Chapter Thirteen: Subtle Nourishment
“It seems to me that technical progress is mainly used today to overcome the inconveniences it creates.” —Claude Lévi-Strauss
13.1: Abstinence and Sensitivity
Our necessities: what are our needs?
1. To breathe. 2. To drink and eat. 3. To sleep. 4. To love or imagine. And since none of us has been educated, elevated, or carried any higher, it can only be by suffocation, starvation, sleeplessness or total solitude that we can be aware of these so-called necessities … Otherwise, through suffering (if one does not demand to be relieved), we are led to reflection, meditation, and then to asceticism.
1. Yoga, chanting and prayer aloud are beneficial practices for becoming aware of breathing and of the analogy of the breath and of the soul.
2. Dry or wet fasts help us to know true hunger, that which is not aligned with automation, repletion, or mock anguish.
3. Insomnia, if the narcosis provided by tranquilizers is denied, is able to supply us with truly restful sleep if we agree to undertake the reflection it offers us.
4. The loss of the being we ignored at a premium up to this irretrievable moment, a frustrated link, can acutely restore to us our unreal loneliness and carry us toward the truth, that which is populated by true love, forgetfulness, and self-sacrifice instead of egoism and selfishness.
And those who engage deeply in the asceticism that demands an understanding of our first three necessities can actually spend a very long time without breathing, drinking, eating, or sleeping but cannot stand one moment without Love, the first and most essential food that one can give or receive.
We cannot live happily just with our feet on the ground and head in the clouds, this is to say, in constant and conscious contact with the forces of instinct, so we propose the direct contact with Nature that comes when we work in the fields, and being in constant contact with Heaven, giving thanks for the gift of life offered to us and for our hands, which allow us to reap and sow.
Plant roots grow telluric currents in the ground and branches capture cosmic currents that descend from the sky, and these complementary forces allow sap to flow, which is the blood of the tree. And man, a walking tree, must not part from these currents of life that are to be found when he runs, hat- and shoeless, through fields and meadows as thought irrigates the soul again.
Today, alas! We only get along through the social—the field of appearances, lying, stealing, hypocrisy, rape, murder, cowardice, paternalism; the rules are as abstract and absurd as those of any game—poker, canasta, monopoly.
This climate of impurities—and the agglomeration of men in cities is both cause and effect—could be redeemed, not by distractions, organized recreation, resorting to alcohol or drugs, but by diving into oneself, where everyone performs a review of his/her conscience, asking themselves, “What daily act am I committing to support my own evolution and the evolution of that which still remains?”
We have lost the Earth. We have lost the sky. And we have lost society (which is nothing more than purgatory gone to hell).
Fasting drops our desires like dead leaves and allows us to find the primacy of our instincts and spirituality and collaborate with everything around us … provided that this abstinence is not granted only to save the body and return to old habits and fall down again once physical strength has returned.
Many people have said, in some way or another, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Yes, we need to achieve wisdom to know the difference so we do not find false excuses that allow us to stay put. If each of us, instead of accusing others, took everything into account by doing a sincere Mea Culpa, Earth would instantaneously become paradise. Do not wait for others to give you this example—be the example yourself!
Yes. But, where to start?
Professor Ehret affirms that vitality, energy and strength do not come from food:
1. Vitality does not find its first and direct source from food but rather in the unknown, external force, whose action results in breathing and the ability to perform chemical exchanges. It is more or less hampered by the obstructions of the human body, mucus and toxins.
2. It is only at the expense of vitality (the elasticity of tissue) that one can remove obstructions by artificial means like massage, tissue vibrations, excessive sports, etc. …
3. Physical and mental energy, exclusively from air and water, is significant as soon as F (force) can work without blockage in a perfectly cleaned body. This is beyond imagination.
4. No one knows the maximum period during which the body in this ideal state can do without solid and liquid food.
5. In such a body, the force F feeds, from the exact amount of other natural agents like: electricity, ozone, light (especially solar), fruit and flower fragrances … In such conditions of natural perfection it is even possible that the nitrogen in the air can be directly assimilated.
For someone already clinging to food asceticism, it seems more understandable to live without ever absorbing anything rather than surviving simply by swallowing dead food (essentially not capable of providing nourishment); if in both cases the subject remains bound to autophagy at least with the first the heavy and expensive work of elimination is avoided.
By mastery over the breath, man can put himself into a state similar to that of hibernation: some yogis have demonstrated this several times; and if their reduction in oxygen consumption to 5% of their normal consumption can reduce all of their organic exchanges, their nutritional needs should be reduced also. So, the existence of Stylites, immobile, at the top of their columns, ceases to be a myth.
If man did not violate the laws of life, his life span would be 150 years without his old age being synonymous with decrepitude and senility. By silencing all appetites, man could double this time: three hundred years is precisely the lifetime attributed to the Stylites. The more immobility, the slower the breathing rate and the ability, therefore, to reduce nutritional necessities to almost nothing and survive only on the subtle foods profuse in air and light.
Tibetan texts report the existence of motionless monks, sitting in the lotus position, whose sole function was to assume this position in order to become pure antennas, the passage of all currents of the universe, to offset the disharmony that the greater part of humanity created.
The Catholic tradition tells the story of the long life of Simeon Stylites, born in Syria in the sixth century A.D., who died on top of a pillar erected forty years earlier and built by his hands; he never came down and no one, during his lifetime, ever went up.
Hibernation, Reception and Transmission
A lot of wild animals and plants are periodically constrained by natural laws and exist in a state of slow motion; during deep heat or drought, aestivation; during freezing, hibernation.
Plants survive thanks to the reserves contained in their roots, and animals survive thanks to that which is contained in their own tissues, and by sometimes accessing some element of support collected on sunny days, like the squirrel does.
In these times, we see an enormous decrease in their breathing, circulation, and their organic exchanges, and some even seem to be asleep forever—it is very difficult to differentiate between a hibernating bat and a dead bat.
As for humans, the Eskimos, in order to happily face the rigors and shortages of the cold seasons, sew fur around or pile up around a fire, only opening one eye and their mouths from time to time in order to chew some bites of food; at their sides, some logs to keep the fire going; their “natural needs,” very rare, flow, without their moving, through openings for this purpose.
The imposition of the fast, or a diet, is certainly different for plants, insects, animals and man through some nuances, but what is certain is that the survival it assures is intrinsically allied to life itself.
Before closing this parenthesis and leaving this new and vibrational knowledge, we repeat that every living organism must extend and also enrich its ratio-vital capital. The sources apt to nourish this are:
a. Contact with the sky (cosmic currents) and contact with the Earth (telluric currents): these are harmful currents if they are separated
b. Contact with the daystar (wave spectrum)
c. Contact with living nourishment
d. Contact with beings that are complementary to us (the union between man and woman is the most fundamental aspect)
e. Contact with the most subtle nourishment: that which pervades through sight, hearing, touch (if some artistic creations are capable of wiping out our appetites through their absence of originality—original: that which returns to the origin, harmony—then others are apt to remove them through their vibrations that feed us.)
f. Contact that healing others gives us while we have the partial grace to preside there.
All of this is at the same time receiving and transmitting power, alongside that which is appointed auspicious or inauspicious, vitamin or microbial. It is as difficult to give as to receive, and to achieve “perfect pitch,” allowing us to replicate any tone without the help of any tuning fork, we must listen to the silence which has become one of the richest vibrations, in general or especially when integrated in contemplation or prayer before meals; these are gentle servants of digestion and easy assimilation.
De-fast and fast, like continuous and discontinuous currents; we now deliver a series of summary reflections on celestial and terrestrial foods. However, we also emphasize the importance of breathing, which is able to accelerate organic exchanges and the assimilation of food. Knowing now that everything is food, including good trade with our fellow man, nature, the animals, thoughts, music, scents, prayer, artistic and artisanal creations, true love relationships …
For a long time, it has been noticed that most advanced souls—scholars, sages, philosophers, saints, visionaries—were extremely frugal and abstemious. It was once believed that frugality was the consequence of their superior spirit, which led to despising or at least ignoring the material satisfaction of the pleasures of the table. Our new ideas on magnetic circulations have led us to consider the abstinence of sages and saints not only as an effect but a partial cause of their wisdom.
Hindus have done the service of showing that the austerities of yogis and others who aspire to holiness and initiation had not only the metaphysical and transcending goal to win merit from an agreeable Divinity, flattered by the intense suffering and torture that the faithful inflicted on themselves in the name of their love, but also the material goal of putting themselves in the best conditions of receptivity to collect inspiration and messages from above. We are able, now, to understand why and how.
We have seen how dietary restrictions allow for significant savings in nerve power during digestion. Being given more and more, we are led to consider thought either as a form of superior energy or as the result of the operations of superior forms of energy; it is quite obvious that any economy of nerve force can only be favorable to the higher operations of the soul. Similarly, the greater penetration of the tissues of nerve impulses resulting from a perfect magnetic assimilation ensures an observable savings of subtle forces. Yet, all savings, any gain of nerve strength, is of utmost importance because they are called to have direct repercussions on the most advanced aspects of consciousness. The study of mental illness shows us that while the mental faculties improve as the individual rises to the zenith of his/her development, the higher faculties are instructive on the substrata of the previously acquired faculties. Any disturbance, any mental illness, disturbs not only some faculty, but always begins by causing disruption with the higher faculties and then the subtler, the last to be acquired, and the less solidly automated. One might conclude that any obstacle to the exercise of thought, no matter how weak, and the loss of nervous energy, is important and constitutes an obstacle in the exercise of the highest faculties of the mind. It is therefore not surprising that the transcendent faculties such as clairvoyance, premonition, inspiration, illumination … are increasingly rare in Western countries where nearly all men are overfed, as Frère Jacques shows in the preface to his thesis on Gleizes, the diet of the average French person has more than doubled in the space of a century.
That in part explains why in spite of the extraordinary enrichment of the daily life of modern man, which is incomparably more varied and extensive than that of our great-grandparents, this is only in the rather vulgar and lower areas of practical intelligence and resourcefulness—we are, however, no more superior in the more elevated domains of sensitivity, intuition, spontaneous gaiety and enthusiasm, and conscience.
On the other hand, we foresee another mode of action of harmonization superior to our internal dynamic states. We see more and more that the human being, prodigious complexes of all kinds of energy, crossed over by the waves coming from all points of celestial space, is like a small universe, a summary of the external universe, where all the components are present. We fully understand now the deep truth of the Oracle at Delphi: Know yourself and you will know the universe and God; or the occult injunctions: Become what you are—take conscious possession and knowledge of your true nature. It is almost a Tantalus torture of the mind knowing that the body we inhabit includes all the principles of universal life, contains an almost infinite variety of their operations, and that we consciously participate so little in the fulfillment of the phenomena of which we are the theater. The psychologist’s recent research on the nature and properties of the unconscious and the subconscious, by applying faculties of almost limitless possibilities, tend to lead to the conclusion that it is possible that this universal permeation, whereby our body is crossed by magnetic waves coming from all the suns in the universe, extends to the psychological domain and that, perhaps, the subconscious regions of the mind are communicating and in communion with all communication realities, in communion with all the subconscious, conscious and superconscious realities of the world …”
—Doctor Parvus
The only questions: To be or not to be?
Our mission on Earth then is also to melt to a trickle the scope of our unconscious and subconscious into our consciousness; we need to mold our own shape, to find the Being—or, rather, to be found by it.
“To be or not to be” from Shakespeare’s Hamlet is truly the only question … Once again, one is not one: if one IS, no need to express: it shows. But, if the emptiness is not within us, we are only emptied, owned by the possession to overcome this quite essential absence.
Science and medicine, it seems, would be there to overcome our moral and hence physical infirmities. Perhaps there is still time to save, without orthopedic instruments, the flickering light that burns us. We engage our intelligence in the search for our lost instincts while we are unworthy of moral supremacy. We close our ears and eyes while no one has yet exhausted this so to better see and hear and to find more subtle ways: beyond appearances. Rudolf Steiner identified twelve senses.
Our threatened and invalidated senses
All the anatomy manuals attribute five senses to man, which he cheerfully disables through the perverse vibrations he imposes on them each day.
TOUCH The sense that is the caress or the refusal of it: punches. The sense also of curiosity and incarnation, thanks to the one who joins us, which should incite respect for life, to restore in us the sense of the sacred.
SMELL The sense directly aligned to the brevity and intensity of the senses. Given the importance it has on the influx of amorous relationships, sensual beings know that sexual excitation makes one sneeze and that the cold’s sneeze grounds the roots of the phallus just before the prostate.
TASTE A sense totally dependent on smell: with flu, one does not taste what is eaten. The palate and the tongue are remarkable tests for physical nutrition: all beneficial food chewed for a long time (at least thirty times) becomes better; any adverse food, chewed the same way, becomes disgusting, regardless of our food habits.
