Attention—Wish—Will—Free Will

A Talk by Mr. de Hartmann

From the Diary Notes of Thomas C. Daly

In June, 1954, the de Hartmanns made a special visit to their newly constituted Toronto Group, to give a clear direction to our Work. On the evening of June 11, all the members met again in my parents' apartment, where we had originally begun as a "provisional" group two years before.

Expectancy was in the air. During the first hour, while Mr. de Hartmann gave a music lesson to someone else at a nearby hotel, Madame de Hartmann questioned each and all of us together, especially deeply: "Why are you here?—What is your aim?—And what do you wish?"

Typical answers: "To be free from ups and downs" … "To get rid of negative emotions" … "To become something real" …

To each answer she countered with: "Yes, but why? Why do you want that?—One can want all such things just to be approved of by others, just to get on better in life—but why do you want that? …"

By the end of the hour, our minds were empty of answers. We had been brought to a level of pondering we had never before experienced. Finally she planted a seed that grew inside this silence: "There is only one important thing—to actually develop our possibilities. We should not be content with anything else, or anything less."

Into this atmosphere at last came Mr. de Hartmann, and it became apparent that, instead of a reading as we usually had, de Hartmann himself was going to speak to us directly from his own experience. And he began to speak without notes and straight from the heart.

First he underlined four themes: "Attention—Wish—Will—Free Will." And then he proceeded to relate them to each other. In that atmosphere of openness, his clarity, breadth of thought and obvious wish for our own understanding penetrated so deeply that afterward I felt I remembered it almost word for word, and wrote it down as follows:

How do we perceive an object? Why that one object, out of so many? Something connects us with that one object, and not with others. It attracts our attention. We pay attention to it. It attracts our attention through one of our senses: our eye, ear, nose, and so on. Our eye, ear or nose pays out attention to the object.

Our wishes, our desires, are connected with it in some way. We want to have it; or we want to avoid it; or we want to look at it more than we want to look at any other object.

This morning I saw a dog with two small boys. Its whole attention was glued to its two masters, watching to see what they would do, which way they would go, so he could quickly follow and be with them. He had attention for nothing else. And his attention continued to be concentrated on the two boys as long as I watched. This is already a high degree of attention, even if it is only animal attention—much stronger than many humans have.

Now we come to wish. Wish is only, as it were, a mere point in space. If we only wish for an object, we will never have it. In order to possess it, we must begin to move toward it. This movement is the beginning of will. If wish is a "point," this kind of will generates a "line," moving toward the object, with a view to possessing it, or identifying with it.

At every level of the universe there are degrees of will. The iron and lodestone: purely mechanical will—yet it moves towards its goal. The caterpillar moves along towards the leaf it wants to eat. The dog: sometimes a dog so strongly wishes to be with his master that when the master dies the dog will sit by his grave and never eat or leave there till he dies himself. This is already a very high degree of will—even if only an animal's will. Few humans attain it.

Thus there is an attention, and a will, for outside objects. An object attracts us; we do not attract the object. Objects govern us from outside. They make us do all sorts of things. It is not the woman who buys the hat, but the hat buys the woman. The man does not smoke the cigarette; the cigarette smokes the man, as Mr. Gurdjieff said. The attention and the will generated by outside objects, through the senses, are not our own. They are part of the mechanism of Nature: Nature works us. We do not conquer Nature; Nature conquers us. The attention and the will connected with the physical senses and outside objects are not our own. This will is not free, but answers the call of every outside object.

But there is another Attention, and another Will. Man has two natures: a lower, and a higher. The lower nature is like an animal's—more subtle and complex, perhaps, but nevertheless it works in the same way. The higher nature is the real one. It is incomplete, but capable of growing into a full and complete Man.

For the higher nature, there is another Attention, and another Will, not born outside of us, but born in us. This Attention is the beginning of real Consciousness; and this Will is the beginning of Free Will. With this Attention, we can observe ourselves; with this Attention we can remember ourselves. With this Will, we can make efforts to attain our greatest aim: to complete ourselves.

