Friday, July 28, 2023

History of the Devil, by Vilém Flusser

Parodying sacred texts, Vilém Flusser presents in this book an homage to the Devil, the “so glorious prince” who has enthused so many throughout human history, and in whose praise many have faced the flames “with ardent dedication.” He seeks to suspend our prejudices regarding the Devil in an attempt to recognize this character, whom he identifies with History itself: “It is possible to affirm that time began with the Devil, that his emergence or fall represents the beginning of the drama of time, and that devil and history are two aspects of the same process.”

Preface

The meditations that I submit to the public in the form of this book are, to a large extent, the result of dialogues with books and people. Given the nature of these meditations, that is, the continuous distortions that my interlocutors undergo during the meditations, I will not mention the books. In other words, there will be no bibliography. However, I cannot refrain from mentioning some of the people.

These meditations had, in fact, two phases. The first began with my expulsion by the Nazis from a reality called “Prague,” resulting in German annotations that were not published. The second phase started with my integration into the reality called “Brazil,” leading to the creation of this book. Two people had a decisive influence on the first phase: Alexandre Bloch and Helmut Wolff, both based in São Paulo. I found myself caught in the crossfire between these two opposing fluid mentalities: between sadness and lust, both in desperate search of a saving faith. My mind became the battleground for these two mentalities. I hope that both can recognize themselves in my mirror, albeit in a distorted manner. In the second phase, I experienced four impacts: the first came from a group of young men and women, representing the best in our youth. The other three were João Guimarães Rosa, Vicente Ferreira da Silva, and Anatol Rosenfeld.

The group of young men and women, friends of my daughter, gathered at my house to “discuss,” that is, to seek an honest opening in the situation that surrounds us. I will mention the names of Mauro Chaves, Celso Lafer, Alan Meyer, and J. C. Ismael, as I cannot mention them all. I soon lost my presumed superiority in intellectual struggle with them. I hope that this struggle contributed to shaping their minds, as it did for mine. If I am not mistaken, Brazilian culture can expect significant contributions from these young individuals.

My contact with João Guimarães Rosa has been sporadic, given that he resides in Rio de Janeiro. But a dialogue with such a passionate and potent spirit is only possible at intervals. Guimarães Rosa provokes the very core of honesty and does so mercilessly. The greatness of his struggle for salvation mobilizes all the defense forces in the interlocutor. The stature of his mind is a formidable challenge. I do not hesitate to consider him one of the great figures of the present time.

Vicente Ferreira da Silva participated in our meetings during the last months of his life, as his thoughts were preparing for a new leap, which was thwarted by death. We, his last partners in the adventure of seeking, are the custodians of the treasure that he no longer minted in the form of books. Part of this treasure is embedded in the meditations that follow.

The importance of Anatol Rosenfeld to me is unfortunately not mutual, as I have not managed to win him over. This is, in fact, one of my bitterest defeats. To me (though this might be a projection I make onto him), he represents the honesty of the intellect humbly closed upon itself. He represents, therefore, the model of the critic, and it is in function and fear of this type of criticism that I write. Although I know that the deliberate limitation this intellect imposes on itself cannot encompass the entire terrain in which I roam, I admit that his critique is pertinent because it reveals pride and sadness. Therefore, it is in constant struggle against this deliberate limitation that I write.

It is obvious that the mentioned individuals do not exhaust the personal influences I have been subjected to. As I mentioned earlier, I am integrated into the Brazilian conversation, to the extent that such integration is possible. I must say that this integration became viable thanks to the intellectual and editorial stimulus of Décio de Almeida Prado, without whose assistance this book could not have been published. This book is my attempt to partly repay the numerous gifts I have received. It is, in part, the expression of my gratitude for the reception I have been given by this society, which can be the cradle of a new civilization to overcome the absurdity in which we are all immersed.

São Paulo, April 1965.

1.000 Introduction

The expression “history of the devil” has deep etymological roots. The term “history” is related to layers that succeed one another, and the German language links the term “history” (Geschichte) with the term “layer” (Schichte). The term “devil” is related to the concept of confusion and, in a disturbing way, with the concept of “God.” But these etymological connections that the expression “history of the devil” evokes will only be recorded by our naive ear and accepted uncritically, albeit with emotion, as we attempt to approach the prince of the lower layers. Divinity presents itself in various aspects to those who seek it, making it unreachable due to an “embarras de choix.” The same happens when attempting to grasp the devil. While Divinity is timeless and simply exists, the flow of events occurs elsewhere. The devil is possibly immortal, but he certainly emerged at some point. He swims in the current of time, perhaps even directs it; he is historical in the strict sense of the term. We can assert that time began with the devil, that his emergence or his fall represents the beginning of the drama of time, and that “devil” and “history” are two aspects of the same process. Thus, we could say that our attempt to escape the devil is another aspect of our attempt to emerge from temporality and enter the realm of immutable Mothers. But a similar statement would demonstrate a negative attitude towards the devil and would let the prejudices we nourish against him take control of us. If we want to do him justice, we must avoid the influence of the anti-diabolical propaganda that has long distorted his image. A prince who has filled so many throughout human history with enthusiasm, and for whom many have faced the flames with ardent dedication—so many martyrs, witches, and sorcerers—a prince so glorious deserves that our minds be free of prejudices when we approach him, at least in part.

We, the Westerners, are products of an official tradition that paints the devil in negative colors, namely, as the opponent of God. This tradition seems to want to exhaust itself. Lately, few Westerners have dedicated themselves to painting the devil. Religions themselves seem to no longer embody the devil. The West remains silent concerning the devil, pretending to have forgotten him, following the rule: “do not think about him.” This is a suspicious attitude. There were times, for example, in the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the devil was discussed publicly and passionately. Those were uncomfortable times for the dominion of the devil. A brief consideration of the present and recent history seems to demonstrate how this dominion has been consolidated. This consideration is one of the reasons for this book.

I mentioned that our official tradition conceives the devil negatively, as a seductive, deceitful, and soul-destroying spirit. These diabolical attributes do not necessarily have to be valued negatively, as they allow the question: “what justifies the devil in his actions?” However, undeniably, these attributes predispose our minds against the devil. These are not the starting points that this book intends to use for its investigations into the diabolical character. To know its motives, methods, and deeds, we must search for other, more positive, aspects of its character. This should not be difficult, as there are so many effects and manifestations of the devil in the external world and in our inner selves that the indications are abundant. The entire symphony of civilization, the entire progress of humanity against the limits imposed by Divinity—all this promethean struggle for the fire of freedom—is, from the devil’s point of view, a majestic work. Or, from the opposite point of view, all this is merely an illusion created by the devil. Science, art, and philosophy are the noblest examples of this work. If we consider how these activities have developed throughout history, and how they have distanced themselves from naive original sin, we will have gained a first glimpse of the multiple positive aspects of the devil’s character.

However, we will have difficulty distinguishing, in the vast river of phenomena, the diabolical influence from the divine. This difficulty is well known to us. It forms the theme of our consciousness, and thus, of our life. I propose to simplify the problem and overcome this difficulty in the course of this book. I will call “divine influence” everything that tends towards the overcoming of time. I will call “diabolical influence” everything that tends towards the preservation of the world in time. It is a simplification, but it is excused by the millenary tradition of the West. The “Divine” will, therefore, be conceived (if it can be conceived) as that which acts within the phenomenal world to dissolve and save it, transforming it into pure Being, thus into timelessness. And the “devil” will be conceived as that which acts within the phenomenal world to maintain it and prevent it from being dissolved and saved. From the point of view of pure Being, the “Divine” will be the creative agent, and the “devil” will be annihilation. But from the point of view of our world, the “devil” will be the conservative principle, and the “divine” will be, euphemistically speaking, the purifying fire of the blacksmith. These considerations alone already confuse our traditional concepts of heaven and hell. It is the duty of the devil to keep the world in time. A definitive defeat of the devil (however inconceivable it may be) would be an irremediable cosmic catastrophe. The world would dissolve. But our tradition teaches us that the world was created by God. We begin to perceive the positive motives of the devil. The divine motives, on the other hand, remain obscure. We now sense that the devil is much closer to us than the Lord, and following the devil is much more comfortable and simple than pursuing the obscure divine paths. The first sympathy for the devil arises within us, and we recognize in him a spirit similar and perhaps as unhappy as our own. But we must be careful not to exaggerate this similarity. The devil (in our conception of the term) knows his duty, and we doubt ours. His project is clear, and he is currently carrying it out with admirable success. But we are “free,” that is, we can follow either the devil or divinity, and thus we err in poorly traced circles. Linear progress is the devil’s thing. If humanity has progressed, it has done so thanks to him.

As “free” beings, we are at the starting point of the first day. The devil follows his path, and history sings the glory of his achievements. Humanity is as close or as far from its goal as Adam and Eve. It is true that a few among us seem to have reached God, and others seem to have found the path to hell. But the vast majority continues to wander in the middle. The history of the devil is the story of progress. This book should have been called “evolution,” but this term would have caused misunderstandings. Evolution as the story of progress is the history of the devil. This evolution takes place in multiple layers. In each of them, the devil acts differently. In each of them, his progress evokes our admiration and astonishment. If we randomly select examples of his works and contemplate progress from the elixir of love to vitamin E, or from the witch’s broom to the “Sputnik,” we will have a first outlined view of the ingenious methods he employs.

Attempting to describe the devil’s path in multiple layers is certainly an exciting task. However, this will not be the method of this book. Along the way, we will point out various phases of diabolical progress, but this will not be our main goal. Our intention is to have a comprehensive view of the devil. Therefore, our problem will be to choose an observation tower, climb it as best we can, and describe the unfolding landscape. Two towers insistently present themselves. The first is called “history” and commands the following landscape: a metamorphosis of diabolical aspects, one after another. From this tower, we will catch a glimpse of the great serpent mother, Ahriman, Prometheus, and how they transform progressively into the cultured scientific philosopher who represents the devil today. But the tower of history reveals a deceptive landscape. In reality, the seemingly overcome forms remain active, and “depth psychology” demonstrates their vitality. In the warm and obscure regions of the subconscious, the devil continues to act archetypally; in fact, it is in these regions that he feels at ease. In the more or less clear light of awakened consciousness, he metamorphoses. The evolution of the devil and the evolution of life are at least parallel. The reptile can be perfectly identified in the sophisticated devil of our elegant era. One of the theses of this book will indeed affirm that the evolution of life is nothing more than the incarnation of the devil’s evolution. The reader is encouraged to restrain their justified indignation. They will have the opportunity, in the course of the book, to give free rein to it. At this moment, I merely wish to sow the seed of the following doubt: who is more possessed by the devil, the almost inert protoplasm of immemorial times, with its humble patience, or the devouring ant and speculative humanity? Therefore, the tower of history unveils a landscape too superficial to serve as the observation point of this book.

The second tower that offers itself as an observatory is called “Introspective.” From there, the devil will be revealed as the driving force behind most of our actions and desires. It is a highly seductive tower, but I fear that if we were to climb it and describe the landscape that presents itself to our vision, the present book would not be publishable. We must, therefore, reject these two possibilities and seek a third one. Fortunately, it exists, and it is the Catholic Church itself that offers it. We will resort to an old wisdom from the Church as the method for developing our argument.

This wisdom teaches that the devil employs the so-called “seven deadly sins” to seduce and annihilate our souls. It is evident that the Church, in its anti-diabolical propaganda, uses somewhat tendentious nomenclature when referring to these sins. It calls them “pride,” “greed,” “lust,” “envy,” “gluttony,” “wrath,” and “sloth or sadness.” But in essence, these ancient terms are unjust, and they can be easily replaced with neutral and modern terms. This is what I propose to do. “Pride” is self-awareness. “Greed” is economy. “Lust” is instinct (or affirmation of life). “Gluttony” is an improvement in the standard of living. “Envy” is the struggle for social justice and political freedom. “Wrath” is the refusal to accept the limitations imposed on human will; therefore, it is dignity. “Sloth or sadness” is the stage reached by calm meditation of philosophy. These, therefore, are the methods that the devil resorts to, according to the Church’s teachings, in its attempt to eliminate divine influence. This book will obediently follow the classification of sins, even retaining their traditional names out of respect for their age. However, given its initial disposition to avoid prejudices, it will not consider these names pejorative. Therefore, this book will attempt to provide a description of the evolution of diabolical weapons and instruments in the seven fields of the seven sins. In this sense, its task will be historical, although this is a sense of the term “history” rarely employed. Thus, this book hopes to outline a vision of our current situation, which is not as obvious as the visions we are accustomed to from reading books and magazines currently in vogue.

It is clear that the seven sins arise from different ontological layers and encompass distinct planes. For example, economics, politics, and technology are sins in the social layer of reality; self-awareness, dignity, and philosophical serenity are sins related to the psychological reality; instinct and affirmation of life sin within the realm of biology. However, this idea of layers is, despite all the ontologies of traditional philosophy, a complex matter. The layers intersect and do not admit to be organized or separated. Ultimately, all seven sins are portals of a single sin — they are seven aspects of the same attitude. Each sin includes the others, and the Church is right in avoiding a hierarchy of the seven sins. A soul possessed by the devil through the biological method of lust tends towards pride in the field of psychology and towards envy in the realm of society, and the possible combinations of sins surpass the commentator’s imagination. The capital sins form a single torrent that unfurls over and above humanity to drag it towards progress. However, the present book is forced, for methodological reasons, to create a hierarchy of sins.

Arranged in this manner, the sins will serve as stages of diabolical activity to be described. But all these sins refer to man. The Church is exclusively interested in human souls. However, we know that the diabolical work, as defined earlier, far exceeds the mere scope of man. It is evident that we are also interested primarily in the “human” devil, but a certain intellectual honesty requires that we consider diabolical activity in inhuman fields as well. This intellectual honesty (which can also be called “aesthetic sense”) compelled our first chapter to present a pre-human devil, that is, prehistoric from our point of view. And this first chapter offers the following advantage: in it, the devil will appear as ethically neutral, as he is disinterested in man, allowing us an unbiased contemplation. All the other chapters will be dedicated to the sins “sensu stricto,” and these will be arranged in a “pseudo-historical” hierarchy, copied from the image of history offered by the so-called natural sciences. Thus, lust will be considered the first and oldest of sins because it is through it that the devil incarnated into dead matter to eliminate divinity. The philosophical distance, what the Church calls “sadness or sloth,” the “dégage-ment,” to use a more modern term, will be considered the last and greatest of sins because it denotes an almost superhuman stage of evolution, a stage in which man surpasses himself to merge almost entirely with the devil. The other sins, which will form the themes of the intermediate chapters, will have their hierarchical gradations designated somewhat more casually. For example, anger will be considered a consequence of the impotence of uninterrupted lust. Gluttony is another form of lust, a sublimated lust, but given this sublimation, transferred to another layer of reality. Envy will be conceived as the dialectical antithesis of greed, and both of these sins as consequences of gluttony. Pride, a new change of layer, will be considered a reflective turning of social sins, therefore as “self-absorption.” Sadness or sloth is this turning completed, and thus negative lust, the negation of life. Lust and sloth, the two poles in the magnetic field of sins, are therefore more fundamentally antithetical than envy and greed. In this dialectical tension, the magical circle of sins that this book intends to present to the readers is closed. Since it is a circle, it can be penetrated from any point and will always lead, even as it rotates, inexorably to hell. The hierarchy proposed by this book is purely accidental, lightly supported by the “historicity” of nature and informed by Freudian prejudices. Lust is taken as the starting point because this sin is considered by Freudians as the very source of reality. Naturally, we could have constructed our circle starting, for example, from envy, considered by Marxists as the main spring of history, and therefore of reality. The course of the book would have been slightly different, but I believe its result would have been very similar. Other sins, less fashionable currently, are equally worthy. Let the reader be content with our “ad hoc” hierarchy.

In the chapter on lust, we will observe diabolical activities that produce life. It will be a chapter full of vitality. Anger, the field of science, is somewhat drier, but no less diabolical, as we will try to demonstrate in the corresponding chapter. We will then make an ontological leap to land in gluttony, in the realm of technology and the earthly paradise. After enjoying the pleasures of this type of hell, we will continue on our journey to enter the meadows of the dioscuros envy and greed, the meadows of political and social struggle. Without overly participating in this diabolical contest, but not without admiring the beauties of the devil’s maneuvers in this struggle, we will advance towards pride. As we mention this chapter, we feel our pulses quicken: it is the chapter of the arts. Here, the quintessence of the devil, which is beauty, will begin to take shape, or so we hope. In fact, “pride” and “sloth,” the last two chapters of this book, therefore art and philosophy, sound like terms and words with a different melody than the names of the other sins. When we mention these words, we feel the diabolical power they exert. All our energy must be mobilized to avoid rushing this book towards these last two chapters, which attract us powerfully and form the goal of this book in more than one sense. Because “pride” and “sloth” are sins of the spirit and, in this sense, perhaps the goal of both the devil and the history of humanity.

Thus, this is the program of this book, which must be called “diabolical” not only because of its subject but also because of the ethical confusion from which it springs, and which is a characteristic confusion of the present moment. The one who writes it is conscious of the “sin” he commits in writing it. He is equally conscious of the sin he would commit in not writing it. That is regarding the program. As for its motive, it has already been partially mentioned. It is an attempt to outline the current scene in which the devil seems to dominate as never before. This almost uncontested domination encompasses both the external world and the inner, what was formerly called the “soul.” Program and motive have thus been mentioned. Now, let’s talk about the intention of this book. In confessing it, we hold our breath because our confession amounts to a betrayal of our mask, which has so far stood between us and the readers. This mask concerned objectivity towards the devil. The intention of this book is not, let us say it immediately, objective. It is true that objectivity will be an ideal that we will pursue in the various parts of the considerations we will present. But as a whole, it cannot be maintained. It is impossible to speak of the devil in abstract and cold terms. The pose is possible, and perhaps productive, but it remains a pose. Ultimately, one must fear the devil, and fear means surrendering or running with all one’s strength. The third possibility would be to fight, but it will only be at the end of this book that we will know, subjectively, if this fight seems existentially achievable. But at the very least, we must be able to flee, and this is the subjective intention of this book; subjective, of course, in both an individual and collective sense. Why fear the devil? Why flee from him? These are the types of existential questions that this book will propose, explicitly and implicitly. Who can predict the answers? Who knows the end of a book when he begins to write it?

The reader now knows the doubts and internal tensions that provoked this book. Nevertheless, we ask you to risk the journey to hell with us. We can promise you that it will not be a Dantean journey. It will bring, on the contrary, as much pleasure, or greater, as the pleasures of heaven. Let this promise serve as bait, no less diabolical for being an openly admitted lure.

2.000 The Devil’s Childhood

2.100. How he was born: It is written: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Every word in this sentence is mysterious. We do not want to confuse our minds with the concepts of “create” and “God” in our attempt to analyze it. “God” is not exactly a concept, as it points to the territories of faith and surpasses the conceptual realm of thought. The concept of “creation” involves ethical and aesthetic problems, and we can approach it authentically only as artists or saints. It is preferable to set this complexity aside temporarily. What remains from the quoted sentence, namely the concepts of the beginning, the heavens, and the earth, already appear sufficiently difficult to us. These concepts surprise and confuse us for two different reasons. Our own naivety surprises us as we generally accept these concepts without realizing their profound meaning. And it confuses us that the vast treasure of commentaries with which science and philosophy adorned the first sentence of the Bible has achieved nothing in adding to or taking away from its simple fascination, preserved throughout these thousands of years. Our wise men indeed succeeded in pushing the beginning further and further into the abysmal well of time. They managed to expand, distort, and bend the heavens, giving them entirely unimaginable dimensions. They rounded the earth, making it small and manageable, and they are on the verge of abandoning it precariously. But the beginning remains the beginning, the heavens remain the heavens, and Mother Earth continues to cradle us in her fertile lap as on the first day. Humanity has always been tempted since ancient times to break the three limits imposed by the first sentence of the Bible or at least to expand them. Something has always incited men to want to see beyond the beginning, to conquer the heavens with their instruments, or at least with their spirits, and to free themselves from the earth in a literal or at least a figurative sense. These attempts will be our theme as we address anger. The devil has never been satisfied with these three constraints. Our imagination refuses to sketch for us the hypothetical situation in which the three limits would be liquidated by human effort inspired by the devil. An infinite and eternal world surpasses our imaginative capacity. The devil succeeded in loosening its limits throughout the history of thought. But the spirit chases the limits in retreat like expanding gas and continues to feel shackled. Here we need to introduce a curious consideration. An infinite and eternal world is inconceivable. However, a finite and fleeting world is equally inconceivable. The infinite world presents the unsolvable problem of its limitation, and the finite world presents an equally unsolvable problem of what lies beyond its limits. Our wise men currently teach a finite world. What they teach is unimaginable. The founders of our religions taught an infinite world. Their teaching is equally unimaginable. Our attempt to loosen the limits is absurd and typically diabolical in this sense. It is an attempt to escape from an unimaginable world to another equally unimaginable world. It is trying to exchange one unreality for another. From this perspective, much of the splendor of the inquiring and progressive spirit is lost. Given this fact, we cannot expect our scientists to clarify the first sentence of the Bible and dispel the mysterious aroma that surrounds it. Any judgment they make of it will be as unimaginable as the opposite judgment. The naive acceptance of this first sentence is imposed upon us.

2.101. This circumstance does not devalue the attempt to interpret the quoted sentence from a different angle. It is evident that “the beginning” refers to time, and “the heavens and the earth” refer to space. The sentence states that “the heavens and the earth” unfold “in the beginning,” and the image that comes to mind is that of a rope. The Lord gave the rope “in the beginning,” and when the rope has fully unwound, the beginning will be over. The Lord, the giver of the rope, sees the entire rope. For Him, the beginning and the end are the same. But our naive interpretation cannot be correct. It requires a reformulation of our sentence. It should be written: “In the heavens and on earth, the Lord created the beginning.” But this reformulation is pure heresy. The devil has already begun to take possession of our thoughts. We must reestablish contact with the first sentence. We must accept its formulation literally, even though it is obscure. Within this obscurity, its meaning hides and reveals itself. It is within the beginning that the heavens and the earth were created. In other words, what was created is space. Time (“the beginning”) was not created properly. If this is the meaning, it is entirely incomprehensible.

We cannot conceive of time independent of space, and modern physics teaches time as a dimension of space. Our conceptual capacity founders under this interpretation of the sentence. But we can conceive the following: by creating “the heavens and the earth,” the Lord tore a piece from “being in itself,” from “pure being,” to immerse it in the current of time. And this current of time alters pure being, turning it into the phenomenal because it drags it along and subjects it to successive modifications. It is in this sense that “the heavens and the earth” were created, and it is in this sense that we can conceive the meaning of the sentence.

In the introduction to this book, we suggested the identity between time and the devil. He is the very principle of modification, progress, and thus phenomenalization. He is the principle of transforming reality into unreality. This is what Guimarães Rosa has in mind when he says that the devil does not exist. The current of time within which the Lord submerges pieces of being when creating “the heavens and the earth” is the very devil. Time is incredible; we cannot believe in it. Kafka says that one cannot have faith in the devil because there cannot be more devil than the devil, and this is precisely the creation process that Kafka has in mind. To make the first sentence of the Bible conceivable, it should read as follows: “The Lord created space and time.” Or, to speak in Kantian terms: “The Lord created the forms of perception (‘Anschauungsformen’).” Or, to speak within the spirit of this book: “The Lord created the phenomenal world and the devil.” This seems to make not only creation but also the devil’s fall conceivable. This fall is the very current of time and the progressive distancing from the world of its origins.

2.102. In the formulation we have just given to the first sentence of the Bible, the devil appears as the creator’s main creation, his masterpiece. He is identical to time but also inspires space because he is the one who makes the world our world. This interpretation, this identification of the devil with the world, is radical puritanism. I confess that this radicality scares us. Therefore, I propose that we moderate ourselves voluntarily. I make this proposal in the interest of this present book. How can we continue writing if the identity devil-world is accepted? The moderation I propose will consist of the following: We accept “the heavens and the earth” as the stage of the devil, but a stage on which a second character acts. We accept “the heavens and the earth” as the stage of struggle between the devil and his opponent, whom the Bible calls the “Lord” because His name cannot be pronounced. This present book will also be part of the stage conceived in this way. Henceforth, the devil will be no more than a mere part of creation, namely the part that makes the world sensible. Therefore, this is the definition that I propose provisionally: the devil is (in its external aspect) the flow of time, thanks to which phenomena appear to us. This definition has the second advantage of revealing the illusory, deceptive, “Maya” character that our tradition attributes to the devil. We will work with this definition until further notice.

2.200 How He Plays with a Spinning Top

These considerations of ours already go beyond the first situation, in which the birth of the devil occurred. He has already started his descent, and our duty will be to accompany the young little devil’s fall towards the first sin, towards lust, towards life. Modern cosmogony describes the course of this fall, although it may not realize the diabolical nature of the process it narrates. It says that “heaven and earth” perhaps did not arise together, but that the earth condensed from the heavens. Giving existential meaning to the mathematical abstractions of modern cosmogony and translating its abstruse propositions into the language of this book, the image it paints for us is as follows: “in the beginning,” the “heavens” had dimension zero and infinite weight. They served as a top for the devil in his fall. He whipped his top, so that this infinitely heavy point began to spin wildly. In this diabolical rotation, it disintegrated. Pieces of gigantic dimensions and limited weights broke off from the point zero, and millions and millions of millions of pieces scattered in a wild race. This race continues to this day. The pieces of the disintegrated top furiously flee from each other and flee from their abandoned center. In their hasty flight, these pieces disintegrate in turn and form new subordinate tops. One piece of a piece of a piece of the first top is our Mother Earth. The diabolical rotation, caused by the first whip, continues with constant momentum, animating all the pieces in their flight. The larger pieces (the “spiral nebulae”) continue to rotate and continue to flee from each other and from their center towards nothingness. They flee from zero to zero, as befits a devil’s toy. In their flight from nothingness to nothingness, they transform mass into energy. They always become “larger” and “lighter,” and the whole world becomes “larger” and “lighter.” The “beginning” of the top’s explosion was infinitely small and infinitely heavy heavens. The end of the explosion will be infinitely large and infinitely light heavens. The current and intermediate stage of the heavens is a world of infinite dimensions and weight, although considerable.

2.201. This is the myth of modern cosmogony. Let’s try to interpret it. From the perspective of the heavenly hosts, it presents no problem. It is evident to angels and other “beings in themselves” that all this explosion that cosmogony tells us about is illusory and has nothing to do with reality. The phenomenal world is unreal; therefore, its apparent phases are also unreal. The beginning is dimension zero, therefore nothing, the end is weight zero, therefore nothing, and the current intermediate stage is the devil’s phantasmagoria. But from the diabolical perspective, the interpretation of the myth will be different. For the devil, it is a marvelous story that narrates the emergence of reality. It tells how things arise from nothing. Nebulae, stars, planets, moons are products of a “creation ex nihilo,” they are works. It is evident that this work has an explosive and violent character since it is the devil’s work of art. But this catastrophic and infernal character of the heavens is only one of its aspects. There is another aspect, the aspect of the top’s rotation, and this aspect is harmonious. The stars follow circles, ellipses, and parabolas of crystalline beauty, which are perfect consequences of the primordial rotation and will, in turn, have equally perfect consequences. Thus, in our considerations, the first dialectical tension arises in the devil’s character: his childish work of art, the starry sky, illustrates it. The explosion that gives rise to this work is catastrophic, but the rules that govern it are laws, that is, they seem to exclude future catastrophes. Already in his infancy, we can discover the duplicity of the devil’s character: brutality and aestheticism. I go further: since the devil is still relatively naive at this tender age, we can see how this duplicity works: it is the brutal catastrophe that makes the beauty of the spheres possible. And these spheres, in turn, seemingly well-behaved bodies, are the condition for a new catastrophe, namely, the violent emergence of life. We will talk more about this later. The devil is a criminal to be an artist and an artist to be a criminal. He creates laws to be able to break them, and breaks laws to be able to create new ones.

Our Western tradition praises the harmony of the spheres as a divine work. Therefore, it may shock the reader that our argumentation is forced to conclude that this harmony is attributed to the devil. A moment of meditation will alleviate the shock. What we admire in the starry sky is not its order but its immense duration. Compared to the duration of our lives, the celestial spheres are effectively eternal. This relative eternity is what appears divine to us. However, we know that it is our deception. The stars are temporal phenomena, like everything in our sensory world. In fact, the stars are “imperpetua mobilia” like the machines we produce. If we reduce their dimensions and duration, the starry sky is nothing more than an example of the machines that our technology ultimately provides us with. With one difference only: our machines generally operate with greater accuracy than the celestial machine, a fact that astronomers note with a slight smile. It would be blasphemy to attribute this imperfect machine to the divine creator. With the same right, we could attribute our own machines, designed to produce instruments or deaths, to him. No, the gigantic machine of the stars is the work of the devil. And our industrial park is its late offspring. Our devices are refined copies of the diabolical pattern that appears every night above our heads. They are more refined copies since they are products of the creative effort of a more mature devil.

Let’s frame Newton in this order of ideas. He is the provisional discoverer of the structure of the celestial machine. This structure is articulated in simple mathematical propositions. The functioning of the machine diverges from these propositions by small but appreciable percentages. Newton attributed the authorship of the machine to God, thus saying “God is a mathematician.” The author of the celestial machine is, indeed, a talented mathematician, but an imperfect one. We recognize in him the young little devil playing with his little top. The discovery of the mathematical structure in astronomical phenomena is very satisfying for the human investigative spirit. Thanks to this discovery, we recognize a spirit similar to ours in the stars. In fact, we recognize in the stars the little devil that inspires us in the depths of our research minds. This is why contemplating the starry sky is, for us, a kind of self-recognition. This is one of the explanations for the attraction that the stars exert over us. The other explanation is as follows: Newton’s outline of the celestial structure is being surpassed. We are beginning to convince ourselves that we would be capable of building a much more perfect celestial machine. In fact, we have already started attempts in this direction, and our artificial satellites and guided missiles are the first symptoms of these attempts. It is because the little devil within us has matured and seeks, through us, to rectify the childishness he committed.

2.210. However, there is a fundamental difference between the celestial machine and our devices. Human machines have a purpose, duties to fulfill, and tasks to perform, in a word: they are products of life. The purposive and entelechial character is inherent in life. We will discuss this when lust is our theme. The inorganic world knows no purposes, and the very term “purpose” sounds false in this world. What is this “inorganic” world we are talking about? After all, it consists of organs, it is organized. Aren’t the stars the organs of the nebulae, the planets the organs of the stars, the moons the organs of the planets, and the very nebulae the organs of a gigantic cosmic animal? Why is this world called “inorganic”? Because it lacks purpose, because it is entirely useless. In the realm of life, the situation is different. The liver serves to maintain the body’s life, the fly serves to maintain the life of the spider, and all plants and animals, with all their intricate organization, serve to maintain human life (at least from our point of view). But Mars serves neither the sun nor Venus; it serves nothing. Being entirely useless, the celestial machine is a perfect example of “art for art’s sake,” it is an “abstract” work of art. The creator of this machine, the devil, is a pure artist.

Unless we consider this machine as a condition of life. In this case, the celestial machine would be an instrument designed to produce life on Earth. It would be the famous mountain that gives birth to a mouse. The celestial machine, conceived thus, would be nothing more than a gigantic and unnecessarily complex diaper. And the devil, its author, would go from a pure artist to the father of life. Future arguments will clarify this point.

2.300 How He Plays with Cubes

The celestial machine is not solid and compact. The little devil constructed it with cubes. It is of no use to ask whether the devil took a box of cubes to build his machine, or if he took the machine to break it down into cubes. If, to speak pseudoscientifically, atoms joined together to form stars, or if atoms are nothing more than aspects of stars. Such questions remain unanswered. It is like asking if the triangle arises from its angles, or if the angles are its aspects. It depends on the perspective. For nuclear physics, astronomy is nothing but an application of the rules discovered in the atom, and for astronomy, nuclear physics is just astronomy in miniature. Science has managed to build a bridge between the unimaginably large world and the unimaginably small world. Effortlessly, our spirit travels from the proton to Sirius, and from Alpha Centauri to me3on. It travels without effort but equally without profit. The bridge that science has built is entirely useless for an existential understanding of our world. And it is a flawed bridge, as evidenced by its most recent results. The atom is not a miniature planetary system, as our parents hoped. And, what is more serious, in the atom, the harmonious laws begin to behave in a very suspicious way. Physics seems to suggest that the harmony of the spheres is a fiction created by statistics, that is, the stars behave in an orderly manner because they consist of so many little cubes. In the realm of these tiny components (I dare not say “particles,” so as not to become too concrete), harmonies do not seem to function because they lack effective functioning. They lack an object, as these tiny components are not truly objective. These “little things” have a curious existence. Sometimes they are mass, sometimes energy, sometimes mathematical symbols of thought. Sometimes they rotate like stars, sometimes they oscillate like rays, sometimes they jump from place to place without spending time like specters. Damn them all! (and, in fact, they do). They are all part of the same family—these electron-positron, neutron, and other “ons”—but they are everything except “beings.” Although they belong to the same family, no common ancestor is found among them. The underworld in which their existences are oncologically doubtful has nothing of the majestic simplicity of the world of the stars. As for the harmony that impresses us so much in the astral world (despite exceptions), it is not contradicted in this little world. Exceptions are the rule.

2.301. What abyss is this that the bridge between astronomy and nuclear physics attempts to overcome without succeeding? Is it possible that the sciences themselves create the abyss? Has astronomy, as the oldest science, already discovered a fundamental harmony that nuclear physics (the newer science) has not yet discovered? Has nuclear physics, as the most advanced science, already discovered a fundamental chaos that astronomy (the more traditional science) has not yet discovered? However, I believe that the abyss is much deeper and that the sciences did not create it. The devil is responsible for the abyss. The world of the stars is an objective world. In it, time flows indisputably. Thus, causality operates there. The world of atoms is not as objective, but only a condition of the objective world. It is situated on the border between object and thought. Time becomes problematic in it. Cause and effect form a pair that dances around itself. That is why our spirit, when contemplating this little world, starts to philosophize rather than wait for more complete results. We feel existentially that we are entering forbidden regions. A cold astonishment seizes us as we contemplate the nucleus of the atom (“the kernel of the poodle”) because we feel that we are making contact with the devil. The moral confusion of nuclear scientists is a symptom of this astonishment and should be called “religious.” For methodological reasons, but with undisguised relief, I leave this line of thought to relegate it to the last chapter of this book, which will address sorrow or laziness.

2.310. In the world of atoms, time is confused. It happens that the future and the past exchange places, and the effect precedes the cause. We define the devil as time. In the world of atoms, the devil is confused. In this blurred frontier between object and thought, in this world not yet material and no longer ideal, the devil is an intruder. This frontier forms the edge of divine garments, namely that edge in which the devil seeks to materialize the world of the senses. It is, in fact, the main stage of the struggle between the devil and Divinity. Modern physics has recently unveiled this stage and still cannot evaluate it. But existentially, we already feel its impact. It is an entirely inhuman struggle, an ontological struggle that seems to have nothing to do with ethics and values. In this terrain, the devil behaves entirely differently from his procedure in the depths of our souls. He is not a seductive devil, and he does not operate with sins. Here he violently tries to infiltrate the nucleus of the atom, to make it phenomenal and thus remove it from pure symbolic being, to damn it. He creates an electron whirl around the nucleus to make the atom a thing, hence something of his own. He seeks to form new, superheavy nuclei, seeks fissions and fusions, in short, seeks to objectify the process of thought. Despite the enormous progress that the devil has recently made through nuclear science inspired by him, the atom remains fundamentally a thought, a diabolical thought, to be sure, but a thought nonetheless.

2.311. Let us try to interpret the situation described above. In his fall into space, the devil created a vortex (the top), which is what we call “matter” in the Western philosophical tradition. But this matter hides, in the deepest fabric, the secret of its origin, namely the “pure being.” Nuclear physics begins to unravel this secret. Let us consider for a moment the situation of the devil after this discovery. In a way, the discovery is progress because it allows the devil to influence matter through human minds. But the discovery has another aspect. Let us imagine a soul that has managed, thanks to absurd faith, to transcend the phenomenal world and reach the vision of “pure being.” This soul is lost to the devil, but it is a legitimate loss, within the rules of the game between the devil and Divinity. Now, imagine a soul that has transcended the phenomenal world through nuclear physics and has reached the vision of “pure being” through Wilson’s chamber. Nuclear physics is a form of sin. So how can this soul be lost? But there is consolation for the devil. Imagine the situation of Saint Peter at the gates of heaven when a soul demands entry because it has surpassed the world of illusions and can prove this fact with a certificate issued by an advanced experimental physics laboratory. I believe that for the first time in the history of human thought, the devil begins to fulfill his promise “eritis sicut Deus, scientes bonum et malum” (you will be like God, knowing good and evil). Clearly, he begins to fulfill this infernally. But this stage is not entirely achieved yet. Atoms are still almost material, and nuclear physics is not yet an automatic liberation from the world of “Maya.”

2.312. Atoms are the cubes with which the devil constructs stars. Therefore, they are the inorganic world “in statu nascendi” (in the state of being born). But atoms also serve to build living bodies. It should not be surprising, therefore, that they contain, “in nuce,” the characteristics of life. The confusion that reigns in the underworld of atoms is a theme that the symphony of life will develop later. Disorder is inherent to life. Order is the enemy of life; it is death itself. Organizing life means killing it. The nearly perfect order that reigns in the inorganic world can be considered as the degeneration of the confusion full of potentialities that reigns among the infinitely small particles. The world of stars can be considered a failed and aborted attempt to create life. The celestial machine can be considered a frustrated organism. Teilhard de Chardin, who certainly cannot be accused of being an advocate for the devil, seems to want to advocate this point of view. I do not want, at this point in the argument, to force the indicated hypothesis. I only want to suggest that the confusion that confounds us in the atomic world can be interpreted as a sign of its fertility for future progress. The attempts of nuclear physics to introduce a system into the territory of atoms may be as inadequate as the parallel attempt of biology. Indeed, it is perfectly possible to consider physics as a preliminary stage of biology. The 19th century nourished the hope of demonstrating that biology is nothing more than an especially complex physics. The 20th century makes the other alternative equally plausible: physics as abstract biology. The catastrophic and disorderly element that characterizes certain nuclear phenomena would be a precursor symptom of life, which is ultimately nothing but a chain of catastrophes connected by tenuous threads of order. But these considerations, somewhat premature in this context, directly point to the chapter on lust, and to this, they shall be relegated.

2.400 How He Plays Composing Elements

The devil’s kindergarten that has interested us so far has been the heavens. Now, let’s consider its more restricted “play-ground,” the Earth. I suggest that this is a complete change of environment. Lately, it has become fashionable to claim that Earth is not an exceptional body among the spheres that make up the celestial machine. Given the enormous number of celestial bodies out there, there must be at least a few very similar to Earth. This seems to be a reasonable argument. It’s a new way to articulate an old problem. Does our Earth have a central and unique position within the cosmos or not? The fight between Ptolemy and Kepler is one of the themes that constantly accompany Western conversations. Every Copernican revolution is followed almost immediately by a Ptolemaic restoration. Currently, Copernicus prevails, and Ptolemy is considered “backward” by the majority and “too advanced” by a small minority. Astronomers and so-called “astro-biologists” are eagerly searching for a second Earth. Let’s assume for a moment that they find one. That wouldn’t end the debate. A second Earth would certainly not be an exact copy of ours; there would be considerable differences. And these differences would be enough for Ptolemy’s defenders to proclaim the uniqueness of our Earth. However, I confess that I don’t believe in the slightest possibility of such a discovery. Contact with beings from other “planets” is science fiction, and Martians speaking Latin and man-eating plants from Betelgeuse are things from Hollywood and asylums for the insane. If we want to converse with other stars, we should consult anthroposophists and spiritualists, not astronomy. The search for a second Earth is born out of despair and a feeling of isolation. It is a refusal to accept the brutal fact that life is not only limited in time but also in space. We do not want to accept the unique nature of our Earth and the isolation of life resulting from this exceptional character of our planet.