SIGHT The platonic sense; a beautiful glance is the reflection of the soul. The eye, which owes its existence to the light, contains the three elements of the world of colors: light, shadow, and the colors themselves. It is also what can most distract us from the interior, because it can be imprisoned in appearances: Blessed are those who believe without seeing; to see well, one must learn to listen: to be quiet, because faith only comes through hearing. Our decadent civilization is a civilization of the eye: materialism, intellectualism, scientism; it is superficial par excellence. We hope that our unworthiness blinds us totally and we open our ears wide, but let it be the ears of the heart.
HEARING The sense of poetry, a true act, of music, to know how to listen and to know how to speak. In the principle there is the verb, and the verb is God.
These five senses, vehicles of communication, enclose us for the most part in irreparable solitude and their poor usage is what does it. We now leave the five threatened and threatening senses to find those totally reversed, which we attribute to Rudolf Steiner:
WORD This sense is the emanation of breath and soul, aerial sculpture of understanding and agreement. It can be a true reflection of a unique thought or a trap into which the intellect drowns: when one has nothing to say, it is insane that one can be so talkative. Like a current of water, a word is the symbol itself of the everlasting, the eternal, provided that it flows without premeditation as the Truth, always paradoxical for those who live only in lies.
THOUGHT It is that of religion: of what is connected and what connects, of what prevents separation. It offers the possibility of transmission of thoughts and telepathy.
LIFE This is the sense of wellness in one’s skin, the constant feeling of participating in Evolution and in being radiant; it is the sense of fullness.
MOVEMENT This sense warns us of changes in the position of our bodies in space; gestural skills give thoughts access to freedom: it reveals our autonomy.
BALANCE This sense is directly related to the sense of movement: it allows us to stand upright and moves us through three-dimensional space. The whole body participates but its seat is in the ear and liver.
HEAT The vehicle of this sense is the blood: it establishes a perpetual exchange between the soul and the body; there is a lot more heat within us than in the environment in which we live: it is important therefore that we unload for the benefit of all living beings; if we do not deliver in peace and harmony, individual creativity, it escapes us as uncontrollable movements: illness, murder, rape …
THE SENSE OF I This is the subtlest of the senses; it is the result of proper use and blossoming of all the other senses. It is the privilege of the true mother, master artists, saints … Its physical seat is indefinable, which seems only to be in the other, in the perception of its potential no matter what mask is worn. It is love itself and requires complete knowledge of one’s self where the I of each becomes as intelligible as our own Me. It should be the inspired and constant practice of doctors and clergy.
It is the divine sign of the awareness of human likeness to the Creator and no longer ignoring, like Him, the similarities and differences: plants, animals, rocks, ethers …
It is the whole Universe where the being is dissolved in his lifetime. The love relationships, well maintained, are good springboards for this approach: to attain the sensuality of the soul, it is not bad to go through that of the body.
Air is a fluid gas, compressible, expansive, liquefiable, composed of oxygen (23% in weight), nitrogen (75%), argon (1.5%), rare gas in very small quantities (helium, krypton, neon, xenon), carbonic acid, water vapor, traces of hydrogen and ozone, and whose mass forms the atmosphere.
It is this atmosphere that allows life on the planet: living beings draw oxygen from there; the composition of these layers prevents ionizing radiation—emitted through the stars and capable of producing serious damage in biological macromolecules—reaching its lowest layers where the living beings grow. Its circulation promotes the reproduction of the plant species through dispersion of seeds; its transparency to some solar radiations (particularly visible spectrum) offers plants the energy necessary for their growth (synthesis of biological molecules)…
As for the human being, the oxygen from the air breathed into the lungs crosses the wall of the gallbladder; it attaches to red blood cells that carry it throughout the body, and it oxidizes the organic material that shapes our tissue.
Respiration is therefore a slow combustion, a source of animal heat. One of the products of this combustion is carbon dioxide (which will be carried back to the lungs by the blood), which will be rejected through the expiration at the same time as the water vapor, nitrogen, and the unassimilated part of oxygen.
Confined air, very rich in carbon dioxide and very poor in oxygen, becomes extremely harmful: the quantity of pure air necessary to each individual is around 10 m3 per hour. The absence of respirable air is compensated by rate which, during breathing difficulty, immediately mobilizes—through shrinkage—an abundance of red blood cells in order to increase the inner surface of absorption.
And if one can go days, even weeks, without eating; if one can subsist months, even years, in dark caves with almost no sunlight (one can withstand many years’ residence at the bottom of a large, deep hole), it is impossible to remain without breathing longer than a few tens of seconds (pearl fishers, master yogi): air is therefore our first vital necessity and the most diverse kinds of death are due to asphyxiation: drowning, crucifixion, calcination …
And our first need is sickened: the first issue was due to the crowding of men into cities, where they are the only animals able to survive without living space. Then they added atmospheric pollution due to stupid urban activities, rural industrialization, and manufacturing. Any solid, liquid or gaseous compound that does not appear in its normal state in the atmosphere is called a pollutant. One can therefore consolidate the main very harmful compounds:
To these nuisances, growing every day, one can add the elimination of green space (able to absorb the carbonic acid and restore oxygen) and the poor conditions of deep aeration into which man places himself through lack of exercise and through the abandonment of his moral potential. The expression of relief, “Ahhhhh! I can breathe!” is hardly ever heard now: how, in effect, to feel relieved by increasing all, including oneself. To be as light as air is an axiom that has become quite deceptive.
But the deep breath has many other functions: it frees the lungs of glucose and plays an important role in the metabolism of calcium, acting on blood clotting (which is much slower than blood circulation); the quantity of lactic acid diminishes in the blood after having traversed the lungs.
Breathing acts through blood circulation, brain irrigation and nerve recharging, the mental and spiritual activity. Exhalation contributes to the rejection of poisons and acids, of the gaseous wastes, to good functioning of the intestines. The act of breathing allows the good circulation of fluids, currents and subtle vibrations and don’t forget how air makes song: this series of notes composed on speech …
Note: Don’t forget, also, that our skin breathes, and that it is better to never hinder the free flow of air around our bodies.
PRIMARILY, BREATHING IS NEVER JUST ABSORBING AIR INTO THE CHEST AND THEN DISMISSING IT but this uncontrolled act, which works wonderfully in free animals, seems to falter within the “civilized” community. But the involution gag has not quite asphyxiated our souls; our breaths still testify to a certain spiritual attraction: breath and soul, in Latin, are actually synonyms (anima, from the Greek anemos).
And this animating principle, in a state of starvation, may be restored to us by discipline that includes a re-education through daily exercises. There are so many—other than singing—and we chose for your use the simplest and least dangerous from the Iranian practice advocated by the sage Hanish.
SUN SALUTATION
I. When one wakes up, stretch once or twice, like a cat, breathing or moaning aloud.
II. Jump (literally) in a single bound, or as quickly as possible, out of bed.
III. Fall to the knees; close the eyes; breathe calmly; say aloud (as a prayer or to give thanks), articulating with great clarity whatever phrase or series of phrases or paragraphs or a poem full of love and humility; this takes five minutes or more.
IV. Fill a container or a bathtub with cold water—the temperature that flows from the tap—sit down in it without allowing the water to exceed the groin; remain in this position for five minutes or more (if one does not support cold water well then begin with warm water, bringing down the temperature a little each day); one can practice cleaning the nasal cavity at the same time:
a. Take a deep, long breath—follow one’s own breath by thought
b. Exhale very quickly, approximately one-tenth of a second, through the right nostril, blocking the left nostril with the help of the thumb as the index finger or rather its tip is resting between the two eyebrows.
c. Again, take a deep, gentle breath in, then exhale through the left and right nostrils alternatively—repeat three times.
The feet in the same cold water, start at the ankles and use a plant-based sponge to soak the whole body; finish with the neck and, thenceforth, squeeze out the excess water from the sponge in such a way that the water streams down the back: in the event of uncontrollable shivering, enjoy screaming! – This cleans the lungs.
V. Without drying off, get out of the water to practice, sitting cross-legged or in the lotus position, the following breathing:
a. Block one nostril (as described above with the exhalation); but this time breathing in for four seconds.
b. Hold your breath for sixteen seconds (or less if it is too hard in the beginning); whatever it is, progressively increase, always without having to force an effort (if so, stop well before you reach this point).
c. Exhale through the other nostril for eight seconds.
Do so three times alternatively through each nostril.
PRELIMINARY EXPLANATIONS
“Everything is burned, taken to the air,
to, I don’t know what…
Life is immense, drunk on absence
And bitterness is sweet, the spirit clear.”
—Paul Valéry (Le Cimetière marin)
From sunrise, one should facilitate organic exchanges and the clarity of mind through deep breathing. One must acquire the impression that the air that one breathes in and out voluntarily, in a set period which can stretch more each day, is like a spring of water whose shores are our entire respiratory system: the inner nose, larynx, trachea and the whole bronchial tree.
Inhales and exhales are performed, closed-mouth, through the nose. The seconds are counted by the rhythm of heartbeats that breath control will slow as we go along with the exercises. Once one focuses his/her thoughts, the places where the beats are most sensitive are the heart, the pulse in the wrist, the inner ear. One always seeks a straight spinal cord, but with suppleness and muscular surrender.
Seek the darkness, which better aids concentration. Ensure that the tongue lies down and does not dart up the palate. Never do, straight away, a successful exercise twice but, however, if one is interrupted due to an error in execution, do not continue on this course but begin again with the preparatory movements.
PREPARATORY MOVEMENTS The following exercises are all practiced by fixing one’s attention on a point (bug, button, a coin) and not looking away. For the beginning exercises, this fixed point is placed on the wall at eye level, and you sit two meters away.
Maintain a straight spine and relaxed muscles (the corpse pose that we will describe at the end is a good preparatory, relaxation exercise).
Make five forced inhales and exhales very quickly; remain on the exhale, then begin the exercise which must always complete a flow and not at once; inhalation and exhalation are, we repeat, always through the nose and the times given here are average times: 7 s – 4 s – 7 s – 4 s, one can reduce these lengths in the beginning (5-3-5-3), or increase them when one has a good handle on the exercises (10-6-10-6).
FIRST EXERCISE Sit on a stool, legs and thighs at a right angle, feet placed in a V shape, heels 20 cm apart, hands placed at each thigh’s center with the thumbs to the inside; place the object to look at 2 m away and at eye height; take five inhales and exhales quickly then:
1. Inhale regularly for 7 s
2. Hold the breath, lungs full, for 4 s
3. Exhale regularly for 7 s
4. Hold the breath, lungs empty for 4 s
Begin again without interruption, all of 1 – 4, seven times in a row. This exercise reinforces the visual sharpness and discernment.
SECOND EXERCISE The object at eye’s height, 2 m distance; standing straight and not stiff, the heels joined, the feet in the V position; five fast inhalations and exhalations:
1. Inhale for 7 s while rising progressively onto the balls of the feet and progressively clenching the fists
2. Hold the breath, lungs full 4 s
3. Exhale for 7 s, descending progressively onto the heels and loosening the fists
4. Hold the breath, lungs empty 4 s
Begin again, 1–4, seven times successively. This exercise strengthens hearing and understanding
THIRD EXERCISE In the same seated position, look at something 20 to 30 cm in front and between the separations of the toes, chin tucked; make five forceful exhalations and inhalations then:
1. Inhale for 7 s while descending to the ground to end up with shoulders on the knees
2. Hold the breath, lungs full, 4 s (without ending the eyes on the object—squint if necessary)
3. Exhale in 7 s, coming up and returning to the seated position (continuing to fix one’s glance on the object)
4. Hold the breath, lungs empty, 4 s
Begin the whole 1–4 again, seven times continuously. This exercise strengthens concentration.
FOURTH EXERCISE in the same position as the second exercise above, make five forced inhalations and exhalations then:
1. Inhale for 7 s, staying perfectly still
2. Exhale for 7 s after having stretched the arms out in front, the palms opened (fingers tight) and, making a right angle with the wrists, make 7 circles (1 per second of exhalation) at the height of the solar plexus.
3. Inhale for 7 s without characterizing the circles with the same position of the arms and the hands extended; the last circle stays at that height, closing the fists (or opening the palm).
4. Without bending the knees and without exhaling, hit the ground suddenly, speedily, fiercely as far as possible in front of you, with a closed fist (or with the palm opened)
5. Stand up quickly and find the correct standing position from the beginning, then exhale very quickly (1/10 s) through the nose.
Repeat steps 1 – 5 six times in a row, this time alternating the right and left arms. This exercise performs a good massage on the digestive organs and increases the rapidity of the reflexes.
Note: One does not take one’s glance off the specific point on the wall except when hitting the ground.
