur becomes insignificant when faced with the grandeur of the sacred. In the sacred, it is as if the genius is concealed; what predominates is an impersonal, vast, mysterious intelligence. The sacred work of art has a perfume of infinitude, the imprint of the absolute. The individual talent is there disciplined; it mingles with the creative function of the entire tradition, which cannot be substituted, much less surpassed by the mere resources of man.' One can say the same regarding self-affirmation on other levels of the 'personality' in that epoch: from the Machiavellian Prince type, with its more or less perfect historical incarnations, to the condottieri and demagogues and, in general, all those who received Nietzsche's approbation for their prodigious yet unformed accumulation of power. \n Later, the emphasis on the human and individual I, the basis of humanism, would survive only in the by-products of the nineteenth- century bourgeois cult of the I, associated with a certain aesthetic cult of heroes, geniuses, and 'nobility of spirit,' But to meet many of the current defenders of 'personality' one must descend yet another degree, to where all the vanity of the I predominates: its exhibitionism, worship of one's own ' interiority,' the craze of originality, the boastfulness of brilliant literati and ambitious belletrists. Even with regard to art alone, this 'personalism' almost always appears joined to an inner impoverishment. Lukacs, though generally opposed to our position, made this legitimate remark: 'The present-day practice of overestimating and exaggerating the importance of creative subjectivity actually betrays the weakness and poverty of the writers' individuality. They distinguish themselves merely by 'eccentricity,' either spontaneous or painstakingly cultivated; their worldview is at such a low level that any attempt they make to go beyond subjective immediacy threatens to leave their 'personality completely flat. The more that this is the case, the more weight is placed on pure, immediate subjectivity, which sometimes is in fact identified with literary talent,' The character of 'normative objectivity' that was proper to true, traditional art is altogether lacking. The category that Schuon has effectively characterized as 'intelligent stupidity' includes almost all the intellectual efforts in this area. But I will not dwell further on considerations at this level — I will return to the subject later — beyond pointing out that in contemporary celebrity worship we can see the popular, updated edition that takes the former 'cult of the personality' to ridiculous lengths.

81-82

Already in Soren Kierkegaard, considered as the spiritual father of the existentialists, 'existence' is presented as a problem; with a special use of the German term Existenz, different from current usage, he defines Existenz as a paradoxical point in which the finite and the infinite, the temporal and the eternal, are co-present, meeting but mutually excluding each other. So it would seem to be a matter of recognizing the presence in man of the transcendent dimension. (Following the abstract habit of philosophy, the existentialists too speak of man in general, whereas one should always refer to one or another human type.) Still, we can accept the conception of Existenz as the physical presence of the I in the world, in a determined, concrete, and unrepeatable form and situation (cf. the theory of one's own nature and law in chapter 7) and, simultaneously, as a metaphysical presence of Being (of transcendence) in the I. \nAlong these lines, a certain type of existentialism could also lead to another point already established here: that of a positive antitheism, an existential overcoming of the God-figure, the object of faith or doubt. Since the center of the I is also mysteriously the center of Being, 'God' (transcendence) is a certainty, not as a subject of faith or dogma, but as presence in existence and freedom. The saying of Jaspers: 'God is a certainty for me inasmuch as I exist authentically,' relates in a certain way to the state already indicated, in which calling Being into question would amount to calling oneself into question.

