"Do not say, 'Draw the curtain that I may see the painting.' The curtain
IS the painting."
THE SAVIORS OF GOD
SPIRITUAL EXERCISES
by
Nikos Kazantzakis
Translated by Kimon Friar
Greetings for
Pandelis Prevelakis
from the author in Greek
and the translator in English
CONTENTS
Prologue
The Preparation
- First Duty
- Second Duty
- Third Duty
The March
- First Step: The Ego
- Second Step: The Race
- Third Step: Mankind
- Fourth Step: The Earth
The Vision
The Action
- The Relationship Between God and Man
- The Relationship Between Man and Man
- The Relationship between Man and Nature
The Silence
PROLOGUE
WE COME from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life. As soon as we are born the return begins, at once the setting forth and the coming back; we die in every moment. Because of this many have cried out: The goal of life is death! But as soon as we are born we begin the struggle to create, to compose, to turn matter into life; we are born in every moment. Because of this many have cried out: The goal of ephemeral life is immortality! In the temporary living organism these two streams collide: (a) the ascent toward composition, toward life, toward immortality; (b) the descent toward decomposition, toward matter, toward death. Both streams well up from the depths of primordial essence. Life startles us at first; it seems somewhat beyond the law, somewhat contrary to nature, somewhat like a transitory counteraction to the dark eternal fountains; but deeper down we feel that Life is itself without beginning, an indestructible force of the Universe. Otherwise, from where did that superhuman strength come which hurls us from the unborn to the born and gives us- plants, animals, men- courage for the struggle? But both opposing forces are holy. It is our duty, therefore, to grasp that vision which can embrace and harmonize these two enormous, timeless, and indestructible forces, and with this vision to modulate our thinking and our action.
THE PREPARATION
First Duty
1. WITH CLARITY and quiet, I look. upon the world
and say: All that I see, hear, taste, smell, and touch are the creations of my
mind.
2. The sun comes up and the sun goes down in my skull. Out of one of my temples
the sun rises, and into the other the sun sets.
3. The stars shine in my brain; ideas, men, animals browse in my temporal head;
songs and wee ping fill the twisted shells of my ears and storm the air for a
moment.
4. My brain blots out, and all, the heavens and the earth, vanish.
5. The mind shouts: “Only I exist!
6. “Deep in my subterranean cells my five senses labor; they weave and unweave
space and time, joy and sorrow, matter and spirit.
7. “All swirl about me like a river, dancing and whirling; faces tumble like
water, and chaos howls.
8. “But I, the Mind, continue to ascend patiently, manfully, sober in the
vertigo. That I may not stumble and fall, I erect landmarks over this vertigo;
I sling bridges, open roads, and build over the abyss.
9. “Struggling slowly, I move among the phenomena which I create, I distinguish
between them for my convenience, I unite them with laws j yoke them to my heavy
practical needs.
10. “I impose order on disorder and give a face- my face- to chaos.
11. “I do not know whether behind appearances there lives and moves a secret
essence superior to me. Nor do I ask; I do not care. I create phenomena in
swarms, and paint with a full palette a gigantic and gaudy curtain before the
abyss. Do not say, ‘Draw the curtain that I may see the painting.’ The curtain
is the painting.
12. “This kingdom is my child, a transitory, a human work. But it’s a solid
work, nothing more solid exists, and only within its boundaries can I remain
fruitful, happy, and at work.
13. “I am the worker of the abyss. I am the spectator of the abyss. I am both
theory and practice. I am the law. Nothing beyond me exists.”
14. "To SEE and accept the boundaries of the human mind
without vain rebellion, and in these severe limitations to work ceaselessly
without protest- this is where man’s first duty lies.
15. Build over the unsteady abyss, with manliness and austerity, the fully
round and luminous arena of the mind where you may thresh and
winnow the universe like a lord of the land.
16. Distinguish clearly these bitter yet fertile human truths, flesh of our
flesh, and admit them heroically: (a) the mind of man can perceive appearances
only, and never the essence of things; (b) and not all appearances but only the
appearances of matter; (c) and more narrowly still: not even these appearances
of matter, but only relationships between them; (d) and these relationships are
not real and independent of man, for even these are his creations; (e) and they
are not the only ones humanly possible, but simply the most convenient for his practical
and perceptive needs.
17. Within these limitations the mind is the legal and absolute monarch. No
other power reigns within its kingdom.
18. 1 recognize these limitations, I accept them with
resignation, bravery, and love, and 1 struggle at ease in their closure, as
though I were free.
19. 1 subdue matter an force it to become my mind’s
good medium. I rejoice in plants, in animals, in man and in gods, as though
they were my children. I feel all the universe nestling about me and following
me as though it were my own body.
20. In sudden dreadful moments a thought flashes through me: “This is all a
cruel and futile game, without beginning, without end, without meaning.” But
again I yoke myself swiftly to the wheels of necessity, and all
the universe begins to revolve around me once more.
21. Discipline is the highest of all virtues. Only so may strength and desire
be counterbalanced and the endeavors of man bear fruit.
22. This is how, with clarity and austerity, you may determine the omnipotence of
the mind amid appearances and the incapacity of the mind beyond appearances-
before you set out for salvation. You may not otherwise be saved.
Second Duty
1. I WILL NOT accept boundaries; appearances cannot contain me; I choke! To
bleed in this agony, and to live it profoundly, is the second duty.
2. The mind is patient and adjusts itself, it likes to play; but the heart
grows savage and will not condescend to play; it stifles and rushes to tear
apart the nets of necessity.
3. What is the value of subduing the earth, the waters, the air, of conquering
space and time, of understanding what laws govern the mirages that rise from
the burning deserts of the mind, their appearance and reappearance?
4. I have one longing only: to grasp what is hidden behind appearances, to
ferret out that mystery which brings me to birth and then kills me, to discover
if behind the visible and unceasing stream of the world an invisible and
immutable presence is hiding.
5. If the mind cannot, if it was not made to attempt the heroic and desperate
breach beyond frontiers, then if only the heart could!
6. Beyond! Beyond! Beyond! Beyond man I seek the invisible whip which strikes
him and drives him into the struggle. I lie in ambush to find out what
primordial face struggles beyond animals to imprint itself on the fleeting
flesh by creating, smashing, and remolding innumerable masks. I struggle to
make out beyond plants the first stumbling steps of the Invisible in the
mud. 7. A command rings out within me: “Dig! What do you see?”
“Men and birds, water and stones.”
“Dig deeper! What do you see?”
“Ideas and dreams, fantasies and lightening flashes!”
“Dig deeper! What do you see?”
“I see nothing! A mute Night, as thick as death. It
must be death.”
“Dig deeper!”
“Ah! I cannot penetrate the dark partition! I hear voices and weeping. I hear the flutter of wings on the other shore.”
“Don't weep! Don't weep! They are not on the other shore. The voices,
the weeping, and the wings are your own heart.”
8. Beyond the mind, on the edge of the heart’s holy precipice, I proceed,
trembling. One foot grips the secure soil, the other gropes in the darkness
above the abyss.
9. Behind all appearances, I divine a struggling essence. I want to merge with
it.
10. I feel that behind appearances this struggling essence is also striving to
merge with my heart. But the body stands between us and separates us. The mind
stands between us and separates us.
11. What is my duty? To shatter the body, to rush and merge
with the Invisible. To let the mind fall silent that I
may hear the Invisible calling.
12. I walk on the rim of the abyss, and I tremble. Two voices contend within
me.
13. The mind: “Why waste ourselves by pursuing the impossible? Within the holy
enclosure of our five senses it is our duty to acknowledge the limitations of
man.” 14. But another voice within me- call it the
Sixth Power, call it the heart- resists and shouts:
“No! No! Never acknowledge the limitations of man. Smash all boundaries! Deny
whatever your eyes see. Die every moment, but say: ‘Death does not exist.’”
15. The mind: “My eye is without hope or illusion and gazes on all things
clearly. Life is a game, a performance given by the five actors of my body.
16. “I look on avidly, with inexpressible curiosity, but I am not like the
naive peasant to believe what I see, clambering on the stage to meddle with the
blood-drenched comedy.
17. “I am the wonder-working fakir who sits unmoving at the crossroads of the
senses and watches the world being born and destroyed, watches the mob as it
surges and shouts in the multicolored paths of vanity.