FIFTH EXERCISE in the same position as for exercises 2 and 4, make five inhalations and exhalations, then:
1. Inhale for 7 s, raising the arms (which are parallel) in front of you, hands hanging, arms bending progressively
2. Hold the breath, lungs full, for 4 s, maintaining the tension of the arms and the softness of the hanging hands
3. Exhale 7 s by leaving the arms parallel, but progressively relaxing them without lowering them, hands always hanging
4. Hold the breath, lungs empty, 4 s in this same position
Begin 1 – 4 again, three times consecutively, but remaining with the arms bent and parallel, without lifting up as with 1, then:
5. Inhale for 7 s, bringing arms crossed and gradually extending them, hands always hanging
6. Hold the breath, lungs full, 4 s, arms straight, hands hanging
7. Exhale in 7 s, relaxing the arms progressively, hands always hanging
8. Hold the breath 4 s, arms relaxed
Do steps 5 – 8 three times in a row but keeping the arms crossed and without bringing them to the #5 position
9. Inhale in 7 s, bringing the outstretched arms progressively to a right angle with the shoulders and in the parallel position between them, hands tight, palms pointed in, at a right angle with the wrists, the fingers finally approach tightly, as closely as possible one hand to the other, but without touching
10. Hold the breath, lungs full, 4 s, arms and hands firm
11. Exhale in 7 s, bringing the palms to face the body and letting the arms fall at the end
This exercise increases the magnetic and electrical potential.
There are many other respiratory exercises just as beneficial described in Dr.
Hanish’s L’Art de la respiration (Le Courrier du Livre)
Here are two other exercises of different persuasions and of a very good contribution:
CORPSE POSE : An excellent relaxation exercise that can serve as a preliminary for other, more complex ones. Lie on the floor on the back, arms along the body, eyes closed. Take notice of the whole body successively to obtain relaxation, little by little. Begin with the big toe of the right foot then the next toe, then the next and the next; go to the foot then to the calf then to the thigh. Go to the other leg. Next, move up the length of the body, then the torso then the arms (proceeding similarly as with the legs), then the shoulders to the neck, the face and to the top of the skull.
The beginner in this exercise will be find that the relaxed part tightens almost immediately. After some weeks, even months, the relaxation is amplified and in some seconds the whole body can reach complete relaxation. A quarter of an hour of this exercise well done gives a good night’s sleep.
HUMILITY POSE its title is explicit and it assumes the benefit of that explicitly. Stand up straight but relaxed and literally let yourself fall to your knees. With the left hand, grasp the right wrist, arms to the back: sit on the heels; exhale rapidly through the nose, then inhale, then:
1. Exhale slowly, leaning forward until the forehead touches the ground.
2. Hold the breath, lungs emptied, in this position as long as possible without any effort.
3. Inhale slowly while rising and begin to exhale just before the upper body is vertical to the ground, continue exhaling while slowly joining the forehead to the floor.
SOUND, ACCURACY AND NUISANCE Sound is an auditory sensation created by the disruption of an acoustic material medium. It is, in fact, the vibration of silence. Our auditory capacity goes from 16,000 to 20,000 Hz. While the frequency is more elevated, one enters into the domain of ultrasound; lower, into infrasound. Both are inaudible to us.
There are pleasant sounds that one soaks up from music: nature, classical music, the murmur of the beloved’s voice … and other unpleasant sounds: dissonances, false voices, machines … these last ones may cause auditory fatigue if heard continuously and if they are intense (from 60 to 70 dB); intolerable pain from 130 dB. It is interesting to note that in France today, 2,800,000 people are reaching more or less advanced and irreversible deafness due mostly to the annoying noises of modern society.
This explicative parenthesis closed, we will see the beneficial effects of the auditory vibration, and the benefits that it can procure through the intermediary of the voice spoken or sung, such that its aptitude assures the full and deep respiration that the preceding exercises address … A full and deep breathing, an internal massage of the cerebral lobes, an electromagnetic recharge, a good circulation of fluids, a warming power, an autonomic balance, an excellent metabolism, an excellent rapport with others, the joy of living and many other things still.
VOCALIZATION AND SINGING For five to eight minutes each day, vocalize from a recorded piano or, better still, a piano directly. The vocalizations on “yes” and “or” below are like the Tibetan AUM, allowing the whole phenomenon of the production of sounds, from the largest opening to the smallest.
The “yes-or” will be first:
I. Spades: yes-or-or-or-yes then
II. Rows: yesororororyes
to allow the different movements of the whole wind tunnel presiding with the voice’s emission.
Don’t forget that if the sounds materialize at the root of the tongue and end at the lips, psychically they shape from the bottom of the spinal column preceding to the summit of the skull at the level of the pineal, which orchestrates the whole being’s hormonal system.
R. Tagore wrote, “God hires me if I do well but God loves me if I sing.” In effect, speaking or chanting actually unites all of Creation.
We do not forget that hearing is never anything but the ear’s third function, which is never more than a bit of differentiated skin—one can hear with other parts of the body and even with the whole body. The first function of the ear is to assume the electric recharge of the brain (the second governs our equilibrium).
A being who hears certain right sounds, sacred ones (like AUM), experiences a deep tonic. The song, like the spoken voice, becomes essential nourishment just like the air, light, water …
Dr. Tomatis declared, “A brain that meditates has an enormous need for electricity. In reality, we need from four and a half hours of information per day due to three billion/seconds of information. Or, it is through language, the voice, the sounds that we realize this cortical recharge.”
It is not surprising that certain sounds create toxicosis, like from alcohol or meat; and others create freedom, like fruit or the color yellow. Some sounds do not flatter, only activate our lower, visceral parts, and they are apt to disease us spiritually by exacerbating our sexuality. One knows now that pop music has the power to wilt vegetables.
Do not forget that music is a form of expression which one can impartially judge: one C sharp is not a B flat.
One will always put the right ear toward the accompaniment of the sound source and especially those who sing out of tune do not give up: this knowledge of their disability is a first step toward accuracy. It is better to sing out of tune than to not sing at all, and don’t forget that one can sing accurately and badly and sing out of tune and well!
Note: Do not hesitate to learn from tender and enthusiastic texts (those like The Canticle of the Sun by François d’Assise or Vaisseaux by Fauré) before addressing, as soon as possible, the Gregorian Chant.
GREGORIAN CHANT All in Nature is both transmitter and receiver of vibrations. The vibrations that one emits in original creativity nourishes that which it reaches but also the one who creates them.
Sound vibrations have an extremely deep effect on everything living: the majority of modern music has the power to wilt plants and the majority of classical music activates their growth and prolongs their blossoming.
The Gregorian chants have the privilege (along with certain sacred, meditative Hindu music) of doing nothing to flatter us. They express through the instrument of instruments—the a cappella human voice (without instrumental accompaniment). They do not create emotional references in our memories, and they are nourishing, as pure and as subtle as fruit. They do not reinforce our egotism and they call to our harmonious, universal, divine part, which dozes within each of us. They do not stir us either physically or intellectually like all other music, even so-called religious music, but rather this sacred music touches us spiritually.
In the treatment of psychic trouble, listening to them can replace the usage of electroshock, stimulants, and tranquilizers. One must listen with one’s whole being and let it sing within us like the song of the first morsel of nourishment after a thirty-day fast.
In the long fasts, the daily musical practice of vocalization, listening to Gregorian chants, praying aloud, or reading poems aloud, the deep breathing, very rightly joins the patients.
Man penetrates music and music penetrates man.
Because the life of man is not purely spiritual, the music is also incarnated. It is a vibration. The source and the receptor of this vibration is the body of man.
The more the body is inhabited by the spirit, the purer is the music that emanates. The more the music is pure, the more it spiritualizes that which receives it.
The nervous centers, transmitters and receptors, are distributed in all the body according to a vertical axis, determining the different heights of the specified highly sensitive areas. The upper parts of the body vibrate to the sharp frequencies, the middle frequencies address the centers situated at the height of the chest, and the low frequencies take you to the viscera. Following the points of attack (or of emission), the feelings expressed or suggested—because there is correspondence between the transmitter and the receptor—will be of the spiritual order, or sensitive, or carnal. A light voice, rich in keen harmonics, will touch your soul; then there are the hotter voices, which will make the heart beat, and others, deeper, that will awaken more violent passions.
But let us come to the melodies themselves: a melody of the second mode, for example, “Dies Irae,” this funeral song, famous even today, usually ends low and sometimes reaches a strong pathos.
The Requiem, an intro borrowed from the same funeral liturgy, is a sweet emotion, indicating a restraint in joy, well tuned to the meaning of the text, which asks for an eternal rest for the soul and expresses great hope. A limited scale melody—a fifth whose sounds follow at intervals.
I only speak of the melody. But the Gregorian chant acts also through its rhythm, producing the opposite effects, one must say, from those produced by jazz rhythms or pop music.
Fully aligned with speech, the Gregorian chant is a cry. When one asks to use a text, it simply keeps the pace of the sentence. The simplest example is the psalmody: the verse divides into two stics, rising to the focus of the sentence, then falling again to the finale, at the same rhythm as the breath.
But often also one asks the song to paraphrase the text, to amplify the feelings though the proper musical developments in a way to cry himself, uttered without art, under the empire of flesh and blood, with the same liberty the same apparent absence of rules.
Shaped by the school of Latin language, it has its rules. Each note lasts an average of one syllable, the duration that can be elongated and lightened, which can also be doubled, tripled, quadrupled, but never divided. It is this that one calls indivisibility of first time. Never, also, can one slide the rhythmic current through the methods of syncope, dear to our contemporaries. It is always the natural path of discourse: water from a bountiful source on the rocks or gently flowing on the sand, as appropriate.
One would willingly say the practice of singing Gregorian chants is a therapy of vital balance and a key to wisdom.
In a monastic life where the spiritual demands risk engendering tensions, choral singing is present by necessity. In fact, anyone who is strongly concentrated on him/herself senses the value of choral singing.
It is a recharge of neurons collected by the ear, which is done thanks to the voice. It is a relaxation and a communion. It is a chorus whereby one can more accurately take the community’s temperature. But it is the choir that rebuilds after the attrition of daily life.
This is far more true for the liturgy chant, which is not merely happy to translate a state of common soul, but, master of the Word of God, it proposes to reconstruct the common soul by making the Word of God more accessible to everyone.
The Gregorian chant is of religious essence; that is why it is aligned since its birth to the most religious of religions, the Word of God. It promotes psychic and mental hygiene (it’s therapeutic, if you will)—all because it is, above all, the servant of wisdom.
Prayer is a word that is derived from the Latin precariat (which has the same meaning), from which the adjective precarious also derives, a word that is a synonym for fragile and, in the strict sense of the term, means to be obtained through prayer. Prayer then appears as a symbol of life itself: what is more precarious than the life whose string can be cut at any instant?
And could this insecurity not be what makes it so precious, so exalting?
Prayer is a movement of the soul during a spiritual communication with God through the elevation toward him of our feelings, our aspirations, our meditations. In Catholic theology, one differentiates the prayer of action of grace (grateful communication and universalizing in God), and prayer for asking (communication less in a disinterested way, more personalized); both can be either collective or individual.
For Alexis Carrel, prayer is not the simple mechanical recitation of formulas but a mystical elevation, where the consciousness is absorbed in the contemplation of the imminent and transcendental principle of the world.
It is, also, above all, a way of being: prayer is the desire to live in accordance with one’s consciousness such that one is awakened more each day, and it reduces the field of the unconscious and subconscious that makes us access the incarnated Verb, that which allows us to reveal the uniqueness that each one carries within for the unity of everything. Prayer is as necessary as air that one breathes, like the water one drinks, like the child, like what we do in wanting; prayer carries grace: the accomplishment. It is this movement which, in rest, allows us to find the intensity of disorder, of the extraordinary: of this “OH MY GOD, THANK YOU!” or of this “Oh my God, I pray thee, no!” that provides good discourse or bad discourse. Prayer sublimes the daily in detachment from the sensation and in the attachment to everything alive, beyond the appearance, in the unique principle, beyond centuries. No matter one’s religious faith (Catholic, Protestant, Jew, Muslim, Hare Krishna, Buddhist …), it reinforces the only acquisition of man: monotheism, the consciousness of the uniqueness of everything.
It is, above all, work and discipline: one must practice daily even without believing; it is thus not more harmful than the physical culture one accomplishes in continuing to conduct a stupid and sedentary life. One can wash oneself without thinking but it’s a shame. This ablution of the soul carries no contraindication and even less than fluoride toothpaste. It operates at a high, intelligible voice, in a secluded place, in any position (lying down, standing, sitting), but that which renders the most available is kneeling; and not to get down on one’s knees but to fall down to one’s knees! Contemplation is the second step, which introduces us to prayer, the third is awakening to the reality of God and to the weakness of our own condition, the fourth is the quest for the voice or the face of God.
Meister Eckhart expressed it this way: “In the breakthrough, I am stripped of my own volition, free even of the will of God and all of his operations, even God himself! There I am, above all creatures, neither God nor Creature, but I am what I was, what I will remain now and forever. Then something penetrates in me that should elevate me above the angels. And in this break, I receive such wealth, that God cannot suffice with everything that is like God, nor with all these divine operations; because what I get from this break is that God and I are one. There I am what I was. I neither believe or disbelieve because there I am still a question that moves all things. Because God finds no place in man. Because man, conquered by poverty—this for all of eternity, it will always remain. So God is one with the mind. And that is the most intimate poverty that we can find. He who does not understand this discourse does not put a hammer to his head. It is the naked truth that comes directly from the heart of God. May we live in a way to eternally feel it, with the help of God! Amen.”
