And where is the entrance to the Underworld? Rabbi Jeremiah ben Eleazar said, « Gehenna has three entrances: one in the desert, another in the sea, and the third in Jerusalem. » iii
Gehenna takes its name from Gaihinom, meaning a valley as deep as the Valley of Hinom. But Gehenna has many other names as well: Tomb, Perdition, Abyss, Desolation, Mire, Mire of Death, Land of Below. iv
This last expression is similar to the one used by the Nations: the « Underworld ».
« We speak in Latin of the underworld (inferi) because it is below (infra). Just as in the order of bodies, according to the law of gravity, the lowest are all the heaviest, so in the order of spirits, the lowest are all the saddest. » v
Everyone agrees that the Underworld is a sad place. But is it a geographical place, like being located « under Zion »?
Augustine, for his part, asserts that the Underworld is a spiritual place, not a place « under the earth ».
And he adds that this « spiritual place » is in Heavens.
In Heavens ? But which one?
Augustine indeed distinguishes three different Heavens.vi
First Heaven: The corporeal world, which extends over the waters and the earth.
Second Heaven: Everything that is seen by the spirit, and resembles bodies, like the vision of animals that Peter in ecstasy saw coming down to him (Acts, X, 10-12).
Third Heaven: « What the intellectual soul contemplates once it is so separated, distant, cut off from the carnal senses, and so purified that it can see and hear, in an ineffable way, what is in heaven and the very substance of God, as well as the Word of God by whom all things were made, and this in the charity of the Holy Spirit. In this hypothesis, it is not unreasonable to think that it was also in this sojourn that the Apostle was delighted (II Cor., 12:2-4), and that perhaps this is the paradise superior to all the others and, if I may say so, the paradise of paradises. » vii
How can one explain the difference between the second Heaven and the third one ?
One may get an idea of the difference by analyzing two visions of Peter as opposed to Paul’s own famous revelation:
« He felt hungry and wanted to eat something. But while they were preparing food for him, he fell into ecstasy. He saw the sky open and an object, like a large tablecloth tied at the four corners, descending towards the earth. And inside there were all the quadrupeds and reptiles and all the birds of the sky. Then a voice said to him, ‘Come, Peter, kill and eat.’ But Peter answered, ‘Oh no! Lord, for I have never eaten anything that is unclean or impure!’ Again, a second time, the voice spoke to him, ‘What God has cleansed, you do not defile.’ This was repeated three times, and immediately the object was taken up to heaven. (…) As Peter was still reflecting on his vision, the Spirit said to him, ‘Here are men who are looking for you. Go therefore, come down and go with them without hesitation, for I have sent them.» viii
Following the advice, Peter goes to Cornelius’ home, who was a Roman centurion. There he finds a large number of people waiting for him. Then Peter said to them, « You know that it is absolutely forbidden for a Jew to fraternize with a stranger or to enter his house. But God has just shown me that no man is to be called unclean or impure.» ix
This first vision had a very real and concrete effect on Peter. It induced this eyebrowed and law-abiding Jew to somewhat overlook some prohibitions set by the Law, and to fraternize and share food with a group of non-Jews, assembled in their own home.
Peter then had a second vision, in more dramatic circumstances.
Peter had been arrested, put in prison, and about to be executed, on the order of King Herod.
« Suddenly the angel of the Lord came, and the dungeon was flooded with light. The angel struck Peter on the side and raised him up: « Get up! Quickly, » he said. And the chains fell from his hands. »x
Then, « Peter went out and followed him, not realizing that which was done by the angel was real, but he thought he was having a vision.» xi
This was not a vision indeed, but a real event, since Peter was really set free.
Still, there was an element of « vision » in this « reality » : the apparition of the angel and his role in the escape of Peter.
Peter had yet to acknowledge that role.
« Suddenly, the angel left him. Then Peter, returning to consciousness, said, « Now I know for certain that the Lord has sent His angel and has taken me out of the hands of Herod and out of all that the people of the Jews were waiting for.» xii
It was not the reality of his evasion from the prison of Herod that awakened the consciousness of Peter.
He became conscious only when the angel left him.
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iAt least that is what Rech Lakich asserts in Aggadoth of the Babylonian Talmud. Erouvin 19a §16. Translated by Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre. Ed. Verdier. 1982, p.264.
iiThe passage « Who has his fire in Zion and his furnace in Jerusalem » (Is. 31:9) shows us this. According to the school of R. Ishmael, His fire in Zion is Gehenna; His furnace in Jerusalem is the entrance to Gehenna. In Aggadoth of the Babylonian Talmud. Erouvin 19a §14. Translation by Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre. Ed. Verdier. 1982, p.263.
iiiAggadoth of the Babylonian Talmud. Erouvin 19a §14. Translated into French by Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre, and my English translation. Ed. Verdier. 1982, p.263.
One can consult the latest research in Neurosciences on consciousness: many interesting hypothesis are tested, but there is never a word about the soul. Total absence of the idea, even. Is soul a blind spot of techno-sciences? One may suppose that the soul, by her very nature, escapes all scientific investigation, she is out of reach, absolutely. She can’t be looked at, with a simply « objective », « materialistic » gaze.
By contrast, the Talmud is more prolific on the subject, and teaches several things about the human soul: she has been called « Light »; she « fills » and « nourishes » the whole body; she « sees » but cannot be seen; she is « pure »; she resides in a « very secret place »; she is « weak ».
It’s a good start. But let’s review these Talmudic determinations of the soul.
The soul is named « Light ».
« The Holy One, blessed be He, said, ‘The soul I have given you is called Light, and I have warned you concerning the lights. If you heed these warnings, so much the better; if not, beware! I will take your souls’. » i
Light is only the third of God’s « creations », right after heaven and earth. But there is an important nuance. Heaven and earth were definitely « created ». « In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. » ii
But « light » was not « created », literally speaking. Rather, it came right out of the word of God: « God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light. » iv
Moreover, it seems that from the start, light worked better, as a creation: « God saw that the light was good. » v God did not say that the heaven or the earth were « good ».
Light, therefore, was the first of the divine creations to be called « good ».
Hence, maybe, its extraordinary success as a metaphor. Light became the prototype of life (of men): « Life was the light of men »vi. And, by extension, it also became the prototype of their soul, as the Talmud indicates. If life is the light of men, the soul is the light of life.
This explains why, later on, we will see a deep connection between light and truth: « He who does the truth comes to the light »vii.
The Hebrew word for « light » is אור, « or ». The word אור means « light, radiance, sun, fire, flame », but also, by extension, « happiness ».
« Or », אור, is maybe the true name, the true nature of the soul.
The soul fills and nourishes the body, sees, is pure, and resides in a very secret place.
We learn all this in the Berakhot treaty:
« R. Chimi b. Okba asked: ‘How can I understand? Bless the LORD, my soul: let all my womb bless his name. (Ps 103:1)? (…) What was David thinking when he said five timesviii Bless the LORD, my soul?
– [He was thinking ] of the Holy One, blessed be He, and to the soul. Just as the Holy One, blessed be He, fills the whole world, so the soul fills the whole body; the Holy One, blessed be He, sees and is not visible, and likewise the soul sees but cannot be seen; the soul nourishes the whole body, just as the Holy One, blessed be He, nourishes the whole world; the Holy One, blessed be He, is pure, the soul also; like the Holy One, blessed be He, the soul resides in a very secret place. It is good that the one who possesses these five attributes should come to glorify the One who possesses these five attributes. » ix
This text teaches us that the soul has five attributes. These five attributes are based on the hypothesis of a « likeness » or « resemblance » between the soul and the « Holy One ».
The soul fills the whole body and nourishes it. But then what happens when a part of the body becomes detached from it? Does a piece of the soul leave as a result? No, the soul is indivisible. What is called « body » takes its name only from the presence of the soul that envelops and fills it. If the body dies and decomposes, it just means that the soul has gone. Not the other way around.
The soul sees. It is not, of course, through the eyes of the body. It is all about seeing what cannot be seen, which is beyond all vision. The soul sees but she does not see herself. This comes from the fact that she is of the same essence as the divine word that said « Let there be light ». One cannot see such a word, nor can one hear it, one can only read it.
The soul is pure. But then evil does not reach her? No. Evil does not attain her essence. It can only veil or darken her light. Evil can be compared to thick, uncomfortable clothes, heavy armor, or rubbish thrown on the skin, or a hard gangue hiding the brilliance of an even harder diamond.
The soul resides in a very secret place. This statement should be made known to the specialists of neurosciences. The first Russian cosmonauts famously reported, after their return to earth, that they had not found God in space. Nor is there much chance that the soul can be detected by positron emission tomography or other techniques of imagery. This makes it necessary to imagine a structure of the universe that is much more complex (by many orders of magnitude) than the one that « modern », positivist science is trying to defend.
The soul is weak.
The soul is « weak », as evidenced by the fact that she « falters » when she hears even a single word from her Creator. « R. Joshua b. Levi said: Every word spoken by the Holy One, blessed be he, made the souls of Israel faint, for it is said, My soul fainted when he spoke to me (Cant. 5:6). But when a first word had been spoken and the soul had gone out, how could she listen to a second word? He made the dew fall that was destined to raise the dead in the future, and it raised them up. » x
There are even more serious arguments. The soul is weak in its very essence, because she « floats ».
« [In Heaven] are also the breaths and souls of those who are to be created, for it is said before me the breaths float, and the souls which I have made (Is. 57:16); and the dew that will serve the Holy One, blessed be he, to raise the dead. » xi
The quotation from Isaiah in this excerpt from the Talmud, however, lends itself to other interpretations, and translations…
The word « float » here translates the Hebrew יַעֲטוֹף: « to cover oneself; to be weak ».
With this more faithful sense, one reads: « Thus says He who is high and exalted, whose dwelling is eternal and whose name is holy: ‘I am high and holy in my dwelling place, but I am with the contrite and humiliated man, to revive the humiliated spirits, to revive the contrite hearts. For I do not want to accuse constantly or always be angry, for before me would weaken the spirit and those souls I created. » (Is. 57:15-16)
Another translation (by the Jerusalem Bible) chooses to translate יַעֲטוֹף as « to die out »:
« Sublime and holy is my throne! But it is also in the contrite and humble hearts, to vivify the spirit of the humble, to revive the hearts of the afflicted. No; I don’t want to argue without respite, to be angry all the time, because the spirit would eventually die out in front of me, with these souls that I myself have created. »
So, is the soul « floating », « weak » or threatened to « die out »?
All this together, for sure. Fortunately, Isaiah brings us good news.
The souls of the humble and the afflicted will be enlivened, revived.
It is the souls of the proud who risk to die out.
I would like to conclude here, with yet another metaphor, due to the Psalmist:
« My soul is in me like a child, like a little child against its mother. » xii
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iAggadoth of the Babylonian Talmud. Shabbat 31b. §51. Translated by Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre. Ed. Verdier. 1982, p.168.
viiiIn Psalm 103, David says three times, Bless the LORD my soul (Ps 103:1, 2 and 22), once bless the LORD, you his angels (103:20), once bless the LORD, you his hosts (Ps 103:21), once bless the LORD, you all his creatures (Ps 103:22). However, David says twice more Bless the LORD, my soul in Psalm 104:1, « My soul, bless the LORD! O LORD my God, you are infinitely great! « and « Bless, my soul, YHVH, hallelujah! « Ps 104:35.
ixAggadoth of the Babylonian Talmud. Berakhot 10a. §85. Translated by Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre. Ed. Verdier. Lagrasse, 1982, p. 69-70.
xAggadoth of the Babylonian Talmud. Shabbat 88b. §136. Translated by Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre. Ed. Verdier. 1982, p.207.
xiAggadoth of the Babylonian Talmud. Haguiga 12b, § 31. Translated by Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre. Ed. Verdier. 1982, p.580.
Chacun d’entre nous est réellement un système quantique, affirme Alexander Wendt (« Human beings really are quantum systems »i).
D’un côté, cette affirmation est une évidence, puisqu’en dernière analyse nous sommes effectivement composés de molécules, d’atomes et d’un certain nombre de particules élémentaires, qui obéissent aux lois de la mécanique quantique, très différentes, comme on le sait, des lois de la physique classique.
D’un autre côté, cela peut sembler contre-intuitif, tant le corps qui nous constitue, l’esprit qui nous anime, la mémoire qui nous fonde, l’intelligence qui nous éclaire, la volonté qui nous inspire, semblent fort loin de la réalité quantique, plus proche de nuages mathématiques de probabilités abstraites que de la vie concrète de tous les jours, avec son cortège relativement stable de sujets, d’objets et d’interactions plus ou moins observables.
Il est aussi possible qu’il n’y ait pas de contradiction entre ces deux « côtés ». Nous pourrions parfaitement être à la fois des systèmes quantiques obéissant aux lois de la mécanique quantique dans les profondeurs de notre corps et de notre cerveau, et, en même temps, des êtres humains plongés dans la réalité quotidienne, faites de sujets et d’objets.
Par exemple, on peut imaginer que le monde quotidien, la réalité de tous les jours, n’est que la projection « réalisée » d’une possibilité singulière, choisie parmi une infinité d’états quantiques superposés.
Chaque femtoseconde, des quantités inimaginables de micro-événements quantiques se « réalisent » en tous points de notre corps et notamment dans notre cerveau. Infiniment plus nombreux encore, sont les événement qui ne se réalisent pas mais qui demeurent dans un état de « superposition » quantique, c’est-à-dire restent à l’état de nuages de probabilités, jusqu’à ce que certaines conditions permettent de nouvelles émergences, de nouvelles actualisations singulières dans l’univers des possibles.
Admettons un instant le point de vue « matérialiste », selon lequel l’esprit humain n’est qu’un épiphénomène, découlant seulement du fonctionnement interne du cerveau, et voyons ce qu’on peut en inférer, du point de vue de l’épistémologie quantique.
Si le cerveau est un « système quantique », on peut en induire que l’esprit humain est sans doute aussi dans un état de « superposition quantique ».
Dans ces conditions, comment l’esprit, plongé dans de multiples nuages de probabilités, peut-il prendre une décision effective, se traduisant matériellement, dans la réalité?
La théorie classique de la décision pose que celle-ci découle de la maximalisation de l’utilité. L’utilité est considérée par les matérialistes, les positivistes et bien sûr les utilitaristes, comme le principal critère de la rationalité de la décision.
Cette théorie présuppose que l’esprit humain possède des croyances et des préférences dûment définies. Toute décision, toute action peut alors être envisagée comme un moyen de maximiser la satisfaction des préférences ou le respect des croyances, à travers le choix d’un comportement ad hoc.
En revanche, dans la théorie quantique de la décision, il n’y a pas de préférence a priori, pas de croyance pré-existante, ni non plus de critère d’utilité à maximiser. La rationalité ne peut plus prétendre à relier mécaniquement, classiquement, des circonstances initiales, des moyens appropriés et une fin désirée, car cette fin n’existe pas (ou pas encore). La prise de conscience de la fin poursuivie, ou « désirée », dépend en fait de la détermination effective de l’ensemble de l’environnement (y compris jusqu’aux confins de l’univers) et du choix des moyens pour en mesurer les critères de réalisation.
La théorie quantique n’exclut certes pas le rôle des « croyances » et des « préférences », dont on sait qu’elle peuvent par ailleurs jouer leur rôle dans des situations classiques, mais elle les relativisent, compte tenu de la masse totale des informations actives qui assaillent objectivement ou subrepticement l’esprit du décideur.
Quand il y a une situation d’incertitude profonde, de crise grave, d’urgence immédiate, ou même seulement de flou cognitif sur l’état réel de l’environnement, les croyances et les préférences ne peuvent plus jouer leur rôle « mécanique », « classique », d’orientation « rationnelle » de la décision.
Le cerveau prend alors tous les autres moyens qui sont à sa disposition pour surmonter les aléas de l’incertitude générale, – et il s’appuie notamment sur les ressources potentiellement disponibles, celles que recèlent les innombrables superpositions de ses non moins innombrables « états » quantiques et de leurs intrications avec l’ensemble du cosmos.
La théorie quantique de la décision remet donc en cause l’idée selon laquelle avoir un esprit « logique », une « raison » bien ordonnée, soient la base optimale pour relever les défis des incertitudes et des complexités, et pour prendre des décisions dans des contextes intrinsèquement insaisissables, non représentables rationnellement, et selon la théorie classique, indécidables.
Cette assurance vient d’un fait expérimental bien connu. Quand un physicien mesure le comportement d’une particule, il devient de facto intriqué avec elle. Le processus de la mesure, qu’il conçoit et met en œuvre, crée d’emblée une corrélation non-locale entre l’objet à mesurer, l’appareil de mesure et le cerveau du physicien, corrélation qui influence irrémédiablement, en retour, le résultat de la mesure obtenue.
Cette non-séparabilité de la particule avec tout son environnement est la base de la théorie du holisme des processus quantiques.
Comme les êtres humains sont des systèmes quantiques, ils font partie eux aussi d’univers multiples, relationnels, holistiques, englobant l’ensemble des mondes macroscopiques et microphysiques.
L’esprit humain est donc, quantiquement parlant, infiniment plus étendu que le cerveau biologique proprement dit. Il s’étend infiniment au-delà de l’occiput ou du lobe frontal, et il communique en permanence et instantanément avec l’univers entier, non seulement tel qu’il est à l’instant t, mais aussi tel qu’il a été depuis son origine, et peut-être même tel qu’il sera jusqu’à sa fin, puisque dans cette représentation le temps se présente sous la forme d’une universelle synchronicité, pour reprendre le terme proposé par C. G. Jung.
La communication de l’esprit avec l’univers ne s’opère pas par la transmission causale d’informations ou de signaux qui convergeraient vers l’esprit-récepteur.
L’esprit n’est pas un appareil de radio qui recevrait des ondes émanant du reste de l’univers.
Il est en permanence dans un état de superposition quantique avec l’ensemble de l’univers. Il n’y a pas transmission et réception, mais superposition et synchronicité.
Dans ces conditions, comme l’esprit humain prend-il une décision ?
Elle se fait par le passage de la superposition de multiples états « potentiels » à un seul état « actuel » de l’esprit. Dans le jargon de la mécanique quantique, ce passage s’appelle « effondrement » ou « réduction » (« collapse » en anglais) des fonctions d’onde. Il exprime l’idée qu’une réalité « actuelle » prend soudain forme, émergeant d’un vaste ensemble de potentialités qui demeuraient jusqu’alors « superposées », réparties en un spectre de probabilités.
