self

About Secrets still Buried in the Dark Depths of the Earth

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« Immanuel Kant »

Consciousness, obviously, is capable of grasping abstract, immaterial ideas – for example, the principle of non-contradiction or the concept of universal attraction. Can we deduce from this that consciousness is itself immaterial in nature? Materialists deny it. Consciousness is not immaterial, they say; it is only ever the material emanation of the material substance of material bodies. But then, how can we explain the fact that purely ‘material’ entities are capable of conceiving pure abstractions that are essentially unconnected with the material world? How could a consciousness that is only ‘material’ link up and interact adequately with all the beings of unknown essences that make up the world, with the various natures that surround or subsume it? What could be the stuff of the links between a ‘material’ consciousness with beings a priori totally unrelated to its own ‘matter’? In particular, how can a ‘material’ consciousness, confined in a ‘material’ body, interact effectively with other consciousnesses, themselves confined in other bodies? How can we imagine that a consciousness could link up (materially) with other beings existing in act, or in potential, throughout the world, and that it could penetrate (materially) their essence?

All these difficult questions were dealt with by Kant in his lively little work, Dreams of a Man Who Sees Spiritsi. But Kant does not adopt a materialist point of view. Quite the contrary. In this book, he asserts that consciousness (which he calls the ‘soul’) is immaterial, just as what he calls the ‘intelligible world’ (mundus intelligibilis, the world of ideas and thoughts), – immaterial. This ‘intelligible world’ is the proper ‘place’ of the thinking self, because the latter can go there at will, detaching itself from the material, sensible world. Kant also asserts that human consciousness, although immaterial, can be linked to a body, the body of the self, from which it receives material impressions and sensations from the organs of which it is composed. Consciousness therefore participates in two worlds, the material and sensible world and the immaterial and intelligible world, – the world of the visible and that of the invisible.

The representation that consciousness has of itself as being a ‘spirit’ (Geist), when it considers itself in its relations with other consciousnesses, is quite different from the representation it has when it sees itself as being attached to a body. In both cases, it is undoubtedly the same subject who belongs at the same time to the sensible world and to the intelligible world; but it is not the same person, because the representations of the sensible world have nothing in common with the representations of the intelligible world, says Kant. What I think of myself as a living, feeling, carnal being is not on the same level, and has nothing to do with my representation as (pure) consciousness.

Conversely, the representations that I may hold of the intelligible world, however clear and intuitive they may be, are not sufficient to give me a representation of my consciousness as a human being. The representation of oneself as (pure) consciousness can be acquired to a certain extent by reasoning or induction, but it is not naturally an intuitive notion, and it is not obtained through experience.ii

Consciousness does indeed belong to a single subject, who participates in both the « sensible world » and the « intelligible world », but consciousness is also twofold. It is not « the same person » when it represents itself as « pure consciousness » and when it represents itself as « attached to a (human) body ». The fact that it is not « the same » in these two cases implies an inherent, profound duality – consciousness is a dual being. Here, for the first time, Kant explicitly introduces the expression « duality of the person » (or « duality of the soul in relation to the body »iii). This duality can be inferred from the following observation. Some philosophers believe they can refer to the state of deep sleep when they want to prove the reality of ‘obscure representations’. We can only observe that they are no longer clearly present in us when we wake up, but not that they were really ‘dark’ when we were asleep.

For example, we might well think that they were actually clearer and more extensive than the clearest representations we have in the waking state. This is indeed what we might expect of consciousness when it is perfectly at rest, and separated from the external senses, Kant concludes.

Hannah Arendt found this particular idea ‘bizarre’iv, without further explaining or justifying her trenchant judgment. Perhaps it seems indeed ‘bizarre’ to assert that consciousness thinks more clearly and more extensively in deep sleep, and that it is then more ‘active’ than in the waking state? Or does it seem ‘bizarre’ to present consciousness not as ‘one’ but as ‘two’, this duality implying a contradiction with the unified idea that consciousness might a priori have of its own nature? Consciousness feels the intrinsic unity it possesses as a ‘subject’, and it also feels, as a ‘person’, endowed with a double perspective, one sensible and the other intelligible. It may therefore seem ‘strange’ that the soul should think of itself as both one and two, – ‘one’ (as subject) and ‘two’ (as person).

This intrinsic duality creates a distance between consciousness and itself, an inner gap within itself. It reflects a gap between the ‘waking’ state (where the feeling of duality is revealed) and the ‘deep sleep’ state, where the feeling of duality evaporates, revealing the true nature of consciousness.v

To ward off this ‘oddity’, Hannah Arendt proposed an explanation, or rather a paraphrase of Kant’s note: « Kant compares the state of the thinking self to a deep sleep in which the senses are at complete rest. It seems to him that, during sleep, the ideas ‘may have been clearer and more extensive than the clearer ideas of the waking state’, precisely because ‘the sensation of man’s body was not included in it’. And when we wake up, none of these ideas remain ».vi What seems ‘bizarre’ to Hannah Arendt, we then understand, is that after consciousness has been exposed to ‘clear and extensive’ ideas, none of this remains when it wakes up. Awakening erases all traces of the activity of consciousness (or of the ‘soul’) in the deep sleep of the body. Even if there is nothing left, there is at least the memory of an immaterial activity, which, unlike activities in the material world, does not encounter any resistance or inertia. There also remains the obscure memory of what was then clear and intense… There remains the (confused) memory of having experienced a feeling of total freedom of thought, freed from all contingencies. All these memories cannot be forgotten, even if the ideas conceived at the time seem to escape us. It is possible to conjecture that the accumulation of these kinds of memories, these kinds of experiences, will end up reinforcing the idea of the existence of a consciousness that is independent (of the body). By extension, and by analogy, these memories and experiences of deep sleep constitute in themselves an experience of ‘spirituality’, and reinforce the idea of a spirit world, an ‘intelligible’ world, separate from the material world. The consciousness (or spirit) that becomes aware of its power to think ‘clearly’ (during the body’s deep sleep) also begins to think of itself as being able to distance itself from the world around it, and from the matter that constitutes it. But its power to think ‘clearly’ does not allow it to leave this world, nor to transcend it (since waking up always happens – and with it forgetting the ‘clear’ thoughts of deep sleep).

What does this sense of distance from the world bring to consciousness?

Consciousness can see that reality is woven from appearances (and illusions). In spite of the very profusion of these appearances (and illusions), reality paradoxically remains stable, it continues unceasingly, it lasts in any case long enough for us to be led to recognise it not as a total illusion, but as an object, and even the object par excellence, offered to our gaze as conscious subjects.

