Rudolf Steiner: Lecture (1861 - 1925)

 Between Death 

     and a New Birth

                   

The last time I spoke to you here, I dealt briefly with a significant phase of human life between death and rebirth. This phase cannot be treated as if it were of no importance to our physical existence. We should be clear about the fact that the forces we need for life do not  only come from the realm of the physical body. They emanate essentially from a supersensible world to which we belong between death and rebirth. This can be understood only if we are able to form mental images of life between death and rebirth. Man is mostly enveloped in a kind of dreaming-sleeping condition. Those who go through the daily routine without thinking about the events they experience are in fact asleep to life, and those who concern themselves with what lies beyond material existence are also those who awaken to physical life. Referring to our earlier considerations, you will remember that spiritual science rightly understood is capable of entering fully into all aspects of human existence. Inasmuch as spiritual science permeates our civilization, humanity will experience an awakening from a sleep of life. Many things that approach the human being appear strange and mysterious, but they represent a riddle more to the feelings than to the dry intellect. A mother standing by the coffin of her child, or the reverse, is such an instance. One has but to concern oneself thoroughly with human existence to realize how people become aware of the riddle of life. People who have lost a sister, a husband, or a wife come to me and say, “I never used to think about death, never concerned myself about what might happen afterwards, but since this relative has been taken from me it is as if he were still here, and this has led me to occupy myself with spiritual science.” Life will bring people to spiritual science. What happens as a result will be richly rewarding because spiritual science can permeate life with certain impulses that it alone can give. When a person is no longer physically present, the riddle arises as to what happens to him after death. External science cannot supply the answer because it only observes with the eyes, and they, too, decay. The physical brain decays also, and it is clear that it can be of no use for what man experiences without his physical sheath. Yet the mighty questions regarding the beyond remain. In this connection general answers are of little avail and it is preferable to consider actual instances that can penetrate directly into life. 

Let us take life on earth as a starting point. Perhaps you will have come across a person who, through a deep inner longing, through his own soul disposition, was driven to spiritual science, whereas another may have become antagonistic towards it. The one became more deeply involved in spiritual science, while his friend developed increasing enmity towards it. The one became more deeply involved in spiritual science, while his friend developed increasing enmity towards it. Life not only presents us with a maya in nature but also in the immediacy of our connection with others. In fact, what has just been related may be a complete deception. He who has convinced himself that all this is nonsense may, in the

depths of his soul of which he remains unconscious, develop a secret love for it. 

In the substrata love can express itself as hate. One does find such cases in earthy life. When a person has gone through the gate of death, all the secret soul impulses and longings that he has suppressed during his earthly existence rise to the surface and become the content of the period of catharsis. We have observed people going through the gate of death who on earth were enemies of spiritual science and who after death developed an intense longing for it. Such antagonists then strive for spiritual science. Had we during their earthly lives gone to them with a book on spiritual science, they might have dismissed us in anger. After death we can do them no greater service than to read to them. Reading in thought to the dead can have the greatest furthering effect for them.

There are many instances within our spiritual movement in which those connected with a dead person have read to him and thereby helped him. The dead receive what is given with the utmost gratitude, and in this way a beautiful relationship can be developed. This shows what spiritual science can mean quite practically. Spiritual science is not mere theory. It must take hold of life and tear down the wall that separates the living from the dead. Thus can the gulf be bridged. A great deal of good can be done by bringing spiritual science into life with the right attitude. No better advice can be given than to read to the dead because it is a strange fact that immediately after death we are incapable of making new connections. We are forced to continue with the old ones.

The question presents itself as to whether or not the dead are able to find spiritual beings beyond the threshold who could teach them. That is not possible! To begin with, one can only have connections with beings with whom one has had a relationship before going through the gate of death. On encountering a being one has not known on earth, one merely passes him by. On earth, too, one would not recognize a great genius if he were dressed like a teamster. One has contact only with the individuals one has known on earth. One might meet many beings who could be of help, but if there has been no prior connection, they can be of no use to one. 

Spiritual science is in its early stages and because it has only just begun to have an effect on human beings, the living can perform the greatest service to the dead by helping them in this way. This is an instance of the influence that can be exercised

from our world upon the other. But the opposite is also possible — the dead can work into the physical world. To the extent that spiritual science takes hold of life, a cooperation between both worlds will come about. The dead can also influence the living. People know remarkably little about the world. At most, only what happens in the course of time is grasped. Many think that the rest is of no significance. But what actually occurs is only the smallest part of what is worth knowing. By knowing only what happens externally, one actually remains ignorant of life. In the morning we go to work. Probably we consider the things that happen there as well worth knowing. One day we leave three minutes later than usual and surprising events take place. If, for example, we had left home at the right time we

might have been run over, but we have been protected. Or perhaps we have to make a tripand miss the train. Then this very train is involved in a serious accident. What can we gather from such considerations?