But we must actually will it. Knowledge is not enough. It is good, and necessary, of course, but of itself it will change nothing in us. Understanding is necessary. We must have new knowledge: for instance, in order to know what can be wished. But unless we actually wish it, we will have no chance of obtaining anything. And wishing alone, is also not enough. We can wish forever, but unless we move toward what we wish we will never obtain it. We must will it.

But we do not have enough Will. And we do not have enough Attention. So we must increase them as best we may. And the only way to increase them is to make the right kind of efforts. Without efforts, nothing can increase. But if we turn all our Attention, all our Will, and all our Efforts, towards our big Aim, little by little, like the caterpillar, we will approach it: the big Aim.

Two Masters

In the early days of my interest in Buddhism and psychology,I [Atanu] was given a particularly vivid demonstation of how difficult it was going to be to forge an integration between the two. Some friends of mine had arranged for an encounter between two prominent visiting Buddhist teachers at the house of a Harvard University psychology professor. These were teachers from two distinctly different Buddhist traditions who had never met and whose traditions had in fact had very little contact over the past thousand years. Before the worlds of Buddhism and Western psychology could come together, the various strands of Buddhism would have to encounter one another. We were to witness the first such dialogue.

The teachers, seventy-year-old Kalu Rinpoche of Tibet, a veteran of years of solitary retreat, and the Zen master Seung Sahn, the first Korean Zen master to teach in the United States, were to test each other's understanding of the Buddha's teachings for the benefit of the onlooking Western students. This was to be a high form of what was being called _dharma_ combat (the clashing of great minds sharpened by years of study and meditation), and we were waiting with all the anticipation that such a historic encounter deserved. The two monks entered with swirling robes -- maroon and yellow for the Tibetan, austere grey and black for the Korean -- and were followed by retinues of younger monks and translators with shaven heads. They settled onto cushions in the familiar cross-legged positions, and the host made it clear that the younger Zen master was to begin. The Tibetan lama sat very still, fingering a wooden rosary (_mala_) with one hand while murmuring, _"Om mani padme hum"_ continuously under his breath.

The Zen master, who was already gaining renown for his method of hurling questions at his students until they were forced to admit their ignorance and then bellowing, "Keep that don't know mind!" at them, reached deep inside his robes and drew out an orange. "What is this?" he demanded of the lama. "What is this?" This was a typical opening question, and we could feel him ready to pounce on whatever response he was given.

The Tibetan sat quietly fingering his mala and made no move to respond.

"What is this?" the Zen master insisted, holding the orange up to the Tibetan's nose.

Kalu Rinpoche bent very slowly to the Tibetan monk near to him who was serving as the translator, and they whispered back and forth for several minutes. Finally the translator addressed the room: "Rinpoche says, 'What is the matter with him? Don't they have oranges where he comes from?"

The Ebbing Glory of King Poseidon

The Skin of Light

The Skin of Light
Rene Daumal


The skin of light enveloping this world lacks depth and I can actually see the black night of all these similar bodies beneath the trembling veil and light of myself it is this night that even the mask of the sun cannot hide from me I am the seer of night the auditor of silence for silence too is dressed in sonorous skin and each sense has its own night even as I do I am my own night I am the conceiver of non-being and of all its splendor I am the father of death she is its mother she whom I evoke from the perfect mirror of night i am the great inside-out man my words are a tunnel punched through silence I understand all disillusionment I destroy what I become I kill what I love.

Artificial Sun

[Describing one of Antonioni's first documentaries, which was never completed: a shoot with schizophrenics in a mental hospital]. I wanted to do it with real schizophrenics, and the director of the hostpital agreed. he was a bit mad himselff--a very tall man who demonstrated reactions of mad people in pain by rolling about on the floor with the rest of them. But he provided me with some schizophrenics and I chatted with them, explaining how they were supposed to move in the first scene. They were amazingly docile and they did everything in the rehearsal as I asked them. Everything was fine--until we lit the klieg lights and they came under a glare that they'd never seen before. All hell broke loose. They threw themselves on the ground; they began to howl--it was ghastly. We were in a sea of them and I was absolutely petrified. I hadn't even the strenght to shout "Stop!" So we didn't shoot the documentary; but I've never forgotten that scene."