The “Our Father” (which so many no longer want because of the Vatican and the hoarding by most of the proponents of Catholicism) remains an excellent springboard for falling into this reserve, provided that we find meaning, power, to explain it to oneself, without forgetting to forgive Rome (which continues to enslave it): it is not Love that seized it, it seized Love; we live more and more under the Roman decline without any chance of freeing ourselves from the materialism imposed on us by forced paternalism and sectarianism.
“Our Father who is in heaven
Let your name be sanctified
Let your reign arrive
Let your will be here on earth as it is in heaven;
Give us this day our daily bread
Forgive our offenses
As we pardon those who offend us
Let us not fall to temptation
Save us from wrongdoing;
Thy will be done
Amen.”
And our daily prayer makes us understand that original sin is not wisdom (the joy that one gives to another in the flesh of the Spirit) but knowledge, science (the sadness of the belief of having understood anything and mistaking oneself for God), so to sin is only, as Thibon said, “To act only with a fragment of oneself, enslaving the whole in the rebellious part, treating the part as the whole. To not do this or that in itself is to do this or that in a dissonant or anarchic way—it is acting outside of consent and collaboration with the whole being. From the limited character and exclusive sin: man is trained by the Earth through a fragment, through one side of himself, the whole overthrow is unilateral! To walk is a harmonious act where each part of the body has a function: one walks with his/her whole being but one falls only to one side.”
Universality exists without any intermediary of human authority other than that of our own asceticism.
The sense of smell, which permits the receiving of the scent vibrations of gaseous bodies, has its headquarters in the nasal cavity. It is interesting to note that the verb “to feel” refers to nearly all of our senses: one feels bad, one feels pain, one feels pleasure, one feels heat or hunger… but one feels also specifically with the nose. For Maeterlinck, the sense of smell will be the only sense that is not degraded: “This mysterious sense, which, on the surface, appears almost foreign to our organism, is perhaps better considered than that which penetrates most closely. After all, we are air beings. Isn’t air the most absolute element and the most promptly essential, and isn’t smell precisely the unique sense that some parts perceive? The perfumes, which are the jewels of this air that keeps us alive, don’t they adorn us without reason? It would not be surprising that this misunderstood luxury replied to something very deep and very essential, and as we have come to see, to something which is no longer, something which is no more. It is very possible that this sense, the only one that is turned toward the future, seized already the most striking manifestations of a form of a happy and healthy state of matter that reserves many surprises for us.
“Meanwhile, it is still the most violent perceptions, the least subtle. It is hardly suspected in aiding the imagination, the depths and harmonious effluvia that obviously envelop the great spectacles of atmosphere and light. Are we yet at the point of understanding rain or twilight, haven’t we arrived yet at disentanglement in order to attach a perfume to snow, to ice, to the morning rose, the dawn’s beginning, the twinkling stars? Everything should have its perfume, even the inconceivable, in space, even a ray of the Moon, the water’s murmur, a hovering cloud, the smile of the azure …”
One knows about the importance of smell as a stimulant for the digestive or sexual appetites and that taste is directly linked: a good flu that inhibits this sense prevents taste.
“Colors, perfumes and sounds meet,” affirms the sensitive Baudelaire, and here the remarkable orchestration on bad odors made by Zola in Le Ventre de Paris, “The Limburgs, the Marolles, the square Pont-l’Évêques, each put their acute and particular note in a harsh sentence to nausea … Amidst this strong sentence, the parmesan casts, at times, a trickle of pastoral flute while the brie gives out the bland sweetness of wet tambourines. There was the suffering recovery of the Livarot cheese. And this symphony was silenced for a moment by a sharp aniseed extended climax. Suddenly, the grumble of the Limburgs arrive between three women, sour and bitter, as if blown through dying throats! … Thus, it created a silence and the enormous Camembert expanded its exhalation, stifling the other senses under a surprising abundance of spoiled breath … They (the three shrews) remained standing, greeting each other in the grand finale of cheeses—a true ending of a great lyrical drama. At this time, everything was at once bestowed: this cacophony of foul breath, from the soft heaviness of cooked pasta, of gruyère and of gouda, to the alkaline points of the Olivet. There were the deafening snores of the cantal, chester, goat cheeses, similar to a song, heavy on the bass, onto which, in staccato notes, the small, sharp vapors of Neufchatel, Troyes and Mont d’Or stood out. Then the smells bustled, rolled over one another. This spread is sustained in the middle of a general buzz, not having more distinct perfumes (sic), in a dizziness subdued by nausea and a terrible force of asphyxiation. Nevertheless, it seemed that the bad words of Madame Lecoeur and Mademoiselle Saget really stank!”
It is certain that our olfactory sense is extremely sensitive: rose essence diluted at 1/2,000 mg is noticeable though it wears out quickly (one quickly becomes insensitive to the fragrance) and it is easily corruptible; in dietetics, if a patient is advised to practice a non-mixing diet (the energetic elements taken separately), without forbidding meat or fish, he or she will be disgusted by him or herself, gradually abandoned by the putrid swamp in the intestines, the patient will rediscover his or her taste and smell and will renounce meat, then fish, then stinky cheese … At the end of two years, the patient will no longer be stationed at the butcher’s counter: the stench that reigns there would make him or her vomit. One also notices a similar evolution in the amorous relationships: a woman carnivore smells, through a refined nose, like cadavers and urine and more, while a vegetarian woman offers scents of hay, thyme and pineapple more and more pronounced under the same conditions; just as when a man’s semen joins with living nutrition it is much less abundant but more effective.
Each of us has a specific odor, a style of expression, easily recognizable by a sensual being—eyes closed or even blind. Who doesn’t remember the smell of the earth during the summer after a good rain, the scents of a rose, the smells of the spices in the Souqs of Marrakech? In this regard, we have a happy revelation; one may conceive of a concert for nostrils. One of our friends had cut a half of a tree trunk into small pieces and in each of the number of compartments had deposited many various spices; each guest took the container with two hands and passed it under the nose in dissimilar movements and rhythms according to the inspiration of the moment. How happy are the townspeople, embedded in industrial cities, now that they can enjoy the aromatic diffusers which are able to dispense essential oils, the penetrating paths of thyme, rosemary, mint … as needed or desired. We close our eyes more often in order to better feel! The slight odors, the subtlest scents, are somehow the materiality of the air and the soul manifested. And the truly good smells are more nutritious than appetizing.
This is a physical agent capable of awing the eye and making things visible; given to us by the daystar, the Sun, which also offers its warmth and rhythm of life to the surface of the globe. With every ray, the Sun dies, and we live with such a vivifying agony. Sunlight travels about 312,000 km/s and it comes to us from the Sun in 8 mn 13 s.
SOLAR RADIATION Solar light is complex. We ultimately see white, but the prism decomposes the red, orange, blue, indigo, violet radiation. These colors match the vibrations whose frequency is variable depending on the hues.
One can also classify them according to the length of their wave. On the other hand, the retina responds to a number of vibrations and not below a certain number. There are invisible vibrations above and below the visible spectrum.
INVISIBLE RADIATION This is detected by an infrared thermometer and by a fluorescent screen for the ultraviolet rays. Infrared radiation is mainly heat. The slowness of their waves closely resembles electrical vibrations.
By their heating action they enable sunbathing. Sunlight contains another part of ordinary and average ultraviolet radiation, which has a lot to offer in the practice of the heliotherapy and may vary according to various influences.
VARIATIONS OF SOLAR RADIATION All solar radiation is also itself essentially variable depending on the time of the day, season, latitude, and the purity of the sky.
Secondly, light scattered by the atmosphere has an important part in the composition of total light. Finally, certain antagonistic phenomena appear to exist among the radiation. Thus, the infrared would, to some extent, be ultraviolet antagonists.
ON BACTERIA Weak solar radiation can promote the development of bacteria, but in a general way. Solar action is primarily bactericidal: Bacillus anthracis, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Vibrio cholerae, Eberth’s bacillus die after two hours of sunshine, while Koch discovered some that die in half an hour while they live for twenty-two days protected from the light. Though antibodies are not affected by Sun exposure, microbial toxins are destroyed.
This bactericidal action is exerted not only on cultures and secretions, but also on wounds and tissues and liquid media (full at 1.6 meters, partial up to 3 meters); therefore, the Sun has a very important role in the purification of rivers, streams, soil …
ON PLANTS The growth and regeneration of plants depends entirely on sunlight, which is also involved in chlorophyll function (absorption of carbonic acid, decomposition of carbon and oxygen, the preservation of carbon and the rejection of oxygen, which renews the ambient air).
The carbon in plants turns into starch by diastatic operations in response to light: the carbohydrates from the vegetal kingdom depend on the Sun.
ON ANIMALS A few species that live in dim light or in darkness that seems to us total (invertebrates of the deep, birds and nocturnal predators, noctilucent …); the species of animal that lives under the promoting action of light: activated molecular movements; increased respiratory exchanges, the oxidation, red blood cells, leukocytes, hemoglobin; modified cellular and visceral secretions, take in vitamin D …
VITAMIN D The main source of Vitamin D is contained in the human organism itself; it synthesizes in the skin through the action of sunlight on cholesterol contained in the blood. It is no secret that this vitamin is essential in the phenomenon of growth since it governs the formation of bones and teeth: it is a regulator of phospho-calcic metabolism. Its deficiency causes rickets, a decrease in ash, calcium, and bone phosphorus, the increase in calcium and blood phosphorus, the increased urinary and fecal elimination of calcium and phosphorus, dental caries, the hypertrophy with hypo function of the parathyroid gland …
There are other sources (which we must still be able to assimilate): freshly ground whole-wheat flour, mushrooms, yeast, some algae, cod liver oil … time in the sunshine is no longer the surest source.
INSOLATION, ENERGY AND RADIO-VITALITY It is and is not, said Saint Paul, talking about evil; in effect the only dwelling place for the devil is in our prefrontal lobe. Nothing is mad in Nature itself except for the disastrous consequences of our uncontrolled use of all things. And even this good Sun becomes a danger: you will never see an animal—like a cat—be exposed to the sunlight during the hot hours: they only play in the Sun’s rays during sunrise and sunset: any prolonged, static exposure to the Sun’s intense rays is particularly debilitating, to say nothing of the risks of cerebral insolation and of the burns to the skin. One may very well enjoy the light rays at an angle by sitting naked in the shade (preferably the shade of some foliage) or lying on the ground and undergoing a recharge of telluric currents (which rise from the ground) and cosmic currents (which descend from the sky, a subtle nourishment also quite essential).
Just as one cannot really imagine the infinity of the Universe, we cannot conceive of a limitless color: formless, without all the contours of an object or being (resulting from the organization of its parts), without delimitation of another surface, bounded in turn through the framework of the part of our vision that organizes a painting.
Each shape possesses a tone that is its own and acts beneficially or detrimentally on the beholder. In painting and drawing, shape enables the discipline of perspective, of the reconstitution of volumes. Cézanne replaced the design perspective through the painted perspective: one of his paintings reproduced in black and white will seem gawky, clumsy and flat; once we have the original in front of us and slowly back away, the entire canvas appears in depth; the color subtly orchestrated. Cézanne taught us that to see like this is learned, and even, paradoxically, that we must learn to know before knowing, must learn to re-see before seeing. The miraculous View of Delft by Johannes Vermeer is also there to help us.
An artist fully fulfills his/her function by waking up the public and inciting each person to his or her own creativity. And if a colorful series makes us close our eyes so that the fullness of its luminous persistence resonates within us, we don’t forget that each color carries to us specifications which influence us both psychologically and differently.
Color can nourish us. Leave us to Kandinsky who, after Goethe, remarkably analyzed colors and their effects on humans in Concerning the Spiritual in Art. The excerpt below is taken from the first complete English translation (Hilla Rebay, Editor, New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1946).
Let us concentrate on isolated color, that is letting individual color work on us. A very simple method should be used, with the entire question condensed into as elementary a form as possible. Two great divisions which come to mind are:
1. Warmth and cold of color tonality.
2. Its valuation of light and dark.
Thus develop four main effects of each color which can be, or
I. warm and equally I. light and II. dark, and again
2. cold with I. light, or 2 dark.
Generally speaking, warmth or cold in a color is respectively an inclination toward yellow or blue. This distinction appears, as it were, on one surface, color having the constant fundamental appeal but assuming either a more material or non-material quality. As it is a horizontal movement, the warm colors move on this horizontal surface toward the spectator striving to reach him while the cold ones retreat from him.
Colors themselves, which cause this horizontal movement in another color, are equally characterized by this same movement. Yet, they possess still another movement, which strongly divides them from one another, through their inner appeal producing in this manner the first great contrast in the inner value. Therefore, the inclination of color to cold or warm is of tremendous essential inner importance.
The second great contrast or antithesis is the difference between black and white, the colors which formulate the other two of the four main appeals, that is, the inclination of color to light or to dark. They possess the same movement, to and from the spectator, although not in dynamic but static rigid form.