There is much that does not happen in life, and yet we should reckon such events

among the possibilities. Does the individual know how many such possibilities he escapes every single day? Imagine all the things that could happen from which he is protected!  We overlook them because for a cold, abstract view of life they are quite meaningless. But let us consider the effect on the soul of a person who has been saved from danger by an apparent coincidence. A man from Berlin intended to go to America and had already purchased his ticket. A friend advised him not to sail on the Titanic! Picture to yourself the feelings of this man. He did not sail, and then he heard of the sinking of the Titanic. It had a shattering effect on his feelings. What impressions would arise in us if we were able to observe in the course of the day all the things we have been spared! 

When a person begins to concern himself with spiritual science he develops a far greater sensitivity for the complexities of life, for what happens in the normal course of the day. Now if we have acquired a sensitivity of soul and are spiritually prepared, at moments such as these we can receive an impression from the spiritual world, a message from the dead that comes as an act of grace. The gates are flung open by the dead. They can speak to those who have developed sensitivity. Important matters can be imparted. The dead person, for example, may order us to accomplish something that he has not done. So the gulf is bridged. When spiritual science penetrates into practical life, and it will do so in the future, we shall be able to communicate in both directions with the dead. It will bring the supersensible world into the immediate present.

The following question may arise. When we read a spiritual-scientific book in a particular language, can the dead understand this language? During the period of catharsis the dead understand the language they have spoken on earth. It is only later, during the passage into devachan, that they can no longer understand words but only thoughts. A transformation in the intercourse with the dead takes place after a definite period of years. If the one who has remained on earth is sensitive, he will feel that the one who has died is with him and that they think the same. This can last for years and then suddenly one loses the connection. That is the moment when the dead passes into devachan. During the period of catharsis he still remembers earthly life, he still holds onto these memories. 

What is an earthly language? Every language has meaning only for earthly life and is  closely connected with a person's organization, with the climate and with the formation of the larynx. In Europe we do not speak the same languages as in India. But thoughts are not formed according to earthly conditions. The dead only understand language as long as they are in kamaloca. When a medium conveys a message from the dead in a particular language, it can only come from one who has recently gone through the gate of death.

Fundamentally we are already within the higher worlds every time we go to sleep, for in sleep we enter unconsciously the same realm we enter after death. I would like to pose the following question. Can someone who is not yet able to see with

supersensible perception nevertheless know about these things? A sleeping man, of course, does live. He is somewhat like a plant. You may recall that a scientist, Raoul Francé, writes that plants are endowed with feelings and are able to admire. Yet plants do not have a soul element. The sleeping human organism is on par with the plant. The rays of the sun have to fall on the plant if it is to live. The earth is covered with plants because the sun has called them forth. Without the sun there are no plants and during the winter they cannot sprout forth. When man sleeps, where is his sun? What lies in the bed we also cannot envisage without the sun. This sun is outside the man's ego. There the ego has to work on the sleeping organism as the sun does on the plant. But it is not only the sun that plays a part in bringing forth and sustaining vegetation. The moon does also. Without the influences from the moon there would be no plant growth either, but the effect of lunar influences is  completely ignored by scientists. 

The light of the moon influences the plant. The lunar forces determine the width of the plant. A plant that grows tall and thin is little influenced by the moon. Even the whole cosmos is involved in the growth of plants. The ego works into the physical and etheric bodies as the sun influences plant growth. Similarly, the astral body is related to the moon. The ego is the sun for the physical body, the astral body is spiritually its moon. Our ego creates a replacement for the influences of the sun, and our astral body for those of the moon. This justifies what the initiate means when he says man has been formed as an extract of the forces of the cosmos. As the sun is the central point of the plant world and rays forth its light in all directions, in the same way light must permeate the physical and etheric bodies. The sunlight is not only physical, it is also of a soul-spiritual nature separated from the cosmos  and become the “I” or ego. 

The human astral body contains an extract of the light of the moon. The greatest wisdom is contained in these matters. If the human ego were still bound to the sun, man would only be able to alternate between sleeping and waking like the plants. If there were only the solar influence we would never be able to sleep during the day. We would sleep only at night. But our whole cultural life depends upon an emancipation from these conditions. We carry our own sun within us and the ego is an extract of the solar influence. The astral body in man is an extract of the lunar influence. So during sleep we are not dependent in the spiritual world on the cosmic solar influence. Our ego does what the sun would do otherwise. We are illumined by our own ego and astral body.