71-74

Pure action does not mean blind action. The rule is to care nothing for the consequences to the shifting, individualistic feelings, but not in ignorance of the objective conditions that action must take into account in order to be as perfect as possible, and so as not to be doomed to failure from the start. One may not succeed: that is secondary, but it should not be owing to defective knowledge of everything concerning the conditions of efficacy, which generally comprise causality, the relations of cause to effect, and the law of concordant actions and reactions. \nOne can extend these ideas to help define the attitude that the integrated man should adopt on every plane, once he has done away with the current notions of good and evil. He sets himself above the moral plane not with pathos and polemics but with objectivity, hence through knowledge — the knowledge of causes and effects — and through conduct that has this knowledge as its only basis. Thus for the moral concept of 'sin' he substitutes the objective one of 'fault,' or more precisely 'error.' For him who has centered himself in transcendence, the idea of 'sin' has no more sense than the current and vacillating notions of good and evil, licit and illicit. All these notions are burnt out of him and cannot spiritually germinate again. One might say that they have been divested of their absolute value, and are tested objectively on the basis of the consequences that in fact follow from an action inwardly free from them. \nThere is an exact correspondence with traditional teachings here, just as there was in the other behavioral elements suggested for an epoch of dissolution. To name a well-known formula that is nearly always misunderstood, thanks to overblown moralizing, there is the so-called law of karma. It concerns the effects that happen on all planes as the result of given actions, because these actions already contain their causes in potentiality: effects that are natural and neutral, devoid of moral sanction either positive or negative. It is an extension of the laws that are nowadays considered appropriate for physical phenomena, laws that contain no innate obligation concerning the conduct that should follow once one knows about them. As far as 'evil' is concerned, there is an old Spanish proverb that expresses this idea: 'God said: take what you want and pay the price'; also the Koranic saying: 'He who does evil, does it only to himself.' It is a matter of keeping in mind the possibility of certain objective reactions, and so long as one accepts them even when they are negative, one's action remains free. The determinism of what the traditional world called 'fate,' and made the basis of various forms of divination and oracles, was conceived in the same way: it was a matter of certain objective directions of events, which one might or might not take into account in view of the advantage or risk inherent in choosing a certain course. By analogy, if someone is intending to make a risky alpine climb or a flight, once he has heard a forecast of bad weather he may either abandon or pursue it. In the latter case, he accepts the risk from the start. But the freedom remains; no 'moral' factor comes into play. In some cases the 'natural sanction,' the karma, can be partially neutralized. Again by analogy: one may know in advance that a certain conduct of life will probably cause harm to the organism. But one may give it no thought and eventually resort to medicine to neutralize its effects. Then everything is reduced to an interplay of various reactions, and the ultimate effect will depend on the strongest one. The same perspective and behavior are also valid on the non-material plane. \nIf we assume that the being has reached a high grade of unification, everything resembling an 'inner sanction' can be interpreted in the same terms — positive feelings will arise in the case of one line of action, negative in the case of an opposite line, thus conforming to 'good' or 'evil' according to their meanings in a certain society, a certain social stratum, a certain civilization, and a certain epoch. Apart from purely external and social reactions, a man may suffer, feel remorse, guilt, or shame when he acts contrary to the tendency that still prevails in his depths (for the ordinary man, nearly always through hereditary and social conditioning active in his subconscious), and which has only apparently been silenced by other tendencies and by the dictate of the 'physical I.' On the other hand, he feels a sense of satisfaction and comfort when he obeys that tend ency. In the end, the negative 'inner sanction' may intervene to cause a breakdown in the case mentioned, where he starts from what he knows to be his deepest and most authentic vocation and chooses a given ideal and line of conduct, but then gives way to other pressures and passively recognizes his own weakness and failure, suffering the internal dissociation due to the uncoordinated plurality of tendencies. \nThese emotional reactions are purely psychological in character and origin. They may be indifferent to the intrinsic quality of the actions, and they have no transcendent significance, no character of 'moral sanctions.' They are facts that are 'natural' in their own way, on which one should not superimpose a mythology of moral interpretations if one has arrived at true inner freedom. These are the objective terms in which Guyau, Nietzsche, and others have treated in realistic terms such phenomena of the 'moral conscience,' on which various authors have tried to build a kind of experimental basis — moving illegitimately from the plane of psychological facts to that of pure values — for an ethics that is not overtly founded on religious commandments. This aspect disappears automatically when the being has become one and his actions spring from that unity. In order to eliminate anything implying limitation or support I would rephrase that: when the being has become one through willing it, having chosen unity; because a choice is implied even here, whose direction is not obligatory. One might even accept and will non-unity, and in the same class of superior types that we are concerned with here, there may be those who permit themselves to do so. In such a case their basal unity does not cease to exist, but rather dematerializes and remains invisibly on a deeper plane.

Naturally, we are not dealing here with normal existence, but with those possible forms of it that are already differentiated, that have a certain intensity, while still being defined in a chaotic ambiance, in the domain of pure contingency. They are not infrequent today, and in the times to come they will surely proliferate. The state in question is that of the man who is self-confident through having as the essential center of his personality not life, but Being. He can encounter everything, abandon himself to everything, and open himself to everything without losing himself. He accepts every experience, no longer in order to prove and know himself, but to unfold all his possibilities in view of the transformations that they can work in him, and of the new contents that offer and reveal themselves on this path.\n

61-62

The problem of being oneself has a particular and subordinate solution in terms of a unification. Once one has discovered through experiment which of one's manifold tendencies is the central one, one sets about identifying it with one's will, stabilizing it, and organizing all one's secondary or divergent tendencies around it. This is what it means to give oneself a law, one's own law. As we have seen, the incapacity to do this, 'the many discordant souls enclosed in my own breast' and the refusal to obey even before one is capable of commanding oneself are causes of the disaster that may well end the path of a being driven toward the boundary situation in the world without God. There is a relevant saying: 'He who can not command himself must obey. And more than one can command himself, but is still far from being able to obey himself.

