The Great Wall of China
Page 12
If what is supposed to have been destroyed in Paradise was destructible, then it was not decisive; but if it was indestructible, then we are living in a false belief.
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Test yourself by mankind. It makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.
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This feeling: ‘Here I will not anchor’, and instantly to feel the billowing uplifting swell around one.
A sudden reversal. Watchful, fearful, hopeful, the answer prowls round the question, searches desperately in its impenetrable face, follows it along the most senseless paths, that is, along the paths leading as far as possible away from the answer.
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Human intercourse tempts one to introspection.
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The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support.
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Sensual love blinds us to heavenly love; by itself it could not do so, but since it contains the element of heavenly love unconsciously within it, it can.
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Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; whoever wants to recognize it must be a lie.
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No one can desire what is ultimately damaging to him. If in the case of a particular person it appears to be so after all – and perhaps it always does so appear – this is explained by the fact that there is somebody within the person who desires what is admittedly beneficial to that somebody, yet gravely damaging to a second somebody who has been brought in partly in order to judge the case. If the person had put himself on the side of the second somebody at the very beginning, and not only when it came to judging the case, then the first somebody would have faded away and the desire along with him.
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Why do we complain about the Fall? It was not on its account that we were expelled from Paradise but on account of the Tree of Life, that we should not eat of it.
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We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.
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We were created to live in Paradise, and Paradise was designed to serve us. Our purpose has been changed; that this has also happened with the purpose of Paradise is nowhere stated.
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Evil is a radiation of the human consciousness in certain transitional situations. It is not exactly the sensual world which is mere appearance, but the evil of it, which is admittedly what constitutes the sensual world in our eyes.
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Since the Fall we have been essentially equal in our capacity to know Good and Evil; and yet it is precisely here that we seek to outdo our fellows. But it is only on the far side of this knowledge that the real differences begin. That the opposite should appear to be the case is due to the following: No one can be content with knowledge alone, but must strive to act in accordance with it. But he is not endowed with the strength to do this, hence he must destroy himself, even at the risk of not acquiring the necessary strength that way either, but nothing else remains for him save this last attempt. (This is also the meaning of the threat of death associated with the ban on eating from the Tree of Knowledge; perhaps this is also the original meaning of natural death.) Now this is an attempt he is afraid to make; he would rather annul the knowledge of Good and Evil (the term ‘the Fall’ has its origin in this fear); but what has once happened cannot be annulled, it can only be blurred. It is for this purpose that the justifications arise. The whole world is full of them, indeed the whole visible world is perhaps no more nor less than the self-justification of man in his wish to find a moment of peace. An attempt to distort the fact that knowledge is already given, to make knowledge a goal still to be reached.
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A belief like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light.
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Death is before us, rather like a picture of Alexander’s Battle hanging on the schoolroom wall. What matters is that we should, already in the course of this life, obscure this picture by our actions or indeed even blot it out.
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A man has free will, and this of three kinds: First of all he was free when he willed this life; now, of course, he can no longer go back on it, for he is no longer the person who once willed it, except perhaps in so far as he puts what he once willed into practice by living.
Secondly he is free in that he can choose the mode and the route of his progress through this life.
Thirdly he is free in that, as the person he is one day to become again, he has the will to go through life under all conditions and thus to find his way to himself, and what is more to go through life along a road that is indeed a matter of choice, yet will surely be so labyrinthine as to leave no corner of this life untouched,
Such are the three aspects of free will, but since they are present at the same time they form a unity, and at bottom such a complete unity that no room is left for any will, either free or unfree.
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Two possibilities: making oneself infinitely small or being so. The first is perfection, hence inactivity; the second is beginning, hence action.
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Towards the avoidance of a verbal confusion: What is to be actively destroyed must first of all have been firmly grasped; what crumbles away crumbles away, but cannot be destroyed.
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The first worship of idols was certainly fear of things, but, connected with this, fear of the necessity of things, and, connected with this, fear of the responsibility for things. So tremendous did this responsibility appear that people did not even dare to impose it upon one single extra-human being, for the mediation of just one being would not have lightened human responsibility enough, intercourse with one sole being would still have been all too deeply tainted with responsibility, and that is why each thing was given the responsibility for itself, and what is more, these things were given a measure of responsibility for man as well.