If we do not feel able to consider reality as an object, we may at least be inclined to consider it as a state, durable, imposing its obviousness, unlike the other world, the ‘intelligible world’, whose very existence is always shrouded in doubt, of improbability (since his kingdom can only be reached in the abyss of deep sleep).

As subjects, we demand real objects in front of us, not chimeras or conjectures – hence the insignificant advantage given to the sensible world. Phenomenology teaches that the existence of a subject necessarily implies that of an object. The object is what embodies the subject’s intention, will and consciousness. The two are linked. The object (of intention) nourishes consciousness, more than consciousness can nourish itself – the object ultimately constitutes the very subjectivity of the subject, presenting itself to her attention, and even instituting itself as her conscious intention. Without consciousness, there can be neither project nor object. Without an object, there can be no consciousness. Every subject (every consciousness) carries intentions that are fixed on objects; in the same way, the objects (or ‘phenomena’) that appear in the world reveal the existence of subjects endowed with intentionalities, through and for whom the objects take on meaning.

This has a profound and unexpected consequence.

We are subjects, and we ‘appear’, from the very beginning of our lives, in a world of phenomena. Some of these phenomena also happen to be subjects. We then gradually learn to distinguish between phenomena that are merely phenomena (requiring subjects in order to appear), and phenomena that eventually reveal themselves to us as being not just phenomena, of which we would be the spectators, but as other subjects, and even subjects who are intrinsically ‘other‘, subjects whose consciousness can be conjectured as radically ‘other‘. The reality of the world of phenomena is thus linked to the subjectivity of multiple subjects, and innumerable forms of consciousness, which are both phenomena and subjects. The world represents a ‘total phenomenon’, whose very existence requires at least one Subject, or Consciousness, that is not merely a ‘phenomenon’.

In other words, if a thought experiment were to presuppose the absence of any consciousness, the non-existence of any subject, in the original states of the world, would we necessarily have to conclude that the ‘phenomenal’ world did not exist in this time of ‘genesis’? Undoubtedly. The ‘phenomenal’ world would not then exist, insofar as phenomenon, since no subject, no consciousness, would be able to observe it.

But another conjecture is still possible. Perhaps, in this time of ‘genesis’, there are subjects (or consciousnesses) that are part of another world, a non-‘phenomenal’ world, a ‘noumenal’ world, the ‘intelligible world’ evoked by Kant?

Since there can be no doubt that the world and reality began to exist long before any human subject appeared, we must conclude that other kinds of consciousness, other kinds of ‘subjects’ already existed then, for whom the world in the state of phenomenon, total and inchoate, constituted an ‘object’ and embodied an ‘intention’. In this case, the world has always been an object of subjectivity, of ‘intentionality’, of ‘desire’, right from its genesis.

It remains to try and imagine for which subjects, for which consciousnesses, the emerging world could then reveal itself as an object and as a phenomenon. We can hypothesise that this primal subjectivity, endowed with an ‘intentionality’, a ‘desire’, pre-existed the appearance of the world of phenomena, in the form of an original power to will, to desire, and to think. Man retains a ‘mysterious’ trace of this ancient, primal power, insofar as he is ‘thought made flesh’. « For the philosopher, speaking from the experience of the thinking self, man is, quite naturally, not only the Word, but Thought made Flesh; the always mysterious incarnation, never fully elucidated, of the ability to think ».vii Why is this incarnation ‘mysterious’? Because no one knows where thinking consciousness comes from, and even fewer can guess at the multiplicity of forms it has taken in the universe since the beginning, and may yet take in the future.

Since our only guide in this search is consciousness itself, we must return to it again and again. Every consciousness is unique because it recreates (in its own way) the conditions of the spirit’s original freedom. This freedom was not only that of the first man, but also of all that preceded him, of all that was before him and without him – of all that was non-human.

All consciousness is singular, and the solitary thinker recreates in his own way the absolute solitude of the first Man, the first Thinker. « While a man lets himself go and simply thinks, about anything for that matter, he lives totally in the singular, that is to say in complete solitude, as if the Earth were populated by one Man and not by men ».viii

Who was the first man, the first thinker to be « alone »? The one the Bible calls Adam? The one the Veda calls Puruṣa? Or some primal, original Spirit, creating in the thinker the living object of his living thought, and thereby creating the conditions for the engendering of a living multitude of other ideas (and other minds)?

We owe it to Parmenides and Plato, thinkers of the first depths, to have celebrated a few primordial spirits, among the most ancient of whom the world has preserved a memory. They admiringly quoted those sages who had lived long before them in ‘the life of intelligence and wisdom’, that life of Noûs and Sophia, which not all men know, but which all may wish to know. Intelligence and wisdom indeed « live », in the literal sense, for they live by the life of the Spirit. From the beginning, Socrates asserts, the Spirit, the Noûs, has been the « King of heaven and earth »: νοῦς ἐστι βασιλεὺς ἡμῖν οὐρανοῦ τε καὶ γῆς.ix

In this the Sirach agrees with Socrates, and goes back even further: « Wisdom was created before all things, and the light of understanding from eternity ».x

Paradoxically, this very ancient idea (that the Ancient Greeks and the Ancient Hebrews shared) now seems to have once again become one of those « secrets still buried in the dark depths of the earth ».xi

_____________________

iKant. Dreams of a Man who sees spirits, – explained by Dreams of Metaphysics (1766). Translated by J. Tissot. Ed. Ladrange, Paris, 1863

iiIbid. p.27

iiiIn a note appended to Dreams of a Man who sees Spirits, – explained by Dreams of Metaphysics.

ivH. Arendt. The Life of the Mind. Thought. The will. Translated by Lucienne Lotringer. PUF, 1981, p.68-69

vOne finds similar observations on the duality of the transient “ego” and the eternal “Self”, made by Indian thinkers and “rishis” such as Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda or Ramana Maharshi.

viIbid.

viiIbid. p.72

viiiIbid.

ixPlato, Philebus, 28c

xSir. 1.4

xi « Gods, whose empire is that of souls, silent shadows,

And Chaos, and Phlegethon, silent in the night and the limitless places,

May I have permission to say what I have heard,

May I, with your permission, reveal the secrets

buried in the dark depths of the earth.”

Di, quibus imperium est animarum, umbraeque silentes

et Chaos et Phlegethon, loca nocte tacentia late,

Sit mihi fas audita loqui, sit numine vestro,

pandere res alta terra et caligine mersas.