Chemical Brain

" Six months ago another scholar came to visit me [Michaelangelo Antonioni] in Rome, Robert M. Stewart. He had invented a chemical brain and he was going to Naples to a congress on cybernetics to tell them about his invetion, one of the most extraordinary discoveries in the world. It was in a tiny box, mounted on a load of tubes: there were cells, made up of gold and other substances, in a chemical solution. These cells have a life of their own and have certain reactions: if you walk into a room, they take on one shape, whereas if I walk in, they take on another, and so on. In that little box there were a few million cells, but from such basis you can actually reconstruct a human brain. That man feeds them, puts them to sleep--he talked to me about it very clearly. . ."

"Another man Silvio Ceccato, of the Univerrsity of Milan apparently created an electric brain, that could see and describe what it sees, and write an article from any given aesthetic, ethical or political point of view."

Steppenwolf

Excerpt: Steppenwolf: Herman Hesse

"This Steppenwolf of ours has always been aware of at least the Faustian two-fold nature within him. He has discovered that the one-fold of the body is not inhabited by a on-fold of the soul, and that at best he is only at the beginning of a long plilgrimage towards his ideal harmony. He would like either to overcome the wolf and become wholly man or to renounce mankind and at last to live wholly a wolf's life. It may be presumed that he has never carefully watched a real wolf. Had he done so he would have seen, perhaps, that even animals are not undivided in spirit. With them, too, the well-knit beauty of the body hides a being of manifold states and strivings. The wolf, too, has his abysses. The wolf, too, suffers. No, back to nature is a false track that leads nowhere but to suffering and despair. Harry can never turn back again and become wholly wolf, and could he do so he would find that even the wolf is not of primeval simplicity, but already a creature of manifold complexity. Even the wolf has two, and more than two, souls in his wolf's breast, and he who desires to be a wolf falls into the same forgetfulness as the man who sings: "If I could be a child once more!" He who sentimentally sings of blessed childhood is thinking of the return to nature and innocence and the origin of things, and has quite forgotten that these blessed children are beset by conflict and complexities and capable of all suffering.

There is, in fact, no way back either to the wolf or to the child. From the very start there is no innocence and no singleness. Every created thing, even the simplest, is already guilty, already multiple. It has been thrown into the muddy stream of being and may never more swim back again to its source.The way to innocence, to the uncreated and to God leads on, not back, not back to the wolf or to the child, but ever further into sin, ever deeper into human life. Nor will suicide really solve your problem, unhappy Steppenwolf. You will, instead, embark on the longer and wearier and harder road of life. You will have to multiply manytimes your two-fold being and complicate your complexities still further. Instead of narrowing your sworld and simplifying your soul, you will have to absorb more and more of the world and at last take of it up in your painfully expanded soul, if you are ever to find peace. This is the road that Buddha, and every great man has gone, wheter consciously or not, insofar as fortune favored his quest."

Night and The City

The General In The Library

The General in the Library

by Italo Calvino

One day, in the illustrious nation of Panduria, a suspicion crept into the minds of top officials: that books contained opinions, hostile to military prestige. In fact trials and enquiries had re-vealed that the tendency, now so widespread, of thinking of generals as people actually capable of making mistakes and caus-ing catastrophes, and of wars as things that did not always amount to splendid cavalry charges towards a glorious destiny, was shared by a large number of books, ancient and modern, foreign and Pandurese.

Panduria's General Staff met together to assess the situation. But they didn't know where to begin, because none of them were particularly well-versed in matters bibliographical. A commission of enquiry was set up under General Fedina, a severe and scrupulous official. The commission was to examine all the books in the biggest library in Panduria.