18. “Heart, naïve heart, become serene, and surrender!
19. But the heart leaps up and shouts: “I am the peasant who jumps on the stage
to meddle with the course of the world!”
20. I don’t keep checks and balances, I don’t seek to
adjust myself. I follow the deep throbbing of my heart.
21. I ask and ask again, beating on chaos: “Who plants us on this earth without
asking our permission? Who uproots us from this earth without asking our
permission?”
22. I am a weak, ephemeral creature made of mud and dream. But I feel all the
powers of the universe whirling within me.
23. Before they crush me, I want to open my eyes for a moment and to see them.
I set my life no other purpose.
24. I want to find a single justification that I may live and bear this
dreadful daily spectacle of disease, of ugliness, of injustice, of death.
25. I once set out from a dark point, the Womb, and now I proceed to another
dark point, the Tomb. A power hurls me out of the dark pit and another power
drags me irrevocably toward the dark pit.
26. I am not like the condemned man whose mind has been deadened with drink.
Stone sober, with a clear head, I stride along a
narrow path between two cliffs.
27. And I strive to discover how to signal my companions before I die, how to
give them a hand, how to spell out for them in time one complete word at least,
to tell them what I think this procession is, and toward what we go. And how necessary it is for all of us together to put our steps and
hearts in harmony.
28. To say in time a simple word to my companions, a
password, like conspirators.
29. Yes, the purpose of Earth is not life, it is not man. Earth has existed
without these, and it will live on without them. They are but the ephemeral
sparks of its violent whirling.
30. Let us unite, let us hold each other tightly, let us merge our hearts, let
us create- so long as the warmth of this earth endures, so long as no
earthquakes, cataclysms, icebergs or comets come to destroy us- let us create
for Earth a brain and a heart, let us give a ‘human meaning to the superhuman
struggle.
31. This anguish is our second duty.
Third Duty
1. THE MIND adjusts itself. It wants to fill its dungeon, the skull, with
great works, to engrave on the walls heroic mottoes, to paint on its shackles
the wings of freedom.
2. The heart cannot adjust itself. Hands beat on the wall outside its dungeon, it listens to erotic cries that fill the air. Then,
swollen with hope, the heart responds by rattling its chains; for a brief
moment it believes that its chains have turned to wings.
3. But swiftly the heart falls wounded again, it loses all hope, and is gripped
once more by the Great Fear.
4. The moment is ripe: leave the heart and the mind behind you, go forward,
take the third step.
5. Free yourself from the simple complacency of the mind that thinks to put all
things in order and hopes to subdue phenomena. Free yourself from the terror of
the heart that seeks and hopes to find the essence of things.
6. Conquer the last, the greatest temptation of all: Hope. This is the third
duty.
7. We fight because we like fighting, we sing even though there is no ear to
hear us. We work even though there is no master to pay us our wages when night
falls. We do not work for others, we are the masters. This vineyard of earth is
ours, our own flesh and blood.
8. We cultivate and prune it, we gather its grapes and tread them, we drink its
wine, we sing and we weep, ideas and visions rise in our heads.
9. In what season of the vineyard has it fallen your
lot to work? In the digging? In the
vintage? In the feasting? All these are one.
10. I dig and rejoice in the grapes’ entire cycle. I sing as I thirst and
toil, drunk with the wine to come.
11. I hold the brimming wineglass and relive the toils of my grandfathers
and great- grandfathers. The sweat of my labor runs down like a fountain from
my tall, intoxicated brow.
12. I am a sack filled with meat and bones, blood, sweat, and tears, desires
and visions.
13. I revolve for a moment in air, I breathe, my heart beats, my mind glows,
and suddenly the earth opens, and I vanish.
14. In my ephemeral backbone the two eternal streams rise and fall. In my
vitals a man and woman embrace. They love and hate each other, they fight.
15. The man is smothering, and he cries out: “I am the shuttle that longs to
tear apart the warp and woof, to leap out of the loom of necessity.
16. “To go beyond the law, to smash bodies, to conquer death. I am the Seed!”
17. And the other, profound voice, alluring and womanly, replies with serenity
and surety: “I sit cross-legged on the ground and spread my roots deep under
the tombs. Motionless, I receive the seed and nourish it. I am all milk and
necessity.
18. “And I long to turn back, to descend into the beast, to descend even lower,
into ‘the tree, within the roots and the soil, and there never to move.
19. “I hold back the Spirit to enslave it, I won’t let it escape, for I hate
the flame which rises ever upward. I am the Womb!”
20. And I listen to the two voices; they are both mine;
I rejoice in them and deny neither one. My heart is a dance of the five senses;
my heart is a counterdance in denial of the five
senses.
21. Innumerable powers, visible and invisible, rejoice and follow me when,
fighting against the almighty current, I ascend with agony.
22. Innumerable powers, visible and invisible, are relieved and grow calm again
when I descend and return to earth.
23. My heart streams on. I do not seek the beginning and the end of the world.
I follow my heart’s dread rhythm and plod on!
24. Say farewell to all things at every moment. Fix your eyes slowly,
passionately, on all things and say: “Never again!”
25. Look about you: All these bodies that you see shall rot. There is no
salvation.
26. Look at them well: They live, work, love, hope. Look again: Nothing
exists!
27. The generations of man rise from the earth and fall into the earth again.
28. The endeavors and virtues of man accumulate, increase, and mount to the
sky.
29. Where are we going? Do not ask! Ascend, descend. There is no beginning and
no end. Only this present moment exists, full of bitterness, full of sweetness,
and I rejoice in it all.
30. Life is good and death is good; the earth is round and firm in the
experienced palms of my hands like the breast of a woman.
31. I surrender myself to everything. I love, I feel pain, I
struggle. The world seems to me wider than the mind, my heart a dark and
almighty mystery.
32. If you can, Spirit, rise up over the roaring waves and take in all the sea
with an encircling glance. Hold the mind fast, don’t let it be shaken. Then
plunge suddenly into the waves once more and continue the struggle.
33. Our body is a ship that sails on deep blue waters. What is our goal? To be
shipwrecked!
34. Because the
35. Without hope, but with bravery, it is your duty to set your prow
calmly toward the abyss. And to say: “Nothing exists!”
36. Nothing exists! Neither life nor death. I
watch mind and matter hunting each other like two nonexistent erotic
phantasms-merging, begetting, disappearing- and I say: “This is what I want!”
37. I know now: I do not hope for anything. I do not fear anything, I
have freed myself from both the mind and the heart, I have mounted much higher,
I am free. This is what I want. I want nothing more. I
have been seeking freedom.
THE MARCH
1. BUT SUDDENLY a convulsive cry tears through me: “Help me!” Who calls?
2. Gather your strength and listen; the whole heart of man is a single outcry.
Lean against your breast to hear it; someone is struggling and shouting within
you.
3. It is your duty every moment, day and night, in joy or in sorrow, amid all
daily necessities, to discern this Cry with vehemence or restraint, according
to your nature, with laughter or with weeping, in action or in thought,
striving to find out who is imperiled and cries out.
4. And how we may all be mobilized together to free him.
5. Amidst our greatest happiness someone within us cries out: “I am in pain! I
want to escape your happiness! I am stifling!”
6. Amidst our deepest despair someone within us cries out: “I do not despair! I
fight on! I grasp at your head, I unsheathe myself from your body, I detach
myself from the earth, I cannot be contained in
brains, in names, in deeds!”
7. Out of our most ample virtue someone rises up in despair and cries out:
“Virtue is narrow, I cannot breathe!
8. I hear the savage cry, and I shudder. The agony that ascends within me
composes itself, for the first time, into an integral human voice; it turns
full face toward me and calls me clearly, with my own name, with the name of my
father and my race.
9. This is the moment of greatest crisis. This is the signal for the March to
begin. If you do not hear this Cry tearing at your entrails, do not set out.
10. Continue, with patience and submission, your sacred military service in the
first, second, and third rank of preparation.
11. And listen: In sleep, in an act of love or of creation, in a proud and
disinterested act of yours, or in a profound despairing silence, you may
suddenly hear the Cry and set forth.
12. Until that moment my heart streams on, it rises and falls with the
Universe. But when I hear the Cry, my emotions and the Universe are divided
into two camps.