Virgil, Aeneid VI, 264-7

Doubt and I

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« Descartes »

Conceptions of the ‘I’, the ‘ego’, the ‘person’, the ‘subject’, the ‘individual’ or the ‘self’ have become increasingly important in Western philosophy since Descartes and his cogito. By asserting « I think », and even more so « I doubt », Descartes placed the singular existence of the « I » and the pre-eminence of the « ego » at the centre of his philosophy. Before him, no doubt, other philosophers had an idea of the ‘self’, but they did not have the idea of basing this idea on the assurance of a doubt about it.

Take Montaigne, for example. Pascal described, with a kind of light-hearted irony, the nature of the doubt that assailed the author of the Essays, a doubt so doubtful that it made him doubt even his own doubt: « Montaigne places all things in such universal and general doubt that this doubt carries itself away, that is to say, if he doubts, and doubting even this last proposition, his uncertainty rolls over itself in a perpetual circle without rest; opposing equally those who assure that everything is uncertain and those who assure that everything is not, because he does not want to assure anything. The essence of his opinion, which he has not been able to express by any positive term, is to be found in this self-doubting and self-ignoring ignorance, which he calls his master form. For if he says he doubts, he betrays himself, by at least assuring that he doubts; which being formally against his intention, he could only explain by interrogation; so that, not wanting to say ‘I don’t know’ he says ‘What do I know?’ of which he makes his motto. »i

After Descartes, the so-called ‘modern’ philosophical systems that followed, and especially the German idealist philosophies, amplified interest in the figures of ‘I’, ‘ego’ and ‘self’. These personal pronouns, in their deceptive simplicity, embodied various attempts, literally semantic and grammatical, to denote what human beings ‘are’, or rather appear to be, and thus more conveniently designate, at least in appearance, ‘what makes each of us what we are’ii .

But there is nothing less timeless than ‘modernity’. Modern philosophies, as the latest arrivals in the history of thought, are predictably doomed to have to pass the baton in their turn at some point in the future. In their passing glitter, their assertive arrogance, their piecemeal questioning, their contrived theses, they can never make us forget that the conceptions on which they are based are not in themselves universal or absolutely necessary. Other thinkers, of whom we have no idea, will perhaps, in the centuries to come, come up with other points of view. There is no doubt that, on a subject as obscure, profound and abysmal as that of the subject or consciousness, alternative views will flourish and bear new fruit.

If we look briefly at the past, neither the Hebrews nor the ancient Greeks, to take these two examples, attached to the personal pronouns in use in the grammars of their languages, Semitic and Indo-European respectively, an ontological weight comparable to that which they took on in modern philosophies of the ‘subject’, such as those of Descartes, Kant, Fichte or Hegel. But in the absence of ontological weight, their pronouns possessed other qualities, more evanescent, intangible or implicit, perhaps, but nonetheless highly significant, allusive and challenging.

As far as the ancient Hebrews are concerned, several grammatical treatises would not exhaust the subject of ‘subject’. To give an idea of the resources of Hebrew grammatical forms, I will limit myself here to the example of the three personal pronouns juxtaposed one after the other, אֲנִי אֲנִי הוּא , ani, ani, hu’, (« me, me, him »), when God (YHVH) used them to name himself in Deuteronomy, 32,39. This Trinitarian and strange combination of two ‘me’ and one ‘him’ seems designed to reveal a kind of latent, abysmal power in these pronouns intended to define the essence of God.

As for the ancient Greeks, the role of the ‘self’ is nothing less than simple or elusive in Hesiod, Homer, the pre-Socratic philosophers and Plato. But it is not ‘modern’. Frédérique Ildefonse, in her book Le multiple dans l’âme. Sur l’intériorité comme problème, makes a point of expressing her reluctance in principle to use the very word ‘self’ in the context of Greek mythology or philosophy. She considers that the philosophical use of the word ‘I’ is inadvisable, because it is tantamount to « reproducing grammatical categories in the order of the concept, in this case transforming a personal pronoun into a concept »iv . In her view, the ‘I’ has the character of a ‘false end’. It fixes or freezes reflection prematurely. « Rather, the concept of the self artificially blocks the analysis, when it could be developed further ».v

She refers to Lacan, who does not believe in the ‘I’ either. Lacan refers to it in a curiously Anglo-Latin phrase, ‘autonomous ego’, and believes that belief in its existence is ‘a rather common folly’…

« What inner necessity does it serve to say that somewhere there must be an autonomous ego? This conviction goes beyond the individual naivety of the subject who believes in himself, who believes that he is himself – a fairly common folly, and not a complete folly, because it is part of the order of beliefs. Obviously we all tend to believe that we are us. But we’re not as sure as that, if you look closely enough. In many very specific circumstances, we doubt it, without undergoing any depersonalisation ».vi

The Latin word ego comes from the Greek ἐγώ whose Indo-European root is *aghamvii , which gave rise to several other derivatives in various Indo-European languages, including the Gothic ik, the German ich and, most originally, the Sanskrit अहम्, aham. The latter form is also, it should be noted, the origin of the pronouns moi in French and me in English. Notwithstanding the existence of the word ἐγώ, ‘me’, it remains a matter of debate how the ancient Greeks conceptualised the nature of what it covered. For example, the Athenian states in Plato’s Laws, according to the translation by Auguste Diès: ‘The soul is entirely superior to the body, and, in this very life, what constitutes our self is nothing other than the soul: the body is, for each of us, only the concomitant image; thus we are quite right to say that the lifeless body is only the image of the dead, and that the real self of each of us, what we call the immortal soul, goes to give account before other gods, as our ancestral law declares. »viii In this translation, we see that the word ‘me’ appears twice, although the Greek word ἐγώ is in fact completely absent from the Greek original… On this ground, F. Ildefonse criticises the classical translations of Platoix , which render the expression ‘τὸ παρεχόμενον ἡμῶν ἕκαστον τοῦτ’εἶναι’ (to parekhomenon hèmôn hékaston toût’eïnai) by: « the real self of each of us », or by: « what constitutes our self ». She recommends sticking to a more literal version, and suggests translating ‘τὸ παρεχόμενον ἡμῶν ἕκαστον τοῦτ’εἶναι μηδὲν ἀλλ’ᾒ τὴν ψυχήν’ by « what makes each of us what we are, it is nothing other than our soul ». In doing so, she is moreover in full agreement with Léon Robin’s translation, published in 1950 in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, and which is almost identical: « ce qui fait de chacun de nous ce qu’il est, n’est rien d’autre que son âme ».x F. Ildefonse also quotes Michel Narcyxi who also questions the translation of ἡμῶν ἕκαστον (hèmôn hékaston) as « self ». In fact, there is nothing in the original Greek text to suggest that for Plato ‘the true self is the soul’. Without using the word ἐγώ, ‘I, self’, Plato invites us to explore other avenues, such as that of the ‘immortal principle of the soul’ (arkhen psukhès athanaton) or that of the inner ‘demon’ (daimon) supposed to inhabit the soul.