The library was in an old building full of columns and stair-cases, the walls peeling and even crumbling here and there. Its cold rooms were crammed to bursting with books, and in parts inaccessible, with some corners only mice could explore. Weighed down by huge military expenditures, Panduria's state budget was unable to offer any assistance.

The military took over the library one rainy morning in No-vember. The general climbed off his horse, squat, stiff, his thick neck shaven, his eyebrows frowning, four lieutenants, chins held high and eyelids lowered, got out of a car, with a briefcase in his hand. Then came a squadron of soldiers who set up camp in the old courtyard, with mules, bales of hay, tents, cooking equipment, camp radio, and signalling flags. Sentries were placed at the doors, together with a notice of forbidding entry, 'for the duration of large-scale manoeuvres now under way. This was an expedient which would allow the enquiry be carried out in great secret. The scholars who used to go to the library every morning wearing heavy coats and scarves and balaclavas so as not to freeze, had to go back home again. Puzzled, they asked each other: "What's this about large-scale manoeuvres in the library? Won't they make a mess of the place? And the cavalry?

And are they going to be shooting too? Of the library staff, only one little old man, Signor Crispino, was kept so that he could explain to the officers how the books were arranged. He was a shortish fellow, with a bald, eggish pate and eyes like pinheads behind his spectacles.
First and foremost General Fedina was concerned with the logistics of the operation, since his orders were that the com-mission was not to leave the library before having completed their enquiry; it was a job that required concentration, and they must not allow themselves to be distracted. Thus a supply of provisions was procured, likewise some barrack stoves and a store of firewood together with some collections of old and it was generally thought uninteresting magazines. Never had the library been so warm in the winter season. Pallet beds for the general and his officers were set up in safe areas surrounded by mousetraps.

Then duties were assigned. Each lieutenant was allotted a particular branch of knowledge, a particular century of history. The general was to oversee the sorting of the volumes and the application of an appropriate rubber stamp depending on whether a book had been judged suitable for officers, NCOs, soldiers, or should be reported to the Military Court.
And the commission began its appointed task. Every evening the camp radio transmitted General Fedina's report to HQ. So many books examined. So many seized as suspect. So many declared suitable for officers and soldiers.' Only rarely were these cold figures accompanied by something out of the ordinary, a request for a pair of glasses to correct short-sightedness for an officer who had broken his, the news that a mule had eaten a rare manuscript edition of Cicero left unattended.

But developments of far greater importance were under way, about which the camp radio transmitted no news at all. Rather than thinning out, the forest of books they seemed to grow ever more tangled and insidious. The officers would have lost their way had it not been for the help of Signor Crispino. Lieutenant Abrogad, for example, would jump to his feet and throw the book he was reading down on the table. 'But this is outrageous! A book about the Punic Wars that speaks well of the Carthaginians and criticizes the Romans! This must be reported at once!' It should be said here that, rightly or wrongly, the Pandurians considered themselves descendants of the Romans.

Moving silently in soft slippers, the old librarian came up to him. That's nothing,' he would say, 'read what it says here, about the Romans again, you can put this in your report too, and this and this,' and he presented him with a pile of books. The lieutenant leafed nerv-ously through them, then, getting interested, he began to read, to take notes. And he would scratch his head and mutter: 'For heaven's sake! The things you learn! Who would ever have thought!' Signor Crispino went over to Lieutenant Lucchetti who was closing a book in rage, declaring: 'Nice stuff this is! These people have the audacity to entertain doubts as to the purity of the ideals that inspired the Crusades! Yes sir, the Crusades!' And Signor Crispino said with a smile: 'Oh, but look, if you have to make a report on that subject, may I suggest a few other books that will offer more details,' and he pulled down half a shelf-full. Lieutenant Lucchetti leaned forward and got stuck in, and for a week you could hear him flicking through the pages and mutter-ing; “These Crusades, these Crusades.”

