the fundamental question

From Carlo Suares:

In some detective novels, at a point similar to this, the author sometimes challenges the readers. They have all the clues. Can they find who the murderer is? The question here is somewhat different: can the reader guess what the author thinks he can murder him psychologically with?.. (There are two kinds of deaths: the dead death and the death of resurrection. I do not care to know whether it is possible or not to resurrect dead bodies. It is irrelevant.)

Of course the reader will only find here words, words. He will not die psychologically unless he plays the game. If he plays the game he may or may not, at his will.

****************************

Here is the game.

"Have you in mind any basic fundamental question, really vital for you?" asks C.S. to a friend.

"I have," says X.Y.Z., "three fundamental questions: What is living? What is death? What is life?"

"I've heard them already and am sorry to say they are not basic. When you ask: what is living? that question stands upon, is supported by, your notion of living. That notion is not fundamental: it rests on the concept "living" as opposed to "non-living". Dig into it and you will see that the concept "living" is a conclusion, an abstraction, a projection of the mind. When you ask "what is death?" you complicate the matter still further. As I already said, you oppose arbitrarily death to life. When you ask "what is death?", you are implicitly and unknowingly asking "what is birth?" Do you want an answer based on biology, ethnology or natural history? And of course, when you ask "what is life?", you are sure to receive innumerable answers. Scientists, metaphysicians, mystics, or anybody around the corner, will tell you "what life is". Everyone has his notion of what life is. This question is anything but fundamental."

"But I have no idea of what life really is. My question is really fundamental."

"It isn't. You have in mind, again, the distinction between that life is and that it is not. Do you consider it to be a state of ceaseless change, a functional activity peculiar to organized matter? Or is it a mental projection resulting from such assertions as "I am life," etc. . . supposed to have been uttered by some deity? Whatever you mean by "what is life" has an enormous background of knowledge, observation, creed or faith. It is not a fundamental question. It is based on a qualification and a classification resulting of an inner feeling of "being" and an outward superficial observation of things that are considered a priori to be alive."

"All right. So what are the fundamental questions?"

"Not the questions: there is one and there can only be ONE fundamental question; don't you see? Two questions would not be basic: they would arise from two different points of view, concepts or perceptions, hence they would contain a cause unknown to you, for being two. They would be effects of that cause. An effect is not fundamental, nor is the cause, because a cause is always the effect of another cause. By definition, the basic question is based on nothing. It arises from the nature and structure of thought in its clearest perception."

"I don't know what you are talking about."

"Of course you don't. You do. I have formulated the fundamental question in every one of my books, lectures, articles. You have read it a number of times in the last twenty years. I always declared it to be basic."

"You mean I skipped it and it is fundamental?"

"No. You skipped it because it is fundamental."

"Let's drop your rigmarole and come to the point. What is it?"

"We've gone a longer way than you think towards it. Will you now, please, keep in mind everything you know, believe in, think about; everything you feel to be obvious, every certainty, such as the simple fact that we are both here, talking together. . . or, reader, the obvious fact that you are reading this. Now, if you came to play the game, keep in mind everything, conscious or unconscious that is in your mind, and even the fact that you exist, keep it all under your scrutiny so as to be sure that you will not use any part of it, absolutely not. Shut your eyes, open them, make a statement. State something."

"I see something."

"Wake up! You are not playing the game. Discard the I and the seeing."

"Well! There is something anyway."

"Correct. There is something. And if you are honestly playing the game, you are not satisfied in totally containing, limiting, classifying the things you see as: this is a book, a room, or anything else. The immediate causes for their being what they are and for being there do not explain away how it is that they are there at all. You know nothing about that. Your consciousness is in a state of waking up to the blunt, absolute unchallengable fact that there is something, period. This statement is so simple that it is already difficult to come to it. Any average mind, dreaming its childish dream, would say: of course there is something! And to prove its point, it would describe the outer world with the notion that every element it is obvious because it is perceived and recognizable through some equivalence. That obviousness of things acts as a screen to the fact that everything is included in the unknowable nature of time and space. We have now gone a long way towards the statement there is something, because on the way we have acquired the capacity of knowing that we don't know fundamentally what it is that is. So what is the basic question that arises?"

"What is it that is?"

"No, no: you are falling asleep again. Your question is an appeal to link something that you cannot think about to something that belongs to one or another of your memories. You want to exchange the unthinkable for the thinkable. You are trying to draw upon the provisions stored in your mind. As I said a while ago: think. Think with the naked intrinsic nature and structure of thought. Thought is made of time and space and cannot understand time or space: thought does not understand itself. So think!"
(Please reader, this is vital: Think!)

"Well... there is something... I do not allow myself to recognize any part in it, because, of course, I would not be thinking: I would only be searching concepts in my repertory of classified words. I am therefore compelled to state that I simply don't know how it is that that which is is here at all."

"We have come at last to the fundamental question; how is it there is anything at all? Can you answer that?"

"No. I have already seen through the texture of thought. Its nature is time, its structure is measures. So I cannot think how it is that anything is."