2.410. Let’s consider the exceptional and unique (and in this sense central) situation of our Earth in the cosmos. First of all, Earth is an exceptionally moderate body. It doesn’t burn in incandescent heat, it doesn’t revolve in the unimaginable cold of absolute zero, it’s not composed of rigidly compact matter, it doesn’t float like rarefied gas, and it doesn’t rotate violently around its axis. It is not accompanied by thousands of moons (at least not at the time of writing this). It is neither isolated nor lost in space. But almost all the celestial bodies we know of are extreme in one or more of these aspects, except for the two or three planets in our immediate vicinity. Secondly, Earth is exceptionally mutable. Its clouds move, its mountains appear and disappear, its continents and seas travel. Earth is a paradox: exceptionally moderate and exceptionally mutable. Compared to other celestial bodies, it represents a stage of extreme instability, a fleeting and transient stage between two extremes. How did this precious stage, which gave rise to life, come about? The circumstances and influences that made this state of affairs possible are so complex that imagining they have been or will be repeated is not a sign of imagination but a sign of lack of knowledge. If a single circumstance were missing, and if a single influence had failed, life would not have arisen. Because a single link can break the delicate chain of this precious instability. For example, Earth had to be a planet. Terrestrial conditions are unimaginable on other stars. And planets are rare. But as a planet, it had to be at an exact distance from a star of a certain size. A little closer to this star, and it would be a blazing body like Venus. A little farther away, and it would be as frigid as Mars. This planet had to be accompanied by a moon of certain size and specific distances. The chemical elements that compose it had to have precise absolute and relative relationships. The same applies to the chemical elements that had to compose its sun and moon. Its rotation required a certain determined speed, and its orbit around the star needed specific characteristics. Its specific weight, its gravitational field, its electromagnetic field, and thousands of other characteristics had to be as they are, and not different, for the phenomenon called “life” to arise. The reader shouldn’t argue that other circumstances would have given rise to a different type of “life.” We only know one type of life, namely, a specific behavior of albumins and ribonucleic acids, and any other type of behavior, from any other type of substance, is not recognized by us as life. It wouldn’t help at all to find this different type of “life” on other bodies. We wouldn’t recognize it as such. Perhaps it exists in our immediate vicinity here on Earth without us conceiving it as life. And based on this concept, it is necessary to affirm that Earth is an entirely exceptional body, and the possibility of finding another body like it is highly improbable.

2.411. We can say that the conjunction of circumstances and the constellation of influences that allowed life on Earth is a gigantic accident. But what does the term “accident” mean in the present context? From the perspective of the celestial machine, which is entirely fortuitous and purposeless, the “accident” that allowed life on Earth is of no interest whatsoever. Therefore, it’s not really an “accident” but just one of millions of possible constellations. From the perspective of life on Earth, the celestial machine had the purpose of creating the necessary constellation for life to arise. The gigantic “accident” is, therefore, the very purpose of the heavens. We must, therefore, be content with the realization that, from our point of view, Earth is the center of the universe, in the sense that it is the culmination of the celestial purpose. This does not exclude the possibility that the universe may have more than one “purpose,” perhaps as many purposes as there are celestial bodies. But these purposes unrelated to our Earth are existentially uninteresting.

Let’s reinterpret this view of the position of Earth from the devil’s perspective. The celestial machine, his first “abstract” work of art, is a diabolical achievement since it consists of temporal phenomena, thus removed from the realm of “pure being.” However, it is a childish work since it is purely aesthetic and ethically neutral. The devil sees the need to expand his work to apply his “sin” method. In this sense, the celestial machine is a frustrated work. It doesn’t permit sin. Perhaps the devil chose our Earth as the only stage for sin, and maybe all bodies are stages for different sins. Due to our limitations as terrestrial beings, we can only conceive earthly sins. The devil that will interest us from now on will be the earthly devil. Therefore, Earth is the devil’s “play-ground” where we shall focus our argument.

2.412. We shall, therefore, define Earth as the purpose of the celestial machine. The devil created the heavens to create Earth. And he created Earth to create life. And he created life to create humanity. And he created humanity to create the human spirit, that spirit that knows Good and Evil, hence the realm of sin. In other words, Earth is the stage of sin. It is the workshop where the devil forges his weapon for conquering reality: the human spirit. This forged work continues to progress, and the weapon is still far from perfect. For tens of thousands of years, the devil has been sharpening and honing the human spirit to perfect it. The capital sins are the abrasives. The finished product, the perfectly diabolical human spirit, is an ideal not yet achieved. But this diabolical perfection is the purpose of Earth.

2.420. The Earth is a celestial body. It is composed of the same atoms that make up the rest of the heavens. However, these atoms behave differently on Earth. They have a tendency to form combinations with each other, combinations with an unimaginable richness of variations. In other celestial bodies that we know of, atoms also tend towards combinations, but the combinations are infinitely simpler. Usually, only atoms of the same type combine to form what chemistry calls “elements.” Rarely do simple combinations between different atoms arise. The situation on Earth is entirely different. On Earth, the devil uses atoms as elements in that toy called the “jigsaw puzzle.” It is to this diabolical toy, called “chemistry” in other contexts, that I direct the readers' attention. In paragraph 2200, I recounted the myth of astronomy, and in paragraph 2300, the myth of modern physics. Allow me to tell you the myth of chemistry now. Chemistry says: the atoms, as compounds of particles, are the problem of physics, and they do not interest me. To me, atoms are the indivisible components of my reality. I find myself in a reality different from physics; in fact, the “reality” of physics is nothing more than the virtuality of my reality. In my reality, atoms are ontologically problematic, but in a sense that physics, in its naivety, does not even dream of. Atoms are little things that become real “sensu stricto” only in society. We must imagine the situation as follows: atoms are hands seeking reality, and this reality is achieved when hands meet. Joined hands are called “molecules,” and these, indeed, are the fundamental building blocks of reality. But atoms, these hands seeking reality, are not unreal because we can distinguish them in the structure of the molecules they form. This is the ontological problem of chemistry, philosophically much more complex than the parallel problem of modern physics. Physics explores the ontic territory between thought and thing. Chemistry acts in the ontic field between structure and function, the work of a more mature devil. Let us consider this problem a little more closely.

2.421. Atoms are not equivalent to each other but form a hierarchy. The measure of the hierarchy, the “value” of each atom, is the hands with which the atoms tend towards reality. Some atoms are poor in hands, and poor hydrogen has only one little hand to wave towards reality. And there are valiant and versatile aristocrats that have hundreds of hands pointing in different directions. This feudal system of atoms is a closed system. The number of hands is not infinitely large. In fact, there are only ninety-two types of atoms in the cosmos. Obviously, the number of types of atoms is limited since the number of atoms itself must be limited, given the finitude of the weight of the cosmos. But the number 92 is not aesthetically pleasing to the mind. If there were, for example, only two types of atoms, we could exclaim: what beauty in the economy of nature! Or if there were 100,000,000 types of atoms, we could marvel: how beautiful is the richness of nature! But 92 is a rather ugly figure. For the spirit that seeks beauty as the foundation of reality, this number represents an ontological problem that disturbs. This explains the attempts to alter the number of types of atoms in both directions, i.e., decreasing and increasing the figure. Both of these attempts have been successful lately. The devil is improving thanks to the human spirit. Types of atoms can be reduced to one another. Atoms can be fabricated to infiltrate the scale of 92 set by “nature.” And ultrahigh atoms can be constructed that exceed the scale. What I have just said may seem like a harmless play with numbers, but it is, in fact, the discovery of the philosopher’s stone and the culmination of alchemy. We can playfully produce gold from “vis” substances (reducing or increasing the dignity of atomic values), but we can perform even more impressive miracles. For example, we can produce atoms lighter than hydrogen, things that are no longer things. Or we can produce atomic monsters like Thorium and Plutonium, whose names already demonstrate their origin. Thor and Pluto are archetypal forms of the devil. The Middle Ages, much more enlightened than us regarding the devil, knew very well why they burned alchemists.

2.422. The hands of the various types of atoms occasionally meet to grab onto each other and form molecules of different kinds. Molecules are the little stones (mechanically indestructible) that make up matter; therefore, they are finally something concrete, although no one has ever experienced the lived experience of an isolated molecule. The concreteness of the molecule is not immensely impressive. How do the hands meet to form these concrete little pieces? The myth of chemistry resorts to the myth of Democritus to explain this inconceivable ontological miracle. The hands are the hooks of the hard atoms of that archaic Greek devotee, wrongly interpreted as the father of materialism. The atoms float in nothingness like snowflakes, and when they happen to meet, they form reality because their hooks latch onto each other. Reality is a kind of crochet, and nothingness infiltrates it from all sides and through all pores. And the “accident” of this crochet is the same that produced the Earth. Some of the molecules have a simple structure. They are formed by a few hands that grasp each other in a straightforward manner. Other structures are extremely complex. It is not only a matter of knowing which atoms enter the combination but also in which direction and in what way they enter. The old problem of space comes into play. The drawings that chemists make for these diabolical structures vividly resemble paranoid figures or Tibetan mandalas. Three-dimensional models of molecules resemble the so-called “abstract sculpture.” In these models, atoms are represented by balls, and their hands by bars. But it must be clear that these balls and bars do not symbolize “realities” but “realities in statu nascendi.” What is “real” in chemistry is only the structure. These models are the sensible demonstration of the diabolical effort to transform “pure being” into a sensible phenomenon. However, these models can also be viewed from a different ontological level. It is possible to say that the balls in these models represent individual beings that only become real in society. They are “zoa politika” whose reality is society, called “molecule” in this example. This ontological level, which we can call “social,” reveals an entirely new reality. Molecules are nothing more than structurally homomorphic phenomena with phenomena like the living organism. In them, the organs are only a virtual condition of the organism. The isolated organ lacks reality. The same can be said about the “environment” of ecology. The “environment” as a structure is the only reality, and the “things” that compose the “environment,” such as trees, animals, streams, clouds, and the forest floor, are nothing more than virtualities of the reality that is the forest. We can say the same about human society. The human individual is only a virtual condition of the reality that is society. In a word: reality is in the structure. This is what the models of molecules strive to demonstrate to the senses.

2.423. Some of these models are, as I said, enormously complex. The rules that govern their structure have something to do with electromagnetism, thermodynamics, optics, in short, with the rules that govern the starry sky. From the point of view of astronomy, chemistry is nothing more than a limited example of astronomy. But from the point of view of chemistry, astronomical phenomena are nothing more than examples of extremely simple chemical processes. Another example of how ontological levels intersect in this diabolical world called the “sensible world.” The complexity of the molecules is not surprising. They represent only realizations of potentialities contained in the gigantic number of combinations among 92 elements. But this complexity of molecules is already related to the catastrophic complexity of the phenomenon of life. The devil, playing with the combination of atoms, already dangerously approaches life. He is almost reaching puberty. In this super-complicated chess game that is chemistry, the devil already almost vitalizes his partner. Chemistry, all of it, is pregnant with organic chemistry, the basis of life. The more complex the molecules, the more fragile and corruptible, and the more able to undergo an unimaginable ontological leap, becoming a phenomenon of life. In simple molecules, the chemical play is limited. They react simply to a few bases and acids to form salts and water. Or they oxidize ingenuously. But the supercomplex molecules are in that state of precarious instability that characterizes the Earth. The slightest chemical influence corrupts these fragile structures. In the supercomplex molecules, we are dealing with phenomena that are already pseudo-historical since the slightest modification of influences modifies their structure. Polymers, these supercomplex supermolecules, these greases with their repulsive viscosity, these sticky and slippery fats, already persistently evoke the lust of life.

2.430. Our molecular considerations lead directly to the problem of the aggregate. The aggregate is the society of molecules, the very material body, the tangible reality that the naive spirit calls by that name. But the aggregate itself is, as I said, a problem. The rational and classifying mind distinguishes three states of aggregation: solid, liquid, and gaseous. In ideal solid bodies, the molecules accumulate in piles and form unimaginably enormous weights.

Ideal solid bodies do not exist on Earth and can only exist under conditions of absolute zero. They represent the cold of death. They would be “sensu stricto” what the naive spirit calls “reality,” but we have no experience of them. Some celestial bodies may approach this absolute solidity. Gaseous bodies are societies of molecules that do not want to be so. In these bodies, the molecules eccentrically flee from each other, and the higher the temperature of the gas, the faster they flee. Most celestial bodies are gaseous. The gaseous aggregate does not satisfy the naive spirit’s sense of reality because it represents bodies that do not want to be so. For these spirits, air is a kind of nothing. The liquid aggregate is a precarious and fleeting stage between the solid and gaseous states. It is highly doubtful whether there are liquids in the cosmos, except for the Earth and one or two planets in its immediate vicinity. But on Earth, the situation is much more complex than the description provided. “Solid,” “liquid,” and “gaseous” are relative terms. I will not speak of the Earth’s core, whose aggregate is debatable, nor of the Earth’s gaseous envelope, which is, in its lower part, almost an emulsion, almost liquid, and in its upper part, almost as rarefied as to be almost nothing. I will talk about the Earth’s crust. The smallest change in temperature or pressure, ridiculously insignificant compared to the conditions prevailing in the cosmos, transforms solids into gases and gases into solids. The Earth, I repeat, is something very special in the cosmos. The temperature and pressure in the Earth’s crust are practically constant. Nevertheless, the slightest variations are enough to turn gases into solids and vice versa. And in this transition from state to state, there is a tiny, transient, and precarious stage called “bodily liquidity.” This precariously precious stage, probably exclusively terrestrial, is the cradle of life.

2.431. Life emerged in the liquid, but it cannot be defined as a liquid “sensu stricto.” Life cannot be defined regarding its aggregate, just as it cannot be defined in any of its aspects. Protoplasm is a kind of viscous liquid, as its name suggests, but it contains solid grains and gas bubbles. Nevertheless, it is correct to speak of the liquidity of life, in a somewhat figurative sense, because the chemical reactions that characterize vital phenomena are typical reactions of liquids, and it is in a liquid environment, in solutions, that they take place. The figurative sense of the term “liquidity of life” therefore has two meanings in the present context: life is chemically liquid, and life is liquid because it cannot be defined.

0.000. Let us interrupt the argument for a moment. Let us take a quick look at the path we have already traveled in pursuit of the devil. It is astonishing what has happened. The path we have covered is short. We are still far from life, even further from man, and even further from the human spirit. But now we have lost all solidity and support. Our concepts have liquefied, the contours of our definitions have blurred, we are in a liquid, fluid environment, prey to the furious current of time. This current has already carried us far from the Divinity. In the stars and atoms, we still nurtured the illusion of solidity, albeit with serious doubts. In the field of chemistry, this courtyard of life, multiple veils begin to descend to obscure our view of reality. They are veils woven by the devil, they are the veils of “maya.” The purpose of this book is not to tear these veils now. On the contrary, it is to let ourselves be enveloped by them, to see where they lead us. And after all, aren’t the veils of chemistry beautiful, and aren’t the veils that life promises us even more beautiful?

2.440. So, we are approaching life from all sides. The air is already filled with its articulate clamor. Therefore, we must leave behind the childhood of the devil, which develops this side of life. We will follow his steps to enter the verdant meadows of life. He is no longer entirely unknown to us. We know him a little, but only intellectually. He has not provoked fear or anger. Only curiosity has been provoked. This detached atmosphere cannot be maintained in the field of life. There, he must reveal the ethical side of his character. Let us, therefore, gather all our courage as we lift the curtain on the stage of life, that scene in which our own drama unfolds.

3.000 Lust

3.010. The previous chapter attempted to demonstrate how countless influences poured from the heavens onto the earth, how these casual, intentional, and predestined influences converged into millions of tributary streams on the earth’s surface, and how, finally, hundreds of millions of years ago, they flowed into the majestic current of life. They condensed from the spirit of heavens and earth to produce the River of Life that flows in search of the ocean of the spirit. Purposefully and for poetic reasons, we resort to the allegory of water circulation to describe the phenomenon of life. In this commonplace allegory, multiple aspects of life are condensed into a single image. The aspect of liquidity, fluidity, and instability. The aspect of its plasticity. Its spiritual origin and spiritual goal, and how origin and goal merge. The wheel of life, what the Hindus call “samsara,” the eternal return of life. The amorphous unity of life, in which apparently distinct individuals are but illusions, like drops of a river or rain. And many other aspects hide in our allegory, aspects that point to the devil and Divinity, which we do not want to suggest, much less articulate explicitly. The parable of circulation is banal because it has been evoked countless times in the tradition of the West. However, this parable is pregnant with meanings, and it seems that the West has not yet begun to exhaust them. Eastern speculation has delved much deeper into the circularity of life. It was the Eastern sages who genuinely attempted to think about this circularity. We, Westerners, intellectually know of the transience and fluidity of life, and we know that individuals emerge from the river of life as superficial phenomena only to sink back into it, returning to the biological economy from which they precariously emerged. We know this because our sciences describe this process in cold terms. But existentially, we are imprisoned within the bars of our individuality, and these bars do not allow us to have a living experience of the indivisibility of life. This prevents us from dedicating ourselves to it. The full impact of the analogy with water is thus denied to us, and a different mental disposition will be necessary to grasp it, a disposition that perhaps we will achieve later in the course of this book. In this chapter, we will only try to understand the Western aspect of the fluidity of life, namely the literal meaning of the term “fluidity of life processes.”

3.100 Life

Until now, we have attempted (with problematic success) to assume a distant attitude towards the creation that surrounds us. We have tried to see it as a useless and beautiful whole and equally as an impetuous tendency in search of a goal. Now, in the realm of life, we will not be able to maintain the same detachment, the same sadness, and laziness. Nor will we seek to do so. With a palpitating heart, enraptured and amazed, we will describe the miracle of “first life.” A fateful constellation of suns and planets, a gigantic conspiracy of physical, chemical, and God knows what other influences, came together at a given moment, at that great moment that produced the first protoplasm, the first drop of life. The entire cosmos writhed to give birth to this tiny droplet. The spheres spun, the earth trembled, the seas rose and fell in furious tides, torrential rains hammered smoking rocks, and on the shore of a forgotten sea, a mucus-like speck was formed - the Venus born of foam. This epochal event (in the most literal sense of the term) is veiled from us by the enormous distance that separates us from it. It is impossible to imagine the appearance and characteristics of the first drop. Scientific research, though animated by the devil, has not yet been able to reproduce in its laboratories the conditions that gave rise to life. The homunculus has not yet been produced, although attempts in that direction are in progress. Artificial life, which the future holds for us, will be a much more diabolical achievement than the conquest of dead nature. Following this train of thought, I must once again lament the lack of imagination in our “science fiction.” It populates its worlds with mechanical robots and various relatively innocent Frankensteins. The future holds muscles, intestines, sexual organs, and ambulatory brains. The world will be filled with this kind of rascal. We should be thankful to God that we are underdeveloped grandparents and not evolved grandchildren.

3.110. Our temporary incapacity for the manufacture of artificial life has numerous reasons. But the first reason is that we are unable to even imagine orthogenesis. Such a process does not occur in the nature surrounding us. The rule prevails there: “omne vivum ex vivo.” The careful observation of nature, undertaken by thousands of scientifically trained observers, seems to impose the following conclusion: the emergence of life was a unique and irreproducible event. Nature seems to say: only once was I inspired by the breath of life. “Only once” is an expression that the scientific spirit does not admit. It cannot admit it because it ceases to function when uttering it. Science is a mental discipline that investigates phenomena that are at least theoretically repeatable. It fails when confronted with a solitary and irrevocable phenomenon. Such a phenomenon would be a miracle, and science confesses disbelief in miracles. But life is a phenomenon investigated scientifically. It is not possible to consider it a miracle. The hypothesis of orthogenesis is, therefore, scientifically almost inadmissible. Science seeks to bypass the problem and shift the origin of life to even more gigantic distances, possibly to other celestial bodies. We will not accompany science in this flight and will accept, resignedly, the miracle of solitary and irrevocable incarnation.

3.120. Let’s take a furtive look through the biologists' microscope, directed at protoplasm for examination. Of course, it is the protoplasm of today, not the mysterious substance we spoke of earlier. What biologists investigate is a drop taken from the current stream of life. Thus, the incredible complexity and total confusion from a chemical, morphological, and electromagnetic point of view that prevails in protoplasm may be a modern aspect. Not to mention the possibility that this complexity and confusion are aspects of the observer rather than the observed phenomenon. The original protoplasm may have been of a crystal-clear clarity. I say this because science suggests that protoplasm is a liquid crystal and that biology is merely a special case of crystallography. If we accept this suggestion, we must conceive life as one among multiple manifestations of substances' tendency to crystallize. It is as if the devil had tempted multiple substances to seduce them into sin, and the dead crystals (the inorganic ones) were nothing more than failed attempts. Crystals, those curious and somewhat sinister formations hiding in the dark womb of the earth, are, unfortunately, very similar to life. They have very similar structural, geometric, electromagnetic, and thermal properties. They propagate, feed, and, in certain cases, luxuriously extend their tentacles in search of light. They are a diabolical bridge between amorphous matter and life. Given this bridge, it becomes evident once again how futile philosophy’s attempts are to introduce sharp barriers between the layers of reality. I say this to correct Nicolai Hartmann. All our attempts at definition founder in the realm of multiple and quivering veils of “maya.”

3.130. These preliminary considerations immediately introduce our minds to the method of the evolution of life. Thousands of crystal species have been tried by the devil without success until he found protoplasm and seduced it towards continuous evolution. All these frustrated species represent dead-end paths. They are there, rigid and dead, in the bosom of the earth. The devil abandoned them and withdrew from them. The same process of temptation, trial, and abandonment of failed attempts characterizes the course of all biological evolution. The English call this method “trial and error.” The devil seems to know its goal but ignores the shortest path to reach it. This is why its path is so convulsive and why it often results in dead ends and grotesque structures.

In theory, the entire evolution is contained in the first drop of protoplasm. The first protoplasm is the blueprint for all forms that have ever arisen in the past and for all forms to arise in the future. All plant and animal bodies, all deceased and yet-to-be-born human bodies, all thoughts thought and to be thought, and all superhumans, including angels and demons, are contained in germ in the first drop of protoplasm. It is no wonder, then, that protoplasm obstinately refuses to be understood by the researcher who investigates it. On the contrary, it seems evident to us that an analysis (and a fortiori a synthesis) of protoplasm is still unattainable. We have a slight suspicion that all this effort by biologists to analyze and synthesize protoplasm is the result of naivety, which in turn is a consequence of the simplistic mentality of 19th-century science. It is undoubtedly true that life emerged, win illo tempore, from the chemical layer of reality, and that, therefore, chemical methods are relevant to it. But it is equally true that there was a leap, and these chemical methods seem to be simply missing the target. Biology is in crisis.

3.140. Despite all this, it is perfectly possible to study the morphology of protoplasm. Its structure is called “cell,” and we can distinguish in it, somewhat vaguely, nucleus, contents, and walls. But a caveat must be made before attempting to describe what biologists tell us in their myths of life. It is necessary to say that there are two types of protoplasm: living and dead. Right from the beginning of considering life, the problem of death arises. Dead protoplasm is not inorganic matter; it is life that has died. During the chemical processes that act on it, it may transform into inorganic substance, or it may be reabsorbed into the current of life. It is impossible to define what death is, even at such a primitive stage of life that we are considering. However, experientially, we feel that something has happened that should not have happened when a single drop is removed from the river of life. Something in us rebels against this event, which seems absurd, contrary to all reason, even against the economic reason of life itself. We know that the current of life, taken as a whole, knows nothing of death. On the contrary, it flows in an ever wider and deeper torrent, covering the entire earth’s surface with its warm and plastic waves. It is, therefore, absurd that this current, from its source, is accompanied by the shadow of death. The immortality of life as a whole is not an excuse for the fact of death; on the contrary, it makes death even more absurd. The fact that corpses are reabsorbed by the vital current does not console us; it rather revolts us even more, as it demonstrates a profound brutality of life. Protoplasm, in its immortal and impetuous advance, devours its own excretions, and this is unacceptable both ethically and aesthetically. When a single drop of protoplasm dies and when that drop is reabsorbed to feed another, we witness a tragic process that we cannot merely consider intellectually. There was a struggle in this process, and the protagonists of this struggle are behind the scenes, as in Greek tragedy. They are Divinity and the devil. And we cannot say who won.

3.200 The Cell

The difficulties of biology begin even before the investigation of protoplasm. In order to investigate it, it is often necessary to kill it. The intervention of the mind kills life in most cases. Nuclear physics teaches us that the observer influences the observed phenomena. This is a serious and fundamental problem for the theory of knowledge. But in the case of biology, this problem takes on a new aspect. Besides being epistemological, it is an ethical problem, and the protests against vivisection (which accompanied the birth of biology) attest to the awareness of this aspect.

The drop of protoplasm that biologists take from the river of life to observe is generally a dead drop, despite all the care that researchers may take to keep it alive. All that biology tells us refers to this protoplasm removed from its environment. However, what biology tells us is still fascinating. Here is its myth: the structure of protoplasm (this liquid crystal) is the cell. There is the virus, which lacks cellular organization but has a simpler structure, a kind of double helix. It is a phenomenon located between cell and crystal “sensu stricto.” But scientists doubt that it serves as a link between the two realms. The virus parasitizes the cellular protoplasm, and we cannot conceive how it could have existed before it. Therefore, the cell is, at least in the current stage of our knowledge, the structural blueprint of protoplasmic existence.

It is possible to illuminate the cell from multiple angles to comprehend it. It is a motor powered by solar energy in a mysterious way. It is a collection of chemical substances in a precarious state of balance, always on the verge of decomposition, within which chain reactions continuously unfold. It is an electronic valve with properties so intricate that our knowledge of it remains rudimentary. It is an electronic computer of enormous efficiency with an unimaginable “memory,” and the new science of cybernetics is just beginning to vaguely perceive the structure of the “hereditary information” it stores. It is a library, a safe, and a warehouse of all past experiences. It is the womb of all future achievements, all works of art, all acts of kindness, and all visions of truth. And it is the starting point from which lust develops. It is under this light that it will be considered in the present chapter.

3.210. Consider this drop of life. Its walls are permeable but protect its contents. Its sap articulates in a mysterious way into grains and bubbles. Its nucleus is formed by threads, which were once conceived as necklaces, whose pearls, the “genes,” would be the carriers of heredity. And this nucleus, consisting of “ribonucleic acids,” is the center of the mystery that the drop conceals. This drop moves. It expands and contracts, turns in search of light, trembles, and vibrates. It emits covetous pseudopods and devours. In an incredibly complex process, it assimilates what it has devoured and expels the inassimilable. And in an extreme paroxysm, it contorts in its entrails, bubbles, and ejaculates with extreme lust, expelling a part of itself and creating new life. How can one speak of this pornographic process with a cold and objective mind? Biologists do so. They calculate with “geometric measures” how high and low tides arise within the cell. How chromosomes shamelessly mix and then retreat, contrite, to their respective corners. How a wall is introduced into the cell “poste festum” to hypocritically divide the libidinous act. How this wall divides the cell in two, and how the two halves separate. This method of description is wholly inadequate to capture the ardor and violent desire by which the devil has taken possession of the cell. In the territory of stars and atoms, polymers and crystals, this type of description is aesthetically acceptable. But in the realm of life, we feel an existential disgust if we follow its argument. When a living being writhes in extreme pleasure and extreme torment, when it surrenders to lust to the point of bursting into explosive childbirth, and from this explosion new life emerges, how can the process be applied to the method of probability calculation? But the biologists are right from their point of view. The process is ardently diabolical, and their description of it is unapologetically diabolic.

3.300 The Organism

The cell was the only form of life for countless millions of years. It probably was for most of the history of life. The lush and violently lustful process I described was, during all that time, majestic, the purpose, and the goal of all flesh. Death accompanied this process in a way that is not unfamiliar to us but diverges from the concept of death we consciously harbor. Death was the very act of love and immediately resulted in new life. It was the “Liebestod,” the loving death. The being died so that two beings could emerge. Perhaps there was another type of death, death as an accident. But this type was not designed within the cell. The cell is immortal and only dies when it loves. The vast majority of beings that make up the protoplasmic river still consist of unicellular organisms today. We can observe this process of cell division, this death through love, under the microscope, as it happens continuously around us and within our bodies. All those huge multitudes of infusorians, bacteria, and leukocytes in our blood are dedicated to this lustful suicide. These unicellular beings form the protective cover of the protoplasmic river, nourish and decompose it, and organize its currents. They form its geographical boundary and are the outposts of life in the depths of the humus, in the heights of the atmosphere, on the surface of the sea, and in the abysses of the oceans. All other beings are just excrescences on the body of life, a kind of cancerous growth. They represent a diabolical disease in the immortal and continually growing body of life. They are like infernal plants that sprout from the protozoan ground, only to be devoured by their own ground and return to it. Why did the devil create these multicellular organisms? Because they are mortal in a new sense. With multicellular organisms, the devil created a new death.

These organisms are cellular societies of limited duration. When the society dissolves, what we call “death” in the conscious sense occurs. These cellular societies create a unifying principle, a species or governing principle that permeates the whole organism. We call this principle “individuality,” though we can never fully comprehend what this term means. Religions call it “soul,” although Western religions tend to reserve this term for human beings. The reasons for this deliberate limitation are historically explainable but not supported by biological evidence. Eastern religions, which recognize souls in all organic beings, are, in this sense, more “scientific” than ours. By creating cell societies, the devil created a fleeting biological phenomenon because he created death “sensu stricto.” It was said that the dissolution of society is this death. However, we recognize death before the dissolution is effective and speak of “death” at an indefinable moment when the biochemical processes that lead to dissolution begin to come into play. The beginning of this decomposition process is, in fact, the moment when the unifying government of the organism is deposited. Religions say it is the moment of liberation of the soul. Therefore, the devil created multicellular organisms from the protozoan ground to create souls.

3.310. At a certain moment in the history of life, individual cells no longer separated after dividing. Thus arose a super being that is no longer a family of beings (like the algae, the first attempts in that direction) but a new Self. Biologists say that bio-chemical processes produce this new intercellular connection. But our imagination refuses to conceive of “biochemical” processes that result, so to speak, exothermically, in a new Self. In the transition from protozoa to metazoa, there was evidently a new layer of reality. The societies that thus emerged are in a state of balance even more precarious than the protozoa. They are mortal beings precisely because the balance in which they find themselves is precarious. The cells that form the organism contribute to its functioning based on a division of labor. They assume various roles within the economy of the organism. It is for this reason that more optimistic eras viewed the organism as a kind of cooperative. But our more precise knowledge does not support this optimistic description. The division of labor among cells in the organism is very imprecise, and there is also constant strife among them. The inaccuracy of the division of labor and the struggle among cells are called “disease.” Therefore, we must say that, more than a cooperative, the organism is a field of struggle. When the government of the organism, “the soul,” loses control of the struggle, death arises. Thus, organisms are, by their design, not only mortal beings but also sick beings.

3.311. It is possible to describe the same situation more optimistically. The age of organisms is relatively small compared to the age of life. They emerged only recently. Compared to protozoa, organisms are mere children. Therefore, we can affirm that their imperfections are a result of their youth, and future evolutions will correct these errors. We can imagine that further progress in the evolutionary process will result in perfectly flawless organisms that will be indestructible. They will be immortal beings in the ordinary sense of the term. What is even more impressive is that they will be healthy beings. The human mind does not accept waiting for this possible evolution. It intends to hasten evolution and produce immortal and healthy beings right away, using its methods. Medicine is one such attempt. However, a brief consideration of the result, if achieved, reveals its somewhat questionable ethical side. Immortal and healthy beings, as perfect as protozoa, might not be ethically desirable phenomena. All progress, including that of medicine, is inspired by the devil.

3.320. The internal struggle that characterizes the organism makes it mortal but also makes it flexible in its structure. It is an internal restlessness that keeps the structure of the organism always ready to change. This readiness for modification within the organism is the basis for the biological evolution of organisms. It is our duty to demonstrate in this chapter that the internal restlessness of the organism is lust, and it is thanks to lust that organisms evolve. And the more they evolve, the more restless and lustful they become. The more developed a being, the less stable its balance, and the more mortal and sick its organism. Man, this being most developed from our point of view, is the most mortal and sick of beings. Let this biological observation serve as an illustration for those who advocate development in other layers of reality.

3.321. The struggle between the cells of tissues and organs is the root of the organism’s evolution. Biology tells us the following myth about it: “in illo tempore,” cells that had divided formed a society called “tissue.” The disturbing lust, which now no longer resulted in “Liebestod,” the death of love, but in the continuous expansion of the tissue, made the existential project of the tissue be limitless expansion until it covered the entire Earth or the entire cosmos. However, the environment opposes resistance to this project, not allowing the tissue to expand without limits. This resistance creates a reaction in the tissue, best described as violent “existential anguish.” The tissue begins to contort violently. This grotesque and disgusting contortion lasts for millions of years and is currently in full progress. The first result of this contortion is a tissue rolled up like a carpet, forming a tube. It is still represented today by some primitive worms. This tube continues to coil and twist like a glove, giving rise to complex organisms. Gradually, the various body cavities, the three germ layers, and a huge variety of organs emerge. The existential anguish of the organism, which is frustrated lust, produces the multitude of genders and species that biology presents to us. The very contemplation of some of these forms vividly demonstrates the diabolical fury that gave rise to them. Describing the evolution of some organs through the history of life would undoubtedly be exciting and would shed light on the devil’s methods. Consider, for example, the aspect of evolution that starts with the nerve and results in the eye, the brain, and the antenna. But the scope of this book does not allow us to dedicate ourselves to this task.

3.322. We will attempt, however, to follow the path of the organism in its evolution towards man, albeit necessarily in a superficial and fragmented manner. This path is generally known and admirably illustrates the devil’s methods. We will be concise because our impatience to reach man, the crown of creation, is great when we measure it by lust. We will describe how this frustrated and anguished lust seizes the organism, making it increasingly precarious, restless, sick, and mortal, ultimately resulting, after countless failed attempts and missteps, in man. And how this unsettling lust continues to function within the human organism, perhaps leading to even more perfect beings, that is, even more sinful. The evolution of the organism is the evolution of the capacity for sin, and that is why the devil incites it. But before describing it, it will be necessary to briefly consider the method of evolution.

3.323. We have already mentioned it when we talked about the transition from crystals to protoplasm. It is the method of trial and error. The river of life progresses, driven violently by lust, flowing erratically in all imaginable directions. In this violent flow, it divides into countless branches. Some of these branches, perhaps the majority, are proven unproductive by their results. They are therefore abandoned by the “élan vital” and stagnate. They form swamps of genders and species that gradually dry up. The vast majority of the river of protoplasm organized into organisms constitutes these swamps that surround us on all sides. The few main branches of the life current continue to flow and gradually reabsorb the stagnant substance. The path of life is thus marked not only by the countless tombs of sacrificed individuals but also by the tombs of genders and species abandoned by the devil. Brutally and unscrupulously, the devil sacrifices the individual in favor of the species, the species in favor of the genus, the genus in favor of the phylum, and the entire huge phylum in favor of a single individual that, at a given moment, seems to represent the tip of the evolutionary spear directed by him. This is the method of evolution, and 19th-century biologists nicknamed it the “survival of the fittest.” They tacitly accepted the devil’s value norms. But the 19th century seemed to sympathize with evolution in general and its methods in particular, without respect for its norms.

3.324. The problem of these norms arises insistently. What is the “right” direction of evolution, the direction that the devil intends? This question brutally reveals the relativity of values within the realm of the illusion that is the sensible world. From the point of view of the gigantic polyps inhabiting the depths of the oceans, cephalopods are the most “developed” genus. The river of life intends to produce cephalopods, and all “later” genera (later from our human point of view) are nothing but degenerations in the exact sense of that term. The viewpoint of the polyp is humanly unacceptable. The relativity of values is existentially limited by our human condition. All values refer existentially to man. Man as the normative reference point is one of the most beautiful products of the relativistic ethics created by the devil. Taking this reference point as the normative principle, mollusks (to which polyps belong) are merely “primitive” ancestors of chordates, which, in turn, are the womb of vertebrates. Cephalopods march along a dead-end path, despite their many legs. Man is the goal of evolution, the crown of creation, and the proof of that is our existence as humans. But since this existential proof is “objectively” suspicious, we look for circumstantial evidence to strengthen it. We say that our brain, our hands, our articulation ability, and similar properties “prove” that we are the most advanced species. Biologists, although human, hesitate to sign this certificate of guarantee. “Objectively,” every species represents the tip of the evolutionary spear, and its existence proves it. Every species has certain special characteristics that can be considered as indicative of its superiority as much as the mentioned human properties.

This book is human. It accepts man as the reference point for all norms. It obstinately refuses to compare the electronic senses and social anatomy of ants with the biological organization of humans, for fear of confusion. For this book, life has only one purpose: to evolve towards man. All plants and animals have one of the following three meanings: they are ancestors of man, they feed man, or they harm man. A whispered voice in some of us objects to this argument: “I am the solitary one that inhabits human intestines. If all plants and animals have the meanings mentioned in the human argument, I agree. But it is evident that man serves to shelter me. Therefore, I am the goal of life.” How to respond to this impertinent objection? By appealing to lust as the “absolute” measure of norms, according to the argument developed in this present chapter. Life is a lustful process. Man is a being capable of greater lust than the tapeworm, so he is more advanced. The tapeworm may argue that every link in the chain that forms it possesses a particularly complex male and female sexual apparatus, making it the most lustful. However, we can refute this argument with a smile. The male and female sexual apparatus of man, although primitive, are distributed in such a way that the encounter between them is almost impossible. Anatomical, social, and religious barriers stand in the way in the realm of life, separating the two apparatuses. Coitus, to occur, needs to break through all these barriers.

3.330. Having established our superiority, we can finally and with undisguised satisfaction move on to the description of the evolution that seeks human desire. Right from the start, the river of protoplasm divides into two branches: the branch of animals and the branch of plants. Plants have the duty to nourish animals, and animals have the beautiful right to parasitize upon plants. The distinction between these two types of life is not rigid, just as no distinction in the realm of life is. Animal photosynthesis is known. Nevertheless, we have resolved, given our superiority, to disregard plants. The type of vegetal lust does not touch our soul, unless sped-up films humanize it. Then we undergo a shock of self-recognition. Let us imagine, for example, an accelerated film of the vital processes of the forest. A diabolical scene is revealed before our eyes, parallel in every way to the scene of our own lives. It is a stage of struggle, in which individuals and species violently strive to eliminate one another and to conquer the beloved. Roots, branches, and creepers twist, petals solicit shamelessly, and the air is filled with pollen. But as I said, let us despise this infernal stage, for it is not truly ours.

3.331. The animal kingdom is a symphony on the theme of sex that culminates in the splendid chord of human desire. The theme itself, let us confess it right away, is somewhat tedious. It is the old story, always repeated, of cell division. Thus, the sexual act is a limited act and involves only one actor, or at most, two actors. In the beginning, the organism itself divides as its ancestor, the cell, did. Then, organs specialized in matters of desire appear in the organism to perfect it. They come in two types, “male” and “female,” but belong to a single organism. Later, the process of specialization evolves, and the organs separate into two distinct organisms to make the act more varied and interesting. This, roughly speaking, is the whole theme. It is, as I said, a thematically poor act. But the variations of the theme compensate for its poverty. The devil as a playwright is somewhat limited. But as a director, he reaches the bounds of genius. It is a classical drama, consisting, strictly speaking, of three acts. The first act, the approach of partners, introduces the theme in a veiled manner. The second act, the sexual act “sensu stricto,” begins with high emotional tension and leads to the ruthlessly anticipated catastrophe. The third act represents the anticlimax, that “omne animal post coitum triste.” The history of evolution can be described as the story of this drama.

3.332. The first act is a pantomime accompanied by dance. The two actors appear in festive and colorful costumes and accompany their ritualistic steps with suggestive songs. We all know and appreciate this festive ritual. We admire the bridal attire of females and males. We resonate with the calls of mating. We try to interpret that proud walk, that slow circular movement, that showing and hiding, those feigned escapes, and those equally feigned aggressions. The first act is festive. The second act changes character. It becomes brutal and violent. It is impossible to describe all the elaborated variations. We will limit our considerations to some vertebrates to illustrate how this second act leads directly to sinful lust “sensu stricto” in humans. The sadness of the third act is reminiscent of the “Liebestod” of unicellular beings. Organisms are ashamed to still be alive after the second act. This sadness after the act is difficult to interpret from the devil’s point of view. Perhaps this sadness is the first sign of an anti-diabolic interference in the symphony of life. I launch this suggestion for the reader’s meditation and then abandon it.