La perception quantique, instantanée, « non-locale », permet une certaine correspondance, instantanée, entre l’esprit et son environnement indéfini, complexe, incertain. La rationalité livrée à sa seule clarté, à son aveuglement solipsiste, soumise à des lois classiques de causalité, et d’interdépendance spatiale et temporelle, est bien moins apte à traiter de l’obscur, du flou, et de l’indécidable .
Il y a encore d’autres sources, non rationnelles, dont l’esprit s’abreuve en permanence : les émotions, le subconscient et l’inconscient.
Les émotions ne relèvent pas de la raison. L’inconscient non plus.
Cependant, les neurosciences ont prouvé expérimentalement que la raison et les émotions sont profondément entremêlées, enchevêtrées, intriquées, surtout lorsqu’il s’agit de prendre des décisions dans l’incertitude, l’ignorance ou l’urgence.
Que signifie alors l’idée de « rationalité », si la raison est ainsi naturellement soumise à tant d’influences exogènes ?
Il y a peut-être, au-delà de la raison une méta-raison, un méta-logos ou un méta-noos, capable de « superposer » raison, émotion, subconscient et inconscient ?
Cette méta-raison enrichirait considérablement l’idée même de « raison », si l’on accepte de considérer l’élargissement immense de son possible champ de perception et d’intellection (par le biais de toutes ces sources non rationnelles, les émotions, le subconscient et l’inconscient).
Par son intermédiaire l’esprit voit son pouvoir de saisie étendu jusqu’aux confins des mondes, et jusqu’au tréfonds de l’abîme.
On peut en tirer deux conclusions provisoires :
1. Le cosmos, la raison et l’inconscient, sont « intriqués », depuis les origines.
2. Par cette « intrication », l’univers et l’inconscient (cosmique) ont fait intrinsèquement alliance avec l’espèce humaine.
Saurons-nous respecter le pacte qu’implique cette fort ancienne alliance ?
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iAlexander Wendt. Quantum Mind and Social Science. Unifying Physical and Social Ontology. Cambridge University Press, 2015. p. 3. Je dois la découverte de ce beau livre à l’ami Derrick de Kerckhove, que je remercie ici.
Is a « beautiful girl », whose beauty is « without soul », really beautiful?
Kant thought about this interesting question.
« Even of a girl, it can be said that she is pretty, conversational and good-looking, but soulless. What is meant here by soul? The soul, in the aesthetic sense, refers to the principle that, in the mind, brings life.» i
For Kant, here, the soul is an aesthetic principle, a principle of life. Beauty is nothing if it does not live in some way, from the fire of an inner principle.
Beauty is really nothing without what makes it live, without what animates it, without the soul herself.
But if the soul brings life, how do we see the effect of her power? By the radiance alone of beauty? Or by some other signs?
Can the soul live, and even live to the highest possible degree, without astonishing or striking those who are close to her, who even brush past her, without seeing her? Or, even worse, by those who see her but then despise her?
« He had no beauty or glamour to attract attention, and his appearance had nothing to seduce us. » ii
These words of the prophet Isaiah describe the « Servant », a paradoxical figure, not of a triumphant Messiah, but of God’s chosen one, who is the « light of the nations »iii and who « will establish righteousness on earthiv.
A few centuries after Isaiah, Christians interpreted the « Servant » as a prefiguration of Christ.
The Servant is not beautiful, he has no radiance. In front of him, one even veils one’s face, because of the contempt he inspires.
But as Isaiah says, the Servant is in reality the king of Israel, the light of the nations, the man in whom God has put His spirit, and in whom the soul of God delightsv.
« Object of contempt, abandoned by men, man of pain, familiar with suffering, like someone before whom one hides one’s face, despised, we do not care. Yet it was our suffering that he bore and our pain that he was burdened with. And we considered him punished, struck by God and humiliated. » vi
The Servant, – the Messiah, has neither beauty nor radiance. He has nothing to seduce, but the soul of God delights in him.
A beautiful woman, without soul. And the Servant, without beauty, whose soul is loved by God.
Would soul and beauty have nothing to do with each other?
In the Talmud, several passages deal with beauty; others with the soul; rarely with both.
Some rabbis took pride in their own, personal beauty.
R. Johanan Bar Napheba boasted: « I am a remnant of the splendors of Jerusalem ». vii
His beauty was indeed famous. It must have been all the more striking because his face was « hairless ».viii
And, in fact, this beauty aroused love, to the point of triggering unexpected transports.
« One day, R. Johanan was bathing in the Jordan River. Rech Lakich saw him and jumped into the river to join him.
– You should devote your strength to the Torah, » said R. Johanan.
– Your beauty would suit a woman better, » replied Rech Lakich.
– If you change your life, I’ll give you my sister in marriage, who is much more beautiful than I am. » ix
At least this R. Johanan was looked at and admired ! The same cannot be said of Abraham’s wife. She was beautiful, as we know, because the Pharaoh had coveted her. But Abraham did not even bother to look at her…
« I had made a covenant with my eyes, and I would not have looked at a virgin (Job, 31:1): Job would not have looked at a woman who was not his, says Rabbah, but Abraham did not even look at his own wife, since it is written, « Behold, I know that you are a beautiful woman (Gen. 12:11): until then he did not know it. » x
From another point of view, if someone is really beautiful, it can be detrimental, even deadly.
The very handsome rabbi R. Johanan reported: « From the river Echel to Rabath stretches the valley of Dura, and among the Israelites whom Nebuchadnezzar exiled there were young men whose radiant beauty eclipsed the sun. Their very sight alone made the women of Chaldea sick with desire. They confessed it to their husbands. The husbands informed the king who had them executed. But the women continued to languish. So the king had the bodies of young men crushed.» xi
In those days, the rabbis themselves did not hide their appreciation of the beauty of women :
« Rabbi Simon b. Gamaliel was on the steps of the Temple Hill when he saw a pagan woman of great beauty. How great are your works, O LORD! (Ps. 104:24) he exclaimed. Likewise, when R. Akiba saw Turnus Rufus’ wifexii, he spat, laughed, and wept. He spat because she came from a stinking drop; he laughed because she was destined to convert and become his wife; and he wept [thinking] that such beauty would one day be under the earth. » xiii
That Rabbi Akiba dreamt of converting and seducing the wife of the Roman governor of Judea can be attributed to militant proselytizing.
Or was it just a parable?
Why did Rabbi Akiba mourn the beauty of this pagan?
Shouldn’t the beauty of her « converted » soul have obliterated forever the beauty of her body, destined moreover to be buried some day?
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iEmmanuel Kant. Criticism of the faculty of judgment.
The 7th verse of the 3rd Sura of the Qur’an offers one hell of an enigma, opening up a flood of comments.
« It is He who has sent down the Book to you, there are unequivocal verses in it. (ءَايَتُ مُّحْكَمَتُ ), which are the mother of the Book, and other equivocal ones (مُتَشَبِهَتُ ). People who have an inclination to straying in their hearts, put the emphasis on the equivocal verses, seeking dissension by trying to find an interpretation for them, when no one knows the interpretation, except God and men of a deep science. They say, ‘We believe: all things come from our Lord’, but only men of understanding remember them.» i
The word « unequivocal » translates the adjective مُّحْكَمَتُ, coming from the verbal root حَكَمَ « to judge, to decide ». The word « equivocal » translates the adjective مُتَشَبِهَتُ . But this adjective may have other meanings : « doubtful, ambiguous, uncertain, suspicious ».
It is really not common, for a revealed text such as the Quran, to challenge itself directly, by claiming that Quranic verses can be « equivocal » or even « dubious, suspicious » – as the word مُتَشَبِهَتُ implies.
There is another question, perhaps an even deeper one, which has fascinated such eminent philosophers as Averroes or Ghazzali: is this verse 3:7 itself equivocal or not?
Indeed, there are two very different ways of reading its second sentence, thus producing a real equivocation as to its true meaning.
The first reading, which has just been given, suggests that philosophers and men of profound science can decipher the obscure allusions and secret knowledge that the text conceals, and come closer to its true interpretation, the one that God knows.
But if the end of the sentence is marked just after « except God », – as the lack of punctuation marks in Arabic allows –, the text then reads:
« No one knows the interpretation, except God. But men of deep science say: ‘We believe in it’…etc. ».
This second reading brings the « men of deep science » back to a radical modesty. They are granted only the possibility of conceiving the existence of these allusions and their potential secrets from a distance, but without being able to grasp them, to explain them, to understand them. Philosophers and men of science are reduced to measuring their ignorance and the absolute transcendence of God.
In this second interpretation, philosophers and scientists would therefore be held silent on all equivocal verses, including verse 3:7, – which deals with the existence of equivocal verses in the Qur’an in an equivocal manner.
They must renounce the apparent superiority of their science of interpretation, not so much out of humility, but because they have to admit their radical limits with regard to the transcendence of the revealed text.
Averroes addressed this delicate issue in his Decisive Treatise.
He takes a clear stand for the first reading: « We opt, for our part, for the reading that consists of pausing after the words: »and men of deep science ».»ii
In so doing, it supports the cause of philosophers, recognizing the freedom of scholarly analysis, and the benefit of seeking to reconcile science and belief, reason and faith.
He makes a thorough analysis of the various levels of meaning to be found in the Qur’an, and the precautions to be taken in this regard. Only philosophers and men of science can be brought to discuss this subject, far from the unlearned ears of common people and crowds. « True interpretations [of revealed statements] should not be written down in books for the masses, let alone those that are flawed.» iii
Revelation, perhaps a little paradoxically, is not always clear; it does not reveal everything and there are many things that continues to keep hidden.
« We know from the tradition of their words that many figures of the first age of Islam believed that the Revelation includes the apparent and the hidden (ظاهِرأوَباطِنأ , zāhiranwa bātinan), and that the hidden should not be known by those who are not men who possess the science of it and who would be incapable of understanding it. Proof of this, the sayning of ‘Ali ben Abi Tālib – reported by al-Boukhāri – God be pleased with him: ‘Speak to men about what they know. Do you want to tax Allah and His Prophet with a lie?’, and similar words that are reported from many other pious elders. » iv
There is a radical difference between « clear » verses, which often deal with practical religious issues, around which it has been easy since the earliest ages of Islam to form a consensus and then to conform to it, and « equivocal » verses, which raise theoretical questions, which in themselves offer no possibility of consensus.
Consequently, Averroes judged, like many others before him, that the interpretation of these verses should not be made public. « No era has been short of scholars who felt that the Revelation contains certain things whose true meaning should not be known by everyone.»v
If consensus is not conceivable in these theoretical matters, the consequence is that one cannot call it ‘infidelity’ either if one breaks the consensus on this or that interpretation.
But not everyone is as broad-minded as Averroes:
« What about Muslim philosophers, such as Abū Nașr (al-Fārābī) and Ibn Sinā (Avicenna)? Abū Hamid [Ghazali], in his book known as Incoherence of Philosophers, however, categorically concluded that they were unfaithful to three questions.» vi
(These three famous and unresolved questions were the issue of the eternity of the world, the assertion according to which God does not know the particulars, and the theses of the ressurection of the flesh and future life.)
Averroes concludes that it is better to keep secrecy about philosophical research and interpretations of the Qur’anic text. And this for a very good reason :
« It is because of the interpretations, and because of the opinion that these should, from the point of view of the revealed Law, be exposed to everyone, that the sects of Islam appeared, which came to the point of accusing each other of infidelity or blameworthy innovation, especially those of them that were perverse. The Mu’tazilites interpreted many of the prophetic verses and traditions, and exposed these interpretations to the crowd, and so did the Ash’arites, although the latter interpreted less. As a result, they precipitated people into hatred, mutual abhorrence and wars, tore the Revelation to pieces and completely divided people. » vii
One may say ‘Yes’ to science, therefore, ‘Yes’ to philosophy, ‘Yes’ to making an effort to interpret the Qur’an, in its most ambiguous, opaque, uncertain verses. But it’s an absolute ‘No’, as for communicating the results to the people, to the crowd.
This would only lead to hatred, division and wars…
Is truth equivocal? Should it be kept secret?
Averroes, unequivocally, answered « yes » to these questions.
Le gouvernement a peur (de disparaître aux prochaines élections). Il a peur parce qu’il pense que le peuple a peur (de mourir du Covid, ou de quelque autre catastrophe diffuse, en gésine, liée à l’état de la planète, ou suite aux turbulences prévisibles qui résulteront de la fin annoncée d’un modèle de développement, et de l’implosion de la société).
Le gouvernement a peur du peuple, car il sait que sa gestion de la crise est très en-dessous de ce que le peuple était en droit d’attendre. Il a peur de sa peur et surtout de sa réaction en cas d’aggravation des contradictions entre diverses politiques de plus en plus incompatibles (santé, société, économie, sécurité, éthique, migration, liberté, vie privée, démocratie…).
Le peuple a peur, parce qu’il voit que le gouvernement ne maîtrise rien, mais est, depuis plus d’un an, en fuite constante devant l’orage pandémique, gérant mal des urgences successives, inexplicables, calamiteuses (des masques introuvables au début de la pandémie, aux centaines de millions de doses de vaccin dûment payées mais non fournies par le Big Pharma).
Le peuple a peur, parce qu’il voit que, devant une crise relativement mineure comme celle de la pandémie, le gouvernement a montré toutes ses limites et ses incompétences.
Le peuple a peur parce qu’il pressent que lors de l’explosion (probable) de prochaines crises, qui seront réellement des crises majeures, existentielles, et qui s’annoncent déjà, le gouvernement sera sans doute encore plus incompétent, pusillanime, désordonné, mais qu’il deviendra, alors, d’autant plus autoritaire, répressif et fascisant, parce qu’il lui faudra cacher sa peur, ou bien laisser la place à l’anarchie et à la violence.
La pandémie du Covid est une crise à la fois mineure et gravissime.
Elle est mineure parce qu’elle risque de se traduire par (seulement!) quelques millions de morts à l’échelle de l’humanité, alors que la crise climatique ainsi que la tragédie de la disparition progressive de millions d’espèces vivantes indispensables à l’avenir de la vie commune sur Terre, risquent de se traduire par des centaines de millions de morts, voire des milliards, à l’horizon de la fin du siècle actuel.
Elle est gravissime parce qu’elle montre crûment l’état d’impréparation du gouvernement pour traiter une crise sanitaire annoncée comme possible, et même latente, depuis des décennies, avec nombre d’alertes récentes, qui auraient dû déclencher une réponse globale et préventivei. Elle est gravissime parce qu’elle montre crûment que le gouvernement sera encore bien plus désarmé pour traiter du désastre écologique et systémique qui se prépare.
Que faire ? Il faut changer complètement de modèle de vie, de modèle du pouvoir et de modèle du monde. Vaste programme, dire-t-on sans doute. En effet. Aux grands maux, les grands remèdes.
Wittgenstein a écrit en 1930 une phrase profonde et prémonitoire : « L’homme et sans doute les peuples doivent s’éveiller à l’étonnement. La science est un moyen de les faire se rendormir. »ii
Est-ce que la science (qui, entre parenthèses, a montré sa capacité d’adaptation et d’invention en multipliant les succès décisifs dans sa recherche d’un vaccin contre le Covid) est censée mettre un terme à la peur généralisée qui couve (celle du gouvernement et celle du peuple) ?
La peur a semblé un moment être conjurée, lorsque des annonces tonitruantes ont été faites par le Big Pharma quant à l’efficacité des vaccins Pfizer, Moderna ou AstraZeneca. Puis une autre peur s’est instillée en Europe, celle de ne pas être livrée dans les temps contractuels, celle d’être victime de manipulations commerciales ou autres…
Wittgenstein avait aussi affirmé que la science ne pourrait pas protéger les peuples de leur peur profonde, viscérale, ontologique. « Il n’est pas exclu que des peuples très civilisés soient de nouveau enclins à cette même peur [que celle de certaines tribus primitives devant la nature], et leur culture comme la connaissance scientifique ne peuvent les en protéger. »iii
Nous y voilà. La science ne représente pas le summum de la pensée humaine. Il est possible que la voix des philosophes, ou des sages, portent beaucoup plus loin que celle, par exemple, du président d’AstraZeneca, qui semble fort peu effarouché de s’en prendre à lui tout seul au bloc de l’Union européenne, qui l’a pourtant inondé de commandes…
Il est fort possible que le temps soit venu pour changer le modèle politique et philosophique qui gouverne un monde placé sur une trajectoire catastrophique, et semblant inconscient de sa fin proche.
Il ne suffit pas, aujourd’hui, de dire : « N’ayez pas peur ! »…
iUne réponse préventive et globale que l’OMS était bien incapable d’assumer en tant que tel, vu l’état de déshérence des systèmes intergouvernementaux placés sous l’égide de l’ONU, du fait d’une volonté systématique des principaux États financeurs de les affaiblir.
Etymology goes back further to the dawn of thought, much further than archaeology or paleography.
The root of the oldest words is all that remains of time that no memory can imagine. These roots are the minute, ineffaceable traces of what was once pure intuition, radiant knowledge, sudden revelation, for singular men and moving crowds.
The ancient roots, still alive, like verbal souls, speak to us of a vanished world.
Among the most powerful roots are those that inform the names of the Gods.
In the Veda, Agni is said to be « Fire ».
But the truly original, etymological meaning of the word « agni » is not « fire », it is « alive », and « agile ».
The idea of « fire » is only a derivation from this primeval sense. The oldest intuitions associated with the word « agni » then are « life » and « movement », as opposed to « rest » and « death ».
The divine Agni, had indeed many other names, to tell of his other qualities: Atithi, Anala, Dahana, Vasu, Bharata, Mātariśvā, Vaiśvānara, Śoṣaṇa, Havyavah, Hutabhuk…
Agni’s names all have a distinct, specific meaning. Atithi is « Host », Anala is « Longevity », Dahana is « Burning », Tanūnapāt : « Self-Generated », Apāṃnapāt : « from the waters ».
So many attributes for such a hidden God!
« Two mothers of a different color and walking quickly, each giving birth to an infant. From the breast of one is born Hari [yet another name of Agni], honored by libations; from the breast of the other is born Soucra (the Sun), with a bright flame ». i
Agni is indeed « visible », He was born as a child, – but very clever, very wise is whoever can really « see » Him !
« Which of you has seen Him, when He is hiding? As an infant just now, there He is who, by the virtue of sacrifice, now gives birth to His own mothers. Thus Agni, great and wise, honored by our libations, generates the rain of the cloud, and is reborn in the bosom of deeds.» ii
Agni is everywhere. Agni is not only « alive », « agile », He is not only « Fire », not only « God ».
