Nikos Kazantzakis: Askitiki (1923)

 The Relationship
          Between Man 

                   and Nature

ALL THIS WORLD, all this rich, endless flow of appearances is not a deception, a multicolored phantasmagoria of our mirroring mind. Nor is it absolute reality which lives and evolves freely, independent of our mind's power. It is not the resplendent robe which arrays the mystic body of God. Nor the obscurely translucent partition between man and mystery. All this world that we see, hear, and touch is that accessible to the human senses, a condensation of the two enormous powers of the Universe permeated with all of God. One power descends and wants to scatter, to come to a standstill, to die. The other power ascends and strives for freedom, for immortality. These two armies, the dark and the light, the armies of life and of death, collide eternally. The visible signs of this collision are, for us, plants, animals, men. The antithetical powers collide eternally; they meet, fight, conquer and are conquered, become reconciled for a brief moment, and then begin to battle again throughout the Universe - from the invisible whirlpool in a drop of water to the endless cataclysm of stars in the Galaxy. Even the most humble insect and the most insignificant idea are the military encampments of God. Within them, all of God is arranged in fighting position for a critical battle. Even in the most meaningless particle of earth and sky I hear God crying out: "Help me!" Everything is an egg in which God's sperm labors without rest, ceaselessly. Innumerable forces within and without it range themselves to defend it. With the light of the brain, with the flame of the heart, I besiege every cell where God is jailed, seeking, trying, hammering to open a gate in the fortress of matter, to create a gap through which God may issue in heroic attack.

LIE IN AMBUSH behind appearances, patiently, and strive to subject them to laws. Thus may you open up roads through chaos and help the spirit on its course.

Impose order, the order of your brain, on the flowing anarchy of the world. Incise your plan of battle clearly on the face of the abyss. Contend with the powers of nature, force them to the yoke of superior purpose. Free that spirit which struggles within them and longs to mingle with that spirit which struggles within you. When a man fighting with chaos subdues a series of appearances to the laws of his mind and strictly confines these laws within the boundaries of reason, then the world breathes, the voices are ranged in order, the future becomes clarified, and all the dark and endless quantities of numbers are freed by submitting to mystical quality.

With the help of our minds we compel matter to come with us. We divert the direction of descending powers, we alter the course of the current, we transform slavery into freedom.

We do not only free God by battling and subduing the visible world about us; we also create God. "Open your eyes," God shouts; "I want to see! Prick up your ears, I want to hear! March in the front ranks: you are my head!" A stone is saved if we lift it from the mire and build it into a house, or if we chisel the spirit upon it. The seed is saved - what do we mean by "saved"? It frees the God within it by blossoming, by bearing fruit, by returning to earth once more. Let us help the seed to save itself.

Every man has his own circle composed of trees, animals, men, ideas, and he is in duty bound to save this circle. He, and no one else. If he does not save it, he cannot be saved. 

These are the labors each man is given and is in duty bound to complete before he dies. He may not otherwise be saved. For his own soul is scattered and enslaved in these things about him, in trees, in animals, in men, in ideas, and it is his own soul he saves by completing these labors. If you are a laborer, then till the earth, help it to bear fruit. The seeds in the earth cry out, and God cries out within the seeds. Set him free! A field awaits its deliverance at your hands, a machine awaits its soul. You may never be saved unless you save them. If you are a warrior, be pitiless; compassion is not in the periphery of your duty. Kill the foe mercilessly. Hear how God cries out in the body of the enemy: "Kill this body, it obstructs me! Kill it that I may pass!" If you are a man of learning, fight in the skull, kill ideas and create new ones. God hides in every idea as in every cell of flesh. Smash the idea, set him free! Give him another, a more spacious idea in which to dwell. If you are a woman, then love. Choose austerely among all men the father of your children. It is not you who make the choice, but the indestructible, merciless, infinite, masculine God within you. Fulfill all your duty, so overbrimming with bitterness, love, and valor. Give up all your body, so filled with blood and milk. Say: "This child, which I hold suckling at my breast, shall save God. Let me give him all my blood and milk."

PROFOUND AND  incommensurable is the worth of this flowing world: God clings to it and ascends, God feeds upon it and increases. My heart breaks open, my mind is flooded with light, and all at once this world's dread battlefield is revealed to me as an erotic arena. Two violent contrary winds, one masculine and the other feminine, met and clashed at a crossroads. For a moment they counterbalanced each other, thickened, and became visible. This crossroads is the Universe. This crossroads is my heart. This dance of the gigantic erotic collision is transmitted from the darkest particle of matter to the most spacious thought. The wife of my God is matter; they wrestle with each other, they laugh and weep, they cry out in the nuptial bed of flesh. They spawn and are dismembered. They fill sea, land, and air with species of plants, animals, men, and spirits. This primordial pair embraces, is dismembered, and multiplies in every living creature. All the concentrated agony of the Universe bursts out in every living thing. God is imperiled in the sweet ecstasy and bitterness of flesh. But he shakes himself free, he leaps out of brains and loins, then clings to new brains and new loins until the struggle for liberation again breaks out from the beginning.

For the first time on this earth, from within our hearts and our minds, God gazes on his own struggle. Joy! Joy! I did not know that all this world is so much part of me, that we are all one army, that windflowers and stars struggle to right and left of me and do not know me; but I turn to them and hail them. The Universe is warm, beloved, familiar, and it smells like my own body. It is Love and War both, a raging restlessness, persistence and uncertainty. Uncertainty and terror. In a violent flash of lightning I discern on the highest peak of power the final, the most fearful pair embracing:  Terror and Silence. And between them, a Flame.

From "The Saviours of God

 (Spiritual excercises)

Translated by Kimon Friar