13. Someone within me is in danger, he raises his
hands and shouts: “Save me!” Someone within me climbs, stumbles, and shouts:
“Help me!
14. Which of the two eternal roads shall I choose? Suddenly I know that my
whole life hangs on this decision- the life of the entire Universe.
15. Of the two, I choose the ascending path. Why? For no intelligible reason,
without any certainty; I know how ineffectual the mind and all the small
certainties of man can be in this moment of crisis.
16. I choose the ascending path because my heart drives me toward it. “Upward!
Upward! Upward!” my heart shouts, and I follow it trustingly.
17. I feel this is what the dread primordial cry asks of me. I leap to its
side. I cast in my lot with its own.
18. Someone within me is struggling to lift a great weight, to cast off the
mind and flesh by overcoming habit, laziness, necessity.
19. I do not know from where he comes or where he goes. I clutch at his onward
march in my ephemeral breast, I listen to his panting struggle, I shudder when
I touch him.
First Step: THE EGO
1. AM NOT good, I am not innocent, I am not serene.
My happiness and unhappiness are both unbearable; I am full of inarticulate
voices and darknesses; I wallow, all blood and tears,
in this warm trough of my flesh.
2. I am afraid to talk. I adorn myself with false wings; I shout, I sing
and I weep to drown out the inexorable cry of my heart.
3. I am not the light, I am the night; but a flame stabs through my entrails
and consumes me. I am the night devoured by light.
4. Imperiled, moaning and staggering in darkness, I strive to shake
myself free from sleep and to stand erect for a while, for as long as I can
bear.
5. A small but undaunted breath within me struggles desperately to vanquish
happiness, weariness, death.
6. I put my body through its paces like a war horse; I keep it lean, sturdy,
prepared. I harden it and I pity it. I have no other steed.
7. I keep my brain wide awake, lucid, unmerciful. I
unleash it to battle relentlessly so that, all light, it may devour the
darkness of the flesh. I have no other workshop where I may transform darkness
into light.
8. I keep my heart flaming, courageous, restless. I
feel in my heart all commotions and all contradictions, the joys and sorrows of
life. But I struggle to subdue them to a rhythm superior to that of the mind,
harsher than that of my heart- to the ascending rhythm of the Universe.
9. The Cry within me is a call to arms. It shouts: “I, the Cry, am the Lord
your God! I am not an asylum. I am not hope and a home. I am not the Father nor
the Son nor the Holy Ghost. I am your General!
10. “You are not my slave, nor a plaything in my hands. You are not my friend,
you are not my child. You are my comrade-in-arms!
11. “Hold courageously the passes which I entrusted to you; do not betray them.
You are in duty bound, and you may act heroically by remaining at your own
battle station.
12. “Love danger. What is most difficult? That is what I want! Which road
should you take? The most craggy ascent! It is the one
I also take: follow me!
13. “Learn to obey. Only he who obeys a rhythm superior to his own is free.
14. “Learn to command. Only he who can give commands may represent me here on
earth.
15. “Love responsibility. Say: ‘It is my duty, and mine alone, to save the
earth. If it is not saved, then I alone am to blame.’
16. “Love each man according to his contribution in the struggle. Do not seek
friends; seek comrades-in-arms.
17. “Be always restless, unsatisfied, unconforming.
Whenever a habit becomes convenient, smash it! The greatest sin of all is
satisfaction.
18. “Where are we going? Shall we ever win? What is the purpose of all this
fighting? Be silent! Soldiers never question!”
19. I stoop and listen to this war cry within me. I begin to discern the face
of my Leader, to distinguish his voice, to accept harsh commands with joy and
terror.
20. Yes, yes, I am NOT nothing! A vaporous
phosphorescence on a damp meadow, a miserable worm that crawls and loves, that
shouts and talks about wings for an hour or two until his mouth is blocked with
earth. The dark powers give no other answer.
21. But within me a deathless Cry, superior to me, continues to shout. For
whether I want to or not, I am also, without doubt, a part of the visible and
the invisible Universe. We are one. The powers which labor within me, the
powers which goad me on to live, the powers which goad me on to die are,
without doubt, its own powers also.
22. I am not a suspended, rootless thing in the world. I am earth of its earth
and breath of its breath.
23. I am not alone in my fear, nor alone in my hope, nor
alone in my shouting. A tremendous host, an onrush of the Universe
fears, hopes, and shouts with me.
24. I am an improvised bridge, and when Someone passes
over me, I crumble away behind Him. A Combatant passes through me, eats my
flesh and brain to open up roads, to free himself from
me at last. It is not I but He who shouts.
Second Step: THE RACE
1. THE CRY IS not yours. It is not you talking, but innumerable ancestors
talking with your mouth. It is not you who desire, but innumerable generations
of descendants longing with your heart.
2. Your dead do not lie in the ground. They have become birds, trees, air. You
sit under their shade, you are nourished by their flesh, you
inhale their breathing. They have become ideas and passions,
they determine your will and your actions.
3. Future generations do not move far from you in an uncertain time. They live,
desire, and act in your loins and your heart.
4. In this lightning moment when you walk the earth, your first duty, by
enlarging your ego, is to live through the endless march, both visible and
invisible, of your own being.
5. You are not one; you are a body of troops, One of
your faces lights up for a moment under the sun. Then suddenly it vanishes, and
another, a younger one, lights up behind you.
6. The race of men from which you come is the huge body of the past, the
present, and the future. It is the face itself; you are a passing expression.
You are the shadow; it is the meat.
7. You are not free. Myriad invisible hands hold your hands and direct them, When you rise in anger, a great-grandfather froths at your
mouth; when you make love, an ancestral caveman growls with lust; when you
sleep, tombs open in your memory till your skull brims with ghosts.
8. Your skull is a pit of blood round which the shades of the dead gather in
myriad flocks to drink of you and be revived.
9. “Do not die that we may not die,” the dead cry out within you. “We had no
time to enjoy the women we desired; be in time, sleep with them! We had no time
to turn our thoughts into deeds; turn them into deeds! We had no time to grasp
and to crystallize the face of our hope; make it firm!
10. “Finish our work! Finish our work! All day and all night we come and go
through your body, and we cry out. No, we have not gone, we have not detached
ourselves from you, we have not descended into the earth. Deep in your entrails
we continue the struggle. Deliver us!”
11. IT IS NOT enough to hear the tumult of ancestors within you. It is not
enough to feel them battling at the threshold of your mind. All rush to clutch
your warm brain and to climb once more into the light of day.
12. But you must choose with care whom to hurl down again into the chasms of
your blood, and whom you shall permit to mount once more into the light and the
earth.
13. Do not pity them. Keep vigil over the bottomless gulf of your heart, and
choose. You shall say: “This shade is humble, dark, like a beast: send him
away! This one is silent and flaming, more living than I: let him drink all my
14. Enlighten the dark blood of your ancestors, shape their cries into speech,
purify their will, widen their narrow, unmerciful
brows. This is your second duty.
15. For you are not only a slave. As soon as you were
born, a new possibility was born with you, a free heartbeat stormed through the
great sunless heart of your race.
16. Whether you would or not, you brought a new rhythm, a new desire, a new
idea, a fresh sorrow. Whether you would or not, you
enriched your ancestral body.
17. Where are you going? How shall you confront life and death, virtue and
fear? All the race takes refuge in your breast; it
asks questions there and lies waiting in agony.
18. You have a great responsibility. You do not govern now only your own small,
insignificant existence. You are a throw of the dice on which, for a moment,
the entire fate of your race is gambled.
19. Everything you do reverberates throughout a thousand destinies. As you
walk, you cut open and create that river bed into which the stream of your
descendants shall enter and flow.
20. When you shake with fear, your terror branches out into innumerable
generations, and you degrade innumerable souls before and behind you. When you
rise to a valorous deed, all of your race rises with you and turns valorous.
21. “I am not done! I am not done!” Let this vision inflame you at every
moment.
22. You are not a miserable and momentary body; behind your fleeting mask of
clay, a thousand-year-old face lies in ambush. Your passions and your thoughts
are older than your heart or brain.
23. Your invisible body is your dread ancestors and your unborn descendants.
Your visible body is the living men, women, and children of your own race.