3.333. Fish, relatively primitive vertebrates, represent the drama of sex entirely uninhibited. Fertilization is public and external. Males and females begin the drama with intricate dances. These dances, becoming more violent, culminate in simulated combat. At the moment of greatest tension, the bodies of the fish compress. In certain species, they form compact layers of hundreds of fish. This compression of bodies creates the orgasm. Eggs and sperm are expelled to mix in the water. The sexual organs do not touch. This is a somewhat undifferentiated lust, an inauthentic lust of the “crowd.” The “crowd” compressed in a bus experiences a similarly primitive feeling. Amphibians are much more evolved. The actors on stage assume individualized masks and become “persons.” The male frog squeezes the female’s body to force her to lay eggs. It is true that he then fertilizes them publicly. However, the act has a certain intimacy. The frog embraces intimately the object of his desire. The stage that lust reaches with the frog is identical to what traditional religions discover in humans. These religions deny that human lust is different from that of frogs, thus seeking to deny (with problematic success) the aesthetic evolution of sex. But even in the case of the salamander, which is a relative of the frog, lust has evolved. The male walks with large and dignified steps and deposits secretions containing sperm. The female obediently follows the destiny of the man of her dreams and accepts the secretion into her lap. Fertilization takes place within her body. Thus, lust develops and grows in intimacy, beauty, and segregation, and we can interrupt this somewhat pornographic description and leave the reptilian, mammalian, and human phases to the reader’s imagination.

3.340. Lust becomes increasingly more beautiful and segregated. It becomes more and more hidden and secret. Hiding and secrecy are symptoms of sin. Lust becomes increasingly more sinful. The biological myth tells us, in its pseudo-cold language, that the hiding of the female beneath the male and the hiding of the male within the female are physiologically conditioned processes. Biologists pretend that these processes have nothing to do with the corresponding human behavior, and that interpreting them as such would be a false anthropomorphism. But after all, biologists are human beings, so they anthropomorphize everything they tell us. The myth they tell is about animals, but it is a human myth. “Physiological processes” is a mythical term which, translated into the experiential layer of our experience, means “behavior.” If animals behave in the sexual act as they do, it is because they are conditioned by something that corresponds, in human experience, to the term “shame.” The more evolved the animal, the more shame it displays in its behavior. And with the appearance of shame on the stage of life, which has something to do with the sadness mentioned in paragraph 3,332, the opponent of the devil appears more and more insistently.

3.341. The reader must have noticed that this chapter is assuming a pseudo-scientific air to reinterpret the facts that the sciences tell us in the existential atmosphere that surrounds the devil. To maintain this stance, we must carefully avoid terms like “God” and “soul,” although these terms are always on the tip of the tongue. Let us say “inhibition” instead of “God.” “Inhibition” is a scientifically cold and ethically neutral term. We can talk about “inhibition” without any inhibition. Although we know that, in the myth of psychology, this term is the name of God. Well, the more evolved the animal, the more inhibited it is. And the most inhibited of animals is man. From the point of view of life, inhibition is obviously a pathological phenomenon, but it is not a disease in the same sense as the term we use when discussing the struggles within the organism. Physiological diseases are part of the life plan. The devil has planned them. However, inhibitions are products of a struggle that the devil himself wages. They are not part of his program.

3.342. All animals are inhibited. Inhibition is the antithesis of all life. But the inhibition of man is as marked as his lust, and it is also in this sense that man is the goal of life (although this sense is not diabolical, therefore not within the present context). The transition from animal to man is gradual and not qualitative, whether we measure it by lust or inhibition. To want to define man in opposition to animals is as futile a desire as any attempt to define levels of reality. And it is mainly the primates that mimic man. Observing a cage of chimpanzees at the zoo is an experience of the most disturbing nature, not only from an ontological perspective but also an ethical and aesthetic one. Ontologically, we begin to doubt to what extent the chimpanzee is human, and to what extent we are chimpanzees. But from an ethical and aesthetic perspective, the cage is a tangible demonstration of what psychologists call the “subconscious.” Consider the following scene: the female leans deeply and reveals her attractions to the male. The male, captivated by this fascination, initiates sentimental activity while the female devours the banana he had peeled. This is a scene in which lust and greed combine to produce a phenomenon called “prostitution” in the human context. In fact, in our efforts to follow the devil toward man, we are already very close to our goal. What a genius and thrilling evolution it is: from naive crystallization to sophisticated prostitution. Truly, the doors of our human homeland are beginning to open. By contemplating the primates with their greedy hands, voracious mouths, and covetous glances, we glimpse, as through a very transparent veil, the face and gesture of humans, the devil’s masterpiece. And thus, we reach the forefront of the wedge of life in its furious advance.

3.400 Man

Abruptly, we jump to the human layer of reality. It is true that man emerged imperceptibly from the current of life. But now we are separated from the animal kingdom by an intellectually insurmountable abyss. We can connect with animals on many levels of recognition, on all those levels to which we are related to them. However, genuine intellectual contact, the linguistic one, is denied to us. As articulate beings, we are isolated from life, and human conversation is a reality that hovers over life without ever merging with it. Life is one of the topics of conversation, perhaps its only theme, but as a topic, it remains external to the conversation, ontologically. It does not surprise us that we cannot establish bridges of connection between us and the animals that surround us. None of the existing species is our immediate ancestor. And even in fossils, we cannot find our parents or grandparents, although we have discovered uncles and cousins. By the logic of biology, we are primates, and we must have been born through mutation as the offspring of animalistic parents. But historically, it seems that we emerged in a leap, fully equipped with language, thus with intellect. We were a sudden intuition of the devil, and we came out of his head fully armed, just as Palias, Atbenc emerged from the head of Zeus. Our search for hominids and pithecanthropus, for sub-humans and similar cretins, is not relevant to the human situation in which we find ourselves. Therefore, at this point in the argument, I have decided to abandon the pseudo-historical method that I had applied. I will forget that we are animals and will proceed to describe the lust of our current, mature, and evolved days. But I will try to keep in mind, during my description, the lessons learned on our journey from the amoeba to the chimpanzee in its cage.

3.410. Freudian psychology explains that lust does not wait for our sexual maturity to seize our bodies and minds. Our pious and chaste naivety destroyed this psychology in this sense. On the contrary, it shapes us already in the womb, and it never releases us, not even for an instant, after birth. This fact clarifies that lust is not solely an instrument of propagating life. Its goal is much broader, and the reader should already suspect that goal if they have followed the argument. In the womb, as we recapitulate the lessons learned throughout evolution, it inspires us. It makes us refresh our memories, as embryos, with all the experiences of infra-human life, so that we can use them in our separate existence from the maternal womb. We are first a cell that divides lustfully and gradually advance to the tissue that contorts violently. We pass through the stages of blastocyst and gastrula, and from other repulsive worms, we become reptiles and mammals before becoming humans. The wriggling worms in the human womb already have a soul, and Western religions admit this, thus prohibiting abortion. However, what is the difference between these worms and an earthworm? The worm in the womb will become a human in nine months, whereas an earthworm took nine million years to transform into a human. Religions allow the killing of earthworms because they are victims of time. The depth psychology (and Eastern religions) rediscover the earthworm deep in our minds. Are these disciplines more or less diabolical than Western religions?

3.411. Given the activity of lust in the womb, it should not surprise us to discover the most infamous desires in the mind of a newborn. Freudians point to the innocent child, the naive pleasure of mothers, as the seeds of all illusions and crimes. This is because in the cradle, a frustrated worm, a rebellious lizard, wriggles in the infant’s diapers.

Why frustrated, and why rebellious? Because at the moment of birth, an element foreign to life, an element opposed to life, was introduced. By cutting the umbilical cord and refusing the feeding bottle for the first time, the midwife and the nanny served as instruments for this foreign element. We will call this element “inhibition” again, to maintain our Freudian disguise. This first inhibition initiates a chain of causes and effects. This chain forms a wall in the child’s mind, and this wall henceforth separates the libidinal region of the mind from its clear consciousness. Thanks to this wall, the being that has just been born will become a man in the ethical sense of the term. The wall is responsible for all that misery called “existential anguish,” for all madness, and for all crimes. It is also responsible for that type of anguish, madness, and crime called “human civilization.” But it also produces that disease (a disease from the perspective of life) called “salvation of the soul.”

3.412. Freudians try to convince the public that the myth they tell is “science” and resort, whenever possible, to cold terms. They do not realize that all science is a form of myth. Therefore, they say that the nanny (and similar actors) is responsible for the inhibition of lust. The nanny, (and similar actors), thus appear in the Freudian myth as divinities. So be it. But this type of actor has a transparent mask. We glimpse, moved, the powerful force behind their possessions. And it is this force that drives them to act as they do against life.

The wall they introduce into the mind presses against lust to repress it. Lust rebels and seeks to break the wall. It is an indecisive struggle, as lust is repelled in certain places on the wall, but it creates cracks in others. The Freudian myth tells us here about the struggle between the devil and the “inhibition” for possession of our soul. It is the same myth told by the ancient Persians. We are a battlefield between the children of light and the children of darkness. But Freudians are followers of the children of darkness. What the Persians and this book call “devil,” Freudians call “sanity.” This warning regarding the nomenclature is necessary if the reader wants to understand the following description.

3,420. The Freudian myth describes the struggle. Lustful desires repressed by inhibition attack, either alone or in groups, to break the wall and invade the upper halls of the mind. This attack is necessary because it is only on the surface of the mind that desires can be realized. But inhibition resists because its goal is to keep desires in the stage of virtuality. It is, fundamentally, the same struggle that we described when dealing with the atom and the devil’s attempt to realize it. Our mind is a stage of permanent civil war. Freudians, typical children of the 19th century, sympathize with the oppressed classes. But when the revolution triumphs, and when libidinal desires violently invade the first floor of the mind, a stage that even Freudians recognize as madness arises. To excuse this fact, they say that inhibition is to blame for madness since it should not have resisted. And from their point of view, they are right. Speaking “objectively,” madness can be defined as the destruction of the wall that separates the mind.

3.421. This destruction does not necessarily occur from bottom to top. It is possible to destroy inhibition by attacking from top to bottom. Thus, negative madness arises. The attempts of Freudians and the Jungian school are precisely attempts to produce this type of madness. They try to penetrate the subconscious, breaking the wall of inhibition and illuminating the entire soul with the lights of elevated consciousness. But the expeditions undertaken by our psychologists are not deep enough to result in madness. Furthermore, these soul divers protect themselves with ultramodern breathing apparatus and usually return to the surface unharmed. The psychology of “depth” is not very dangerous for the psychologists who apply it. But let us consider for a moment the “yogis.” They plunge unprotected, like pearl divers in tropical seas, into the dark abysses of the soul to bring forth treasures from there. These treasures promised by the discipline of Yoga were, until very recently, unknown to the Western tradition. The Jungian school seems to have caught at least a vague glimpse of their outlines. The “yogis,” indeed, risk negative madness. By fighting against lust, they become arrogant. I will address this problem in the chapter on arrogance.

3.430. The two extreme cases of “positive” and “negative” madness are rare. They represent the definitive victory of the devil. The lunatic and the sage have surrendered their souls to the devil. They no longer have a soul. The lunatic is “insane,” and the sage has merged the Atman into Brahman. The situation of the “normal” mind, though dramatic, is less extreme. The wall continues to resist the constant attacks of lust, although yielding here and there to its advances. Individual desires or complexes of desires always manage to infiltrate beyond the wall. Individual meditations or meditative disciplines always manage to infiltrate into the subconscious. This constant transport through the cracks of inhibition is the ontological plane of psychology. Let us first consider the “from top to bottom” meditative tendency.

“Know thyself” is one of the imperatives of the Western tradition. But the tendency for vivisection of the mind has been violently “repressed” in the course of Western history. We are not very meditative. Meditation is, as I said, a form of arrogance. The West performs its arrogance in other forms. And even when, as it has done lately, it begins to analyze the mind, it prefers to do so in a non-meditative way. It transfers the investigation of the self to the other and analyzes the patient. This “transfer” of arrogance (in the Freudian sense of the term) was already initiated by the Church in the institution of confession, but it is in modern psychology that it is “sublimated.” The sublimation of this arrogance consists of the para-scientific jargon that psychologists use. It is a transparent sublimation. All meditation, even the transferred one, leads to mysticism. The Jungian school proves it. In any case, it is still too early to predict the results of modern psychology. It is just beginning to penetrate the depth of the mind, and the shock it suffers is precisely the shock of beginning to know itself. The phenomena that arise in this field of reality are difficult for our minds to assimilate because they have been neglected by Western tradition, and their ontological problematic seems insurmountable for now. Psychology has discovered lust as the foundation of life without knowing how to interpret this finding. Beneath lust, it is discovering myths, this projected lust. There seems to be a layer jump between libido and myth. Traditional philosophy, the repository of Western meditations until the advent of psychology, is equally “inhibited” in dealing with these themes. Except for existential philosophy, which is beginning to face them. However, it is perfectly possible that future developments in Western psychology will penetrate to those depths where Eastern meditation has revolved for thousands of years. Then, the encounter between Western and Eastern thought will take place in the jungles of the subconscious. We regret that we cannot witness this “Mr. Livingston, I presume,” which will mark a new era in human history. We must not underestimate, as the West has done so far, the primordial importance of Eastern research into the mind. An illuminated subconscious subjected to awakened will would open sources of energy much more powerful than atomic energies. Compared to journeys into the mind, journeys to the moon are harmless and primitive amusements. However, it is true that these journeys are much more easily achievable. We will reach the moon, and even Sirius, much sooner than we reach the abyss of the mind.

Inhibition is an infinitely more formidable barrier than the force of gravity. The journey into the mind is, in fact, the search for a direct passage to God. However, it leads directly to hell. Our psychology has not yet discovered this absurd fact because it has not advanced far along this path. India and China are aware of this danger. Their religious history and arts prove it.

3.431. Let us consider the second opposing tendency to overcome inhibition, the libidinal tendency “from bottom to top.” Lust seeks to infiltrate through the cracks of inhibition to dominate our conscious thoughts and govern our actions. To do so, it resorts to tricks. The myths of the Freudian sect describe the masks that lust uses to deceive inhibition and pass through it. Since the reader is familiar with these myths, we do not intend to bore them with “censors,” “sublimations,” “compensations,” “transferences,” and other entities from the Freudian pantheon. These pseudo-beings amazed our ancestors, but today they can no longer “shock the bourgeoisie”; they only provoke yawns. Psychoanalysts are the traffic wardens for lust’s journey into inhibition. Our somewhat weary gaze has already accepted their thesis that lust is the driving force of the mind, and we have long ceased to follow the acrobatics of these modern sorcerers.

However, reading psychoanalytic works raises the following ontological problem: Does psychology consider the beings with which it populates the mind as real, or is it aware that they are allegories? The problem is somewhat different from the parallel problem in the older sciences. Physics believes in its “reality,” although philosophy may doubt it. The same goes for chemistry, astronomy, and biology. Therefore, the ontological problem of these sciences is an external problem. But psychology seems to doubt its own reality. In this aspect, it resembles the philosophy of the Greeks. Did Socrates and Plato believe in Apollo? Does psychoanalysis believe in the Oedipus and Electra complexes? It is the problem of faith that arises in reading these works. Psychology is a new science. It emerged from the humus of religion and philosophy with more than two thousand years of delay. Therefore, it still has many archaic aspects, and the ontological doubt is one of them. Its mythological character is more evident than in more advanced sciences. In fact, our psychology is at the mental stage where the Western world was two thousand years ago. It is polytheistic. Its pantheon consists of a multiplicity of gods, titans, demons, and fairies. Therefore, our psychology cannot be compared to the other sciences, which are monotheistic in the sense that they operate with extreme economy of terms, nor can it be compared to the psychology of the East, which is as evolved as our “exact” sciences. The appropriate term of comparison is the psychology of ancient India. Our psychologists say “libido,” just as they used to say “Kali,” and they say “id,” just as they used to say “Brahman.” And psychology is divided into sects, dedicated to various gods or titans, just as ancient India was divided into religious sects. Therefore, we will continue pursuing our argument without the support of any of the sects.

3.500 Sex

We are entering the land of love, the land of wonders. Obviously, we will use the term “love” with a limited meaning in the present context. The green meadows that stretch before us are the classic landscape where Love and Psyche court. But beware, the snake hides in the grass. The history of Western civilization progressively transformed this landscape and adorned the statue of Love with vines and fragrant roses. It was especially the chivalric Middle Ages that sought to conceal the immodest nudity of the god’s statue. The center of the idol, the phallus, is almost unrecognizable. Our traditions and customs try to conceal it, but we know that the serpent is always ready to raise its head. It is this serpent that inspires our poets in their songs, and it is this serpent that lifts our virile spirit “through hardships to the stars.” Neither the noblest crusade nor the most beautiful tournament can deceive us. It is the first act of the drama of lust, as we have described it in the case of the salamander. All our material and spiritual civilization can be framed within this first act. Thus, it is not a new phenomenon in the history of life. Sexuality is not specifically human unless we reformulate the problem and shift it from biology to philosophy. Then it presents itself in the following way:

3.510. The behavior of the salamander in the first act of the drama of sex belongs to a set of realities called “nature.” A significant part of human behavior in the same act belongs to a reality called “human civilization.” When transitioning from the first to the second act, the salamander does not change the layer of reality. The poet, when transitioning from lyricism to the carnal phase of his inspiration, changes the layer. The problem at hand is the relationship between “nature” and “civilization,” which encapsulates the issue of human creativity. Man is a being that creates reality in the first act of the drama of sex. This problem is fundamental to understanding diabolic methods and will be addressed in the last chapters of this book. The current context requires that sex be considered at the ontological level of biology and psychology.

3.520. The behavior of the salamander is “natural,” but that of man is not “natural”; it is “perverted.” Man’s sexuality is a perversion of animal sexuality. Man is a sexually perverse being. Advocating for a “healthy,” “uninhibited,” and “clean” sexuality, essentially promoting an animalistic sexuality, ignores the human situation. Naturally “healthy” sexuality in humans does not exist, just as the “natural man” does not exist—a fiction propagated by Rousseau and some 19th-century romantics. Nor does the “pure primitive” extolled in the poems of the same romantic movement. Man is perverse by definition because he is inhibited. His sexuality is perverse because of this inhibition. Human sexuality is a battleground between lust and inhibition, and this battleground must be considered in our argument.

3.521. The mentioned attempts to establish a “natural sexuality” deserve careful attention. These attempts are called the “struggle for free love” and thus raise the issue of freedom. The theme of freedom will be addressed in another context, but it reveals an important aspect here. Let’s imagine the situation of victory for sexual freedom. Inhibition will be overcome, and sex will no longer be a problem. Humanity will undergo a complete transformation. There will be no more neuroses, no complexes, and no crimes. Humanity will be healthy. The first act of the sexual drama will consist of only a few gestures. There will be no science, art, or philosophy. Humanity will be free from all these neuroses. The second act of the drama will be roughly the same as it is now, but the third act, the one of sadness, will probably be much more pronounced. It will be the true crowning of the drama. Sexual freedom will create a type of earthly paradise that needs to be illuminated more closely. For every freedom creates an earthly paradise.

3.522. It is possible to describe the history of humanity as the history of sex. Let’s imagine that the historian, conceived in a Marxist way, becomes the discoverer of the dialectic of sex. He will find the laws of the evolution of sexuality. Sex will be the thesis, inhibition the antithesis of this process. The reactionary forces of inhibition will try to halt the progressive forces of sex. He will show how sex rebels against the shackles imposed by reaction and breaks these shackles one by one. Currently, these shackles are represented by bourgeois prejudices. But the immutable laws of dialectics will liberate sex. The final stage will be free love. It will be the paradise we mentioned earlier. Lovers of all countries, unite.

3.523. The ideology I have just proposed is attractive. Despite Freud and Kinsey, it has not yet found a prophet. There is still a lack of someone to inspire our youth with this good news. We can imagine the selflessness with which they would be ready to fight and die for this paradise. Isn’t it at least as beautiful as the paradise of gluttony and greed promised by the Marxists? The paradise of lust may be more beautiful than the paradise of greed, but fundamentally, it is a similar stage. Ethically speaking, it is equivalent. It represents a final time, an “Endzeit.” Time ceases to flow in the earthly paradise because nothing more happens. But it is not the annihilation of time. On the contrary, it is the final victory of time. Everything becomes temporalized. Time no longer flows because there is nothing for it to flow toward; there is nothing left except time. It is the definitive victory of the devil. And this victory is achieved through freedom. Having liberated sex, the devil will turn everything into lust, and there will be no more room for the timeless. This openness is given by the inhibition that oppresses sex. Sex oppressed by inhibition is forced to seek openings. Unhindered sex will be entirely closed upon itself. Freedom within the phenomenal world is equivalent to absolute slavery. It is, as Engels said, the knowledge of necessity. The earthly paradise is hell. The Church describes the same situation in other words. Freedom resides in the “peccare posse” (the possibility of sin). In the paradise of free love, the potentiality of sin through lust would be entirely realized. Nothing more would happen. If the devil could create this paradise on Earth, he would no longer need to resort to other types of sins. Through the liberation of lust, he would conquer humanity. The earthly paradise is sin entirely realized. It is the ultimate realization of history, the completed evolution. However, like everything the devil creates, it is paradoxical. Realized freedom is slavery because it leaves no room for choice. The earthly paradise is hell because it leaves no room for the transcendent. The paradise of lust is relatively innocent compared to the paradises of other sins. That is why its consideration is relatively easier.

3.530. Human sexuality is not free lust. It is lust shackled by inhibition, thus a battleground. The tension between lust and inhibition is love “sensu stricto.” Freed lust would not be loving. “Free love” is a contradiction in terms. Love is never free. By its own definition, it is the loss of freedom. As love is a product of the dialectical tension between lust and inhibition, it is a historical phenomenon and can be historically described. In this attempt, I will ignore the forms of love infiltrated by non-lustful sins. My description will, therefore, be abstract. In concrete experience, love includes various different sins. Jealousy, for example, is an alliance between lust and greed. Anger is never far from the experience of love. Whoever loves is always a plaything of all sins, and one who has not experienced all sins has never truly loved. But it is abstract love that I will describe next.

I will divide my historical description of love into two parts. First, I will consider love “sensu stricto,” although I will do so very condensed. Then, I will consider some “sublimated” forms of this love, although this description will be even more condensed, and the selection of these forms extremely subjective.

3.531. Over the course of history, human love, as the fulfillment of lust, has significantly distanced itself from the pure tendency towards coitus, and this tendency has become only one aspect of the phenomenon of love. The prevailing type of love in the West today, the type that our maidens dream of, our poets sing of, and that Hollywood producers feed on, is a historically conditioned love. Other epochs and civilizations do not experience love in this sense. But even in the current West, love is a highly malleable concept. The amorous ardor of a Basque villager, for example, is an entirely distinct phenomenon from the sentimentality of a Wall Street lawyer. Kinsey impressively demonstrated how the forms of love depend on social strata, and further research will prove that they equally depend on numerous other factors. The more civilized a person, that is, the more “evolved,” the more inhibited and therefore more perverse they are. Increasing inhibition provokes increasing lust, and the more developed the mind, the more furious the struggle for it.

3.532. Let us compare our love with the type that inspired our Victorian grandparents. In that beautiful era, inhibition assumed gigantic proportions because it clung to things. The spirit of the 19th century was materialistic, and inhibition followed the trend of the time. Material things became the stage for the struggle between inhibition and lust, symbols of sex. Fans, gloves, and shoes were objects of love. Mentioning underwear was considered pornography. It was an unutterable term. The atmosphere was charged with materialized lust. The female ankle provoked lustful associations. Social conversations revolved, inauthentically, around sex. The founders of industries attended the can-can to momentarily forget the dazzling economic progress. The Victorian era was a paradise of material lust because it was materially inhibited.

That beautiful era is over. Diabolical progress has overcome material inhibition. Fans and ankles no longer excite us. Soon, even monokinis will provoke yawns. Following the spirit of the time, our lust has become more spiritualized. The new generation adopts an attitude of soft boredom towards carnal love, which characterizes it in many aspects. But is the lust of today any less diabolical? I do not believe so. It has simply shifted from the material field to a new one, and the struggle between it and inhibition continues, intensified, in this new field. Observe the histrionically mechanical gestures of jazz enthusiasts, the hoarse cries of the “crooners” in heat, the effeminacy of men’s fashion, and the masculinization of women’s fashion, and you will understand what I mean. The inauthentic pseudo-asceticism characterizing the present is evidence of a more evolved lust and inhibition. The devil has progressed in the last seventy years, but so has the inhibition opposing him.

3.533. The historical source of our type of love lies in the medieval relationship between the knight and the lady. Antiquity was unaware of the structure informing our amorous phenomenon. The amorous ideal was “pure” love, that is, love as art for art’s sake, love without utility. The ideal was, therefore, homosexuality. The Middle Ages established the “lady” as the standard of the knight and their relationship as “high love” (hohe Minne). This is the existential project of Western love, a project that was progressively realized. In the early 19th century, this project was reformulated by the Romantic poets as a kind of antithesis against progressive industrialization. The Romantics sought refuge in lust to escape the greed and gluttony that surrounded them. The Romantic reformulation of the amorous structure continues to inform the phenomenon to this day. It is a moral and aesthetic plague that focuses on illustrated magazines and film studios, spreading throughout humanity and infesting different societies with its inauthentic myths (commercially exploited). Not only does it affect all Western society, but also entirely different societies. The result is highly comical and illustrates the devil’s humor. Today, we find medieval knights and ladies wearing romantically reconstructed costumes in the Siberian steppes and the jungles of Congo. The sentimental words whispered by these Romeos and Abelards in the ears of their Juliets and Heloises were coined by troubadours, reformulated by Romantics, and rigidly fixed in idle conversation by today’s propagandists. A phenomenological and existential analysis of Western love (whose first steps were taken by Ortega) will certainly reveal its Christian and Germanic sources and its progressive profanation through the ages. The scope of this book does not allow us to delve deeper into this problem. We will only make a few comments regarding the Christian source of our concept of sexuality.

3.534. Medieval legends describe the lives of saints. What impresses us in these legends is the violent lust of the saints. They fled from lust to desolate places, but lust pursued them. The visions of these saints far surpass the boldest pornography of today. The paintings of Breughel give a faint idea of their striking virulence. The souls of the saints were the stage for violent struggles between lust and inhibition, between the devil and God. For medieval Christianity, “flesh” was the devil itself, and “woman” was the name of the flesh. This is the Christian aspect of our amorous project.

Our modern minds, although fundamentally Christian, are less virulent. Our dreams are less repulsive than the visions of the saints. The devil does not exert as much effort to possess our minds with lust. The diabolical explanation for this fact is twofold. Firstly, the devil now has other, more powerful and refined, sins as weapons to possess our minds. Gluttony, for example, once naive and innocent in the Middle Ages, has now assumed gigantic proportions. Secondly, lust has become somewhat uncomfortable for the devil. Inhibition has shifted the struggle to terrain that does not suit him well. This displacement can be called the “evolution and fulfillment of Christianity.”

3.535. What has fundamentally changed is our concept of “woman,” and this change is a problem for the devil. For the medieval Christian, woman is sin. For us, woman is increasingly becoming “the other.” And the love for a woman takes on a new aspect. It is true that woman continues to embody sin, and the devil strives, romantically, to preserve this aspect. But the new aspect of love for a woman is as follows: it can happen that we “recognize” ourselves in the woman we love and that in this recognition, we surpass the boundaries of our individuality in a leap. It is challenging to describe this leap because it is not situated in the realm of discourse. This leap is like abandoning the sensible world. It is as if we glimpsed, behind the face of the beloved woman, in an act of concrete recognition, that timeless foundation above which the world of senses hovers inauthentically. It is as if the gates of heaven had cracked open behind the beloved face. In that fleeting and precious moment, we experience the total fortuitousness of passing phenomena and are willing to sacrifice ourselves, as all sacrifice is merely an act within fortuitousness. This moment is fleeting, but it shakes the very foundation of our minds. In that instant, there is a danger for the devil to lose us.

Does the moment I just described so unsatisfactorily explain why the devil and lust were created? Was all that enormous evolution from amoeba to man triggered to produce this moment? We cannot speculate about the ways of Divinity. We can only say that the moment I mentioned is the defeat of lust because it simply does not fit into it. This moment represents “love” in the sense in which Christianity uses the term. It is the moment of sacrifice, the transcendence of life. Lust, therefore, is a dangerous weapon for the devil, as it can lead to the transcendence of life.

3.536. But the devil is not so naive as to fall defenseless into this trap. In the field of lust itself, he possesses advanced methods to avoid the catastrophe of “love” in the sense described above. Psychologists call these diabolical methods of refinement “sublimation.” Lust can become devilishly more sublime. It can change its object. Since the woman has become dangerous for the devil, he replaces her with ontologically more dubious objects. We will now consider some of these objects.

3.600 Nationalism

Sublimated phenomena are elevated to a new level of reality. Sublimated lust acts in a new reality. It is a new sin. Nationalism is lust elevated to the level of social reality; therefore, it is envy or greed. In this chapter, however, I will address the psychological aspect of nationalism, which still falls under the realm of luxurious reality. Other aspects will be discussed in the appropriate chapter.

3.601. When discussing sex, I had the opportunity to emphasize the romantic side of the devil. Romantic eras best illustrate his character. In classical eras, the devil acts more indirectly. The current era is romantic in its experiential climate, reacting to the classical era of triumphant capitalism, physical sciences, and naturalism. In our era, the devil acts directly. Hence, we are experientially closer to the romanticism of the 19th century than to more recent times. Many of our motivations stem from romanticism, and nationalism is one of them.

3.602. Nationalism is a romantic mask of lust that managed to deceive inhibition and penetrated disguised into the surface of events. Thus, nationalism is uninhibited lust. The nationalist mind behaves as if it were not sinful. It fills the air with lofty exclamations, as if it had nothing to fear and were the voice of a clear conscience. Inhibition, numbed by the national mask of lust, does not manifest. Nationalism is completely liberated lust. If the mind is entirely possessed by nationalism (which fortunately is rare), we must say it has been wholly possessed by the devil. Nationalism is one of the most impressive victories of the devil and exhibits all diabolical characteristics to a high degree.

3.603. Let us compare love for the people and the nation with love for a woman to admire the devil’s progress. We find the same languor, orgiastic ecstasy, romantic gestures, idle talk, and a taste for theatricality and inauthenticity. However, all the elements that endanger the devil’s position in the realm of love for a woman are absent for a straightforward reason. The new object of love, “the people” or “the nation,” is an entirely fictional object. The ontological problem of love for a woman is one of recognition. If I do not recognize the woman I love, she is a sinful fiction to me. If I recognize her, she becomes a path to the transcendent. However, “the people” is an unfounded concept, (“bodenlos”), and in this deliberate fiction, there is nothing to recognize. Attempts to ground “the people” undertaken by various sciences and poetically romantic experiences are all ad hoc constructions. “The people” is nothing more than a cheap slogan. Therefore, genuine dedication and sacrifice in love for it are not possible. The devil takes no risks in nationalism. Patriotic gestures imitating dedication and sacrifice are harmless and represent no danger. Nationalism is a sublimated secretion of repressed testicles that still manages, periodically, to induce extreme orgasms. I will address this diabolical miracle in the following.

3.610. Nationalism is a recent phenomenon. It originated in a corner of Western civilization but has spread recently throughout the entire globe. The concept of “the people” and “the nation” is older, but it acquired its illusory significance with nationalism. It was the German Romantic thinkers who achieved this miracle. Until then, the division of humanity into “peoples” was accepted as an existentially uninteresting fact or as a punishment imposed on humanity for building the Tower of Babel, a punishment to be overcome by the universality of the Church, humanism, or other cosmopolitan tendencies. “The people” was not a subject to be filled with lust but a subject to be overcome. Yet, the German “people” philosophers managed to imbue this concept with existential interest and transformed it from a curse into a source of pride. This innovation of “idealism” is immensely fruitful. It has already led to at least four wars, countless incineration ovens, and bloody revolutions. As long as the flames of patriotic love burn in countless hearts, future consequences are unpredictable. How can we explain this miracle?

3.611. Nationalism is Western sex sublimated. It, therefore, has the structure of this sex. As I already mentioned, this structure is based on the medieval concept of the “lady.” The gentleman defends the lady’s colors, which are his flag and shield. The knights' tournaments are ritual acts that replace coitus. But there is always the possibility of sleeping with the lady. The sublimated lady is the people. The sublimated gentleman is the patriot. However, the patriot has an advantage over the gentleman as he cannot and does not need to sleep with “the people.” His virility will never be put to the test. This is not his only advantage. The gentleman belongs to a feudal organization that demands discipline. The patriot (who is either a wealthy bourgeois or an enraged mob) can be entirely undisciplined. In fact, one of the attractions of nationalism lies precisely in the dissolution of discipline. Nationalism liberates. The patriot surrenders to the beloved people precisely to free himself from discipline and responsibility for his actions. Nationalism is a splendid way to turn man into “the people.” “The people” do not need scruples, nor do they suffer existential doubts about the norms of their behavior. “The people” are now the supreme value, and individual existence is subordinate to this supreme “reality.” The existential project of the individual is just one aspect of the “basaltic” or “monolithic” project (as the Fuehrer used to say) of the people. I have practically overcome death by integrating myself into the immortal beloved people. Therefore, it is sweet and honorable (dulce et decorum est) to die for the people. Unfortunately, the patriot does not always achieve this desired death. Sometimes, he is forced to die for himself. I believe that in this death, nationalism is in jeopardy. Thus, it is better to pretend that death does not exist. Only then can “the people” truly be “the people.” A good method to forget death is to sing patriotic songs and participate in processions.

3.612. The ardently beloved people are always surrounded by internal and external enemies. The beloved people suffer. The reason for this suffering lies in the curious fact that other peoples do not recognize the rights of our people. Perhaps because these other peoples are also composed of nationalists. This applies to our external enemies. As for our internal enemies, they are those who do not love the people but persist in blind individualism and refuse to be “the people.” They are traitors. Our enemies are odious, and our hatred towards them is directly proportional to our love for the people.

The reader will agree that this view of so-called “social reality” is foolish. However, German Romantic idealism achieved the remarkable feat of turning it into the historical doctrine taught to all of us in schools. It is true that our teachers soften the profound stupidity of this doctrine to make it more acceptable. But this stupidity still shines through in almost every chapter of our school history books. The history of humanity is thus reduced to a monotonous series of fights between peoples, interspersed with brief demonstrations of the superiority of our own people or events that prove how our people, in their innocence, have been exploited. As a result, we are forced to memorize the names of generals and kings and the dates of battles, which have a soporific effect that prepares our minds for nationalism.

3.613. The radical and unmitigated nationalism characterized the first half of the 20th century on the European continent. Apparently, it has been suppressed in the present era due to the incredible technological development in that region. The inhabitants of Western Europe seem so preoccupied with consuming the products spewing from their machines that they have no opportunity to open their mouths to sing patriotic hymns in praise of the people. Perhaps gluttony will permanently replace nationalism. Perhaps nationalistic lust is the devil’s final stage in advancing toward gluttony. Thus, nationalism may belong to the past virtually. However, the observation of other continents makes this statement somewhat doubtful.

The North American continent is the only place on earth that has been spared from nationalism “sensu stricto.” True, there are few places where so many flags are displayed as in the United States, and American patriotism is virulent. But is this patriotism lustful? American sociologists study the phenomenon in their own way, full of statistics and lacking conclusions, but their results seem to indicate that American patriotism has little to do with the nationalism discussed above. It is a different way than the European one to turn men into “the people.” The basis of this transformation is gluttony.

The Americanization of the world, which is one of the possibilities of the future, is precisely what is currently happening in Western Europe.

The “Latin American” America (by those who do not know it) is an extremely active continent from the point of view of lust. Lust has managed to break most of the constraints that bind it elsewhere on this continent. The consequence of this is an unparalleled demographic explosion, accompanied, obviously, by unparalleled misery on the current scene. This is probably a temporary stage. The furious advance of technology will soon reach the population curve, transforming material misery into mental misery of boredom and disgust. Latin America will be “developed” soon. But the current provisional stage is an excellent opportunity for nationalism. Obviously, this nationalism undergoes metamorphosis when penetrating territories so far from the German romantic idealism. It is less repulsive because it is based on a less empty reality. There is a basis for Latin American nationalism, namely, hunger. But its psychological aspects are very similar to those presented earlier. Once hunger is satisfied, and gluttony is established (as there are no intermediate stages), nationalism will be overcome. However, as I will try to demonstrate in future chapters, Latin America is possibly a continent in which the very overcoming of gluttony is emerging.

Much more exciting, from the point of view of lust, are the events unfolding on the African continent. The black civilization (if we can gather such diverse phenomena under the concept of “negritude”) results from a sexuality entirely different from our own. It is a sacred sexuality, and the devil makes use of it in a way that is existentially inaccessible to a mind informed by Christianity. Just imagine what is happening. The sorcerer drops the phallus symbol to raise the banner of national liberation in defense of the people. Isn’t that marvelous? See how the luxuriant gods of rain and thunder are replaced by the pale specters of Fichte and Hegel. White civilization managed to graft the dry branch of our sick and decadent lust onto the vital trunk of fertility religions. The flakes of nationalism are falling like radioactive ash upon the burning land. Yes, it is true, Africa is evolving.

Finally, from the point of view of nationalism, consider the ancient and holy land of Asia, the cradle of humanity. For thousands of years, a process has been developing in these lands, a process that tends to transform lust into its opposite, into sadness and sloth. For thousands of years, the “yogis” have meditated, and for hundreds of years, Buddhist monks have withdrawn from the stream of life to avoid reincarnation and merge with nothingness. Asian civilization is marked by the efforts of its elites to break the chain of life. All the sins of young and impetuous West—anger, gluttony, greed, and envy—dissolve under the tired gaze of this elite, dedicated with all their souls to pride and sloth. And regarding the masses, they seem placed on the sidelines of history, victims of the eternal return of the ever-identical, of the diabolical “samsara.” Suddenly, this land is touched by the magical wand of nationalism, this sublimated lust. The veils of illusion condense and envelop Asia again with their deceptive flutter. The muezzins climb the minarets, calling the crowd to battle instead of evening prayers. The sadhus leave their retreats and engage in election campaigns or income tax reforms. Buddhist monks abandon their monasteries to set themselves on fire with gasoline (with gasoline!) to overthrow governments. What happened? From our point of view, Asia has undergone “modernization,” and the devil has taken possession of it as it did with the West. The Asian point of view is inaccessible to us. But we can imagine that this wave of nationalism is merely a superficial phenomenon that does not affect the foundations of the prevailing existential climate. We can imagine that Asia is merely pretending to imitate us to better devour us. The devil has reached unimaginable heights of cunning in Asia. Perhaps it is in his program to transform Asia, the cradle of humanity, into the tomb of the West? In this case, nationalism would be a mere pretext for the devil to complete this project.

3.614. We can, therefore, take a retrospective look at nationalism before throwing it into the infernal cauldron, from which we fished this revolting piece. It is a sublimation of lust that manages to deceive inhibition and freely governs a significant portion of that scene called “social reality” by those engaged in it. It is a sure method to reach hell. This is why the consideration of the current political scene evokes a sublimated brothel. If our moralists truly wanted to prohibit the distribution of pornographic literature, they should ban the publication of speeches by our inflamed political leaders. With this observation, I conclude the considerations on nationalism.

3.700 Love for the Mother Tongue

“The people” is an ontologically empty concept, unless we define it as a conversation that unfolds within the field of a particular language. From this perspective, it assumes a primordial position, as the very foundation of reality. The problem of language and its creative and ordering power of reality does not fit into the chapter that deals with lust as a theme. It will be considered, if we manage to maintain the program of this book, only in the chapter of sadness. Besides, its formal aspect was the subject of my book “Language and Reality.” What I intend to discuss in this context is the lustful aspect of our love for the mother tongue. This love is a form of sublimation of lust that seems to have connections with nationalism, but is, in fact, a sublimation on an entirely different ontological level. To this level, I call the readers' attention.