By way of comparison with these resolutely non-modern Platonic ideas, Michel Narcy refers to the definition of the self as given by Adolphe Franck’s Dictionnaire des sciences philosophiques: « The self is the name by which modern philosophers are accustomed to designate the soul insofar as it is aware of itself and conceives of its own operations, or that it is both the subject and the object of its thought ».xii This definition establishes a link between the concept of self and that of consciousness, a link notoriously absent in Plato. Adolphe Franck’s article reinforces the idea of an identity equation between the self, the soul and consciousness. In Kantian philosophy, this identity takes on a more abstract meaning, that of the pure self or self-reflective consciousness. For Fichte, the abstract self will even identify with the idea of the absolute, insofar as it thinks itself. For Schelling and Hegel, it embodies the particular form or manifestation of the absolute insofar as this form reveals it to itself. « When Descartes defined himself as something that thinks, res cogitans, or enunciated the famous proposition: I think, therefore I am, he was really putting the self in the place of the soul; and this substitution or, to put it more accurately, this equation, he did not content himself with establishing it in the substance of things, he also made it pass into language. Because, ‘on the one hand’, he says (Sixth Meditation, § 8), ‘I have a clear and distinct idea of myself in so far as I am only a thing that thinks and is not extended, and because, on the other hand, I have a distinct idea of the body in so far as it is only an extended thing and does not think, it is certain that this self, that is to say my soul, through which I am what I am, is entirely and truly distinct from my body, and that it can be or exist without it. »xiii However, we do not see that this expression ever took on the rigorous and absolute meaning that was later attached to it, either by him or by any of his disciples. He does intentionally say ‘I’ instead of ‘my soul’, but he does not use theword ‘I’ to designate the soul or the spirit in general. It is only in the German school of thought that we come across this expression for the first time, and it is also there that it reaches a degree of abstraction that the psychological or experimental method, brought in by Descartes, cannot authorise. The self, in Kant’s system, is not the soul or the human person, but consciousness only, thought insofar as it reflects itself, i.e. its own acts, and the phenomena on which it is exercised. Hence, for the founder of critical philosophy, two kinds of self: the pure self (das reine ich) and the empirical self. The first, as we have just said, is the consciousness that thought has of itself and of the functions that are entirely its own; the second is the consciousness applied to the phenomena of sensibility and experience. Fichte makes the ego the absolute being itself, thought substituted for the creative power and drawing everything from its own bosom, mind and matter, soul and body, humanity and nature, after it has made itself, or posited its own existence. Finally, in the doctrine of Schelling and Hegel, the self isneither the human soul, nor human consciousness, nor thought taken in its absolute unity and placed in the place of God; it is only one of the forms or manifestations of the absolute, that which reveals it to itself, when, after having spread out as it were in nature, it returns to itself or collects itself in humanity. » xiv

If we were to undertake a general history of the word « I » and of the conceptions attached to it, we could undoubtedly determine that the « I » has never been considered to be perfectly identical with what is called the soul or consciousness. The self can certainly represent the soul, but only when it has reached a state of development where it is truly aware of itself and its various ways of being. But the « I » doesnot embody the very essence of the soul, nor the whole range of its manifestations. It does not show it to us in all its possible states and in all the putative forms of its existence. There are certainly states in which the soul does not yet know itself. Thus the soul in infancy, and before that during the uterine life that precedes birth. There are also states in which it ceases to know itself, as in the time of dreams, deep sleep, and the various states of unconsciousness that can affect life, without the soul necessarily being aware of being a self. If we wish to affirm that the notion of self is formally linked to that of consciousness, what then becomes of the identity of the human person in cases where this consciousness is not complete, or is more or less obscured? Is not the soul then distinct from the self, when it is immersed in the obscure sensations of a relative or absolute unconsciousness, or when it is dominated by instinctive faculties, in which consciousness plays no assured role?

The modern preeminence of the ego over the notion of the soul, – downgraded to the status of a Platonic essence, and as such discredited –, is now apparently predominant. But for how much longer? Neuroscience research has not found the slightest trace of soul in synaptic microtubules. Is this the end of the story? It’s doubtful.

It is certain, on the other hand, that the dominance of the ego leads moderns to dismiss any role for the soul in thought, and to postulate that thought is in some way identical to the ego. The ego becomes the ultimate symbol of the human person who has reached the full development of her ‘consciousness’. This eminent role of ‘consciousness’ was also undoubtedly one of the main reasons for the emergence of the ego, the reason why the human person could be considered by the idealist philosophies already mentioned as a simple ‘mode’ of divine thought, becoming aware of itself.

But there are many other avenues open to us if we are prepared to stray from the beaten track. Firstly, consciousness could be considered as pure energy, and not as a state. From this point of view, it would not be a mode of being of the ego or the subject. Its own movement could be conceptualised as essentially incessant, autonomous, and therefore essentially infinite. The essence of consciousness-energy would be that it always surpasses and increases itself, from its own point of view, in its own world, different from the material world, that ontologically static world where, it is said, ‘nothing is lost, nothing is created’.

Secondly, we cannot exclude a priori the idea that the soul does exist, as a substance, as an irreducible monad. The conceptual annihilation of the soul by modernists could itself be conceptually annihilated in the coming centuries, or millennia, as a result of discoveries that are unimaginable today.

If we follow these lines of thought, we may find that the conceptions of the German idealists (Fichte, Hegel, Schelling), who see in the human soul a kind of incarnate figure of the Absolute, are too simple. Their conclusions are too hasty, too premature. Nothing has yet been absolutely finalised in the great metaphysical and pan-cosmic drama that continues to unfold. Everything remains to be done.

The question of the self isproving to be a thorny one – much more so than a bush of burning thorns.