Ancient occult vision penetrated to this point only occasionally. Spiritual science gives us the following picture of the sleeping man. Above him shines the sun, his ego, without which he could not be as a plant during sleep. Above him shines the moon, his own astral body. Now, we can also picture that during the autumn when the sun's influence decreases, vegetation withers. In a man who is awake the astral body and ego are within the physical and ether bodies. The return into the body is to a certain extent like the setting of the sun and moon, and it also marks the end of the plant-like existence. The vegetative condition that prevails to revivify our forces during sleep is much less active during waking life. The vegetative growth-forces wane as man awakens. Inasmuch we are plant-like, we die every morning. 

This throws considerable light on the interplay between soul and body. Some people feel active and stimulated shortly after waking. Those are the ones who are able to live more strongly in the soul sphere. People who tend to live more in the bodily nature often sense a certain fatigue in the morning. The less tired a person is in the morning, the more active he can be. Yet our waking life may be compared to the dying process of the plants in winter. Each day we draw death forces within our organism. They accumulate and because of this process we eventually die. The fundamental reason for death lies in the sphere of consciousness. From this we can gather that the conscious activity of the ego within our daily life is the destroyer of our physical and etheric bodies. We die because we live consciously.

Many attempts are being made to explain the nature of sleep. Sleep is supposed to be a condition of exhaustion and is said to exist to dispel tiredness. But sleep is not really a condition of exhaustion. The small child, for instance, sleeps more than anyone. Sleep is a part of the whole of life. It is inserted in the rhythm of falling asleep and waking up. Similarly, as we see nature wither in winter, so something dies in us during our waking life. When we go through the gate of death, we leave our physical and etheric bodies behind and our ego and astral body now emerge as sun and moon that have nothing to illumine. Nevertheless, the ego and the astral body can continue their existence in spite of the fact that they have nothing to illumine. When they permeate the body, consciousness arises. 

In the spiritual world also, man has to permeate something if he is to acquire consciousness, otherwise he would exist without consciousness. The bodily nature was most strongly illumined during the Greco-Latin period. Then the saying, “Rather a beggar on earth than a king in the realm of the Shades,” had reality. At that time to dwell in the underworld meant to lead a miserable existence. Before the birth of Christ life after death was little developed. We, on the other hand, belong to an age that is characterized by the fact that such forces are no longer exercised on the bodily nature. Man, inasmuch as he sleeps, is on the decline. The bodily nature has been on the downgrade since the time of Christ. The vegetative forces were most strongly prevalent during the Greek epoch. 

At the end of the evolution of humanity the bodily nature will be most barren.

In earlier epochs men were clairvoyant and the soul was highly developed. Through the soul-spiritual decline the bodily nature rose to its peak as expressed in the beauty of Greek art. But as we go into the future all striving for beauty is faced with a pitfall in that external beauty has no future. Beauty must become an inner quality and in this way must it reveal its character. Insofar as this withering process increases, the inner nature of the sun and of the moon will become ever more glorious. Those who cultivate spirit and soul through spiritual science have a greater understanding of the future than those people who seek to revive the Greek games. The more a person leaves his soul-spiritual nature in unconsciousness, the more miserable is the destiny he will encounter between death and a new birth. 

The decay of the body has nothing to do with life after death, but if nothing of a soul-spiritual nature has been developed, then there is nothing to carry over into the spiritual world. The more a person has opened himself to receive a spiritual content, the better he will fare after death. Mankind will learn increasingly to become independent of what is bound to the physical body. Spiritual science will not keep its present form. Words can scarcely express what it wishes to convey. In spiritual science more will depend on how things are said, rather than on  what is said. That is an international element and can live in any language. One will accustom oneself to listen to how things are expressed. In this way one can enter into contact with the dweller of devachan. 

Today we are gathered together and speak of spiritual science. We will go through the gate of death and continue to develop in a number of future incarnations. Then we will have thoughts independent from the earth-bound language of today. The spirit will enter into our life and we will be able to communicate with the dead.

External cultural life goes to its downfall. A time will come when the skies will be filled with airplanes. Life on earth will wither, but the human soul will grow into the spiritual world.