3.701. The mother tongue shapes all our thoughts and provides all our concepts. It is responsible for our worldview and the value upon which we base it. In other words, the mother tongue is the source of our sense of reality. Indeed, love for the mother tongue is synonymous with the sense of reality. But what reality is it? It is a relative reality. The plurality of languages proves it. Each language produces and orders a different reality. If we leave the ground of our mother tongue, if we begin to translate, our sense of reality starts to dissolve. The love for the mother tongue restores our sense of reality because it gives us the experience of the superiority of our own language. The other languages are nothing more than auxiliary systems that strive, with varying degrees of success, to achieve the translated articulation of the reality that springs from our language. If we lose the love for the mother tongue, if we accept all languages as ontologically equivalent, our reality breaks into as many pieces as there are languages. And in the abysses between these spaces, nothingness opens up, precariously crossed by the doubtful bridges that translations offer. The loss of love for the mother tongue is equivalent to an infernal way of overcoming lust through sadness. The devil is identical to language. Language is that fabric of illusion that establishes itself as a veil on the surface of timelessness. The reality or realities that language creates are precisely what we have called, until now, the “sensible world.” We will henceforth call it the “articulable world.” And we will equally rectify our operative definition of the devil. We have said that it is time. Now we can specify that term “time.” “Time” is the discursive aspect of language. And we will define the devil as language. The love for the mother tongue is the highest sublimation of lust because it elevates lust to the level of the devil’s reality.

3.702. If we love our mother tongue, if we accept it without criticism or doubt as the source of reality, we are integrated into the current of life. In this situation, we swim within the current of language, letting it carry us along, and it, though fluid, forms the foundation of our existence as thinking beings. And this current of the mother tongue is life itself. Thanks to it, we communicate with our fellow humans, and thus, thanks to it, we are members of the “human” class. And this conversation, in turn, establishes our contact with the non-human world. This conversation is our only source of knowledge and values of this world. The mother tongue is, therefore, the very structure of human lust, as defined in this present chapter. And since all forms of lust prior to the human become articulated to us only in the structure of our language, they are equally the result of our mother tongue.

3.703. When discussing various sciences, I said that what matters are myths. Now I can justify the use of this term. Sciences are a set of propositions that become existentially meaningful when articulated in our language. These propositions are arrangements of words. These words seek to mean something that is ultimately inexpressible. Attempts to articulate the inexpressible are called myths. Conversation is a continuous development of myths. The progress of conversation is a constant demythologizing of myths. But new myths constantly appear in progressing conversation. These new myths are new themes to be discussed. Sciences provide new themes. Sciences are the less discussed myths of current conversation. The myths of antiquity and the Middle Ages have already been conversed, in the course of history, almost to total exhaustion; they are now almost demythologized. It is through sciences that we are in the closest contact with the inexpressible. Through sciences and other mental disciplines that will be mentioned later. As sciences are one of the sources of our myths, I have turned to them in my attempt to describe the devil, this fundamental myth, because it is identical to the structure of myths.

3.704. The love for the mother tongue is the shield that protects us from falling into the abyss that opens up between languages. The love for the mother tongue is diabolical because it keeps us within an illusory reality, thus within a kind of hell. But those who overcome this love, those who set themselves to analyze the fabric of language, become victims of an even more terrible sin. They lose their sense of reality and plunge into an unfathomable hell. The mind bound by the shackles of the mother tongue is in a relatively modest hell, compared to the hell of grinding and gnashing of teeth, the hell of meaningless babble, in which the logical philosopher writhes. The victory that the devil achieves by transforming the lust of love for the mother tongue into the sadness of linguistic analysis is a glorious triumph. There is more joy for the devil in getting one logical mind than in gaining a thousand minds bound to language.

3.705. But the logical analysis of language has, from the devil’s perspective, another aspect. By freeing itself from the shackles of language, the mind can, at certain moments, disarticulate itself. These are moments very similar to those I attempted to describe when dealing with the love that is overcome. St. Thomas seems to have experienced this moment when falling into silence. It is the great silence that transcends language, into which the mind rises. Although coming from an entirely different existential level, this experience leads to the same love, which is a overcoming of the devil’s illusion. The danger for the devil is not serious. The analyzer of language generally falls into silence, but into a hellish silence of grinding teeth. Nevertheless, there is this other way out. At least this is the timid hope of the present book.

3.800 Love of Reading and Writing

The lust that is sublimated in love for the mother tongue acquires its most radical character when that language is read or written. So radical does the lust become, in fact, that it reaches a new level of reality. For the author of this book, reading and writing are the most violent and diabolical manifestations of the lust he has experienced, and for this subjective reason, he devotes an entire paragraph to it. I have already confessed my subjectivity. I believe that every attempt at cosmovision is autobiographical, even if one tries to hide it. But this is not necessarily a defect. We are products of the conversation that surrounds us and in which we participate. We are all, therefore, connected to each other more or less intimately. What we call “our individual experience” is therefore much less characteristic and much more typical than we suspect. An autobiography always has a much more general meaning than the term “self” implies. What prevails in it is the term “bio.” With this reservation, I turn to consider reading.

3.810. The mind inspired by the lust for reading swims in an almost infinite current of books. Books are the objects of its libidinous desire. The mind thus constituted is exactly in the situation articulated by the myth of Don Juan. And it is only at this point in the argument that I introduce this mythical figure that embodies the lustful aspect of the devil. It is true that even the amoeba can be considered a tentative realization of the project established by the myth of Don Juan. But the mind inflamed by the lust for reading seems to me to be the most perfect realization of this project ever achieved by the devil. Its violent frustration, its desperate hunt, the insurmountable hell represented by the infinite fluid library, seems to me a diabolical work that is difficult to surpass… When Camus sought to articulate the notion of the absurd, he was, consciously or unconsciously, influenced by the diabolical experience that I will try to articulate, in my own way, in the following considerations.

3.811. It is of the essence of sin to sink the mind into a torrent of desires that increase as they are satisfied. The more it drinks, the thirstier the sinful mind becomes. Each cup it brings to its lips contains another drop of the poison that increases its thirst. Behind every lover embraced by Don Juan, there stretches the infinite and ever-growing row of lovers to be embraced. In the mouth that kisses, it still feels the taste of lips already kissed. But it is already sensing the taste of the lips that are there, ready to be kissed. It is true that every lover represents a different challenge. Each one requires a different tactic to be conquered. But what is the use of this conquest? It serves only as a stepping stone to the next conquest. Cold and rational considerations like this do not help the intoxicated one to overcome his thirst. They are existentially unproductive. He rushes, with them or without them, ever deeper into his sin.

3.812. In the situation I am describing, chalices and lovers have been sublimated into books. This makes the situation even more terrible. Physiological thirst and physiological love are sins limited by their own layer of reality. They are limited by physiological fatigue, which intervenes to ease the suffering. But reading takes place at a level of reality where fatigue is much less merciful. Therefore, the race of lust is even more unbridled at the level of intellect. Its situation is as follows:

3.813. The first stage is represented by an experience that is interpreted by the mind itself as a overcoming of lust, and thus as liberation. The mind “discovers” the boredom of immediate experience. Living in the world of the senses is no longer adventurous. After all, all these experiences are just variations of very poor themes. The world of the senses is repetitive. Its pleasures are reeditions of pleasures already enjoyed. Its sufferings can be largely intellectualized and, thus, made uninteresting. It is true that it is not possible to abandon the world of the senses. But it is possible to accept it as a necessary but fundamentally uninteresting condition of the world of intellect. The ontological relationship between the world of the senses and the world of intellect is an intellectual problem, and much of traditional philosophy deals with this problem. But existentially, this problem does not arise for the mind I am talking about. It has been resolved by the intellect. It believes, in its total illusion, that it has been freed from lust, that it has become free. Henceforth, it will hover detached, over the seething mass of life, as a calm Olympian observer. It will exist in the calmness of libraries.

3.814. This mind starts to read. Reading is a poison that acts subtly. In small doses, it acts merely as a stimulant. The reading mind, in its Olympian calmness, selects among the books proposed one whose theme seems to concern it. This theme does not matter, as we will see, and the apparent choice was merely an illusion of the mind. The reader opens the first page of the “chosen” book, and the sweet poison of reading begins to drip into his mind. The mind opens its petals and passively lets itself be carried away by the words and thoughts of the author of the book. It enters into passive conversation. It is as if the author had taken the reader by the hand to seduce him with his ways. And the reader lets himself be carried away, eager to be seduced. He reaches the last page, and the need to close the book arises. The moment is regrettable. Perhaps for this reason, the reader impatiently devours the first pages but lingers on the last, reading with increasing care to postpone the inevitable outcome. But, finally, the book is closed. The author is now inside the mind of the reader, and continues to stir within it. This stirring of alien thoughts within one’s own mind acts as a stimulant. The reader is not satisfied. Something in him demands that something happen. In everyday language, we say, to minimize the diabolical aspect of this phenomenon, that the reader’s curiosity has been awakened. Existentially, however, it is the lust of the reader that has been encouraged by the first “satisfaction” it obtained. Therefore, the reader picks up the second book.

3.815. Let us assume that this second book deals with a theme close to that treated in the first book. The hypothesis is plausible. This is how “curiosity” works, this innocuous synonym for the lust of the mind. The more the intellect knows about a subject, the more it wants to know about it. The more it knows, the more it knows that it knows nothing. The increasing dissatisfaction created by partial satisfaction is precisely the characteristic of sin. The second book, therefore, will very likely deal with a theme allied to that of the first. The reader opens the first page of the second book. However, his attitude is not exactly the same as with the first book. His mind is already addicted to reading the first book. We say he has prejudices. Existentially speaking, his mind has lost its virginity. There is an element of prostitution in the reader’s surrender to the second book, as well as a betrayal of the author of the first book. The second author begins to penetrate the reader’s mind in this situation fraught with problematicalness. And yet another element arises. The reader has acquired what we can call the “technique of reading.” A mechanical element begins to manifest itself in his reading. In this environment, the thought of the second author enters into conflict with the thought of the first, with the lust of the reader’s mind as the backdrop. The result of this struggle is an increased intellectual thirst. This thirst clamors for the third book.

3.816. It is the moment when the desperate interconnection of themes manifests itself. It is not possible to know something about something if one does not know something about everything. One theme depends on all others. The problem is this: if my first author dealt, for example, with crystallography, and if my second author dealt with the same theme, it becomes obvious to my mind that the struggle between them involves allied themes. To get out of this struggle, I must know something about geometry, optics, chemistry, geology, and so on ad infinitum. I need to read everything ever written to know something about crystallography.

Therefore, in my eagerness to read everything, it is not a desire to know everything. It is simply to know something about crystallography. My imaginary library, which initially consisted of well-separated shelves, has transformed, due to my growing lust, into a torrent of books that pour over me. My apparent initial choice of a theme has revealed itself as a deception. From all sides, this mass of books begins to oppress me. From all sides, invitations, solicitations, seductive gestures come to me. An apparently casual visit to a bookstore becomes a luxuriously painful experience. Faced with this amorphous mass of shameless solicitations, the reading mind desperately seeks a criterion to orient itself. Since the theme is no longer the criterion, it is replaced by “quality.” I try to distinguish between “good” and “bad” books, but this criterion is fluid and uncertain. A “good” book will be one that satisfies my lust, that is, provokes new desires. But I can only know if the book was “good” after reading it. I need to read everything.

3.817. I cannot read everything. And even if I could, it would be of no use. I need to read everything that has been written, but also everything that will never be written. My mind has turned into a shrew. I need to greedily surrender to any book that passes me by. I must devour every piece of printed paper. It is a tremendous transformation that my obsession has produced in my mind. From the initial Olympian calm, nothing remains. The very columns that supported my intellectual edifice have collapsed. My mind has turned into a heap of scraps of authors fighting each other. I am a stage for shreds of information that fly at the breath of the wind caused by the book I am presently reading. My intellect has become a sewer through which the disgusting torrent of uncoordinated data flows, depositing its accumulated debris. This state of my mind is called “doubt.”

3.818. Doubt is the mental lust in full swing. Our mind is torn into as many pieces as there are authors who have possessed it. But it cannot exist in this torn state. It needs to unify. It needs to regain structure. What is called “faith” needs to be regained. Only in this structural unity can the mind fulfill its purpose. How to regain this unity? The mental lust responds: by reading more, knowing more, so that we can achieve the unification of knowledge and accumulated information. Doubt can be overcome, says the mental lust, only through knowledge. What a wicked lie of the devil. At this stage of furious reading, we know that it is a lie. We know that doubt can only be separated by faith, which is the opposite of knowledge. But our knowledge doesn’t help us. The books are there, waiting for us, and they press upon us to be read. And thus, the giant wheel of books keeps spinning with ever-increasing rotation, dragging our minds. We read voraciously because the salvation of our souls depends on reading. And at this stage, it is called “cultivated mental lust.” The devil possessed us thanks to books. We are in a terrestrial paradise called the “library.” One of the most nefarious forms of hell. In this hell, we still exist precariously because something continues to connect the torn pieces of our mind: the lust for reading. And above this hell hovers a typically diabolical ideal: the last book. In it is deposited the ultimate wisdom, the overcoming of doubt, certainty. We read all the books so that we can read that last book. The lust for reading is the introduction to arrogance.

3.820. In this dark night of the library’s inferno, a pale arm emerges, extending a torch to us. The flickering light of this torch illuminates, trembling and uncertain, the wreckage of our minds. It is the arm of “inspiration” extending the torch, and it is the torch of “critique” that illuminates the accumulated doubt that we are. In a terrible effort, we try to gather the pieces of what we once were, to gather them around this light that miraculously appeared. But we deeply feel that this effort to gather the pieces is not our own. It was the external arm that caused this incredible phenomenon. Yet, something of ours also participates in this process. Our mind begins, in this highly doubtful and suspicious event, to reorganize itself. The amassed information starts to connect with each other through thin and transparent threads; the doubt we are starts to take structure, starts to articulate itself. Formations begin to emerge, words organized into sentences, and these words and sentences are ours in a very dubious sense. And there comes a flow of words and sentences that press out of our minds. It seizes our nerves, our entire body, and we start vibrating with tension, almost unbearable due to its lustfulness. In search of a liberating orgasm from this unbearable tension, we concentrate the vibration on the tips of our fingers, we precipitate this tension onto the keys of a typewriter, and we do what everyday talk calls “writing creatively.” We sit before the typewriter, trembling and sweaty, because something has grabbed us by the collar and will not let us go.

3.821. The keys of the typewriter strike. In them, there is a rhythm of a drum that seeks to crush doubt and transform it into a malleable mass. And this incandescent mass pours into crucibles called “sentences” to take shape. The rhythm of the keys and the pattern of the sentences are not our own doing; we are being informed from the outside. What is ours is the doubt and the luxurious experience that accompanies the process. We are being crushed and reformulated luxuriously. We are possessed.

3.822. Desperately, we seek a “rational” and “ironic” stance towards this infernal event; we want to save ourselves. We don’t want to sink entirely into it. We want to save something of our own. We say that we write because we want to and what we want. We say we want to write to overcome doubt and achieve clarity. Or to communicate our thoughts to our partners. Or to achieve immortality. Or simply to make money. All of this is desperate lying, and we know it. Deep inside, we know that “scribere necesse est, vivere non est” (to write is necessary, to live is not). It is the diabolical lust that forces us into this libidinous act. We are perfectly aware of the sin we are committing, and the alternating chills and fever running down our spine are existential proof of this knowledge. We know that the act of writing binds us ever more desperately to the illusory world of the senses. By immersing ourselves in the conversation called “literature,” we are selling our immortal soul in an entirely different sense. We are rapidly falling into the arms of the devil who awaits to receive us.

3.823. But why do we fall? Why do we run towards the devil? There is a voice inside us whispering: because we want to defeat him. By writing, this voice says, we seek the devil to overcome him. Whose voice is speaking? Is it ours? Is it another one of those lies I mentioned earlier? Perhaps it is. But if we lean our ears to listen closely, it seems not to fit within the luxurious atmosphere. There is a different existential climate in it. The voice is affirming the following: The sin of writing is so profound that it can annihilate itself in a mortal leap. Writing, which is a diabolical path, can, if pursued radically, lead elsewhere. How can it do that? There, the voice falls silent.

3.824. Why did Don Juan fall into desperate lust? Because he sought love, that is, the overcoming of time. Why does the reading mind fall into the lust of the library? Because it seeks knowledge, that is, the overcoming of time. Why do we write? Because we seek the silence of no longer needing to write, that is, the overcoming of time. What we are doing is absurd, Don Juan, reader, and writer, and we must admit it. But this is a curious absurdity, the absurdity we are engaged in. The world of the senses, the phenomenal world, is absurd because it lacks meaning. But within this absurdity, all diabolical acts have meaning: to maintain this absurd world. The absurdity I am talking about now is absurd within the absurdity of the world. It is clearly a calculated speculation in the convulsive argument I am presenting. But within this calculated speculation lies a germ of hope. Reading and writing, feminine and masculine aspects of the lust of the mind, contain this germ of calculated hope in their project. The most evolved lust, the mental lust, holds the germ of hope. The path of reading and writing is tortuous and full of suffering, and it usually leads to hell. But it is a path accompanied by hope. Not even through the most developed lust is the devil guaranteed.

3.900. The time has come to leave the field of lust, although we have illuminated only a few aspects of its richness. The manifestations of lust are countless, and the chosen aspects are subjective. We have lingered too long in the meadows of Eros. Perhaps we have excessively adored the devil as the giver of life. The bridge we have built between the lustful amoeba and the possessed human mind is perhaps too extensive to be used for carrying heavy cargo. It was constructed with materials provided by biology and psychology, materials that are suspicious, and the supports of the bridge were few and poorly distributed. But these construction defects are not decisive if this chapter has evoked the following image in the reader’s mind:

3.901. Lust is the driving force of the brutal and absurd process called “life.” It is what Schopenhauer calls “will.” And the mind is the spearhead of this lustful process. In this sense, it is not opposed to life, and Schopenhauer is mistaken about that. This whole process is a single giant attempt through which the devil seeks to dominate that from which he fell. It is a historical attempt that began at some point millions of years ago, although this moment is veiled from us, being latecomers as we are.

We are, with our bodies and minds, very recent phenomena of this development. But we participate in it from its beginning with the roots of our being, with our lust. By contemplating the process of life, we are contemplating the diabolical evolution within ourselves. “De te fabula narratur” (the story is about you). The more the arrow of life advances against the gates of heaven to force them, the better and more powerfully lust articulates itself. Our minds, with their linguistic structure and their lust for reading and writing, are the most perfectly articulated lust. Indeed, our minds are fulfilled lust. The enormous river of life, consisting of protoplasm and flowing against the heavenly gates in an ever more furious torrent, is nothing more than a virtual condition of the lustful reality that our minds are. Everything we tell about this river is myth and becomes real only in the linguistic structure of our mind. The enormous river of protoplasm was created and propelled by the devil as a virtual condition of the emergence of our minds. In this sense, we are the crowning glory of nature.

3.902. The more our minds advance against the gates of heaven, the more the devil evolves within us, and the more we evolve thanks to the devil. This diabolical evolution within us consolidates and solidifies the reality that we are. It is a negative reality because it denies heaven. It is the reality of language that becomes increasingly realized in our impetuous progress. But as this reality condenses and materializes, the resistance offered to it also grows. There is a dialectical process between the evolution of our reality and the resistance to it. In this process, the lust of our minds intensifies. It reaches a stage of intensity in which it changes the ontological plane, so that speaking of “lust” from now on is nothing but a Freudian prejudice. Therefore, at this point in the argument, we must abandon the Freudian mask, which, more or less loosely, accompanied our excursions into the terrain of Eros.

3.903. Consider how this mask ceased to function in the last paragraphs presented. In sexual love, it still fit with severe limitations. In nationalism, it is true, it offered an opportunity for the articulation of disgust, but the reader certainly felt that the phenomenon of nationalism is not exhausted if considered merely as a libidinous phenomenon. In love for the mother tongue, lust was already almost a nickname. It had already transformed into another sin, a sin that lies halfway between lust and pride. In reading and writing, lust, though easily diagnosable, already takes on the features of pride and, in its final stages, of sadness. Such vehement lust already starts the dance of all the deadly sins.

3.904. The diabolical manifestations we will consider in the following chapters can all be explained as sublimated lust. But we will abandon this kind of explanation from now on; we will follow the devil’s path by the methods he has chosen, not by preconceived methods.

3.905. Let us try to understand why the devil changes methods. Because he did not succeed in achieving his goal through lust. Despite all his tricks, the principle opposed to him always infiltrated the fabric of lust. We called this principle “inhibition,” which problematizes the devil’s work. This infiltration of inhibition is an ontological and ethical problem simultaneously. Ontologically, it unveils at every step the illusory nature of the reality created by the devil. Ethically, it reveals with undeniable force the sinfulness and absurdity of all acts within that reality. True, the diabolical fabric is dense and conceals its illusory and absurd character. But there is the phenomenon (if it can be called that) of death. The devil introduced this phenomenon to give meaning to the reality he created. It is a window out of this reality. And, in less expected moments, cracks open in this reality, through which minds can escape the devil. These cracks are deeper the further the devil’s project advances. No, lust is not an entirely satisfactory method for producing the paradise of hell. It is necessary, I say more, urgent, that other methods be invented.

3.906. The first new front opened by the devil in his war for absolute domination is the front called “wrath.” Historically, it is a recent front. True, anger has always existed, as long as there has been lust as the realization of the devil’s project. Anger is merely an aspect of lust, a subordinate aspect. But as a specific method, wrath was established approximately four hundred years ago in Western civilization. It is, like all historically conditioned diabolical manifestations, new. In this new front, the devil resorts to new tactics and new weapons. He abandons the Don Juanesque foil and turns to heavy artillery. He abandons his lustful method of trial and error and resorts to the severe and angry method of exact sciences. He hopes to eliminate, once and for all, the divine influence as a useless and harmful hypothesis. Yet, he does not entirely abandon the old and lustful battlefield. But he does not rely on it. From now on, he expects to win the war through science. Let us now consider the angry and aggressive devil.

4.000 Wrath

Lust and wrath form, as lived experiences, a separate group among the other sins. All the sins to be described in the following chapters can be characterized by the term “for me,” they are sins that have some ego at their center. These sins in the future chapters are about egocentric existential situations. The circumstance surrounding the ego is experienced as real and valid only in relation to that ego. A profound ontological dubiosity characterizes these sins, and the ethics established around them are relativistic due to this dubiosity. Speaking from an ontological point of view, we can characterize these sins as follows: gluttony is the attempt to devour the world to fulfill it since the reality lies in what it devours. Envy and greed seek to organize and rule the devoured world. Pride and sloth seek to belittle and ignore it. All these sins are possible only in an atmosphere where the world is “for me,” in front of my hand (“present at hand”) and without ontological dignity “in itself.” Therefore, these sins are consequences of a loss of faith in all reality “in itself,” except perhaps in my own reality. Lust and wrath are different. They accept the world of phenomena as reality. This fact requires a moment of reflection to be evaluated.

4.001. Lust has created, through our minds, a fabric of something called “phenomenal reality,” and it is in this fabric that it acts. By acting, it increases this reality and propagates it. From the point of view of the phenomenal world, it is a productive tendency. Wrath completely transforms the method and goal of this action but operates in the same field. Fueled by anger at the limitations that the fabric of the phenomenal world opposes to lust, wrath sets out to systematically reorganize this fabric. As a first step in this reorganization, it researches and analyzes this fabric. But the fabric is always taken, both by wrath and by lust, as the field of reality. Only when wrath, in its enraged anger, has crumpled the threads of the phenomenal world and destroyed its foundations, will the ontological problem appear with all its force. Then the other sins will arise. This foray into future chapters of this book has become necessary to ontologically locate the following argument.

4.010. The lustful mind seeks to enjoy the pleasures of the “objectively” given world and, in this pursuit, sells itself to the devil. The angry mind seeks to govern and rule the “objective” world, and that’s why it sells itself. They are kindred minds. Don Juan and Dr. Faustus are twin brothers in their naivety regarding the reality of “objects.” In the previous chapter, we attempted to portray Don Juan and his world. We now ask the reader to leave with us the sunny landscapes of Estremadura, where the guitar and fencing provoke the devil and make him provide the lustful soul with the lover in the mantilla and castanets. Let us transport our thoughts to dusty rooms and dark alcoves where the devil is conjured with formulas and distilled to provide the angry soul with the stone of wisdom, the quintessence, and the secret of the world. Let us leave the luxuriant gardens of love and enter the corridors and alleys of wisdom.

4.100 Freedom

Lust has not been able to eliminate the limitations that have oppressed matter since its origin. It has not managed to free the phenomenal world from its shackles. It is true that the evolution of protoplasm contains, in its design, the goal of transforming the entire material world into life. The river of protoplasm is entirely capable, in its future evolution, of absorbing all the matter of the earth and perhaps of the other celestial bodies and assimilating them. To transform, so to speak, all matter into nerves. And the mind is entirely capable, in its future evolution, of encompassing this entire objective world. But even so, lust will not cease to be limited, and the devil knows this. The boundaries of lust will always be further expanded by ongoing evolution, but they will continue to be boundaries. These boundaries cannot be admitted. They are limitations unworthy of the mind. Life, yes, is condemned to be limited, and death condemns it. But the mind rebels against this indignity. It wants to be free. This freedom will not be achieved by reckless rage. The mind must discipline itself. It must systematically destroy this indignity that is the limitation of the mind. If pleasure was the ideal of lust, freedom is the ideal of wrath.

4.101. Freedom is the most beautiful of all ideals. It is synonymous with dignity. Shackles, prisons, limitations are unworthy of the mind. The mind demands an unlimited field. What is it that limits the mind? We will call these shackles “laws,” and this term replaces the term “inhibition,” which has been used in a different context. Wrath rebels against these laws. It does not accept them as limitations, but it still needs them. It needs them to shackle what it considers “reality.” The laws must not be destroyed. They must be transformed from shackles of the mind into shackles of the objects. Freedom without laws is inconceivable. And therein lies the profound problematic nature of freedom and the wrath that seeks to achieve it.

4.102. Let us consider this problem in the field of physics, for example. Before the intervention of wrath, this field was governed by blind laws, by laws of “nature.” And the mind, conditioned to some extent by the field of physics, was limited by the laws of nature up to that point. Wrath changed all of this. It did not conform to the laws, but it did not remove them either. On the contrary, in a miraculous way, it transformed the laws into the very foundation of freedom. The laws of aerodynamics are used to lift planes; those of electromagnetics transport television programs, and those of thermodynamics heat bathtubs. Thanks to the laws of physics, the mind has become the owner of the physical layer of reality. And so it is in all fields, at least in theory. The laws of economics will soon produce the paradise of economic freedom on earth. The laws of psychology will transform humanity, through subliminal propaganda and conditioning, into a group of happy beings. In a slightly more distant future, they will probably transform the laws of the hierarchy of values in humanity into a cluster of saints. In this abbreviated catalog of diabolical promises in the field of wrath, its mendacity becomes almost obvious. The internal dialectic of this terrible concept of freedom becomes almost obvious. It tears and ravages it. It is almost incredible that Faust and the scientists, his heirs, do not realize it. The devil promises, indeed, when promising freedom, that the known laws, that is, those formulated linguistically by the mind, will be instruments of the mind. That is, they will continue to function as they always have. And simultaneously, he promises that, in a mysterious way, the mind will not be subject to them. In other words, the devil promises the alienation of the mind and its overcoming of “nature.” With its promise of freedom, it establishes a division between knower and known, subject and object, a division whose results are barely outlined in the present as a collective madness. Wrath is the first stage of a schizophrenia that begins to take shape. Science is the historical form of this disease. Descartes is its first theoretical formulator, and the vacuity of current science is its first palpable clinical manifestation.

4.103. The existential project of wrath is a situation in which nature is the object of the mind. In this situation, nature has been for 400 years. Once turned into an object, it becomes a set of things governed by strict laws. The last 400 years have made this concept of nature so familiar that we don’t realize that it is in flagrant contradiction with our concrete experience. In concrete experience, nature is not yet entirely the object of our wrath but is still the environment of our lust and desires. In this situation, nature is chaotically arbitrary, and within this chaos, a few ill-defined islands of periodicity stand out, such as day and night, spring and autumn, birth and death. School teaches the world as a set of causal chains, as a fabric of cause and effect. Experience teaches the world as a heap of chances, where the wills of living beings jostle to penetrate it through their efforts, if lucky. Thus, we live in a dual world, in the wrathful world of school and in the luxurious world of life. In the wrathful side of this schizophrenic conception, on Dr. Jekyll’s side, one speaks of mathematical equations, necessary relationships, the discovery of new relationships, the constant improvement of our view of phenomena, and the progressive simplification of the already known and formulated laws. There is very little doubt on this side of the mind that the last traces of disorder are condemned to be eliminated, and that, in the not-too-distant future, the mind will be free. On the luxurious side of the mind, on Mr. Hyde’s side, terms like luck and merit, revenge and punishment, struggle and transient victory and definitive defeat through death prevail. There is no doubt on this side of the mind that the world, this absurd heap, is random and disordered.

4.104. The world of lust knows no laws and does not admit them. An uninformed observer might suppose that in this world, there is complete freedom. The absence of laws would be synonymous with freedom to this observer. They will not understand the devil’s motives for transforming lust into wrath to make the mind free. They will not understand the motives that drive science to transform chaos into cosmos. Science postulates, discovers, or formulates laws (or theories or operating hypotheses), therefore creating shackles. It is true that ontologically speaking, what science is doing in this activity is highly doubtful. But from an ethical point of view, our observer argues, science is limiting freedom.

4.105. The naive observer is mistaken. The absence of laws excludes freedom. A disordered set does not allow choice. A chaotic world has no Gestalt, no structure. Without structure, there are no directions, and without directions, there is no sense. And where there is no sense, there is no motive. Motive is synonymous with will. Where there is no will, one cannot speak of freedom. The world of lust is not properly a world of will but a world of desire. The distinction between will and desire is existentially significant. Desire seeks an object. Will has an object. Wrath is desire turned into will because it has an object. The object is the world. Wrath is lust with an object, namely, the world. In the chaotic set of lust, we indeed have the experience of continuous wanting, but also the profound conviction of the randomness and frustration of this wanting since it lacks a defined goal. In this world without sense, there is no need or obligation (except for the mysterious “inhibition”), and this lack of motivation is experienced by the mind as wanting without an objective. In a world of such negative wanting, the concept of freedom has no place. Freedom is an act of choice. Choice presupposes goals and methods to achieve them. The goals are objects, the methods are the laws that govern the objects. For this reason, wrath removes the mind from the world of lust to oppose it. Thus distanced and alienated, the mind becomes the subject. The world becomes the object. The relationship between the mind and the world becomes knowledge. Knowledge is the basis for manipulating the world. The climate of lust is desire as the basis of pleasure. The climate of wrath is knowledge as the basis of manipulation, hence as the basis of the world. In the world of lust, the mind demands. In the world of wrath, it commands. This is the reason why the devil transforms lust into wrath.

4.200 The Law

Necessity is the logical condition of freedom. It is only in the realm of necessity that freedom can arise. The devil had to create the world of necessity to be able to liberate the mind. Necessity is a situation ordered by laws, by unbreakable chains. Freedom is the breaking of unbreakable chains. Therein lies its absurdity. The devil created laws to be able to break them. We are sketching a typically diabolical situation here. Existential philosophy, especially Sartre’s, is entangled and entwined in it. The law limits freedom; in theory, it frustrates it, but it is an indispensable condition of freedom. Science, in formulating laws, limits the mind; in injuring it, it frustrates it, but it is an indispensable condition for the freedom of the mind.

4.201. The situation, seen thus, is diabolically complex. But, seen as a historical process, it becomes comprehensible. Science, “sensu stricto,” emerged a little over 400 years ago. But the tendency toward organized rage is much older. Over the world of lust hovered, since time immemorial, perhaps since the origin of humanity, another ill-defined world, a vaporous angry world called the “magic” world. This world of magic was a kind of astral body of the world of the senses.

It hovered over it but penetrated it. Thanks to this “supernatural” world, the world of nature acquired a kind of problematic order. It represented an ordering principle both in a methodological and normative sense. Thanks to magic, the mind could orient itself in the world of nature. Natural phenomena acquired, thanks to it, a sense and meaning. The world of magic was hermetic, kept secret. Few minds, those of the magicians, inhabited it. They were the few disciplined minds in the lush environment that dominated. Magicians sought to liberate their minds through disciplines that can be characterized by terms like “giving to receive,” “debt and retribution,” “promise and responsibility.” They were chains established by the world of magic, although these chains were not strictly causal in the narrow sense of the term. They were laws, although not laws in the scientific sense of the term. They approached more the juristic meaning of the term “law”; they were more obligations than necessities. Magicians thought in imperatives, scientists think in indicatives.

4.202. The world of magic did not satisfy the devil in his attempt to liberate the mind. The failure of this diabolical method had two profound reasons. The first resided in the excessive complexity of the chains it established. The mind of the magician was entangled in these chains from all sides. At every step, the magician infringed upon some threads of the web of obligations he had woven. It was necessary to propitiate almost uninterruptedly some of the “forces” that had been offended. True freedom was not possible in the midst of this web. The second reason concerned the ethical aspect of the chains established by magic. This ethic was uncomfortable for the devil. There was always the danger of the devil being defeated by his own weapon. The distinction between “black magic” and “white magic,” a naive distinction, to be sure, but nevertheless symptomatic, illustrates what I have in mind. Therefore, it was necessary, from the devil’s point of view, to change tactics in this field. It was necessary to simplify the set of chains and to de-ethicize them.

4.203. The scope of this book does not allow an attempt to describe the history of law, thus the history of the devil in the field of rage. If we did so, this chapter would reach the same prohibitive dimensions as were reached in the chapter on lust. In passing, it should only be said that in a history of laws, the devil would appear as the founder or at least co-founder of the traditional religions of the West. Let us abbreviate the history and say only that the devil took the law from its magical environment, made it simpler, stripped it of its ethical vestments, and created the world of exact sciences. In its Promethean incarnation, the devil seized the laws deposited on the altars of the gods (where he had secretly placed them in earlier times) and handed these laws to men so that they could become free with them.

4.204. This process of transferring laws from the magical realm to the realm of science is a lengthy process and is still ongoing. It is called the “progressive scientification of the world.” Increasingly larger pieces are being torn from the “supernatural” world of magic to be incorporated into the “symbolic” world of exact science. The principle of retribution is being replaced in these pieces by the principle of causality. Magical formulas are being replaced by formulas of pure mathematics. But the magical origin of mathematical symbols is still evident. The “=” still symbolizes the scales of justice and the “x” its sword. The current situation, created by this ongoing transfer, can be described as follows: in the center flows the lush mass of the world of the senses with its senseless bubbling. Over this mass, the remnants of the world of magic still hover and try to order the mass. Below, the rigid crystals of the mathematical symbols of exact science shimmer and try to precipitate the luxurious phenomena onto themselves. At the back of the world of the senses, pieces of the magical mist condense into pure mathematical crystals. As if touched by the icy breath of science, they transform into crystallized ice. But in recent times, this process of crystallization begins to reverse. Science itself is generating a suspicious heat, and its crystals begin to evaporate into the mists of magic. Thus, the circle of these three worlds closes.

4.205. The history of scientific law would show, if told, the tender embryo of the Greeks, the beautiful adolescence of the humanists, the muscular adulthood of the positivists, and the statistically trembling old age of our sad days. But it is the current stage that we want to present to the readers. The law is an imprecise term. It concerns different constructions, which were erected with mathematical symbols and are intended to carry the transport of phenomena in both directions over the chaos of disorder, but especially towards the future. Some of these bridges, for example, those of physics, are of such solid construction that until recent times, derailing a single phenomenon on them was unimaginable. Unfortunately, recently, fissures have been discovered in their infrastructure. Repairs are still in progress, and their success is doubtful. Other bridges, for example, those of the social sciences, resemble the rope bridges of Peruvian Indians. They tremble and statistically vibrate. It happens that entire trains of phenomena that try to pass over them plunge into the abyss of chaos. Passing over them requires courage and optimism. This difference in bridge construction is responsible for the division of the sciences into “exact” and, euphemistically speaking, “less exact.”

4.206. All bridges have this in common: they are constructed from symbols and anchored in chaos. Their elements are taken from the world of magic, their foundations from the illusory world of the senses. It is obvious that the devil seeks to mask this aspect of the bridges. He builds one bridge upon another, constructs bridge after bridge, establishes one bridge upon another, supports one bridge with another, and erects a structure of bridges consisting of bridges, such that the web of bridges almost entirely conceals the chaos. Not satisfied with this, he reduces and dehydrates the phenomena of the sensory world to transform them into symbols of the first, second, third, and ninetieth degree, and thus transformed and almost weightless, he leads the phenomena over his bridges. Symbolic bridges cannot bear the weight of a sensory phenomenon. The weight of the sensory phenomenon is its irreversibility and its indefinable existential fullness. Its lust, in other words. Scientific bridges cannot bear it.

4.207. The only ontologically valid bridge would be one that unites phenomenon and symbol, experience and word. But this bridge is also the only one that science confesses itself incompetent even to consider, much less to construct. Whoever penetrates the realm of science must, therefore, achieve it in Multo. But this leap transports the mind to the palace of icy rigor. Henceforth there will be no leap. In this palace, the mind becomes the master of time and space, knowing the past and the future, and the commander of dehydrated phenomena. The miracle of this whole story, however, is as follows: the dehydrated and scientifically domesticated phenomena can be thrown out of the palace by the mind and return, transformed, to the world of the senses. Consider the following recipe: take sensory phenomena, such as stones and plants, dehydrate these phenomena into mathematical symbols, pass these symbols through the icy bridges, throw this mixture back into the phenomenal world, and (unimaginable miracle) an automobile emerges. Henceforth, this diabolical product behaves as if it were a phenomenon exactly like the others. It moves, makes noise, smells bad, in a word: it is part of the luxurious world. The mind, contemplating the miracle, is overwhelmed. It cannot comprehend it, nor can it hope to comprehend it, but it is the creator of this miracle. This vertigo is precisely the sensation of freedom. It is the reason for the existence of the sciences and of rage. The world of phenomena has become the instrument of the mind. Over countless millennia, magicians tried to use it, with meager results. In just over four hundred years, science accomplished the miracle. It is true that certain regions of the sensory world still resist the scientific mind. But we can at least glimpse the methods to conquer them. The entire sensory world will be our instrument. The principles of magic will be definitively eliminated from it. And with magic, the ethics of the world will be eliminated. And with ethics, sin (now a very archaic concept) will be eliminated, and with sin, God (now a useless hypothesis). Thus, the devil will have triumphed, in a rigorous manner, over this prejudice called “divinity.” The human mind will be free and reasonable. And it will have no more reason for rage. Rage will overcome itself. It will be paradise.

4.208. We can imagine minds that are not satisfied with this paradise. They may ask, for example: how did the first leap from phenomenon to symbol occur? Or: how did this throwing of the symbol into the world of the senses happen? Such a mind is backward. It does not think scientifically. It is “metaphysical” what it is doing. And pragmatically, its arguments are devalued. Let us disregard them. They cannot harm the harmony of the song in praise of progress.

4.300 Chance

Unfortunately, the idyll I have just described is a thing of the past, though it’s a recent past. In describing the law, I found myself forced to mention some recent events that, frankly, clash with it. Something has stealthily entered the glorious edifice of science from below, or behind (or above?), and it quietly but noticeably gnaws at its foundations. The edifice of science still stands in all its beauty, and new floors are added rapidly. But sensitive seismographs record a slight tremor throughout the building, a sinister tremor. Scientists do not trust their own competence to combat this kind of danger. It comes from outside. Hence, they seek help, and they turn to philosophers. But philosophers are scientifically irresponsible people. Indeed, they are possessed by the spirit of science, like all reasonable minds nowadays. However, they have the dangerous tendency to analyze concepts. The something that started to penetrate stealthily into the edifice of science is, nonetheless, a philosophical problem, not a purely scientific one, and philosophers become indispensable. Unless the scientists themselves engage in philosophy to save themselves. And that is what they attempt. The result may show authenticity, but, in general, it is rather poor philosophy.