_____________

iPascal. L’entretien avec M. de Saci sur Épictète et Montaigne. Delagrave, Paris, 1875, p.25

iiTo use Plato’s expression, Laws XII, 959 a, in Léon Robin’s translation.

ivFrédérique Ildefonse The multiple in the soul. On interiority as a problem. Vrin. Paris, 2022, p. 32

vFrédérique Ildefonse The multiple in the soul. On interiority as a problem. Vrin. Paris, 2022, p. 32

viJ. Lacan. The Seminar, Book II. The ego in Freud’s theory and in the technique of psychoanalysis. Paris, Seuil, 1978, p.24

viiMichel Bréal and Anatole Bailly. Latin etymological dictionary. Latin words, grouped according to meaning and etymology. Hachette, Paris, 1918, s.v. « ego ».

viiiPlato, Laws XII, 959 a-b, in the translation by Auguste Diès, quoted by F. Ildefonse.

ixLike those of Joseph de Maistre and Auguste Diès.

x« Between the soul and the body there is a radical difference, and in life precisely what makes each of us what we are is nothing other than our soul, whereas the body is a semblance with which each of us is individually accompanied ; and it is rightly said of the body of a dead man that it is a simulacrum of that man, whereas what each of us really is, that imperishable thing to which we give the name of soul, goes off to other Gods to give account to them, as our national traditions state.  » Plato, Laws XII, 959 a-b. Translated by Léon Robin, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, 1950, p.1114.

xiM. Narcy, « En quête du moi chez Platon », in Le moi et l’intériorité, p.58.

xiiDictionnaire des sciences philosophiques by a society of professors and scholars under the direction of M. Adolphe Franck, Paris, Hachette, 1875, p.1122

xiiiDescartes. Méditations métaphysiques. GF Flammarion, Paris, 2009, p.190

xivDictionnaire des sciences philosophiques by a society of professors and scholars under the direction of M. Adolphe Franck, Paris, Hachette, 1875, p.1122

Bráhman’s Salt and Thirst

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–A Salt Mountain–

Why should we seek to become the bráhman, since the Veda states that we already are?

The revealed words, which later, after many centuries of oral tradition, became Scripture, seem to carry within them profound contradictions.

For example, the Veda affirms that, in brâhman, being and thinking are one, absolutely one.

How can there be then, on the one hand, very real and well hidden, the bráhman, absolutely one, being and thought, and on the other hand, in the world, men, who are also thinking, conscious beings, and who think of themselves as individual, finite, separate beings?

Let’s be logical.

Either men are not really bráhman or they arei.

If men are not really bráhman, then what are they, since everything is in bráhman, and everything is bráhman? Are they only an illusion, or even just nothing, a mere nothingness?

If they really are bráhman, then why do they think of themselves as individuals and as separate from it/her? Or even, why do they think of themselves as the only existing and thinking ones, the bráhman her- or itself being in their eyes only an illusion…

Shouldn’t their thought and being be ‘naturally’ united with the thought and being of the bráhman because it/she is absolutely one?

If being and thinking are part of the essence of the bráhman, how is it that thinking beings, conscious beings, can so easily doubt that they are already, in some way, bráhman?

For it is a common observation. The individual soul (jīva) feels a thousand miles away from being bráhman because she is overwhelmed by her obvious narrowness, by her limits. She is suffocated by the consciousness of the determinations (upādhi) that she undergoes, by her incarnation in a body.

If one adopts the path, particularly developed by Śaṅkaraii, of the identity of the self (of man) and of the Self (of bráhman), then one must conclude that these limits, these narrownesses, these determinations are only illusion, they are only « names and forms projected in it by nescience » (avidyā–pratyupasthāpita nāma-rūpa).

Nescience is what best defines the human condition. Man, who is supposed to be bráhman, does not even suspect it, and his conscience is in full confusion. All planes (reality, illusion, names, forms) are superimposed. This superposition (adhyāsa) seems innate, natural, consubstantial.

Where does this metaphysical illusion, this confusion come from?

Could it have been deposited in man from the very beginning, by the Creator?

But then, why this deliberate deception, and to what end?

Another hypothesis: if the Creator is not at the origin of this illusion, this confusion, this ignorance, would they come from an even deeper source?

If the Creator is not responsible for them, it is because they are already there, came before Him, and are immanent, and present not only in creation, but also in Him.

What? How could bráhman be in such ignorance, such confusion, even partial? Isn’t It/He/She supposed to be omnipotent, omniscient?

It is however a path of reflection that must necessarily be considered if we want to exempt bráhman from having deliberately created confusion and ignorance in its/her/his Creation…

You have to face the alternative.

« Indeed, either the bráhman would be ‘affected’ by nescience, in the sense that the individual living being is affected, and it/she would then become a kind of super-jīva, the Great Ignorant, the Great Suffering and the Great Transmigrant. Or it/she would not be fooled by its/her own māyā, which it/she would use above all as an instrument to create, abuse and torment souls, which would then be like toys or puppets in its/her hands. »iii

This alternative led, from the 10th century onwards, to the creation of two schools of thought, the « school of Bhāmati » and the « school of Vivaraṇa ». Both are in the tradition of Śaṅkara and advocate respectively the idea that nescience is « rooted in the living individual » (jīvāśritā), or that the notion of nescience is « rooted in bráhman » (brahmāśritā).

Who is the bearer of nescience? Man or bráhman?

In fact we don’t know. Nobody decides. And speculation in this respect seems futile.

A famous formula sums up this vanity: sad-asad-anirvacanīyā, « impossible to determine (अनिर्वचनीय anirvacanīyā), either as existing (sad) or as non-existent (asad)« .

This idea that there is something inexplicable often comes up.

So is the illusion, māyā, real or not?

Answer: « It is neither real nor unreal. Since the world appears, māyā is not unreal. But since māyā is contradicted by the knowledge of the Self, it is not real either.

So what is she? As she cannot be both real and non-real, she is inexplicable, indeterminable, anirvacanīyā. iv

What is inexplicable, we must not stop there. It must be transcended. We must go higher.

If the body, the mind, the life itself are māyā, one must seek liberation (mokṣa), to reach the eternal nature of the Self.

 » ‘The Self (ātman), who is free from evil, free from old age, free from death, free from suffering, free from hunger and thirst, whose desires are reality, whose intentions are reality, – it is He whom one should seek, He whom one should desire to understand. He obtains all the worlds and all the desires, the one who discovers the Self and understands it’, thus spoke Prajāpati. »v

But how do you do it in practice?