In the commission's evening report, the number of books examined and lined up got bigger and bigger, but they no longer provided figures relative to positive and negative verdicts. General Fedina's rubber stamps lay idle. If, trying to check up on the work of one of the lieutenants, he asked, 'But why did you pass this novel? The soldiers come off better than the officers! This author has respect for hierarchy!', the lieutenant would answer by quoting other authors and getting all muddled up in matters historical, philosophical, and economic. This led to open discussions that went on for hours and hours. Moving silently in his slippers, almost invisible in his grey shirt, Signor Crispino would always join in at the right moment, offering some book which he felt contained interesting information on the subject under consider-ation, and which always had the effect of radically undermining General Fedina's convictions.

Meanwhile the soldiers didn't have much to do and were getting bored. One of them, Barabasso, the best educated, asked the officers for a book to read. At first they wanted to give him one of the few that had already been declared fit for the troops; but remembering the thousands of volumes still to be examined, the general was loth to think of Private Barabasso's reading hours being lost to the cause of duty; and he gave him a book yet to be examined, a novel that looked easy enough, suggested by Sig-ner Crispino. Having read the book, Barabasso was to report to the general. Other soldiers likewise requested and were granted the same duty. Private Tommasone read aloud to a fellow soldier who couldn't read, and the man would give him his opinions. During open discussions, the soldiers began to take part along with the officers.
Not much is known about the progress of the commission's work: what happened in the library through the long winter was not reported. All we know is that General Fedina's radio reports to General Staff headquarters became ever more infrequent, until finally they stopped altogether. The Chief of Staff was alarmed; he transmitted the order to wind up the enquiry as quickly as possible and present a full and detailed report.

In the library, the order found the minds of Fedina and his men prey to conflicting sentiments: on the one hand they were constantly discovering new interests to satisfy and were enjoying their reading and studies more than they would ever have im-agined; on the other hand they couldn't wait to he back in the world again, to take up life again, a world and a life that seemed so much more complex now, as though renewed before their very eyes; and on yet another hand, the fact that the day was fast approaching when they would have to leave the library filled them with apprehension, for they would have to give an account of their mission, and with all the ideas that were bubbling up in their heads they had no idea how to get out of what had become a very tight corner indeed.

In the evening they would look out of the windows at the first buds on the branches glowing in the sunset, at the lights going on in the town, while one of them read some poetry out loud. Fedina wasn't with them: he had given the order that he was to be left alone at his desk to draft the final report. But every now and then the bell would ring and the others would hear him calling: 'Crispino! Crispino!' He couldn't get anywhere without the help of the old librarian now it seemed, and they ended up sitting at the same desk writing the report together.

One bright morning the commission finally left the library and went to report to the Chief of Staff; and Fedina illustrated the results of the enquiry before an assembly of the General Staff. His speech was a kind of compendium of human history from its origins down to the present day, a compendium in which all those ideas considered beyond discussion by the right-minded folk of Panduria were attacked, in which the ruling classes were declared responsible for the Nation's misfortunes, and the people exalted as the heroic victims of mistaken policies and unnecessary wars of their government. It was a somewhat confused presentation including, as can happen with those who have only recently embraced new ideas, declarations that were often simplistic and contradictory. But as to the overall meaning there could be no doubt. The assembly of generals were stunned, their eyes opened wide, then they found voices and began to shout. General Fedina was not even allowed to finish. There was talk of a court-martial, of his being reduced to the ranks. Then, afraid there might be a more serious scandal, the general and the four lieutenants were each pensioned off for health reasons, as a result of 'a serious nervous break-down suffered in the course of duty'. Often after that, dressed in civilian clothes with heavy coats and thick sweaters so as not to freeze, they were often to be seen going into the old library where Signer Crispino would be waiting for them with his books.

The Man Who Shouted Teresa

The Man Who Shouted Teresa

by Italo Calvino

I stepped off the pavement, walked backwards a few paces looking up, and, from the middle of the street, brought my hands to my mouth to make a megaphone, and shouted toward the top stories of the block: "Teresa!"

My shadow took fright at the moon and huddled at my feet.