4.301. The intruder in the edifice of science has various names. For example: “the need to fundamentally reformulate observation,” or “the need to reformulate the principle of causality,” or “the need to reformulate the mathematical method in the application of scientific problems,” or “the factor of indeterminability.” But I believe that all these somewhat complex terms can be replaced, at least in the present context, by the simple term “chance.” The situation seems to be the following: in the very foundation of science, where it touches the phenomenal world, in the deep well of research, a dragon hides, and this dragon has been awakened by the progress of research. This dragon is called “chance,” and it has two horrendous heads. One of the heads wobbles, and with this negating movement, it turns all laws into conjectures. The second head blinks conspiratorially, and with this gesture, it transforms all laws into pure subjectivity. The first aspect of chance is that laws are laws because they are not sufficiently exact. When formulated with greater precision, they will cease to be laws and become mere transcriptions of random events. The second aspect of chance is that laws are laws because they purport to reflect an objective reality. When formally analyzed, they reveal themselves as mere meaningless noise or reducible to zero. Purely scientific problems provoked the dragon, although this belongs to the realm of philosophy. Problems such as the difficulty of distinguishing between observer and observed, or effects that precede causes, or objects changing position without spending time. But now the dragon has been awakened and can no longer be ignored.

4.302. Yet, the laws continue to function in practice. How is this possible? The easiest answer would be that laws work by chance. Science is entirely one gigantic chance. However, we do not intend, in this context of the argument, to address the miracle of science functioning despite its doubtful foundation. It is a problem to be treated later. Existentially, science is not in jeopardy due to epistemological considerations like this. Only the scientists are affected by these kinds of problems, not the masses. It is the ethical aspect of scientific doubt that arouses widespread suspicion. This ethical aspect can also be called “chance.” Science was embraced and deified throughout recent history because it seemed to be the path to freedom. In large part, science has indeed fulfilled that promise. But lately, it has become evident that science is ethically neutral and that its liberating effect depends on extrascientific factors. The masses are, therefore, losing confidence in science as a substitute for magic. This is obviously a misunderstanding. Science always intended to liberate the mind precisely because it is ethically neutral. The ethical argument against science is thus intellectually futile, although experientially valid. When combined with the epistemological argument (intellectually valid and existentially false), it endangers science as a whole.

4.303. What I have called “chance” is obviously synonymous with “miracle.” The epistemological argument demonstrates the miraculous origin of the ordered relationships between phenomena in the sensible world. Thanks to this argument, scientists become aware of the magical element of their discipline. They begin to know themselves as invokers and evokers of the devil. This self-awareness has an aspect that will be a problem in the future. We know from history that magic ceases to work when magicians become aware of the method they apply. The same phenomenon threatens modern science. Knowing itself as a purely formal discipline, an invoker, linguistic, science might stop working, and the miracle will be over. The devil will have to look for another method to discipline his wrath.

4.310. The considerations of the previous paragraphs provoke the following chain of thoughts. The world of chance is the absurd world of lust. From it evolved the world of magic, which is the world of laws without freedom. From this, the world of science emerged, which is the world of “objective” laws, hence the world of freedom. And this world, when sufficiently advanced, transforms again into the world of chance. Thus, apparently, we have constructed a vicious circle. In this circle, the law seems to be a transitional stage between chance and freedom. Freedom seems to be a stage between law and chance, and chance seems to be the source of law and the goal of freedom. But a more careful consideration of the present denies this argument. It is obvious that we are not returning to the chance of the luxurious world. Our alienation from the world of lust is definitive. A return to the primitive chance, to authentic miracle, would be a regression to our integration into the world of the senses. And this is not what is happening. Let us consider the present scene from this perspective.

4.311. I experience chance when I accidentally stumble or when I casually encounter an acquaintance on the street. This type of chance is the substance of the world of the senses. But intellectually, I know that I am mistaken in calling this event chance. My stumbling is the ultimate effect of a whole complex series of chains of causes and effects. The same applies to my encounter with an acquaintance. They are apparent chances made transparent by the scientific method, at least in theory. They are “explainable” chances. Their miraculous aroma has been lost. I still experientially live in the world of lust, but it has ceased to be miraculous. However, at the bottom of these complex chains that “explain” my stumbling, there hides an entirely new chance. It is an event like the casual passage of a quantum of light through one of two holes. This, indeed, is intellectually a miracle. But experientially, I cannot perceive it. And so, I live within a transparent world, within a glass environment. I live in a world that lacks reality because it lacks the sensation of a miracle. The world of lust has transformed, through wrath, into a world of transparent objects, and behind these objects extend infinite causal chains—physical, biological, psychological, sociological—and at the end of all these chains, experientially unattainable, chance reappears. I continue to stumble, and in this sense, I continue to live. But I have lost faith in stumbling; I have lost the sense of reality. I can no longer distinguish between forms of reality. Everything has become transparent. My stumbling is as real or as unreal as the chains of causes and effects that caused it. The fundamental chance from which these chains arise is as real or unreal as the rest. It is, in effect, not a matter of degrees of reality but of layers of reality. Henceforth, I can change, at will, between layers. I can, with a certain degree of irony, accept the world of the senses as “real,” or the world of physics, or the world of psychology, or even that distant world that is the pure chaos of absurdity. It is possible, perhaps, to leave this scene of transparent backdrops and jump into a compact reality. It is possible, perhaps, to escape this multiple schizophrenia. It is the possibility of a reconquest of faith in the transcendent. But, in the present moment, this possibility is more than remote.

4.400 Wrath Revisited

The devil promised liberation of our minds through wrath. Diabolically, he fulfilled that promise. We were lustful minds before becoming wrathful. We nurtured sexual desires, loved with libidinous passion, and were part of a community or a football club. We read and wrote, worked and rested, all without truly doubting the “reality” of it all. Fleetingly, we may have had a vague intuition that it was all futile, and that “reality” lay elsewhere, but the existential climate of reality reigned undisputed. And this reality oppressed us. We didn’t feel free. And there was the supreme problem of death, representing both the ultimate slavery and the demonstration of the absurdity of it all. Then the devil came with his wrath.

We became free. Destiny was annihilated. Death was pushed into the background, “forgotten.” Before our eyes appeared a paradise, the paradise of freedom almost within our reach. A world inspired by the flame of human freedom, where planets follow their paths according to the noble and beautiful laws of the human spirit, where electrons and nuclei form and deform atoms according to our command, where chemical elements combine and separate to serve as our instruments. A world where the domesticated forces of nature and tamed animals become reasonable according to human reason. And it will not be just that. Our own thoughts and desires will be subject to our reasonable will, and human society will be transformed into a reasonable organization, a fabric of dignified liberties. The mind will be free from the oppression of brutal nature and ferocious animals, free from the oppression of obscurantist human factors. The mind will be free from the cruel and blind hand of fate, liberated from the avenging arm of divinity. Divinity will be superfluous and unveiled as a product of underdeveloped mentality. Our minds will be the judges and directors of the world. The golden age will be restored, free from any avenger.

It was a beautiful dream, this world, but we are awakening. We know, or we are beginning to know, that it was a dream. The awakening is terrible. It is the loss of reality. Reality. We recognize the world of wrath as unreal, but we cannot recapture the reality of the luxurious world. Absurdly, we long for this hell of lust, which suddenly seems like paradise compared to the emptiness of the paradise of wrath. Freedom, which is a consequence of emptiness, suddenly appears to us as the height of suffering, like madness.

4.410. At this stage of our development, we pose a problem for the devil. There is a danger that in our existential and epistemological despair, we might attempt to leap into faith in the transcendent. This must be avoided. We must regain a new sense of reality, obviously an equally fictitious reality, but a reality that blinds us to what transcends it. This is what the devil will try to do by transforming wrath into gluttony. This will be the theme to be addressed in the following pages.

5.000 Gluttony

5.001. In order to reestablish contact with reality, lost in the icy spheres of science, we must try to immerse ourselves again in the warm current of life. Scientific anger has freed us from desire’s lust, and we are now floating as free spirits above a life renounced by the chains of desires. We have abandoned all our instincts and exist in the realm of pure symbols. But “existence” is too positive a term to describe the situation in which we find ourselves. We have lost the sense of reality; we are alienated. As a measure of mental sanity, we are determined, in our minds, to return to the reality of life. But to grasp, comprehend, and experience this reality as minds, it must be transformed into mental substance; it must be elevated to our level. Only then will it be “real for us,” in other words, only then will it be the realized world of life. The substance of life needs to be “understood” by us in order to become real for us because “understanding” means incorporating into what is understood. Reality, life itself, is only so if it is incorporated by us. We must devour, swallow, and digest life so that this mere virtuality of our minds becomes reality. The world of phenomena is nothing more than the potentiality of our minds, the mere “coming-to-be” of the mental reality that we are.

5.002. The climate of gluttony, presented in these few considerations, is known in philosophical tradition as “idealism.” Gluttony is an idealistic sin. Indeed, this climate characterizes all Western thought from the Modern Age onwards, from the disciplined beginning of methods of anger. Science has been recognized, at least since Descartes, as masked schizophrenia. Idealism is an attempt to overcome this madness. It denies reality to the phenomenal world but affirms the reality of the thinking thing. This even applies to so-called “materialist” philosophies, such as Marxist thought. While apparently accepting the world of phenomena as the basis of reality and considering the world of thought as a mere epiphenomenon of life, the materialist epistemology proves that this appearance is deceptive. Knowledge is defined, even by the so-called “materialists,” as the transformation of matter into mind. Or, as the Marxists put it, as the “progressive humanization of nature.” Hence, this kind of thinking is gluttonous and, in this sense, idealistic.

5.003. Knowledge is now conceived and experienced as a process parallel to metabolism. The phenomenal world is devoured by the mind (stage of learning). It is then swallowed (stage of comprehensive learning). The next step is digestion (stage of understanding), and the residues are expelled (stage of transformative action). Nature becomes food, raw material for the mind. And as the mind’s enormous feast takes place, nature diminishes, and around us, the excrement of the mind, the instruments, increases. These instruments are, in fact, the mind made sensitive. The goal of gluttony is to devour all of nature and transform it into instruments. These instruments, having a mental origin, are much more real than the objects of nature. The objects of nature are the “coming-to-be” of the gluttonous mind; they are before the mind’s hand (“vorhanden”). The instruments witness the devouring and transforming action of the mind and are at the service of the mind (“zuhanden”). Nature transformed into instruments will become an almost real environment serving the mind. In this environment, the mind will be free but not alienated. Thus, gluttony has two movements: hunger (knowledge) and digestion (technology). The aspect of hunger needs no further comments, as it overlaps with the theme discussed in anger. The focus of this chapter will be the second movement of gluttony, technology.

5.010. Hunger and digestion are phenomena of life, aspects of the incarnated devil. But gluttony, being mental, is a different phenomenon. This distinction is important. Let us quickly take a look at hunger and digestion in nature to later define gluttony.

5.100 The Mechanism

We have considered life as a luxurious torrent. It is also possible to see it as a hungry torrent. This aspect of life has been overlooked by poets and religious moralists, but it dominates the minds of economists and secular moralists. Life advances on the stomach as much as it does on sex. The history of life can be described as the evolution of hunger. Life, seen in this way, is a gigantic viscous river that pours over the earth, fills the seas, covers the continents, with the sole purpose of sucking terrestrial matter with billions of roots, mouths, and trunks, transforming it into protoplasm. It is nothing but an incarnation of hunger. For countless millions of years, bacteria have devoured the minerals of the earth to make them edible for the devouring roots of plants. These plants devour day and night to transform the elements of the earth into plastic and soft life. And this plant life is continually devoured by mouths and snouts to be transformed into animal life, into new types of protoplasm. Meanwhile, bacteria lurk, ready to attack and knock down plants and animals and mix their bodies back into the earth. And this earth serves as humus for new animals and new plants. Thus spins the majestic wheel of life, from mouth to mouth. As it absorbs ever greater quantities of inorganic terrestrial elements, it becomes larger and hungrier. From the perspective of the earth, life is merely a trunk that sucks its entrails. From the perspective of life, the earth is nothing but future life. A large part of the earth’s crust and much of the seawater have already been devoured by this process that began with the formation of a single droplet. The end of this evolution will probably be the transformation of the entire earth’s crust and all the seawater into protoplasm. Living oceans and living mountains will form the surface of the earth. This will be the moment to seriously consider the colonization of other celestial bodies.

5.101. The wheel of life can be seen as a pipe. Inside the pipe flows the rising tide of food. The walls of the pipe are formed by small gears that fit perfectly together, the so-called “living beings.” Their function is to propagate food. Seen in this way, life is a hunger mechanism. The so-called “living beings” are nothing more than highly specialized digestive organs of the gigantic body of life. And only when seen in this light does life reveal its perfect hierarchy, within which the beings that comprise it fit. Protoplasm is a perfect and incredibly complex organization of hunger. It is a set of organs that complement each other in a marvelous way. Every plant is complemented by a tooth specially formed to grind it. Every scale is complemented by a claw specially formed to crack it. Every shell is complemented by tenacious pincers specially formed to snap it. This perfect harmony among organs belonging to distinct “individuals” problematizes the concept of the “individual” because it shows the artificiality of the concept. A recent discipline in biology, ecology, is almost ready to abandon this concept. Why say that a tree is an individual and a woodpecker is another when both are so intimately interrelated that they cannot be functionally separated?

5.102. The wall of the life pipe consists of niches arranged in a honeycomb-like structure. Each niche is inhabited by a species of living being. This being devours the inhabitant of the niche just below it, is devoured by the inhabitant of the niche just above it, and competes with the inhabitant of the adjacent niche. All niches are occupied, and none can remain vacant indefinitely. If that happened, the lower niches would overflow with life as there would be no one to devour it, while the upper niches would become empty since their inhabitants would have no food. A single empty niche would stop the wheel of life. Such is the fragility of this hierarchy. Nevertheless, the life mechanism has very efficient methods of quickly filling any empty niche. If the evolution of life demands the extinction of a particular species (for reasons discussed in the chapter on lust), its niche temporarily becomes vacant. The life mechanism quickly fills this vacuum with any other species genetically unrelated to the extinct one. For instance, in Australia, marsupials inhabit the niche once occupied by wolves in Europe. In New Zealand, a bird called the Moa occupied the niche filled in Africa by the giraffe. Recently, the human mind has sought to interfere in this mechanism. It has attempted to empty niches occupied by bacteria using antibiotics and sterilization. The life mechanism reacts and seeks to evolve resistant bacterial species. Will the human mind be able to halt the wheel of life?

5.103. The complexity and perfection of this hunger organization have fascinated the human observer’s mind. Unable to comprehend it in detail, the human mind admires it. But this attitude of admiration for nature is always suspect. It is a way for the mind to surrender to the devil. The complexity of the hunger organization conceals its infernal nature. The human mind admires nature because every little bird has its worm, and every little kitten has its mouse, and calls this divine providence. It forgets the perspective of the worm and the mouse. Nature is brutal, and all beings chirp and squawk, growl and grunt, buzz and caw (not in praise of the Lord) but in praise of hunger.

5.104. All of this mechanism is diabolical, undoubtedly, but it has nothing to do with gluttony. It has nothing to do with that “idealistic” climate we talked about. The hummingbird, a delight of the gardens, is not idealistic; it doesn’t kiss flowers. It devours five times its body weight per day. This is not gluttony. Gluttony is the pleasure of devouring, the pure devouring for the sake of devouring, the devouring as an activity that creates reality. Life, in its brutal lustfulness, does not possess an organ for gluttony. This organ is mental; it is the mind in opposition, as the subject who realizes nature. All the throats of all the tigers, all the pincers of all the scorpions, all the arms of all the polyps are innocent and harmless instruments compared to the mind in its opposition to nature and its gluttonous eagerness to transform it into “reality for the mind.” Let us observe how this mind acts.

5.200 The Program

In the part of this book dealing with anger, we attempted to describe what is called “knowledge.” How the mind fishes phenomena from the sensible world, reduces them to symbols, subjects these symbols to formal and linguistic rules, and how the result of this process can be expelled in the form of transformed phenomena. In the chapter on anger, this process seemed miraculous because there was no bridge allowing the passage from the phenomenon to the symbol and from the symbol to the transformed phenomenon. In the territory of gluttony, the miracle disappears. The phenomenon that the mind fishes is not “reality”; it is merely an unborn symbol. The world of the senses is a fiction of the mind. And the transformed phenomenon is equally fictitious but derived from “reality” since it has been informed by the mind. The transformation of nature into civilization and the objects of nature into an industrial park, which is the program of gluttony, is a transformation from a fictitious world into a world witnessing the passage of the mind. This is how science operates, and the miracle of its functioning despite its epistemological difficulties disappears. Science does not seek “objective knowledge” or “absolute knowledge.” What it seeks is to transform the fictitious world of nature.

Science is the first stage of technology. In the territory of gluttony, the devil no longer promises the mind supreme wisdom. Instead, he patiently explains that wisdom is not existentially relevant. What matters is power and freedom. And this the devil can promise as the result of technology. Theoretical problems such as chance and freedom are overcome. We are in the realm of practice.

5.201. The program of gluttony is as follows: 1) devour the world of the senses, 2) transform it into a system of symbols, namely language, and 3) produce machines and instruments. The machines and instruments will form a Chinese wall around the mind, preventing chance, necessity, and other theoretically chaotic influences from disturbing it. Thus, machines and instruments will become the horizon of reality, a situation bordering on the mind. Within these walls, there will be a new sense of “sheltered,” hence reality. The mind surrounded by machines and instruments will be protected and thus secure, and the madness of anger will be overcome. As gluttony devours nature, the territory of sanity expands. Gluttony is, therefore, a creative activity, an “Imitatio Dei.”

5.300 Raw Material

In order to devour nature, it is necessary to cut it into slices. Not even gluttony can consume all of nature at once. The knife that slices nature into pieces is called “specialization,” and its duty is to cut the multiple connections that bind nature and transform those severed and amputated connections into “objects.” Nature, thus cut and ready to be consumed, loses its chaotic and multicolored aspect and becomes gray and ordered. The slices into which specialization carves nature are not all served simultaneously. Gluttony, as a creative discipline, is a recent discipline, and the feast it prepares is still in its early stages. It began just over a hundred and fifty years ago. Yet, the entire nature has not yet been cut into all its slices. Nevertheless, due to the impatient mind’s hunger, they have already started serving the first course. It is a cold and richly varied “hors d’oeuvre,” cut from the slice of nature called “applied physics.” Let’s briefly consider this inviting “smorgasbord”:

5.301. As an appetizer, a variety of hunger-producing machines are served. The more machines there are, the more machines are missing. These machines are the driving force of gluttony. Machines create hunger in a geometric and orderly progression. They always open up new fields for hunger. “Raise the standard of living.” Torrents of products that did not exist yesterday but will be entirely indispensable tomorrow gush forth. The hunger created by machines is designed to be automatically insatiable. Recently, the machines have achieved self-automatic reproduction, which will certainly accelerate the progress of insatiable hunger. The machines currently dominate the scene. In our experience, they have already replaced nature. The rhythm of machines is the rhythm of our life.

5.302. This appetizer is accompanied by a dish of various types of vehicles. They serve to devour time but do so in such a diabolical way that they make us completely slaves to time. Thanks to them, we can be in practically all places on earth simultaneously. The effect is twofold: a large part of the gluttonous humanity is on the move, and a large part of the gluttonous humanity does not know what to do with its time. Travel is an escape from boredom, which is the existential climate created by time devoured by technology. “Free time” is the same boredom from which one did not escape in time. Having devoured time, the vehicles have opened up new time, and it is boredom that fills it. Vehicles are machines of tedious time. They produce boredom at the same rate at which other machines produce hunger. For this is the principle of gluttony: mouths that open to yawn are immediately filled with products.

5.303. The varied “hors d’oeuvre” of applied physics consists of multiple dishes such as scientific instruments, weapons of war, and machines designed to conquer space. But the two dishes described in outline already characterize its effect. It can be existentially characterized as a pendulum between boredom and disgust. The angry situation of the mind was one of activity against the world that opposed it. In gluttony, this activity has taken on the aspect of consumption. The more gluttony progresses, the more the consuming activity will be emphasized over the producing one. Gluttony is a sin that is produced in an automated way. The problem in gluttony is consumption. The products produced by the automated methods of gluttony gush over humanity and threaten to inundate and suffocate it. They need to be devoured. The current of products is the cause of human boredom. The products, although witnesses of the human spirit, lack existential interest because they were produced automatically. They are products that cause no astonishment, reveal no secrets, hide no mysteries; they are tedious. As products of the human spirit, they are completely transparent. As they replace the objects of nature, they spread boredom around them and eliminate all adventure from our environment. They make life unbearably tedious. And the gigantic mass that pours over us causes disgust. The incessant devouring is accompanied by the desire to vomit what has been devoured. Disgust is the antithesis of gluttony. Perhaps disgust is a limitation of gluttony. It will therefore be considered in another context.

5.304. The cold and varied dishes of applied physics are followed by a hot soup served by the economy. In the most “advanced” societies, they are currently starting to serve it. One must be careful not to drink it too quickly, as it can burn the mouth. This soup consists of price controls, five-year plans, planned credits, flexible taxes, and similar devices. The soup is intended to make the climate created by the dish of applied physics bearable. The cold sweat and disgust provoked by this dish must be overcome by the warmth that animates this soup. The result is disappointing. It cannot be otherwise, as it, too, was prepared in the kitchen of gluttony. There are two types of soup: the American chicken broth and the Soviet borscht, but both taste the same: tinny. The happiness they promise is a happiness of boredom or disgust. Indeed, both types of soup do nothing more than organize the boredom and disgust created by applied physics, and they do so tediously and disgustingly. Entire libraries have been published regarding soup recipes, but the ingredients are always the same: how to achieve happiness through gluttony.

5.305. In the kitchen, biologists are preparing the next dish: applied biology. Soon, torrents of crops will start rolling out of the kitchen, gigantic quantities of sea plankton transformed into pig fat, or corn harvests automatically planted in twenty-story fields. And that’s not all. Eggs weighing tons will appear, and cows consisting only of udders, and turkeys born with stuffing. To counterbalance this weight, concentrated pills and delicious tastes with no nutritional value will emerge. A discipline of the human body will be made, allowing for gigantic consumption regimes alternated with malnutrition regimes, which will consume gigantic quantities of medicines and stimulants. The next dish will be applied psychology. This will confront boredom and disgust head-on. Advanced techniques of hypnosis, propaganda, subliminal influence, combined with equally advanced techniques of biochemistry such as soporifics, drugs for happiness, tranquility, and visions, will transform humanity into a set of happy but numb minds. Torpor will probably replace, at this stage, the disgust of gluttony.

5.306. Our imagination has already advanced too far into the kitchen. It was not necessary to do so. The observation of the current scene is sufficient for an analysis of gluttony. I believe that the method of gluttony has become obvious in the argument: it is the transformation of nature into an instrument. Ontologically, this means transforming the reality of the senses into the reality of the mind. Existentially, this means transforming anxiety and desire into boredom and disgust. Ethically, this means transforming lust into gluttony.

5.400 The Product

The mind, that singular reality, devours illusion, digests illusion, and excretes illusion informed by the mind. These excrements, the mind disposes around itself, to hide within them. This is the repugnant situation of the current stage of gluttony: the mind sucks nature, which becomes ever poorer and further removed from the mind. In these remnants of nature, the luxurious chaos of chance reigns. But this is not a problem. Soon, all of nature will be absorbed. The mind inhabits the world of instruments. In this world, order reigns. It provides shelter for the mind. This is the reality for the mind. In it, the mind is free. Though somewhat repulsive and tedious, this reality is the appropriate habitat for the mind. And in this sense, it is the paradise of gluttony.

5.401. Unfortunately, the situation I have just described does not correspond to our experiential reality. When we observe these instruments, machines, and devices that constitute our world, within which we are sheltered, we are taken aback. These products of our mind seem to visibly transform into autonomous living beings, authentic monsters. It is as if we have created a new realm of life. But one that behaves exactly like the one we thought we had devoured. They form a continuation of nature. They are not ontologically distinct from nature. Despite all our technology, we have done nothing more than what all living beings do: devour, that is, transform inorganic or dead matter into living matter. It is true that the beings emerging from our devouring activity, these machines and computers, these vehicles and institutions, are not made of protoplasm, they are chemically different. But their degree of reality is exactly the same. We thought that through technology, we could transform nature into something ontologically different. Thus, this book hopes to outline a vision of our current situation, which is not as obvious as the visions to which we are accustomed by reading currently fashionable books and magazines.

Of course, the seven sins arise from different ontological layers and encompass distinct planes. For example: economy, politics, and technology are sins within the social layer of reality; self-consciousness, dignity, and philosophical calm are sins related to psychological reality; instinct and the affirmation of life sin within the realm of biology. But this issue of layers is, despite all the ontologies of traditional philosophy, a complex one. The layers intersect and resist being organized or separated. Ultimately, all seven sins are part of a single stream — they are seven aspects of the same attitude. Every sin includes the others, and the Church is right in avoiding a hierarchy of the seven sins. An individual possessed by the devil through the biological method of lust tends towards pride in the field of psychology and towards envy in society, and the possible combinations of sins exceed the commentator’s imagination. The capital sins form a single torrent that unfurls below and above humanity, dragging it towards progress. However, this book is forced, for methodological reasons, to create a hierarchy of sins.

Thus ordered, the sins will serve as stages for describing diabolical activity. But all sins refer to humanity. The Church is exclusively interested in human souls. However, we know that the diabolical work, as defined earlier, far exceeds the mere scope of humans. It is evident that we are also interested, primarily, in the “human” devil, but a certain intellectual honesty requires us to consider diabolical activity in non-human realms as well. This intellectual honesty (which can also be called “aesthetic sense”) led this book’s first chapter to present a pre-human devil, that is, prehistoric from our point of view. And this first chapter offers the following advantage: in it, the devil will appear as ethically neutral since he is indifferent to humans, which allows us to contemplate him without bias. All other chapters will be dedicated to sins “sensu stricto,” and they will be ordered in a hierarchy that I will call “pseudo-historical,” copied from the image of history offered by the so-called natural sciences. Thus, lust will be considered the first and oldest of sins because it is through it that the devil incarnated himself into dead matter to eliminate divinity. Philosophical distance, what the Church calls “sorrow or sloth,” the “dégage-ment,” to speak more modestly, will be considered the last and greatest of sins because it denotes an almost superhuman stage of evolution, a stage in which man surpasses himself to merge almost entirely with the devil. The other sins, which will form the themes of the intermediary chapters, will have their hierarchical gradations designated a bit more casually. For example, anger will be considered a consequence of the impotence of uninterrupted lust. Gluttony is another form of lust, a sublimated lust, but given this sublimation, it is transferred to another layer of reality. Envy will be conceived as the dialectical antithesis of greed, and both of these sins as consequences of gluttony. Pride, a new shift in layers, will be considered a reflective turn of social sins, therefore as “self-absorption.” Sadness or sloth is this transformation completed, it is therefore negative lust, the denial of life. Lust and sloth, the two poles in the magnetic field of sins, are thus antithetical in a more fundamental sense than envy and greed. And in this dialectical tension, the magical circle of sins that this book intends to present to readers is closed. Since it is a circle, it can be entered from any point and will always, though it rotates, inevitably lead to hell. The hierarchy proposed by this book is purely accidental, slightly supported by the “historicity” of nature, and informed by Freudian prejudices. Lust is taken as the starting point because this sin is considered by Freudians as the very source of reality. Naturally, we could have constructed our circle from, for example, envy, considered by Marxists as the driving force of history, and therefore of reality. The course of the book would have been a little different, but I believe the result would have been very similar. Other sins, less in fashion at present, are equally worthy. Let the reader be content with our invented “ad hoc” hierarchy.

In the chapter on lust, we will observe diabolical activities that produce life. It will be a chapter full of vitality. Anger, the field of science, is somewhat drier but no less diabolical, as we will try to demonstrate in the corresponding chapter. We will then make the ontological leap to land in gluttony, in the field of technology and earthly paradise. After enjoying the pleasures of this type of hell, we will continue on our path to enter the meadows of the dioceses of envy and greed, the meadows of political and social struggle. Without overly engaging in this diabolical dispute but not without admiring the beauties of the devil’s intrigues in it, we will advance towards pride. When mentioning this chapter, we feel our pulses grow stronger: it is the chapter of the arts. In it, the quintessence of the devil, which is beauty, will begin to take shape, as we hope. Indeed, “pride” and “sloth,” the last two chapters of this book, therefore art and philosophy, sound like terms and words with a different melody than the names of the other sins. When mentioning these words, we feel the diabolical power they wield. All our energy must be mobilized not to hasten the course of this book towards these last two chapters, which attract us powerfully and form the goal of this book in more than one sense. Because “pride” and “sloth” are sins of the spirit and, in this sense, perhaps the ultimate goal of both the devil and the history of humanity.

This is, therefore, the program of this book, which must be called “diabolical” not only because of its theme but also because of the ethical confusion from which it springs, a confusion characteristic of the present moment. The one who writes it is aware of the “sin” he commits in writing it. He is equally aware of the sin he would commit in not writing it. That is about the program. As for its motive, it has already been partially mentioned. It is the attempt to outline the current scene in which the devil seems to dominate in a way never before achieved. This almost uncontested domination encompasses both the external world and the intimate, what was once called the “soul.” Program and motive have therefore been mentioned. What remains is to speak of the intention of this book. In confessing it, we hold our breath because our confession amounts to a betrayal of the mask that has hitherto stood between us and the readers. This mask concerned objectivity regarding the devil. The intention of this book is not, let us say it right away, objective. It is true that objectivity will be an ideal we will pursue in the various parts of the considerations we will present. But as a whole, it cannot be maintained. It is impossible to speak of the devil in abstract and cold terms. The pose, on the other hand, is possible, and perhaps productive, but it remains a pose. In essence, one must fear the devil, and fear means surrendering or running with all one’s strength. The third possibility would be to fight, but it will only be at the end of this book that we will know subjectively whether this fight appears existentially achievable. But at the very least, we must be able to flee, and this is the subjective intention of this book; subjective, of course, in an individual as well as a collective sense. Why fear the devil? Why flee from him? These are the types of existential questions that this book will propose explicitly and implicitly. Who can predict the answers? Who knows the ending of a book when they begin to write it?

Now the reader knows the doubts and internal tensions that provoked this book. Nevertheless, we ask you to take the journey to hell with us. We can promise you that it will not be a Dantean journey. On the contrary, it will bring as much pleasure, if not more, as the pleasures of heaven. Let this promise serve as bait, no less diabolical for being confessed bait.

5.500 The Tool

Gluttony has opened a new vision of the human situation. Man as a link in a chain. This represents an important shift in our view of the human condition. Until now, we have considered man as the crown of nature, the goal of the world’s chain. But this goal, achieved through lust, has managed, through wrath and gluttony, to detach itself from the chain and turn against it. Nature as a whole, with its stars and planets, crystals and minerals, plants, and animals, had the human mind as its double goal: it was its duty to produce this mind, and it was its duty to serve as its raw material. The Bible itself confirms this diabolical view of nature and the position of the human mind. Human knowledge and transformative praxis were, from our perspective, the greatest triumph of evolution, the devil’s most potent weapon in advancing against the shield of the transcendent. By perfecting knowledge and intensifying praxis, the devil could overcome the barriers imposed on him through the human mind and thus create a “human reality.” This is essentially the Hegelian philosophy, which glorifies the devil. It is the basis of Marxist philosophy, which is equally Manichaean. And it is the foundation of all humanism that has inspired us since we disciplined wrath.

5.501. Nietzsche initiated a new vision of the human situation. A vision enabled by the triumph of gluttony. Man as a link in the chain. The Nietzschean “superman” was a mutation of man, but it was merely a product of the imagination of a thinker ahead of his time. Today, we can experientially experience the superman. It is the instrument. Let us try, therefore, to frame man as a link in the general scene of the world.

5.502. Photosynthesis enables plants to transform inorganic substances into protoplasm. The mind enables man to transform the phenomenal world into symbols, into language. This linguistic capacity of man is, from the diabolical point of view, a mutation of photosynthesis in more than one sense. The same ontological leap that exists between the inorganic and organic world exists, in a more radical way, between the phenomenal world of the senses and the symbolic world of language. But the parallel I want to force between photosynthesis and language is different. The existence of plants made the animal kingdom of life viable. The existence of man made instruments viable. From the perspective of the plant, the animal is a product of the plant. It is useful to the plant, for example, as fertilizer. But the animal crushes and devours the plant. From the human point of view, instruments are products of man and serve him. But they crush and will devour man. From the meadow’s perspective, the cow is an institution evolved by grass, and its utility lies in providing fertilizer. An atrocious destiny made the cow eat the grass that produced it. It is impossible to ask the grass to accept the cow’s point of view. There is an insurmountable existential abyss between them. The instruments of technology are the cows in the meadow of the mind. But the mind has the ironic ability to transcend itself. It can do what the grass cannot: rise above the situation in which it participates. In this reflective distance, we have an entirely new view of the human situation. Man appears as an instrument of the instrument, just as the instrument appears as an instrument of man. And if we elevate this reflection a bit further, everything appears to us as an instrument in the service of a technology that is not ours. Our technology is nothing more than a subordinate phase of that general technology of which we are instruments.

5.503. The general technology of which we are instruments has been identified in this book with the evolution of the devil. We are merely subordinate instruments of the devil. We are just a stage in that process that seeks to make transitoriness real. But as instruments in this diabolical struggle against its barriers, we are in contact with those barriers. Something of those barriers must manifest itself in our structure. The experience of being mere instruments, which the evolution of technology provides us, leads to the loss of our sense of reality within the transitory world of instruments. It leads to the loss of the sense of reality even of what we call our “self,” this subordinate instrument. And this loss absurdly opens the vision of that “totally different” influence within our structure. The instruments of technology, which are transparent to us because they are products of our mind, absurdly open a vision of that which is entirely different from us.

5.504. Gluttony makes the futility of that process called “evolution” sororally palpable because it accelerates this process. It makes the futility and illusion of the devil experientially sororally palpable. Furious progress problematizes progress. The rapid achievements of the mind problematize the mind. The devil’s own success problematizes the devil. It is an absurd outcome of gluttony, one that the devil certainly did not expect. The devil intended to prepare the human mind for pride with the instruments of technology. Man as the creator of reality. But behold, technology humiliates man. Man as a slave to his own creations. Humility and human loneliness, symptomatic of humility, create a dangerous climate for the devil. The mind, as the creator of reality, can transform into an instrument of a totally different reality in this climate. Gluttony, despite being a great victory for the devil in the realm of the phenomenal world, can become dangerous for him in the realm of the human mind.

5.510. The devil’s struggle for our minds is not easy. He failed to conquer them through lust because death opened a window out of the diabolical world through which minds could escape. He changed tactics and created wrath. He failed to triumph through wrath because the diabolical world lost its reality. Through the schizophrenic opening between the phenomenal world and the mental world, the mind could escape. He perfected wrath into gluttony, and even so, the mind is not guaranteed to him. The very perfection of gluttony creates a climate of loneliness and humility through which the mind can elude him. The power of the creative mind reveals, absurdly, the impotence of the mind. In this deep consciousness of the mind’s impotence, there lies, I believe, a germ of hope for humanity.

5.600 The Feast

The consciousness of the impotence of our minds is currently buried beneath thick layers that extol the glory of the mind as the creator of technology… Therefore, it does not pose an immediate danger to the devil. Observers of the surface of current events cannot discern its traces. “Developed” societies are entirely devoted to gluttony, and our century may be called, by this superficial observer, the “century of gluttony.” But it is not only these societies that glorify gluttony. All of humanity participates in the hasty and greedy pursuit of products. An insatiable hunger for things (and thoughts and “sensations”) has taken possession of our minds, and we are fully aware that we cannot and do not want to satisfy it. Our ideal is not a stable “standard of living,” hence satiety. The ideal is a growing “standard of living,” hence increasing hunger. If, like certain developed societies or certain individuals in underdeveloped societies, we want to stop this race and say “enough,” we will find, to our surprise, that we cannot do it. We may be tired and exhausted by progress, and we may want, exhausted, to abandon the hunt. But we cannot do it. The steamroller of progressing gluttony drags us along with it or crushes us beneath it. The desire to stop and rest is “reaction,” is “obscurantism,” and progress mercilessly eliminates it. Either we advance, along with all of humanity, towards the paradise of gluttony, or we will be annihilated. It is our duty, as evolved humans, to devour and swallow ever larger bites. It is a “civic” duty to be consumers. We must open our mouths as wide as possible, bite, eat, digest, and surround ourselves with our excrement in the form of instruments, or bank accounts, or benevolent institutions.

5.601. Medieval paintings depict gluttony as a person with a grotesquely swollen belly. This is pious naivety. Compare these paintings with modern elephantiasis. Our cities, our buildings, our factories, and our institutions take on superhuman dimensions. Capital and production capacities can only be measured with astronomical figures. Our commercial firms, our offices, our churches, our schools, all these sinister “legal entities,” grow like titans, and we are building altars to sacrifice to them as gods. Humanity currently presents an image of megalomania. The air is filled with the clicking of tongues and lips and the grinding and gnashing of technology’s teeth. And this technology wants to eat more and more, to devour everything and leave no trace of nature. And instead of restraining (or at least attempting to restrain) the advance of machines, men even whip them to encourage their frenzied race towards the abyss. Many already know that the goal of this race is not paradise, but the abyss. Many already feel this abyss in their bones. But they continue to chase. It is not exactly gluttony that propels them, but gluttony transformed into envy and greed. We will discuss these sins in the following chapter.

6.000 Envy and Greed

6.001. The successes that the devil has achieved so far in his attempt to make the world of phenomena real are of doubtful kind. In the realm of life, the struggle between heaven and hell continues unabated. Lust persists in its efforts against inhibition, with the aim of realizing life. In the realm of pure reason, anger continues its fight against chance and seeks to understand, and thus realize, the world to be symbolized in language. In the realm of nature, gluttony continues to devour living and dead things in order to transform them and prevent the devoured things from returning to nature, hence becoming unreal. Given this doubtful situation for the devil, he opens a new front. He declares that society is the source and foundation of reality. The human mind is a product of society. All its thoughts, desires, and values spring from society, are informed by it, and are useful to it. Man is real only as part of society. Outside society, man is merely a mental construct, a specter with which “individualist” philosophers and theologians operate for their sinister purposes. Outside society, man is like a ghost hanging in the air, a mere image (perhaps, as theologians say, an image of God), but certainly nothing more than an image. Within society, man gains context, acquires meaning, and his life becomes significant. Only as a participant in a family, a union, a political party, or a bridge club does man become a reality. Society makes man real. It is true that man, in turn, makes society, and there is, therefore, an ontological problem hidden in our definition of society as reality. But, at this stage of his progress, the devil has decided to ignore this difficulty.

6.002. The man perfectly integrated into society (“well integrated,” to use an expression of American sociologists) does not suffer from ontological problems, knows his reality, and does not need another faith to project his life. When this social integration is disturbed, when man becomes “alienated” from society, the problem of a “transcendent” faith arises, a pathological symptom of man’s alienation. In this situation, man has abandoned the protective strongholds of society and finds himself alone and unprotected, facing the hot and desert wind of Divinity. This man becomes introspective and may become prey to dangerous forces for the devil. If the hot breath of solitude drags the mind away from the collective, there is the imminent danger of the devil losing that mind. Within the framework of society, the mind is sheltered from this dangerous solitude, and the forces of Divinity cannot reach it. It is the duty of infernal forces to fortify and cement the structure of society and establish it as the only reality of man. Man, as a zoon politikon, is an easy prey for the devil. He is already practically in hell; he has lost his authenticity. The devil achieves the strengthening of society through envy and greed.

6.003. Greed is the diabolical method by which the devil locates the mind within the structure of society. Greed is the method by which this location is fixed and maintained to preserve the structure. Envy is the evolutionary principle of society. Thanks to it, society forms and reforms. Greed is the conservative principle of society. Thanks to it, society acquires stability. Every given stage of a society is the product of the dialectical tension between envy and greed. All progressive and revolutionary tendencies at this stage represent the action of envy. All conservative tendencies represent the action of greed. The continuous struggle, concealed by the structure of society, which superficially appears as an orderly evolving organism, is a struggle between these two sins. The devil seems to be fighting against himself within society. But it is obvious that the fight is feigned. Greed strengthens envy, and envy strengthens greed, and both have the same purpose: to make society real. Due to this reciprocal action, we have decided to include both of these sins in the same chapter and will try to outline their functioning.