At the end of earth evolution man will have progressed so that there will no longer be a sharp division between the living and the dead. The earth will do over into a spiritual condition again because man will have spiritualized himself. This will give you a basis for a correct answer when people ask, “Death and birth repeat themselves but will this always continue?” There will not be such a difference between living and dying because for human consciousness everything will be spiritualized. The upward development of the whole of mankind leads to the condition that will be experienced on Jupiter. In speaking about life between death and rebirth we open up a far-reaching realm. There, also, everything is subject to change and transformation, including the intercourse of the living with the dead. We shall gradually penetrate further into the nature of man's existence, into the interplay between his bodily and spiritual nature.

                                                                                                                                                   Vienna, January 21, 1913

                                                                                                     

Nikos Kazantzakis: The Saviours of God (Νίκος Καζαντζάκης; 1883-1957)

           The 

 Relationship 

    Between Man 

                  and Man

What is the essence of our God? The struggle for freedom. In the indestructible darkness a flaming line ascends and emblazons the march of the Invisible. What is our duty? To ascend with blood-drenched line. Whatever rushes upward and helps God to ascend is good. Whatever drags downward and impedes God from ascending is evil. All virtues and all evils take on a new value. They are freed from the moment and from earth, they exist completely within man, before and after man, eternally. For the essence of our ethic is not the salvation of man, who varies within time and space, but the salvation of God, who within a wide variety of flowing human forms and adventures is always the same, the indestructible rhythm which battles for freedom. We, as human beings, are all miserable persons, heartless, small, insignificant. But within us a superior essence drives us ruthlessly upward. From within this human mire divine songs have welled up, great ideas, violent loves, an unsleeping assault full of mystery, without beginning or end, without purpose, beyond every purpose. Humanity is such a lump of mud, each one of us is such a lump of mud. What is our duty? To struggle so that a small flower may blossom from the dunghill of our flesh and mind.

Out of things and flesh, out of hunger, out of fear, out of virtue and sin, struggle continually to create God. How does the light of a star set out and plunge into black eternity in its immortal course? The star dies, but the light never dies; such also is the cry of freedom. Out of the transient encounter of contrary forces which constitute your existence, strive to create whatever immortal thing a mortal may create in this world - a Cry. And this Cry, abandoning to the earth the body which gave it birth, proceeds and labors eternally. A VEHEMENT EROS runs through the Universe. It is like the ether: harder than steel, softer than air. It cuts through and passes beyond all things, it flees and escapes. It does not repose in warm detail nor enslave itself in the beloved body. It is a Militant Eros. Behind the shoulders of its beloved it perceives mankind surging and roaring like waves, it perceives animals and plants uniting and dying, it perceives the Lord imperiled and shouting to it: "Save me!"Eros? What other name may we give that impetus which becomes enchanted as soon as it casts its glance on matter and then longs to impress its features upon it? It confronts the body and longs to pass beyond it, to merge with the other erotic cry hidden in that body, to become one till both may vanish and become deathless by begetting sons.

It approaches the soul and wishes to merge with it inseparably so that "you" and "I" may no longer exist; it blows on the mass of man - kind and wishes, by smashing the resistances of mind and body, to merge all breaths into one violent gale that may lift the earth! In moments of crisis this Erotic Love swoops down on men and joins them together by force - friends and foes, good and evil. It is a breath superior to all of them, independent of their desires and deeds. It is the spirit, the breathing of God on earth. It descends on men in whatever form it wishes - as dance, as eros, as hunger, as religion, as slaughter. It does not ask our permission. In these hours of crisis God struggles to knead flesh and brains together in the trough of earth, to cast all this mass of dough into the merciless whirlwind of his rotation and to give it a face - his face. He does not choke with disgust, he does not despair in the dark, earthen entrails of men. He toils, proceeds, and devours the flesh; he clings to the belly, the heart, the mind and the phallos of man. He is not the upright head of a family; he does not portion out either bread or brains equally to his children. In justice, Cruelty, Longing, and Hunger are the four steeds that drive his chariot on this rough-hewn earth of ours. God is never created out of happiness or comfort or glory, but out of shame and hunger and tears.