60-61

Hence we recall the line already mentioned, to be understood now as the search for, or the acceptance of, those situations or alternatives in which the prevailing force, one's own 'true nature,' is compelled to manifest and make itself known. \n \n The only actions that can be valid for this purpose are those that arise from the depths. Peripheral or emotional reactions do not qualify, for those are like reflex movements provoked by a stimulus, arising 'long before the depth of one's own being has been touched or questioned,' as Nietzsche himself said, seeing in this very incapacity for deep impressions and engagement, and in this skin-deep reactivity at the mercy of every sensation, a deplorable characteristic of modern man. For many people it is as though they have to relearn how to act in the true sense, actively, as one might say, and also typically. Even for the man whom we have in mind, taken in his worldly aspect, this is an essential requirement today. We might note the corresponding discipline that is so important in traditional 'inner teachings': that of self-remembering or self- awareness. G. I Gurdjieff, who has taught similar things in our time, describes the contrary state as that of being 'breathed' or 'sucked' into ordinary existence without any awareness of the fact, without noticing the automatic or 'somnambulistic' character that this existence has from a higher point of view. 'I am sucked in by my thoughts, my memories, my desires, my sensations, by the steak I eat, the cigarette I smoke, the love I make, by the sunshine, the rain, by this tree, by that passing car, by this book.' Thus one is a shadow of oneself. Life in a state of being, the 'active act,' 'active sensation,' and so on are unknown states.

As far as worldviews are concerned, we are dealing with a conception of reality freed from the categories of good and evil, but with a metaphysical foundation, not a naturalistic or pantheistic one. Being knows nothing of good or evil, nor do the great laws of things, nor the Absolute. A good or an evil exists solely in function of an end, and what is the standard by which to judge this end and thereby fix the ultimate legitimacy of an action or a being? Even the theology of Providence and the efforts of theistic theodicy to prop up the concept of the moral God cannot do away with the idea of the Great Economy that includes evil, in which evil is only a particular aspect of a higher order, transcending the little human categories of the individual and the collectivity of individuals. \nThe 'other world' attacked by European nihilism, presented by the latter as sheer illusion or condemned as an evasion, is not another reality; it is another dimension of reality in which the real, without being negated, acquires an absolute significance in the inconceivable nakedness of pure Being. \nIn an epoch of dissolution, this is the essential basis of a vision of life that is appropriate for the man reduced to himself, who must prove his own strength. Its counterpart is to be central or to make oneself so, to know or discover the supreme identity with oneself. It is to perceive the dimension of transcendence within, and to anchor oneself in it, making of it the hinge that stays immobile even when the door slams (an image from Meister Eckhart). From this point on, any 'invocation' or prayer becomes existentially impossible. The heritage of 'God' that one dared not accept is not that of the lucid madness of Kirilov; it is the calm sense of a presence and an intangible possession, of a superiority to life whilst in the very bosom of life.

The Pauline and Faustian lament, 'two souls, alas, live in my breast,' is already an optimistic assumption; all too many have to admit, like a typical character in Hesse, that they have a multitude of souls! Nietzsche himself admitted this state of affairs when he wrote: 'One should not assume that many men are 'persons.' There are also men composed of several persons, but the majority possess none at all.' And again: 'Become yourself: an injunction addressed only to a few, and which to an even smaller number appears redundant.' One can see now how problematic is the very point that has hitherto seemed fixed: fidelity to oneself, the absolute, autonomous law based on one's own 'being,' when it is formulated in general and abstract terms. Everything is subject to debate - a situation accurately exemplified by characters in Dostoyevsky, like Rasholnikov or Stavrogin. At the moment when they are thrown back on their own naked will, trying to prove it to themselves with an absolute action, they collapse; they collapse precisely because they are divided beings, because they are deluded concerning their true nature and their true strength. Their freedom is turned against them and destroys them; they fail at the very point at which they should have reaffirmed themselves - in their depths they find nothing to sustain them and carry them forward. We recall the words of Stavrogin's testament: 'I have tested my strength everywhere, as you advised me to do in order to know myself...What I have never seen, and still do not see, is what I should apply my strength to. My desires lack the energy; they cannot drive me. One can cross a river on a log, but not on a splinter.