24. Only he has been freed from the inferno of his ego who feels deep pangs of
hunger when a child of his race has nothing to eat, who feels his heart
throbbing with joy when a man and a woman of his race embrace and kiss one
another.
25. All these are limbs of your larger, visible body. You suffer and rejoice,
scattered to the ends of the earth in a thousand bodies, blood of your blood.
26. Fight on behalf of your larger body just as you fight on behalf of your
smaller body. Fight that all of your bodies may become strong, lean, prepared,
that their minds may become enlightened, that their flaming, manly, and
restless hearts may throb.
27. How can you become strong, enlightened, manly, if
all these virtues do not storm throughout your entire larger body? How can you
be saved unless all your blood is saved? If but one of your race is lost, he
drags you down with him to destruction. A limb of your body and your mind rots.
28. Be deeply alive to this identity, not as theory,
but as flesh and blood.
29. You are a leaf on the great tree of your race. Feel the earth mounting from
dark roots and spreading out into branches and leaves.
30. What is your goal? To struggle and to cling firmly to a
branch, either as a leaf or flower or fruit, so that within you the entire tree
may move and breathe and be renewed.
31 YOUR FIRST duty, in completing your service to your race, is to feel
within you all your ancestors. Your second duty is to throw light on their
onrush and to continue their work. Your third duty is to pass on to your son the
great mandate to surpass you.
32. Agony within you! Someone is fighting to escape you, to tear himself away from your flesh, to be freed of you. A seed in
your loins, a seed in your brains, does not want to remain with you any more.
It cannot be contained in your entrails any longer; it fights for freedom.
33. “Father, I cannot be contained in your heart! I want to smash it and pass
through! Father, I hate your body, I am ashamed to be glued to you, I want to leave you.
34. “You are nothing now but a sluggish horse, your
feet can no longer follow the rhythm of my heart. I am in haste, Father. I
shall dismount, I shall mount another body, and I shall leave you on the road.”
35. And you, the father, rejoice to hear the contemptuous voice of your child.
“All, all for my son!” you shout. “I am nothing. I am the Ape, he is the
36. A power greater than you passes through you,
smashing your body and mind, shouting: “Gamble the present and all things
certain, gamble them for the future and all things uncertain!
37. “Hold nothing in reserve. I love danger! We may be lost, we may be saved.
Do not ask. Place the whole world in the hands of danger every single moment.
I, the seed of the unborn, eat at the entrails of your race, and I shout!”
Third Step: MANKIND
1. IT IS NOT you talking. Nor is it your race only which
shouts within you, for all the innumerable races of mankind shout and
rush within you:
white, yellow, black.
2. Free yourself from race also; fight to live through
the whole struggle of man. See how he has detached himself from the animal, how
he struggles to stand upright, to co-ordinate his inarticulate cries, to feed
the flame between his hearthstones, to feed his mind amid the bones of his
skull.
3. Let pity overwhelm you for this creature who one morning detached himself
from the ape, naked, defenseless, without teeth or horns, with only a spark of
fire in his soft skull.
4. He does not know from where he comes or where he goes. But by loving, toiling,
and killing, he wants to conquer the earth.
5. Look upon men and pity them. Look at yourself amid all men and pity
yourself. In the obscure dusk of life we touch and fumble at each other, we ask
questions, we listen, we shout for help.
6. We run. We know that we are running to die, but we cannot stop. We run.
7. We carry a torch and run. Our faces light up
for a moment, but hurriedly we surrender the torch to our son, and then
suddenly vanish and descend into Hades.
8. The mother looks ahead, toward her daughter; the daughter in turn looks
ahead, beyond the body of her husband, toward her son - this is how the
Invisible proceeds on earth.
9. We all look directly before us, ruthlessly, driven by dark, enormous,
infallible pOwers behind us.
10. Rise above the improvised bastion of your body,
look at the centuries behind you. What do you see? Hairy,
blood-splattered beasts rising in tumult out of the mud. Hairy, blood-splattered beasts descending in tumult from the
mountain summits.
11. The two bellowing armies meet like a man and a woman and become a lump of
mud, blood, and brain.
12. Behold: multitudes ascend like grass out of the soil and fall into the soil
again, fertile manure for future offspring. And the earth grows fat from the
ashes, the blood, and the brains of man.
13. Numbers without end vanish in mid-journey; they are born, but they die
barren. Huge pits suddenly gape in the darkness, multitudes tumble and fall, disorderly commands are heard in confused clamor, and the
human herd stampedes and scatters.
14. Below and about us and within the abyss of our hearts we suddenly become
aware of blind, heartless, brainless, ravenous powers.
15. We sail on a storm-tossed sea, and in a yellow lightning flash we feel
we’ve entrusted our wealth, our children, and our gods to an eggshell.
16. The centuries are thick, dark waves that rise and fall, steeped in blood.
Every moment is a gaping abyss.
17. Gaze on the dark sea without staggering, confront
the abyss every moment without illusion or impudence or fear.
18. WITHOUT ILLUSION, impudence, or fear. But this is not enough; take a
further step: battle to give meaning to the confused struggles of man.
19. Train your heart to govern as spacious an arena as it can. Encompass
through one century, then through two centuries, through three, through ten,
through as many centuries as you can bear, the onward march of mankind. Train
your eye to gaze on people moving in great stretches of time.
20. Immerse yourself in this vision with patience,
with love and high disinterestedness, until slowly the world begins to breathe
within you, the embattled begin to be enlightened, to unite in your heart and
to acknowledge themselves as brothers.
21. The heart unites whatever the mind separates, pushes on beyond the arena of
necessity and transmutes the struggle into love.
22. Walk tiptoe on the edge of the insatiable precipice and struggle to give
order to your vision. Raise the multicolored trap door of the mystery-the
stars, the sea, men and ideas; give form and meaning to the formless, the
mindless infinitude.
23. Gather together in your heart all terrors, recompose all details. Salvation
is a circle; close it!
24. What is meant by happiness? To live every unhappiness.
What is meant by light? To gaze with undimmed eyes on all darknesses.
25. We are a humble letter, a single syllable, one word out of a gigantic
Odyssey. We are immersed in an enormous song and we shine like humble pebbles
as long as they remain immersed in the sea.
26. What is our duty? To raise our heads from the text a
moment, as long as our lungs can bear it, and to breathe in the transoceanic
song.
27. To bring together all our adventures, to give meaning to our voyage, to
battle undauntedly with men, with gods, with animals, and then slowly,
patiently, to erect in our brains, marrow of our marrow, our
28. Out of an ocean of nothingness, with fearful struggle, the work of man
rises slowly like a small island.
29. Within this arena, which grows more stable night after
day, generations work and love and hope and vanish. New generations
tread on the corpses of their fathers, continue the work above the abyss and
struggle to tame the dread mystery. How? By cultivating a single field, by
kissing a woman, by studying a stone, an animal, an
idea.
30. Earthquakes come, the island sways, a corner crumbles away, another rises
out of the sunless waves.
31. The mind is a seafaring laborer whose work is to build a seawall in chaos.
32. From all these generations, from all these joys and sorrows, from this
lovemaking, these battles, these ideas, a single voice rings out, pure and
serene. Pure and serene because, though it contains dl the sins and
disquietudes of struggling man, it yet flies beyond them all and mounts higher
still.
33. Amidst all this human material Someone clambers up
on his hands and knees, drowned in tears and blood, struggling to save himself.
34. To save himself from whom? From the body which entwines him, from the
people who support him, from the flesh, from the heart and the brains of man.
35. “Lord, who are you? You loom before me like a Centaur, his hands stretched
toward the sky, his feet transfixed in mud.”
“I am He who eternally ascends.”
“Why do you ascend? You strain every muscle, you
struggle and fight to emerge from the beast. From the beast,
and from man. Do not leave me!”
“I fight and ascend that I may not drown. I stretch out my hands, I
clutch at every warm body, I raise my head above my
brains that I may breathe. I drown everywhere and can nowhere be contained."
“Lord, why do you tremble?”
“I am afraid! This dark ascent has no ending. My head is a flame that
tries eternally to detach itself, but the breath of night blows eternally to
put me out. My struggle is endangered every moment. My struggle is endangered
in every body. I walk and stumble in the flesh like a traveler overtaken by
night, and I call out: ‘Help me.'"