AT EVERY MOMENT of crisis an array of men risk their lives in the front ranks as standard-bearers of God to fight and take upon themselves the whole responsibility of the battle. Once long ago it was the priests, the kings, the noblemen, or the burghers who created civilizations and set divinity free. Today God is the common worker made savage by toil and rage and hunger. He stinks of smoke and wine and meat. He swears and hungers and begets children; he cannot sleep; he shouts and threatens in the cellars and garrets of earth. The air has changed, and we breathe in deeply a spring laden and filled with seed. Cries rise up on every side. Who shouts? It is we who shout - the living, the dead, and the unborn. But at once we are crushed by fear, and we fall silent. And then we forget - out of laziness, out of habit, out of cowardice. But suddenly the Cry tears at our entrails once more, like an eagle. For the Cry is not outside us, it does not come from a great distance that we may escape it. It sits in the center of our hearts, and cries out. God shouts: "Burn your houses! I am coming! Whoever has a house cannot receive me! "Burn your ideas, smash your thoughts! Whoever has found the solution cannot find me."I love the hungry, the restless, the vagabonds. They are the ones who brood eternally on hunger, on rebellion, on the endless road - on ME! "I am coming! Leave your wives, your children, your ideas, and follow me. I am the great Vagabond. "Follow! Stride over joy and sorrow, over peace and justice and virtue! Forward! Smash these idols, smash them all, they cannot contain me. Smash even yourself that I may pass."Set fire! This is our great duty today amid such immoral and hopeless chaos. War against the unbelievers! The unbelievers are the satisfied, the satiated, the sterile.

Our hate is uncompromising because it knows that it works for love better and more profoundly than any weak-hearted kindness. We hate, we are never content, we are unjust, we are cruel and filled with restlessness and faith; we seek the impossible, like lovers. Sow fire to purify the earth! Let a more dreadful abyss open up between good and evil, let injustice increase, let Hunger descend to thresh our bowels, for we may not otherwise be saved. We are living in a critical, violent moment of history; an entire world is crashing down, another has not yet been born. Our epoch is not a moment of equilibrium in which refinement, reconciliation, peace, and love might be fruitful virtues. We live in a moment of dread assault, we stride over our enemies, we stride over our lagging friends, we are imperiled in the midst of chaos, we drown. We can no longer fit into old virtues and hopes, into old theories and actions. The wind of devastation is blowing; this is the breath of our God today; let us be carried away in its tide! The wind of devastation is the first dancing surge of the creative rotation. It blows over every head and every city, it knocks down houses and ideas, it passes over desolate wastes, and it shouts: "Prepare yourselves! War! It is War! This is our epoch, good or bad, beautiful or ugly, rich or poor - we did not choose it. This is our epoch, the air we breathe, the mud given us, the bread, the fire, the spirit!

Let us accept Necessity courageously. It is our lot to have fallen on fighting times. Let us tighten our belts, let us arm our hearts, our minds, and our bodies. Let us take our place in battle! War is the lawful sovereign of our age. Today the only complete and virtuous man is the warrior. For only he, faithful to the great pulse of our time, smashing, hating, desiring, follows the present command of our God. THIS IDENTIFICATION of ourselves with the Universe begets the two superior virtues of our ethics: responsibility and sacrifice. It is our duty to help liberate that God who is stifling in us, in mankind, in masses of people living in darkness. We must be ready at any moment to give up our lives for his sake. For life is not a goal; it is also an instrument, like death, like beauty, like virtue, like knowledge. Whose instrument? Of that God who fights for freedom.

We are all one, we are all an imperiled essence. If at the far end of the world a spirit degenerates, it drags down our spirit into its own degradation. If one mind at the far end of the world sinks into idiocy, our own temples over-brim with darkness. For it is only One who struggles at the far end of earth and sky. One. And if He goes lost, it is we who must bear the responsibility. If He goes lost, then we go lost. This is why the salvation of the Universe is also our salvation, why solidarity among men is no longer a tenderhearted luxury but a deep necessity and self-preservation, as much a necessity as, in an army under fire, the salvation of your comrade-in-arms. But our morality ascends even higher. We are all one army under fire. Yet we have no certain knowledge that we shall conquer, we have no certain knowledge that we shall be conquered. Does salvation exist, does a purpose exist which we serve and in the service of which we shall find deliverance? Or is there no salvation, is there no purpose, are all things in vain and our contribution of no value at all?

Neither one nor the other. Our God is not almighty, he is not all-holy, he is not certain that he will conquer, he is not certain that he will be conquered. The essence of our God is obscure. It ripens continuously; perhaps victory is strenghened with our every valorous deed, but perhaps even all these agonizing struggles toward deliverance and victory are inferior to the nature of divinity. Whatever it might be, we fight on without certainty, and our virtue, uncertain of any rewards, acquires a profound nobility. All the commandments are put to rout. We do not see, we do not hear, we do not hate, we do not love as once we did. Earth takes on a new virginity. Bread and water and women take on a new flavor. Action takes on a new, incalculable value. All acquire an unexpected holiness - beauty, knowledge, hope, the economic struggle, daily and seemingly meaningless cares. Shuddering, we feel everywhere about us the same gigantic, enslaved Spirit striving for freedom.