It is enough to be perplexed, enough to get lost…

« From this Self we can only say ‘neither… nor…’. It is elusive because it cannot be grasped. »vi

« This Self is neither this nor that. »vii

« Neither… nor…  » neti neti, नेति .

We don’t know what this Self is, but we know that this Self, – we are it.

« This is the Self, This you are. »viii

Famous formula, – one of the « great words », with « I am bráhman » ix.

You are the Self. You are That.

In its context: « It is what is the fine essence (aṇiman), the whole has it as its essence (etad-ātmaka), it is reality, it is the Self (ātman). You are that (tat tvam asi), Ṡvetaku. » x

You are That, and nothing else.

« But if someone worships another deity, thinking, ‘He is one, I am another,’ he doesn’t know. Like cattle, he is for the gods. » xi

This Vedic formula is reminiscent of that of the Psalmist: « Man in his luxury does not understand, he is like dumb cattle. »xii

But the nuance is a bit different. In the psalm, the mutity (of man) stems from his lack of understanding. In the Upaniṣad, the lack of knowledge (of man) leads to mutity (of the gods).

The logic of the absolute identity of the self and the Self leads us to ask the question again, in crude terms: What does the idea of the nescience of bráhman imply?

Could it be that its/her omniscience is fundamentally limited, for example to what has been, and to what is, leaving the space of possibilities wide open?

Could it be that Creation, still in the process of unfolding, has an essential role in the emergence of a future knowledge, not yet happened, not yet known?

Could it be that the great narrative of Cosmogenesis can only be understood by putting it in parallel with the development of a Psychogenesis (of the world)?

From another angle :

Does the Supreme Lord (parameśvara) use māyā as an instrument to unfold the universe, while remaining hidden, in His own order, in His own kingdom?

Or would He be the (sacrificial) « victim » of His own māyā?

Or, yet another hypothesis, would He be the « architect » of a māyā that would cover at the same time man, the world and Himself?

Would He have deliberately planned, as an essential condition of the great cosmo-theandric psychodrama, His own letting go?

In this case, would the determinations, names and forms (upādhi and nāma-rūpa) that are imposed on men and living beings have similar forms for bráhman?

For example, would His ‘clemency’, His ‘rigor’, His ‘intelligence’, His ‘wisdom’, which are all ‘names’ or ‘attributes’ of the supreme divinity (I am quoting here names and attributes which are found in Judaism) be the nāma-rūpa of bráhman?

Names and forms (nāma-rūpa) are supposed to be contained in bráhman like a block of clay that contains the infinity of shapes that the potter can draw from it.

There would therefore be names and forms in the latent state, and names and forms in the manifest state.

But why this radical difference?

In other words, what animates the ‘potter’? Why does he model this particular vase and not another one?

Does he make his choices freely, and just by chance?

And by the way, who is this potter? The bráhman? Or only one of its/her forms (rūpa)?

No. The bráhman created ‘in Herself’, – in Hebrew it sounds like: אַךְ בָּך, akh bakhxiii , the possibility of a Potter, and the power of Clay. Why is this? Because She does not yet know who She will be, nor what She would like to become?

Being « everything », She is infinitely powerful, but in order for acts to emerge from this infinite Power, a seed, a will is still needed. Where would this seed, this will come from?

Every will comes from a desire, which reveals a lack, Schopenhauer taught us.xiv

The bráhman is everything, so what is It/She missing?

The only logical possibility that is left : the bráhman is missing « missing ».

It/She lacks desire.

In fact, one of Its/Her names is akāma, « without desire ».

« In It/Her », there is therefore this lack, this absence of desire, because It/She is fullness, because It/She is already Everything.

But if the bráhman were only akāma, « without desire », then there would be nothing, no act, no will, no world, no man, nothing.

Indeed, we need to understand akāma in another way.

If It/She is a-kāma, « without desire », It/She is also « a- » , « without » (the privative a- in Sanskrit).

If It/She is « a- » or « without », it is because in It/Her there is a lack. A metaphysical lack.

It/She lacks Its/Her own lack.

Lacking of a lack, It/She desires to desire, It/She wishes to desire.

In It/She comes the desire, the will, wherever It/She is a-, wherever It/She is « without », wherever It/She is « not »-this or « not »-that, neti neti.

The bráhman, confronted with the immanent presence, « in It/Her », of that « lack », of that « a- » , is then confronted with the apparent separation of Its/Her being (sat) and Its/Her thought (cit).

In philosophical terms, « thought » finds in front of itself « being », a « being » in its raw state.

This raw being, which is not « thought », which is « unthought » (a-cit), having no or no more internal unity, fragments, dissolves, incarnates itself in an unlimited diversity of bodies.

These fragments of the being of the bráhman are like pieces of a hologram. Each one of them is the Whole, but less well defined, more blurred. But also, coming from the unlimited bráhman, each of them has its own unlimited power.

Thought does not divide, it augments, it multiplies itself, it generates.

Thoughts are alive. They are not like the inert pieces of a broken pot, but like the begotten children of living beings.

On the same question, Śaṅkara proposes yet another idea, that of gambling.

As happens in the life of an idle King, the Supreme Lord was able to create His Creation by play (līlā).

But this metaphor still brings us back to lack. The bráhman is the only reality, but this reality possesses an emptiness, an idleness, – hence some room to play.

It is necessary to reinterpret the essential unity of the bráhman and the living man (jīva), the unity of the Supreme Self and the Incarnate Self. It is the unity resulting from fullness and lack.

The incarnate self acts and suffers. The supreme Self is beyond « evil » and beyond « the other », – beyond any Other, therefore, but It is not beyond its own lack of lack.

The Self is creator, omniscient, omnipotent, in relation to all that was, and all that is, in act. But He is not omnipotent in relation to what is in potency, to all that will be or might be, and to all that will exist only because it is already and will continue to be part of His own lack, and of the desire that this lack will create. This lack, this desire, yet to come, will be like a means for the bráhman to surpass itself/herself, to surpass its/her own infinity.

The bráhman is like « a block of salt is, without interior or exterior, it is only a whole block of flavor (eka rasa). So is this Self (ātman), without interior or exterior, it is only a whole block of knowledge ».xv

It is a new confirmation. The bráhman is here three times « without ». Without interior. Without exterior. Without any taste other than the taste of salt alone.

It is a sad and dry infinity, frankly, deep down, that of an infinite block of salt.

In addition, the infinite thirst that such an infinite block of salt may generate, is obviously still missing here.