The second movement of yellow and blue, which forms part of the first great antithesis, is its eccentric and concentric movement. (All these statements are the result of spiritual experiences and are not based on any positive science.) If two circles of the same size are drawn and painted respectively yellow and blue, a brief concentration on these circles will reveal in the yellow a spreading movement outwards from the center which almost markedly approaches the spectator. The blue, on the other hand, develops a concentric movement (like a snail hiding in its shell) and moves away from the spectator. The eye is impressed by the first circle, while it is caught by the second.
This effect is emphasized in the case of light and dark colors; the effect of the yellow is increased when it is made lighter with an admixture of white. The effect of blue increases if the color is darkened with an admixture of black. This fact gains in importance if we realize that yellow inclines to the light (white) to such an extent that there exists really no very dark yellow. There is, therefore, a deep relationship between white and yellow in the physical sense, just as there is between black and blue, blue being capable of such depth that it borders on black.
Besides this physical relationship, there is a spiritual one which, through its intensity, marks a strong division between the two pairs (yellow and white on one side, and blue and black on the other) leading to a close relationship between the two parts of each pair. (Further details will be found in a subsequent discussion on black and white.)
An attempt to make yellow (typically warm color) colder, produces a green tint immediately checking both movements (horizontal and eccentric). The color receives a sickly, supersensuous character, as if a human being full of ambition and energy was checked in these ambitions or his vitality thwarted by outer circumstances. The blue by its contrary movement acts as a brake on the yellow and, finally, when more blue is added the two antithetic movements destroy each other, with complete quietude and immobility as the result. Thus, green is born.
This happens to white, when mixed with gray. White loses its permanence, and the gray finally imposes itself. In a spiritual sense, the latter is closely related to green. However, green contains yellow and blue as paralyzed forces which can be reactivated. It has a possibility of movement which is completely lacking in gray. It is so lacking because gray is formed of colors that have no purely active (moving) forces, as they consist, on the one hand, of motionless resistance and, on the other, of an immobility void of any power of resistance.
Since both component colors of green are active and have a movement all their own, it is possible to establish their spiritual appeal from the character of these movements. Likewise, if we experiment and allow the colors to influence us, we will arrive at the same results. As a matter of fact, the initial movement of yellow is the tendency to advance toward the spectator, which can be increased to a degree bordering on intrusion by increasing the intensity of yellow; and also, the second movement, spreading beyond the boundaries, the dispersion of the power into its surroundings are similar to the capacities of any material power which blindly assails an object to burst aimlessly in every direction. On the other hand, yellow, in any geometric form, if gazed at steadily, disturbs its observer, hurts him but also stimulates him. It displays all the characteristics of power expressed by a color which finally carries an aggressive and insistent effect to the mind. (This is the effect of the yellow Bavarian letterbox, if it has not lost its original color, it is interesting that the lemon is yellow (sour taste), the canary bird is yellow [shrill singing]. Here, there is a particular intensity of the colored tone.)
This quality of yellow, which has a great inclination toward lighter colors, can be brought to a power and height unbearable to the eye and to the mind. When so intensified, it sounds like a shrill horn, blown constantly louder, or a high-pitched flourish of trumpets. (A parallel between the colored and musical tones, can naturally be only relative, just as a violin gives very different tones which can be expressed by various instruments to reproduce the various shades. In making such parallels, the pure tone of color and music is considered unvaried by vibration or damper, etc.)
Yellow is the typical earthly color and never contains a profound meaning. With an intermixture of blue, it takes on a sickly color. When compared with the frame of mind of some individual, it would be capable of the color representation of madness—not melancholy or hypochondriacal mania but rather an attack of violent, raving lunacy. The mad man attacks other persons, smashes everything in his way, squanders his physical powers in all directions, uses them up without rhyme, reason or plan, until he has used them up completely. It is also akin to the utter waste when the last rays of summer strike the intense autumn leaves, deprived of the quieting blue which rises to the heavens. A very powerful color is created, lacking all capacity of depth. This capacity of profound depth is found in blue and, theoretically, in all its physical movements: 1. retreating from the spectator; 2. moving toward its own center. The same applies, if we allow the blue (in any desired geometric form) to work on the mind. The inclination of blue to deepen is so strong that its inner appeal is stronger when its shade is deeper. The deeper the blue the more it beckons man into the Infinite, arousing a longing for purity and the supersensuous. It is the color of the heavens just as we imagine it, when we hear the word heaven.
Blue is the typical heavenly color (the halos are golden for emperors and prophets, that is for mortals, and sky-blue for symbolic figures, that is spiritual beings; Kondakoff, “Histoire de I’Art Byzantine, conslderee principalement dans les miniatures,” Paris 1886–1891, Vol. II, page 382). When very dark, blue develops an element of repose (unlike green, which as we shall see later, is earthly, self-satisfied repose of rather solemn, supernatural profoundness, this is to be understood literally. On the road to this “super” lies the “natural” which cannot be avoided. All the tortures, questions, contradictions of the earth must be experienced. None have avoided them. Here, too, there is this inner necessity which is covered by the outer. The realization of this necessity is the source of “repose.” From such repose we are far removed. It is difficult to approach the realm of this predominantly spiritual blue.) When it sinks into black, it echoes a grief that is hardly human (also, different from violet). It attains an endless, profound meaning sinking into the deep seriousness of all things where there is no end. Rising toward the light, a movement little suited to it, it takes on an indifferent character, growing more distant to men like the high, light blue of the sky. The lighter it is the weaker it becomes until it achieves a silent repose by becoming white. In music, light blue is like a flute, dark blue like a cello, and when still darker, it becomes a wonderful double bass. The deepest and most serene form of blue may be compared to the deep notes of an organ. Yellow easily becomes acute and cannot attain deep significance.
It is difficult for blue to become acute, as it is incapable of rising to great intensity.
An ideal balance in the mixture of these two diametrically and totally opposed colors is green.
The horizontal movements, movements from and toward the center, destroy and nullify each other. This results in repose, a logical conclusion. The direct effect, on the eye and through the eye upon the soul, achieves the same result. This is recognized by doctors, particularly occulists.
Absolute green, which is the most restful color in existence, moves in no direction, has no corresponding appeal, such as joy, sorrow, or passion, demands nothing. This persistent lack of movement is a quality which has a quieting effect on the tired souls of men, though it becomes tiresome after a time. Pictures painted in shades of green confirm this statement. A picture painted in yellow will always exhale a spiritual warmth, or a blue painting appears cooling (that is an active effect, because man, as an element of the universe, has been so created as to exercise constant, eternal movement). Green has a wearisome effect (passive effect). Passivity is the most characteristic quality of absolute green, carrying with it a certain emanation of this quality of richness and self-satisfaction. For this reason, the absolute green in the realm of color can be compared to the so-called bourgeoisie; it is an immovable, self-satisfied element, limited in every sense and, in many ways, resembling a fat, healthy, immovably resting cow, capable only of eternal rumination, while dull bovine eyes gaze forth vacantly into the world. (This is also the effect of the much vaunted ideal gravity. How well Christ said this, “You are neither cold nor warm. …”)
Green, the color of summer, comes to life after the winter months of storm and stress are left behind, and nature, the febrile activity and growth of springtime forgotten, sinks satisfied to rest.
When absolute green is brought out of balance, it rises to yellow and becomes alive, youthful, and gay. Through the dominance of yellow, an active power has reasserted itself. In the case of the dominance of blue, the green sinks deep and acquires an entirely different appeal by becoming grave, still, and contemplative. Here, an active element enters an entirely different character from the one affected, and adds warmth to the green.
Changing from light to dark, green retains its original character of equanimity and restfulness, the former increasing with the trend to lightness, the latter with the inclination to depth, all of which is quite natural because these changes are caused by black and white. In music, the absolute green is best represented by placid, long-drawn middle notes of a violin.
The latter two colors, black and white, have already been discussed in general terms. White is often considered as no color, or a negation of color (thanks to the Impressionists who see “no white in nature.”) In his letters, Van Gogh raises the question whether he may not paint a white wall dead white. This question, which offers no difficulty for a non-representational artist, since he uses the color as an inner harmony, appears as bold liberty against nature when viewed by an Impressionist, Naturalist painter. This question must appear just as revolutionary to the latter as the change of brown shadows to blue seemed previously (the favorite example of “green sky and blue grass”). Just as in the latter case, the transition from Academism and Realism to Impressionism and Naturalism is recognizable, it is possible to detect in Van Gogh’s question, the seed of “translation of nature.” That is, the inclination not to represent nature as an exterior phenomenon, but to lay more stress on the element of inner impression, which was lately termed expression.
White is a symbol of a world from which all color, as a material quality and substance, has disappeared. This world is so far above us that we cannot perceive any sound coming from it. There is a great silence which, graphically represented, appears to us as a formidable, indestructible wall, though infinitely cold, reaching up into eternity. For this reason, white affects us with the absoluteness of a great silence. It sounds inwardly and corresponds to some pauses in music, which, though temporarily interrupting the development of a melody, do not represent a definite end of the musical sequence. It is not a dead silence but one full of possibilities. The white has the appeal of silence which has suddenly become comprehensible. It is a “blank,” infinitely young, a “blank” which emphasizes the Beginning, as yet unborn. Thus, probably, did the earth resound during the white period of the Ice Age.
Like a nothingness after sunset, black sounds like an eternal silence, without future or hope. Represented in music, it is as a final pause, which precedes the beginning of another world, yet signifying a termination as the circle is completed. Black is something extinguished like a burned pyre, something immobile, corpse-like, which has no connection with any occurrences, and accessible to all things. It is like the silence of the body after death, the end of life. Outwardly, it is the least harmonious color yet, for that reason, any other color, even the weakest, will appear stronger and more precise in front of it while in the case of white all other colors are minimized in their appeal and some are dissolved completely and retain but a mute, weakened shadow of it. (Vermilion rings dull and muddy against white, but against black it acquires a bright, pure, surprising power. Light yellow against white is weak; against black it is so strong, that it forsakes the background and plunges forward to strike you squarely in the eye.)
For that reason, white is used to color pure joy and Infinite purity. Black is the robe of greatest, deepest sorrow and the symbol of death. A blend of these two colors, created mechanically, produces Grey. Of course, a color so created can offer no outer appeal or movement. Grey is without appeal and immobile. This immobility, however, is of a different kind from the repose produced by green, which lies between two active colors and is their product. Grey is, therefore, the immobility of desolation. The darker this grey becomes the greater the predominance of desolation, of suffocation. When lightened, the color becomes lighter, airier breathing more freely as if in relief and with a new hidden hope. A similar grey is produced by an optical mingling of green and red which achieves a spiritual blend of passive self-satisfaction and a strong glow of activity. (Grey—immobility and repose. Delacroix already sensed this and tried to create repose by mixing green and red.)
Red, as we imagine it, is an endless typically warm color, has an inner, highly vivid, lively, restless appeal, which, however, does not possess the irresponsible and self-dispersive character of yellow, and, in spite of all energy and intensity, it creates a strong note of almost tenacious immense power. It glows in itself and does not radiate much vigor outwardly, achieving a manly maturity. This ideal Red, in reality, endures great changes, deviations, and mutations. It is very rich and varies broadly in its material form. Think of the varieties of saturn red, vermilion, English red, rose-madder from the lightest to the darkest shades! This color shows a possibility of adhering to the basic tone and still appearing characteristically either warm or cold. (Of course, every color can be warm and cold but nowhere is this contrast so strong as in red. A wealth of inner possibilities!) The light, warm red (saturn) has a certain similarity to medium yellow (as a pigment it also contains much yellow) and arouses the feeling of strength, energy, ambition, determination, joy, triumph (louder). In music, it sounds like a trumpet accompanied by the tuba, a persistent imposing, strong tone. In its medium shades such as vermilion, red gains in the persistence of intense feeling; it is like a relentlessly glowing passion, a solid power within itself, which cannot easily be surpassed but which can be extinguished by Blue, as glowing iron is put out by water. This red endures no cold, and through it loses in both sense and appeal this forceful, tragic cooling-off creates a note which is today scorned and unjustly avoided by painters and insulted as “dirt,” which as a material being, has its inner appeal like any other object. For this reason, the exclusion of dirt in painting today is just as one-sided and unjustified as yesterday’s fear of “clean color.” It should never be forgotten that all means are clean, if they are created by an inner necessity. Here, what is outwardly dirty may be inwardly pure, and, on the other hand, the outwardly pure can be inwardly dirty.
Compared with yellow, saturn red and vermilion red are similar in character, but the appeal that reaches the spectator is much lower; this red glows but within itself, and the somewhat mad characteristics of yellow are almost completely lacking. It is probably more widely beloved than yellow, it is often used in primitive and traditional decorations and, also, in peasant costumes, because, in the open air, the complementary colors to green are especially “beautiful.” This red is very substantial and of a very active character as taken by itself and carries no deep appeal. This, also, applies to yellow. When it enters a higher sphere the appeal of red will be deepened, though it is dangerous to mix red with black because the dead black subdues the glow and reduces it to a minimum. This, however, brings about the unemotional, hard immovable Brown, in which the red sounds like a hardly audible simmering. Yet, out of this exterior, the soft sound develops one of forceful inner contrast.