EVERYONE HAS his own particular road which leads him to liberation - one the road of virtue, another the road of evil. If the road leading you to your liberation is that of disease, of lies, of dishonor, it is then your duty to plunge into disease, into lies, into dishonor, that you may conquer them. You may not otherwise be saved.

If the road which leads you to your liberation is the road of virtue, of joy, of truth, it is then your duty to plunge into virtue, into joy, into truth, that you may conquer them and leave them behind you. You may not otherwise be saved. We do not fight our dark passions with a sober, bloodless, neutral virtue which rises above passion, but with other, more violent passions.

We leave our door open to sin. We do not plug up our ears with wax that we may not listen to the Sirens. We do not bind ourselves, out of fear, to the mast of a great idea; nor by hearing and by embracing the Sirens do we abandon our ship, and perish. On the contrary, we seize the Sirens and pitch them into our boat so that even they may voyage with us; and we continue on our way. This, my comrades, is our new Asceticism, our Spiritual Exercises! God cries to my heart: "Save me!" God cries to men, to animals, to plants, to matter: "Save me!" Listen to your heart and follow him. Shatter your body and awake: We are all one. Love man because you are he. Love animals and plants because you were they, and now they follow you like faithful co-workers and slaves. Love your body; only with it may you fight on this earth and turn matter into spirit. Love matter. God clings to it tooth and nail, and fights. Fight with him. Die every day. Be born every day. Deny everything you have every day. The superior virtue is not to be free but to fight for freedom. Do not condescend to ask: "Shall we conquer? Shall we be conquered?" Fight on! So may the enterprise of the Universe, for an ephemeral moment, for as long as you are alive, become your own enterprise. This, Comrades, is our new Decalogue. 

Excerpt from "The Saviours of God
 (Spiritual excercises)
Translated by Kimon Friar

Thomas Merton: Raids on the Unspeakable (1961)

  The Rain 

  and the Rhinoceros

Let me say this before rain becomes a utility that they can plan and distribute for money. By “they” I mean the people who cannot understand that rain is a festival, who do not appreciate its gratuity, who think that what has no price has no value, that what cannot be sold is not real, so that the only way to make something actual is to place it on the market. The time will come when they will sell you even your rain. At the moment it is still free, and I am in it. I celebrate its gratuity and its meaninglessness. The rain I am in is not like the rain of cities. It fills the woods with an immense and confused sound. It covers the flat roof of the cabin and porch with insistent and controlled rhythms. And I listen, because it reminds me again and again that the whole world runs by rhythms I have not yet learned to recognize, rhythms that are not those of the engineer. I came up here from the monastery last night, sloshing through the cornfield, said Vespers, and put some oatmeal on the Coleman stove for supper. It boiled over while I was listening to the rain and toasting a piece of bread at the log fire. The night became very dark. The rain surrounded the whole cabin with its enormous virginal myth, a whole world of meaning, of secrecy, of silence, of rumor. Think of it: all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves, soaking the trees, filling the gullies and crannies of the wood with water, washing out the places where men have stripped the hillside! What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows !

     
                      Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, this rain. 
                                                                                                        As long as it talks I am going to listen.

But I am also going to sleep, because here in this wilderness I have learned how to sleep again. Here I am not alien. The trees I know, the night I know, the rain I know. I close my eyes and instantly sink into the whole rainy world of which I am a part, and the world goes on with me in it, for I am not alien to it I am alien to the noises of cities, of people, to the greed of machinery that does not sleep, the hum of power that eats up the night. Where rain, sunlight and darkness are contemned, I cannot sleep. I do not trust anything that has been fabricated to replace the climate of woods or prairies. I can have no confidence in places where the air is first fouled and then cleansed, where the water is first made deadly and then made safe with other poisons. There is nothing in the world of buildings that is not fabricated, and if a tree gets in among the apartment houses by mistake it is taught to grow chemically. It is given a precise reason for existing. They put a sign on it saying it is for health, beauty, perspective; that it is for peace, for prosperity; that it was planted by the mayor’s daughter. All of this is mystification. The city itself lies on its own myth. Instead of waking up and silently existing, the city people prefer a stubborn and fabricated dream; they do not care to be a part of the night, or to be merely of the world. They have constructed a world outside the world, against the world, a world of mechanical fictions which contemn nature and seek only to use it up, thus preventing it from renewing itself and man.