He is also the flickering glow, the sparkling lightning, the blazing forest, the fatal lightning, the evening sun, the pink dawn, the inflexible flint, the warmth of the body, the embers of love…
To understand the Veda, it helps to be a poet, to expand one´s mind to the universe, and even farther away.
« All men are either Jews or Hellenes; either they are driven by ascetic impulses which lead them to reject all pictorial representation and to sacrifice to sublimation, or they are distinguished by their serenity, their expansive naturalness and their realistic spirit, » wrote Heinrich Heinei.
The over-schematic and somewhat outrageous nature of this statement may surprise in the mouth of the « last of the Romantic poets ».
But, according to Jan Assmann, Heine here would only symbolize the opposition between two human types, each of them holding on to two world visions, one valuing the spirit, without seeking a direct relationship with material reality, and the other valuing above all the senses and the concrete world.
In any case, when Heinrich Heine wrote these words at the beginning of the 19th century, this clear-cut opposition between « Hebraism » and « Hellenism » could be seen as a kind of commonplace “cliché” in the Weltanschauung then active in Germany.
Other considerations fueled this polarization. A kind of fresh wind seemed to be blowing on the European intellectual scene following the recent discovery of Sanskrit, followed by the realization of the historical depth of the Vedic heritage, and the exhumation of evidence of a linguistic filiation between the ‘Indo-European’ languages.
All this supported the thesis of the existence of multi-millennia migrations covering vast territories, notably from Northern Europe to Central Asia, India and Iran.
There was a passionate search for a common European origin, described in Germany as ‘Indo-Germanic’ and in France or Britain as ‘Indo-European’, taking advantage as much as possible of the lessons of comparative linguistics, the psychology of peoples and various mythical, religious and cultural sources.
Heine considered the opposition between « Semitic » and « Aryan » culture as essential. For him, it was a question not only of opposing « Aryans » and « Semites », but of perceiving « a more general opposition that concerned ‘all men’, the opposition between the mind, which is not directly related to the world or distant from it, and the senses, which are linked to the world. The first inclination, says Heine (rather simplistically, I must say), men get it from the Jews, the second, they inherited it from the Greeks, so that henceforth two souls live in the same bosom, a Jewish soul and a Greek soul, one taking precedence over the other depending on the case.» ii
A century later, Freud thought something comparable, according to Jan Assmann. « For him, too, the specifically Jewish contribution to human history lay in the drive toward what he called « progress in the life of the spirit. This progress is to the psychic history of humanity what Freud calls ‘sublimation’ in the individual psychic life.”iii
For Freud, the monotheistic invention consisted « in a refusal of magic and mysticism, in encouraging progress in the life of the spirit, and in encouraging sublimation ». It was a process by which « the people, animated by the possession of truth, penetrated by the consciousness of election, came to set great store by intellectual things and to emphasize ethics »iv.
This would be the great contribution of « Judaism » to the history of the world.
At the same time, however, Freud developed a particularly daring and provocative thesis about the « invention » of monotheism. According to him, Moses was not a Hebrew, he was Egyptian; moreover, and most importantly, he did not die in the land of Moab, as the Bible reports, but was in fact murdered by his own people.
Freud’s argument is based on the unmistakably Egyptian name ‘Moses’, the legend of his childhood, and Moses’ « difficult speech, » an indication that he was not proficient in Hebrew. Indeed, he could communicate only through Aaron. In addition, there are some revealing quotations, according to Freud: « What will I do for this people? A little more and they will stone me! « (Ex. 17:4) and : « The whole community was talking about [Moses and Aaron] stoning them. » (Numbers 14:10).
There is also that chapter of Isaiah in which Freud distinguishes the « repressed » trace of the fate actually reserved for Moses: « An object of contempt, abandoned by men, a man of sorrow, familiar with suffering, like one before whom one hides his face, despised, we took no notice of him. But it was our sufferings that he bore and our pains that he was burdened with. And we saw him as punished, struck by God and humiliated. But he was pierced because of our crimes, crushed because of our faults. « (Is. 53:3-5)
Freud infers from all these clues that Moses was in fact murdered by the Jews after they revolted against the unbearable demands of the Mosaic religion. He adds that the killing of Moses by the Jews marked the end of the system of the primitive horde and polytheism, and thus resulted in the effective and lasting foundation of monotheism.
The murder of the « father », which was – deeply – repressed in Jewish consciousness, became part of an « archaic heritage », which « encompasses not only provisions but also contents, mnemonic traces relating to the life of previous generations. (…) If we admit the preservation of such mnemonic traces in the archaic heritage, we have bridged the gap between individual psychology and the psychology of the masses, we can treat people as the neurotic individual.”v
The repression is not simply cultural or psychological, it affects the long memory of peoples, through « mnemonic traces » that are inscribed in the depths of souls, and perhaps even in the biology of bodies, in their DNA.
The important thing is that it is from this repression that a « decisive progress in the life of the spirit » has been able to emerge, according to Freud. This « decisive progress », triggered by the murder of Moses, was also encouraged by the ban on mosaic images.
« Among the prescriptions of the religion of Moses, there is one that is more meaningful than is at first thought. It is the prohibition to make an image of God, and therefore the obligation to worship a God who cannot be seen. We suppose that on this point Moses surpassed in rigor the religion of Aten; perhaps he only wanted to be consistent – his God had neither name nor face -; perhaps it was a new measure against the illicit practices of magic. But if one admitted this prohibition, it necessarily had to have an in-depth action. It meant, in fact, a withdrawal of the sensory perception in favor of a representation that should be called abstract, a triumph of the life of the mind over the sensory life, strictly speaking a renunciation of impulses with its necessary consequences on the psychological level.”vi
If Judaism represents a « decisive progress » in the life of the spirit, what can we think of the specific contribution of Christianity in this regard?
Further progress in the march of the spirit? Or, on the contrary, regression?
Freud’s judgment of the Christian religion is very negative.
« We have already said that the Christian ceremony of Holy Communion, in which the believer incorporates the Saviour’s flesh and blood, repeats in its content the ancient totemic meal, certainly only in its sense of tenderness, which expresses veneration, not in its aggressive sense ».vii
For him, « this religion constitutes a clear regression in the life of the spirit, since it is marked by a return to magical images and rites, and in particular to the sacrificial rite of the totemic meal during which God himself is consumed by the community of believers.”viii
Freud’s blunt condemnation of Christianity is accompanied by a kind of contempt for the « lower human masses » who have adopted this religion.
« In many respects, the new religion constituted a cultural regression in relation to the old, Jewish religion, as is regularly the case when new, lower-level human masses enter or are admitted somewhere. The Christian religion did not maintain the degree of spiritualization to which Judaism had risen. It was no longer strictly monotheistic, it adopted many of the symbolic rites of the surrounding peoples, it restored the great mother goddess and found room for a large number of polytheistic deities, recognizable under their veils, albeit reduced to a subordinate position. Above all it did not close itself, like the religion of Aten and the Mosaic religion which followed it, to the intrusion of superstitious magic and mystical elements, which were to represent a serious inhibition for the spiritual development of the next two millennia.”ix
If one adopts a viewpoint internal to Christianity, however hurtful Freud’s attacks may be, they do not stand up to analysis. In spite of all the folklore from which popular religiosity is not exempt, Christian theology is clear: there is only one God. The Trinity, difficult to understand, one can admit, for non-Christians as well as for Christians, does not imply « three Gods », but only one God, who gives Himself to be seen and understood in three « Persons ».
To take a cross-comparison, one could infer that Judaism is not « strictly monotheistic » either, if one recalls that the Scriptures attest that « three men » (who were YHVH) appeared to Abraham under the oak tree of Mamre (Gen 18:1-3), or that the Word of God was « incarnated » in the six hundred thousand signs of the Torah, or that God left in the world His own « Shekhinah » .
From the point of view of Christianity, everything happens as if Isaiah chapter 53, which Freud applied to Moses, could also be applied to the figure of Jesus.
It is the absolutely paradoxical and scandalous idea (from the point of view of Judaism) that the Messiah could appear not as a triumphant man, crushing the Romans, but as « an object of contempt, abandoned by men, a man of sorrow, familiar with suffering, like someone before whom one hides one’s face, despised. »
But what is, now, the most scandalous thing for the Jewish conscience?
Is it Freud’s hypothesis that Isaiah’s words about a « man of sorrow », « despised », indicate that the Jews murdered Moses?
Or is it that these same Isaiah’s words announce the Christian thesis that the Messiah had to die like a slave, under the lazzis and spittle?
If Freud is wrong and Moses was not murdered by the Jews, it cannot be denied that a certain Jesus was indeed put to death under Pontius Pilate. And then one may be struck by the resonance of these words uttered by Isaiah seven centuries before: « Now it is our sufferings that he bore and our sorrows that he was burdened with. And we considered him punished, struck by God and humiliated. But he was pierced because of our crimes, crushed because of our faults. « (Is. 53:4-5)
There is obviously no proof, from the Jewish point of view, that these words of Isaiah apply to Jesus, — or to Moses.
If Isaiah’s words do not apply to Moses (in retrospect) nor to Jesus (prophetically), who do they apply to? Are they only general, abstract formulas, without historical content? Or do they refer to some future Messiah? Then, how many more millennia must Isaiah’s voice wait before it reaches its truth?
History, we know, has only just begun.
Human phylum, if it does not throw itself unexpectedly into nothingness, taking with it its planet of origin, still has (roughly) a few tens of millions of years of phylogenetic « development » ahead of it.
To accomplish what?
One may answer: to rise ever more in consciousness.
Or to accomplish still unimaginable « decisive progress »…
With time, the millennia will pass.
Will Isaiah’s words pass?
What is mankind already capable of?
What will be the nature of the « decisive progress » of the human spirit, which has yet to be accomplished, and which still holds itself in the potency to become?
It is necessary to prepare for it. We must always set to work, in the dark, in what seems like a desert of stone, salt and sand.
For example, it would be, it seems to me, a kind of « decisive » progress to “see” in the figure of Moses « put to death » by his own people, and in that of Christ « put on the cross », the very figure of the Sacrifice.
What Sacrifice?
The original Sacrifice, granted from before the creation of the world by the Creator God, the « Lord of Creatures » (that One and Supreme God whom the Veda already called « Prajāpati » six thousand years ago).
It would also, it seems to me, be another kind of « decisive » progress to begin to sense some of the anthropological consequences of the original « Sacrifice » of the supreme God, the « Lord of Creatures ».
Among them, the future of the « religions » on the surface of such a small, negligible planet (Earth): their necessary movement of convergence towards a religion of Humanity and of the World, a religion of the conscience of the Sacrifice of God, a religion of the conscience of Man, in the emptiness of the Cosmos.
iHeinrich Heine. Ludwig Börne. Le Cerf. Paris, 1993
iiJan Assmann. Le prix du monothéisme. Flammarion, Paris 2007, p. 142
ivSigmund Freud, L’Homme Moïse et la Religion monothéiste, traduit de l’allemand par Cornelius Heim, Paris, Gallimard, 1993, p.177, cité par J. Assmann, op.cit. p.144
Les attentats du 11 septembre 2001 ont provoqué la mort de 2 977 personnes. En réaction, les États-Unis ont déclenché plusieurs guerres faisant des centaines de milliers de victimes et de considérables dégâts collatéraux.
Le Covid fait actuellement aux États-Unis plus de 4000 morts par jour. Quelle a été la réaction du gouvernement américain ? Une guerre contre la pandémie ? Certes non. Plutôt: déni, laxisme, fake news et émeutes de petits blancs suprématistes, financées par des poches profondes, et conçues par des réseaux complotistes.
Il a fallu attendre Biden, pour que des mesures de bon sens soient prises, le premier jour de son accession à la présidence, et cela plus d´une année après le début de la pandémie.
Le mensonge général, le marécage idéologique, la dénégation de la réalité et l´hypocrisie foncière prévalant au sein du parti Républicain ont façonné une ´réalité virtuelle ´ dont les Américains sont loin d´être sortis.
Il y a 20 ans, moins de 3000 morts en une seule et unique journée, suivie de 20 ans de guerres et de souffrances au Moyen-Orient, contre un supposé « axe du mal ».
Aujourd’hui: plus de 4000 morts par jour aux États-Unis, depuis des semaines, pour un total provisoire dépassant les 400.000 morts, du fait de l’incompétence et des choix idéologiques d’un gouvernement factieux, fuyant toutes ses responsabilités sanitaires, et contribuant à aggraver la pandémie et son taux de mortalité. Le « mal » (au sens propre) et la mort rodent de par le pays qui s’auto-proclame le « plus puissant du monde ».
Mais, fait gênant, il n´y a maintenant aucun pays-bouc-émissaire (sauf peut-être l´Iran? ou la Chine?) où pouvoir, par manière de diversion, déclencher une guerre punitive, et déployer comme en une sorte d’exutoire une ire guerrière, sanguinaire, et fort rentable, puisque les véritables responsables étaient jusqu’il y a peu au sommet même de l’Etat américain…
Désormais, la perspective d’une nouvelle guerre civile, américano-américaine, est plus qu’envisageable. Elle est déjà en cours. Elle sera longue, cruelle. La victoire, au rasoir, de Biden, quoique porteuse d’espoir, ne préjuge en rien de l’avenir. Elle semble d’ailleurs fragile et provisoire. Rendez-vous aux prochaines élections en 2023, à mi-mandat (midterm elections).
Un peu moins de la moitié des électeurs américains ont voté Trump en novembre 2020. La majorité démocrate au Sénat a été obtenue à l’arraché, d’extrême justesse.
Mais le plus grave et le plus inquiétant pour l’avenir, c’est que 70% des électeurs républicains sont absolument persuadés que le résultat des élections présidentielles a été truqué.
Que tout cela soit aujourd’hui possible dans le pays censé incarner la démocratie est glaçant.
La démocratie est partout en danger. En Europe aussi. Les ingrédients explosifs et les tensions s’accumulent, contribuant à un effondrement progressif du consensus démocratique et à la montée corrélative d’un néo-fascisme et d’un bio-fascisme, d’autant plus terrifiants qu’ils feront un usage démultiplié du contrôle social « total », par le moyen du Big Data, désormais secondé par le Big Pharma, le Big Oil et le Big Agro Biz.
Le contrôle social « total » montre encore patte blanche, — mais combien de temps encore, avant qu’il sorte les griffes, et les crocs, et la haine ?
On devra bientôt peut-être être en possession d’un bio-passeport intérieur, comme dans la Russie des Tsars pour pouvoir circuler.
Il y a 20 ans la guerre contre « l’axe du mal » était proclamée, avec les résultats que l’on sait.
Aujourd’hui, c’est la « guerre » contre le Covid qui a été mondialement proclamée. Le « Mal » et la « mort » rodent dans nos rues et dans nos campagnes.
Mais c’est une guerre sélective. On a oublié de partir en guerre contre le Big Agro Biz qui tue nos abeilles, et anéantit la bio-diversité mondiale.
Résultat de cette « guerre »: en quelque mois seulement, des profits inimaginables pour le Big Data (les GAFA et les quelques multi-milliardaires qui les contrôlent) et pour le Big Pharma. Plus, cerise sur le gâteau, un conditionnement général de la population à l’embrigadement massif, et une médiatisation mondiale du Bio-Politique.
Cela ne peut se laisser faire sans qu’une résistance s’organise.
Une résistance au data-fascisme, une résistance au bio-fascisme.
Premier axe de réflexion à nourrir d’urgence: la proclamation d’un « commun mondial » des Data, d’un « commun mondial » de la Santé humaine et animale, et d’un « commun mondial » de la Biodiversité.
Une première action concrète: définir d’urgence un impôt mondial sur les GAFA, sur le Big Oil, sur le Big Agro Biz et sur le Big Pharma, dont les produits financiers seront répartis mondialement par un Comité des sages (régi par l’ONU ?), pour lutter contre les inégalités mondiales dans toutes leurs dimensions (économiques, sociales, politiques, techniques, …).
Deuxième action: fonder un « Mouvement Mondial », rassemblant toutes les forces locales, nationales et supra-nationales, capable de défendre le bon usage des « communs mondiaux » , de les protéger et de concevoir la politique et la philosophie de leur gestion durable dans l’intérêt supérieur de la planète tout entière.
Utopisme naïf?
Que non! Réalisme absolu, nécessaire, urgentissime!…
___________
P.S. Je suis ouvert à toutes les suggestions constructives …
« Orpheus ripped to shreds by the Maenads », Pierre-Marcel Béronneau, 1895.
To the sound of cymbals and flutes, to the light of torches, disheveled women dance. They are the bacchae. Dressed in fox skins, wearing horns on their heads, holding snakes in their hands, seized by a « sacred madness, » they rush on animals chosen for sacrifice, tear them to pieces, tear them to pieces, and devour the bloody flesh raw.
These bacchanals — or Dionysian feasts, have fascinated the ancients for centuries.
« The bacchanals celebrate the mystery of angry Dionysus, leading the sacred madness to the ingestion of raw flesh, and they perform the absorption of the flesh of the massacres, crowned with snakes, and crying out ‘Evoha !’»i.
What did it mean? The myth reports that Dionysus Zagreus, son of Zeus and Persephone, had taken the form of a young bull to try to escape his pursuers. But he was caught, torn and devoured by the Titans, enemies of Zeus.
In Thrace, this god is called Sabos or Sabazios, and in Phrygia it is called Cybele.
It is in Thrace that initially, between the 8th and 7th centuries BC, these cults of divine madness and ecstatic dancing, culminating in the dismemberment of living flesh, and its bloody devotion, arose.
Historians of religion are inclined to detect in them, not a local phenomenon, but the symptom of a more universal movement originating in human nature, in its desire to establish a relationship with the divine.
« This Thracian orgiastic cult was merely the manifestation of a religious impulse which is emerging at all times and in all places throughout the earth, at all levels of civilization, and which, therefore, must derive from a deep need of man’s physical and psychic nature (…) And in every part of the earth, There are peoples who consider these exaltations as the true religious process, as the only way to establish a relationship between man and the spirit world, and who, for this reason, base their worship above all on the uses that experience has shown them to be most suitable for producing ecstasies and visions.”ii
Many peoples, on all continents, have had similar practices aimed at achieving ecstasy. The Ostiaks, the Dakotas, the Winnebagos, in North America, the Angeloks in Greenland, the Butios in the West Indies, the Piajes in the Caribbean, and many other peoples followed shamanic rites.
