Against the Pollution of the I Read online

  Alas! How could I explain to you? I hardly know what it is.

  No. I know simply that things are there, are present, without having to attribute to them a particular position in the world.

  When you look with your eyes, you say: “This ashtray is there, in front of me, just to my right.” “That man or woman is over there; I see him or her in a precise position that is such and such in relationship to the neighboring position.” You take into account the space and you imagine to yourself that the space you have imposed cannot be destroyed, that in fact it exists, is substantial.

  But, for experiential reasons once again, I think that is not true.

  If, speaking from the depth of my blindness, I say to you: “Things are inside me,” this “inside” is an inexact term since there is no actual inside. Things are presented in another way, that’s all. I can then play with given space as much as I like. I can even imagine — and if you like, I can do it this very instant — the room in which you are in: I can see to the left the wall and the door. I then try, if I pay close attention, to imagine some people around you, there, sitting and looking. Well, naturally, these would be spatial facts.

  But, be careful! Right now, I am playing, just amusing myself, creating a representation, if you like: a drawing.

  If I think of a person, if we right now — go ahead, it’s okay — were to think of Georges Saint-Bonnet, who is in Marseilles: Saint-Bonnet is not at all in this particular place. But he is. Not to the right or to the left or behind us. He is inside me, for I have, in thinking about him, the sensation of being located a little lower, even in my physical body, than I usually am. Closer to my heart than my head, I believe, and I’m not being sentimental.

  Yes, but in reality, this is no longer a space.

  Or instead, it is the only one which counts — that which we have made.

  It is that space in which we support ourselves, in which we unite ourselves, in which we envelop ourselves, and, who knows, in which we create ourselves.

  Being blind, I have made a certain number of practical observations about these things which I’d like to share with you.

  Suppose I am sad. Or embarrassed. I have things which upset me. I am anxious. Armies of small pains race inside my head. I see black butterflies everywhere.

  What happens then?

  Suddenly I see almost nothing.

  When I am sad, walking inside my house, I bump my forehead; I hurt my hand on a half-open door. And I no longer even have a sense of where I am.

  This reminds me that I am blind, but blind in a way I don’t like. That is to say, in a way which makes me different from others. Also I understand quickly that in order to no longer be blind in the way I detest, all that I have to do is simply no longer be sad.

  What a beautiful Godsend!

  It is true that today I think in this clear and peremptory way. At the age of ten, I undoubtedly didn’t tell myself things exactly this way.

  I know in every case when I am in high spirits, when I am confident, when I observe within myself an air of joy, of life, of peaceful curiosity in regard to things, there are no longer any accidents. I no longer smash my face against objects. I have an impression of knowing them wonderfully well, sometimes of measuring them to the exact centimeter.

  In fact, one could write whole books of the newest and most refined psychology on this theme or one like it. But all the books written would add nothing to the experience, which is the only thing that counts. I want to hold myself to that.

  There is also what I have discovered when I was impatient. You see this is no longer exactly sadness, though impatience is in many regards a form of sadness. In a word, when I was impatient, I wanted everything to go faster. I wanted to eat quickly. And during this time when I was impatient, all the objects immediately started to turn against me like fretful children. They changed their positions. I could no longer trust them. There was a glass which was on the table, and which I had seen just a moment ago at the tip of my napkin. It disappeared a moment later. It was behind a bottle, and of course in trying to reach for it, I turned over the bottle.

  Impatience moves objects in exactly the same way that sadness puts them in shadows, almost eclipses them, surrounds them by some sort of smoke or fog.

  Joy clarifies everything.

  How many times have I found myself quite simply walking along. And suddenly I receive one of these gusts of contentment, of, so to say, “joy” or “well-being,” which is a marvelous feeling because one has no idea where it comes from. There is no known reason. It is as if life were tapping, like rain on a window-pane. One is content. I was content on the sidewalk. Paris became visible to me. I saw Paris. I knew how tall the houses were. I distinguished how wide the streets were. I perceived the automobiles coming and going. And people who approached me had a smell, a history, even before they spoke or I spoke to them. In short, for a brief second, I was all-knowing. I had eyes all around my head, and then, truly, I was no longer blind. It was actually even more than that, in a certain regard.

  And it was all because I was content.

  Let’s look at these phenomena and verify especially their extraordinary positiveness, or rather their material character as opposed to their intellectual, moral, psychic, or social character.

  The universe shrinks if I am afraid. It gets gloomy if I am sad. It goes crazy if I am impatient. It becomes clear if I am joyous.

  But how does it happen that the universe can be so pliant as that? And then what is the hand which gives itself all these shapes, one after the other? Let’s see: If the universe were one reality against which we were obliged to struggle because it was created long before we were, would it not be this way?

  If the universe were mere necessity, if it were entirely mechanical, would it be so mobile? Would it allow transformations as concrete in perception as those we get from it?

  Why does the universe — which could be a person, ultimately, someone fully adult before we were even born: out there, well-made, well-rounded, definite — why does it allow itself to grow and shrink, to shine forth or to darken its light? That seems almost absurd.