Of course the festival of rain cannot be stopped, even in the city. The woman from the delicatessen scampers along the sidewalk with a newspaper over her head. The streets, suddenly washed, became transparent and alive, and the noise of traffic becomes a splashing of fountains. One would think that urban man in a rainstorm would have to take account of nature in its wetness and freshness, its baptism and its renewal. But the rain brings no renewal to the city, only to tomorrow’s weather, and the glint of windows in tall buildings will then have nothing to do with the new sky. All “reality” will remain somewhere inside those walls, counting itself and selling itself with fantastically complex determination. Meanwhile the obsessed citizens plunge through the rain bearing the load of their obsessions, slightly more vulnerable than before, but still only barely aware of external realities. They do not see that the streets shine beautifully, that they themselves are walking on stars and water, that they are running in skies to catch a bus or a taxi, to shelter somewhere in the press of irritated humans, the faces of advertisements and the dim, cretinous sound of unidentified music. But they must know that there is wetness abroad. Perhaps they even feel it. I cannot say. Their complaints are mechanical and without spirit.

Naturally no one can believe the things they say about the rain. It all implies one basic lie: only the city is real. That weather, not being planned, not being fabricated, is an impertinence, a wen on the visage of progress. (Just a simple little operation, and the whole mess may become relatively tolerable. Let business make the rain. This will give it meaning).

Thoreau sat in his cabin and criticized the railways. I sit in mine and wonder about a world that has, well, progressed. I must read Walden again, and see if Thoreau already guessed that he was part of what he thought he could escape. But it is not a matter of “escaping.” It is not even a matter of protesting very audibly. Technology is here, even in the cabin. True, the utility line is not here yet, and so G.E. is not here yet either. When the utilities and G.E. enter my cabin arm in arm it will be nobody’s fault but my own. I admit it. I am not kidding anybody, even myself. I will suffer their bluff and patronizing complacencies in silence. I will let them think they know what I am doing here. They are convinced that I am having fun.

This has already been brought home to me with a wallop by my Coleman lantern. Beautiful lamp: It burns gas and sings viciously but gives out a splendid green light in which I read Philoxenos, a sixth-century Syrian hermit. Philoxenous fits in with the rain and the festival of night. Of this, more later. Meanwhile: what does my Coleman lantern tell me? (Coleman’s philosophy is printed on the cardboard box which I have (guiltily) not shellacked as I was supposed to, and which I have tossed in the woodshed behind the hickory chunks.) Coleman says that the light is good, and has a reason: it “Stretches days to give more hours of fun.”

Can’t I just be in the woods without any special reason? Just being in the woods, at night, in the cabin, is something too excellent to be justified or explained. It just is. There are always a few people who are in the woods at night, in the rain (because if there were not the world would have ended), and I am one of them. We are not having fun, we are not “having” anything, we are not “stretching our days,” and if we had fun it would not be measured by hours. Though as a matter of fact that is what fun seems to be: a state of diffuse excitation that can be measured by the clock and “stretched” but an appliance.

There is no clock that can measure the speech of this rain that falls all night on the drowned and lonely forest. Of course at three-thirty A.M. the SAC plane goes over, red light winking low under the clouds, skimming the wooded summits on the south side of the valley, loaded with strong medicine. Very strong. Strong enough to burn up all these woods and stretch our hours of fun into eternities.

And that brings me to Philoxenos, a Syrian who had fun in the sixth century, without benefit of appliances, still less of nuclear deterrents.

Philoxenos in his ninth menra (on poverty) to dwellers in solitude, says that there is no explanation and justification for the solitary life, since it is without a law. To be a contemplative is therefore to be an outlaw. As was Christ. As was Paul.

One who is not alone, says Philoxenos, has not discovered his identity. He seems to be alone, perhaps, for he experiences himself as “individual.” But because he is willingly enclosed and limited by the laws and illusions of collective existence, he has no more identity than an unborn child in the womb. He is not yet conscious. He is alien to his own truth. He has senses, but he cannot use them. He has life, but no identity. To have an identity, he has to be awake. But to be awake, he has to accept vulnerability and death. Not for their own sake: not out of stoicism or despair – only for the sake of the invulnerable inner reality which we cannot recognize (which we can only be) but to which we awaken only when we see the unreality of our vulnerable shell. The discovery of this inner self is an act and affirmation of solitude.

Now if we take our vulnerable shell to be our true identity, if we think our mask is our true face, we will protect it with fabrications even at the cost of violating our own truth. This seems to be the collective endeavor of society: the more busily men dedicate themselves to it, the more certainly it becomes a collective illusion, until in the end we have the enormous, obsessive, uncontrollable dynamic of fabrications designed to protect mere fictitious identities – “selves,” that is to say, regarded as objects. Selves that can stand back and themselves having fun (an illusion which reassures them that they are real).