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Never again psychology!
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Two tasks at the beginning of your life: To narrow your orbit increasingly, and constantly to check whether you are not hiding away somewhere outside your orbit.
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Evil is sometimes in one’s hand like a tool; recognized or unrecognized it can, if one has the will to do so, be laid aside without opposition.
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The joys of this life are not life’s, but our fear of ascending into a higher life; the torments of this life are not life’s but our self-torment on account of that fear.
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Only here is suffering suffering. Not in the sense that those who suffer here are to be raised up elsewhere on account of their suffering, but in the sense that what in this world is called suffering is in another world, unchanged and merely liberated from its opposite, bliss.
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The notion of the infinite expanse and fullness of the cosmos is the result of the intermingling, pushed to its furthest extreme, of laborious creation and free self-contemplation.
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How much more oppressive than the most inexorable conviction of our present sinful state is even the weakest conviction of the eventual eternal justification of our temporal existence. Only strength in the endurance of this second conviction, which in its purity entirely comprehends the first, is the measure of faith.
Many assume that, besides the great basic deception, there is in each individual case a little special deception provided additionally for their benefit, in other words that when a love-intrigue is presented on the stage, the actress has, apart from the false smile for her lover, an especially insidious smile just for the one particular spectator at the top of the gallery as well. This is going too far.
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There can be a knowledge of the diabolical, but no belief in it, for more of the diabohcal than is actually present does not exist.
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Sin always comes openly and can at once be grasped with the senses. It walks on its roots and does not have to be extracted.
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All the suffering around us must be suffered by us as well. We do not all have one body, but we all have one way of growing, and this leads us through all anguish, whether in this or in that form. Just as the child develops through all life’s stages right up to old age and death (and basically each stage seems inaccessible to the previous one, whether longed for or feared), so also do we develop (no less deeply bound up with mankind than with ourselves) through all the sufferings of this world. There is no room for justice in this context, but neither is there any room for fear of suffering or for the interpretation of suffering as a merit.
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You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering that you could avoid.
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This world’s means of seduction, and the token which guarantees us that this world is only a transition, are one and the same. Rightly so, for only thus can the world seduce us in a way that conforms to the truth. The worst thing, however, is that after the seduction has succeeded we forget the guarantee, and thus actually Good has lured us into Evil, the woman’s look into her bed.
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Humility provides everyone, even him who despairs in solitude, with the strongest relationship to his fellow man, though of course only in the case of complete and lasting humility. It can do this because it is the true language of prayer, at once adoration and the firmest of unions. The relationship to one’s fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; from the prayer is drawn the strength for the striving.
Can you know anything else, then, but deception? If ever the deception is destroyed you must on no account look that way, or you will turn into a pillar of salt.
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Everyone is very kind to A., rather in the way that one tries to protect an excellent billiard-table even from good players, until such time as the great player arrives, who carefully examines the surface, will tolerate no premature blemish, but then, when he begins play himself, lets himself go with ruthless fury.
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‘But then he returned to his work, just as though nothing had happened.’ This is a remark we are familiar with from a vague profusion of old stories, although perhaps it does not occur in any one of them.
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‘It cannot be said that we are lacking in faith. Even the mere fact of our life is of a faith-value that cannot be exhausted.’
‘Where is the faith-value here? One simply cannot not-live.’
‘It is precisely in this “simply cannot” that the insane strength of faith lies; in the form of this denial it takes shape.’
It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.