Fourth Step: THE EARTH
1. IT IS NOT you who call. It is not your voice calling from within your
ephemeral breast. It is not only the white, yellow, and black generations of
man calling in your heart. The entire Earth, with her trees and her waters,
with her animals, with her men and her gods, calls from within your breast.
2. Earth rises up in your brains and sees her entire body for the first time. "
3. She shudders; she is a beast that eats, begets, moves, remembers. She
hungers, she devours her children - plants, animals, men, thoughts - she grinds
them in her dark jaws, passes them through her body once more, then casts them again into the soil.
4. She recalls her passions and broods upon them. Her memory unfolds within my heart, it spreads everywhere and conquers time.
5. It is not the heart which leaps and throbs in the blood. It is the entire
Earth. She turns her gaze backward and relives her dread ascent through chaos.
6. I recall an endless desert of infinite and flaming matter. I am burning! I
pass through immeasurable, unorganized time, completely done, despairing,
crying in the wilderness.
7. And slowly the flame subsides, the womb of matter grows cool, the stone
comes alive, breaks open, and a small green leaf uncurls into the air,
trembling. It clutches the soil, steadies itself, raises its head and hands,
grasps the air, the water, the light, and sucks at the Universe.
8. It sucks at the Universe and wants to pass it through its body-thin as a
thread-to turn it into flower, fruit, seed. To make it deathless.
9. The sea shudders and is torn in two; out of its muddy depths a voracious,
restless, and eyeless worm ascends.
10. The weight of matter is conquered, the slab of death heaves high, and
armies of trees and beasts emerge filled with lust and hunger.
11. I gaze upon Earth with her muddy brain, and I shudder as I relive the
peril. I might have sunk and vanished amid these roots that suck at the mud
blissfully; I might have smothered in this tough and many-wrinkled hide; or I
might have twitched eternally within the bloody, dark skull of the primordial
ancestor.
12. But I was saved, I passed beyond the thick-leaved plants, I passed beyond
the fishes, the birds, the beasts, the apes. I created man,
13. I created man, and now I struggle to be rid of him.
14. “I am cramped and crushed! I want to escape!” This cry destroys and
fructifies the bowels of the earth eternally. It leaps from body to body, from
generation to generation, from species to species, becoming always stronger and
more carnivorous. All parents shout: “I want to give birth to a son greater
than I!”
15. During those fearful moments when the Cry passes through our bodies, we
feel a prehuman power driving us ruthlessly, Behind us a muddy torrent roars, full of blood, tears, and
sweat, filled with squeals of joy, of lust, of death.
16. An erotic wind blows over Earth, a
giddiness overpowers all living creatures till they unite in the
sea, in caves, in the air, under the ground, transferring from body to body a
great, incornprehensible message.
17. Only now, as we feel the onslaught behind us, do we begin dimly to
apprehend why the animals fought, begot, and died; and behind them the plants;
and behind these the huge reserve of inorganic forces.
18. We are moved by pity, gratitude, and esteem for our old comrades-in-arms.
They toiled, loved, and died to open a road for our coming.
19. We also toil with the same delight, agony, and exaltation for the sake of
Someone Else who with every courageous deed of ours proceeds
one step farther.
20. All our struggle once more will have a purpose much greater than we,
wherein our toils, our miseries, and our crimes will have become useful and
holy.
21. This is an onslaught! A Spirit rushes, storms
through matter and fructifies it, passes beyond the animals, creates man, digs
its claws into his head like a vulture, and shrieks.
22. It is our turn now. It molds us, pummels matter within us and turns
it into spirit, tramples on our brains, mounts astride our sperm, kicks our
bodies behind it, and struggles to escape.
23. It is as though the whole of life were the visible, eternal pursuit of an
invisible Bridegroom who from body to body hunts down his untamed Bride,
Eternity.
24. And we, all the guests of the wedding procession-plants, animals, men-rush
trembling toward the mystical nuptial chamber. We each carry with awe the
sacred symbols of marriage- one the Phallos, another the Womb.
THE VISION
1. YOU HEARD the Cry and set forth. From battle to battle you passed through
all the war service of militant man.
2. You fought within the small tent of your body, but behold, the battle arena
seemed too narrow; you felt stifled and rushed out to escape.
3. You pitched your camp on your race, you brimmed with hands and hearts as
with your blood you first revived the dread ancestors and then set forth with
the dead, the living, and the unborn to give battle.
4. Suddenly all races moved with you, the holy army of man was arranged for
battle behind you, and all earth resounded like a military encampment.
5. You climbed to a high peak from which the plan of battle branched out amid
the coils of your brain, and all opposing expeditions united in the secret
encampment of your heart.
6. Behind you the plants and animals were organized like supply troops for the
front-line battling armies of man.
7. Now entire Earth clings to you, becomes flesh of your flesh, and cries out
of chaos.
8. HOW CAN I besiege this dread vision with words? I stoop over chaos and
listen. Someone is groaning and climbing up a secret, dangerous slope.
9. He struggles and agonizes stubbornly to ascend. But he finds a contrary
force that impedes him: Someone is hurriedly climbing down a secret and easy
downward slope.
10. Within the descending sluggish stream the Spirit is dismembered and whirled
about, and for a moment-the duration of every life-the two opposing desires are
balanced.
11. This is how bodies are born, how the world is created, how among living
things the two antithetical powers find equilibrium.
12. For a moment the One ascending is entwined by a
beloved body-his own body-and is retarded in his climbing. But quickly, with
love, with death, he escapes it, and then continues to plod on.
13. He tramples on inorganic matter, he shapes the
plant and fills it. He encamps in it with his whole being. By “his whole being”
is meant together with the longing and the power to escape.
14. He emerges a little, breathes with difficulty, chokes.
He abandons to the plants as much heaviness, as much stupor and immobility as
he can and, thus disburdened, leaps, with his whole being again, farther and
higher still, creating the animals and encamping in their loins.
15. Again, “with his whole being” means together with the longing and the power
to escape.
16. The bodies breathe, feed, store up strength, and then in an erotic moment
are shattered, are spent and drained utterly, that they may bequeath their
spirit to their sons. What spirit? The drive upward!
17. He purifies himself slowly by struggling amid their bodies, and abandons to
the animals as much passion, as much slavishness, as much impotence and
darkness as he can.
18. Then once more he rises slightly, a bit (lighter, and rushes to escape. It
is this drive toward freedom, this strife with matter, which slowly creates the
head of man.
19. And now we feel with terror that he is again struggling to escape beyond
us, to cast us off with plants and animals, and to leap farther. The moment has
come-O great joy and bitterness!-when we, the vanquished, must also be cast
away among the reserve troops.
20. Behind the stream of my mind and body, behind the stream of my race and all
mankind, behind the stream of plants and animals, I watch with trembling the Invisible, treading on all visible things and
ascending.
21. Behind his heavy and blood-splattered feet I hear all living things being
tram pled on and crushed.
22. His face is without laughter, dark and silent, beyond joy and sorrow,
beyond hope.
23. I tremble. Are you my God? Your body is steeped in memory. Like one locked
up in dungeons for many years, you have adorned your arms and chest with
strange trees and hairy dragons, with gory adventures, with cries and
chronologies.
24. Lord, my Lord, you growl like a wild beast! Your feet are covered with
blood and mire, your hands are covered with blood and mire, your
jaws are heavy millstones that grind slowly.
25. You clutch at trees and animals, you tread on man, you shout. You climb up
the endless black precipice of death, and you tremble.
26. Where are you going? Pain increases, the light and the darkness increase.
You weep, you hook onto me, you feed on my blood, you grow huge and strong, and
then you kick at my heart. I press you to my breast, and I fear you and pity
you.
27. It is as though we had buried Someone we thought
dead, and now hear him calling in the night: Help me! Heaving and panting, he
raises the gravestone of our soul and body higher and still higher, breathing
more freely at every moment.
28. Every word, every deed, every thought is the heavy gravestone he is forever
trying to lift. And my own body and all the visible world, all heaven and
earth, are the gravestone which God is struggling to heave upward.
29. Trees shout, animals and stars: “We are doomed!” Every living creature
flings two huge hands as high as the heavens to seek help.