In Islam, the Sufis and the Whirling Dervishes know the power of ecstatic dance. Jalâl al-Dîn Rûmî testified: « He who knows the power of dance dwells in God, for he knows how Love kills. Allahu !”iii
The cult of « divine madness » and frenetic exaltation has also been recorded in « Christian bacchanals » in Russia, in the sect of « Christi », founded by a « holy man », named Philippoff, « in whose body God came one day to dwell and who from then on spoke and gave his laws as the living God.”iv
The Dionysian cult of drunkenness and divine ecstasy is closely related to the belief in the immortality of the soul, for many peoples, in all periods of short human history.
This belief is based not on dogmas or prophecies, but on an intimate experience, really and personally felt, by all those who actively participated in those nights of madness and ecstasy.
The link between the belief in the immortality of the soul and the devouring of pieces of the torn body probably appeared in the most ancient times.
As early as a remote era, going back more than eight hundred thousand years (if we take into account the dating of the remains found in the Chou-Kou-Tien caves), the cutting up of corpses was probably a way of definitively ensuring the death of the dead, a way of making them harmless forever, unable to return to earth to threaten the living.
But it was also, ipso facto, an indication of an ancient and diffuse belief in the survival of the soul, despite the evidence of the death of the body.
We will probably never know what Homo Sinanthropus thought of the spirit world. On the other hand, we do have myths of dismemberment attested throughout antiquity and throughout the world.
Orpheus, a divine hero, died torn apart and dismembered alive by mad Thracian women.
Agamemnon, murdered by his wife Clytemnestra, complains in the other world of the atrocious outrages she inflicted on him after killing him: « After my shameful death, she subjected me, out of malice, to maschalism.”v
Maschalism consists in symbolically mimicking the treatment of animal victims during sacrifices. The priests would cut off or tear off the animal’s limbs and offer them as first-fruits to the gods in the form of raw flesh.
The astonishing thing is that the murderers used this method for their own purification, to inflect the anger of the victims, and especially to make the dead person powerless to punish the murderer.
Consequently, they cut up the corpse of the victims, amputating or tearing off the arms and legs at their joints, and then forming a chain that they hung around the shoulders and armpits of the corpse.
There is a certain logic at work here. The dead man’s arms and legs are amputated so that his soul cannot grasp the weapons placed in front of his grave and come back to fight.
In Egypt, Osiris is killed and then cut into fourteen pieces by his brother Set. The body parts are thrown into the Nile and scattered throughout the country.
Let us note that the Osirian myth is replayed for all the deceased, at the time of embalming.
It is in Egypt that the cutting up of corpses took the most ritualized and elaborate form, using a battery of surgical, chemical, and magical methods, including dismemberment, maceration, mummification, cremation, and exposure of various body parts. The embalming ritual lasts seventy days.
« The brain is extracted through the nose, the viscera are removed through an incision made in the side; only the heart, swaddled, is put back in its place, while the organs are placed in « canopies », vases with lids in the shape of human or animal heads. The remaining soft parts and body fluids are dissolved by a solution of natron and resin and evacuated from the body rectally. This first phase takes place under the sign of purification. Everything that is « bad » is removed from the body, in other words everything that is perishable and can compromise the form of eternity that is the goal.”vi
In the ancient Egyptian religion, all these violent interventions around the dead and dislocated body were intended to make the dead person die, as it were, permanently. But they also facilitate the passage from death to eternal life after the embalming of the body and mummification, which is an essentially « magical » operation.
« Then begins the drying phase (dehydration and salting), which lasts about forty days. Reduced to skin and bones, the corpse will then be put back in shape during the mummification ritual; It is then that the skin is anointed with balsamic oils to restore its suppleness, stuffed with resins, gum arabic, fabrics, sawdust, straw and other materials, inlaid with fake eyes, cosmetics and wigs, and finally swaddled with strips of fine linen, partly inscribed with magical formulas and between which amulets are slipped. The result of all these operations is the mummy. The mummy is much more than a corpse: it is the figure of the god Osiris and a hieroglyphic representation of the whole human being, « full of magic, » as the Egyptians say.”vii
Then comes the time for words, prayers and invocations. « In Egyptian, this mortuary therapy by speech is expressed by a word that is fundamentally untranslatable, but which it is customary in Egyptology to render by « glorification » or « transfiguration ». The dead person is invoked by an uninterrupted stream of words (…) The dead person thus becomes a spirit endowed with power capable of surviving in many forms (…) Through the recitation of glorifications, the scattered limbs of the body are somehow brought together in a text that describes them as a new unity. »
The « glorification » and the « transfiguration » of the dead are reminiscent of those of Osiris. « It is the rites, images and texts that awaken Osiris and bring him back to life; it is with the help of symbolic forms that the dislocated dead is recomposed and that the border separating life and death, here below and beyond, is crossed. The mystery of this connectivity capable of triumphing over death, however, lies not in the symbolic forms, but in the love that puts them to work. Who performs the rites, pronounces the words and appears in images is anything but indifferent. It is first and foremost the affair of the goddess Isis, wife and twin sister of Osiris. On this point, the myth of Osiris and Isis corresponds moreover to that of Orpheus and Eurydice (…) For Isis, it is love which confers on her magical rites and recitations a force of cohesion able to supplement the inertia of the heart of Osiris and to bring the god back to life. The combination of love and speech is the strongest cohesive force known to Egyptians and at the same time the most powerful elixir of life.”viii
« Death of the god ». « Glorification ». « Transfiguration ». « Resurrection ». « Power of love. » It is difficult not to find in these themes possible parallels with the death and resurrection of Christ, even in certain details.
Christ’s last moments are described as follows: « As it was the Preparation, the Jews, in order to prevent the bodies from remaining on the cross during the Sabbath – for that Sabbath was a great day – asked Pilate to break their legs and take them away. So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first, and then of the other who had been crucified with him. When they came to Jesus, when they saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs, but one of the soldiers pierced his side with his spear, and immediately blood and water came out of him. He who has seen bears witness, – his witness is true, and he knows that he speaks the truth – so that you too may believe. For this happened so that the Scripture might be fulfilled:
This word of Scripture is indeed found in the text of Exodus :
« YHVH said to Moses and Aaron, ‘This is the Passover ritual: no stranger shall eat of it. But any slave who has been bought for money, when you have circumcised him, may eat it. The resident and the hired servant shall not eat it. It will be eaten in one house, and you will not take any piece of meat out of that house. You shall not break any bones.”x
It must be hypothesized that the precept given to Moses by YHVH « not to break any bones » is a radical reversal of the « idolatrous » practices that were to be entirely abandoned. If the « pagan » priests were tearing off the limbs of animals, breaking bones and joints, one can think that Moses considered it useful to advocate a practice strictly contrary to this, in order to differentiate himself from it.
In contrast to the Egyptian cutting up of bodies, Dionysian dismemberment, or Greek maschalism, the members of Jesus’ body were left intact, so that the Scripture might be fulfilled.
On the eve of his death, however, Jesus symbolically shared his body and blood with his disciples at the Last Supper.
« As they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to the disciples, saying, ‘Take and eat, this is my body. Then taking a cup, he gave thanks and gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood, the blood of the covenant, which is to be poured out for many for the remission of sins.”xi
Pagan practices consist in breaking the limbs of the victims who have been sacrificed and drinking their blood. Jesus breaks bread and drinks wine. This sacrifice is symbolic. But it is also a prefiguration of the real sacrifice that will take place, the very next day, on the cross.
The ancient shamanic sacrifices, the dismemberment of Osiris, the dilaceration of the body of Dionysus, the broken bread and the shared wine by Christ belong to very different cultures and spanning over several millennia.
But there is one thing in common: in all these cases, a God dies in sacrifice, and his remains are ‘shared’, ‘distributed’. Then the God is resurrected by the power of love and the word.
Given the striking analogy in these narrative patterns, we are led to make a hypothesis.
The hunting meal of the first hominids has been the beginning of religion since the dawn of time. It was during the chewing and eating of animal flesh that the idea of the permanence and transmission of the spirit attached to the bloody flesh insidiously came to haunt human consciences.
But then a conceptual leap, an incredible leap took place. It was imagined that the sacrificial victims were themselves only a distant image of the Supreme Sacrifice, that of God, the Lord of all creatures.
More than 6,000 years ago, in the great tradition of Veda, it was affirmed: « The Lord of creatures gives Himself to the gods as a sacrifice.”xii
vAeschylus. Choephori439. Quoted by Erwin Rohde. Psyché. Le culte de l’âme chez les Grecs et leur croyance à l’immortalité. Les Belles Lettres, 2017, p. 229.
viJan Assmann. Mort et au-delà dans l’Égypte ancienne. Ed. Du Rocher, 2003, p.59
Le corps humain est constitué d’organes, eux-mêmes composés de molécules et d’atomes, et en dernière analyse, de particules, lesquelles sont régies par les lois universelles de la mécanique quantique.
Le comportement dûment observé des particules quantiques offre d’intéressantes (et paradoxales) perspectives de réflexion philosophique. Ainsi le principe d’incertitude de Heisenberg impose des limites fondamentales à la mesure et à l’observation, comme lors de la saisie et de la détermination de la position et de la vitesse d’une particule. Plus mystérieuse encore, est la non-séparabilité de deux particules ayant interagi, et restant désormais « intriquées » quelle que soit la distance qui les sépare.
Mais l’une des thèses les plus audacieuses quant à ce qu’on pourrait appeler l’« ontologie » des particules quantiques, a été de poser qu’elles ont une forme de « proto-conscience ».
Selon David Bohm, les particules ont en effet une forme inhérente ou immanente de conscience («mentality »), qui provient de leurs interactions avec un champ de « potentiel quantique » (« quantum potential »).
« By virtue of their indivisible union with quantum fields, particles have an inherent (if primitive) form of mentality »i. [« Par la vertu de leur union indivisible avec les champs quantiques, les particules ont une forme inhérente (quoique primitive) de mentalité »].
Tout se passe comme si la particule était en quelque sorte « informée » de son environnement global par l’intermédiaire de son champ de potentiel quantique, qui lui donne ainsi une « perspective », à laquelle la particule peut répondre, d’une façon déterminée par l’équation de Schrödinger. La métaphore du champ d’« information » dans laquelle baigne la particule invite à une métaphore plus générale, celle d’une « proto-conscience » au sein de chaque particule, baignant dans son potentiel quantique.
L’ensemble des particules du cerveau humain forme donc un mélange (hautement complexe), une « superposition » d’états quantiques représentant un nombre vertigineux de particules en constante interaction, et pouvant par voie de conséquence être elles-mêmes intriquées avec d’autres particules potentiellement « localisées » (si l’on peut ainsi dire) dans l’univers entier.
Le cerveau forme donc une sorte de puissante « antenne », potentiellement en mesure de recevoir des « informations » provenant des innombrables champs de potentiel quantique de toutes les particules qui le composent, en tant qu’elles sont possiblement intriquées avec d’autres particules de l’univers.
Certaines de ces intrications de particules peuvent remonter à l’origine de l’univers, lors du Big Bang. D’autres peuvent dater de la dernière seconde du temps présent, quand notre regard a effleuré la lumière d’une étoile, ou lorsque notre joue a caressé l’aile du vent.
La métaphore du cerveau « antenne » évoque des images de puissantes stations d’observation astrophysique, fonctionnant dans diverses gammes d’ondes (visible, infra-rouge, ultra-violet, rayons X, gamma, etc.), et elle a un parfum (assez rétro) des années 50, quand le radar et la télévision ont commencé de façonner un nouveau rapport à l’espace.
Mais en réalité, la métaphore de l’intrication quantique des particules du cerveau (et des autres organes du corps humain) avec des myriades de particules de l’univers, est bien plus puissante que la métaphore de l’antenne. L’intrication quantique fait du corps humain tout entier un point d’intrication permanent, instantané, avec l’ensemble de l’univers.
Généralisons maintenant cette métaphore de l’intrication quantique en passant à une étape supérieure d’intrication, celle de la pensée et de la conscience.
Les processus de pensée (tous ceux, innombrables, qui restent inconscients ainsi que ceux, moins nombreux, qui aboutissent à la formation de la « conscience ») sont comparables au mélange de « superpositions d’états quantiques » auquel je faisais référence plus haut, dans l’analyse des états du cerveau et du corps quantiques.
Ce mélange, toujours singulier et toujours différent, en constante évolution, se renouvelle à chaque instant, et connecte ce vaste continent qu’est l’inconscient (individuel) avec l’inconscient (collectif) mais aussi, ipso facto, avec l’ensemble des particules (proto-conscientes) de l’univers…
L’analogie entre l’intrication « quantique » des particules du corps humain et l’intrication « symbolique » des pensées (inconscientes et conscientes) est profonde. Ce sont ces mélanges (de particules dans un cas, et d’idées ou de symboles dans l’autre) qui font la pensée et la conscience, qui les rendent possibles et qui les orientent vers ce qu’elles ne soupçonnent pas encore de pouvoir engendrer.
Je voudrais maintenant proposer d’établir un lien entre ces questions d’ontologie quantique et la manière dont l’ancienne philosophie pré-socratique aborde la question de la pensée et de la conscience. Cela nous amènera à affronter un autre ordre de complexité et de profondeur que celui couvert par la mécanique quantique.
Aristote, dans sa Métaphysique, cite un fragment d’un philosophe pré-socratique, le célèbre Parménide, par ailleurs réputé pour être parfaitement obscur, – une obscurité que la traduction suivante de la Bibliothèque de la Pléiade met en particulièrement en valeur:
En chacun comme en tout : l’en-plus est la pensée. »ii
Quel jargon ! Que veut dire, par exemple, « l’en-plus est la pensée » ?
La traduction de ce même fragment par Jean Tricotiii est un peu plus limpide :
« Car, de même que, en tout temps, le mélange forme les membres souples [ou : errants]iv,
Ainsi se présente la pensée chez les hommes ; car c’est la même chose,
Que l’intelligence et que la nature des membres des hommes,
En tous les hommes et pour tout homme, car ce qui prédomine dans le corps fait la pensée. »v
Pour compléter l’arc des sens possibles, voici encore une autre traduction du même fragment, celle de Jean Bollack, parfois considérée comme une traduction de référence :
« Car tel le mélange que chacun possède de membres partout errants, tel le penser que les hommes ont à leur portée ; car c’est la même chose que pense la nature des membres chez les hommes, en tous et en chacun ; car c’est le plein qui est la pensée »vi.
Le ‘penser’, ou le noos, est un mélange, de membres, d’éléments, de parties. Tous ces membres, toutes ces parties, pensent aussi – indépendamment de leur résultante générale, laquelle constitue ce que Parménide appelle le « penser ». Ils pensent tous à ‘ce qui est’, – ils pensent tous ‘ce qui est’.
De cela on déduit que tout ce qui ‘est’, est ‘un’. Et aussi que tout ce qu’on ‘pense’ est ‘un’.
Tout ce qui pense et tout ce qui est pensé sont ‘un’.
Qu’on parte des choses ou des hommes, on en revient toujours à cet ‘un’.
Les choses dispersées, ou réunies, les choses absentes ou présentes, forment toutes ensemble cet ‘un’, – l’un de l’être.
Chaque homme a sa propre conscience ; chacun pense à ce qui la constitue, à ce qui est son essence (à ce qui est le fonds de son être), à ce qui remplit tout et tous.
Ce qui remplit, les Grecs nomment le « Plein ».
Quel est ce « Plein » ? En grec, le « Plein » se dit : τὸ πλέον (to pléon).
Le jeu de mot s’entend dans le grec ancien :
C’est l’Être même (to éon) qui est le Plein (to pléon).
Les hommes restent en général dans leur propre monde, dans leur Moi, dans leur esprit propre.
Mais il y a aussi des hommes qui cherchent ce qui est, au-delà des noms et des mots qui le cachent (ce qui est). Ceux-là peuvent « faire l’expérience d’un être qui unit pensée et choses [τὸ έον et τὸ πλέον, to éon et to pléon], et devenir sensibles au reflet de l’Être. »vii
La pensée, à défaut de contempler l’essence de l’Être, ou d’en percevoir la nature profonde, peut du moins tenter de saisir l’unité de tout ce qui y participe, c’est-à-dire de tout ce qui est.
Je cite enfin, pour être complet, une autre traduction encore du même passage, celle de Clémence Ramnoux, se distinguant par l’emploi du mot ‘membrure’ (mot qui connote le démembrement, source d’errance mais aussi fondateur de l’unité pensante, – dépassée par sa partition et son démembrement ?):
« Car selon que chacun tient le mélange de sa membrure errante,
Ainsi se manifeste pour les hommes la Pensée. Pour les hommes en effet,
Pour tous et pour chacun, c’est la même chose que la qualité de sa membrure
Pourquoi fais-je ce rapprochement entre l’intrication quantique, la pensée symbolique et le ‘Plein’ (ou, selon les traductions, ‘l’en-plus’, le ‘reflet de l’être’, ‘tout ce qui est’, ou encore ce que l’on ‘réalise’ en pensée) ?
Tous ces noms pointent vers la même réalité unique, totale, pleine.
Le ‘Plein’ ne laisse aucun vide. Il est pleinement total et totalement plein.
Et pourtant, ô paradoxe, il laisse place à la nouveauté radicale, à la pensée de l’encore impensé.
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iAlexander Wendt. Quantum Mind and Social Science. Cambridge University Press, 2015, p. 88
iiParménide, fragment 16, cité par Aristote. Métaphysique, Γ, 5, 1009 b 21. Traduction Jean-Paul Dumont. Les Présocratiques. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1988, p.270
iiiAristote. La Métaphysique. Tome 1. Traduction de Jean Tricot. Librairie J. Vrin, 1981, p. 221
ivJean Tricot admet en note une autre traduction admissible : « membres errants », en remplaçant le mot πολυκάμπτον (« souples ») par le mot presque similaire πολυπλάγκτων (« errants », – comme du polyplancton), que l’on trouve dans la version fournie par Théophraste, (De Sens., 3, Doxograph., 499). Note 4, p. 221 in op. cit.
vAristote. La Métaphysique. Tome 1. Traduction de Jean Tricot. Librairie J. Vrin, 1981, p.221
viJean Bollack. Sur deux fragments de Parménide (4 et 16). In: Revue des Études Grecques, tome 70, fascicule 329-330, Janvier-juin 1957. pp. 56-71
They all claim to bring « revelation », but no religion has ever presented total transparency, assumed full disclosure. Much of their foundation is shrouded in secrecy, and « the further back we go in religious history, the greater the role of secrecy”i .