AN EVERYDAY OCCURRENCE
AN everyday occurrence: the enduring of it a matter of everyday heroism. A has an important deal to conclude with B from the neighbouring village of H. He goes to H for the preliminary discussion, gets there and back in ten minutes each way, and at home boasts of this unusual rapidity. The next day he goes to H again, this time for the final settlement of the deal; since this is likely to take several hours, A sets out early in the morning; but although all the attendant circumstances, at least in A’s opinion, are exactly the same as on the previous day, this time it takes him ten hours to get to H. When he arrives there weary in the evening, he is told that B, annoyed at A’s failure to arrive, has gone across to A’s village half an hour ago, they ought to have met each other on the way. A is advised to wait, B is sure to be back soon. But A, anxious about the deal, at once sets out again and hurries home. This time, without particularly noticing the fact, he covers the distance in no more than an instant. At home he is informed that B had actually arrived there early in the day, even before A’s departure, indeed that he had met A on the doorstep and reminded him about the deal, but A had said he had no time just then, he had to go off at once on a matter of urgency. In spite of this incomprehensible behaviour on A’s part, however, B had nevertheless remained here to wait for A. It was true that he had already inquired many times whether A was not back yet, but he was still upstairs in A’s room. Happy at still being able to see B now and explain everything to him, A runs upstairs. He is almost at the top when he stumbles, strains a tendon, and, almost fainting with pain, incapable even of crying out, just whimpering there in the dark, he sees and hears how B – he is not sure whether a great distance off or just close to him – stamps down the stairs in a fury and disappears for good.
THE TRUTH ABOUT SANCHO PANZA
SANCHO PANZA – who has incidentally never boasted of this – succeeded in the course of the years, by supplying numerous romances of chivalry and banditry during the evening and night hours, in diverting his devil – to which he later gave the name Don Quixote – so effectively from himself that this devil thereafter, quite out of control, performed the craziest deeds, which however for lack of their predestined object, which should have been precisely Sancho Panza, did nobody any harm. Sancho Panza, a free man, followed this Don Quixote imperturbably, perhaps from a certain sense of responsibility, on his travels, and he found great and profitable entertainment therein to the end of his days.
THE SILENCE OF THE SIRENS
PROOF that even inadequate, indeed childish measures can suffice for one’s preservation:
To protect himself from the Sirens, Odysseus stopped his ears with wax and had himself chained to the mast. Of course all travellers from the very beginning could have done something of the kind (apart from those whom the Sirens lured even from the distance), but it was known to all the world that this could not possibly help. The song of the Sirens pierced everything, even wax, and the passion of those they seduced would have burst more than chains and a mast. But Odysseus did not think of that, though he had perhaps heard tell of it; he trusted completely to his handful of wax and his bundle of chains, and in innocent pleasure over his little resources he sailed towards the Sirens.
Now the Sirens have a still more terrible weapon than their song, namely their silence. Though it has never happened, it is perhaps conceivable that someone might have escaped from their singing, but from their silence certainly not. Against the feeling of having overcome them by one’s own strength, and against the resultant arrogance that sweeps everything with it, no earthly resistance is possible.
And in fact, when Odysseus came, these mighty singers did not sing, whether because they believed that against this opponent only silence could achieve anything, or whether because the look of bliss on the face of Odysseus, who was thinking of nothing but wax and chains, made them forget all about their singing.
Odysseus however, if one may so express it, did not hear their silence, he believed they were singing and that only he was protected from hearing it, for a first fleeting moment he saw the movements of their necks, their deep breathing, their tearful eyes, their half-open mouths, but he believed this went with the arias that were echoing unheard around him. But soon all this slipped from his gaze, which was fixed on the distance, the Sirens positively vanished from his awareness, and at the very moment when he was nearest to them he knew of them no longer.
But they – lovelier than ever – craned and twisted, let their gruesome hair float free in the wind, stretched their claws wide on the rocks; they wanted to allure no more, all they wanted was to catch for as long as possible the reflected radiance from the great eyes of Odysseus.
If the Sirens had possessed consciousness, they would have been annihilated at that moment; as it was they remained, only Odysseus escaped them.
There is moreover a supplement to this, which has also come down to us. Odysseus, it is said, was so wily, was such a cunning fox, that even the goddess of fate
could not see into his heart; perhaps, although this passes human comprehension, he really did notice that the Sirens were silent, and confronted them and the gods with the above mock episode merely as a kind of shield.
PROMETHEUS
FOUR legends tell of Prometheus:
According to the first, he was clamped to a rock in the Caucasus for betraying the secrets of the gods to men, and the gods sent eagles to feed on his liver, which perpetually renewed itself.
According to the second, Prometheus, to escape the tearing beaks, pressed himself in his agony deeper and deeper into the rock until he became one with it.
According to the third, in the course of thousands of years his treachery was forgotten, the gods forgot, the eagles forgot, he himself forgot.