Through the application of brown, an indescribably inner beauty is created, the delay. Vermilion now rings like a great horn and is comparable to the thunder of drums.
Like any basically cold color, the cold red (such as madder) can be deepened through azure. It also changes its characteristics considerably; the feeling of deeper glow grows while the active element gradually disappears completely. On the other hand, this active motion is not as wholly absent in red as, for example, in deep green but gives vitality. Therein dwells the great difference between a deep red and a deep blue, because in red something of the material is invariably felt. It reminds us of an element of deep and middle tones, of the cello played “con passione.” When lighted, the cold red gains in the material sense but only in the pure meaning of this word. It sounds like innocent, youthful joy, the glad innocence of a young girl. This picture can be easily expressed in music through the high, clear singing notes of a violin. (Pure, happy, often consecutive, tones of small bells—also, bells worn by horses—in Russian are termed to have a “raspberry” note. The color of raspberry juice is similar to this described light and cold red.) This color, intensified only by the mixture of white, is a color well liked by young girls for clothes.
Warm red, intensified by yellow, produces Orange. Through this admixture, the movement of the red becomes the nucleus of the impulse, spreading out toward the spectator. The element of red, which plays a great part in orange, retains the accompanying note of its usual gravity. It is like a human being, aware of his own power and emanating happiness and health. The appeal, exercised by this color, is like a medium-sized church bell reminding one of a strong alto voice or the singing of alto violins.
As orange is red brought closer to humanity, so removing red through blue creates Violet which has the tendency to move away from humanity. This basic red, however, must be cold because the warmth of red cannot be mixed with the cold of blue (regardless of procedure), something concerning the aspect of spirituality.
Violet, a cooled red both in the physical and spiritual sense, possesses an element of frailty, expiring sadness. This color is considered proper for dresses of older women, as the Chinese actually use it as the color of mourning. It is similar to the sound of an English horn, the shepherd’s flute, or the deep, low tone of wood instruments (for example, a bassoon). Among artists the question “how are you?” is often jokingly answered, “very violet,” which presupposes nothing good.
The last mentioned colors, composed of a mixture of red with yellow or blue, have a rather inflexible balance. Inclination for loss of balance becomes evident when colors are mixed. We have the feeling of a tightrope dancer who must watch his equilibrium. Where does the orange begin and yellow or red cease? Where is the borderline of this violet which so definitely divides it from the red or blue? (The violet also has an inclination toward lilac. When does the one begin and the other end?) The last two characterized colors (orange and violet) are the primary fourth and last contrast in the realm of primitive tonalities. Physically, they stand to each other in the same relation as the third antitheses (red and green) that is, as complementary colors.
As a great circle, or a serpent biting its own tail (the symbol of eternity and endlessness) these six colors stand before us, while forming the main antitheses of three pairs. To the right and left stand two great possibilities of silence, death and birth.
All I have said of these simple colors is very provisional and coarse. These feelings quoted as parallels to these colors (such as joy, sorrow) express the material conditions of the soul. Variations of color, like those of music, are of a much subtler nature, and awaken in the soul much finer vibrations than words could.
There is light, darkness and enlightenment. Isn’t it at night, eyelids closed, that we finally see clearly? We should, more often, practice walking blindfolded in order to not remain blind. Is it not the worst disease of the soul to own all senses, to be able to perceive and communicate, but refuse?
Oh God! It is so easy to write while sitting at a table near a fire: to reflect and to give pause have become such a luxury today and such a rarity that one is ashamed … searching for poverty is such a sign of wealth; in order to make a hunger strike, there must still be something to eat, and both are, in the total impossibility, to orchestrate their harmonious suffering in order to survive; we are not talking about men only but all that tremble at his end: herbs as much as animals as much as stars …
Is it still possible for us to put what little intelligence remains to us to work seeking our equally lost instincts? Tirelessly, the rock once again falls during the night and the slope on which we strive seems to become steeper.
Bruised by a perpetual injury: unable to be stunned by our own blood before it flows out in suffering. Forgiveness. The penumbra embroidered gray where black weds white and the colors that one places there are nightmarish. Night seems to excuse us: in the middle of the day, one cannot see anything, or taste, but that seems to be more wholly our own fault. Insomnia! Unable to return to resources only meant to be used and fruitful. And is not being able to sleep, not not being awakened? Escape again, before life and its vital responsibilities.
No one should be afraid of eternal rest: how can a total absence of feelings be scary? Unfortunately or fortunately, is irrelevant. It is important to feel. When will we stop trying to combine the benefits of life with those of death: the refusal of movement. Poor voluntary fossil that is humanity! The rock on which one stumbles is his/her own heart, which will stop beating. For whom has it truly already beaten?
Momentary sleep is a function of defense against exhaustion. During the waking state, our nerve impulses (which are exhausted, little by little) claim a recharge from sleep. Contrary to popular belief, sleep is not really restorative unless it is light: heavy sleep is the result of a chaotic life, the brutishness of an infantile search for the lost protection of the mother’s womb. To sleep well is to rest in calm and constant emptiness.
He who sleeps, dines … yes, perhaps, but the reverse is also true; the fruit-eaters know this well, whoever eats a little bit of living food and who chews no longer sleeps, so to speak. So, it takes eight to twelve hours per day of sleep for an adult organism, overworked by a job, entertainment and rogue nutrients; while one or two hours is sufficient for a balanced being: rightly nourished, well ventilated, filled with sunlight and deservedly proud of his/her work.
It is true that the hours of rest taken before midnight count for double: one goes to bed at the same time as the Sun, and four or five hours later, one wakes up fresh.
Below is an accurate schedule—still used in some monasteries.
5 p.m.–6 p.m. dinner (fruits)
6 p.m.–8 p.m. walk, conversation
8 p.m.–12 a.m. nap
12 a.m.–1 a.m. prayer
1 a.m.–5 a.m. spiritual and artistic work
5 a.m.–6 a.m. rest, ablution (sacred bath)
6 a.m.–7 a.m. mass
7 a.m.–11 a.m. manual work (garden, culture, artisan …) then ablution
11 a.m.–12 p.m. breakfast (raw legumes plus one course either fat, carbohydrate or protein)
12 p.m.–2 p.m. walk, conversation
2 p.m.–5 p.m. intellectual work
All possibilities for a being are orchestrated here in a harmonious ensemble capable of contributing to one’s development in the joy of living and toward Unity.
Sleep shrinks with a good life, but also with the warm season and advanced age: youth who ages and the aging who sleeps are very near death.
It is important to rest on a comfortable bed … that is to say, one that is hard: made of wooden planks nailed to three posts; manage the cracks between them so that air circulates: cover with a thin mattress, preferably wool. Always sleep, if the shelter position allows, head north. If one suffers circulatory disorders in the legs, raise the foot of the bed around fifteen centimeters. Avoid sleeping in an unventilated place with walls covered by electrical wires in operating condition. Never fall asleep before digesting the evening’s dinner: there will therefore always be an interest in only eating fruit if one goes to bed early.
Evening prayer, listening to Gregorian chants, deep breathing exercises are preparations for good rest especially if one kneels during their practice.
Standard tells us that we cannot stay more than a few tens of seconds without breathing, more than a week without drinking, more than ten days without eating, and certainly not more than eight days without sleep.
Well, Marthe Robin had nothing to eat or drink for about fifty years, and a man whose name we forgot, who was J.C. Averty’s lawyer ten years ago, had not slept for twenty years following a brain injury.
In common practice, some yoga exercises act on our whole plexus and also ensure a recharge as good as a good night’s sleep. Insomnia and dreams, like disease, are not confined to those—we repeat—who do not use their vital resources in constant creativity in order to reveal their full potential, which, together, always constitutes a completely unique absolute in the world. A good rest is not linked to a large amount of sleep, of unconsciousness, but to a conscious life that rest extends so that we are continuing to shrink the field of our unconscious and subconscious lives.
In consideration of eternal rest, whoever gives consideration to all variations is well merited. It is feared by those who refuse or who are unable to offer their lives to life, by those who always handed over to tomorrow the transformations they needed to accomplish immediately because the here and now came so much later than imposed death!
As for reincarnation, for similar reasons, we cease to think about: the incarnation, the now. The future, our only future, is always present.
By definition, the only creation is the creature and the only Creator is God because to our knowledge, man has still not drawn anything from nothing and tends, furthermore, to destroy everything: one million animal and plant species will be gone in twenty years.
If God (or the “Divine Principle,” for those whom the word repels) created us in his image, it is for us to participate in creation, not by imitating Nature, but by adding to Nature in the sense of Evolution: not to prove our existence by power and domination (what the wizards, scientists and politicians do), but to express our essence (like the poets do).
The poet is, by definition, one who makes: to be a poet consists not only of writing verse: many poets do not write and many versifiers are not poets. A poet is one who reflects faithfully on the sole purpose of life by adding his/her style, his/her original approach to Truth because (just as two leaves on the same tree are different) each of us is unique in the world and ceases to be alone if unveiled, if communion with the created silences the ego.
Humanity’s lazy tendency to conformity is a huge sacrilege. To recognize and to live the sacred is also to promote and to respect the diversity of creation and to return to oneself. Unlike sports competitions where the test is in the individual’s defeating an opponent (in appearance—because it is always his/her own weaknesses he/she must overcome), the artist or craftsman is only facing himself/herself. In an effort to better address the form that will be born of the formless (clay, octaves, colors, gestures …), the artist’s purpose is to get silent in order to properly express himself/herself—through hard work he/she allows inspiration to enter, gradually learning to know these possibilities and to push the boundaries. Everything is built on a single plane and the universal form is visible everywhere. Each of us, through concentration, whatever the discipline, will enter the knowledge of all these resources and be able to assist in the emergence of others.
Art by definition is artificial, composed of artifices, that is to say, initially creation does not exclude time: the creator is in premeditation but, once he/she enters into the creative act, time no longer exists: the creator becomes then an antenna, an auditor, a secretary, able to seize Nature with his/her own nature in order to offer it a statue, a symphony, a poem, a ballet, a simple gesture or some words …
But this revelation of Self in harmony with the Whole is not reduced to art alone: it must be that our lives and every thought, every act, become a poetic gesture: the mother, the gardener, the cook, the baker, the teacher (everything as a labor toward the nourishment of others and of the whole environment) is in a constant state of creativity: together in desire, pleasure, spasm, pregnancy, childbirth, nursing … where the clay intends to make our unique potential.
Since few of us have a vocation, when nothing truly attracts us, it is good to persist in the creative discipline by choosing, above all, that which repels us least. And the quiet fury to which we submit in constancy and stubbornness, in the daily discipline of work, makes that within a few months the foundation and the bearing capacities are revealed and wed—one will know what is best. And the act of painting becomes the act of sculpting or the reverse, singing is supplanted by writing, and it is important to know if shared among several disciplines, progress made in one will appear in the other—singing advances drawing, drawing dance, dance culinary art …
Our energy, thus liberated, no longer risks making us ill—it must be released from us and if we don’t release it, it turns into disease: despairing creation. It is better to cultivate one’s evolution through accomplished works rather than by following one’s temperature charts.
Accomplished creativity becomes a first-class nutrient. Plunged into deviations, the individual suffers from autophagy. As with love, it can live only on fresh water until the work is completed. One, therefore, prolongs life more than imaginable, in the pain (though transposed) and in the tranquility, health and serenity exist in this adaption.
It is important to know that technique hinders only those without it. The poet forgets what he/she has learned: the mental ends in silencing itself; the whole being knows: a second nature is created. A good actor lies without anyone’s detection—another sincerity is restored which allows for the suffering from love, the dying on stage, and the virtually unscathed rise; one does not pretend with impunity.
This internal creative need is the prerogative of each of us and our work is absolutely to liberate this so as to not be duped any longer by anything or anyone: it allows us to be in harmony, with God without an intermediary; it reinforces a sense of humor within us; everything is certainly serious (one must climb), but nothing is serious and especially not You. God is an infant who plays: let us be careful so that no one gets hurt.
Here are the mystical necessities governing our own creation:
• Each person must express his/her undressed individuality, his/her own originality, to rise to the source of its origin without the lies of the ego.
• Each person must express the personality of his/her moment, era, and be an intrinsic part of collaboration with history, gravity, and the world.
• Each person must realize beyond himself/herself (space and time), in the ages of ages, the constancy and permanence of the Being.
“This point in time does not exist and seems to go so quickly,” wrote J. Cocteau. We don’t have one second to lose: here, now and always in the Beauty.
Contrary to widespread opinion—words fly, writings remain—it is only words that will remain because all of our world is definitively going to disappear; our works, as well as the little children of our children. Our waves emitted in this moment in harmony are gathered in the air for Eternity.