30. With his knees doubled up under his chin, with his hands spread toward the
light, with the soles of his feet turned toward his back, God huddles in a knot
in every cell of flesh.
31. When I break a fruit open, this is how every seed is revealed to me. When I
speak to men, this what I discern in their thick and
muddy brains.
32. Cod struggles in every thing, his hands flung upward toward the light. What
light? Beyond and above every thing!
33. PAIN IS NOT the only essence of our God, nor is hope in a future life or
a life on this earth, neither joy nor victory. Every religion that holds up to
worship one of these primordial aspects of God narrows our hearts and our
minds.
34. The essence of our God is STRUGGLE. Pain, joy, and hope unfold and labor
within this struggle, world without end.
35. It is this ascension, the battle with the descending countercurrent, which
gives birth to pain. But pain is not the absolute monarch. Every victory, every
momentary balance on the ascent fills with joy every living thing that
breathes, grows, loves, and gives birth.
36. But from every joy and pain a hope leaps out eternally to escape this pain
and to widen joy.
37. And again the ascent begins-which is pain-and joy is reborn and new hope
springs up once more. The circle never closes. It is not a circle, but a spiral
which ascends eternally, ever widening, enfolding and unfolding the triune
struggle.
38. WHAT IS THE purpose of this struggle? This is what the wretched
self-seeking mind of man is always asking, forgetting that the Great Spirit
does not toil within the bounds of human time, place, or casualty. The Great
Spirit is superior to these human questionings. It teems with many rich and
wandering drives which to our shallow minds seem contradictory; but in the
essence of divinity they fraternize and struggle together, faithful
comrades-in-arms.
40. The primordial Spirit branches out, overflows, struggles, fails, succeeds, trains itself. It is the Rose of the Winds.
41. Whether we want to or not, we also sail on and voyage, consciously or
unconsciously, amid divine endeavors. Indeed, even our march has eternal
elements, without beginning or end, assisting God and sharing His perils.
42. Which is that one force amid all of God’s forces which man is able to
grasp? Only this: We discern a crimson line on this earth, a red,
blood-splattered line which ascends, struggling, from matter to plants, from
plants to animals, from animals to man.
43. This indestructible prehuman rhythm is the only
visible journey of the Invisible on this earth. Plants, animals, and men are
the steps which God creates on which to tread and to mount upward.
44. Difficult, dreadful, unending ascension! Shall God conquer or be conquered
in this onslaught? Does victory exist? Does defeat exist? Our bodies shall rot
and turn to dust, but what will become of Him who for a moment passed beyond
the body?
45. Yet these are all lesser concerns, for all hopes and despairs vanish in the
voracious, funneling whirlwind of God. Cod laughs, wails, kills, sets us on
fire, and then leaves us in the middle of the way, charred embers.
46. And I rejoice to feel between my temples, in the flicker of an eyelid, the
beginning and the end of the world.
47. I condense into a lightning moment the seeding, sprouting, blossoming,
fructifying, and the disappearance of every tree, animal, man, star, and god.
48. All Earth is a seed planted in the coils of my mind. Whatever struggles for
numberless years to unfold and fructify in the dark womb of matter bursts in my
head like a small and silent lightning flash.
49. Ah! let us gaze intently on this lightning flash,
let us hold it for a moment, let us arrange it into human speech.
50. Let us transfix this momentary eternity which encloses everything, past and
future, but without losing in the immobility of language any of its gigantic
erotic whirling.
51. Every word is an Ark of the Covenant around which we dance and shudder,
divining God to be its dreadful inhabitant.
52. You shall never be able to establish in words that you live in ecstasy. But
struggle unceasingly to establish it in words.
53. God, the Great Ecstatic, works in the same way. He speaks and struggles to
speak in every way He can, with seas and with fires, with colors, with wings,
with horns, with claws, with constellations and butterflies, that he may
establish His ecstasy.
54. Like every other living thing, I also am in the center of the Cosmic whirlpool. I am the eye of monstrous rivers where
everything dances about me as the circle continually narrows with greater
vehemence till the heavens and earth plunge into the red pit of my heart.
55. Then God confronts me with terror and love-for I am His only hope-and says:
“This Ecstatic, who gives birth to all things, who rejoices in them all and yet
destroys them, this Ecstatic is my Son!”
THE ACTION
The Relationship Between God and Man
1. THE ULTIMATE most holy form oF theory is
action.
2. Not to look on passively while the spark leaps from generation to
generation, but to leap and to burn with it!
3. Action is the widest gate of deliverance. It alone can answer the
questionings of the heart. Amid the labyrinthine complexities of the mind it
finds the shortest route. No, it does not “find”- it creates its way, hewing to
right and left through resistances of logic and matter.
4. Why did you struggle behind phenomena to track down the Invisible? What was
the purpose of all your warlike, your erotic march through flesh, race, man,
plants, and animals? Why the mystic marriage beyond these labors, the perfect
embracement, the bacchic and raging contact in
darkness and in light?
5. That you might reach the point from which you began-the ephemeral,
palpitating, mysterious point of your existence-with new eyes, with new ears,
with a new sense of taste, smell, touch, with new brains.
6. Our profound human duty is not to interpret or to cast light on the
rhythm of God’s arch, but to adjust, as much as we can, the
rhythm of our small and fleeting life to his.
7. Only thus may we mortals succeed in achieving something immortal,
because then we collaborate with One who is Deathless.
8. Only thus may we conquer mortal sin, the concentration on details, the
narrowness of our brains; only thus may we transubstantiate into freedom the
slavery of earthen matter given us to mold.
9. Amid all these things, beyond all these things every man and nation,
every plant and animal, every god and demon, charges upward like an army
inflamed by an incomprehensible, unconquerable Spirit.
10. We struggle to make this Spirit visible, to give it a face, to encase it in
words, in allegories and thoughts and incantations, that it may not escape us.
11. But it cannot be contained in the twentysix
letters of an alphabet which we string out in rows; we know that all these
words, these allegories, these thoughts, and these incantations are, once more,
but a new mask with which to conceal the Abyss.
12. Yet only in this manner, by confining immensity, may we labor within the
newly incised circle of humanity.
13. What do we mean by “labor”? To fill up this circle with desires, with
anxieties, and with deeds; to spread out and reach frontiers until, no longer
able to contain us, they crack and collapse. By thus working with appearances,
we widen and increase the essence.
14. For this reason our return to appearances, after our contact with essence,
possesses an incalculable worth.
15. We have seen the highest circle of spiraling powers. We have named this
circle God. We’ might have given it any other name we wished:
Abyss, Mystery, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light, Matter, Spirit, Ultimate
Hope, Ultimate Despair, Silence.
16. But we have named it God because only this name, for primordial reasons,
can stir our hearts profoundly. And this deeply felt emotion is indispensable
if we are to touch, body with body, the dread essence beyond logic.
17. Within this gigantic circle of divinity we are in duty bound to separate and
perceive clearly the small, burning arc of our epoch.
18. On this barely perceptible flaming curve, feeling the onrush of the entire
circle profoundly and mystically, we travel in harmony with the Universe, we gain impetus and dash into battle. 19.
Thus, by consciously following the onrush of the Universe, our ephemeral action
does not die with us.
20. It does not become lost in a mystical and passive contemplation of the
entire circle; it does not scorn holy, humble, and daily necessity.
21. Within its narrow and blood-drenched ditch it stoops and labors
steadfastly, conquering easily both space and time within a small point of
space and time-for this point follows the divine onrush of the entire circle.
22. I do not care what face other ages and other people have given to the
enormous, faceless essence. They have crammed it with human virtues, with
rewards and punishments, with certain ties. They have given a face to their
hopes and fears, they have submitted their anarchy to a rhythm, they have found
a higher justification by which to live and labor. They have fulfilled their
duty.
23. But today we have gone beyond these needs; we have shattered this
particular mask of the Abyss; our God no longer fits under the old features.
24. Our hearts have overbrimmed with new agonies,
with new luster and silence. The mystery has grown savage, and God has grown
greater. The dark powers ascend, for they have also grown greater, and the
entire human island quakes.
25. Let us stoop down to our hearts and confront the Abyss valiantly. Let us
try to mold once more, with our flesh and blood, the new, contemporary face of
God.