But this secrecy should not be confused with mystery.
The mystery is deep, immense, alive.
The secret is useful and human. It is maintained on purpose, by the pythies, the shamans, the magi, the priests, the haruspices. It is used for control, it facilitates the construction of dogma, reinforces rites and the rigor of laws.
The mystery belongs to no one. It is not given to everyone to sense it, and even less to grasp its essence and nature.
The secret is put forward, proclaimed publicly, not in its content, but as a principle. It is therefore imposed on all and benefits a few.
To a certain extent, the secret is based (a little bit) on the existence of the mystery. One is the appearance of the reality of the other.
This is why the secret, through its signs, can sometimes nourish the sense of mystery, give it a presence.
The secret can remain such for a long time, but one day it is discovered for what it is, and we see that it was not much, in view of the mystery. Or, quite simply, it is lost forever, in indifference, without much damage to anyone.
The mystery, on the other hand, always stands back, or very much in the front, really elsewhere, absolutely other. It’s never finished with it.
Of the mystery what can we know?
A divine truth comes to be « revealed », but it also comes « veiled ».
« Truth did not come naked into the world, but it came dressed in symbols and images. The world will not receive it in any other way.”ii
Truth never comes « naked » into the world.
At least, that is what sarcastic, wily common sense guarantees.
God cannot be « seen », and even less « naked »…
« How could I believe in a supreme god who would enter a woman’s womb through her sexual organs […] without necessity? How could I believe in a living God who was born of a woman, without knowledge or intelligence, without distinguishing His right from His left, who defecates and urinates, sucks His mother’s breasts with hunger and thirst, and who, if His mother did not feed Him, would die of hunger like the rest of men?”iii
Rigorous reasoning. Realism of the details.
Yehoshua, the Messiah? « It is impossible for me to believe in his being the Messiah, for the prophecy says of the Messiah, ‘He shall have dominion from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth’ (Psalm 72:8). But Jesus had no reign at all; on the contrary, he was persecuted by his enemies and had to hide from them: in the end he fell into their hands and could not even preserve his own life. How could he have saved Israel? Even after his death he had no kingdom… At present, the servants of Muhammad, your enemies, have a power greater than yours. Moreover, prophecy foretells that in the time of the Messiah … ‘the knowledge of YHVH will fill the earth as the waters cover the sea’ (Isaiah 11:9). From the time of Jesus until today, there have been many wars and the world has been full of oppression and ruin. As for Christians, they have shed more blood than the rest of the nations.”iv
In this affair, it seems, common sense, reason, truth, are on the side of the doubters. Two millennia of Christianity have not changed their minds, quite the contrary…
What is striking in this whole affair is its paradoxical, incredible, implausible side.
Philosophically, one could tentatively argue that there are « naked » truths that are, by that very fact, even more veiled. They are hidden in the plain sight.
But history teaches us over and over again that there are no « naked » truths, in fact, but only veiled ones.
« The ancient theory of Egypt’s secret religion, as found in Plutarch and Diodorus, Philo, Origen, and Clement of Alexandria, and in Porphyry and Iamblichus, is based on the premise that truth is a secret in itself, and that it can only be grasped in this world through images, myths, allegories, and riddles.”v
This ancient conception probably dates back to the pre-dynastic period, and one can think that it goes back well before pre-history itself .
Since these immensely remote times, it has not ceased to influence the « first » religions, then the « historical » religions. Nor has it ceased to proliferate in Pythagorism, Platonism, Hermeticism or Gnosis.
The Nag Hammadi manuscripts still retain the memory of it. One of them, found in 1945, the Gospel of Philip, affirms that the world cannot receive truth otherwise than veiled by words, myths and images.
Words and images do not have the function of hiding the truth from the eyes of the unbelievers, the hardened, the blasphemers.
Words and images are themselves the very expression of the secret, the symbols of mystery.
Goethe summed up the ambivalence of the secret, both as concealment and as the manifestation of truth, in three words:
Secrets always end up being revealed, but then they only reveal the ’emptiness’ of their time, their era.
The mystery, for its part, never ceases to stay hidden.
Jan Assmann concluding his beautiful study on « Moses the Egyptian » with a provocative thought:
« At its apogee, the pagan religion did not hide a void in the mysteries, but the truth of the One God.”vii
A good example of that is Abraham himself coming all the way to pay tribute to Melchisedech, a non-Hebrew « priest of the Most High ».
Augustine connected all the ages of belief in one stroke:
« What today is called the Christian religion existed in antiquity, and from the origin of the human race until Christ became incarnate, and it was from him that the true religion that already existed began to be called Christian.”viii
Basically the idea is very simple. And very stimulating, in a way.
Truth always has been ‘true’, and always will be. Truth was ‘true’ from the beginning of the world, and even before the beginning of the world. Truth will still be »true in a hundred million or a hundred billion years, and even after the end of this (fleeting) universe.
The various words that tell the Truth, and the men who believe in it, such as Akhnaton, Melchisedech, Abraham, Moses, Zoroaster, Plato, Yehoshua, are only themselves quite fleeting, but they serve It, according to their rank, and wisdom.
Truth is as ancient as the Ancient of Days; Truth is also very young, and just beginning to live again, everyday, in hidden, mysterious cradles.
« Leshan Giant Buddha« , built during the Tang dynasty (618–907)
At the time of the introduction of Indian Buddhism in China, the scholars of the Chinese Empire, confronted with the arrival of new ‘barbaric words’ (i.e. the sacred names and religious terms inherited from Buddhism) considered it preferable not to translate them. They chose to only transliterate them.
A tentative translation into the Chinese language would have given these terms, it was thought, a down-to-earth, materialistic sound, hardly likely to inspire respect or evoke mystery.
Much later, in the 19th century, a sinologist from Collège de France, Stanislas Julien, developed a method to decipher Sanskrit names as they were (very approximately) transcribed into Chinese, and provided some examples.
« The word Pou-ti-sa-to (Bôdhisattva) translated literally as ‘Intelligent Being’ would have lost its nobility and emphasis; that is why it was left as veiled in its Indian form. The same was done for the sublime names of the Buddha, which, by passing in a vulgar language, could have been exposed to the mockery and sarcasm of the profane.”i
There are words and names that must definitely remain untranslated, not that they are strictly speaking untranslatable, but their eventual translation would go against the interest of their original meaning, threaten their substance, undermine their essence, and harm the extent of their resonance, by associating them – through the specific resources and means of the target language – with semantic and symbolic spaces more likely to deceive, mislead or mystify, than to enlighten, explain or reveal.
Many sacred names of Buddhism, originally conceived and expressed in the precise, subtle, unbound language that is Sanskrit, have thus not been translated into Chinese, but only transcribed, based on uncertain phonetic equivalences, as the sound universe of Chinese seems so far removed from the tones of the Sanskrit language.
The non-translation of these Sanskrit words into Chinese was even theorized in detail by Xuanzang (or Hiouen-Thsang), the Chinese Buddhist monk who was, in the 7th century AD, one of the four great translators of the Buddhist sutra.
« According to the testimony of Hiuen-Thsang (玄奘 ), the words that should not be translated were divided into five classes:
1°) Words that have a mystical meaning such as those of the Toloni (Dharanîs) and charms or magic formulas.
2°) Those that contain a large number of meanings such as Po-Kia-Fan (Bhagavan), « which has six meanings ».
3°) The names of things that do not exist in China, such as the trees Djambou, Bhôdhidrouma, Haritaki.
4°) Words that we keep out of respect for their ancient use, for example the expression Anouttara bôdhi, « superior intelligence ».
5°) Words considered to produce happiness, for example Pan-jo (Prodjna), « Intelligence ». »ii
Far from being seen as a lack of the Chinese language, or a lack of ideas on the part of Chinese translators, the voluntary renunciation to translate seems to me to be a sign of strength and openness. Greek once allowed the Romance languages to duplicate each other, so to speak, by adding to the concrete semantic roots of everyday life the vast resources of a language more apt for speculation; similarly, Chinese has been able to incorporate as it stands some of the highest, abstract concepts ever developed in Sanskrit.
There is a general lesson here.
There are compact, dense, unique words that appeared in a specific culture, generated by the genius of a people. Their translation would, despite efforts, be a radical betrayal.
For example, the Arabic word « Allah » literally means « the god » (al-lah). Note that there are no capital letters in Arabic. There can be no question of translating « Allah » into English by its literal equivalent (« the god »), as it would then lose the special meaning and aura that the sound of the Arabic language gives it. The liquid syllabes that follow one another, the alliterative repetition of the definite article, al, “the”, merging with the word lah, « god », create a block of meaning without equivalent, one might think.
Could, for instance, the famous Koranic formula « Lâ ilaha ilâ Allâh » proclaiming the oneness of God be translated literally in this way: « There is no god but the god »?
If this translation is considered too flat, should we try to translate it by using a capital letter: “There is no god but God” ?
Perhaps. But then what would be particularly original about this Islamic formula? Judaism and Christianity had already formulated the same idea, long before.
But the preservation of the proper name, Allah, may, on the other hand, give it a perfume of novelty.
The Hebrew word יהוה (YHVH) is a cryptic and untranslatable name of God. It offers an undeniable advantage: being literally untranslatable, the question of translation no longer arises. The mystery of the cryptogram is closed by construction, as soon as it appears in its original language. One can only transcribe it later in clumsy alphabets, giving it even more obscure equivalents, like “YHVH”, which is not even a faithful transcription of יהוה, or like “Yahweh”, an imaginary, faulty and somewhat blasphemous transcription (from the Jewish point of view).
But, paradoxically, we come closer, by this observation of impotence, to the original intention. The transcription of the sacred name יהוה in any other language of the world, a language of the goyim, gives it de facto one or more additional, potential layers of depth, yet to be deciphered.
This potential depth added (in spite of itself) by other languages is a universal incentive to navigate through the language archipelagos. It is an invitation to overcome the confusion of Babel, to open to the idiomatic lights of all the languages of the world. We may dream, one day, of being able to understand and speak them all, — through some future, powerful AI.
Some words, such as יהוה, would still be properly untranslatable. But, at least, with the help of AI, we would be able to observe the full spectrum of potential semantic or symbolic “equivalences”, in the context of several thousands of living or dead languages.
I bet that we will then discover some gold nuggets, waiting for us in the collective unconscious.
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iMéthode pour déchiffrer et transcrire les noms sanscrits qui se rencontrent dans les livres chinois, à l’aide de règles, d’exercices et d’un répertoire de onze cents caractères chinois idéographiques employés alphabétiquement, inventée et démontrée par M. Stanislas Julien (1861)
iiHoeï-Li and Yen-Thsang. Histoire de la vie de Hiouen-Thsang et de ses voyages dans l’Inde : depuis l’an 629 jusqu’en 645, par, Paris, Benjamin Duprat, 1853 .
Rav Shmuel ben Ali, Gaon of Baghdad, rightly pointed out that in Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed , there is not a single word on the question of the immortality of souls or that of the resurrection of the dead.
It is not that Maimonides was not interested in these delicate problems. In his great work, the Mishneh Torah, he asserted that the rational soul is immortal, and that she is conscious of her personal individuality, even in the world to comei.
Maimonides also said that the individual soul, which he also called the « intellect in act », joins after death the « agent intellect » that governs the sublunar sphere. At birth, the soul emanates from this sphere, and she comes to melt into it again at death.
The immortality of the soul does not take a personal form. Immersed in the bosom of the “agent intellect”, the soul possesses a kind of identity, without however having a separate existence.ii
Clearly, we are entering here into a highly speculative territory where the reference points are incomplete, even absent, and the indications of the rare daring ones who think they have some revelation to make on these subjects are scattered and contradictory.
The opportunities for getting lost are multiplying. No ‘guide’ seems to be able to lead us to a good port.
Perhaps that is why Maimonides did not see fit to include these ideas in his own Guide, despite the few insights he had into these matters.
Speculation about the afterlife, however fraught with pitfalls, offers an opportunity to dream of strange states of consciousness, to dream of unimaginable possibilities of being. There are more futile activities.
From the few elements provided by Maimonides, it is worth trying to freely imagine what the soul experiences after death, at the moment when she discovers herself, in a kind of subliminal awakening, plunged into another « world ». Arguably, she is fully conscious of herself, while feeling a kind of fusion with other sister souls, also immersed in the infinity of the « agent intellect ».
In this new « world », several levels of consciousness are superimposed and cross-fertilized, of which she hardly perceives the ultimate extensions or future implications.
The soul accessing the « sublunar sphere » is conscious of being (again) newly « born », but she is not completely devoid of reference points.
She has already experienced two previous « births », one at conception, the other at childbirth. She now knows confusedly that she has just experienced a kind of 3rd birth after death, opening a new phase of a life decidedly full of surprises, leaps, jumps.
Not long ago, on earth, she was a principle of life and consciousness, and now she swims in an ocean of life and intelligence, which absorbs her completely, without drowning her, nor blinding her, quite the contrary.
She was, a while ago, a “principle” (of life and consciousness, as I said) , and now she has become pure spiritual substance !
In this new state, she is probably waiting for an opportunity to manifest herself as a singular being, perhaps having taken a liking for it in her previous lives. Or, nourished by the thousand wounds of experience, she volunteers for yet other states of consciousness, or for yet other worlds, of a hopefully less cruel nature, and of which there is perhaps a profusion, beyond the sublunar sphere.
This kind of idea, I am well aware, seems perfectly inadmissible to an overwhelming majority of « modern » thinkers. Nihilists and other materialists give full meaning to « matter » and give nothing to the strength of the spirit, to its autonomy, to its capacity for survival, in an unsuspected way, after the vicissitudes of a life dominated by « matter ».
By contrast, Maimonides, in twelfth-century Spain, then a crossroads of thought, has attempted to unravel the mystery of what happens after death.
Maimonides was neither reactionary, nor an “illuminati”, nor a bigot, nor complacent. He flew high above innumerable dogmatic quarrels. There was in him an aspiration to pure reason, a nostalgia for the beyond of religious forms.
There was no question of renouncing the Law, however, or of abandoning memory of ancient cults. In his strange, aloof, ironic style, he says: « To ask for such a thing would have been as if a prophet in those times, exhorting the worship of God, came to us and said: ‘God forbids you to pray to Him, to fast, and to call on His help in times of trouble, but your worship will be a simple meditation, without any practice.”iii
This phrase that Maimonides put into the mouth of an imaginary prophet as if by play, can be taken today, a thousand years later, at face value. What seemed at the time a frank denial can now be interpreted as a rhetorical ruse, a posthumous warning from the man Maimonides, a master of double meaning.
The irony of the time fades away. The meaning is reversed, the intention is revealed.
His idea was radical. It is necessary to put an end to all cults, to idolatry, to hypocrisy, based on « prayers », « sacrifices », « fasts » and « invocations ».
Here comes the time for « simple » meditation!
I think that Maimonides was, very early on, one of the necessary prophets of new times, of those times which are always announced with delay, just as today these future times are late in coming, when ancient cults will no longer be respected for what they claim to embody, in their motionless repetitions.
In our times in parturition, naked meditation will surpass the practices of surface and appearance.
Is this idea subversive, scandalous?
Or is it a real vision, for the ultimate benefit of humankind?
Men have practiced, millennia after millennia, multiple sorts of religion. They have followed ordinances and laws, detailed or symbolic, or even freed themselves from them.
History is far from having said its last word.
There is no end to prophecy. There is no seal of the prophets.
Always, the search for a truer truth will animate the minds of men.
And in our wildest imagination, we are still very far from having tasted a small drop from this oceanic truth.
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iCf. Gérard Bensussan. Qu’est-ce que la philosophie juive ? 2003
The « realist » philosophers analyze the world as it is, or at least how it looks, or what they believe it to be. But they have nothing to say about how being came to be, or about the genesis of reality. They are also very short about the ultimate ends, whether there are any or none.
They are in no way capable of conceptualizing the world in its full potency. They have no idea how the universe emerged from nothingness in indistinct times, when nothing and no one had yet attained being, when nothing was yet « in act ».
Nor do they have any representation of this world (the planet Earth) a few hundred million years from now, which is not a large space of time, from a cosmological point of view.
My point is: if one takes the full measure of the impotence and pusillanimity of the “realist” philosophy, then our mind is suddenly freed, – freed from all the past web of philosophical tatters studded with limited thoughts, turning short, local truths, fleeting views, closed syllogisms.
Our mind is freed from all inherited constraints. Everything is yet to be thought, and discovered.
We should then exercise the highest faculty, that of imagination, that of dreaming and vision.
It is an incentive to get out of reason itself, not to abandon it, but to observe it from an external, detached, non-rational point of view. “Pure reason” is ill-equipped to judge itself, no matter what Kant thinks.
What can we see, then?
Firstly, reason is truly unable to admit that it is closed on itself, let alone willing to admit that it necessarily has an outside, that there is something out there that is inconceivable to reason.
The purest, most penetrating reason is still quite blind to anything that is not reasonable.
Reason sees nothing of the oceanic immensity of non-reason which surrounds it, exceeds it infinitely, and in which however reason bathes, as an ignorant, fragile, ephemeral bubble.
Reason has always been in a strong relationship with language. But we know quite well that the language is a rudimentary tool, a kind of badly cut, flimsy flint, producing from time to time some rare sparks…
Let’s try to show this flimsiness with an example, based on a simple but foundational sentence, like « God is one ».
Grammatically, this sentence is a flimsy oxymoron. It oozes inconsistency. It links a subject (« God ») and a predicate (« one ») with the help of the copula (« is »). But in the same time it separates (grammatically) the subject and the predicate. In the same time, it separates them (semantically) and then reunites them (grammatically) by the sole virtue of a copulative verb (« is »), which, by the way, exists only in some human languages, but remains unknown to the majority of them…
If truly, I mean grammatically, ‘God is one’, then it should be impossible to really separate the words ‘God’, ‘is’, or ‘one’. They would be just the same reality.
If grammatically ‘God is one’, there would only be a need for the word ‘God’, or if one prefers only for the word ‘one’, or only for the word ‘is’. Those words or ‘names’ imply just the same, unique reality. Moreover, after having stated this ‘unique reality’, one would remain (logically) short. What else could be added, without immediately contravening the ‘unitary’ dogma? If anything else could be added, it should be immediately engulfed into the “oneness” of the “being”. Or, if not, that would imply that something could “be” outside the “One and Unique Being”. Which is (grammatically) illogical.