Ironically (because it hardly seems so), man is a social animal: like bees, ants, or termites; humans live in communities where everyone performs a specific task for the benefit of all; but, unlike insects, this task is reusable for now … because genetics seems ready to bring to life the worst of all worlds, the one Huxley called, derisively, the “best”—a world of human robots in characteristics and physical uniforms, serving predetermined functions.
For then, the aforementioned insects assume the essential purpose in life: the maintenance and propagation of their species. Man, himself, gladly assassinates his fellows and, just as well, those who are different. Man is the only animal to kill without any essential need but rather only for his need to quell his impotence, for his pleasure and the appearance of domination over his entourage and environment, apparently with perfect indifference and insensitivity to the suffering of other beings; because, it seems, that man enjoys this suffering and he is, therefore, insensitive. When one is incapable of spreading joy, one tortures, and this way obtains the grimace of ecstasy; not content with wasting one’s own life, he or she also wants to remove the joy and dignity of other beings.
The gentle command “Love your neighbor as yourself” resonates mournfully when we understand that today it would be better expressed this way: do not detest your neighbor as yourself. Yet it is undeniable now that our first necessity, since Jesus lived and was named, is Love. Hatred, which seems like the opposite, is always the manifestation, a reverse movement that resides as the vehicle of communication. However, don’t forget that if each one is his/her own executioner, he/she invents only guilty victims in others. A most painful and also stupid game of all: betting on horses, poker, dominoes, bridge or politics … persecution begins with our own egos. Forged by the stupidities of educators and teachers in our societies, who reinforce our dualism in order to continue the duels and the gambling—the oppositions.
Everyone is a woman, female of God: fertilized by the thought of self-sacrifice. Everyone is also the wife of the entire world with the wonderful so-called feminine qualities: tenderness, fidelity, perseverance, responsibility, giving her flesh and her soul …
Rimbaud’s I is another, and Nietzsche’s God is dead have become complementary reflections as long as we remain strangers to ourselves; as long as we have not given birth to our gracious gifts, we will not access our addition: our divine, timeless part. It is easy to see that currently the most advanced species on the spiritual and moral plane is the plant species, with a few exceptions, like the Solanaceae, which, in trying to force their evolution like man, have transformed their positive forces into negative forces. R. Steiner is right to insist, “The plant world, for fear that one knows to understand it, appears as a huge mirror of conscience” and Schiller says, “You endlessly tend toward that which is higher, bigger? A plant could guide you.”
Plants are not torn between gravity and grace: they bear with humility the difficulties imposed by one and the gracious gifts proposed by the other, while man, increasingly bestial, manages less and less to reconcile the will of the Absolute with the low tendency to the relative. Once our sordid society’s notions of “to have” seizes the child that we were, we cease “to be” and become monkeys—irresponsible, stupid and pretentious. We then enter into the realm of appearances where sectarianism, racism, and intolerance prevail—the poisoned fruits of the world of differences. Racial segregation already began between parents and children. Language (peepee, poopoo, can can …) demonstrates how a parent believes in putting him/herself on a lower level for children. Sexual discrimination works the same way: a man becomes the slave for a woman and a woman becomes the slave for a man. Then the fall toward incommunicability is accelerated as soon as we enter into the castes and social positions: strangers to ourselves, we arrange ourselves so that everything also remains the same.
And when one loves, it is not another who one loves but the nice feelings it gives to us. Until they become unpleasant and one resorts to divorce and begins again with someone else …
But love can also be the recognition of all the potentials in others and the constant care provided for their hatching; love is firstly, in this case, an aspiration, it becomes a real feeling in order to access the force and become the aim itself of life.
If our societies are little inclined to respect the commandment “thou shalt not kill,” they will be endlessly preparing for war, and even if the people easily tolerate theft, intrigue, lying, hypocrisy, exploitation, concealment … they will continue to curse sex. It is curious to note that a civilization has wholly built its morality around one single point: the ass, and making this natural, harmonious, vital movement a mortal sin and shame denotes an enormous stupidity and has sowed many misfortunes.
The only recognized purpose for all of life is the maintenance of life and the propagation of the species is hardly conceivable without mating. The human is the only animal able to mate outside of the female’s fertile period and the only animal to be able to take sex without consent. Maybe it’s time to stop taking our companions for “trash to fuck” and find self-control, and let desire arise in her and stop imposing ourselves on her. If it is true that the man’s back-and-forth sexual movements would, on average, number forty before his orgasm, that reduces the act of love by a few seconds. No surprise, then, that 95% of women become frigid because their erotic potential is much greater than that of man—the woman is slower to awaken so the importance is on prior respect and foreplay. We know that a man is capable of making love for hours—even days—if he does not ejaculate, and a woman can come between one and ten times in an hour and thirty to forty times per day according to her temperament, and the strength of her desire and her age; sometimes her spasm can even be continuous. Jean Rostand stated that the original human mating was accomplished during three to five days (solely in fertile times) with continuous flow and spasm on both sides and without penetration ever being interrupted. If the man has completely lost this ability (though this may still occur, rarely) then the woman hasn’t.
If some young men can satisfy an amorous relationship biannually, others are able to ejaculate twenty times a day. The great genetic potential of the latter, which is very rare, quickly brings a mastery of the self, and they end up preferring quality to quantity and a very extended lovemaking with many short coitus. Their joy is in introducing a woman or women to “a little death”—fainting caused by highly repetitive spasms; polygamy uses this sexual potency as evidence and, thereafter, if implemented, the holiness of the carriers is always mystical.
Noting in passing that a man never having correctly copulated is incapable of understanding life, but a virgin woman can remain or become intelligent and flourish as a woman. Noting also that it is impossible to become chaste by effect of will: one is or one is not.
It is difficult to provide recipes for making love well because they do not exist: anatomical knowledge, strong desire, patience, kindness, the respect and curiosity one has for another, legitimate pride in fully revealing oneself, seeking one’s soul through one’s body … these are the sure guarantees of a romantic apotheosis. Dr. Zwang wrote a very nice tribute to our companions—A Taste of Seaweed and Pineapple: The Sex of a Woman, which I read.
Very few of us, unfortunately, have experienced love at first sight, that irresistible appeal of two beings, where their whole organism is electrically and chemically converted, which Novalis summarized by saying, “A child wants to be born from us!”
The woman has been brutalized by centuries of chauvinist civilizations (stirring his loins during copulation could earn him eternal damnation), and it is good to let her find her time and rhythm, giving her all initiative and accepting being her wife, in a way: little by little the differences disappear and, she, much closer to Nature (through her maternal capacity), will have quickly regained her fullness, and who penetrates who, may we ask?
Now that I know how to make a baby, I would really like to know how to not make one, declared a young woman recently.
Fear of unwanted conception makes it more likely the woman will abandon the act of lovemaking. Our companions know it is not up to them to ensure the seed but rather it is up to their partner: we repeat, they are not “trash to fuck” and since they alone can withstand the consequences of a shared joy, it is quite obvious that it is up to the man to take responsibility.
How to acquire mastery over ejaculation? Deep breathing, cold water, thinking of something very disagreeable, and respecting a woman allows easier access, and, especially, the absolute fact of preferring their pleasure to your own. Otherwise, the irresponsible man wears the unpleasant condom (too bad for him) and thus he ceases to impose the genocide pills, the orthopedic and pharmaceutical products, the abortions that are actually a crime.
But the enjoyment in her is actually very important for the woman as for the man and there are many detractors of coitus interruptus. And what is interrupted then when the location has already changed many times and it suffices to change again: the mouth, the hand, the cleavage, the anus so close they are disappointing, one to the next. It may be noted here that anal sex done well with delicacy, slowness and sensitivity, assures excellent satisfaction for the partners, and relatively quickly the anus, like the vagina, begins to be lubricated, and one collides with happiness through the skin. If the woman is often clitoral, nothing prevents her from being vaginal, mammary, oral and anal …
Sound manifestations: words, sighs, and moans are excellent stimulants; regarding screams, they effectively extend the spasms. The act of love is the secret and the couple’s affair and so the notion of guilt is removed, there is no sin, just like any other act, unless the being does not participate completely.
Regarding venereal diseases, on the rise since the influx of contraceptives, which allow impunity and, too often, eliminate the after-the-act bath, they certainly do not suffer in cases of exodus or survival. One should not make love without a condom before several weeks in the relationship, before noticing whether either partner has a wound or suspicious discharge.
The act of making love should achieve many other necessities that few people know:
One is accustomed to saying that passionate lovers “live on love and fresh water”—they actually seem to not be able to get enough of one another. There is more than one symbol: man and woman are two complementary, magnetic beings and when a being desires to be born of their union, it passes into one or the other a chemical, physical and electromagnetic disruption.
It is easy to see that, like a yin and yang symbol, both possess a bit of the dominance of the other, and, we dare say, their mutual attraction is created by recognition, one for the other. The woman is sensitive to the partial femininity of the man and the man to the partial virility of the woman. And united here is the T’ai Ki—the limit—born itself of the Ki—the infinite.
If the relationship was obviously erroneous and without purpose except for the satiation of desire for pleasure, it would be quite right for God (not being within them) to always put separation between them; yet there are some durable bonds; their rarity cannot erase them.
Our only concern should be, above all, the perfect realization of our electromagnetic complementarity.
To this end and on the practical plane, man remains as long as possible (it can vary from several hours to several days) in his half at first stage without external movements: his thoughts concentrated on the gland that alternately swells and smoothes down while his companion’s tightens then loosens. Their magnetic complementarity perfectly performs and nourishes the living vibrations of a continuous and divine ecstasy and the temporal is excluded: the temporal is indeed the overripe fruit of a quest for the good exclusively for oneself, or, at least, the search for a feeling that seems agreeable to us.
Then, if each member of the couple desires more to nourish the other, it must animate internally while the other retains the most perfect stillness, languishing on the back. The position and this act must be alternated by one another.
We should not forget, however, that while a woman emerges triumphant and enriched by deep recurring or continuous spasms, the man, on the contrary, is worn out if these ejaculations and discharges are only prostatic in origin because they are spermatic, and this weakens him. His seed is an essential food for the thought. A prophet is chaste by evidence: the seed, if it is disposed, could not nourish the Universal Love.
The practice of mastered, deep breathing, calm, the concern one has for another, the tenderness after several months or years of practice allows us to dissociate the spasm of ejaculation. It suffices to instantly realize ejaculation without enjoyment: an easy movement to accomplish in the absence of any movement when the sap wants out. If that is possible, and it readily is, then the inverse is understandable to us and it is … certainly less readily.
So “make love” or “make war” ceases to be synonymous and lovemaking again becomes what it is: as nutritious as cosmic or telluric currents, as nitrogen from the air, as light from the Sun or a ripe, fresh, raw fruit.
Platonic trade, friendly, brotherly, with our fellows, also has quite beneficial radio-vital effects; one can see this in loving exchanges between grandparents and grandchildren: the elderly have a lower magnetic charge which is enlivened by the essence of that of the little ones, from where there is often a need to touch, hug, cuddle, embrace, sometimes even to sleep near a child. That which is called the “midday demon” (a midlife crisis) among older adults is only superficially related to sexual obsessions but deeply related to the need for a magnetic recharge by younger beings still largely filled up.
Gandhi, at one moment in his life, made a vow of chastity and was able to stick to it, but he often slept with young girls in order to take their strength.
Prolonged fasts make us particularly sensitive to this subtle nourishment.
Renaissance individuelle, the excellent work by Dr. Hanish (Le Courrier du Livre), gives many other recommendations on the excellence of deep, amorous relationships.
When you are going to receive a guest, all your thoughts, all of your acts are focused on cleaning house. The child is a guest and the bodies of the father and mother must be purified before conception. A long fast for fifteen to twenty-one days with a slow, pure, nourishing renewal ensures the opportunity. This will allow a woman to know the precise time of ovulation as she will purify and refine her sensitivity.
The wanted child must certainly be conceived with ejaculation from the man but without spasm: it suffices to stand still and ask the woman to help. The woman, however, can enjoy the sprinkling. Falling asleep inside the woman or close to the entrance of the vagina ensures the sperm remains inside.
If a man can resist the (quite justified) urge to have his fruit watered, it would be good, during pregnancy, to have no vaginal or anal penetration. Contrarily, the father’s voice, through the intervention of the mother’s ear, will be heard by the fetus for its greater good. Placing the father’s hands on the mother’s belly is also beneficial. It is understood that the mother will avoid, during pregnancy and nursing, morbid food (meat, fish, alcohol, cigarettes, food killed by cooking, drugs …), just as she did before conception.
By Jenny Jordan: this is a homeopathy-based therapy that brings to the child in the mother’s womb the complement of material needed for his/her formation, as a means of detoxifying the pathological heredity that could harm his/her physical and mental health later; it also ensures that the mother has a more comfortable pregnancy and easier delivery.
Since we know that a disabled child is born into the world every twenty seconds, the contribution of this therapy is important. It relies on the different temperaments according to typology.