"That's it! I can think five billion light-years or one billion's part of a second, but I cannot think a beginning of time, or a time that has already always been. I cannot think a something created out of nothing - and anyway a nothing pregnant with a future something would already be something. I cannot think an always, always, and when I go deeper and deeper in it I feel insanity awaiting. An always always before and an always always after. . . always always go into it. . . If you tried to go into it, to feel it, to mean it, if you could for a single moment try to live with the notion that the something that you are compelled to assert has never begun and will never end, you would soon have your thought declare itself at its end. You have discarded as being already something the erroneous alternative of a nothing-out-of-which-something-was-created. So only the unthinkable is left."

****************************

That is the end of the dialogue. The weapon for your psychological murder and resurrection is in you. It is up to you. It is up to you to allow it to go through you.

During one whole day keep it in mind. Do whatever job you have to do. Meet whatever people you have to meet. During one whole day keep on saying to yourself:

I do not know how it is that anything is.
I meet a Christian, a Jew, a Moslem
They say God-Elohim-Allah.
It is irrelevant
Would deities be something?
I do not know how it is that anything is.
Some say there is a liberation
A transformation
From irreality
A facing oneself,
It is irrelevant
Would such things be something?
I do not know how it is that anything is.
Some say: who am I?
I am not this gross body
I am this gross body.
What is the nature of awareness?
What is the self?
Is there a self?
There is a self.
There is no self.
The world is to be removed
It is not to be removed
What is the nature of the mind?
There is a path to inquiry.
There is no path
I must practice
I must not practice
Everything is the Siva, the Self.
Give yourself up to God
Do not.
Do.
Whether such things are or are not
It is irrelevant
I do not know how it is that anything is.

****************************

I do not know, I do not know. I do not know. In your religions, philosophies, wisdoms, paths, no-paths; in your self-knowledge, your assertions, no-assertions, in whatever you say, not say, do, not do; in your petty exalted minds; in your self-centredness non-centered; in your conflicts, peace; wherever you are, however you blend with the All; you are satisfied in evading the fundamental devastating question; you stop at some point; you do not go far enough; you do not enter the dangerous zone; you cling to erroneous evidences, you do not go through.

I cannot go through
My consciousness is a prisoner
A prisoner in the immeasurable world
However large and deep
However exalted
The "is" is a prison to my awakening
I do not know
I know nothing
What is this?
And I am this.
What? What?
And because I cannot go through and because I do not consent to stop asking myself and not being able to say how it is that anything is, the question hits me right in my solar plexus; it causes nausea; I feel sick; I feel in my blood my psyche dying. Yes. It is driven to its death because every element of what once was its structure is dissolved in the fundamental enigma, in the unfathomable mystery of the fact that something is.

****************************

If you are not afraid to "lose your mind", if you play the game with great purpose and vigor, you will discover that what you are doing is obeying the Aleph's impulse in your psyche to free itself from all the memories that capture it, anaesthetize it, or, alas, more often than not, annihilate it. Your psyche becomes the empty dwelling of the Explosive Energy, whereas your body is more and more cognizant of its conservative, compressive purpose. Psyche and body, "in joint opposition" recreate in you the cosmic game of the One Energy in two opposite directions, and the human sense of fitness is alive and operating in and through you.

Be watchful! Never, never lose the fundamental question: Your fitness is no answer! Let not the established order in you trap you into any certainty. You know, yet do not know that the Cosmic Energy is at work in its abode in you. You know yet you do not know what its process is. You understand yet you do not understand the words Explosive-Compressive Energy. You no longer hear what so many people have to say about spiritual experiences, self-realization, good and evil, irreality and reality, being in a dream, being awake. You don't know. You don't know what the ultimate reality of a person, a flower an object is. Therefore you are free to look, to see, to respect, because, after all, there never is any murder.

"Because I respect everything," says Cain, "I am only an orderly craftsman. Because I respect the psyche I do not want it to give itself, to prostitute itself to every false obviousness in which Aleph is lost. Because I respect thought I do not want it to believe that it can find Aleph, hence lose it. Because I respect words I only accept those that have a real, understandable meaning, signifying a clear designation. I, because of Aleph alive, am only its humble craftsman. I want every Bayt I make use of to be as perfect as possible, in its category. I therefore respect my body to begin with. I want it in good enough shape to do whatever the unknown inner impulse of explosive Aleph in me can do with my abilities. Because I respect my abilities I put them at the service of Aleph, polishing them endlessly. Yes! I am only Aleph's craftsman."

****************************

Some understand Cain, die and resurrect psychologically. Others don't know what he is talking about: he doesn't exist for them; they go on carrying the weight of their ordinary existences; they are satisfied to think they are this or that; they are their beliefs, creeds, opinions, positions, aspirations, habits, customs, memories and all their psychological structures. Those feel instinctively that Cain's look into them, through them, could dispel their very notion of being. Those, indeed, kill Cain. Mind you! They kill him in themselves! Hence, they remain simple bags of blood, and Cain, in contrast, is exalted "sevenfold".

http://www.psyche.com/psyche/suares/cain2.html