If grammatically ‘God is one’, then one must already count three verbal instances of His nature: the ‘name’ (God), the ‘essence’ (Being), the ‘nature’ (Oneness).
Three instances are already a crowd, in the context of the Unique One…
And no reason to stop there. This is why there are at least ten names of God in the Torah, and 99 names of Allah in Islam….
If grammatically ‘God is one’, then how can language itself could dare to stand as overhanging, outside of the ‘oneness’ of God, outside of His essential ‘unity’?
If grammatically ‘God is one’, then shouldn’t the language itself necessarily be one with Him, and made of His pure substance?
Some theologians have seen this difficulty perfectly well. So they have proposed a slightly modified formula: « God is one, but not according to unity.”
This clever attempt doesn’t actually solve anything.
They are just words added to words. This proliferation, this multiplicity (of words) is not really a good omen of their supposed ability to capture the essence of the One… Language, definitely, has untimely bursts, uncontrolled (but revealing) inner contradictions… Language is a mystery that only really take flight, like the bird of Minerva (the Hegelian owl), at dusk, when all the weak, flashy and illusory lights of reason are put under the bushel.
Here is another example of reason overcome by the proper power of language.
The great and famous Maimonides, a specialist in halakha, and very little suspect of effrontery in regard to the Law, surprised more than one commentator by admitting that the reason for the use of wine in the liturgy, or the function of the breads on display in the Temple, were completely beyond his comprehension.
He underlined that he had tried for a long time to search for some « virtual reasons »i to use wine and bread for religious purpose, to no avail. This strange expression (« virtual reasons ») seems to vindicate that, for Maimonides, there are in the commandments of the Law « provisions of detail whose reason cannot be indicated », and « that he who thinks that these details can be motivated is as far from the truth as he who believes that the general precept is of no real use »ii.
Which leaves us with yet another bunch of mysteries to tackle with.
Maimonides, a renowned expert of halakha in the 11th century A.D., candidly admitted that he did not understand the reason for the presence of bread and wine in Jewish liturgy, and particularly their presence in the premises of the Temple of Jerusalem.
It is then perhaps up to the poet, or the dreamer, or the anthropologist, to try to guess by analogy, or by anagogy, some possible « virtual reasons » for this religious use of bread and wine?
Maybe the bread and wine do belong to the depths of the collective inconscious, and for that reason are loaded with numinous potency?
Or, maybe Maimonides just would not want to see the obvious link with what had happened, more that a millennium before his time, in Jerusalem, during the Last Supper?
Whatever the answer, the question remains: why bread and wine, if “God is One”?
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iMaimonides. Le Guide des égarés. Ed. Verdier. 1979. The translation from Arabic into French by Salomon Munk, p.609, gives here : « raisons virtuelles ».
iiMaimonides. Le Guide des égarés. Ed. Verdier. 1979. Translation from Arabic into French by Salomon Munk, p.609 sq.
La façon la plus ramassée dont les Modernes ont traduit l´antique idée selon laquelle « tout est plein de dieux » est d’affirmer l´intrication quantique de toutes les particules de l´univers, — depuis le Big Bang. Le constat, originellement fait par Thalès, philosophe, astronome et géomètre, « πάντα πλήρη θεῶν εἶναι », implique logiquement que les multitudes divines sont toutes unies, ou « intriquées », pour reprendre le jargon quantique.
Toutes ces myriades de dieux, d’anges ou d’ondes, sont liées, enlacées, embrassées, enchevêtrées. Un nœud numineux noue leur être en l´Un.
Mais à la différence des particules quantiques, les dieux infiniment innombrables restent subtilement « séparés » des choses et des corps, dont ils accompagnent pourtant, sans cesse, l´émergence.
La nappe des « dieux », finement tissée, sans couture, enveloppe une souple base de matière et d´énergie.
Elle s´immisce dans ses interstices et ses vides.
Deux ordres de réalité se voisinent, sans se confondre, mais parfois s’intersectent, comme des plis, des angles, ou des croix.
Où trouve-t-on ces lieux de rencontre? Dans les hasards, les augures, les pythies, les temples et les invocations ? Peut-être.
Plus sûrement dans les cœurs, battants et clos.
Et sans doute aussi dans l’indicible silence, blotti entre les mots, caché dans l’absence.
Ou encore celés sous les symboles qui ne montrent, — signes cois.
Ou parfois dans le grand fond, l’abysse abaissé. Ou dans les nues lisses, hautes et fines.
Ou simplement dans une âme, mue d’épigenèse, embryon d’elle-même, sans sol ni ciel.
Âme capable d’approcher toute chose. De la connaître. Et de s’en détacher, légère.
Ce n’est pas l’éveil, mais le sommeil, qui lui révèle les rares mystères, dont elle est douée.
Pauvre en esprit, elle cache sa nature dans l’opulence des désirs. Éveillée, elle la couvre de conscience comme d’un voile.
En son sommeil, elle est exil, allée en des rêves indociles, elliptiques.
Abeille, elle butine, cherchant des sucs neufs, loin de la ruche connaisseuse.
Miel à son retour, vers la reine endormie, la connaissance assoupie.
Qui dira son vol nocturne ? La conscience est collée à l’aire et n’a pas d’ailes.
Double vie, double face de l’âme. L’une de lumière et de soleil, l’autre de lune et d’ombre.
Mais c’est la nuit qui est grosse, non le jour qui s’ignore.
C’est dans la nuit des sens, dans cette ténèbre du sens, qu’elle monte le plus haut, loin des steppes plates, des chotts et des ergs.
Alors elle explore, non une évidence, une révélation, mais l’exode.
Elle quête les passages, les chenaux, les détroits, les « trous de ver » (noirs ou blancs). Tout ce qui ouvre la fuite et l’impensé, l’angoisse de l’angustai…
Toutes les nuits, elle voyage comme une colombe noachique, loin de l’arche immobile, échouée sur quelques hauts fonds, attendant la décrue. Rares alors les retours fructueux, mais non impossibles. Telle branche, telle olive en disent la trace.
C’est dans ces envols nocturnes, loin des rêves de glu, qu’elle s’approche des terres supérieures et des dieux occupés.
C’est alors qu’elle grappille des parcelles de génie, qu’elle découvre la gravité et la danse,
qu’elle sait la symphonie immense, qu’elle sent la puissance des sèmes,
qu’elle suce le sein nébuleux, le lait cosmique, la sève galactique.
Elle voit soudain l’idée, nue comme un buisson qui brûle, une sylve d’odeurs et d’épines…
Elle vole aux dieux mêmes leur vol et leur envol.
Cinglant larcin, à la Prométhée, payé du foie.
Rapt utile, pourtant, au retour célébré de caresses méritées.
Nimbée d’aura, constellée de cieux, l’âme à la fin retourne à la glèbe, fait verdir la boue, exhausse le lotus.
L’âme est double, et ce double s’enlace en elle, comme deux amants doux, deux courbes magnétiques.
Mais quand elle se dédouble, se désenlace, quand cesse l’union avec les lointains, elle se réalise, pénétrée de connaissance, gorgée de possession, se sachant libre.
Se sachant aussi possédée, absolument possédée, et pourtant à cet instant, plus libre que jamais, d’aller toujours plus haut.
Comme en la forge le fer en feu bout, fusionne, coule et s’évapore, sublimé, — atomes par atomes, fer encore, quoique quantique.
L’âme de fer fut un instant centre de l’âtre ultime.
Il lui faudra des jours et des ans pour guérir sa brûlure, penser sa plaie, combler de cicatrices sa conscience sauve et balafrée.
Ce n’est pas la pensée qui s’est mue, dans cette mouvance ignée.
Ce n’est pas d’un vol extatique, d’un vain délire, que l’âme a franchi les mondes.
Son calme est froid comme un lac. Maintenant, elle entre dans le cratère, elle plonge dans la lave, comme une goutte d’eau nue.
Pourtant ne se vaporise. L’eau est lourde, comme une bombe.
Œil et boson, iris irradié. Entière entéléchie. Théophanie non-humaine.
« There are not many Jewish philosophers, » says Leo Straussi.
This statement, however provocative, should be put into perspective.
The first Jewish philosopher, historically speaking, Philo of Alexandria, attempted a synthesis between his Jewish faith and Greek philosophy. He had little influence on the Judaism of his time, but much more on the Fathers of the Church, who were inspired by him, and instrumental in conserving his works.
A millennium later, Moses Maimonides drew inspiration from Aristotelian philosophy in an attempt to reconcile faith and reason. He was the famous author of the Guide of the Perplexed, and of the Mishne Torah, a code of Jewish law, which caused long controversies among Jews in the 12th and 13th centuries.
Another celebrity, Baruch Spinoza was « excommunicated » (the Hebrew term is חרם herem) and definitively « banished » from the Jewish community in 1656, but he was admired by Hegel, Nietzsche, and many Moderns…
In the 18th century, Moses Mendelssohn tried to apply the spirit of the Aufklärung to Judaism and became one of the main instigators of the « Jewish Enlightenment », the Haskalah (from the word השכלה , « wisdom », « erudition »).
We can also mention Hermann Cohen, a neo-Kantian of the 19th century, and « a very great German philosopher », in the words of Gérard Bensussanii.
Closer in time, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Lévinas .
That’s about it. These names don’t make a crowd, but we are far from the shortage that Leo Strauss wanted to point out. It seems that Leo Strauss really wished to emphasize, for reasons of his own, « the old Jewish premise that being a Jew and being a philosopher are two incompatible things, » as he himself explicitly put it.iii
It is interesting to recall that Leo Strauss also clarified his point of view by analyzing the emblematic case of Maimonides: « Philosophers are men who try to account for the Whole on the basis of what is always accessible to man as man; Maimonides starts from the acceptance of the Torah. A Jew may use philosophy and Maimonides uses it in the widest possible way; but, as a Jew, he gives his assent where, as a philosopher, he would suspend his assent.”iv
Leo Strauss added, rather categorically, that Maimonides’ book, The Guide of the Perplexed, « is not a philosophical book – a book written by a philosopher for philosophers – but a Jewish book: a book written by a Jew for Jews.”v
The Guide of the Perplexed is in fact entirely devoted to the Torah and to the explanation of the « hidden meaning » of several passages. The most important of the « hidden secrets » that it tries to elucidate are the ‘Narrative of the Beginning’ (the Genesis) and the ‘Narrative of the Chariot’ (Ezekiel ch. 1 to 10). Of these « secrets », Maimonides says that « the Narrative of the Beginning” is the same as the science of nature and the “Narrative of the Chariot” is the same as the divine science (i.e. the science of incorporeal beings, or of God and angels).vi
The chapters of Ezekiel mentioned by Maimonides undoubtedly deserve the attention and study of the most subtle minds, the finest souls. But they are not to be put into all hands. Ezekiel recounts his « divine visions » in great detail. It is easy to imagine that skeptics, materialists, rationalists or sneers (whether Jewish or not) are not part of the intended readership.
Let us take a closer look at a revealing excerpt of Ezekiel’ vision.
« I looked, and behold, there came from the north a rushing wind, a great cloud, and a sheaf of fire, which spread a bright light on all sides, in the center of which shone like polished brass from the midst of the fire. Also in the center were four animals that looked like humans. Each of them had four faces, and each had four wings. Their feet were straight, and the soles of their feet were like the soles of calves’ feet. They sparkled like polished bronze. They had human hands under the wings on their four sides; and all four of them had their faces and wings. Their wings were joined together; they did not turn as they walked, but each walked straight ahead. As for the figures of their faces, all four had the face of a man, all four had the face of a lion on the right, all four had the face of an ox on the left, and all four had the face of an eagle.”vii
The vision of Ezekiel then takes a stunning turn, with a description of an appearance of the « glory of the Lord ».
« I saw again as it were polished brass, fire, within which was this man, and which shone round about, from the form of his loins upward, and from the form of his loins downward, I saw as fire, and as bright light, about which he was surrounded. As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud on a rainy day, so was the appearance of that bright light: it was an image of the glory of the Lord. When I saw it, I fell on my face, and I heard the voice of one speaking.”viii
The « man » in the midst of the fire speaks to Ezekiel as if he were an « image » of God.
But was this « man » really an « image » of God? What « philosopher » would dare to judge this statement ?
Perhaps this « man » surrounded by fire was some sort of « reality »? Or was he just an illusion?
Either way, it is clear that this text and its possible interpretations do not fit into the usual philosophical canons.
Should we therefore follow Leo Strauss, and consequently admit that Maimonides himself is not a « philosopher », but that he really wrote a « Jewish book » for the Jews, in order to respond to the need for clarification of the mysteries contained in the Texts?
Perhaps… But the modern reader of Ezekiel, whether Jewish or not, whether a philosopher or not, cannot fail to be interested in the parables one finds there, and in their symbolic implications.
The « man » in the midst of the fire asks Ezekiel to « swallow » a book, then to go « to the house of Israel », to this people which is not for him « a people with an obscure language, an unintelligible language », to bring back the words he is going to say to them.
The usual resources of philosophy seem little adapted to deal with this kind of request.
But the Guide for the Perplexed tackles it head on, in a both refined and robust style, mobilizing all the resources of reason and criticism, in order to shed some light on people of faith, who are already advanced in reflection, but who are seized with « perplexity » in the face of the mysteries of such « prophetic visions ».
The Guide for the Perplexed implies a great trust in the capacities of human reason.
It suggests that these human capacities are far greater, far more unbounded than anything that the most eminent philosophers or the most enlightened poets have glimpsed through the centuries.
And it is not all. Ages will come, no doubt, when the power of human penetration into divine secrets will be, dare we say it, without comparison with what Moses or Ezekiel themselves were able to bequeath to posterity.
In other words, and contrary to usual wisdom, I am saying that the age of the prophets, far from being over, has only just begun; and as well, the age of philosophers is barely emerging, considering the vast scale of the times yet to come.
Human history still is in its infancy, really.
Our entire epoch is still part of the dawn, and the great suns of the Spirit have not revealed anything but a tiny flash of their potential illuminating power.
From an anatomical and functional point of view, the human brain conceals much deeper mysteries, much more obscure, and powerful, than the rich and colorful metaphors of Ezekiel.
Ezekiel’s own brain was once, a few centuries ago, prey to a « vision ». So there was at that time a form of compatibility, of correspondence between the inherent structure of Ezekiel’s brain and the vision which he was able to give an account of.
The implication is that one day in the future, presumably, other brains of new prophets or visionaries may be able to transport themselves even further than Ezekiel.
It all winds down to this: either the prophetic « vision » is an illusion, or it has a reality of its own.
In the first case, Moses, Ezekiel and the long list of the « visionaries » of mankind are just misguided people who have led their followers down paths of error, with no return.
In the second case, one must admit that a “prophetic vision” implies the existence of another “world” subliminally enveloping the « seer ».
To every « seer » it is given to perceive to a certain extent the presence of the mystery, which surrounds the whole of humanity on all sides.
To take up William James’ intuition, human brains are analogous to « antennae », permanently connected to an immense, invisible worldix.
From age to age, many shamans, a few prophets and some poets have perceived the emanations, the pulsations of this other world.
We have to build the neuroscience and the metaphysics of otherworldly emanations.
Philo, in a short, dense passagei, describes the search of the ‘wise man’ who wants to know the secret of the universe, the origin of all things, the ultimate end – the Sovereign Mystery.
Let us reveal at once that this secret can never be reached.
Understanding this is the first step on the road of the ‘wise man’. It is necessary to know that the Mystery is too transcendent, too elusive, too unimaginable to ever be within reach. And yet it is worth continuing the search.
After a while, looking back over the road traveled so far, the walking ‘wise man’ surely knows that he knows almost nothing. At least he knows that, – which is not nothing, really, but indeed is really not much, and even one can say that it is almost absolutely nothing.
But the ‘wise man’ also knows that he has to get back on the road, and continue the search, without delay.
Looking at what still seems like a long way ahead to go before the next stop, he believes he can decipher the scattered signs in the distance. Some tracks. A few fragments.
Tending his ear, he may perceive confused clamors, rare echoes, silent sighs, indistinct words, tenuous, almost inaudible voices.
Raising his eyes, he may distinguish with some difficulty, very high in the nebula, kind of scintillating memories, and a background of faint glimmers, originally immensely distant, far beyond the forgotten ways, and lost nights.
The ‘wise man’ sets off again. He has no more time to lose. This last halt has lasted too long.
He walks with slow steps, eyes open, memory alive. From time to time he comes across thin, quickly outdated clues.
Peaceful, solitary, he reflects on the geometry of his unlimited, illogical walk. The more he advances, it seems, the less he arrives.
But he continues walking, however. In a sense, maybe doing so he does not go backwards, at last.
Towards the front, very far, in the distance, the horizon fades away.
The walker clearly sees only his slow steps, and what is just around him. He also sees that what seems quite close to him constantly slips away from him as he approaches, slowly moving away, into a blind spot.
Only the immeasurably distant, the absolutely separated, the utterly unapproachable, does not leave him, in his slow approach.
The ‘wise man’ in his walk rarely has his joy, his thirst: minute traces, celestial analects, pollens in the wind, inchoate echoes, iridescent sounds, allusive gleams, unearthed nitescences, …
But none of this is enough for him.
Walking again, continuing the search, that alone, in a sense, is enough for him.
Il y a une sorte de connaissance qui est, par nature, séparée de son objet, ainsi celle que peut obtenir un observateur, détaché de ce qu’il observe. Il observe une chose ou un phénomène, et n’y voit que l’« autre » que lui-même.
Si c’est lui-même que l’observateur observe, alors son être en tant que sujet est encore « autre » que son être observé.
Et il y a une sorte de connaissance qui est une étreinte intime, une fusion, une intuition de la présence enveloppante, une participation à la chose connue, en laquelle on s’immerge entièrement. Cette deuxième sorte de connaissance n’a rien à voir avec la méthode rationnelle, scientifique. Pourtant c’est bien une forme de connaissance, ultime, directe, et en un sens, sans aucun intermédiaire.
Qu’est-ce qu’un intermédiaire ? C’est ce qui relie des extrêmes antinomiques, ce qui résout des oppositions contradictoires, ce qui connecte deux niveaux de réalité, ce qui comble le fossé qui sépare les différences.
Car il faut bien que le sens circule, du Levant au Couchant, ou du Ciel vers la Terre. Il faut qu’en la poussière une haute essence puisse s’immiscer, si le Dieu veut étendre son règne du haut sur le bas, du lointain sur le proche, du caché au révélé.