At all events, the error and the illusion are the same in both socioeconomic ideologies, namely the serious assumption that existential misery can be reduced to suffering in one way or another from material want, and to impoverishment due to a given socioeconomic system. They assume that misery is greater among the disinherited or the proletariat than among those living in prosperous or privileged economic conditions, and that it will consequently diminish with the 'freedom from want' and the general advance of the material conditions of existence. The truth of the matter is that the meaning of existence can be lacking as much in one group as in the other, and that there is no correlation between material and spiritual misery. Only to the lowest and dullest levels of society can one preach the formula for all human happiness and wholeness as the well-named 'animal ideal,' a well-being that is little better than bovine. Hegel rightly wrote that the epochs of material well-being are blank pages in the history book, and Toynbee has shown the challenge to mankind of environmentally and spiritually harsh and problematic conditions is often the incentive that awakens the creative energies of civilization.

When a cycle of civilization is reaching its end, it is difficult to achieve anything by resisting it and by directly opposing the forces in motion. The current is too strong; one would be overwhelmed. The essential thing is not to let oneself be impressed by the omnipotence and apparent triumph of the forces of the epoch. These forces, devoid of connection with any higher principle, are in fact on a short chain. One should not become fixated on the present and on things at hand, but keep in view the conditions that may come about in the future. Thus the principle to follow could be that of letting the forces and processes of this epoch take their own course, while keeping oneself firm and ready to intervene when 'the tiger, which cannot leap on the person riding it, is tired of running.' The Christian injunction 'Resist not evil' may have a similar meaning, if taken in a very particular way. One abandons direct action and retreats to a more internal position.

221-222

Suicide, condemned by most moralities with social and religious foundations, has in fact been permitted by two doctrines whose norms of life are not far from those indicated for the differentiated man in the present epoch: Stoicism and Buddhism. One can refer to the ideas of Seneca regarding Stoicism, recalling above all the general background of its vision of life. I have already said that for Seneca the true man would be above the gods themselves because they, by their very nature, do not know adversity and misfortune, whereas he is exposed to them, but has the power to triumph over them. Moreover, Seneca sees the beings that are most harshly tested as the worthiest, recalling this analogy: in war it is the most capable, sure, and qualified persons that leaders entrust with the most exposed positions and the hardest tasks. Usually it is this virile and agonistic conception that applies when suicide is condemned and stigmatized as cowardice and desertion. (There is a saying attributed by Cicero to the Pythagoreans: 'To leave the place that one is assigned in life is not permitted without an order from the leader, who is God.') Instead Seneca reached the opposite conclusion, and put the justification of suicide directly into the mouth of divinity (De Providentia 6:7-9). He makes the divinity say that he has given the superior man, the sage, not only a force stronger than any contingency, and something more than being exempt from evils, namely the power to triumph over them interiorly, but has also ensured that no one can hold him back against his will: the path to 'exit' is open to him — patet exitus, 'Wherever you do not want to fight, it is always possible to retreat. You have been given nothing easier than death.' \nGiven the presuppositions mentioned earlier with regard to the general vision of life, there is no doubt that Seneca did not intend this decision to refer to cases in which death is sought because a given situation appears unbearable: especially then, one could not permit oneself the act. Here too it is unnecessary to add what is equally valid for all those who are driven to cut their life short due to emotional and impassioned motives, because this would be equivalent to recognizing one's own passivity and impotence toward the irrational part of one's soul. The same is even true for cases in which social motives intervene. Both the ideal Stoic type and the differentiated man do not permit these motives to intimately touch them, as if their dignity were injured by what binds them to social life. They would never be driven to put an end to their own existence for these motives, which are included by the Stoics in the category of 'that which does not depend on me.' The only exception we can consider is the case of a disgrace not before others whose judgment and contempt one cannot bear, but before oneself, because of one's own downfall. Considering all this, Seneca's maxim can only have the meaning of an enhancement of the inner freedom of a superior being. It is not a matter of retreating because one does not feel strong enough before such ordeals and circumstances; rather, it is a matter of the sovereign right — that one always keeps in reserve — to either accept these ordeals or not, and even to draw the line when one no longer sees a meaning in them, and after having sufficiently demonstrated to one- self the capacity to face them. Impassibility is taken for granted, and the right to 'exit' is justifiable as one of the possibilities to be considered, in principle, only for the sake of decreeing that our circumstances have our assent, that we are really active in them, and that we are not just making a virtue of necessity.