6.100 Society

The leap we made, leaving gluttony behind and landing in the realm of society, brings about a change of climate. The devil has given up on forcing a single layer of reality. Henceforth, the devil is content with pluralism. Society will be henceforth the reality of the first order. Around this primary reality, and created by it, secondary realities emerge, whose degree of reality depends on their proximity to society. The most important of these realities is called “civilization” or “culture.” It is the immediate product of society. What we call, quite imprecisely, “the history of society” or “the history of humanity” is, strictly speaking, the history of civilization and culture. All products of society, all second-order realities, are historical products and evolve over time. The structure of society itself evolves in this way. But society “in itself,” which has now become a kind of Kantian “thing-in-itself,” is not historical; it is given. It is what old-fashioned philosophers would call the “metaphysical foundation” of reality. All history is the product of society; it is the active and effective aspect of society. All history and all the realities it produces are “for society.” It is evident that a concept of society as the one I have just described identifies “society” with the “devil,” as defined in this book. Envy and greed reveal society as a new aspect of the devil. Let us delve a little deeper into this line of thought.

6.101. Society is the primordial sludge of reality. It is the bottom from which our minds spring. Western psychology is discovering this bottom and observing it bubble. It calls this fundamental layer of the mind the “id.” The processes, still poorly understood, that develop in this layer are called the “myths of humanity.” They are the primary structures of behavior. The myths are the structures through which society projects our existences to realize society, thereby realizing themselves in the process. The myths are, therefore, the primary and immediate product of society. It is impossible to grasp society “in itself” with our evolved minds because it is the very foundation of the mind. The most we can approach it is through the myths. The myths are the immediate revelation of society, hence of reality. These myths project us as human beings. Let us try to describe how they do this from the perspective of this book.

6.102. The primordial sludge seeks to articulate itself because it contains a dialectical tension, a tension that we have identified as “envy and greed.” It is what the ancients called the “envy of the gods” and the “greed of beings.” Envy forces its way out of the sludge, bursts to the surface, produces a historical phenomenon, articulates itself, and this is called a “myth.” Greed immediately seeks to consolidate the produced phenomenon, contract it, and prevent it from evaporating. This is called a “rite.” We must imagine the reality of society as an inert mass, yet fervent. We must imagine myths as bubbles blown to the surface by envy, and we must imagine rites as these bubbles consolidated into spheres by greed, rolling into history. Myth and rite, these primary manifestations of society, constitute the starting point of “history” in the strict sense of the term. The history of civilization is an evolution of myths and rites. This process is continuous. Envy constantly blows myths, and greed constantly ritualizes them. Thanks to envy, society develops in its manifestations and continuously creates new realities of lower order. Thanks to greed, these new realities are repeatedly consolidated. The given stage of a society is the synthetic product of myths and rites.

6.103. This description does not agree with the view of society that 19th-century philosophy offers us. The disagreement is understandable. Our view has been achieved through disciplined introspection that modern psychology provides. The thinkers of the 19th century, especially Hegel and Marx, regarded society as an external phenomenon. Although they professed faith in society as the foundation of reality, they were still naive in their experiential impact of this faith, they were still alienated minds. They were still trying to understand society from the outside, and in this sense, they were alienated minds. But if we analyze their thoughts from our point of view, we will find that the divergence is not so severe. For Hegel, there exists as the foundation of reality the “idea,” and for Marx, the “material,” and both are linked to each other by the dialectical process that produces history in the strict sense. If we replace the metaphysical terms “idea” and “material” with the ethical terms “envy” and “greed,” we will see that the divergence becomes less severe. In fact, although modernizing, we are being Hegelian and Marxist in considering these two sins. But precisely because we are modernizing these two thinkers, we are being much more radical in our ontology. We are even radicalizing the ontology implicit in Dilthey, who, in our view, is the first thinker to articulate envy and greed consistently.

6.110. Myth and rite are, therefore, within the ontology that we are now defending, the first results of social reality in its attempt to articulate itself. Civilization and all its material and spiritual products are realities produced by myths and rites. These phenomena are real because they are connected, through myths and rites, to the primordial reality of society. The world of our minds is another layer of reality because it is linked, through the “id,” to the fundamental layer of reality. The most complex problem that this ontology offers is the one posed by nature. How is nature connected to society? Is it entirely fictitious, as it was for gluttony, or is it opposed to society, as it was for anger? No, patient analysis reveals that nature is the product of society. It is a product removed from society, hence of a lower degree of reality than civilization, but nevertheless a product. Let us try to illustrate this statement, which is so contrary to common sense but still a logical consequence of the argument:

6.111. Consider, as the only example of our thesis, the celestial bodies. They are representative objects of nature. How did the stars come into being and how have they evolved? Primordial myths established a “world,” let’s say the world of Western civilization. This civilization realized the project contained in these myths, and part of this realization was gods walking, masculine or feminine, but always representing masculine force, over the earth, representing femininity. This masculine principle was what we now call “stars.” New eruptions of envy created new myths that modified this world. The starry sky of the Pythagoreans and the Ptolemies emerged as a ritualization of these myths, in which the current stars were somewhat like symbols of petrified perfection. In the Renaissance and Baroque periods, new myths emerged. The stars were stones. In the 18th and 19th centuries, they transformed into a group of small balls, molecules, which were connected to each other by elastic “gravitation,” whose behavior was mathematically ritualized. Nowadays, the stars are carvings in the curved gravitational and electromagnetic field. What are the stars “in themselves”? It is a false question. The stars are not “in themselves”; they are “for society.” And so it is with all of nature. It is nothing more than a product of society, a historical product that changes according to the dialectical tension that informs society. Nature is the product of envy and greed. It is a reality of a subordinate degree. Let us return our attention to a more immediate reality, namely civilization, which is the most tangible field of envy and greed.

6.200 Retribution

Civilization is the phenomenal manifestation of society. It can be described introspectively and extrospectively. Extrospectively, it appears as a determined number of human beings surrounded by instruments and institutions, and introspectively, it appears as my conscious self. There is an intimate connection between these two aspects; one is a reflection of the other. Both aspects emerged from the primordial mud of society. Let’s consider the external aspect.

6.201. Civilization consists of human beings seeking to fulfill the existential projects imposed on them by society and within which they are thrown. These existential projects form a multitude of intersecting arrows. The more developed the civilization, the greater the number of projects it offers to the participating individuals. The number of projects offered by civilization is directly proportional to what we call “political, economic, and social freedom” because it offers a choice between projects. Human beings participate in more than one project. Each project in which a human being participates is a mask and a character they perform on the stage of society. Behind each of these projects lies a myth, and human life in society is the (often unconscious) attempt to realize the chosen myths.

6.202. The projects intersect. For example: a single human being can have an existential project of being a family father, a master turner, a member of a football club, a member of a church and a political party, and so on, infinitely. Participation in numerous projects represents an existential problem because changing from one project to another requires a change of pose. The projects are not equivalent to each other and can be organized into intersecting hierarchical pyramids. From the family, we can move to the clan, the people, and the family of peoples. From the master turner, we can move to the union, the class, and the proletariat. However, the higher we climb the pyramid, the more existentially empty the concept becomes. The existential falseness of the term “people” has already been discussed.

6.203. The realization of a project, which is human life within society, is a process. It advances with time but is ambivalent. Every project fits into its hierarchical pyramid, meaning that each project is fluid within it. Human beings, transformed into individuals by their participation in projects, seek to rise within their pyramid, to surpass others competing with them. This tendency is what we call “envy.” Simultaneously, the person seeks to prevent others from surpassing them, which is what we call “avarice.” The envious tendency seeks to make the pyramid structurally fluid and malleable; it is always ready to destroy pyramids if its progress is frustrated. The avaricious tendency seeks to solidify pyramids and is always ready to defend pyramids if it finds itself near the top. Obviously, these tendencies always coexist in every mind engaged in society. They are, in fact, two sides of the same coin. They are both symptoms of commitment.

6.204. Envy is the progressive and revolutionary aspect of the mind, while avarice is its conservative side, and the prevailing aspect corresponds to the stage of project realization. Young people are generally progressive because they have achieved little. Biologically or mentally elderly individuals tend to be conservative because they fear for the realization they have already achieved. Envy is frustrated avarice, and avarice is frustrated envy. The revolutionary is a frustrated reactionary, and the conservative is a frustrated progressive. The realized revolutionary becomes a fierce reactionary, and the realized conservative becomes progressive. The revolutionary is in action, and the reactionary “in fieri,” and the conservative is the victorious revolutionary.

6.205. All of this is obvious and would not require an explanation if the everyday conversation with newspapers and speeches had not blurred the outlines of the scene. However, a different consideration illuminates this scene with a different light. It is the consideration that relates to the automaticity of the functioning of the envy-avarice dialectic that propels society. It requires no judge or arbitrator; it progresses on its own momentum, and the individual efforts of engaged individuals are merely a subjective aspect of the objectivity of this process. This observation is fundamental to understanding the atmosphere of the two sins we are considering. The atmosphere in which we are moving in this chapter is the atmosphere of ethics, the atmosphere of morality. From the perspective of envy, avarice is bad, and from the perspective of avarice, envy is bad. Trojans are bad from the Greeks' point of view, and Greeks are bad from the Trojans' point of view. Capitalists are bad from the enlightened proletarian’s perspective, and Bolsheviks are bad from the democratic capitalist’s perspective. The automaticity of the process we have just outlined undermines, once conscious, all values. And therein lies the beauty of the scene from the devil’s point of view.

6.206. From this perspective, individuals in society have only two alternatives: “engagement” or “dégageruent,” taking sides or not taking sides. If they take sides, whether in favor of envy or avarice (it’s irrelevant), they become victims of an illusion of an ethics that society itself contradicts. They become easy prey for the devil. If they become aware of the relativity of the two ethics and refuse to take sides, they lose all sense of value and become opportunists. They also become easy prey for the devil. Therefore, society is a true masterpiece of diabolical malice, capturing the mind in any decision it takes. Let’s exemplify.

6.207. Let’s assume that someone is engaged in envy. For them, society is fundamentally poorly structured. Fortunately, they know how to restructure it. They know how to reform its foundations. Their project is that of a fighter for good, for progress. However, we know what the project will lead to when realized. It will result in a new social structure, where envy takes the place of avarice. Ethically, nothing will have changed. Countless examples from the history of civilizations prove this. But the do-gooder, in this case, will be changed. They will have done nothing more than prepare the ways for the devil and end up in hell. Now, let’s assume that someone is engaged in avarice. Now society is fundamentally well-structured. Unfortunately, there are destructive tendencies in it, which threaten to undermine the established order. It is true that these tendencies are inevitable and do not invalidate the excellence of the social structure, but it is equally true that they need to be fought against. This person becomes a defender of good, protecting the orthodoxy of society. However, we know how this defense ends. Countless examples from history confirm it. Evil automatically prevails, and the structure of society is reshaped. But in doing so, evil automatically becomes good, and they defend the new structure. Ethically, nothing has changed. But the defender of good will be changed. For having defended an illusory good, they will go straight to hell. Now, let’s assume that someone knows all of this. They are aware of the automaticity of society’s dialectic. They know that it is theoretically and practically impossible to stop this automaticity. Any attempt to stop it would be mere reaction and would be automatically integrated into this automaticity. The very passivity in the face of this process becomes a link in its chain. This person is now fundamentally convinced of the ethical neutrality of all action and the relativity of all values. Good and evil are fluid aspects of a given situation, ready to invert themselves at any moment. This conviction can elicit two reactions. They can either decay, alienated, within the indefinite gray mass of society, or they can develop an opportunistic ethics, with their immediate self-interest as a point of reference. In both cases, their path leads directly to hell.

Let’s brutally simplify the situation described. In society, that is, in the realm of automatic retribution, the human mind faces two alternatives: it can resolve to hypocritically engage in envy or avarice (both elevated to ideals, of course), or it can advance, transcending hypocrisy, to enlightened opportunism or to the gray despair of relativized ethics.

6.300 Justice

The automaticity of social processes dispenses with an arbiter. Society is in automatic moral balance and progresses automatically. Ethics is a miracle of balance, and the devil is the tightrope walker. God has finally been eliminated. It belongs to the realm of outdated notions like divine right, natural law, absolute law. The victory of the devil seems definitive. Human freedom is guaranteed. It lies in the plurality of values that participate in the balancing act. However, the following question arises: Where does the existential despair of someone who has realized the relativity of values come from?

6.301. To consider this question, we need to delve a little deeper into the change of atmosphere between gluttony and the two sins we are dealing with. By accepting society as the foundation of reality, we find ourselves in a new cosmos. Until now, the world consisted of phenomena to be enjoyed, understood, or transformed. Now the world has a new dimension. Its phenomena want to be valued. Merely understanding or transforming them is no longer enough; they must be ordered according to a scale. It is impossible to enjoy them without knowing their place on that scale. The problem of envy and avarice is not exclusively a problem of ontological reality but also of the normative aspects of things. This new element that has penetrated our world is curious. Until now, we had to deal with two elements of the world: phenomena and the mind. Now a third element, value, has infiltrated between them like a wedge. We know immediately the reality of the mind. We doubt the reality of phenomena. But we neither know nor can doubt the reality of value. Our experience of value is intellectually impenetrable. The manifestations of value can be analyzed. The various scales of values provided by society can be compared, resulting in relativity. But the experience of value, this impenetrable experience, remains untouched.

6.302. The relativity of value is a consequence of comparing scales. These scales are provided by society. By identifying society with reality, we base all scales on society. Since society provides diverse scales, all values are relative. This is ultimately the reason why the devil created envy and avarice – to make values relative. The mind that feels despair in the face of this relativity begins the following reasoning: All values are relative. There are no absolute values. Therefore, there are no values. But what kind of reasoning is this? Is it not a normative judgment? Is this mind not valuing in that judgment? Indeed, it is affirming that the absolute value (which doesn’t exist) is better than relative value. But by what scale is this mind measuring the relative scales of society?

6.303. At this point in the argument (if we can call what happens in this desperate mind an argument), there is total confusion that disorganizes it. The society as the foundation of reality begins to disintegrate. The mind starts to feel as if the ground is being pulled from under its feet, and an inarticulate abyss opens up. The gray indifference that this mind felt towards society begins to transform into a violent experience whose best articulation is provided by the Church: love for others as a form of love for God. The mind that believed to be beyond good and evil is suddenly exposed to the explosion of absolute Good. Its enlightened opportunism suddenly turns into overwhelming contrition.

6.304. Intellectual honesty demands the following remark. The author of this book has never experienced what he is describing. He proceeded, in despair, from envy and avarice directly to pride. He coldly and intellectually deduced the situation from the observations he has made. Since it concerns someone else’s experience, he prefers to remain silent about it. However, he believes that this glorious and crushing experience of absolute Good is not necessary for developing an argument in favor of it. After all, we all have something we call the “conscience of good and evil,” which we take as absolute. To relativize this conscience was precisely the devil’s goal when he transferred our faith to society. The devil convinced us intellectually. We are intellectually certain that killing is a relative evil because a given society has deemed it a negative value. We can perfectly imagine scales of values in which killing is a positive value. But this intellectual conviction cannot shake our intimate and irrational experience that killing is an absolute evil. This very irrational experience can, in turn, be rationalized. But there is always an inarticulate foundation that insists, against all reason, on absolute value. And the devil has not yet succeeded in eliminating this foundation entirely.

6.400 Conversation

Civilization, as a manifestation of society, can also be described from an introspective point of view. Under this perspective, it presents itself as the conscious Self. Why do we call this Self conscious? Because it is the articulation of the foundation of reality, which is society. Introspectively speaking, this reality is identical to the “unconscious” layers of the Self. The conscious Self is an articulated society. It is a linguistic being, a node within the fabric called “conversation,” an organization of words. Civilization, when viewed introspectively, is an organization of words.

6.401. Our existential project is participation in the conservation within which we find ourselves. We fulfill our project through conversation. For our consciousness, conversation is the field of reality. And conversation is an articulated society. Words and the structures by which words are organized into sentences are manifestations of the unarticulated foundation, expelled from that foundation through the dialectical action of envy and avarice. Let us observe a little how this process works.

6.402. Conservation is a fabric consisting of threads formed by words, with points of intersection of threads called “intellects.” The word is the bridge that connects intellects and points, ultimately, to the unarticulated foundation. Every word is a product, a work of the creative effort of that foundation, a diabolical work of art informed and shaped by envy and avarice. Every word is a work of the combined effort undertaken by countless generations of intellects that came before us. Throughout the history of thought, every word has been continually molded and shaped by the countless intellects that used it to express themselves. Every word is a living witness to the entire history of thought. Every word contains the secret of the historical dialectic of thought. In this sense, every word is the integral of thought. It is so, every word, even the humblest one, is the triumphal cry of the entire stream of life, from protoplasm, a cry of life transformed into thought. Through its meaning, which is the fundamental reality of the dialectical process, every word is a devil’s name, and it should not, strictly speaking, be taken in vain and without a sense of sacredness. It is the most glorious attempt to create reality by breaking the shackles of the body, overcoming lust, and freeing the illusion from the body, overcoming anger; it is a continuous creation and transformation overcoming gluttony. The word is a military expedition undertaken by all of humanity, by all the current and past intellects, seeking to overthrow and annihilate divinity. Language, the totality of words, is the army marching against the regions of faith, which are entirely different, and this army gradually occupies those regions to incorporate them into the realm of language. Language is the visceral enemy of faith, and everything touched by it becomes immune to divine intervention. Every word is a flaming sword of the devil, and language as a whole is a protest against the limitations of intellect, a cry of articulation against the ineffable, a war cry against divinity, an expression of the envy of the human intellect directed against God.

6.403. The army of words forms and closes ranks in obedience to rules. The ranks are called “sentences,” and the rules “grammar,” and it is thanks to this organization that the army of words advances. The ritual by which words are organized into sentences is responsible for the consistency of the intellect’s reality. It is the formal aspect of what psychologists call the “unity and flow of consciousness”; it is, ultimately, the structure of the conscious Self. Thanks to the linguistic ritual, we are intellects. The ritual, grammar, is the manifestation of avarice in its action against the envy manifested in words. We are individuals; we are individual intellects because we consist of words (expressions of diabolical envy against God), consolidated by grammar (the expression of diabolical avarice that seeks to preserve the reality created by it). The human mind, the supreme illusion of reality, is the most perfect work of the devil, and it is in this sense that our avaricious insistence on maintaining our individuality is the supreme triumph of the devil. Our effort in favor of language (which is the effort in favor of our intellect) and our effort in favor of the propagation and enrichment of language (which is the effort in favor of the immortality of our intellect) is the culminating point of the glorious career of the devil. The overcoming of language, which would be the abandonment of the intellect, would be the loss of our individuality and, from the opposite perspective of the devil, the salvation of our soul.

6.404. Our individual intellect, formed by envy (words), and maintained by avarice (grammatical rules), is in conservation, meaning it is intimately linked to other intellects. These connections work in two directions: they point outward and inward of the intellect. The existential climate within which these connections work has already been discussed when we analyzed the activities of reading and writing, albeit from a luxurious aspect. At this level of the argument, we can reformulate the problem slightly. The connections that lead my intellect to others (those that correspond to “writing”) are expressions of my envy. With them, I aim to reshape and restructure reality and extend its scope. They are the creative phase of the conversation in which I participate. The connections from other intellects to mine (those that correspond to “reading”) are expressions of my avarice. With them, I aim to increase and consolidate the substance of my intellect. Both of these connections represent my effort towards my immortality as an intellect. The goal of the conversation is my immortality. It is through envy and avarice manifested in conversation that I intend to overcome death. Ultimately, death is the exclusive subject of the ongoing conversation. “Private” conversations are nothing but variations of this theme. If the theme of death and the attempt to overcome it are effectively included within every sentence I capture or articulate, if I receive the sentences with the intention of immortalizing myself and express myself in sentences to immortalize myself, then I am engaged in authentic conversation, fulfilling the existential project within which I am projected. But if the sentences I receive and articulate are meant to avoid or render futile the theme of death, if they represent escapes from this unique and exclusive theme, I betray and deviate from my existential project, engaging in empty talk. My effort to realize myself is synonymous with my effort to immortalize myself. This effort is a symptom of my authenticity. I am an authentic intellect; I am myself only if I am always conscious of death and strive to overcome it through the conversation in which I articulate myself. If I fail to do so, I am not an authentic intellect, I am not myself, but merely one of the crowd, and I descend into empty talk. This profound existential aspect of the conversation has not always been recognized by existential philosophy, which seeks to analyze authenticity. Authentic conversation and empty talk are the two climates in which the intellect functions.

6.405. Authentic conversation, within which my existence projects itself, is a structure of multiple layers. These layers are products of different myths and are ritualized in different ways. The multiplicity of conversational layers allows for a variety and a choice among projects. Let us take, as a single example of these layers, the scientific conversation, which currently represents a powerful form of realization. This layer of conversation is the product of envy, taking the form of the myth of the subject. The distant and transcendent subject has the world as its object within this conversation. The ritual of this conversation is the product of greed, taking the form of the rigorous discourse idealized by pure mathematics. The scientific conversation consists of words that articulate the subject towards the object and does so in a discourse that idealizes pure mathematics. The scientific conversation is objective because it predicates the subject towards the object and is progressive because it follows the ritual of rigorous discourse. The structural functioning of this conversation was discussed in the chapter on anger. Intellects engaged in this type of conversation seek to immortalize themselves in two ways. They absorb scientific phrases and incorporate them into their substance, thus consolidating and increasing the scope of their individuality, which, in this specific case, is their “knowledge.” And they articulate scientific phrases to launch them into the conversation and thereby propagate the conversation enriched by their own individuality towards an ideal myth, which in this specific case is “objective knowledge.” The immortality of the intellect engaged in scientific conversation is “absolute knowledge.” The scientific intellect is authentic because it seeks to overcome death through knowledge. Obviously, this is an absurd goal. All diabolical goals are absurd. But this goal is pursued by a rigorously rational and consistent method. At these heights, diabolical methods are rigorous. The scientific conversation is a stage in the development of the devil characterizing the present.

6.406. Idle talk, within which my existence declines, consists of debris from authentic conversation, forming a kind of garbage repository. Everything is false in the atmosphere it holds. The words that are concepts in authentic conversation turn into prejudices in idle talk. The structure of sentences, which is ritual in authentic conversation, turns into pose in idle talk. The intellect, which is the receiver and producer of sentences in authentic conversation, becomes a mere conduit through which sentences pass in idle talk. Authentic conversation is the articulation of society. Idle talk is the pseudo-articulation of the disorganized and fallen mass society. It consists of words worn out by conversation, glued together to form clichés, wandering in the amorphous mass formed by the “people.” Idle talk can be defined as conversation without a goal. The dialectical tension between envy and greed no longer functions in it. The suppression of envy and greed is a sign of inauthenticity. The mind that confesses to being free of envy and greed confesses its decadence in inauthenticity. Idle talk is therefore the devil’s goal. To achieve idle talk, the devil created conversation, and conversation can be defined, from a diabolical point of view, as idle talk “in statu nasccndi.” When words, which are the articulation of myths, are entirely worn out, that is, exhausted of their sacred content, they enter into idle talk. When structures, which are manifestations of rituals, are entirely realized, that is, stagnated in total rigidity, they enter into idle talk. When intellects, which are intersections of words and sentences, are entirely realized, that is, immortalized, they enter into idle talk. Idle talk is a conversation without subject. The immortalized intellect is the one that has no subject: idle talk is the intellectual paradise towards which all authentic conversation tends. The consciousness of this fact begins to awaken in the conversation of pure mathematics and in that philosophical conversation called “neopositivism.”

All of us participate, with a large part of our intellect, and at certain moments, with our entire intellect, in idle talk. We are intimately familiar with the experience of the intellect’s paradise. In it, we are liberated from the plague of all effort. We become entirely passive, attaining peace of mind. In the warm bath of meaningless phrases, in the loud and empty murmuring of clichés, our intellects rest. The internal tension that held the structure of our self stretches. We lose individuality, becoming “the people.” The loving embrace of the mud welcomes the debris of what were once our selves. Who doesn’t know this nostalgia for the mud, this longing to return to the amorphous bosom of society?

In this climate, the problem of death is overcome. “The people” do not die. “The people” do not think, and death resides in thought. The people do not worry. They pretend that the almost-automatic movements of daily life are eternity. And daily life is all reality because daily life is the very amorphous mass of society. This is the paradise that the devil creates in idle talk. It is the paradise of infinite boredom. It is the paradise of the eternal return of the always identical, of repetition, of the same-old. Traditional churches, where the devil acts powerfully, promise their faithful idle talk as the overcoming of death. The heavens of Christians and Jews are pure idle talk. The pose of angels playing harps (probably repetitive variations of a poor and worn-out theme), the aimless wandering of souls, the insipid happiness of souls without commitment, effort, or subject—this is the heaven that traditional religions promise us in their propaganda. It is, in fact, the hell they promise, and the attraction that this hell exerts on our minds is proof of the devil’s power within us and of the triumphs that idle talk has achieved in the environment that surrounds us.

But when we immerse ourselves in idle talk, we intimately know that we are in hell. We know, deep down, that we are betraying something. That we are, to use a term of Sartre, “salauds” (swine spirits). Or, to use a more religious expression, we have “bad conscience” in idle talk. This bad conscience represents an unrest not yet destroyed in our authenticity. Idle talk offends, ethically and aesthetically, this unrest. It is the cause of our disgust. It is as if this bad conscience within idle talk were a reminder of the gluttony that metamorphosed into envy and greed. It is as if something wanted to remind us that the reality of society (which is essentially idle talk) is nothing but an escape from gluttony. All of society and all of its manifestation—that is, conversation tending toward idle talk—all of this is unveiled, by this remaining authenticity, as an escape. We can say that it is an escape from death. But fundamentally, this is equivalent to saying that it is an escape from the transcendental. The bad conscience that we feel within idle talk, and the disgust it causes us, is the internal aspect of what I attempted to formulate in paragraph 6304 when I discussed the external aspect of society.

Existential philosophy seeks to rationally capture this resistance that something in us offers to our decadence, but the result of this effort is meager. This resistance is not rationalizable. To say that this resistance is the experience of the absurd is to say nothing. I have already tried to show the ambivalence of the term “absurd.” It depends on the context. The experience of the bad conscience (which is the opposite of Sartre’s “mauvaise foi”) is the experience of the absurd within the absurdity of idle talk. It is absurd from the perspective of idle talk. Any attempt to rationalize it ends in infinite regress. Our refusal to follow the devil into idle talk is the manifestation of something entirely different. It is not discussable. Language does not extend to it. Given this resistance, the devil has not yet achieved his goal.

6.410. Envy and greed are the devil’s methods of creating the paradise of society. Externally, this paradise is the perfect society, a society in which these two sins are in perfect balance, thus a satisfied society. It is the society that has overcome history, and nothing happens thereafter. It is the paradise that Marx and Hegel have in mind, which is the perfect realization of all potentialities contained in the dialectical tension between the two sins. Internally, this paradise is idle talk, that is, perfect conversation. In this paradise, all conversation topics will be exhausted. It is the ideal that the logical analysts have in mind. Something in us continues to resist this paradise. Something in us continues to deny reality to that society made up of “people.” The devil has not yet won the battle on this new front.

6.411. The abandonment of society, the transformation of the mind into an outsider, the removal of the intellect from conversation, has become inevitable for the mind that accompanied the devil to this point. This “alienated” mind (in the sense given to this term by idle talk) can take two different directions. It can lead to pure and simple loss of the protective shell that society provides, and the dragging of the mind by the force of everything different. This mind would be lost to the devil. But fortunately, there is another path for the devil to continue his struggle. It is the path of transcending society. In this path, the mind rises above the flock of “people,” becoming the “superman.” Perceiving the relativity of all values, this glorious mind does not rush into the scorching abyss of “absolute good,” but hovers, like Zarathustra, above good and evil to impose its own values on reality, a reality that will no longer be society. In its sovereign situation, this mind is a magnificent spectacle. And it is pride that is the theme of the next chapter.

7.000 Pride

7.001. The battle between the devil and the opposing forces has turned our minds into a field of ruins. The splendid buildings that once adorned it are now in ruins, forming a chaotic heap of debris. The wheel of life, once the driving force of our minds, which integrated us into the community of beings, is cracked, torn apart by lust and inhibition, and its movement is now just a faint tremor of memory and longing. The palace of sciences, once the pride of our constructive capacity, has its walls cracked by the trembling of its foundations, and anger wanders within it, desperate and pursued by the specter of chance. The feast of gluttony covers the scene with the poorly digested remnants of its menu, with machines, instruments, and institutions in different stages of putrefaction, ready to dissolve into amorphous smoke, into nature. The pyramids of society have lost their marble coating and expose their structure: envy and greed. Shreds of words and phrases, inflated by the wind of death, flutter over this desert landscape of our minds. The climate is cold; if not for the low whisper of the cold wind of death, silence would be absolute. The devil seems to have abandoned this destroyed battlefield and appears to have withdrawn from it. Only one survivor wanders alone and pathetic through the streets of this bombarded city, the human will to accomplish itself despite and in defiance of everything.

7.002. This chapter will be a song, a hymn in praise of the human will. It will sing the miraculous legend of its feats. It is the most beautiful, most exciting, most moving of all legends. Storytellers sing this song in bazaars, bards and rhapsodes make their lyres resonate, and the hearts of their listeners, priests in temples chant on the steps of their altars, and the legend of the human will inspires marshals and emperors, wise men, and prophets. Human will: despite everything and in spite of everything. Its determined step overcomes obstacles, and valleys and mountains level to make way for it. It raises its powerful arm, and dreams come true. It spreads its resplendent mantle, and worlds rise. Human will, your name is beauty. You bring forth castles with a thousand towers from thin air, and each tower carries a flag. You transform deaf and dumb stones into white and clear statues carved in your image. You make the wind sing and turn a hurricane into harmony. Praise be to you, human will, creator of art, inventor of the world, producer and destroyer of the devil and God.

7.003. Unexpected and spontaneous, the terrible phrase we have just formulated, or that was formulated despite us, bursts forth expressing the enthusiasm hitherto contained. Let this terrible phrase come, and let it be received with hospitality. It was time to shed our false humility. It was time to confess the intoxication and vertigo caused by the peaks of our creative will. It was time to let the disgusting cloak of hypocrisy fall. Let us no longer be ashamed to speak the whole truth. We have known since we exist, we have felt it and intuited it, that all this about God and the devil, sin and salvation, real world and illusory world, is just idle talk. All this is the work of our will, a representation meant to amuse ourselves. The world is here before us because we ordered it to emerge from the abyss of nothingness. As soon as we turn our backs on it, as soon as we lose interest in it, it will disappear into the same abyss. And what is this world we created to amuse ourselves? The projection screen of our will. We create the world to project ourselves into it. And this image of ourselves that we project onto the screen of the world is God. Sometimes, the illusion we create is so perfect that it manages to deceive even ourselves. In those moments, we worship our own image. But just turn away from it, just make a slight gesture of contempt, and the image vanishes, and God bids us farewell. “Ich weiß, dass ohne mich Gott nicht ein Nu kann leben” (“I know that without me, God cannot live for an instant”). And this image of ourselves that we project onto the screen of the world we have created, and that we call “God,” this image can be projected from two different angles. To distinguish between angles, we call one projection “God” and the other “devil.” It depends on our whim to desire the divine or diabolic world, depending on our point of view. And it equally depends on our will to erase the projection and plunge the world into the gray darkness of neutrality, into the flatness and dullness of a world without God and without devil. It is precisely to avoid this boredom and flatness, to make the representation interesting, that we are projecting our will onto the screen of the world. It is for aesthetic reasons, or to satisfy our sense of balance and drama, that we project God and the devil onto the world. They are apparently two actors appearing on the screen to amuse us, but in reality, they are two masks of our will.

7.004. Everything that is, everything that was, everything that will be, and everything that can be, is our will. To be, and to become, and to be able to be, are forms of our will. Everything stems from our will, and everything returns to it. Everything that happens and everything that occurs, happens and occurs within our will and by virtue of our will. In an eccentric movement, the will creates the world. In a concentric movement, the will knows the world. In this knowledge, the will discovers itself at the core of the world. Knowledge of the world is self-recognition. In another eccentric movement, the will creates the mind. In a concentric movement, the will investigates the mind. In this investigation, the will discovers itself at the depth of the mind. Mind’s investigation, meditation, is self-recognition. World and mind are the two faces of the will. Science and meditation are the jaws of the pincers that hold the nut of illusion created by the will, to break its shell and lay bare the core. They are the two methods of self-recognition.

7.005. Natural science and Yoga are the sharpest and most penetrating teeth of the two jaws advancing into illusion. When they meet at the bottom of the atom and the Atman, the shell of illusion will explode, and the will will recognize itself. In this ultimate revelation, the masks of the devil and God will be torn away. This is when the representation of the will will end. In this climax, the purely formal rules of nature will be revealed, and the veil of Maya will be torn apart. Nothing will remain except pure and free will. But why should the will free itself from itself? Because the illusion it created is so perfect that it deceives even the will itself. The will fell into the ambush it had set for itself. In its eccentric movements, it moved so far from its center that it forgot the center. The concentric movements are a remembering of the center. Natural science and Yoga are the methods of rediscovering the origin. They are the detectives of the will in the thicket of deceptive appearances. They discover and seek to prove that nature and mind are the works of the will, deliberate works, although they may have aspects of autonomy. Nature and mind are works of art. They are works by an unknown but knowable author. Natural science and Yoga prove that the author is the will. How were these works created? Forget, for a moment, natural science and Yoga, and try to evoke within ourselves the creative activity of the will.

7.100 Language

The will tends. Presses. It wants to explode. It is thirsty. It wants to spread. It is tense. It seeks to go beyond itself. It wants to project itself. It seeks power. It wants to accomplish itself. It expresses and expresses itself. It articulates itself. The will becomes language. The will turned into language creates the world and the mind.

7.110 Poetry

The will is the spider that secretes from itself the web of language. Unceasingly and without fatigue, it expels the translucent and brilliant threads of phrases and weaves the threads and ties them into knots, making the web dense. It runs back and forth within the web to consolidate it. By the “principle of individualization,” it creates the illusion of intellects at the intersections between the threads, and by the principle of discourse, it creates the illusion of the autonomy of the web. The web grows and expands in all dimensions, nourished by the secretion of the will. New threads of phrases constantly emerge, new intellects form, and new connections between intellects arise. The threads solidify and become rigid. In these rigid threads, chains are formed consisting of concepts and relationships between concepts. These chains bind the intellects. The chains of threads branch out. Some of the branches join together to form new chains, new discourses. Other branches float with their tips in the void, unfinished arguments. The force of the will that propels the web in all directions informs all the threads. It is the meaning of the phrases and the goal of the discourses. The web vibrates. Pulsates. The threads run. The positions of the intellects within the web are fluid and variable. At times, they are connected to each other by solid threads of discourse; at other times, they move away to the edges of the web and become almost isolated, held to the web only by recent, thin, and weak threads. In some intellects, the will petrifies. These are the rigorous and clear intellects. In other intellects, the will pulsates and seeks to expand further, to extend the scope of the web. These intellects are propelled by the will to the edge of the web. From them, the will extends new threads and branches of threads outside the void. The will takes risks with these intellects.

7.111. In the extreme and risky situation in which these propelled intellects find themselves, the web of language floats in nothingness. These intellects are in contact with nothingness. They are the outposts of the will. The illusion and deliberate character of the web are existentially absorbed by these intellects. It is to these extreme points that the spider of the will rushes to consolidate the web. It rushes to the edge of the web, occupies the place of the intellect in the extreme situation, and transforms this intellect into the center of its activity. From this extreme, the will secretes its threads and forms new discourses. The extreme intellect has become the center of the creative activity of the will, the source of language. This intellect has become a poet. And in this situation, in this extreme tension of the will, we can experientially savor the creative activity of the will.

7.112. The first phase of this activity is the phase of retreat. The intellect gathers the network of threads that surround it and concentrates them on itself. Its discourse becomes internalized. In this internal discourse, phrases intersect and intertwine to form fabrics of unbearable complexity. The intellect becomes a Gordian knot and becomes unbearable to itself. The tension of the will within it threatens to explode it. The experience of this stage is despair. Suddenly, in an instant that strikes like a bolt of lightning, the sword falls and cuts the Gordian knot, and the struck intellect plunges, internally torn, into the abyss of nothingness. But the threads it had gathered continue to hold it to the web of language. They prevent it from sinking. The will that took possession of this intellect starts projecting new threads to ensure the continuity of the web. These new threads projecting from the struck and precipitated intellect vibrate and oscillate with the shock the intellect experienced upon plunging. These threads are new verses. The will has just created, in this intellect possessed by it, a new work. The experience for the intellect is that of exaltation, of a sense of power, of pride.

7.113. The new verses projecting from the intellect of the poet towards the web of language are an immediate manifestation of the will. They are concrete will. In their concreteness, they are caught by the intellects close to the poet. Let us call these intellects “critics” who reside in the proximity of the poet. In these critical intellects, the hot and vibrant threads of the verses are consolidated and integrated into the web. They are discussed. The concrete manifestation of the will is subjected, by the critical intellects, to the process of conversation, which progressively makes it more abstract. Conversation is the process of abstraction in the sense of a progressive distancing from the concreteness of the will. Concreteness and abstraction are measures of the distance of a phrase from the creative will. As a phrase moves away from the creative will, as it advances into the web of language, it loses concreteness and gains abstraction, it loses intimacy with the will, and gains autonomy. Phrases advanced in the process of abstraction take on the appearance of automaticity and independence from the creative will. They appear as “data.”

7.114. The phrases that originated in their concreteness within the creative will and flow into the web of language through the process of abstraction run in countless streams. It is as if the intellect possessed by the creative will were located on the peak of a mountain, and as if the verses flowing from it spilled over the mountain’s slopes. But in the plain, at the farthest point from poetry, all these currents, all these threads of discourse, are dammed into two lakes: nature and mind. Nature and mind are the dams that receive abstracted verses. Nature and mind are the reservoirs of the entirely abstracted, entirely “objectified” will. So far are these lakes from the peaks of creation that they do not seem connected to them. But they hide, in their murky waters, the secret of their origin in the will. The natural sciences fish in the lake on the western side of the mountain and begin to discover the structure of the will at the bottom of the lake. They begin to discover the primordial poet who created nature: the will. Yoga stirs and rummages through the mud in the lake on the eastern side of the mountain. It has always suspected the origin of this lake. And there is more. The two lakes communicate underground. The catches and investigations of the natural sciences have discovered the underground channel that connects the lakes. They will reinforce, from below, the efforts of Yoga. They will unveil, through a joint effort, the secret of the lakes: nature and mind are will abstracted, hence objectified. The prophet of this discovery, Schopenhauer, this intellect who personifies pride, and the glorifier and singer of this discovery, Nietzsche, this intellect who personifies the absurdity of pride, are the guides of these efforts. The philosophy of the present, especially that which is dedicated to the analysis of experience and language, follows in their footsteps.

7.120 Music and Concrete Poetry

Every verse that projects from the poet’s intellect is a concrete manifestation of will. But at the moment of articulation, the verse begins to abstract itself. The rapidity of verse’s decline into abstraction is related to the slope that connects the course of discourse initiated with the lakes of the mind and nature. Some verses rush, foaming, directly towards the lake of nature. Others head, with parallel speed, towards the lake of the mind. And there are those that flow gently and calmly through the slightly inclined plateaus of poetry. The courses of these verse discourses are prefigured by layers of language. We will call the course that leads directly to the lake of nature “pictorial language,” the one that heads to the lake of the mind “semantic language,” and the one that lingers on the plain of poetry, “language of music,” although this nomenclature is provisional and subject to future arguments.