Someone walked by. Again I shouted: "Teresa!" The man came up to me and said: "If you do not shout louder she will not hear you. Let's both try. So: count to three, on three we shout together." And he said: "One, two, three." And we both yelled, "Tereeeesaaa!"

A small group of friends passing by on their way back from the theater or the café saw us calling out. They said: "Come on, we will give you a shout too." And they joined us in the middle of the street and the first man said one to three and then everybody together shouted, "Te-reee-saaa!"

Somebody else came by and joined us; a quarter of an hour later there were a whole bunch of us, twenty almost. And every now and then somebody new came along.

Organizing ourselves to give a good shout, all at the same time, was not easy. There was always someone who began before three or who went on too long, but in the end we were managing something fairly efficient. We agreed that the "Te" should be shouted low and long, the "re" high and long, the "sa" low and short. It sounded fine. Just a squabble every now and then when someone was off.

We were beginning to get it right when somebody, who, if his voice was anything to go by, must have had a very freckled face, asked: "But are you sure she is home?"

"No," I said.
"That is bad," another said. "Forgotten your key, have you?"
"Actually," I said, "I have my key."
"So," they asked, "why dont you go on up?"
"I don't live here," I answered. "I live on the other side of town."
"Well, then, excuse my curiosity," the one with the freckled voice asked, "but who lives here?"
"I really wouldn't know," I said.

People were a bit upset about this.

"So, could you please explain," somebody with a very toothy voice asked, "why you are down here calling out Teresa."

"As far as I am concerned," I said, "we can call out another name, or try somewhere else if you like."

The others were a bit annoyed.

"I hope you were not playing a trick on us," the frecled one asked suspiciously.

"What," I said, resentfully, and I turned to ther others for confirmation of my good faith. The others said nothing.

There was a moment of embarrassment.

"Look," someone said good-naturedly, "why don't we call Teresa one more time, then we go home."

So we did it one more time. "One two three Teresa!" but it did not come out very well. Then people headed off for home, some one way, some another.

I had already turned into the square when I thought I heard a voice still calling: "Tee-reee-sa!"
Someone must have stayed on to shout. Someone stubborn.

The Black Sheep

Black Sheep, by Italo Calvino

There was a country where they were all thieves.

At night everybody would leave home with skeleton keys and shaded lanterns and go and burgle a neighbour's house. They'd get back at dawn, loaded, to find their own house had been robbed.

So everybody lived happily together, nobody lost out, since each stole from the other, and that other from another again, and so on and on until you got to a last person who stole from the first. Trade in the country inevitably involved cheating on the parts both of the buyer and the seller. The government was a criminal organization that stole from its subjects, and the subjects for their part were only interested in defrauding the government. Thus life went on smoothly, nobody was rich and nobody was poor.

One day, how we don't know, it so happened that an honest man came to live in the place. At night, instead of going out with his sack and his lantern, he stayed home to smoke and read novels.

The thieves came, saw the light on and didn't go in.

This went on for a while: then they were obliged to explain to him that even if he wanted to live without doing anything, it was no reason to stop others from doing things. Every night he spent at home meant a family would have nothing to eat the following day.

The honest man could hardly object to such reasoning. He took to going out in the evening and coming back the following morning like they did, but he didn't steal. He was honest, there was nothing you could do about it. He went as far as the bridge and watched the water flow by beneath. When he got home he found he had been robbed.

In less than a week the honest man found himself penniless, he had nothing to eat and his house was empty. But this was hardly a problem, since it was his own fault; no, the problem was that his behaviour upset everything else. Because he let the others steal everything he had without stealing anything from anybody; so there was always someone who came home at dawn to find their house untouched: the house he should have robbed. In any event after a while the ones who weren't being robbed found themselves richer than the others and didn't want to steal any more. To make matters worse, the ones who came to steal from the honest man's house found it was always empty; so they became poor.