  No. What happens, instead, is that we observe ourselves as the hand that manipulates this universe, which gives itself form — though that’s an inadequate phrase — inside ourselves.

  And we can verify that this hand is not in the objects of the universe that we perceive, but certainly elsewhere.

  Thus, during the years following my accident, I lived in a kind of amazement, enchantment, a very beautiful dream.

  That expressed itself for me in great lyric expansiveness and in poetry.

  Don’t worry, I have no wish to speak ill to you about poetry, but that marvel sometimes hid from me something which is more central to all marvels.

  I’ll try to be a little less obscure.

  Having become blind, I had discovered enchanted worlds inside myself. I think you’ve felt them as well.

  I had discovered enchanted worlds, and I was content with these enchanted worlds, and then, one day I was afraid.

  I was afraid because it occurred to me, “Good heavens, what if, by chance or bad luck, I am the author of these enchanted worlds? What if I’m just making them up? If they’re just hallucinations that I am entertaining according to some more or less suspicious process, some egocentric compensation for being blind? That would be frightful, because the world would no longer be as beautiful as I have made it, and one day I’ll perceive the difference and that will hit me like a ton of bricks.”

  Then one beautiful day I recognized that it was not something I had fabricated, but that in fact it had all been given to me.

  And given by someone. I say “someone” because that is the most suitable way to say it in words. By someone or something who, evidently, was very much inside of me, but who in another sense was not at all identified with myself.

  In fact, I perceived in myself someone who saw all these wonders of the inner life, but who was not me. I profited from
it, and then broke it down into parts, transformed it, arranged it, but in the end, it was not I who saw.

  I recognized that there was indeed someone watching.

  Someone watching deep within.

  But this spectator himself did not have a history. And, for him, linear space had no meaning whatsoever.

  Who was this someone watching deep within? Imagine for a second that he is identical to the manipulator — the hand — I have just spoken about: to whatever makes the universe expand larger, or shrink, or shine forth or darken. Imagine that he is the same as that. Everything suddenly explains itself.

  And everything in fact is explained. There is inside each of us someone watching deep within. Someone who sees.

  But whoever is watching is not whoever it is, in us, who sees with our physical eyes — a superficial person indeed — nor even whoever it is, in us, who sees with the eyes of the imagination: that is no longer enough.

  He — the someone who’s watching deep within — to tell the truth, he sees nothing.

  He sees nothing because no spectacles of the inner or outer life interest him. He allows seeing. That’s all.

  Without him, indeed, we perceive nothing, neither with our physical eyes nor with our inner psychic look. He is more important; he counts for more than anything we perceive.

  There is one other thing that I owe, I am almost certain, in large part to my blindness, or rather to which I owe the evidence of my blindness.

  Blindness has allowed me to have contact — quite concrete and a good deal closer — with what is going on inside of us all. There are, if you like, whole dull areas of perception that have been elevated, and consequently salvaged.

  I have had roughly the best seat in the house at this theater. I have become part of the scenery.

  It’s up to me to use blindness, to profit from it, to serve it. But in the end, that’s how it is.

  Yes, you see, when you learn that it is possible to pass beyond your physical eyes, when you discover all that the inner glance can observe, well, you perceive in the end the value of this intimate glance in and of itself. Is it not the essential part of us, something better than anything else? You are no longer content to just be blind once; you want to become blind a second time.

  To become blind a second time, why?

  And after the second time, a third!

  To be blind by accident in the exterior world, in the physical world in one part of its manifestation, is one thing; but imagine also being blind, after that, to all the images of the inner world, to try to look beyond them — beyond the screen of images, in some way — into pure light.

  Blind just once? What strange austerity!

  There is actually no austerity, for then what we see of the world can never be suppressed, no matter what. Such spectacles indeed will always exist.

  It is we, in relationship to them, who perhaps must change.

  They will continue to be there, and they will defile us as much as ever, maybe more. And this can also truly be a great fountainhead, a great source for our growth.

  Yes, what we see defiles us. One sees these spectacles in their succession, in their interminable progression. But one no longer has to be mixed up with them.

  For there is inside of people a kind of glance.

  This glance is not at all what one might imagine.

  On the level of physical vision, it is carried by what we call eyes, those two organs well protected in the face. Well protected but nonetheless very fragile.

  On the level of inner psychic vision, it is carried, if you wish, in a fashion a bit more subtle than on the physical level, but one that is still heavy, mixed up, complex: the power to represent images within ourselves.

  But in the end, it’s all the same power.

  It is never completely exhausted, by either one of these visions.

  It is a good deal more central than all that, and a good deal greater. It is up to us to reconcile it within ourselves.

  To put it concisely and very simply, when I was eight years old, it was possible to see again, even though I had become blind, because vision is not an organ of the body, nor even an organ of the feeling imagination alone, but an essential power.

  A power to help, to assist everything that is, or better yet, to convey in itself everything that is: the power that the spirit possesses to contain the whole universe — our link with the Principle, with God. For that’s how it is.

  That fountainhead at the bottom of us: I have called it someone watching deep within, also joy.

  Perhaps it is exactly the same thing.