26. For our God is not an abstract thought, a logical necessity, a high and
harmonious structure made of deductions and speculations.
27. He is not an immaculate, neutral, odorless, distilled
product of our brains, neither male nor female.
28. He is both man and woman, mortal and immortal,
dung and spirit. He gives birth, fecundates, slaughters-death and eros in one-and then he begets and slays once more, dancing
spaciously beyond the boundaries of a logic which cannot contain the
antinomies.
29. My God is not Almighty. He struggles, for he is in peril every moment; he
trembles and stumbles in every living thing, and he cries out. He is defeated
incessantly, but rises again, full of blood and earth,
to throw himself into battle once more.
30. He is full of wounds, his eyes are filled with fear and stubbornness, his
jawbones and temples are splintered. But he does not surrender, he ascends; he
ascends with his feet, with his hands, biting his lips, undaunted.
31. My God is not All-holy. He is full of cruelty and savage justice, and he
chooses the best mercilessly. He is without compassion; he does not trouble
himself about men or animals; nor does he care for virtues and ideas. He loves
all these things for a moment, then smashes them eternally and passes on.
32. He is a power that contains all things, that begets all things. He begets
them, loves them, and destroys them. And if we say, “Our God is an erotic wind
and shatters all bodies that he may drive on,” and if we remember that eros always works through blood and tears, destroying every
individual without mercy-then we shall approach his dread face a little closer.
33. My God is not All-knowing. His brain is a tangled skein of light and
darkness which he strives to unravel in the labyrinth of the flesh.
34. He stumbles and fumbles. He gropes to the right and turns back; swings to
the left and sniffs the air. He struggles above chaos in anguish. Crawling,
straining, groping for unnumbered centuries, he feels the muddy coils of his
brain being slowly suffused with light.
35. On the surface of his heavy, pitch-black head he begins with an
indescribable struggle to create eyes by which to see, ears by which to hear.
36. My God struggles on without certainty. Will he conquer? Will he be
conquered? Nothing in the Universe is certain. He flings himself into
uncertainty; he gambles all his destiny at every
moment.
37. He clings to warm bodies; he has no other bulwark. He shouts for help; he
proclaims mobilization throughout the Universe.
38. It is our duty, on hearing his Cry, to run under his flag, to fight by his
side, to be lost or to be saved with him.
39. Cod is imperiled. He is not almighty, that we may cross our hands, waiting
for certain victory. He is not all-holy, that we may
wait trustingly for him to pity and to save us.
40. Within the province of our ephemeral flesh all of God is imperiled. He
cannot be saved unless we save him with our own struggles; nor can we be saved
unless he is saved.
41. We are one. From the blind worm in the depths of the ocean to the endless
arena of the Galaxy, only one person struggles and is imperiled: You. And
within your small and earthen breast only one thing struggles and is imperiled:
the Universe.
42. WE MUST UNDERSTAND well that we do not proceed from a unity of God to
the same unity of God again. We do not proceed from one chaos to another chaos,
neither from one light to another light, nor from one darkness to another darkness. What would be the value of our life then?
What would be the value of all life?
43. But we set out from an almighty chaos, from a thick abyss of light and
darkness tangled. And we struggle-plants, animals, men, ideas- in this
momentary passage of individual life, to put in order the Chaos within us, to
cleanse the abyss, to work upon as much darkness as we can within our bodies
and to transmute it into light. 44. We do not struggle
for ourselves, nor for our race, not even for humanity.
45. We do not struggle for Earth, nor for ideas. All
these are the precious yet provisional stairs of our ascending God, and they
crumble away as soon as he steps upon them in his ascent.
46. In the smallest lightning flash of our lives, we feel all of God treading
upon us, and suddenly we understand: if we all desire it intensely, if we
organize all the visible and invisible powers of earth and fling them upward,
if we all battle together like fellow combatants eternally vigilant-then the
Universe might possibly be saved.
47. It is not God who will save us-it is we who will save God, by battling, by
creating, and by transmuting matter into spirit.
48. But all our struggle may go lost. If we tire, if we grow faint of spirit,
if we fall into panic, then the entire Universe becomes imperiled.
49. Life is a crusade in the service of God. Whether we wished to or not, we
set out as crusaders to free-not the Holy Sepulchre-but
that God buried in matter and in our souls.
50. Every body, every soul is a Holy Sepulcher. Every seed of grain is a Holy Sepulchre; let us free it! The brain is a Holy Sepulchre, God sprawls within it and battles with death;
let us run to his assistance!
51. God gives the signal for battle, and I, too, rush to the attack, trembling.
52. Whether I straggle behind as a deserter or battle valiantly, I know that I
shall always fall in battle. But on the first occasion my death would be
sterile, for with the destruction of my body my soul would also be lost and
scattered to the winds.
53. On the second occasion, I would descend into earth like a fruit brimming
with seed. Though my breath abandon my body to rot, it
would organize new bodies and continue the battle.
54. My prayer is not the whimpering of a beggar nor a
confession of love. Nor is it the trivial reckoning of a small tradesman: Give
me and I shall give you.
55. My prayer is the report of a soldier to his general: This is what I did
today, this is how I fought to save the entire battle in my own sector, these
are the obstacles I found, this is how I plan to fight
tomorrow.
56. My God and I are horsemen galloping in the burning sun or under drizzling
rain. Pale, starving, but unsubdued, we ride and
converse.
57. “Leader!” I cry. He turns his face toward me, and I shudder to confront his
anguish.
58. Our love for each other is rough and ready, we sit at the same table, we drink the same wine in this low tavern of life.
59. As we clink our glasses, swords clash and resound, loves and hates spring
up. We get drunk, visions of slaughter ascend before our eyes, cities crumble
and fall in our brains, and though we are both wounded and screaming with pain,
we plunder a huge Palace.
The Relationship Between Man and Man
1. 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.
2. Whatever rushes upward and helps God to ascend is good. Whatever drags
downward and impedes Cod from ascending is evil.
3. 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.
4. For the essence of our ethic is not the salvation of man, who varies within
time and space, but the salvation of Cod, who within a wide variety of flowing
human forms and adventures is always the same, the indestructible rhythm which
battles for freedom.
5. We, as human beings, are all miserable persons, heartless, small, insignificant. But within us a superior essence drives us
ruthlessly upward.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. Out of things and flesh, out of hunger, out of fear, out of virtue and sin,
struggle continually to create Cod.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. And this Cry, abandoning to the earth the body which gave it birth,
proceeds and labors eternally.
12. A VEHEMENT EROS runs through the Universe. It is like the ether: harder
than steel, softer than air.
13. 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!”
14. 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.
15. 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!
16. 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 Cod on earth.
17. 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.
18. 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.
19. 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.
20. 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.
21. Cod is never created out of happiness or comfort or glory, but out of shame
and hunger and tears.
22. AT EVERY MOMENT of crisis an array of men risk their lives in the front
ranks as standard-bearers of Cod to fight and take upon themselves
the whole responsibility of the battle.
23. Once long ago it was the priests, the kings, the noblemen, or the burghers
who created civilizations and set divinity free.
24. Today Cod 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.
25. 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.
26. 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.
27. 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.
28. Cod shouts: “Burn your houses! I am coming! Whoever has a house cannot
receive me!
29. “Burn your ideas, smash your thoughts! Whoever has found the solution
cannot find me. 30. “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!
31. "I am coming! Leave your wives, your children, your ideas, and follow
me. I am the great Vagabond.
32. “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.”
33. Set fire! This is our great duty today amid such immoral and hopeless
chaos.
34. War against the unbelievers! The unbelievers are the satisfied, the
satiated, the sterile. 35. Our hate is
uncompromising because it knows that it works for love better and more
profoundly than any weak-hearted kindness.
36. We hate, we are never content, we are unjust, we are cruel and filled with
restlessness and faith; we seek the impossible, like lovers.
37. 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.
38. 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.
39. 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.
40. The wind of devastation is blowing; this is the breath of our Cod 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 s War!
41. 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!
42. 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!
43. 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 Cod.
44. THIS IDENTIFICATION of ourselves with the Universe
begets the two superior virtues of our ethics:
responsibility and sacrifice.
45. It is our duty to help liberate that Cod who is stifling in us, in mankind,
in masses of people living in darkness.