178-179

Furthermore, the absurdity of modern life is blatantly revealed by those economic aspects that essentially, and regressively, determine it. On the one hand, an economy of necessities has decidedly become an economy of excess, one of whose causes is the overproduction and progress of industrial technology. On the other hand, overproduction requires, for the sake of the market, that a maximum volume of needs be fed and maintained among the masses: needs that, on the brink of becoming customary and 'normal,''' entail a corresponding, growing conditioning of the individual. The first factor here is the very nature of the dissociated productive process that has, as it were, taken modern man by the hand, like an unleashed giant incapable of restraint, thus confirming the saying: Fiat production pereat homo! (Let there be production! Let man perish! — Werner Sombart). While in a capitalist regime not only greed for profits and dividends has a part in this senseless increase in production, but also the objective necessity for capital reinvestment in order to prevent a blockage paralyzing the entire system, another more general cause of the senseless increase of production along the lines of an excessive consumer economy is the necessity to employ labor to combat unemployment. As a result, in many states the principle of overproduction and overindustrialization, exacerbated by the demands of private capitalism, has become the very dictator of sociopolitical planning. So a vicious circle forms, the opposite of a system in equilibrium, of processes well contained within sensible boundaries. \nThis naturally brings us to an even more prominent aspect of the absurdity of modern existence: the unrestrained increase and growth of the population, occurring along with the regime of the masses, fostered by democracy, the 'conquests of science,' and the unselective welfare system. The procreative pandemic or demon is effectively the principal force that incessantly feeds and sustains the entire system of the modern economy, with its mechanism ever more conditioning the individual. Proof positive of the derisory character of the craze for power nurtured by today's man is the fact that this creator of machines, this dominator of nature, this inaugurator of the atomic era, is not far above an animal or a savage when it comes to sex. He is incapable of controlling the most primitive forms of the sexual impulse and everything connected with it. So, as though obeying a blind destiny, he ceaselessly, irresponsibly, increases the formless human mass and supplies the chief driving force to the entire system of the paroxysmal, unnatural, and ever more conditioned economic life of modern society, creating at the same time innumerable hotbeds of social and international instabilities and tensions. The vicious circle then becomes that of the mass, which, with the excess potential of a workforce, feeds over production, which in its turn seeks ever-larger markets and masses to absorb the products. Nor can we ignore the fact that demographic growth has an index inversely proportional to the social scale, thus adding a further factor to the general regressive process.

174-176

In the present political situation, in a climate of democracy and 'socialism,' the rules of the game are such that the man in question absolutely cannot take part in it. He recognizes, as I have said before, that ideas, motives, and goals worthy of the pledge of one's own true being do not exist today; there are no demands of which he can recognize any moral right and foundation outside that which they derive as mere facts on the empirical and profane plane. However, apoliteia detachment, does not necessarily involve specific consequences in the field of pure and simple activity. I have already discussed the capacity to apply oneself to a given task for love of action in itself and in terms of an impersonal perfection. So, in principle, there is no reason to exclude the political realm itself as a particular case among others, since participating in it on these terms requires neither any objective value of a higher order, nor impulses that come from emotional and irrational layers of one's own being. But if this is how one dedicates oneself to political activity, clearly all that matters is the action and the impersonal perfection in acting for its own sake. Such political activity, for one who desires it, cannot present a higher value and dignity than dedicating oneself, in the same spirit, to quite different activities: absurd colonization projects, speculations on the stock market, science, and even — to give a drastic example — arms traffic or white slavery. \nAs conceived here, apoliteia creates no special presuppositions in the exterior field, not necessarily having a corollary in practical abstention. The truly detached man is not a professional and polemic outsider, nor conscientious objector, nor anarchist. Once it is established that life with its interactions does not constrain his being, he could even show the qualities of a soldier who, in order to act and accomplish a task, does not request in advance a transcendent justification and a quasi-theological assurance of the goodness of the cause. We can speak, in these cases, of a voluntary obligation that concerns the 'persona,' not the being, by which — even while one is involved — one remains isolated. \nI have already said that the positive overcoming of nihilism lies precisely in the fact that lack of meaning does not paralyze the action of the 'persona.' In existential terms, the only exception would be the possibility of action being manipulated by some current political or social myth that regarded today's political life as serious, significant, and important. Apoliteia is the inner distance unassailable by this society and its 'values'; it does not accept being bound by anything spiritual or moral. Once this is firm, the activities that in others would presuppose such bonds can be exercised in a different spirit. Moreover, there remains the sphere of activities that can be made to serve a higher-ordained and invisible end, as when I mentioned the two aspects of impersonality and what is to be gained from some forms of modern existence. \nTurning to a particular point, one can only maintain an attitude of detachment when facing the confrontation of the two factions contending for world domination today: the democratic, capitalist West and the communist East. In fact, this struggle is devoid of any meaning from a spiritual point of view. The 'West' is not an exponent of any higher ideal. Its very civilization, based on an essential negation of traditional values, presents the same destructions and nihilistic background that is evident in the Marxist and communist sphere, however different in form and degree. I will not dwell on this, given that I have outlined a total conception of the course of history, and dismissed any illusion about the final result of that struggle for world control, in Revolt Against the Modern World. Since the problem of values does not come into question, at most it presents a practical problem to the differentiated man. That certain margin of material freedom that the world of democracy still leaves for external activity to one who will not let himself be conditioned inwardly, would certainly be abolished in a communist regime. Simply in view of that, one may take a position against the soviet-communist system: not because one believes in some higher ideal that the rival system possesses, but for motives one might almost call basely physical. \nOn the other hand, one can keep in mind that for the differentiated man, having no interest in affirming and exposing himself in external life today, and his deeper life remaining invisible and out of reach, a communist system would not have the same fatal significance as for others; also an 'underground front' could very well exist there. Taking sides in the present struggle for world hegemony is not a spiritual problem, but a banal, practical choice.