The carbonic constitution: The carbonic is a “rigid” and “right” being; a stiff gait (slow or fast), but always with a cadence; simple, clear gestures. The rigidity of his/her attitude is reflected in every act of his/her life.
Patient and stubborn, he/she never bends; he/she is ordered, anxious to do well, not afraid of responsibilities; he/she stands out for his/her authority. His/her standard is order, its purpose security.
He/she is the original honest “type” toward which nature tends to return, which is why this “type” still exists in spite of the enormous hereditary poisoning, which has altered his/her constitution.
The phosphoric constitution: The phosphoric is slender, distinguished, frail, graceful, elegant; an expressive attitude; a little resistant, easily tired; he/she vibrates and suffers terribly. In top form, they have the perception of an artist. They have undergone, for example, morbid impregnation of tuberculosis, which acted on him/her like a consuming fire.
The fluoric constitution: The fluoric has suffered the contraction of syphilis, which alters the components of the tissue as if eaten by acid. A skeleton with big juxtaposed bones, the fluoric remains more than he/she sustains. He/she is essentially unstable with a constantly irregular walk and broad, disorderly gestures. This is an unbalanced being, in the proper sense of the word.
Order is his/her enemy. He/she can no longer ensure a static coordinate of his or her own thoughts. The disorder of his actions and ideas joins his extraordinary faculties of assimilation and produces a complex being, difficult to understand.
Unstable in all, he/she has an absolute need for being directed and oriented. This “type” is easily turned; he/she is the one who sees, listens and devastates. In his/her highest function, he/she is enlightened.
Each of these three types, masterfully portrayed, corresponds to a certain temperament and, consequently, to the remedies.
These three constitutions often overlap and give birth to mixed types, for example, the Phospho-Fluoric or Carbo-Fluoric. Each also corresponds to a constitutional remedy, a limestone remedy still called remedy of the “ground.”
• For the carbonic we have Calcarea Carbonica
• For the phosphoric we have Calcarea Phosphorica
• For the fluoric we have Calcarea Fluorica
These three salts of calcium, carbonate, phosphate and fluoride, form our skeleton in proportions which, in absolute estimate, are unequal, each with a specific influence on the subject, which explains the different anatomical features together with a particular dynamism.
For more suggestions, consult Jenny Jordan’s work Avant que de naître (Ed. Enéa) or else write to the national associations that help children with special needs.
That you will give birth in pain does not mean you will get hurt physically while having your child, but You shalt raise your child very well so that he/she will leave you to live his/her own life as soon as possible and then you will experience the pain of the joy of giving to a Being who you thought was made exclusively for you.”
The rogue curse thrown on sexual matters and the degeneration of our race has made the painful and complicated act most essential and the simplest in the world; it will suffice to render account by witnessing a cat give birth; four kittens, one after the other in less than an hour; the cat chews the cords in half with her teeth and absorbs all the waste; she cleans her babies and never ceases to purr with delight even (and especially) during contractions.
An elderly lady recently told us, as we were astonished by the intensity of affection she showed her grandchildren, “Dear sir, believe me, when you give birth in a bed that you designed, you will also die there—your children will never put you in a hospital!”
To accomplish this painless childbirth, it is necessary for the woman to have mastery over her breath so that she can, when the moment comes, synchronize her breathing and contractions and influence them.
Chanting and yoga (padmasana, pranayama …) are excellent preparatory practices. Excellent practices, as convenient as walking (provided the mother takes the child along). Kegel exercises strengthen the pelvic floor muscles, which support the uterus, bladder, small intestine and rectum. You can do Kegel exercises, discreetly, anytime. It returns strong muscle to the vaginal ring and accomplishes abdominal fitness before pregnancy.
This way of birth, promoted by Dr. Leboyer—and many other practitioners today—is very rightly preoccupied with transporting the child safely from the secure amniotic world to the frightening outside world, smoothly, without regrets, a practice that could render humans much less infantile.
It is the father who is going to help with the infant’s arrival, assisted by the midwife, a doctor or other competent person, in the nuptial chamber where darkness and silence reign or else very tonic sounds (Gregorian chants, birds singing …) so as not to shock the newborn. Upon arrival, the child will be placed on his/her mother’s belly:
“… As careful as possible, place both hands on the child …
By touching her child, it is as if the woman were finally found. She has encountered her double.
For her, the inside, the outside, they found one another.”
(Dr. Leboyer, Pour une naissance sans violence—Le Seuil)
The umbilical cord will be cut when it is no longer needed, then it will fall off itself and the newborn gradually becomes accustomed to breathing by him/herself. Later, we separate the newborn for a few minutes from the mother, placing him/her in a tub of warm water (38° C); we dress the newborn and place him/her near the mother and, little by little, the ecstatic, smiling face of the Buddha appears on the newborn.
Everything given supports eventually falls. The woman’s breasts supported by a bra (like the testicles in a jockstrap) lose their vitality and self-support, like a limb in plaster; the chest is made of muscles just waiting to work—anyone having stroked the warm, living marble breasts of an athlete understand this. And it is absolutely recommended that a woman leave her breasts free, normally, and practice exercises that sculpt them: horizontal bar, javelin and weights (with both hands), swimming, diving … As soon as milk rises and the breasts grow, one must wear a bra without underwire, and continue throughout breastfeeding.
The mother’s milk is absolutely irreplaceable for babies: feeding children cow’s milk is absurd, especially with the treatment they inflict on cows. The mother’s milk has all the vital elements necessary for a newborn provided that the mother is not deficient: nutritional rehabilitation takes four to six years (fresh vegetable, organic, raw, whole, live foods, abstaining from meat, fish, alcohol). A mother can nurse for two years until Nature imposes. We have taken the opportunity to taste the milk of a carnivore woman and spit it out and we enjoy that of a vegetarian woman. Food grown without pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals is quite necessary because the chemicals used in industrial agriculture unfortunately tends to pass into the breast milk in large quantities.
Nutritionally irreplaceable, milk is also on the physiologically, psychologically, emotionally, physical planes, for both the child and the mother. And do not believe that the nursing drops the breasts. On the contrary, with good hygiene, the function still makes the organ.
The first two days, the feedings are four in number, then six. These are done at regular intervals, between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.; the duration lengthens according to the baby’s growth—weighed before and after feeding, we see how much is absorbed and the amount that is necessary. From eight months, we remove a nursing and replace it with a slurry of freshly ground wheat; at thirteenth months, another nursing is deleted and replaced by either semolina, tapioca, arrowroot, vermicelli, rolled wheat, rice, barley or corn; we add very small amounts of freshly pressed juice from fruits.
Note: The work by Dr. Hanish, Maternité heureuse (Le Courrier du Livre, Paris), offers a lot of advice.
During these first months, the child only needs mother’s milk—and one must speak to the child and sing to the child and caress the child and rock the child and massage the child. Shantala, the book by Dr. Leboyer (Le Seuil), offers a wide range of traditional massages for children.
Like the act of love, one cannot set up any formulas or recipes. Raising a child means carrying a child as high as possible, and it is certainly not accomplished with concepts, ideals, or projecting onto the child our shortcomings and our possessive minds, which try to assume the child’s enlightenment and fulfillment.
We know today that education and teaching offer our children disease, not only of the spirit but also in their bodies: a child is actually an adult by the age of ten years, responsible and able to breed and survive until 150 years; whereas old age is not synonymous with decrepitude but rather fulfillment if we follow the laws of life. We should fall one day with all our teeth and our hair and our full vitality and intelligence. It is interesting to vibrate with children under three years of age (at this age they are not yet tortured by our stupidities) and to elevate one another.
Let us turn first to the child who is still inside of us in order to encounter the man or woman that the child carries within.
We will be surprised for everything the child knows and for all that is believed to not be ignored.
Note: De l’Éducation by Krishnamurti (Delachaux) is an excellent book that denies all forethought and speaks only of constant attention, of love in the moment.
For the ancient Greeks, eroticism and unconditional love were antonyms: one a symbol of physical love, the other of spiritual love. Etymologically, they are absolutely complementary—Eros, which comes from love; Agape, from affection. Through the body one searches for the soul. And there exists a sensitivity of the soul in search of an exceptional kind. One looks for this in someone else but one cannot find it unless first discovered in oneself. If one is able to offer sufferings as if joys, joy, the revelation, comes quickly. Joy is the only thing in the world that one can have when one gives it. And one can get it physically, spiritually, and morally; at best, the differences disappear and the being is touched completely: all is united within.
The ages of life offer a time for everything: a time to be up, a time to be passionate, a time to elevate, a time to suffer, a time to reflect, a time to transpose or sublime … Each of us should be sanctified, die a saint; in this, God’s pregnancy is carried to term.
“My God, let me be chaste, but as late as possible,” asked St. Augustine, which was eventually granted; youth, in spite of itself, turns to flesh: the chaste communities physically stink if sin is not entirely in the act committed, it is also not entirely not in the act we do not commit.
With age, the sex drive diminishes and it is natural to be chaste; one keeps the seed so that it nourishes spirit; one leaves the momentary ecstasy to enjoy the perpetual ecstasy. That said, some are freed rather early and graciously from carnal bonds and that is offered to them in addition.
The two most beautiful poems on spiritual Love are also the two most beautiful poems on physical love: the sensuality of the soul is portrayed through that of the body. These dialogues between a husband and wife are in fact those between God and the human soul. We offer a sample of each …
a. The Song of Solomon: [Holy Bible, New International Version]
Husband:
Why would you gaze on the Shulammite
as on the dance of Mahanaim?
How beautiful your sandaled feet,
O prince’s daughter!
Your graceful legs are like jewels,
the work of an artist’s hands.
Your navel is a rounded goblet
that never lacks blended wine.
Your waist is a mound of wheat
encircled by lilies.
Your breasts are like two fawns,
like twin fawns of a gazelle.
Your neck is like an ivory tower
Your eyes are the pools of Heshbon
by the gate of Bath Rabbim.
Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon
looking toward Damascus.
Your head crowns you like Mount Carmel.
Your hair is like royal tapestry;
the king is held captive by its tresses.
How beautiful you are and how pleasing
my love, with your delights!
Your stature is like that of the palm,
and your breasts like clusters of fruit.
I said, “I will climb the palm tree;
I will take hold of its fruit.”
May your breasts be like clusters of grapes on the vine,
the fragrance of your breath like apples,
and your mouth like the best wine.
Wife:
May the wine go straight to my beloved,
flowing gently over lips and teeth.
I belong to my beloved,
and his desire is for me.
b. The Spiritual Canticle of St. John of the Cross
The bride:
With flowers and emeralds
chosen on cool mornings
we shall weave garlands
flowering in your love
and bound with one hair of mine
You considered that one hair
fluttering at my neck;
you gazed at it upon my neck
and it captivated you;
and one of my eyes wounded you.
When you looked at me
your eyes imprint your grace in me;
for this you loved me with tenderness;
and thus my eyes deserved to adore
what they beheld in you.
Do not despise me;
for if, before, you found me dark,
now truly you can look at me
since you have looked and left in me
your grace and beauty.
Catch the foxes,
for already our vineyard is in bloom,
in this time, we take up roses
to make a bouquet in the shape of a cone
and let no one appear on the hillside.
Be still, wind of the north;
south wind come, you that waken love,
breathe through my garden,
let its fragrance flow,
and the Beloved will feed amid the flowers.
The Ascent of Mount Carmel by Saint John of the Cross
The bridegroom:
The bride has entered
the sweet garden of her desire,
and she rests in delight,
laying her neck on the gentle arms of her Beloved.
Beneath the apple tree:
there I took you for my own,
there I offered you my hand,
and restored you,
where your mother lost her innocence.
Some never lose their innocence, others find it and still others … one is tempted to say, “Too bad for them, poor fools.” Yes, joy is the only thing we get from giving. But there are some beings, so thick and heavy that nothing in them is agreeable and so we judge them. It is difficult to find all God in everyone and yet God is there. In confession, we had a dialogue with a priest in the Chartres Cathedral where, some years ago, we went to gain back force, to enjoy the telluric currents powerfully running through there:
• So, my son, I am listening …
• My father …w
• Speak
• I am unable to love everyone the same, indifferently, if I may say.
• (Long silence) …You have only this on your conscience?
• Can’t this be blamed for others?
• Indeed … But, my son, what can I do for you? I have the same problem. I mean, we hear such horrors in confession. I fall often. The problem is not the chastity, but maintaining Faith—the more it grows, the more we lose. We lose. It is found. I do not know what to say … (long pause) … All true torment must find healing … Trust … That’s it, trust … I cannot tell you anything else … I do not give you penance, you are in penance … Trust.
• Thank you.
If man could live in paradise at every moment, he/she would have done it a long time ago. It would probably be enough that each of us takes everything into account and no longer accuses the other person, that everyone constantly does true Mea Culpa: everything wrong is my fault.
If we accept and live by this Thirteenth part of this work, everything before it would be appropriate. And we conclude by paraphrasing St. Paul, “Though we may say, write, do, if we do not have love, we are nothing … Nothing.
… NOTHING”