S’Il veut vraiment être partout où sa volonté se meut, Il peut s’attacher à tout ce qu’Il n’est pas.
D’y être ainsi joint ou mêlé, ne L’enserre ni ne Le lie. Et la Terre n’en est pas non plus désertée, par cette déliaison, même dans ses moindres confins.
Thalès l’avait déjà dit, avant les autres philosophes, « Tout est plein de dieux »i. Phrase prémonitoire et programmatique, désormais délaissée.
L’âme en conséquence en a aussi sa part, sa masse et sa foule de dieux innommés. C’est pourquoi le Philosophe avait conclu, imparablement, à une explication de l’origine divine de ses dons: « La connaissance appartient à l’âme, ainsi que la sensation, l’opinion, et encore le désir, la délibération, en un mot les appétits. »ii
Son propre maître lui avait ouvert la voie de ce penser : « L’âme est quelque chose de plus ancien, et, à la fois, de plus divin que le corps… ‘Tout est plein de Dieux’, et jamais les puissances supérieures, soit manque de mémoire, soit indifférence, ne nous ont négligés !.. »iii.
Thalès, Platon, Aristote convergent en somme vers l’idée qu’en l’âme vit quelque essence divine. Leçon nette, aujourd’hui bien oubliée. Les Modernes, cyniques, secs et méprisants, se passent volontiers des poètes, de l’âme et des dieux, et les ont remplacés par de vibrants éloges du néant, un goût vain pour le théâtre de l’absurde, et un incommensurable provincialisme cosmique.
Le divin est le principe de la lumière, tant la matérielle qui traversa les mondes, et tout le visible, que l’immatérielle, qui illumine encore la raison et fait voir les intelligibles.
Lumière une et indivisible, pour qui la voit, ou, pour qui, par elle, la comprend, et pour qui tout le malheur vient de son ombre portée.
C’est un fait: toute lumière projette une écume d’ombre, dans la vague qu’elle ouvre en l’abîme.
D’ailleurs, la lumière des dieux n’est elle-même, au fond, qu’une sorte d’ombre, si on la rapporte (comme il se doit) à l’origine qui l’engendre, à la puissance qui la propulse.
La métaphore même, qui suit la danse de l’onde et du corpuscule, comprend l’idée d’un mouvement de la lumière à l’intérieur d’elle-même, jamais là où l’on attend, toujours ailleurs, à jamais mue, mais jamais nue.
L’âme aussi est une sorte de lumière, une étincelle d’origine. Lorsqu’elle arrive dans l’embryon endormi, dans le corps qui se forme, elle l’enveloppe et le nourrit, non de lait et de caresses, mais de suc et d’essence, de vues et de sens.
Elle lui donne le un et le deux, l’union et la différence, le silence, le rythme – et la symphonie sans fin des organes affamés.
Elle lui donne toutes les formes, celles qui la feront toujours vivre et même sur-vivre.
L’âme se donne, et le corps rue sans raison, pur-sang pris à son lasso, d’un côté cravaché par le souffle, et de l’autre la matière est son mors. Ils s’enlacent sans fin comme du même à de l’autre.
Cet enlacement, cet embrasement, est comme une brève image d’un embrassement plus infini, plus vaste que tous les mondes, celui que le divin entretient avec lui-même, et dans lequel il emporte sans fin tous les êtres, nonobstant leur néant et leur évanescence. Enfouis dans le devenir, la fugacité est leur partage. Mais les êtres créés, éphémères fumées, sont aussi, un par un, don à la cause, tribut à l’être. Ils prennent part au sacrifice, au silence du Soi, à la saignée de la sève, aux salves du sang, au souffle sourd, dans les souterrains du destin.
Enlacement, embrasement, embrassement, enfouissement, emport et entretien, toutes ces métaphores disent encore le lien. Alors que le divin, même uni, est aussi séparé de ce qu’il est ou semble être. Il s’envole aussitôt posé sur la terre, oiseau toujours, aux ailes de ciel.
L’âme aussi vole, ses ailes sont d’aube ou de soir, elle se projette par à-coups dans l’abîme du jour, dans la différence des lumières. Elle caresse la lèvre des peuples endormis, ou des filles éveillées, et elle s’envole toujours à nouveau, comme un moineau blessé, ou un autour chanteur.
Elle ne ressemble à aucun être, unique à jamais, et même d’elle-même elle se plaît à se détacher, dans la liberté de son désir. Elle est de la race des dieux, sans avoir ni leur vie ni leur infinité, mais elle peut monter en leur ciel plus haut que toutes les puissances et les autres anges.
In Platonic philosophy, the God Eros (Love) is always in search of fulfillment, always moving, eager to fill His own lack of being.
But how could a God lack of being? How could he fail to be ?
If Love signals a lack, as Plato says, how could Love be a God, whose essence is to be?
A God ‘Love’, in Plato’s way, is fully ‘God’ only through His loving relationship with what He loves. This relationship implies a ‘movement’ and a ‘dependence’ of the divine nature around the object of His ‘Love’.
How to understand such a ‘movement’ and such a ‘dependence’ in a transcendent God, a God whose essence is to ‘be’, and whose Being is a priori beyond any lack of being?
This is the reason why Aristotle harshly criticizes Plato. For Aristotle, Love is not an essence, but only a means. If God defines Himself as the Being par excellence, He is also ‘immobile’, says Aristotle. As the first immobile Motor, He only gives His movement to all creation.
« The Principle, the First of the beings is motionless: He is motionless by essence and by accident, and He imprints the first, eternal and one movement.”i
God, ‘immobile’, sets the world and all the beings it contains in motion, breathing love into them, and a desire for their ‘end’ (their goal). The world is set in motion because it desires this very ‘end’. The end of the world is in the love of the ‘end’, in the desire to reach the ultimate ‘end’ for which the world was set in motion.
« The final cause, in fact, is the Being for whom it is an end, and it is also the end itself. In the latter sense, the end can exist among immobile beings.”ii
For Aristotle, then, God cannot be ‘Love’, or Eros. The Platonic Eros is only an ‘intermediate’ god. It is through Eros that God sets all beings in motion. God sets the world in motion through the love He inspires. But He is not Love. Love is the intermediary through which He aims at the ‘final cause’, His ‘aim’.
« The final cause moves as the object of love.”iii.
Here we see that Aristotle’s conception of the God differs radically from the Christian conception of a God who is essentially “love”. « God so loved the world » (John 3:16).
Christ overturned the tables of Aristotelian law, that of a ‘still’ God, a God for whom love is only a means to an end, abstractly called the ‘final cause’.
The God of Christ is not ‘immobile’. Paradoxically, not withstanding all His putative power, He places Himself at the mercy of the love (or indifference, or ignorance) of His own creation.
For Aristotle, the divine immobile is always at work, everywhere, in all things, as the ‘First Motor’. The divine state represents the maximum possible being, the very Being. All other beings lackbeing. The lowest level in Jacob’s ladder of the aeons is that of being only in power to be, a pure potency, a purely virtual being.
The God of Christ, on the other hand, is not always ‘present’, He may be ’empty’, He may be ‘mocked’, ‘railed », ‘humiliated’. And He may ‘die’, and He may remain ‘absent’.
In a way, the Christian conception of divine kenosis is closer to the Platonic conception of a God-Love who suffers from a fundamental ‘lack’, than to the Aristotelian conception of God as ‘First Mover’ and ‘final cause’.
There is a real philosophical paradox in considering that the essence of God reveals in a lack or an ‘emptiness‘ in the heart of Being.
In this hypothesis, love would not only be a ‘lack’ of being, as Plato thinks, but would be part of the divine essence itself. This divine Lack would actually be the highest form of being.
What is the essence of a God whose lack is at its heart?
There is a name for it – a very old name, which gives a rough idea of it: ‘Sacrifice’.
This profoundly anti-intuitive idea appeared four thousand years before Christ. The Veda forged a name to describe it: Devayajña, the ‘Sacrifice of God’. A famous Vedic hymn describes Creation as the self-immolation of the Creator.iv Prajāpati totally sacrifices Himself, and in doing so He can give His Self entirely to the creation. He sacrifices himself but lives by this very sacrifice. He remains alive because the sacrifice gives Him a new Breath, a new Spirit.
« The supreme Lord said to His father, the Lord of all creatures: ‘I have found the sacrifice that fulfills desires: let me perform it for You’ – ‘So be it’, He replied. Then He fulfills it for Him. After the sacrifice, He wished, ‘May I be all here!’ He became Breath, and now Breath is everywhere here.”v
The analogy between the Veda and Christianity is deep. It includes the same, divine ’emptiness’.
« The Lord of creatures [Prajāpati], after having begotten living beings, felt as if He had been emptied. The creatures departed from Him; they did not stay with Him for His joy and sustenance.”vi
« After having generated everything that exists, He felt as if He was emptied and was afraid of death.”vii
The ’emptiness’ of the Lord of creatures is formally analogous to the ‘kenosis‘ of Christ (this word comes from the Greek kenosis and the verb kenoein, ‘to empty’).
There is also the Vedic metaphor of ‘dismemberment’, which anticipates the dismemberment of Osiris, Dionysus and Orpheus.
« When He had produced all the creatures, Prajāpati fell apart. His breath went away. When His breath was no longer active, the Gods abandoned Him”viii.
« Reduced to His heart, He cried out, ‘Alas, my life!’ The waters came to His aid and through the sacrifice of the Firstborn, He established His sovereignty.”ix
The Veda saw it. The Sacrifice of the Lord of Creation was at the origin of the universe. That is why, it is written: « the sacrifice is the navel of the universe »x.
Perhaps the most interesting thing, if we can get this far, is to allow to conclude that: « Everything that exists, whatever it is, is made to participate in the Sacrifice » xi.
One chisel stroke, and the thread ends. The bobbin unwinds endlessly; but always, one day, there is a cut. The thread, however white it is, knows nothing of the cut to come.
The thread only knows that it is spinning, that it is following its thread. Cotton or chitin, it spins. For what? It does not know.
It spins, and as long as it spins, it is only thread.
What can a thread of wool or silk understand about a blade of steel ? Or to the soul of a knife? Or to the spirit of the razor?
Thread is thread. Infinitely thread. The length is on its side, he believes. What can an horizontal thread comprehend about a perpendicular blade?
Even a very long thread has an end. Comes the cut, the stroke. The end of the continuous, the condition of appearance.
Thought follows her thread; straight, sinuous, zigzagging, she follows this thread, or that other, she weaves her web. Does the blade think about the end? Made of various threads, how would she think what is not made of thread? Can the thread think about the thickness of the carpet, its surface, its pattern, or the cat that sleeps on it?
The thought following her thread is quite assured, from premises to inductions. She does not yet think about what is expecting her, maybe, what is beyond her, – the cut, or the knot.
The birth of the cut, at the end of the thread.
And the cut is also of a wire, of steel. Sharp wire, destined to cut, not to bind. Carrot, or carotid, the wire cuts. The blade cuts the soul’s core.
The Spinner, Clotho, weaves the thread of life. Lachesis unwinds it. Atropos cuts it. O fates cut short!
In ancient Greek dictionaries, just right after the name Orpheus, one may find the word orphne (ὄρφνη), « darkness ». From a semantic point of view, orphne can be applied to the underworld, the « dark » world. Orpheus, also descended into the Underworld, and was plunged into orphne.
Orpheus was « orphic » par excellence. He sought revelation. He ventured without hesitation into the lair of death, and he came out of it alive – not without the fundamental failure that we know well. But later, the shadows caught up with him. A screaming pack of Thracian women tore him apart, member to member.
Only his severed head escaped the furious melee, rolled ashore. The waves swept him across the sea, and Orpheus‘ head was still singing.
He had defeated death, and passed over the sea.
The myth of Orpheus symbolizes the search for the true Life, the one that lies beyond the realm of Death.
The philosopher Empedocles testifies to the same dream: « For I was once a boy and a girl, and a plant and a bird and a fish that found its way out of the sea.”1
In tablets dating from the 6th century BC, found in Olbia, north of the Black Sea, several characteristic expressions of Orphism, such as bios-thanatos-bios, have been deciphered. This triad, bios-thanatos-bios, « life-death-life », is at the center of orphism.
Orpheus, a contemporary of Pythagoras, chose, contrary to the latter, to live outside of « politics ». He refused the « city » and its system of values. He turned towards the elsewhere, the beyond. « The Orphics are marginal, wanderers and especially ‘renouncers‘ », explains Marcel Detiennei.
Aristophanes stated that the teaching of Orpheus rested on two points: not making blood flow, and discovering »initiation ».
The Greek word for initiation to the Mysteries is teletè (τελετή). This word is related to telos, « completion, term, realization ». But teletè has a very precise meaning in the context of Orphism. Among the Orphic mysteries, perhaps the most important is that of the killing of the god-child, Dionysus, devoured by the Titans, – except for his heart, swallowed by Zeus, becoming the germ of his rebirth within the divine body.
Several interpretations circulate. According to Clement of Alexandria, Zeus entrusted Apollo with the task of collecting and burying the scattered pieces of Dionysus’ corpse on Mount Parnassus.
According to the neo-Platonic gnosis, the Mysteries refer to the recomposition, the reunification of the dismembered body of God.
The death of Orpheus is mysteriously analogous to the more original death of the god Dionysus, which probably derives from much older traditions, such as those of the ancient Egyptians, who worshipped Osiris, who was also torn to pieces, scattered throughout Egypt, and finally resurrected.
For the comparatist, it is difficult to resist yet another analogy, that of the sharing of Christ’s « body » and « blood, » which his disciples « ate » and « drank » at the Last Supper just before his death. A scene that has been repeated in every Mass since then, at the time of « communion ».
There is a significant difference, however, between the death of Christ and that of Osiris, Dionysus or Orpheus. Contrary to the custom that governed the fate of those condemned to death, the body of Christ on the cross was not « broken » or « dismembered, » but only pierced with a spear. The preservation of the unity of his body had been foretold by the Scriptures (« He keeps all his bones, not one of them is broken », Psalm 34:20).
No physical dispersion of the body of Christ at his death, but a symbolic sharing at Communion, like that of the bread and wine, metaphors of flesh and blood, presented at the Last Supper, symbols of a unity, essentially indivisible, universally shareable.
This makes all the more salient the search for the divine unity apparently lost by Osiris or Dionysus, but found again thanks to the analogous care of Isis, Zeus, or Apollo.
Beyond the incommensurable divergences, a paradigm common to the ancient religions of Egypt and Greece and to Christianity emerges.
The God, one in essence, is dismembered, dispersed, really or symbolically, and then, by one means or another, finds Himself unified again.
One, divided, multiplied, dispersed, and again One.
Again One, after having been scattered throughout the worlds.
So many worlds: so many infinitesimal shards within the divine unity.
« Modern atheism is dying a beautiful death » and « modern nihilism » will soon, too, « lose the game », Philippe Nemoi wants to believe. The good news, he prophesies, is that as a consequence, a period of glory will open up for new ideals, with infinite possibilities for the development of the human adventure, on the way to the highest destinies…
Quite a radiant perspective…
But « modern atheism » and « modern nihilism » actually do resist very much. They have occupied the front stage in the West during the last two centuries.
Only two centuries, one may ask? …. Is atheism a « modern » specialty?
When it comes to anthropology, nothing beats the measure of millenia.
Traces of religious practices dating from 800,000 years ago have been found in the excavations at Chou-Kou-Tien (Zhoukoudian 周口店 ). Eight thousand centuries ago, then, so-called « Peking Man, » or « Sinanthrope, » painted red carefully prepared human skulls and placed them in a composed circle for ceremonial purposes. To evoke what? For what purpose? For what sort of Deity?
Almost a million years ago, hominids in the Beijing area could probably answer these questions in their own way, and not necessarily confusedly, but we actually know next to nothing of their understanding of the world.
We only can infer from the clues left behind that death was certainly a profound mystery to them.
Analogous questions will no doubt still arise for future anthropologists, who will analyze the few remains of our own “civilization”, that may still be accessible in a million years from now, preserved in a some deep geological layers… Future anthropology, assuming that such a discipline will then still make sense, will perhaps try to infer from the traces of many future, successively « modern » civilizations yet to appear, the role of « atheism », « nihilism » and religious « creeds », throughout millenia?
I find it is a stimulating thought experience. It is necessary to try to project oneself into the distant future, while at the same time connecting through a reflexive and memorial line to the still accessible depths of the paleontological past. In order to test our capacity to represent the ‘human phenomenon’, we can try to draw a perspective on the history of religious feeling (or absence thereof), to gauge its essence, to understand its nature and foundation.
Some provisional lessons can already be drawn. Let us listen to Benjamin Constant: « The time when religious feeling disappears from the souls of men is always close to that of their enslavement. Religious peoples may have been slaves; but no irreligious people remained free.”ii
Benjamin Constant was without illusion about human nature. « India, Ethiopia, Egypt, show us the humankind enslaved, decimated, and, so to speak, confined by priests.”iii The priests of antiquity were « condemned to imposture », by their very functions, which involved constant communication with the gods, with oracles to be rendered, – the correctness of which could be easily checked afterwards, not to mention the wonders, miracles and other revelations. Fraud must have been, one can imagine, a permanent temptation, if not a vital necessity.
Regardless of past and future (religious) frauds and impostures, the most significant question that men of all times have asked themselves and will ask themselves remains that of the meaning of life, for a man confronted with the mystery of an assured death, after a rather short life.
Hence this quite logical (and cynical) statement:
« To defend freedom, one must know how to immolate one’s life, and what is there more than life for those who see beyond it only nothingness? Also when despotism meets with the absence of religious sentiment, the human species prostrates itself in dust, wherever force is deployed.”iv
Absurd, useless, inessential lives and deaths, crushed by despotism, pose a question to which neither atheism nor nihilism can provide the slightest answer.
Perhaps « atheism » is already « dying its beautiful death », if we are to believe Nemo.
This does not mean that from this death will arise some « theism » ready to live a new life.
The mystery cannot be solved by such elementary, simplified qualifiers.
In a million years, it is a good bet that all our « philosophies », all our « religions », will appear only just as some sort of red skulls, arranged in forgotten circles.
___________
iPhilippe Nemo. La belle mort de l’athéisme moderne. 2012
iiBenjamin Constant. De la religion considérée dans sa source, ses formes et ses développements. 1831
Ernst Haeckel was the biologist and philosopher who made Darwin known in Germany. He was one of the first to apply Darwinian ideas to human ‘races’. Nazi ideologues used his writings to support their racist theories and social Darwinism. Haeckel is also the author of the « recapitulation » theory, according to which ontogenesis « recapitulates » phylogenesis.