_______________

iThere may be other assumptions as well. After considering the impossibility of deciding on this first alternative, a third way will have to be considered, the one that man is the potential bráhman but not the actual bráhman. Conversely, the bráhman is also in potency, and in this potency he is man.

iiŚaṅkara. The Thousand Teachings. Transl. by Anasuya from the edition by A.J. Alston. Ed. Arfuyen. 2013

iiiMichel Hulin. Śaṅkara and non-duality. Ed. Bayard. Paris, 2001, p.92

ivŚaṅkara. The Thousand Teachings.Transl. by Anasuya from the edition by A.J. Alston. Ed. Arfuyen. 2013, p.30

vChāndogya-upaniṣad 8.7.1. Translation in French by Alyette Degrâces (adapted and modified by myself in English) . Ed. Fayard. 2014, p. 199

viBṛhadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad 3.9.26 and 4.5.15. Transl. by Alyette Degrâces. Ed. Fayard. 2014, p. 275 and p. 298.

viiBṛhadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad 3.9.26 cited by Śaṅkara. The Thousand Teachings. Trad. Anasuya from the edition by A.J. Alston. Ed. Arfuyen. 2013, p. 39.

viiiChāndogya-upaniṣad 6.8.7 cited by Śaṅkara. The Thousand Teachings. Trad. Anasuya from the edition by A.J. Alston. Ed. Arfuyen. 2013, p. 47.

ixBṛhadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad 1.4.10

xChāndogya-upaniṣad 8.6.7. Translation by Alyette Degrâces. Ed. Fayard. 2014, p. 176

xiBṛhadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad 1.4.10. Transl. by Alyette Degrâces. Ed. Fayard. 2014, p.233

xiiPs 49:13

xiiiSee the article « Only with you …אַךְ בָּך, akh bakh » on Metaxu, Philippe Quéau’s Blog.

xivCf. A. Schopenhauer. The world as will and representation.

xvBṛhadāraṇyaka-upaniṣad 4.5.13. Transl. by Alyette Degrâces. Ed. Fayard. 2014, p.298

The Divine Wager

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— Carl Gustav Jung —

Some Upaniṣad explain that the ultimate goal of the Veda, of its hymns, songs and formulas, is metaphysical knowledge.

What does this knowledge consist of?

Some wise men have said that such knowledge may fit in just one sentence.

Others indicate that it touches on the nature of the world and the nature of the Self.

They state, for example, that « the world is a triad consisting of name, form and action »i, and they add, without contradiction, that it is also « one », and that this One is the Self. Who is the Self, then? It is like the world, in appearance, but above all it possesses immortality. « The Self is one and it is this triad. And it is the Immortal, hidden by reality. In truth the Immortal is breath ; reality is name and form. This breath is here hidden by both of them. » ii

Why do we read ‘both of them’ here, if the world is a ‘triad’?

In the triad of the world, what ‘hides’ is above all the ‘name’ and the ‘form’. Action can hide, in the world, but it can also reveal.

Thus the One ‘acts’, as the sun acts. The divine breath also acts, without word or form. The weight of words differs according to the context…

We will ask again: why this opposition between, on the one hand, ‘name, form, action’, and on the other hand ‘breath’? Why reality on the one hand, and the Immortal on the other? Why this cut, if everything is one? Why is the reality of the world so unreal, so obviously fleeting, so little immortal, and so separated from the One?

Perhaps reality participates in some way in the One, in a way that is difficult to conceive, and therefore participates in the Immortal.

Reality is apparently separated from the One, but it is also said to ‘hide’ It, to ‘cover’ It with the veil of its ‘reality’ and ‘appearance’. It is separated from It, but in another way, it is in contact with It, as a hiding place contains what it hides, as a garment covers a nakedness, as an illusion covers an ignorance, as existence veils the essence.

Hence another question. Why is it all arranged this way? Why these grandiose entities, the Self, the World, Man? And why these separations between the Self, the World and Man, metaphysically disjointed, separated? What rhymes the World and Man, in an adventure that goes beyond them entirely?

What is the purpose of this metaphysical arrangement?

A possible lead opens up with C.G. Jung, who identifies the Self, the Unconscious, – and God.

« As far as the Self is concerned, I could say that it is an equivalent of God ».iiiiv

The crucial idea is that God needs man’s conscience. This is the reason for man’s creation. Jung postulates « the existence of a [supreme] being who is essentially unconscious. Such a model would explain why God created a man with consciousness and why He seeks His purpose in him. On this point the Old Testament, the New Testament and Buddhism agree. Master Eckhart says that ‘God is not happy in His divinity. So He gives birth to Himself in man. This is what happened with Job: the creator sees himself through the eyes of human consciousness.»v

What does it (metaphysically) imply that the Self does not have a full awareness of itself, and even that It is much more unconscious than conscious? How can this be explained? The Self is so infinite that It can absolutely not have a full, absolute consciousness of Itself. Consciousness is an attention to oneself, a focus on oneself. It would be contrary to the very idea of consciousness to be ‘conscious’ of infinitely everything, of everything at once, for all the infinitely future times and the infinitely past times.

An integral omniscience, an omni-conscience, is in intrinsic contradiction with the concept of infinity. For if the Self is infinite, it is infinite in act and potency. And yet consciousness is in act. It is the unconscious that is in potency. The conscious Self can realize the infinite in act, at any moment, and everywhere in the World, or in the heart of each man, but It cannot also put into act what unrealized potency still lies in the infinity of possibilities. It cannot be ‘in act’, for example, today, in hearts and minds of the countless generations yet to come, who are still ‘in potency’ to come into existence.

The idea that there is a very important part of the unconscious in the Self, and even a part of the infinite unconscious, is not heretical. Quite the contrary.

The Self does not have a total, absolute, consciousness of Itself, but only a consciousness of what in It is in act. It ‘needs’ to realize its part of the unconscious, which is in potency in It, and which is also in potency in the world, and in Man…

This is the role of reality, the role of the world and its triad ‘name, form, action’. Only ‘reality’ can ‘realize’ that the Self resides in it, and what the Self expects of it. It is this ‘realisation’ that contributes to the emergence of the part of the unconscious, the part of potency, that the Self contains, in germ; in Its infinite unconscious.

The Self has been walking on Its own, from all eternity, and for eternities to come (although this expression may seem odd, and apparently contradictory). In this unfinished ‘adventure’, the Self needs to get out of Its ‘present’, out of Its own ‘presence’ to Itself. It needs to ‘dream’. In short, the Self ‘dreams’ creation, the world and Man, in order to continue to make what is still in potency happen in act.