172-174

In the present epoch, no nation-states exist that, by their nature, can claim any principle of true, inalienable authority. Furthermore, one cannot even speak of states today in the proper traditional sense. Only 'representative' and administrative systems exist, in which the primary element is no longer the state, understood as an entity in itself and an incarnation of a higher idea and power, but 'society,' conceived in terms of 'democracy.' This background even persists in totalitarian communist regimes, which so insist on the quality of 'popular democracies.' For a long time there have been no true sovereigns, monarchs by divine right capable of wielding sword and scepter, and symbols of a higher human ideal. More than a century ago, Juan Donoso Cortes stated that no kings existed capable of proclaiming themselves as such except 'by the will of the nation,' adding that, even if any had existed, they would not have been recognized. The few monarchies still surviving are notoriously impotent and empty, while the traditional nobility has lost its essential character as a political class and any existential prestige and rank along with it. Its current representatives may still interest our contemporaries when put on the same plane as film actors and actresses, sport heroes and opera stars, and when through some private, sentimental, or scandalous chance, they serve as fodder for magazine articles. \nEven outside traditional frameworks , true leaders do not exist today. 'I turned my back on the rulers when I saw what they called ruling: bartering and haggling with the rabble. . . . Among all the hypocrisies, this seems to me the worst: that even those who commanded feigned the virtues of the serfs' — Nietzsche's words are without exception still true of the so-called ruling class of our times. \nLike the true state, the hierarchical, organic state has ceased to exist. No comparable party or movement exists, offering itself as a defender of higher ideas, to which one can unconditionally adhere and support with absolute fidelity. The present world of party politics consists only of the regime of petty politicians, who, whatever their party affiliations, are often figureheads at the service of financial, industrial, or corporate interests. The situation has gone so far that even if parties or movements of a different type existed, they would have almost no following among the rootless masses who respond only to those who promise material advantages and 'social conquests.' When striking these chords does not suffice, the only influence over the masses today — and now even more than ever — is on the plane of impassioned and subintellectual forces, which by their very nature lack any stability. These are the forces that demagogues, popular leaders, manipulators of myths, and fabricators of 'public opinion' count on. In this regard we can learn from yesterday's regimes in Germany and Italy that positioned themselves against democracy and Marxism: that potential enthusiasm and faith that animated masses of people, even to the point of fanaticism, has completely vanished in the face of crisis, or else been transferred to new, opposing myths, replacing the preceding ones by the sole force of circumstances. One must expect this from every collective current that lacks a dimension of depth, inasmuch as it depends on the forces I have mentioned, corresponding to the pure demos and its sovereignty — which is as much as to say, literally, 'democracy.' \nThe only realms left for any efficacious political action after the end of the old regimes are this irrational and subintellectual plane, or the other one, determined by pure material and 'social' utility. As a result, even if leaders worthy of the name were to appear today — men who appealed to forces and interests of a different type, who did not promise material advantages, who demanded and imposed a severe discipline on everyone, and who did not prostitute and degrade themselves just to ensure a personal, ephemeral, revocable, and formless power — they would have almost no hold on present society.