Haeckel had a monistic view of the world, an acute perception of divine immanence and proposed a quasi-deification of the « laws of nature ». « God is found in the law of nature itself. God’s will acts according to laws, both in the raindrop that falls and in the crystal that grows, as well as in the scent of the rose and in the minds of men. »i
This immanence can be found in the « cell memory » (« Zellgedächtnis ») and in the « soul of crystals » (« Kristallseelen »).
From such a interpenetration of « Nature » and « God », Haeckel deduced the end of « the belief in a personal God, in the personal immortality of the soul and in the freedom of human will.”
The whole metaphysics was to be called into question.
« Alongside the law of evolution and closely related to it, one can consider as the supreme triumph of modern science the almighty law of substance, the law of conservation of matter (Lavoisier, 1789) and of conservation of energy (Robert von Mayer, 1842). These two great laws are in manifest contradiction with the three great central dogmas of metaphysics, which most cultured people still today consider to be the most precious treasures: belief in a personal God, in the personal immortality of the soul, and in the freedom of the human will. (…) These three precious objects of faith will only be removed, as truths, from the realm of pure science. On the other hand they will remain, as a precious product of fantasy, in the realm of poetry. »ii
There are two points to consider, here. On the one hand the question of the validity of the « supreme laws » of modern science, the law of evolution and the law of conservation, and on the other hand the question of the « manifest contradiction » between these laws and the « three central dogmas of metaphysics ».
On the first point, it should be recalled that the purely scientific vision of the conservation and evolution of the world cannot alone account for singular phenomena such as the Big Bang. Where does the initial energy of the universe come from? « It has always been there, by the law of conservation », answer the believers in pure science.
But this very thesis is in itself undemonstrable, and therefore unscientific.
« Pure science » is apparently based on an unprovable axiom. Hence « pure science » does not seem quite scientific.
The second point is the question of the « manifest contradiction », according to Haeckel, between the two laws of conservation and the central dogmas of metaphysics such as freedom of the will or the immortality of the soul.
In 1907, only one year after the publication of Haeckel’s quoted work, the American physician Duncan MacDougall measured the weight of six patients just before and after their death. He found a decrease of 21 grams, which he deduced could be the weight of the soul escaping from the human bodyiii. A heated controversy ensued. The experiment was deemed to be flawed, for many commentators.
In any case, obviously, if an immaterial soul « exists », it cannot have mass. Or, if it has a « mass », then it is a SISO, a Soul In Name Only…
However, assuming the validity of D. MacDougall’s experimental results, one may infer that the 21-gram loss of mass, supposedly observed in some individuals after death, may come from causes other than the alleged soul’s exit from the body.
It would be possible to imagine, for example, a « sublimation », in the chemical sense, of certain components of the human body, which would thus pass directly from the solid state to the gaseous state, without passing through a liquid state. In fact, this « sublimation » would result in an exhalation or evaporation of the matter transformed into a gaseous mass.
The « last sigh » would thus not only consist of the air contained in the lungs of the dying body, but also of a mass of body matter « sublimated » by the metabolic transformations accompanying death itself. Among these transformations, those affecting the brain would be particularly crucial, considering that the brain consumes about a quarter of the body’s metabolic energy.
Death would have a physico-chemical effect on the brain in the form of a « sublimation » of part of its substance.
The « soul » may not have any mass and any weight. But the biological « structure » of a living brain, its « organization », this specific seal of a singular person, could prove to have a weight of several grams. At the time of death, this « structure » would rapidly decompose and « exhale » out of the body.
The « structure » of the brain, or its « systemic » organization, constitutes – from a materialistic point of view – the very essence of the individual. It can also be defined as the very condition of its « freedom », or « spirit », to use metaphysical concepts.
What is certain is that whether one has a materialistic point of view or not, death obviously produces a systemic loss, which also translates into a loss of matter.
How can the laws of « conservation » of substance and energy account for such a « loss »?
Just as every birth adds something to the unique and unheard of in this world, so every death subtracts something unique and unspeakable.
Whether we call this unique, unspeakable something: « soul », « breath », « structure » or « 21-gram mass », has no real importance, from the point of view that interests us here.
In any case, death results in a net, absolute loss, which the scientific laws of « conservation » cannot explain.
The soul, or freedom of the will for that matter, really have no « mass ». When they are « lost », the laws of conservation do not find them in their balance sheets.
It is an important lesson.
The « supreme triumph of modern science, the almighty law of substance » just cannot grasp a spiritual « essence ».
Not just any essence. Particularly the essence of our own personal soul. Once this is well understood, the implications are immense.
iii MacDougall, Duncan. “The Soul: Hypothesis Concerning Soul Substance Together with Experimental Evidence of The Existence of Such Substance.” American Medicine. April 1907. Here is a significant excerpt : « The patient’s comfort was looked after in every way, although he was practically moribund when placed upon the bed. He lost weight slowly at the rate of one ounce per hour due to evaporation of moisture in respiration and evaporation of sweat. During all three hours and forty minutes I kept the beam end slightly above balance near the upper limiting bar in order to make the test more decisive if it should come. This loss of weight could not be due to evaporation of respiratory moisture and sweat, because that had already been determined to go on, in his case, at the rate of one sixtieth of an ounce per minute, whereas this loss was sudden and large, three-fourths of an ounce in a few seconds. The bowels did not move; if they had moved the weight would still have remained upon the bed except for a slow loss by the evaporation of moisture depending, of course, upon the fluidity of the feces. The bladder evacuated one or two drams of urine. This remained upon the bed and could only have influenced the weight by slow gradual evaporation and therefore in no way could account for the sudden loss. There remained but one more channel of loss to explore, the expiration of all but the residual air in the lungs. Getting upon the bed myself, my colleague put the beam at actual balance. Inspiration and expiration of air as forcibly as possible by me had no effect upon the beam. My colleague got upon the bed and I placed the beam at balance. Forcible inspiration and expiration of air on his part had no effect. In this case we certainly have an inexplicable loss of weight of three-fourths of an ounce. Is it the soul substance? How other shall we explain it? »
Cette formule fameuse date du 6ème siècle avant notre ère. Elle prend d’une part à rebours toute la conception matérialiste, déterministe et positiviste de la modernité occidentale. D’autre part, elle porte une vision de l’immanence divine, un panthéisme multiplié à l’infini, qui tranchent avec la conception strictement monothéiste de religions prônant une divinité « unique », « séparée », – « transcendante ».
Rien de moins moderne, — ou de moins monothéiste, donc. En revanche, rien de plus classique, ô combien !
Cette formule est due à Thalès de Milet, l’un des tout premiers philosophes de la Grèce antique, l’un de ses plus grands sages, mais aussi un éminent mathématicien et célèbre astronome, et l’un des plus brillants esprits de tous les temps.
Aristote le cite: « Certains prétendent que l’âme est mélangée au tout de l’univers ; de là vient peut-être que Thalès ait pensé que toutes choses étaient remplies de dieux. »i
Diogène Laërce et Aétiusii ont ajouté à ce jugement concis quelques précieuses précisions :
« Aristote et Hippias disent qu’il attribuait une âme même aux êtres inanimés, se fondant sur les phénomènes observés dans l’ambre et dans l’aimant. »iii
« L’eau était pour lui le principe de toutes choses ; il soutenait encore que le monde est vivant et rempli d’âmes.»iv
Thalès disait encore :
« L’esprit est ce qu’il y a de plus rapide : il se répand à travers toutes choses.»v
Selon Thalès, les « dieux », la « vie », l’« âme » et l’« esprit » sont donc présents en toutes choses. De cela, il tire la conséquence, parfaitement logique, qu’il n’y a aucune différence entre la vie et la mort: « Qui t’empêche donc de mourir? lui dit-on. — C’est, reprit-il, qu’il n’y a aucune différence.»vi
Il n’est pas indifférent de noter enfin, dans ce contexte, que Thalès est le véritable auteur de la célèbre maxime, souvent attribuée à Socrate, qui répéta un siècle après Thalès, l’oracle de Delphes: « Connais-toi toi-même ».vii
Pour ma part, je suppute que se révèle ici un lien profond entre cette dernière formule et le constat de la présence universelle du divin. S’y noue un nœud, une intrication, entre immanence et conscience.
Thalès percevait la présence immanente du divin en chaque point de l’univers. L’immanence baigne aussi chaque ‘partie’ de la conscience. « Connais-toi toi-même » revient à dire : «Sache que le divin, qui est en Tout, est en toi. »
Un siècle environ après Thalès, Empédocle reprit l’idée en la charpentant :
« Sache en effet que toutes choses (ta panta) possèdent la conscience et un lot de pensée. »viii
Ou dans une autre traduction :
« Sache-le, en effet, toute chose a conscience et part à la pensée (logos). »ix
Ce vers conclut le fragment 110 d’Empédocle, dont Hippolyte a conservé la version la plus complète:
Sextus Empiricus a cité le dernier vers de ce fragment pour montrer qu’Empédocle attribuait la pensée aux bêtes et aux plantes. « Empédocle, d’une manière encore plus paradoxale, considérait que toutes choses se trouvaient douées de raison, et non seulement les animaux, mais encore les plantes, lorsqu’il écrit expressément : ‘Sache-le, en effet, toute chose a conscience et part à la pensée.’ »xi
Mais le neutre pluriel, ta panta (« toutes choses »), comme souvent en grec, a aussi un sens abstrait. Il désignerait au-delà des animaux et des plantes toutes choses au monde, selon le commentaire que Clémence Ramnoux a fait de ce fragmentxii.
Elle ajoute qu’Hyppolyte veut introduire ici la notion d’une troisième puissance, et donc un Principe par delà la dualité du Bien et du Mal. Il s’agirait, pour Empédocle, du ‘logos juste’ (dikaios logos), qu’Empédocle appelle symboliquement ‘la Muse’, et à laquelle il ne faut pas cesser de donner des « soins » (« tu les contemples entretenant des soins purs »xiii).
Mais Hippolyte avait sans doute des intentions apologétiques. L’important est de voir qu’il s’agit surtout d’un « logos en voie de croissance », comme le souligne la traduction que C. Ramnoux livre du Fragment 110 :
« Alors ces choses sûrement toutes te demeureront présentes le long de la vie. Et même à partir d’elles tu en acquerras davantage : car ce sont choses qui croissent toutes seules, chacune en son genre, selon que sa nature la pousse. »xiv
Non seulement il faut voir et comprendre que « tout est plein de dieux », mais il faut aussi voir et comprendre que cette pensée même, ainsi exprimée, il faut la garder toujours présente en soi, il faut la garder toujours immanente en son propre logos, pour la « connaître » en soi. « D’elle-même en effet, [cette idée] croît, au cœur de chaque individu », dit le Fragment 110.
C’est à cette unique condition que l’idée du divin pourra croître, se développer, et porter tout son fruit.
Le divin, en toutes choses, comme dans notre moi, est une idée qui croît, qui vit, et fructifie, pourvu que cette idée, on la garde toujours vivante, et croissante, en nous.
ii Selon Aétius le Doxographe : « Thalès disait que Dieu est l’Intellect du monde, que le tout est animé et plein de démons. » Aétius, Opinions, I, 7,11. In Les Présocratiques, Thalès. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, 1988, p.21
xivEmpédocle. Fragment 110, 3-5, cité par Clémence Ramnoux. « Le Fragment 110 d’Empédocle ». In Héraclite, ou L’homme entre les choses et les mots. Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 1968, p. 167
L’inconscient contient et maintient tous les mondes. La conscience est appelée à aller au-delà.
*
La conscience se meut comme l’éclair, vive, légère, ou bien reste immobile, lourde, lente, – du soupir à la gorge, de la douleur à l’épaule, de l’iris à l’ongle, de la papille au nez, de la paume au cœur, de la lèvre à la jouissance, de la mémoire au pas, du rêve au théorème, de l’acte à son absence, de la vérité à l’idée.
*
Nous avons gagné en naissant une conscience issue de notre inconscient. En mourant, nous hériterons aussi de l’inconscient de toutes les consciences.
*
Il faut observer les lumières que l’on croit posséder sur le moi. La connaissance de leurs ombres, fût-elle infime, mène au soi. Elle est le démon du moi, le divise, le multiplie, l’additionne, le soustrait et l’exhale.
*
La peur inconsciente épure.
*
Les malaises vagaux, – répétitions générales de la mort immédiate, vague immédiatement avortée.
*
La conscience et l’inconscient : le dos et son fardeau, l’aveugle et le paralytique.
*
Souffrances, maux, contrariétés, infirmités, induisent une perte partielle de la conscience générale, un évidement local. En contrepartie, on gagne un grain d’ultra-conscience, une fixation éblouie sur un détail.
*
Après la mort, le moi s’extasie, sans se dissoudre, aux dimensions du soi. L’âme re-née vagit. Et la vie la ravit. Tout est autre, à la vérité, mais on reste le même. Vaste programme, dont l’infini sait le secret.
*
La substance du moi, c’est le soi, en puissance. Alors rien n’est impossible. La substance du soi, c’est le mystère en acte. Alors tout est possible.
*
Avant d’être, on a la chance de naître. Avant de renaître, on a eu la chance d’être. Avant de « *** », on aura eu la chance de renaître.
*
Le mot « *** » appartient à une langue sans grammaire, sans dictionnaire, sans racine, mais non sans inconscient. Cette langue, très vivante, ne cesse de s’inventer, elle se pense au moment où elle se parle. Elle ne se tait jamais.
*
La vie, c’est gagner sur le vide, et perdre sur le temps.
*
La conscience est un peu moins inconcevable que son contraire.
*
Pas le moindre signe de non-réalité nulle part. Tout est beaucoup trop plein.
*
L’esprit de sérieux : « Extase de la chrysalide. Enfin pouvoir papillonner ».
*
Conscient, je suis aveugle à l’inouï. Inconscient, je suis sourd à ses cris.
*
La foi est la paresse de la voie.
*
Dès que la conscience se met à vivre, elle se substitue à tout ce qui n’est pas elle.
*
« Dieu » n’est pas une solution. Tout reste à inventer. Pour « Lui » aussi.
« The Churning of the Ocean of Milk ». Dasavastra manuscript, ca. 1690 – 1700, Mankot court, Pahari School (India)
In India at the end of the 19th century, some Indian intellectuals wanted to better understand the culture of England, the country that had colonized them. For instance, D.K. Gokhale took it as a duty to memorize Milton’s Paradise Lost, Walter Scott’s Rokeby, and the speeches of Edmund Burke and John Bright.
However, he was quite surprised by the spiritual emptiness of these texts, seemingly representative of the « culture » of the occupying power.
Perhaps he should have read Dante, Master Eckhart, Juan de la Cruz, or Pascal instead, to get a broader view of Europe’s capabilities in matters of spirituality?
In any case, Gokhale, tired of so much superficiality, decided to return to his Vedic roots. Striving to show the world what India had to offer, he translated Taittirīya-Upaniṣad into English with the famous commentary from Śaṃkara.
At the time of Śaṃkara, in the 8th century AD, the Veda was not yet preserved in written form. But for five thousand years already, it had been transmitted orally through the Indian souls, from age to age, with extraordinary fidelity.i
The Veda heritage had lived on in the brains of priests, during five millenia, generation after generation. Yet it was never communicated in public, except very partially, selectively, in the form of short fragments recited during sacrifices. The integral Veda existed only in oral form, kept in private memories.
Never before the (rather late) time of Śaṃkara had the Veda been presented in writing, and as a whole, in its entirety.
During the millenia when the Veda was only conserved orally, it would have been necessary to assemble many priests, of various origins, just to recite a complete version of it, because the whole Veda was divided into distinct parts, of which various families of Brahmins had the exclusive responsibility.
The complete recitation of the hymns would have taken days and days. Even then, their chanting would not have allowed a synoptic representation of the Veda.
Certainly, the Veda was not a « Book ». It was a living assembly of words.
At the time the Taittirīya-Upaniṣad was composed, the Indo-Gangetic region had cultural areas with a different approach to the sacred « word » of Veda.
In the Indus basin, the Vedic religion has always affirmed itself as a religion of the « Word ». Vāc (the Sanskrit word for « Word ») is a vedic Divinity. Vāc breathes its Breath into the Sacrifice, and the Sacrifice is entirely, essentially, Vāc, — « Word ».
But in the eastern region, in Magadha and Bihar, south of the Ganges, the Deity remains ‘silent’.
Moreover, in northeast India, Buddhism, born in the 6th century B.C., is concerned only with meaning, and feels no need to divinize the « Word ».
These very different attitudes can be compared, it seems to me, to the way in which the so-called « religions of the Book » also deal with the « Word ».
The « word » of the Torah is swarming, bushy, contradictory. It requires, as history has shown, generations of rabbis, commentators and Talmudists to search for all its possible meanings, in the permanent feeling of the incompleteness of its ultimate understanding. Interpretation has no end, and cannot have an end.
The Christian Gospels also have their variations and their obscurities. They were composed some time after the events they recount, by four very different men, of different culture and origin: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
As human works, the Gospels have not been « revealed » by God, but only « written » by men, who were also witnesses. In contrast, at least if we follow the Jewish tradition, the Torah has been (supposedly) directly revealed to Moses by God Himself.
For Christianity, the « Word » is then not « incarnated » in a « Book » (the Gospels). The « Word » is incarnated in Jesus.
Islam respects the very letter of the Qur’an, « uncreated », fully « descended » into the ear of the Prophet. Illiterate, Muhammad, however, was its faithful mediator, transmitting the words of the angel of God, spoken in Arabic, to those of his disciples who were able to note them down.
Let us summarize. For some, the « Word » is Silence, or Breath, or Sacrifice. For others, the « Word » is Law. For others, the « Word » is Christ. For others, the « Word » is a ‘Descent‘.
How can such variations be explained? National « Genius »? Historical and cultural circumstances? Chances of the times?
Perhaps one day, in a world where culture and « religion » will have become truly global, and where the mind will have reached a very high level of consciousness, in the majority of humans, the « Word » will present itself in still other forms, in still other appearances?
For the moment, let us jealously preserve the magic and power of the vast, rich and diverse religious heritage, coming from East and West.
Let us consider its fundamental elevation, its common aspiration, and let us really begin its churning.
________
i Cf. Lokamanya Bâl Gangâdhar Tilak, Orion ou Recherche sur l’antiquité des Védas, French translation by Claire et Jean Rémy, éditions Edidit & Archè, Milan et Paris, 1989
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