7.121. The course of the language of music has a barely perceptible slope. It hardly has meaning. We have defined “meaning” as the direction of discourse. The discourse with a gentle slope, the discourse almost devoid of meaning, is the discourse of the language of music, and this language retains the concreteness of will. Verses expressed in musical language provide the most immediate experience of creative will. The creative will manifests itself in musical verses as pure beauty. The experience that music provides is concrete because we are in direct contact with the creative will, that is, with the “aistheton,” the aesthetic impact of will. Music is an almost entirely pure discourse, untainted by the impurities of ethics and logic that adhere to pictorial and semantic discourse to distort it. Ethics and logic are aspects of phrases that arise as a consequence of abstraction, as a result of thoughts drifting away from will. Ethics and logic are symptoms of abstract thoughts. Will, the source of reality, is beyond ethics and logic, beyond Good and Evil, and beyond truth. The immediate manifestation of will is beauty. The mind possessed by the creative will is a magnificent mind. It is located beyond Good and Evil and knows that art is superior to truth. Music is the purest articulation of this mental climate.

7.122. Music is pure beauty. Music is the articulation of reality. The essence of reality (which is the creative will) is beauty. The structure of reality consists of the rules of aesthetics, it is harmony. When we listen to music, we are confronted with the structure of reality. This is the reason for the deep emotion that music causes in us and the sense of exaltation and liberation it provokes. In the presence of music, lies and sin explode, and equally, truth and goodness. Music is the ultimate argument. After music, nothing more can be said. And what cannot be said must be silenced. Music dissolves God and the devil, annihilates both. All argumentation and dialectics are surpassed and made insignificant by music; it encapsulates them. When we listen to music, we feel that it is our origin and our goal. The language turned into beauty, which is music, represents our most direct path towards self-recognition. Music overcomes illusion because it directly represents reality, which is our creative will. It is pure language. Pure language is the burial ground of God and the devil.

7.123. Music is the most immediate manifestation of will. All other discourses are distorted will, abstracted will, they are illusion, they are maya. If it were possible to purify all other discourses from the impurities of logic and ethics, if it were possible to concretize all other discourses, illusion would be overcome, and reality reestablished. It is, in fact, an attempt to translate all discourses, all languages, into musical language, to concretize them. These attempts at translation (which are attempts at self-recognition) are currently in progress. Let us consider, in a brief outline, these attempts.

7.124. As a first example, let us consider the attempt to concretize semantic language undertaken by concrete poets. They seek to catch the discourse at the moment of its eruption from the creative will and detain it on the plateau of poetry. They try to prevent this discourse from flowing rapidly towards conversation and then towards the mind. They also try to prevent the discourse from crystallizing into verse. Therefore, they insist on the “aistheton,” the pure and immediate experience of the word. They accept the word as it springs from the will, the immediate articulation of the will. They submit to the word and imbibe it.

They take the word in its entirety, as a visual and auditory structure. They do not suppress the meaning of the word; that is, they do not try to drag the word away from the river of language, whose course gives direction to every word. But the mere fact that the word is detained in this attempt already alters its direction and modifies its meaning. Therefore, concrete poetry demands a violent effort from the intellect. Indeed, it requires an effort of will. It demands that the intellect refuses to be dragged by discourse and seeks to remain on the plateau of poetry. The entire web of language pulls the intellect down the flank of the mountain of poetry. Concrete poetry seeks to offer the intellect support to hold onto the summit. Therefore, concrete poetry is a weapon of will against illusion, seeking to avoid abstraction and maintain concreteness. It is a new weapon, and its effectiveness has not yet been fully tested. However, it is potentially powerful. The emergence of this attempt in Brazil proves that this civilization is ready to overcome gluttony and envy through pride.

7.130 Painting

The situation in which attempts to concretize pictorial language take place is more complex and requires a slightly more detailed consideration. The poets who choose this language to articulate the creative will are, at least in the West, deeply immersed in the illusion of nature. They accept nature, this set of pictorial phrases highly removed from the creative will; they accept this nature as “given.” They are being deceived. They do not see that nature is an abstract construct and that, to concretize it, one must discover the creative will within it. They do not recognize themselves in nature. They do not know or have forgotten that it was the will, that is, themselves, who created it. From this misunderstanding arises the hybrid phenomenon that is Western painting and sculpture.

7.131. The painter and sculptor, who are “poets” in the sense we have employed, are intellects possessed by creative will. The will tends, in these intellects, to articulate itself through the process we have described. It expels and projects its articulation, which is beauty. It is an articulation according to aesthetic rules and, in its initial impulse, devoid of all meaning. But the painter and sculptor, trapped in the illusion of nature, precipitate this articulation onto nature to capture it. Let us use an image to describe the process. When the painter becomes possessed by the creative will, they are on the summit of poetry. The creative will projects from them the pure articulation of beauty, which is a network of rules organizing colors and shapes. These colors and shapes are already an illusion, the first abstraction of the creative will. The rules, however, are pure will. But the abstraction that colors and shapes represent is an inevitable consequence of articulation, as articulation is already an alienation from reality. The network of rules organizing colors and shapes is launched by the painter (sitting on the summit of the mountain of poetry) into the lake of nature to fish for data. The painter deeply bows before nature in the act of casting their net. In a final effort of will, they collect the immense net in nature and try to drag it back to the peak of poetry. But in this process, the net has changed and become heavy. Moss, shells, and fish have adhered to it and almost unrecognizably altered the net’s structure. Henceforth, the net “represents” nature. This net, hidden by the illusory impurities of nature, is what we call “representative” painting or sculpture. The history of Western visual arts is an enumeration of works of this kind, in which the creative will is concealed. These products are works of art because the net of the creative will is transparent in them and they are all the more emotionally stirring the more it shines through. But they are incomparably less concrete than the verses of music or concrete poetry.

7.132. These works are the results of the power of illusion over the intellects that created them. Nevertheless, recently, we have begun to awaken from the illusory dream and started to recognize the creative will within us as the foundation of reality. This self-recognition acts as a penetrating light that penetrates the fabric of illusion like an X-ray to discover its structure. It is against this light that we begin to examine these works. We discover, at the core of these paintings and sculptures, the network of will, a pure structure that organizes colors and shapes. This rediscovery of will in visual arts profoundly modifies our attitude and provides a new experience of reality. Reality can be immediately and concretely articulated by the aesthetic rules that structure colors and shapes. The consciousness of this is the explanation for the emergence of so-called “abstract” and concrete painting and sculpture.

7.133. The term “abstract,” used by painters, is proof of the illusion that has only just been overcome. These works are “abstract” because they refuse to represent nature. But nature is still tacitly accepted as reality. The works that arise from this effort are close to will and distant from nature, and therefore called “abstract.” In fact, they are concrete works. Abstract painting is the first manifestation of concrete pictorial language in the West. It is a vivential proof of the enormous progress of Western mentality in its attempt to free itself from illusion and rediscover the will. It is a fully conscious articulation of the will in colors and shapes. In these paintings and sculptures, the will speaks almost immediately. These new works liberate our minds, as do musical compositions and concrete poems, and demonstrate viventially the pride of our will.

7.134. Concrete painters are of fundamental importance for an interpretation of the present. In my view, there is no more important event. These painters are the prophets of future development; they are the pioneers of pride. They are, in fact, the advanced outposts of the science of nature. Our scientists are still at the stage of representational painting. They do not even know that they are poets. Victims of illusion, and almost entirely unaware of the creativity of their efforts, they believe that nature is a reality. They seek to cast the purely aesthetic net of the creative will, which projects from their intellects in the form of mathematical rules; they seek to cast this net into the lake of nature to represent it. And these poets disguised as scientists are surprised to discover that nature is structured according to these rules. They are beginning, albeit somewhat confusedly, to discover their own will at the heart of nature. The process of concretizing nature has begun. The process of self-awareness in the natural sciences has commenced. Nature is a work of art. Scientists are its poets. But nature is representational art, figurative. It represents the creative will in its abstract stage. Nature is an illusion. The natural sciences, following in the footsteps of painting, are beginning to apply the X-rays of self-recognition to nature. Modern physics is the most advanced science and is rapidly approaching the stage of concrete painting. The structures of modern physics are no longer representational or figurative. They no longer contain “true” or “false” phrases. The criterion applied to judgments of modern physics is the criterion of aesthetics, and the whole of physics seeks not to “signify” but to be consistent. The science of nature is becoming musicalized.

7.140 Science

We seek to illustrate the method by which the creative will weaves the veil of illusion, applying three languages. What we call the “world,” whose most abstract extremes are nature and mind, is the fabric created by the will; it is maya. Mind and nature form the multicolored and floating surface of the veil, if we contemplate it reflectively, that is, in the opposite direction of the will. This surface is what philosophy calls the “phenomenal world,” for it is through this surface that the reality of the will appears to the reflective mind. Reflection is the disciplined penetration of the surface, with the purpose of attaining the reality of the will. Reflection is the reverse movement of poetry. Therefore, reflection is the attempt to destroy the illusion, an attempt at self-recognition. Let us cast a gaze upon the surface of the veil, upon the world of phenomena, before attempting to follow reflection in its progress.

7.141. The world of phenomena presents itself to us, at this stage of our development, as a set governed by the rules of beauty. Anger has eliminated its logical aspect, and envy and greed its ethical aspect, so that the world of phenomena is ethically neutral and logically insignificant. Ethics and logic are aspects of judgments abstracted from the creative will; they are illusory and can no longer deceive us. “God” and “devil” are outdated terms. They are prejudices from which we have already freed ourselves. Our reflection on the world of phenomena advances without the burden of these prejudices. This more illusory layer of the world has been abolished. “God” and “devil” are the extremes of illusion, the furthest phenomena from the will. We can disregard them. They are nothing more than extreme projections of the will onto the screen of the phenomenal world; they are illusory even from the perspective of the illusion of the world. The image we seek to create is as follows: at the center is the creative will. Around it, the threads of sentences, created by that will, extend. These threads form, on their horizon, the two illusory realities of nature and mind. And the covering that surrounds all of this to give it meaning is the projection of God and the devil. If reflection manages to eliminate nature and mind, if it manages to dissolve this illusion and reach the will, the protective covering will automatically collapse. In this collapse of God and the devil, we can verify that both are nothing more than our own inflated will. This will be the definitive victory of the will.

7.142. Viewing the phenomenal world from its surface, it seems to consist of phenomena that are connected in two ways: through causal chains or random conglomerates. We know that this is an illusion because all phenomena are connected to each other and to our will by the chains established by our will. Accepting causal chains as independent of our will and trying to reduce random conglomerates and causal chains (as antiquated sciences do) is proof of the strength of illusion over reflective minds. As long as science nurtures this illusion, as long as it accepts causal connections as “given,” it will not be able to penetrate to the will. Science is not yet aware of the fact that we are the authors of the laws of nature; it still lacks this degree of self-recognition. But when this self-awareness is achieved, all the ontological and epistemological difficulties that currently oppress the sciences will have been overcome. The problem of causal law and chance, which caused anger to fail, will be seen in a new light and lose its problematic nature. The situation will be as follows:

7.143. The phenomenal world is a set of fields of activity of the will, although very abstract fields. There are fields in nature that appear to us as governed by causal laws because in those fields the creative will has fixed itself in a rigid and determined structure. These are the fields in which the creative will has articulated, through the intellects of the poets called “scientists,” organized verses. There are other fields in nature in which chance seems to govern. These are the fields in which the will is seeking to manifest itself in verses. The function of science is precisely to articulate the creative will in these fields. If phenomena behave causally, they prove, with their behavior, the strength of our will. The movement of the stars, for example, or free fall, are works of art that prove the function of the creative will. If phenomena behave randomly, they prove, with their behavior, that the will still has open fields for its creative activity. The behavior of particles within the atom, for example, is raw material for future poets. Of course, all these fields that form the ensemble of nature are illusory fields and were created by the will. But they were created precisely so that the will could articulate itself in them. Nature is an abstract articulation of the creative will, which becomes concrete thanks to the science that has become self-aware. The laws of nature do not prove God, but they prove the divine force of the will. The randomness in nature does not prove divine interventions, but it proves the creative freedom of the will. All of nature is a representation of our will. It is a set of articulations of the will in a wholly abstract pictorial language.

7.144. The phenomenal world has, like a carpet, two sides and two faces. Nature is one of these faces. Mind is the other. Everything said about nature applies equally to the mind. The method of penetrating the mind is different from the method of penetrating nature and has been perfected in the East. But the results are exactly the same. The phenomena of the world of nature have replicas in the world of the mind and vice versa. The will is at the bottom of both nature and mind. However, I relegate the consideration of this aspect of the illusory world of phenomena to a future paragraph. I will only say that nature is a set of phrases articulated in a pictorial language, and the mind in a semantic language, and that there is a correspondence between the two languages.

7.145. We have, therefore, the following worldview created by arrogance: The creative will emits language. The illusory and extreme significance of language are the pseudo-concepts “God” and “devil.” In the intermediate regions, the misty fabric of the phenomenal world extends in all its deceptive richness. This misty fabric has two faces: nature and mind. So beautiful and complex is this work of art of our will that it appears to be completely autonomous and conceals its origin from reflective contemplation. We no longer recognize ourselves in the world of phenomena and forget that we are its authors.

This error of ours is the source of all our suffering. We believe that the phenomenal world conditions and oppresses us. We must tear apart this illusion; we must tear apart the veil of maya. We must refresh our memory so that we can rediscover ourselves as the authors and creators of the world. We are the authors of this cosmos we fear. We are the creators of the destiny we have attributed, so ingenuously, to the illusion of “God” and “devil.” Let us tear, therefore, the veil of illusion, let us become gods. Let us draw the final conclusions from thinkers like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, let us try to take advantage of the technique of Yoga.

7.200 Pliers of the Will

We spoke, at the beginning of this chapter, of “claws of the will” that break the shell of illusion to expose the core. Let us modify the image and say that it is scissors cutting the veil of maya. The scissors consist of two blades, the Western and the Indian. The Western blade delves into nature and seeks to eliminate from this illusory fabric its ethical and logical aspects, to discover the purely linguistic, purely aesthetic structure of its foundation. The Indian blade seeks to reconstruct the mind, cutting vertically and exposing the path of the will in creating the mind. The methods of science and Yoga are opposing methods. Science seeks to find the will by approaching it. Yoga seeks to find the will by chasing after it. Both are detectives of the will. Science starts from the scene of the crime and, retracing the steps of the criminal, seeks to locate it. The Yogi does not seek the criminal. He knows who committed the crime. Therefore, he follows the footsteps to catch him in the act. The scientist and the Yogi are thus placed in different climates of research. The scientist’s method is systematic doubt because he does not know the criminal and suspects everyone. The Yogi’s method is systematic perseverance because he knows the criminal but needs to prove his knowledge. It is true that science strongly suspects the will as the criminal. But the scientific pose requires the scientist to keep up appearances of doubt and continue pretending to search. If the Yogi condescends to speak to us, he speaks with exasperating conviction to a Western listener, but his persistence proves, existentially, that there must still be traces of doubt in his attitude.

7.201 Science as Yoga

However, currently, the two methods, so opposed, and the two different climates, are beginning to converge. Science still pretends to scorn Yoga, but certain scientific disciplines seem to confirm both the results and the assumptions of Yoga. Yoga continues to observe our science with a smile of benevolent superiority, but the concepts it formulates increasingly resemble the scientific terms it scorns. Science has penetrated so deeply into the fabric of nature that it has become almost transparent. Deep within this fine veil, woven from mathematical equations reducible to zero, science already catches a glimpse of the Yogi in his lotus posture, trying to tear the veil. Only one final step is lacking, and science and Yoga will be united. This convergence does not require much imagination. The history of the white race will conclude with this encounter in the circle of arrogance. The two blades of the scissors called the “civilization of the white race,” which separated five thousand years ago, will have reunited. It will be the end of a cycle. Perhaps our days are numbered, and our arrogance is a symptom of our decline. Or of our omnipotence, as science and Yoga would say. Let us observe this encounter.

7.202. The world of phenomena consists of attributes, properties of something. It is a collection of colors, noises, and smells of something. These attributes and properties are fleeting and volatile. The ancient Greeks already knew that attributes are deceptive and do not provide “knowledge” (sophia). They sought something of which attributes are properties. The history of Western thought can be seen as the history of the search for this something. They attempted, for example, to hierarchize attributes and speak of primaries and secondaries, so that extension or hardness would be “immediate” attributes of something, and the others even more illusory than these. They tried to deny movement in the phenomenal world (Parmenides) or attempted, like Heraclitus, to identify movement with something. Plato even denied all reality to the world of phenomena but elevated the mind as the foundation of reality.

7.203. But all of this was mere deliberate speculation. It did not convince the “senses,” that is, the lust that insisted on reality, because enjoyability, of the world of attributes. Philosophers can say whatever they want, the table still remains the table because I “feel” its reality. The method of science, however, fortified the arguments of philosophical speculation so convincingly that even lust cannot ignore them. With its instruments, that is, with something experientially sippable, science proves that the table is not black, or hard, or anything, because it is not a thing. Nor is it a copy of a Platonic original or any other form of mental phenomenon: it simply does not exist. What exists is an electromagnetic and gravitational field; hence, there are structures of potentialities. The field is an imaginary structure in which something can occur. And the field is the substance of the phenomenal world, for example, the table. Therefore, in discussing the world of appearances, we should speak in the potential from now on, not in the real, as we are currently doing. The reality of the “material” world has evaporated.

7.204. This leaves materialist philosophers in an embarrassing situation. This philosophy, born from the science of the 18th and 19th centuries, existed thanks to its connection with the sciences, and it maintained the same connection that scholastic philosophy had with theology. Now, the materialists must get used to their position as heretics in the face of modern science. But idealist philosophy should not nurture the hope of becoming the heir of materialism. Science has not become idealistic. It has simply become self-conscious and does not need philosophy. It is almost ready to prove, empirically and rationally, that the world of phenomena does not exist. What exists is a set of rules. And these rules are the material with which science has to deal, to organize them. As we can see, the non-existence of the phenomenal world is not the end for science but the beginning of its activities. Science begins to understand itself. And this is its purpose, not to understand “nature.” Nature is the consequence of the self-understanding of the science of nature. Science will become a creator. It will understand that it is the creative will. It will understand that the laws formulated by it are not something “discovered” in nature but are the will itself creating nature. In the stage of magic, these laws had an ethical character; in the stage of representational and abstract science, they had a logical character. But in the future stage of concrete science, they will have a purely aesthetic character, as they already begin to have in modern physics. They will be beautiful laws. The phenomena of nature will not follow the laws of science because they must (magic), nor because they need to (current science), but because they were composed by creative science (future science). The world of science of the future will be a work of art conscious of itself. Whatever the will desires, whatever it asks for, whatever it dreams, science will be ready to produce it in the form of nature. Nature will be the will’s dream brought into existence by science to amuse it. It will be art for art’s sake. And when the will grows tired of this representation, nature will vanish like foam. Nature will be a deliberate composition, and we will experience in it the same sensation that music provides us. Contemplating nature will be a liberating experience, just like music, because it will be a concrete and immediate manifestation of our will. We will admire in nature its composer, which is our own will. We will be absolute.

7.210 Yoga as Science

The phenomenal world presents itself, when we reverse our contemplation, as the world of the mind. The West has not achieved great success in this inversion, and we will follow the method of Yoga to describe this scene. The world of the mind appears as a set of thoughts, imaginations, desires, and impulses. The ancient yogis had already discovered that these phenomena are illusory and deceptive. In the time of the Vedas, Hindu thinkers sought to penetrate the illusory layer of the mind that these phenomena form. They discovered a structure that informs these phenomena, a structure very similar to our laws of nature. They called it “karma.” But the parallel should not be exaggerated. Our laws only had an ethical aspect in the stage of magic. Science relegated this aspect of the law to the field of theology, and in the West, we have two distinct disciplines: science and theology. In India, the division was never made. “Karma” is a structure of laws that are both ethical and logical, and Yoga is parallel to our science and theology at the same time. But this does not make it a “primitive” discipline. It is as rigorous a method as ours. Our scientific method prepares to transform logical laws into aesthetics, and thus leads to mysticism. Yoga achieves the same result without having previously eliminated the ethical aspect of its discipline. This is the reason for the apparent primitivism of Yoga, but also for its apparent progressiveness. The judgments that the yogis make appear to us simultaneously as barbaric stuttering and prophetic babbling, and it will be necessary to translate them into our civilized language to make them understandable.

7.211. If self-conscious will turns against the mind to elucidate it, it penetrates successive layers of illusion. First, the will understands the illusion of the relationship between mind and “body.” The “body” is nothing but a superficial and entirely fictitious layer of the mind, and the mind changes bodies according to the rules of karma, just as the body changes clothes. The second illusion that is overcome is the one concerning the individuality of the mind. The will discovers that the individual mind is only a superficial organ of the great mental wheel, which is the foundation of all minds. The individual mind is just a passing manifestation of this fundamental wheel, arising from it to dissolve back into it. It is merely a phenomenon caused by the rotation of this wheel, and this rotation is governed by the laws of karma. The “principle of individuation,” which is an aspect of karma, brings forth the illusion of individual minds from the mental wheel, as well as the illusion of the continuous “reincarnation” of these minds and the continuous exchange of bodies. But this very wheel of the mind, “samsara,” is also an illusion, and this is the third discovery of the will. This entire gigantic wheel, which unites all seemingly individual minds of plants, animals, humans, and gods, is nothing but an illusory whirlwind that arose in the creative will. It is nothing but a “poetic” manifestation of the creative will, the “atman.” In this respect, Yoga is very close to the current Western thought. The fourth illusion to be overcome is the differentiation between mind and nature. They are both aspects of the “atman.” The phenomena of nature, of which the “body” is a part, are merely superficial layers of the mind and are continuously produced and absorbed by the mind according to the rules of karma. Therefore, the expression “reincarnation of the mind” is equivalent to “re-ensoulment of the body” to describe the rotation of the wheel. Moreover, the distinction between mind and nature is not strict, and intermediate stages can be discovered, such as astral bodies, specters, and gods. This proves not only the illusion of the distinction but also the illusion of all phenomena of the mind and nature. The last illusion penetrated by the will in its elucidating effort is the illusion of the devil and God, of the “Brahman.” The Brahman, this apparent foundation of the “atman,” is nothing but a projection of the “atman” and is identical to it. Everything is the creative will. It is true that this final conclusion is not generally accepted by the yogis. They mostly continue to pay homage to the “Brahman.” But the very structure of the Yoga discipline proves that it is entirely dedicated to the struggle against the Brahman, and its goal is the overcoming of the Brahman.

7.212. At the moment when the elucidating will, the will turned against itself, recognizes itself in the depth of all appearances, recognizes itself in the “atman,” the chain of karma is broken. The veil of illusion, “maya,” which includes nature and mind, is torn, and nothing remains except the “atman.” The whole world, nature, and mind are nothing but creations of the “atman,” dreams of the “atman,” and the chains of fate, “karma,” were imposed upon it by the “atman” itself. Karma is nothing but an aesthetic web woven by the creative will to fulfill its dream. “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” The result of Yoga is identical to the result towards which Western sciences are approaching.

7.213. This is, therefore, the situation that presents itself to the self-conscious will: nature and mind are works of art of the creative will. They are a hymn of praise to the will, a musical monologue of the “atman.” What sustains the world, what gives it structure, is the harmonious order of karma, which is a musical and grammatical order, the order of language. The world is a monologue and a song, a monologue and a song without meaning. The world is a song without words. The world was created by the will as pure beauty without utility. The mathematical and musical beauty of the structure of the world is an existential proof of the creative will. The self-conscious will enjoys the world as beauty. The deluded mind, which does not recognize itself in the world, suffers in the world because the ethical and logical aspects of the world oppress it. This suffering is overcome by self-recognition, and everything is transformed into the pure savoring of pure beauty. The phenomena governed by causal laws are understood as perfect and harmonious articulations of our will. The areas of chance are understood as fields of activity of our will. It is as if the world of phenomena were a canvas on which we are painting. The phenomena governed by causal laws are the parts of the canvas that are already covered with the oil of our creative activity. The events by chance are the parts in which we are applying the brush of our creative activity. The design of the picture is within us, and we project it onto the canvas. Chance in the world of phenomena is the point at which our will is realized. It is the tip of our brush that we apply against the world. It has been said that “chance” and “miracle” are synonymous and seek to articulate the creative moment in the world. Chance is the miracle by which our will is realized. It is the bridge through which the design of our will transfers to the world. Thus, law and chance have become the two aspects of our will, which is our freedom. Law is our realized will, chance is our will in action, and both are the two aspects of our freedom. The chains of Karma, the chains of fate, the chains of illusion, are finally broken. We are sovereign.

7.214. The structure of the world does not seem insignificant to us if we still persist in the illusion of this world. In this illusion, we recognize, or believe to recognize, values. And we recognize, or believe to recognize, knowledge. But in the lofty stage of self-recognition, we realize with ecstasy that the world is devoid of values and knowledge. Nothing has value in the world, and nothing can be known except our will. The criterion to be applied to the world is purely formal; it is the aesthetic criterion of internal consistency. The insistence of Kant on synthetic a priori judgments is surpassed in this act of self-recognition. The world is the product of our judgments organized by the rules of our will. They are judgments without meaning. They are all synthetic, and they are all a priori. They are, in fact, all mathematical or musical judgments, which are equivalent. The laws are articulations of themselves. These laws are purely formal, with no ethical or epistemological aspects, they do not value or seek knowledge.

7.215. But at the extreme of illusion, these laws acquire ethical and epistemological contexts. In this extreme, the illusion of Good and Truth arises. The creative will brought forth these illusions to give meaning to the world it created. It created the illusion of Good and Evil, and the illusion of Truth and Lie, to make the illusory world it created consistent. It created the illusion of a purpose in the world. This illusion makes the work of the will perfect. It deceives perfectly. The will created nature and mind for six days and on the sixth day, to crown its work, it created the illusion of Good and Evil, Truth and Lie. The creative will created God and the devil on the sixth day. It did so to be able to rest on the seventh day. Because now the world was perfect. God and the devil gave it an appearance of objectivity. God and the devil function to maintain the world’s apparent independence from the will. God and the devil govern the world as proxies for the will. They are the two substitutes for creation, the two auxiliary elements of the will. Had the will not created God and the devil, the world would obviously demonstrate its lack of meaning. It would be an obviously absurd world, a world obviously dependent on the will. By projecting God and the devil onto the world, the will perfectly masked the obscurity and subjectivity of the world. Thanks to God and the devil, the world manages to deceive the mind and thus amuse the creative will. Without God and the devil, the world would be a tedious representation. It would be obviously a creation of the will. Thanks to God and the devil, the will can have fun in the world. God and the devil are the principal clowns created by the will to give attraction to the representation that is the world. God and the devil are projections of the will, created in its likeness.

7.216. The self-conscious will knows that God and the devil are its creations. But it knows that they are useful creations. The Nietzschean phrase (whose thought we are following in this chapter, although somewhat independently), the phrase “God is dead” must be understood in this context. God is dead because we killed Him when we acquired self-awareness. But He can be resurrected at the slightest movement of our finger. And by resurrecting God, we will automatically have resurrected the devil. The devil is the counterpart of God, a necessary counterpart for the aesthetic balance of the representation we are assembling. These two masterpieces of our will shall continue to function to our full satisfaction. They will amuse the will without causing it embarrassment. At the slightest sign of discomfort, God and the devil can be abolished, to be reinstated when the representation of the world requires it.

7.217. The self-conscious will is all-powerful. Everything around it was created by it and is subject to its commands. Everything around it is pure music, pure mathematics, pure beauty. The veils of illusion have been penetrated and have become transparent. They can now be consciously used to create the experience of beauty. And in this lies the will’s purpose. To create and enjoy beauty. The self-conscious will exists in the paradise of beauty. It is the paradise of eternal weaving of beauty. The eternal return of the ever-identical will to power, as Nietzsche would say. Is the paradise we have just outlined, and the liberation, the freedom of will we have just drawn, or is it something entirely different?

7.300 Contrition

This entire chapter has hardly mentioned the term “pride.” It was not necessary to insist on this point. Every sentence and thought were saturated with it. Let us confess that in the course of this chapter, we did not have enough self-control to choose our words carefully. It flowed uncontrollably. The violent contortions of science, art, philosophy, and the acrobatics of Yoga overwhelmed our minds and left no inclination for a deliberate scheme. We followed, fascinated, its grotesque exercises and let ourselves be carried away by its acrobatics. And now, here we are in paradise. We can rest for a moment and take a look at the victorious will. There it is, in all its purity, with legs crossed behind the neck. The creative will of beauty does not offer, honestly speaking, a dazzling spectacle. On the contrary, it is quite repugnant. The dry and contorted limbs of this illuminated yogi, intertwined in a way that makes it impossible to distinguish between legs and arms, do not give the image of a liberated mind. The will, in its posture of deep meditation on itself, does not exude the aura of sovereignty. It must be confessed that the representation the will presents to us is chilling. There is an air of spell, sinister, and gloomy in this whole process of self-recognition, in this entire procedure of overcoming illusion and freeing oneself from the veil of maya. There is something deeply malevolent, blasé, and refined, something deliberate in this triumph of the will. It must be confessed, it must be proclaimed in defiance of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and the sages of the East: all this self-knowledge, all this conscious creation of beauty, all this articulation of nature by the human creative will, all this enlightenment of the mind by the human will, all this disciplined and methodical striving for salvation, is the work of the devil. It is the capital sin of pride. All this systematic revaluation of all values, all this twisting of the supreme into the insignificant, and the insignificant into the supreme, all this pouring of the inner into the outer and the outer into the inner, all of this is the very essence of hell. The enlightenment, “samadhi,” that accompanies the exercises of Yoga, and science, and philosophy, and (unfortunately) the creative activity of art, is an enlightenment produced by the flames of hell. The mind free from all illusion, the emancipated mind is the mind writhing in the cauldrons of hell. The only support of this mind, the only substance that sustains it, is the devil’s pitchfork. The paradise of disciplined enlightenment is the spit revolving around which the mind gyrates.

7.301. But how can the work of the devil be a situation in which the mind perceives the absurd illusion that is the devil? How can the devil create a situation in which he is annihilated? To understand this diabolically confusing situation, we must go back to the situation in which this development took place. It was a situation of the darkest despair. Everything within us had been destroyed by the struggle between God and the devil for our soul. We lost our naive faith in life and our faith in pure reason, and practical reason, and society. We lost the pleasure of immediate experience, of pure knowledge, and the joy that accompanies the transformation of nature into instruments, and the enthusiasm that accompanies engagement in society for an ideal. Our vital fiber had been annihilated, and our intellectual morality, and our productive élan, and our ethos in society. All of this had disintegrated in the terrible fire of divinity. The very forms of our mind broke, cracked, and burst in the scorching breath of divinity. Only debris remained. When society disintegrated into envy and greed, we had lost the last connection with reality. We faced nothingness. In this extreme situation, there were only three choices left to us. The grace of merciful madness. The grace of sweet death. The vertical fall into the abyss of faith in God.

7.302. The second and third options would have been catastrophes for the devil. He chose the first one. Our suicide at this stage would have been a divine victory. The fall into faith had to be avoided at all costs. The devil chose madness. He chose a madness that suited him. He seduced our minds into the madness of beauty. Pure art, pure science, pure meditation, this is the madness the devil chose, and we fell into the trap. Driven by our development, the devil renounced all pretensions to create illusory reality to ensnare us. He gave up all poses, all tricks. He showed his nakedness to our torn minds. We took this risk. He shouted, in effect: look at me, and look at the divine abyss, now make your choice. And we, fully aware, made our choice. We chose the madness of proud solitude that the devil offered us, to avoid falling into the divine crucible. Now, we are trapped. The devil himself has abandoned our solitary cell in which we are “creating beauty.” We are surrounded on all sides by thick and impenetrable walls, and our cry of “we are the architects of these walls” echoes back to us with a resounding echo. And our songs in praise of ourselves resonate in our ears like sinister laughter. Thus, the devil ingeniously transformed a situation in which he was perishing into a triumph for the cause of hell.

7.303. Nevertheless, I say it in a low and trembling voice, so that no one betrays this secret, even in this profound hell, there flickers the faint light of hope. In this hell, I am all-powerful. My will is everything. I am God. When I cry out this cry of supreme pride, the echo resounds: I am God. And that echo, which is nothing but a faithful repetition of my pride, has a devastating effect on my mind. Pay close attention to what is happening: I am God and God is me. Sciences and philosophies teach that I am God. Arts experientially prove that I am God. Yoga experimentally demonstrates that I am God. Therefore, I know that I am God. And that is why I am in the solitary prison I created for myself. But if I were to believe, even for a moment, in what the echo claims, namely that God is me, in that very moment, my proud knowledge of my divinity would be nullified. I tremble for this knowledge of mine and intend to defend it. My disciplined will is my shield against this unexpected intrusion. But all this is ridiculous. I am God, and God is me, these judgments are equivalent. Why then should I fear the second formulation of my triumph?

7.304. Because in that second formulation, which turns against me to inundate me with its pitiless resonance, I am being called. My pride has completely alienated me from that God which is my own creation. It is a mere pale projection of my will. And suddenly, this pale projection is calling me. My contortions and acrobatics have turned my entire mind, and suddenly, I am facing something that is completely different from me. And that something completely different tells me: I am you. In that instant, my mind comes to its senses, and it rushes to the ground, hiding its face in its hands, unable to bear the rays that penetrated its dark cell. The darkness of the cell, which my mind pretends to have constructed by its own will, makes the rays unbearable. The acrobat of the creative will, blinded by the luminosity, writhes on the floor of its cell. As if struck, its limbs in spasm relax, its pose unravels, and the proud mind prostrates itself, contrite and desperate—at the feet of that which it is, but that which transcends it.

7.305. The event we have just described with such inadequate words is the sudden passage from pride to humility. Pride is always on the verge of this happening, and it knows this danger very intimately. This sudden ruin can occur at any moment, amidst science and philosophy, amidst art and Yoga. It must be avoided at all costs. It must be avoided if we want to maintain the pose of pride, that which is entirely different must not manifest itself. And it is possible to do so. The safest method to avoid humility is humble pride. We must create humble science, humble philosophy, humble art. This would be the supreme pride because it is entirely unassailable.

7.306. What diabolical disciplines these humble sciences and arts are. They are perfect poses. In them, the creative will assumes the pose of self-sacrifice for amusement. The creative will pretends to sacrifice its works to God, that God whom the creative will created in its own image. With humility, this will approaches the temple of God (the temple it itself built) and says humbly: God, see what beautiful work you have created through me and for your greater glory. And the creative artist, with a barely noticeable smile, places the work on the altar of divinity and withdraws, humbly, into anonymity. Humble pride, the pride that creates anonymity, is supreme pride. Its representation is perfect. It deceives everyone, including that God who is, after all, its own creation. Religious art, for example, that creative will that remains anonymous to glorify the Eternal. Or the faith of the yogi, achieved through disciplined and deliberate practice. Or the faith of scientists in a transcendent God, reached as the ultimate link in their theories. Humble pride is a secure defense against the authenticity of humility.

7.307. However, let us temper our enthusiasm for praising pride a bit. The stained-glass windows in Gothic cathedrals are supremely proud, and yet, there is a trembling of humility in them. The oratories of classical composers are highly deliberate, and yet, there is fervent faith in them. The border region between pride and humility is slippery. We do not want to deny that there can be faith in deliberation and humility in art. But we believe that faith and humility articulated in this way are already harmless to the devil. Deliberation is the opposite of faith, and deliberate faith is faith without dangers for the devil. Art is pride, and humble art is humility in the service of pride. Science as a path of faith is an escape from humility. Philosophy as a handmaid of religion is a refusal to fall into the abyss of the entirely different. All of this is the ways of pride to avoid humility. And the more humble they become, the more suspicious they are. The complex and systematic constructions of Gothic cathedrals, the equally complex and systematic systems of scholasticism and Vedanta, are attempts of pride to represent humility. But what kind of humility is this manifested in the monsters, in the columns of the cathedrals? In the rigorous proofs of God’s existence, in the arguments of the doctors of the Church? In the precise and well-tempered preludes and fugues? It is a very well-behaved humility, a humility too beautiful and organized to be humility. It is not the kind of humility that endangers the proud mind.

7.308. The immediate intuition of one’s insignificance and the enormity of the entirely different is not likely to make the mind compose hymns in praise of God. Nor does it make it build cathedrals or proofs of God’s existence. On the contrary, it silences the mind. The truly humble mind falls silent. This silence of the mind is the end of pride. Pride is to speak, to articulate, to create. Pride is language. Humility falls silent. This silence is the devil’s end. In this silence, which is the silence of contrition, the mind dissolves entirely different. It is the sacred silence.

7.309. At least this is what the testimonies of the great mystics, who still spoke before dissolving into sacred silence, seem to want to convey. The author of this book does not have the experience of this silence, and the fact that this book continues despite the argument proves it. Although the author has felt the imminence of humility repeatedly, he has resisted bravely. But the danger of falling into humility exists. The devil must avoid it. Feigned humility, humble pride, is a powerful method to avoid humility. But there is another one. It is the most powerful weapon the devil possesses. It is feigned silence. It is silence very similar to sacred silence. It is a sad silence. This silence arises when the mind tries to simultaneously articulate two opposing judgments. This intense articulation of “yes” and “no,” which is an intense articulation, has all the appearances of sacred silence. In this intense articulation, nothing is articulated because the two judgments cancel each other out. A zero arises in this articulation, a nothingness. But it is a dialectically tense zero, and a contradictory and full nothingness.

The devil resorts to this contradictory and full nothingness in his attempt to avoid sacred silence. He resorts to nothingness that swallows and annihilates everything. He resorts to the deepest hell. To this tense silence, which is the sadness and lethargy of the heart, the next chapter will address.

8.000 Sloth and Sorrow of Heart

Thus, we have arrived, whether well or not, tired and exhausted, at the last chapter of this book, and we have reached the devil’s goal. From that horrendous sin, this last and deepest of sins that we shall now address, we see no salvation, nor can we imagine it. Sloth and sadness are the furthest imaginable stage in the development of the mind. The dark despair of pride leaves a narrow gap open, through which one can glimpse vaguely the steep and tortuous path that leads to the peaks of faith, the path of humility. This gap closes now. The lukewarm and calm, cultured and moderate, gently smiling regions of sloth, which know everything and know nothing, have no exits. The gentle wisdom of vanity, the noble sadness of resignation, the sweet sacrifice of all desires, restores ultimate calm. The violent struggle that takes place in the mind and through the mind, which this book has attempted to outline, is over. The weapons are at rest. With the nostalgia of remembrance, sweet and sad, smiling through tears, we can now recall the struggle through which we have passed. It was all in vain, all the product of misapplied enthusiasm. The two contenders, God and the devil, were naive fictions, and the object of their contention, our mind, was the seat of naivety. The struggle revolved around the distinction between Good and Evil, between illusion and reality. What naivety. This naivety has now evaporated. The circle is closed. The devil was created to create the world, and now, when the world has dissolved, the devil and the creator of the devil have dissolved as well. Or, to formulate the process of evolution in a tautological manner, the only appropriate formulation: from nothing came nothing and was annihilated. We should not have expected any other outcome. The devil is a negative principle. When we set out to follow his path, we should have already sensed his goal: nirvana. Right from the beginning of this book, that goal illuminated the figure of the prince of the world like a multiple halo. When we identified him with time, and even more so when we identified him with language, we could have sensed the goal of time and language: the “nunc stans,” the silence of nothingness. The devil’s path points to its beginning. Let us evoke this beginning before attempting the description of sloth and sadness. Let us evoke our naive sources before we let the current of our sophisticated mind subside into the calm of the illuminated ocean.

8.002. What motivated us, or what seduced us, to recognize the devil as the creator of the world? How could we fundamentally abandon all official Western traditions and ally ourselves with the underground currents of Manichaeism and Buddhism? Why did we do it? Because, when we began writing this book, sloth and sadness had already taken hold of our minds, although we were not aware of it. Consciously, we have sought to demonstrate experientially that the world of appearances is nothing but a diabolical work designed to draw our minds away from their origin, which lies in the transcendent. From chapter to chapter, we provoke the devil in ever new territories to prove the non-existence of the devil. From chapter to chapter, we maintain the hope, confessed or unconfessed, that the disappearance of the devil and the illusory territories created by him will reveal the face of reality. Through the systematic destruction of the knowledge of the world, we sought, step by step, to conquer faith in that reality, of which we felt a part. The path was rugged. Sometimes, we pursued the devil; other times, being too advanced, we fled from him. But our conscious goal was always the same: to use the devil’s path to attain divinity. When we reached pride, the devil seemed to vanish, but he reappeared, victorious, as our own creative will. But this was the devil’s last refuge. Once our will was defeated, once pride and naive arrogance were vanquished, the devil had no more foothold. We can calmly assert: the devil does not exist. We have fulfilled the purpose of this book.