  And one could almost ask if the only way we have of adapting our senses to the universe, of making better use of them — of seeing, hearing, touching, and sensing as best we can, of not “being blind” — is it not to pray, in the true sense of the term, which is to say to put ourselves in touch with God, as continually and as frequently as possible?

  For this joy is close to you,

  it is in you!

  None of you has a spirit so heavy,

  nor an intelligence so feeble,

  none of you is so far from God

  not to be able to find this joy in Him.

  — Meister Eckhart

  I even dare believe that interior joy has a secret power to make luck more favorable. . . .

  I have often noticed that the things I have done with a happy heart, and with no inner repugnance, have a habit of succeeding happily, even during games of chance, where it is only fortune which rules. . . .

  It is useful to have a strong conviction that the things which you undertake without repugnance, and with the freedom which ordinarily accompanies joy, will not fail to succeed well.

  Your Highness will allow me, if she pleases, to finish this letter as I began it, and to wish her primarily the satisfaction of the spirit and of joy, as not only as the fruits that one looks for above all others, but also as a means to augment the grace one has for acquiring them.

  — René Descartes,

  Letter to Princess Elisabeth

  CHAPTER 4

  AGAINST THE POLLUTION OF THE I

  EACH MORNING AND EACH EVENING I LISTEN, as I must, to news of the war. I must, because I do not have the right to live removed from the realities of my time. And since at present my home is in America, the news that comes over my radio deals with that unnecessary war, that lost war that is being waged with stubborn insistence in Vietnam. But even more often, with ever-increasing frequency, I hear news of a different war: I hear news about pollution. In that war the enemy is not at the other end of the world; he is no stranger, his history is no different from mine, nor is his creed. That enemy is I myself: he is all of us. Pollution is a civil war. The enemy is none other than the product of our own intellect, the ever-growing number of discoveries made by our practical intelligence. He is our own inventive dreams, the ever new combinations that we assemble out of the sum total of technical possibilities, and whose fallout hews gaping wounds that penetrate deep into our daily lives and affect us even in our most intimate personal concerns. Each day I hear our latest defeats reported.

  Where once — why do I say once? it was only yesterday — the Navahos had their peaceful tribal reservation, the Colorado plateau is now poisoned for almost a hundred miles in all directions by fumes from a huge power plant that devours coal torn from the earth all around. Somewhat farther away, the vast virgin forests that cover southeastern Alaska are beginning to be exploited: according to reports they are to be systematically cut for lumber. Soon this lung that gave breath to the entire northwestern continent will no longer be able to serve its function. Those were the two latest items from the front in yesterday’s news.

  Certainly it is good that such news is reported. Barely four years ago it was only a few daring souls, a few pioneers, who ventured to do so. Now this information (I wish I could say, this voice of conscience) has become public property. Perhaps now people will put an end to their madness. Perhaps they will finally sign a “Holy A
lliance to Save the Earth.” But alas, this civil war is not restricted to the earth, to the air, to the water. It rages in ourselves. And about those battles I hear not a word. I for my part wish to break this silence. It has already lasted far too long.

  Or to put it differently: I come today to share my concern with you, my very deepest concern. But rest easy; I am not one of those who enjoy being concerned. I am not one of those who take pleasure in their own misery, even in their own fright. Together with you I will be concerned only in the hope that jointly we may uncover the truths and find the means that will permit us not always to have to be concerned about the future.

  THE EARTH SURELY IS THE ONE FIELD OF ACTION on which this life that has been given us can flourish. We have blighted it. But this earth is only the lesser half of our existence, its outwardly visible field of action, its outer space. There is another sphere for which we are responsible: our inner space, our I. Of this there is never any mention in the morning news. And yet it is just this, our I, whose very existence is being threatened today. So permit me to come to its aid. I will need to be most careful in the battle, for the I is the most fragile of all our possessions. But the time for sleeping is past; the time is past even for patience.

  Our I. That word is so powerful and at the same time so vague that some clarification is called for at the outset.

  There are two levels to the I, just as there is an outside and an inside to every object, or if you prefer, just as there are two ways in which each of us can approach someone else: in outer appearance, or in actuality as a person. To the extent that there is any willingness at all to speak of the I today, one speaks almost exclusively of only one of its manifestations, namely the one in which it appears only as outer surface. This I shall refer to not as the “I,” but as the “ego.”

  It is our ego that makes every one of us want to be different from others and, whatever the cost, to distinguish ourselves in some way — frankly, it matters little in what way. Our ego is the desire to gather for ourselves a greater share of the booty of life; to be in the right, even when we are in the wrong. It is our ego that gives rise to those monstrosities about which no one would dream of saying a bad word: jealousy, and competitiveness. It also gives rise to fanaticism, and to authoritarianism that likes to pass itself off as genuine authority. The ego is the seat of that power which seeks to estrange us one from another. You all know the characteristic malady of this century, that so unfortunately has replaced the melancholy of the romanticists: it is the malady of noncommunication. Once we are infected, progressive deterioration is foreordained. The more we are ourselves, the more alone we shall be: so reads the verdict; such is the poison of the ego. We all know it; we even write about it. But what do we do to take up the battle? In very truth, we indulge and gratify the canker in us.