This is how the Self knows Itself, through the existence of that which is not the Self, but which participates in It. The Self thus learns more about Itself than if It remained alone, mortally alone. Its immortality and infinity come from there, from Its power of renewal, from an absolute renewal since it comes from what is not absolutely the Self, but from what is other to It (for instance the heart of Man).

The world and Man, all this is the dream of the God, that God whom the Veda calls Man, Puruṣa, or the Lord of creatures, Prajāpati, and whom Upaniṣads calls the Self, ātman.

Man is the dream of the God who dreams of what He does not yet know what He will be. This is not ignorance. It is only the open infinite of a future yet to happen.

He also gave His name: « I shall be who I shall be ». vi אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה, ehyeh acher ehyeh. If the God who revealed Himself to Moses in this way with a verb in an « imperfective aspect » ‘, it is because the Hebrew language allows one side of the veil to be lifted. God is not yet « perfective », as is the verb that names Him.

Pascal developed the idea of a ‘bet’ that man should make, to win infinity. I would like to suggest that another ‘bet’, this time divine, accompanies the human bet. It is the wager that God made in creating His creation, accepting that non-self coexists with Him, in the time of His dream.

What is the nature of the divine wager? It is the bet that Man, by names, by forms, and by actions, will come to help the divinity to accomplish the realization of the Self, yet to do, yet to create, the Self always in potency.

God dreams that Man will deliver Him from His absence (to Himself).

For this potency, which still sleeps, in a dreamless sleep, in the infinite darkness of His unconscious, is what the God dreams about.

In His own light, He knows no other night than His own.

iB.U. 1.6.1

iiB.U. 1.6.1

iiiC.G. Jung. Letter to Prof. Gebhard Frei.1 3 January 1948. The Divine in Man. Albin Michel.1999. p.191

ivC.G. Jung. Letter to Aniela Jaffé. September 3, 1943. The Divine in Man. Albin Michel.1999. p.185-186

vC.G. Jung. Letter to Rev. Morton Kelsey. .3 May 1958. The Divine in Man. Albin Michel.1999. p.133

viEx 3.14

Surviving Self

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How to survive our Self?

Are we essentially alone in the face of the porous mysteries of the unconscious? Are we always alone in front of what could suddenly be discovered or revealed there, after long and slow maturation? Are we alone in front of the flagrant repression of what will remain buried there forever?

Many wander in sorrow in the deserts of their own minds, they wander lonely in the ergs of understanding. Fleeing the austerity of the silent void, they flee to the hubbub.

Others think alone, against the norm, against opinion, against the crowd. « I cross the philosophical space in absolute solitude. As a result, it no longer has any limits, no walls, it doesn’t hold me back. This is my only chance.”i

But if it is difficult to think alone, it is even more difficult to think with others.

The common brings us closer and warms us up. It doesn’t encourage people to try to reach cold peaks. The community compensates for isolation, and offers fusion in the mass. But something resists. It is the haunting, extreme, demanding feeling that the ‘self’ is not the ‘us’. The ideological, collective, social ‘us’ does not intersect with the inner, personal, singular ‘self’…

Cultures, religions and civilizations are ‘us’, fleeting in essence.

They fictitiously envelop billions of solitary ‘selves’, in essence. All these ‘us’ become lifeless shells, skinless drums, after a few millennia.

The mystery is that only the ‘self’ will survive them.

A deeper mystery yet: how to survive our Self?

______

iCatherine Malabou, Changer de différence, – cit. in Frédéric Neyrat , Atopies.

The Absolute Constant of the Mystery

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The famous 17th century Hindu thinker, Śaṃkara, proposed four essential concepts, sat, cit, ātman, and brahman.

They may be tentatively translated into English by the words being, thought, self, and absolute.

But it is worth digging a little beneath the surface.

For Śaṃkara, sat is « what is here and now ». Sat seems closer to being than to existence, or essence. Sat is, so to speak, the true form of being. But then what can be said of what is not here or now, of what was or will be, or even of what could or should be? One can say sat, too, to designate these sort of beings, but we oblige ourselves to an effort of abstraction, by thinking of these other modalities of being as “beings”.

Cit means thought, but also and above all consciousness. The objective idea is grasped by thought, the subjective feeling requires consciousness. Cit brings the two meanings together, but it is consciousness that leads the game.

As for ātman, this word is originally linked to life, life force, energy, wind, air, breath. It is only later that it comes to designate the person. In the Upaniṣad, the meaning of the word varies: body, person, self, or Self. This ambiguity complicates interpretation. Is the Self without a body? Is the Self a person? Difficulties related to language.

Finally, brahman may be translated as ‘absolute‘, but it has many other possible meanings. It is referred to in the Upaniṣad as breath, speech, mind, reality, immortality, eternity and also as the aim, “that which is to be pierced »i. It may mean ‘sacred word’, but it evolves to mean ‘absolute silence’. « Leave the words: here is the bridge of immortality.”ii

In the end, brahman comes to designate the absolute, the absolute of speech, or the absolute without speech, the absolute silence.

This analogy has been proposed: ātman represents the essence of the person, brahman identifies with the essence of the entire universe.

The word brahman has had some success in the Indo-European sphere of influence. Its root is ḅrhat, « greatness ». The Latin word flamen derives from it, as does brazman (« priest » in old Persian).

But the meaning of brahman as “priest” does not at all capture the mystery of its main meaning.

The mystery of the poet and the mystery of the sacred word are both called brahman. The mystery of absolute silence is also brahman. Finally, the mystery of the absolute, the mystery of the absolute is brahman.

The brahman is that from which all beings are born, all gods, and the first of them is Brahmā himself. Brahman is what everything is born of, « from Brahmā to the clump of grass »iii.

The absolute, the brahman of Śaṃkara, is at the same time greatness, speech, silence, sacred, enigma, mystery, divinity.

It must be underlined. The Veda does not offer a unique, exclusive, absolute truth. There is no truth, because an absolute truth could not account for the absolute mystery. In the Veda, the absolute remains an absolute mystery.

This lesson is compatible with other ideas of the hidden God, that of ancient Egypt, that of the God of Israel, or that of the God of Christian kenosis.

This may be a hint of an anthropological persistence, throughout the ages.

The persistent presence of an absolute mystery.

iMuU II,2,2

iiMuU II,2,5

iiiTubh III, 1,1