46. 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 Cod who fights for freedom.
47. 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.
48. 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.
49. 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.
50. 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.
51. Does salvation exist, does a purpose exist which we serve and in the
service of which we shall find deliverance?
52. Or is there no salvation, is there no purpose, are all things in vain and
our contribution of no value at all?
53. Neither one nor the other. Our Cod 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.
54. The essence of our Cod 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.
55. Whatever it might be, we fight on without certainty, and our virtue,
uncertain of any rewards, acquires a profound
nobility.
56. 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.
57. 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.
58. EVERYONE HAS his own particular road which leads him to liberation-one
the road of virtue, another the road of evil.
59. 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.
60. 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.
61. We do not fight our dark passions with a sober, bloodless, neutral virtue
which rises above passion, but with other, more violent passions.
62. 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.
63. 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!
64. Cod cries to my heart: “Save me!”
65. Cod cries to men, to animals, to plants, to matter: “Save me!”
66. Listen to your heart and follow him. Shatter your body and awake: We are
all one. 67. Love man because you are he.
68. Love animals and plants because you were they, and now they follow you like
faithful co-workers and slaves.
69. Love your body; only with it may you fight on this earth and turn matter
into spirit. 70. Love matter. Cod clings to it tooth and nail, and
fights. Fight with him.
71. 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.
72. Do not condescend to ask: “Shall we conquer? Shall we be conquered?” Fight
on!
73. 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.
The Relationship Between Man and Nature
1. 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.
2. It is not the resplendent robe which arrays the mystic body of God. Nor the
obscurely translucent partition between man and mystery.
3. 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.
4. One power descends and wants to scatter, to come to a standstill, to die.
The other power ascends and strives for freedom, for immortality.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. Even in the most meaningless particle of earth and sky I hear God crying
out: “Help me!” 9. Everything is an egg in which God’s sperm labors
without rest, ceaselessly. Innumerable forces within and without it
range themselves to defend it.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. 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.
15. 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.
16. We do not only free God by battling and subduing the visible world about
us; we also create God.
17. “Open your eyes,” Cod shouts; “I want to see! Prick up your ears, I want to
hear! March in the front ranks: you are my head!”
18. 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.
19. 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.
20. 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.
21. 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.
22. 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.
23. 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!”
24. 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.
25. 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.
26. Say: “This child, which I hold suckling at my breast, shall save God. Let
me give him all my blood and milk.”
27. PROFOUND AND incommensurable is the worth of this flowing world: God
clings to it and ascends, God feeds upon it and
increases.
28. 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.
29. 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.
30. This crossroads is the Universe. This crossroads is my heart.
31. This dance of the gigantic erotic collision is transmitted from the darkest
particle of matter to the most spacious thought.
32. 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.
33. 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.
34. All the concentrated agony of the Universe bursts out in every living
thing. God is imperiled in the sweet ecstasy and bitterness of flesh.
35. 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.
36. For the first time on this earth, from within our hearts and our minds, God
gazes on his own struggle.
37. 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.
38. 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.
39. 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.
THE SILENCE
1. THE SOUL OF MAN IS a flame, a bird of fire that leaps from bough to
bough, from head to head, and that shouts: “I cannot stand still, I cannot be
consumed, no one can quench
2. All at once the Universe becomes a tree of fire. Amidst the smoke and
the flames, reposing on the peak of conflagration, immaculate, cool, and
serene, I hold that final fruit of fire, the Light.
3. From this lofty summit I look on the crimson line which ascends-a tremulous, bloodstained phosphorescence that drags itself
like a lovesick insect through the raincool coils of
my brain.
4. The ego, race, mankind, earth, theory and action, Cod-all these are
phantasms made of loam and brain, good only for those simple hearts that live
in fear, good only for those flatulent souls that imagine they are pregnant.
5. Where do we come from? Where are we going? What is the meaning of this life?
That is what every heart is shouting, what every head is asking as it beats on
chaos.
6. And a fire within me leaps up to answer: “Fire will surely come one day to
purify the earth. Fire will surely come one day to obliterate the earth. This
is the Second Coming.
7. “The soul is a flaming tongue that licks and struggles to set the black bulk
of the world on fire. One day the entire Universe will become a single
conflagration.
8. “Fire is the first and final mask of my Cod. We dance and weep between two
enormous pyres.”
9. Our thoughts and our bodies flash and glitter with reflected light. Between
the two pyres I stand serenely, my brain unshaken amid the vertigo, and I say:
10. “Time is most short and space most narrow between these two pyres, the
rhythm of this life is most sluggish, and I have no time, nor a place to dance
in. I cannot wait.”
11. Then all at once the rhythm of the earth becomes a vertigo, time
disappears, the moment whirls, becomes eternity, and every point in space
-insect or star or idea-turns into dance.
12. It was a jail, and the jail was smashed, the dreadful powers within it were
freed, and that point of space no longer exists!
13. This ultimate stage of our spiritual exercise is called Silence. Not
because its contents are the ultimate inexpressible despair or the ultimate
inexpressible joy and hope. Nor because it is the ultimate
knowledge which does not condescend to speak, or the ultimate ignorance which
cannot.
14. Silence means: Every person, after completing his service in all labors,
reaches finally the highest summit of endeavor, beyond every labor, where he no
longer struggles or shouts, where he ripens fully in silence, indestructibly,
eternally, with the entire Universe.
15. There he merges with the Abyss and nestles within it like the seed of man
in the womb of woman.
16. The Abyss is now his wife, he plows her, he opens and devours her vitals,
he transmutes her blood, he laughs and weeps, he ascends and descends with her,
and he never leaves her.
17. How can you reach the womb of the Abyss to make it fruitful? This cannot be
expressed, cannot be narrowed into words, cannot be subjected to laws; every
man is completely free and has his own special liberation.
18. No form of instruction exists, no Savior exists to
open up the road. No road exists to be
opened.
19. Every person, ascending above and beyond his own head, escapes from his
small brain, so crammed with perplexities.
20. Within profound Silence, erect, fearless, in pain and in play, ascending
ceaselessly from peak to peak, knowing that the height has no ending, sing this
proud and magical incantation as you hang over the Abyss:
1. I BELIEVE IN ONE COD, DEFENDER OF THE BORDERS, OF DOUBLE DESCENT, MILITANT, SUFFERING, OF MIGHTY BUT NOT OF OMNIPOTENT POWERS, A WARRIOR AT THE FARTHEST FRONTIERS, COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF ALL THE LUMINOUS POWERS, THE VISIBLE AND THE INVISIBLE.
2. I BELIEVE IN THE INNUMERABLE, THE EPHEMERAL MASKS WHICH GOD HAS ASSUMED THROUGHOUT THE CENTURIES, AND BEHIND HIS CEASELESS FLUX I DISCERN AN INDESTRUCTIBLE UNITY.
3. I BELIEVE IN HIS SLEEPLESS AND VIOLENT STRUGGLE WHICH TAMES AND FRUCTIFIES THE EARTH AS THE LIFE-GIVING FOUNTAIN OF PLANTS, ANIMALS, AND MEN.
4. I BELIEVE IN MAN’S HEART, THAT EARTHEN THRESHING-FLOOR WHERE NIGHT AND DAY THE DEFENDER OF THE BORDERS FIGHTS WITH DEATH.
5. 0 LORD, YOU SHOUT: “HELP ME! HELP ME!” YOU SHOUT, 0 LORD, AND I HEAR.
6. WITHIN ME ALL FOREFATHERS AND ALL DESCENDANTS, ALL RACES AND ALL EARTH HEAR YOUR CRY WITH JOY AND TERROR.
7. BLESSED BE ALL THOSE WHO HEAR AND RUSH TO FREE YOU, LORD, AND WHO SAY: “ONLY YOU AND I EXIST.”
8. BLESSED BE ALL THOSE WHO FREE YOU
AND BECOME UNITED WITH YOU, LORD, AND WHO SAY: "YOU AND I ARE ONE. "
9. AND THRICE BLESSED BE THOSE WHO
BEAR ON THEIR SHOULDERS AND DO NOT BUCKLE UNDER THIS GREAT, SUBLIME, AND
TERRIFYING SECRET:
THAT EVEN THIS ONE
DOES NOT EXIST!