“In all the cities of the world, it is the same,” says Ionesco (a playwright — author of Rhinoceros). “The universal and modern man is the man in a rush (i.e. rhinoceros), a man who has no time, who is a prisoner of necessity, who cannot understand that a thing might perhaps be without usefulness; nor does he understand that, at bottom, it is the useful that may be a useless and back-breaking burden. If one does not understand the usefulness of the useless and the uselessness of the useful, one cannot understand art. And a country where art is not understood is a country of slaves and robots…” (Notes et Contre Notes, p. 129) Rhinoceritis, he adds, is the sickness that lies in wait “for those who have lost the sense and taste for solitude.”

. . . There will always be a place, says Ionesco, “for those isolated consciences who have stood up for the universal conscience” as against the mass mind. But their place is solitude. They have no other. Hence it is the solitary person (whether in the city or in the desert) who does mankind the inestimable favor of reminding it of its true capacity for maturity, liberty and peace.

We still carry this burden of illusion because we do not dare to lay it down. We suffer all the needs that society demands we suffer, because if we do not have these needs we lose our “usefulness” in society–-the usefulness of suckers. We fear to be alone, and to be ourselves, and so to remind others of the truth that is in them.

“I will not make you such rich men as have need of many things,” said Philoxenos (putting the words on the lips of Christ), “but I will make you true rich men who have need of nothing. Since it is not he who has many possessions that is rich, but he who has no needs.” Obviously, we shall always have some needs. But only he who has the simplest and most natural needs can be considered to be without needs, since the only needs he has are real ones, and the real ones are not hard to fulfill if one is free!

The rain has stopped. The afternoon sun slants through the pine trees: and how those useless needles smell in the clean air!

A dandelion, long out of season, has pushed itself into bloom between the smashed leaves of last summer’s day lilies. The valley resounds with the totally uninformative talk of creeks and wild water. Then the quails begin their sweet whistling in the wet bushes. Their noise is absolutely useless, and so is the delight I take in it. There is nothing I would rather hear, not because it is a better noise than other noises, but because it is the voice of the present moment, the present festival.

Yet even here the earth shakes. Over at Fort Knox the Rhinoceros is having fun.

Rainer Maria Rilke: On love and other difficulties (1875-1926)

The Dragon-Princess

To speak of solitude again, it becomes always clearer that this is at bottom not something that one can take or leave. We are solitary. We may delude ourselves and act as thought this were not so. That is all.  That is all. But how much better it is to realize that we are so, yes, even to begin by assuming it. We shall indeed turn dizzy, then; for all points upon which our eye has been accustomed to rest are taken from us, there is nothing near any more and everything far is infinitely far. A person removed from his own room, almost without preparation and transition, and set upon the height of a great mountain range, would feel something of the sort: an unparalleled insecurity, an abandonment to something inexpressible would almost annihilate him. He would think himself falling or hurled out into space, or exploded into a thousand pieces: what a monstruous lie his brain would have to invent to catch up with and explain the state of his sense!

So for him who becomes solitary all distances, all measures change; of these changes many take place suddenly, and then, as with the man on the mountaintop, extraordinary imaginings and singular sensations arise that may seem to grow out beyond all bearing. But it is necessary for us to experience that too. We must assume our existence as broadly as we in any way can; everything, even the unheard-of, must be possible in it. That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular, and the most inexplicable that we may encounter. That mankind has in this sense been cowardly has done life endless harm; the experiences that are called "visions", the whole so-called "spirit-world", death, all those things that are so closely akin to us, have by daily parrying been so crowded out of life that the senses with which we could have grasped them are atrophied. To say nothing of God.

But fear of the inexplicable has not alone impoverished the existence of the individual; the relationship between one human being and another has also been cramped by it, as though it had been lifted out of the riverbed of endless possibilities and set down in a fallow spot on the bank, to which nothing happens. For it is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed; it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope. But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively from his own existence. For if we think of this existence of the individual as a larger or smaller room, it appears evident that most people learn to know only a corner of a room, a place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and down. Thus they have a certain security. And yet that dangerous insecurity is so much more human which drives the prisoners in Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their abode.

We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us. We are set down in life as in the element to which we correspond, and over and above this, we have through thousands of years of accomodation become so like this life, that when we hold still we are, through a happy mimicry, scarcely to be distinguished from all that surrounds us. We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

Translation:

 John J.L. Mood