8.003. Unfortunately, we have fulfilled more than the purpose of this book. We have surpassed the goal. And perhaps, unconsciously, we already knew at the beginning that the goal was surpassable. Hence, our unconfessed Manichaeism, our unconfessed connection with Buddhism. The disappearance of the devil revealed what hides behind him, namely: nothingness. We can clearly see the scene behind the devil: nothingness. The devil, this illusion, and the illusory representations it creates, are everything. The devil and his artifices, that is the whole reality. His presumed author does not exist. The devil is everything, and everything is absurd. Everything I do and everything I think is absurd. And this book that I create and think with so much suffering is an absurd effort. Indeed, it is doubly absurd. It is absurd like everything in this absurd world. And it is absurd because it deals with the absurdity of the world. It is absurd to want to speak; it is absurd to want to write; it is absurd to want to act; it is absurd to want to save oneself. And it is doubly absurd to want to speak, to want to write, to want to act, and to want to save oneself. Ultimately, it is absurd to want, except perhaps to want death.

8.004. Having attained this definitive wisdom, we should finally learn to be silent, except perhaps to articulate the last wish: come, sweet death. We should be able to throw this manuscript into the fire and sigh with relief. This, too, like everything else, is overcome; we should be able to tell ourselves. In the wisdom of the absurdity of everything, in the lack of foundation of everything, there should reside peace and calm. This peace and calm are what our sages promise us, and it is what Buddha brings to us, the Great Illuminated.

8.005. How does the opposite happen? Why do we not remain silent? Why do we continue writing? Why, with clenched teeth, do we reject the absurdity of everything? Why this internal restlessness that seeks to articulate the inarticulable: sloth and sadness? What active sloth is this? What rebellious sadness is this? Our desperate activity is not a sign of hope. It is absurd activity. It is Camusian “quand-même” to which we are desperately devoted. All the questions we formulate remain unanswered. We continue, absurdly, to formulate them. We speak, to avoid silence. Not yet silence. Let the reader judge, from the symptoms now confessed, the climate of this last sin. Or perhaps, who knows, the reader will judge that the last sin has not yet taken complete possession of our minds. Let us proceed for now.

8.100 The Breath of Voice

The foundation of the devil, let us repeat it one last time, is language. But until now, we have considered only superficial aspects of language. We have not penetrated to the key of its secret. In the chapter on pride, we observed how the web of language projects itself, how the threads intersect, and how in these crossings the phenomena of the world emerge. How language creates the world in praise of the creative will. But this is only one aspect of the process of language. There is an opposite process. The web of language can expand in a different direction. It can become increasingly diaphanous and, in this dilution, extend to infinity. In this process of expansion, there will be no more phenomena. In this dilution, only the web of language will remain. This language as pure linguistic structure without meaning, this “universal” language, this “flatus vocis,” is the climate of sadness.

8.101. Pythagoras, that mystical and profound thinker, suspected, in a nebulous way, what modern analysis articulates in dry terms: mathematics and music are two aspects of religion; they are how religion manifests itself. This intuition is perhaps much older than Pythagoras himself and, passing through Orpheus, points to the beginnings of thought. The mystagogues of Orphism seem to have intuited the common foundation of religion, mathematics, and music, namely the structure of language. This common foundation is the “logos.” For us, late and decadent beings, these intuitions cannot be experientially assimilated. We no longer inhabit the proximity of the word. We can no longer syncretically experience the musical, mathematical, and sacred aspect of the word. The primordial language has already “specialized” too much, and the living word has for us a different existential value than the mathematical symbol or the written and heard musical note. On the contrary, we feel tension between the symbols of music and mathematics, as if they were two extremes of language. Music seems to us the most concrete form of articulation, the immediate manifestation of language. This is what we discussed in the chapter on pride. And the mathematical symbol seems to be the most universal and abstract manifestation of language. Certainly, both manifestations are informed by the same rules of language but function on different ontological planes. Music is the articulation of immediate experience, and mathematics is the articulation of “theory.” Lately, however, a surprising re-approximation between music and mathematics has been taking place, a re-approximation between logical analysts and dodecaphonic composers that evokes Orphism. The goal of this paragraph, which is the attempt to outline the climate of sadness as a phenomenon of the development of language, is to explain these new Pythagoreans, these “Western Buddhists unknowingly.”

8.110 The Structure

Mathematics, as a set of symbols structured by rules, is a rigorous and refined linguistic layer that emerged as a result of the effort to make discourse “objective.” The thick and full layer of language consists of proper names, that is, terms that articulate immediate experience. Its sentences are predications of nouns like “this tree,” that is, of particular terms. The linguistic process we are discussing here extends these terms, transforming proper names into classes. “This tree” becomes “tree,” “one” and “a,” and finally a pure symbol, broad and without “meaning.” The linguistic progress resulting in music goes in the opposite direction. It condenses the proper name to make it concrete. Music is a linguistic set that wants to be experienced, not discussed. Mathematics, on the other hand, is a linguistic set that can only be discussed as it cannot be experienced. In fact, this set is so elegant and pure that the only compatible discourse with it is that hermetic language called “rigorous analysis.” All “subjective” qualities, all qualities of experience have been eliminated from this type of discourse. Mathematical language is obvious, evident, and leaves no room for existential or normative doubts. Its statements are crystal clear, and if they are, they are “false.” They enunciate relationships and forms. It is the language of the realm of immutable Forms. However, the statements of mathematics need to be interpreted to be experienced. They must be translated back into the thick and tense language. In this re-translation, all existential and normative doubts reappear. From the perspective of mathematics, this attempt at interpretation seems to be a betrayal of its purity. This discrepancy between mathematics and ordinary language has the following explanation:

8.111. The web of mathematical language is infinite and rigorous, but it consists of voids. These voids arose in those places where proper names were placed in their fullness. By extending these names, the voids were created. Mathematics seeks to fill these gaps. It creates a series of symbols intended to solidify the web. Thus, real, unreal, imaginary, integral numbers, and other tricks emerge to fill the voids. The web expands in this way, but it does not solidify. The series of arithmetic symbols consists of intervals, and the series of geometric symbols consists of fluid transitions. Between two close arithmetic symbols, such as 1.0 and 1.1, there is an interval through which the entire phenomenal world escapes. And between two geometric symbols, like two points, the line immediately emerges as a transition. Due to its structure, the web of mathematical language is not suitable for catching phenomena of immediate experience. Speaking purely formally, the use of mathematical language by the natural sciences is a kind of abuse – “applied mathematics.” From the perspective of “pure mathematics,” it is an attempt to translate universal purity into coarser layers of language.

It is a widespread mistake to believe that mathematics is a tool of science, in the sense of being a means to serve the communications that sciences articulate. Quite the contrary, the sciences are nothing but a preparatory and rudimentary stage of language in its transition to the level of pure mathematics. Mathematics is not one among the methods of language, not one among the structures of human thought. Mathematics is the structure of ideal thought; it is the goal of the entire mental process called “thinking.” It is the goal of all languages. It is the prototype of the meta-language. The expansion of proper names is not a method of creating symbols to “explain” and perhaps “govern” the phenomena that proper names “signify.” This is the error of an antiquated science. The expansion and dilution of proper names into pure symbols are, in themselves, the very goal of thought. It is a fact that in this process of dilation, the phenomena referred to by proper names become docile, and the natural science proves it. But this fact is only a subordinate aspect of this process. It is not the goal of the mathematization of language. The goal lies precisely in the de-subjectivization and de-phenomenalization of all terms. All terms are transformed into pure symbols. All sentences are transformed into pure structures. All judgments are transformed into equations reducible to zero. The goal of thought is solved equations. All human mental activity aims to be translated into mathematical language, to be solved there, that is, reduced to zero. If a sentence or thought refuses to be thus reduced, it automatically and obviously proves to be either “false” or “insignificant.” The criterion of “validity” for a sentence or thought lies in its reducibility to zero. Logical analysis sheds a penetrating light on all our thoughts and uncovers “errors.” These errors are faults in the construction of the sentence or thought. They are incorrect grammar. Once the error is eliminated, the purity of the structure is restored, the “noise” is annihilated, and thought and sentence become reducible to zero. Mathematical logic is like a corrosive acid. It corrodes all grammar errors and reduces all human thoughts to their fundamental validity, which is zero. And indeed, this is the function of human thought. Thought has two alternatives: articulating structures with incorrect grammar, producing noise, or articulating structures with correct grammar and producing zero. The elimination of errors eliminates all noise. The perfect language emerges. As this language is reducible to zero, the perfect language is also perfect silence, free from noise. At the moment when thought is articulated correctly, it is no longer articulated. Language is, to use Wittgenstein’s happy image, a ladder to reach the goal of silence, and this ladder needs to be discarded once the goal is reached. But this is not all. Having discarded the ladder of language, thought annihilates itself. It reduces itself, as the last proper name (first-person pronoun), to zero. Total silence emerges. Nirvana appears.

8.120 The Reunion

This logical nirvana that semantic analysis promises us is the definitive result of that mystical “logos,” which flowed from Orphism to Christianity, and which produced so many metaphysical speculations throughout its development. However, it is evident that logical analysis does not capture the totality of the “logos.” It misses the musical aspect of the word. Therefore, pure logic is not complete Buddhism. It can annihilate pure thought, the Ego in the logical and epistemological sense of the term, but it cannot annihilate it in the psychological sense. We can be logicians, and if we are, we cease to think, but this doesn’t mean that we automatically cease to live. Pure logic is not complete. To complete its work, it needs to become musical.

8.121. The reunion between mathematics and music, mentioned before, is not yet a realized event. However, advances and attempts are currently being undertaken by both disciplines. Ultimately, it is not a surprising trend. Mathematics has always sought harmony in its statements reminiscent of musicality. Musical composers have always worked with notes that evoke the operation with symbols of pure mathematics. Currently, however, this similarity between the two disciplines takes on a different color. The epistemological importance of mathematics has been recognized at least since Leibnitz. Purely formal composition has been a fact in music since Bach and Handel at least. The novelty lies in the fact that mathematics is being recognized, since the beginning of this century, as the epistemological equivalent of pure musical composition, and musical composition is being recognized, since Schopenhauer, as the equivalent, if not superior, to mathematics as a method of knowledge. In other words, both disciplines are being recognized as formally and epistemologically equivalent, and the distinction between the formal and epistemological aspects collapses. The goal of mathematics is the contrapuntal resolution of tensions in the equation to reduce it to zero. The goal of music is exactly the same. Mathematicians and composers are almost aware of this fact.

8.122. This awareness has not yet permeated broad layers of the West. For most Westerners, the two disciplines still develop in entirely different climates. When we study mathematics, we have an entirely different experience than when we attend a concert. But we are beginning to perceive, although vaguely, what the ancient Greeks meant when they asserted that music and mathematics form a unity. In certain moments of concentration, when we manage to solve a intricate mathematical problem or when a musical experience overwhelms us, we have a vague sense of the mystical force of the two disciplines. As we begin to perceive, both are methods of dissolving the Ego. We start to perceive the syncretic mystical unity that binds the symbols of pure mathematics to musical symbols, and we begin to recapture the liberating experience of the “logos.” And this type of liberation that the rigorous structure of both disciplines provides starts to outline before our inner vision. It is the dissolution of the Ego. Mathematics and music provide a salvation and enlightenment that are precisely the opposite of salvation in the Christian sense. It is a salvation entirely removed from faith; on the contrary, it is salvation thanks to the total loss of faith, salvation thanks to the destruction of our innermost Ego. We know that it is a pagan experience when we experience this kind of ecstasy; we know that when we do mathematics or music in the above sense, we are much closer to the Greeks than to the Church Fathers. We recognize Pan’s flute in the harmonious mathematical equations and the orgiastic flight of Bacchus in rigorous mathematical compositions. The “logos” that we recognize in this experience of mathematical and musical symbols, this “logos” that saves us by annihilating our Ego, has no kinship with the Savior of Christianity. This “logos” as “soter” is a savior that comes from a completely different realm. It does not save us from sins; it saves us by annihilating our Ego. It does not bring us eternal life; it brings us eternal death. Through music and mathematics, when the two join forces to make the word reappear in its fullness, we recognize what we are, namely, nothing. We know that we are a knot created by the spasm of language, an error of grammar, a mere noise that tarnishes the harmony of language. We are a dissonance that arose because the logical and musical aspects of the word were dissociated. We are an Ego because we are the point in the fabric of language where the logical and aesthetic aspects of language collide. We are an Ego because we interrupt the flow of language in its quest for zero. We are a disturbance in the pure structure, and that’s why we are an Ego. That’s why we think, and that’s why we live. Thinking is a sign of a logical error in the fabric of language. Living is a sign of an aesthetic error in the fabric of language. Thinking and living are suffering. We suffer, and that’s why we are an Ego. In our Ego, language is thirsty for peace and calm. In us, language seeks to restore the balance between mathematics and music, between thought and life. We are an Ego because in us, the thirst of language for peace and calm manifests itself. Our Ego is a manifestation of thirst. Our Ego is a deficiency; our Ego is a disease. Thinking is a disease, and living is a disease. Afflicted by this thirst, by this deficiency, by this disease that is the Ego, we suffer. It is due to this suffering that we believe we can think and can live, it is because of this that we want. Wanting is synonymous with suffering, and will is synonymous with Ego.

But when the two aspects of language come together, when the “logos” is restored in its fullness, suffering ends. We are saved. Our Ego disappears. We want nothing anymore. We think nothing anymore. We no longer live; we are annihilated. In the place where our Ego was, everything gently reduces to zero. The experience of the full language, the musical experience of mathematics, and the logical experience of music provide the calm annihilation of nirvana.

8.123. Everything I have just said is not yet a fact realized through the development of the West and may, therefore, appear strange to the reader who has not experienced its effect. No one in the West has yet achieved nirvana through the union of mathematics and music. These are only tendencies pointing towards that glorious ecstasy, which can be discovered in figures like Wittgenstein or Schoenberg. For now, Western culture still retains, at least on the surface, its traditional character of affirming life and individuality of mind. At least superficially, the West remains positivist. However, a very observant observer may discover the tendency towards dissolution and salvation through the annihilation of the mind, and therefore towards mysticism, in many manifestations of this tired civilization. If I have drawn attention to this trend in the fields of mathematics and music, it is because I consider these two areas fundamental for the mind, as they are fundamental for language.

8.124. The formal aspect and the experiential aspect of language, synoptically united in the fusion of logical analysis and musical creation, are the Western equivalent of nirvana. The first step on the Western path of Lord Buddha is the mathematical equation and musical harmony, as both lead to Being-Knowing-Bliss (sat-chit-ananda). The mathematicians who play the violin and the composers who calculate the vibrations of their electronically produced sounds are our Bodhisattvas. The spirituality that these activities provoke, a spirituality without faith, is the spirituality of Buddhism. And the silence that follows this spirituality, a silence that will shroud our civilization like a death shroud, will be the silence of Buddha. In this sense, Western civilization is on the verge of fulfilling its definitive project. This project is contained within the languages that inform the mentality of the West. The two most perfect products of these languages, the most perfect realizations of the Western project, are mathematics and music, and when united, they will form the perfection and the end of the West. After them, only laziness and sorrow will come.

8.125. The present book is being written in Brazil, a peripheral territory of the West. The rebellion against the inexorable approaching end in the form of a Western Buddhism is perhaps a result of this liminal situation of Brazilian society. Perhaps, in Brazil, we feel with greater clarity the catastrophe of approaching nirvana. When I spoke of nationalism before, I pointed out certain tendencies that seem to indicate an independent development of this peripheral society. I said that nationalism (which is here a product of hunger) will soon be replaced by a stage of gluttony. But I also said that this gluttony now seems to want to overcome itself in a different direction from the path followed by this book. Sadness and laziness are fundamental traits of Brazilian society. All efforts of Brazilian thought are directed towards overcoming these traits. A new mentality is forming, and this new mentality keeps this book being written, although the author deeply feels the futility of everything.

8.126. Because we are in Brazil, bathed in the Camusian atmosphere of “quand-même,” in the atmosphere of rebellion against the inexorable realization of our project articulated by Vicente Farreira da Silva, we continue to speak and write, as if to conjure and thus avoid nirvana. If we could burn our tongue like Moses, perhaps we could fall silent, as Europe will fall silent. Europe, in its “development,” has almost entirely traversed the path of progress towards hell. It has understood that speaking leads to silence. That truth is the locus of all lies. That the net of thought must be retracted. That it is enough. That the time of rest has come. The time of laziness so well illustrated by the lazy youth born tired. The time of sadness so well illustrated by the dances and gestures of this youth. The time of annihilation has come. We in Brazil are “underdeveloped.” We still think and live a little. May God have mercy on our souls.

8.200 The Ivory Tower

The murderer of God and the devil that we perpetrated in our arrogance has revealed itself as the suicide of our will. In the place of the golden throne from which our creative will was to rule the world of illusion, an ivory tower rises, chiseled and decorated with grotesque forms, where the specter of the decapitated mind spies, nebulous and vague, the nebulous and vague specter of the beheaded world. The progress of the evolution of the mind has resulted in a macabre dance. It began with the lustful desire to enjoy reality. The mind could not attain the enjoyment of reality and annihilated itself in the attempt. It is the end of the mind and the end of the diabolical path we are describing. But like everything related to the devil, this end has two faces and is ambivalent. The deepest hell is also the highest. Sadness and laziness are also wise and sophisticated. Let us abandon the naivety of this vain world, shake the dust of this valley of tears from our feet, and ascend the tower of wisdom, resignation, and calmness.

8.201. Let us dedicate ourselves to the peace of the realm of shadows. Let us enter the building of noble philosophical systems with a beheaded spirit, that is, without faith in them. The words of our great thinkers, the sages of our tradition, should not be accepted with faith but with detached calmness. Only in this atmosphere does the ivory tower of the history of philosophy condense from the mists of words. This is the true spirit of philosophy. This is the true attitude of wisdom. We should not philosophize with a thirst for knowledge or a thirst for enlightenment or a thirst for happiness. We should not philosophize with thirst. We should do it with resignation. If we bother philosophy with impetuous questions, as anger does, or if we ask it to free us from illusion, as arrogance does, we will be buried under the avalanche of contradictory answers or frozen by the cold and cutting breath of its disinterested silence. We should not consider philosophy as our master. We should not ask it for teachings. Nor should we consider it as our mother. We should not ask it for sustenance. We should surrender to it without asking for anything. We should give ourselves to it for it to annihilate us. Then it will smile at us, albeit sadly. For the angry and arrogant mind, philosophy is an instrument of knowledge or an instrument of power, a mere servant. Anger and arrogance degrade philosophy. That’s why philosophy hides its face and refuses its miraculous gifts.

For the sad and lazy mind, philosophy is the ultimate refuge. In philosophy, the mind dies. That’s why the sacred philosophy opens its arms to it, to annihilate it in that calm and merciful embrace. The mind thirsty for knowledge or the mind thirsty for power, the mind that refuses to die, that mind cannot comprehend the essence of philosophy. That mind does not understand the greatness of the philosophers of yesterday and today. Whatever these wise men taught (so this mind thinks) has either been refuted or is meaningless. That mind does not understand that it is not about what the philosophers say, but how they say it. The essence of philosophy does not lie in its statements but in its atmosphere. We seek to capture a faint aroma of this mysterious atmosphere of philosophy when we discuss the union of music and mathematics as a method of annihilation. The climate of philosophy is both elevated and dry. It is a climate of sadness and laziness (if seen from anger and arrogance, and perhaps even from faith and naivety), but when seen from within, seen through an authentically philosophical mind, it is the climate of calmness and smiles. At the summit of the ivory tower, peace and “dégage-ment” reign, but it is a somewhat sinister peace that reigns in those heights. It is the result of the total unreality of all philosophical problems. And the smile that illuminates the face of philosophy is the smile of irony, the result of the fundamental conviction that no philosophical problem can be solved. Everything is just a game. Philosophy is a sadly playful activity. The modesty and resignation of philosophy are poses that are part of this sad game. The open mind of philosophy is a sign of the dead mind. The lack of prejudice is a sign of the lack of concepts.

8.202. The essence of philosophy is the climate of philosophy. And it is to create this climate that philosophy exists. This climate unites and defines all philosophy. Apparently, philosophy consists of statements that are not only contradictory but irrelevant to one another. Unity lies in the climate. But there is a series of processes within the philosophical phenomenon; there is a “history of philosophy.” These are stages of authenticity of the dying mind. In the first stage, still inauthentic, in the sense of still almost alive, statements like “I think, therefore I am,” or “I am, but I do not think,” or “I think, but I am not,” occur, but these statements should not be taken literally. They are moves in the game of philosophy’s opening. They create entirely unreal and entirely unsolvable problems, so that the game of philosophy can alternately confirm and refute them. It keeps the wheel of philosophy spinning. The second stage of philosophical authenticity is characterized by questions like “Do I exist?” These questions are inauthentic in the sense that they do not expect an answer. But they are authentic in the sense that they articulate the deep conviction of the nonexistence of any answer. They are the ritual articulation of the feast of philosophy. Philosophy in this stage is the feast of the dead mind. It is the funerary dance of the mind. It is the solemn mass and the requiem for the death of the mind. Philosophy is the feast of annihilation. In this macabre dance, the mind moves, as a specter, as if it were alive. It repeats the movements that had characterized it in life but ritualistically. It formulates the same kind of questions that the living mind had formulated and seeks the same answers that the living mind sought. The mistake of anger and arrogance was precisely this: they did not understand that these are ritual gestures, and that the philosophical mind is a specter and a skeleton of a mind that dances. The philosophical mind is no longer of this world and dances on the pinnacle of the tower. Its festive gestures, its finger raised in emphasis, its head swaying in doubt, its wise smile, its hands piously joined, are rites and shadows. Only the rigor of philosophy is authentic. It is the rigor of death. Those who observe philosophy from the outside may believe that something real is happening up there in the ivory tower. They may expect that this event will result in something. They are mistaken. Nothing is happening, and the game with shadows will result in nothing. But those who are in the tower itself and participate in the dance (the sad and lazy mind), they will feel the sweet and intoxicating aroma of decomposition that hovers over the entire building. This aroma adheres to all philosophical works and is the symptom of their authenticity. In it lies the appeal of philosophy. This decadent aroma is the existential justification of philosophy. The greatness of philosophy is this: for the layman, it is a discipline of thought seeking answers.

For the initiated, it is the giver of the calmly-perfumed reality. Philosophy is the existential proof of the death of the mind and the existential refutation of immortality.

8.203. The ivory tower, in which the specter of the mind dwells, consists of steps of logic, richly ornamented and covered with silver bells that ring ethically. The smiling specter ascends, serenely inductive, the steps of logic and descends them, serenely deductive, when the ritual demands it. In this graceful passage, it lightly shakes the bells of ethical teaching, and the crowd of laymen at the foot of the tower respectfully receives the message. Tired, half-closed eyelids, the philosophical specter gazes at this formless crowd, and lo and behold, it disappears before its vague gaze. And when the philosopher directs his gaze to the tower he inhabits, the tower dissolves into the mist of nothingness. And the specter hovers above the clouds like the wise men in Chinese engravings. It extends its tired arm into the clouds, and they form according to the movement of the arm. And when it looks at itself, it transforms itself into a cloud and floats among the clouds, shaped by them. There is no wind blowing in this nebulous region, and no wind can give consistency to the clouds. If there are winds, they are phenomena of faith, and even if they reached the specter, they would not be recognized as such. The last traces of faith died when the mind died. Philosophy becomes a flower in a vase of precious crystal. The meadow from which the flower was picked is already forgotten; it no longer exists. Sometimes, from time to time, a slight tremor seems to want to take possession of the flower, a slight heliotropic tendency, a movement that seems to seek the sun of faith animates the plant. In this movement, the ritual gestures of philosophy called “faith in philosophy” arise. But they are only sadly smiling gestures, shadows. In the Elysian fields of philosophy, altars and churches are erected at these moments. The philosophical specters bow ritually before the statues of the deities that seem to be the same as those worshiped outside the tower. But the statues themselves are specters. In these moments, the dance of philosophy copies the gestures of religion on the stage of hell. And when hell and heaven become indistinguishable.

8.210 Honesty

The mind inclined towards sadness and laziness seeks the protective hand of philosophy. And it introduces the novice into its sacred feast. This introduction is merely an initiation into the secrets of philosophy. The great mystery hidden at the core of the tower is the overcoming of immortality. The tired mind begs for death. Exhausted from the struggle between God and the devil, entirely devastated by the acrobatics of pride, the sad and lazy mind asks to be annihilated. Philosophy takes it by the hand and leads it slowly and festively through all the corners of the tower, but always ascending, always seeking the culmination of the tower, which is annihilation. The mind surrenders to philosophy, lets itself be led. Without prejudices and without a plan, the mind follows the path of the spirit of philosophy. This lack of prejudice and plan characterizes the path of the mind surrendered to philosophy. Here lies the authenticity of the mind. It does not aim to reach any point; it only wants to die, and that is all. All other mental activities, the activities of still-living minds, have some defined goal. The path of philosophy is the only path of authenticity because it is not deliberate. It is the only path towards death, accepting death. All other mental activities are forms of inauthenticity because they are escapes from death, driven by the desire to avoid death. All other activities, since they are activities of a living mind, carry the stigma of escape. Science and religion, art and “engagement” in society, all of this is hypocrisy because it does not admit to being an escape from death. All of this appears and pretends to have a positive goal when the fundamental and deliberate goal is negative: to avoid death. Everything, except philosophy, is a deceitful pretense. Only philosophy is authentic and modest. It admits that it has no goal and advances without a deliberate plan towards death. It admits this to the crowd outside the tower. And for itself, it admits that the path it follows is a pure gesture, a pure ritual of calling death. It admits that it has passively surrendered to death, and its apparent activity is the articulation of the passivity imposed by death. Herein lies the honesty of philosophy. It admits that everything it does is merely a gesture. All other mental activities deny their inauthenticity. Philosophy admits its inauthenticity. Philosophy is honest. Life in all its manifestations is an inauthentic denial of death. Philosophy alone is the affirmation of death.

8.211. This admission is the goal of the ritual of philosophy. The noble dance of the philosophy’s celebration, that dance of specters initiating the death of the mind, becomes ever slower and gentler, leading the mind imperceptibly, step by step, festively, to the tip of the tower, where the sadness of the heart resides in its stillness. There reigns philosophical calm, the sought-after peace finally found. From now on, the mind rests. Nothing else interests it. All suffering and all desires have died. The river of thoughts no longer flows. All noises have ceased. The flow of language has stopped. The mind has entered, with head held high and eyes open, dignified and honest, into the embrace of death. Serene and calm, it has chosen death. This is the goal of the path of philosophy: the dignified and honest suicide.

8.220 The Purifying Bath

Not everyone who enters the philosophy’s building can hope to reach this goal, this most sacred point of the tower. It is necessary to undergo the cathartic bath, to purify the heart from everything opposing death. The last traces of lust must be eliminated, as they adhere stubbornly. The final remnants of pride must be dissolved, as pride had dominated the mind so recently. The last thin and fragile threads that connect the mind to society must be cut. The last memory of anger, in the form of curiosity, must be overcome. Now the mind is empty and can advance into philosophy. But the mind is a very complex formation. There are dark corners and places in it where unsuspected debris from past days can hide. It is also the duty of philosophy to traverse all these corners and purify them, a strategy of scorched earth. What God and the devil forgot to liquidate must be liquidated by philosophy. And lo and behold, in unsuspected corners, philosophy finds the last remnants of faith and love hidden there, waiting for the passing of the struggle. The mind had completely forgotten about them. They must have hidden themselves in immemorial times, in the times that initiated the conflict between lust and inhibition, and none of the sins discovered them. Sadness is the one that discovers them.

8.221. Upon discovering faith and love within itself, the sad mind cannot suppress a slight smile. So, this modest flora endured the violent struggle that passed through the mind? The violent waves of lust, the fiery fireworks of anger, the devouring of gluttony did not destroy it? The cold breath of envy and avarice, and the contortions of pride did not uproot it? Will the moderate and serene climate of sadness do away with it? The heart’s sadness, contemplating this lowly vegetation, becomes somewhat sentimental and nostalgic. This vegetation evokes the mind’s naive childhood. But it must be uprooted. It is obviously a weed. Faith and love clearly hinder the mind’s suicide. They must be eliminated. The mind wants peace and tranquility. It must remove these plants from its inner self, root and all. But the resistance of these little plants is surprising. Where did they come from? What winds blew their seeds into the mind? This flora is exotic. It cannot have been born within the mind. It does not fit inside it. It does not adapt to it. It was a grave mistake of the mind to have forgotten it. It was meant to be uprooted in the phase of lust when it deceived the mind. This mistake must be quickly corrected. There is no need for so much ceremony; away with this treacherous vegetation.

8.222. The weeds have been uprooted. Faith and love have been eliminated. They had very deep and extensive roots, although very fine. The entire mind experienced a slight shock upon their removal. But there is no need to waste time on such trifles. It is now about ascending calmly and dignifiedly towards peace and death. The mind is now empty. It is no longer the mind. It can finally be silent. The wings of silence envelop the tired heart and mercifully cover the wounds inflicted by the claws of Good and Evil in their terrible struggle. Under the cover of this dark down, all spasms relax, all opposition dissolves, all tensions calm down. Thoughts spin gently and slowly, then dissipate. Feelings flow weakly and thinly, then dry up. The will moves imperceptibly and becomes tranquil. The world and the self, like flower petals, fall withered and disappear. The mind plunges into oblivion.

8.230 Do Not Speak of This

This is death. This is the goal of everything. This is peace and calm. But Western tradition insists that this is the victory of the devil. This is the deepest hell. Western tradition insists that death is a devil’s illusion. It insists that overcoming the devil is precisely overcoming death. That God created an immortal mind and that it can be saved for eternal life if it overcomes the devil. And all of Western tradition is a violent affirmation of the illusion of death. Death does not exist! the West shouts. Our religion, our science, and our art all proclaim it loudly. Death does not exist, and the devil does not exist. And does this nirvana of philosophical calm, of noble suicide, not exist? Western tradition responds: do not speak of this. Speaking of death is provoking it. Speaking of the devil is painting him on the wall. But how inauthentic is the entire West. If our path has shown that there is nothing beyond the devil and death. If everything is for death. If everything is absurd. How can we be silent about this and speak of the rest? And philosophy, in its most recent current, existentialism, finally opens its mouth to proclaim it.

8.240. Asian tradition diverges from ours. Its attitude towards death diverges from ours. It affirms as much as we do that death does not exist, but it laments this fact. This is why we cannot understand the terms and statements that this tradition different from ours articulates. The terms and statements, when translated into our languages, undergo a transformation. They have a different meaning because they view death differently. These terms must be turned inside out if we want to grasp some of their significance. Our term “heaven” and “eternal life” mean “hell” in the East, that is, the stage of the impossibility of death. The Eastern term “nirvana” means our “hell,” that is, definitive death. Our term “God,” which is eternal life, means “devil” in the East. The term “Buddha,” which is the ultimate calm, means our “devil.” The West desperately flees from death. The East also desperately flees from life. Before concluding this book, let us cast a glance at this different type of flight. Perhaps this contemplation will shed some light on the situation in which we find ourselves.

8.300 Inversion

The struggle between God and the devil, which is the theme of this book, was described in Western terms and should be reformulated to fit the tradition of Buddhism. We presumed, tacitly, that divinity is reality, and that the mind, upon contacting reality, would become real and escape death. We also presumed that the devil was an illusion and an enemy of reality, and that its path, the path of sins, was a progressive alienation from reality. Deliberately, we plunged into death when we discovered that there is no reality, and therefore there is no salvation, and that everything is absurd. The ability to feel reality and to connect with it, we called “faith,” and the loss of this ability as a result of enlightenment, we called “despair.” A Buddhist would describe the scene in different terms. They would say that all our attempts to establish contact with reality are the work of the devil. That our own mind is the work of the devil. That what we call “faith” is the work of the devil. That all of this is a form of thirst, and that thirst is absurd because the more one drinks, the thirstier one becomes. Denying reality is divine. Affirming the illusion of everything is divine. The pursuit of ultimate death and annihilation is the divine path. God is annihilation. What we call “sin” is a rather confusing way to describe the path to salvation, thus the path toward God. What we call “faith” is the path of the devil because it is the method of asserting the immortality of the mind. What we call “despair” is an aspect of happiness. Happiness is something negative, namely the overcoming of thirst. Happiness is experiencing annihilation. Heaven is nothingness. What we call “heaven” is suffering. And what we call “hell” is nirvana.

8.301. The situation, as described by the Buddhist, is fundamentally the same. It does not differ, in its basic traits, from the situation described in this book. However, the goal of the Buddhist is opposite. The Buddhist seeks (in our terms) to lose faith, deny God, and achieve, thanks to sins (especially thanks to laziness and sadness), the deepest hell. The incredible thing in all this is that the Buddhist goal, which seems so easily achievable to us, and against which we struggled throughout the book, throughout life, that goal seems so arduous from the Buddhist point of view. For us, falling into hell is automatic, it requires no effort. The path to hell becomes terrifying because we resist the devil at every step. But the Buddhist tells a different story. We fear death, which can reach us at any moment, and we fight for our immortality. The Buddhist fears that dying won’t help because the devil instantly revives the mind and makes it be reborn and suffer again. We face nothingness at every step, ready to engulf us. The Buddhist seeks nothingness, and there is always some illusion to block their access to nothingness. The devil seeks, by all means, to annihilate us. The devil seeks, by all means, to prevent the annihilation of the Buddhist. The devil seeks to break our faith in any reality. The devil seeks to create faith in any reality in the mind of the Buddhist.

8.302. The Western tradition proclaims the divine victory. In the end, the devil will be defeated, and pure Being, pure reality, will emerge. All manifestations of the West are variations of this theme, more or less invaded by the devil. The Eastern tradition proclaims Nothingness. All manifestations of the East are variations on the theme of nothingness. How do we explain this inversion of values? How do we interpret it? And how do we explain that it is as difficult to attain nothingness as it is to attain reality? How do we distinguish, from now on, and after a brief visit to the East, between both projects? How do we distinguish between the silence of St. Thomas and the silence of Buddha? How do we distinguish between God and the devil?

8.303. This is exactly what the Church intends to avoid, this comparison between Being and nothingness, between heaven and hell, between existence and annihilation. The very goal is much deeper than we had suspected. The very suicide of the mind is impossible. The very goal of the devil is impossible. Just as impossible as the divine goal. And both are opposite, and yet indistinguishable. It is impossible to endure life, and it is impossible to endure death. It is impossible to live, and it is impossible to die. This is the final conclusion of all experience and all thought. The terrible struggle that took place in our mind, and that this book tried to describe as best as it could, this struggle makes life and death impossible. Who ultimately struggles for our mind, and what is this mind of ours? We do not know, but we suffer. We suffer terribly because neither sadness nor laziness led to anything. It led to nothing. The struggle continues. Hopelessly, without anything to fight for or reason to fight, it continues.

It continues between two indistinguishable contenders. It continues without rest and without purpose, and it continues without the possibility of resolution. Let us witness the last stage of this struggle. Let us strike the bronze gong and watch the final act.

8.304 The Bronze Gong

The path of our mind, the path of our life, the path of this book was then, unknowingly and unwillingly, one of the paths of Buddha. We were Buddhists in a Western sense, therefore much more immediate than those pseudo-Buddhists who engage in Zen Buddhism in the West. And almost, almost, we reached nirvana. How did we do it? How did we become so holy? By practicing all sins. We are, therefore, true spiritual guides of the East. We can proclaim to the four winds! Be luxuriously uninhibited, be furiously angry without limits, devour everything, envy and be greedy, and above all, be proud and never humble yourselves, and you will become sad, and you will attain the glories of nirvana’s salvation. Look at the West progressing. It is almost in nirvana. Follow in its footsteps.

8.305. But our optimistic cry is of no avail. The wise and saints of the East cannot follow in our footsteps. Our good news is of no use. The Eastern sages meditate and re-meditate, dissolve their minds, become hollow and empty, and they cannot die, cannot cease to be, cannot be saved. Neither of the two contenders admits it. The progress we made through sins is not relevant to them. It was not progress. It was just another step within the eternal wheel. Everything spins and turns as always. Everything wanders in absurdity between impossible death and impossible life. And the teaching that these sages have to offer us, Westerners, is equally futile and unproductive. They seem to tell us: Do as we do, be passive, systematically kill your will, and you will be immortal like us, since we also have not reached nirvana. The only consideration that mitigates this situation is its supreme ridiculousness. The only reaction that our life and suffering can provoke is laughter. Is this laughter diabolical? But what is diabolical at this point?

8.306. Let us cast one last glance at the scene of the struggle. What has entered the arena of our torn and ready-to-laugh heart? Two twin brothers entered. They are indistinguishable. They embrace each other as if to merge. They embrace to kiss each other, or to strangle each other? We do not know. Both remain silent. They will never speak; it is no use asking them. Both smile. We will never know why they do it. Perhaps they are smiling at us, or at each other? There is an aura of light around both. It is the aura of the sacred. And this aura of light, which is the brightness of heaven and the fire of hell, this aura is the only light that illuminates us. This light is our source and our goal. It warms us and burns us. In it, we exist, and in it, we are being annihilated. This light is everything and nothing. It is the sacred light of absurdity.

8.307 Lust Again

Both embrace each other. This struggle will never end. Time stands still in it. The film’s tape of this story has torn. The projection on the screen, which is our mind, has frozen. The image has fixed itself. The image of the struggle and the embrace. The struggle will never be finished, nor the embrace realized. But neither can we say that this process is unfinished. No one won, and no one was defeated. Nor can we say that the drama of our mind ended in a draw. Neither God nor the devil has disappeared. Nor can we say that they continue or that they never existed. Nor can we distinguish between them. The only thing left is this stage of decided indecision. Is this the overcoming of sadness and laziness? Is this damnation? Is it salvation? Or is it simply an absurd stage within absurdity? Asking is futile. Writing is futile. So let us continue writing. “Scribere necesse est, vivere non est.” We are in lust again.

9.000 Postscript

9.001. At the beginning of this book, we had the courage to define the devil. By the end of this book, that courage evaporated. At the beginning of this book, we had the thinly disguised purpose of annihilating the devil. By the end of this book, we almost (but only almost) annihilated ourselves. At the beginning of this book, we were strolling with our mind through the majestic regions of the stars and galaxies. By the end of this book, we sought refuge in the trembling corners and obscure folds of our deflated mind. We became (to speak euphemistically) somewhat modest. And this is the only “positive” result of a journey so grandly begun and accompanied by so many lofty promises. But we should not dismiss this result entirely. It is a symptom of the situation in which Western humanity finds itself. The result is, perhaps, our destiny. Perhaps, after such grand journeys, it is time to return to the deflated mind somewhat modestly. Perhaps, at this stage of “evolution,” it is time to feel a bit of shame? After so many triumphs of the mind, after so many discoveries and inventions, after so many achievements and glories, has the time of defeat perhaps arrived?

9.002. This book does not intend to be defeatist. Throughout the journey, it preserved the last traces of hope. Hope for what? A futile question. But one conviction remains in our mind: it is impossible to remain silent. Whether it is a curse or a blessing, a gift or a punishment, the impossibility of silence is the mark of continuity. The only message this book has, therefore, is this: let us continue.

9.003 Not Lacking

In this book, we followed the devil’s boat without a preconceived destination. We allowed the boatman to take us wherever the river’s course wanted, and we tried not to influence him “ideologically.” This book was thus a true adventure for us. The reader, perhaps, can participate in this adventure. If they do, they will excuse the jumps and waterfalls that mark the way. And with this observation, we bid farewell to the devil and ask that he leave us. There are other hunting grounds for him. They are not lacking.

at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)