Meanwhile, the ones who had become rich got into the honest man's habit of going to the bridge at night to watch the water flow by beneath. This increased the confusion because it meant lots of others became rich and lots of others became poor.

Now, the rich people saw that if they went to the bridge every night they'd soon be poor. And they thought: 'Let's pay some of the poor to go and rob for us.' They made contracts, fixed salaries, percentages: they were still thieves of course, and they still tried to swindle each other. But, as tends to happen, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer and poorer.

Some of the rich people got so rich that they didn't need to steal or have others steal for them so as to stay rich. But if they stopped stealing they would get poor because the poor stole from them. So they paid the very poorest of the poor to defend their property from the other poor, and that meant setting up a police force and building prisons.

So it was that only a few years after the appearance of the honest man, people no longer spoke of robbing and being robbed, but only of the rich and the poor; but they were still all thieves.

The only honest man had been the one at the beginning, and he died in very short order, of hunger.

Introduction to Analogous Alpinism

Introduction to Analogous Alpinism
René Daumal

My observations are those of a beginner. As they are completely fresh in my mind and concern the first difficulties a beginner encounters, they may be more useful to beginners making their first ascents than treatises written by professionals. These are no doubt more methodical and complete, but are intelligible only after a little preliminary experience. The entire aim of these notes is to help the beginner acquire this preliminary experience a little faster.

Alpinism is the art of climbing mountains by confronting the greatest dangers with the greatest prudence. Art is used here to mean the accomplishment of knowledge in action.

You cannot always stay on the summits. You have to come down again . . .

So what's the point? Only this: what is above knows what is below, what is below does not know what is above. While climbing, take note of all the difficulties along your path. During the descent, you will no longer see them, but you will know that they are there if you have observed carefully.

There is an art to finding your way in the lower regions by the memory of what you have seen when you were higher up. When you can no longer see, you can at least still know. . .

Keep your eyes fixed on the way to the top, but don't forget to look at your feet. The last step depends on the first. Don't think you have arrived just because you see the peak. Watch your feet, be certain of your next step, but don't let this distract you from the highest goal. The first step depends on the last.

When you take off on your own, leave some trace of your passage that will guide your return: one rock set on top of another, some grass pierced by a stick. But if you come to a place you cannot cross or that is dangerous, remember that the trace you have left might lead the people following you into trouble. So go back the way you came and destroy any traces you have left. This is addressed to anyone who wants to leave traces of his passage in this world. And even without wanting to, we always leave traces. Answer to your fellow men for the traces you leave behind.

Never stop on a crumbling slope. Even if you believe your feet are firmly planted, while you take a breath and looking at the sky the earth is gradually piling up under your feet, the gravel is slipping imperceptibly, and suddenly you are launched like a ship. The mountain always lies in wait for the chance to trip you up.

If, after climbing up and down three times through gullies that end in sheer drops (visible only at the last moment), your legs begin to tremble from knee to heel and your teeth start to chatter, first reach a little platform where you can stop safely; then, remember all the curse words you know and hurl them at the mountain, and spit on the mountain; finally, insult it in every way possible, swallow some water, have a bite to eat, and start climbing again, calmly, slowly, as if you had your whole lifetime to undo this bad move. In the evening, before going to sleep, when it all comes back to you, you will see then that it was just a performance. It wasn't the mountain you were talking to, it wasn't the mountain you conquered. The mountain is only rock or ice, with no ears or heart. But this performance may have saved your life.

Besides, in difficult moments, you'll often surprise yourself talking to the mountain, sometimes flattering it, sometimes insulting it, sometimes promising, sometimes threatening. And you'll imagine that the mountain answers, as if you had said the right words by speaking gently, by humbling yourself. Don't despise yourself for this, don't feel ashamed of behaving like those men our social scientists call primitives and animals. Just keep in mind when you recall these moments later that your dialogue with nature was only the outward image of a dialogue with yourself.

Shoes are not like feet—we are not born with them. Therefore we can choose them. Let yourself be guided in this choice first by experienced people, then by your own experience. Very quickly you will be so used to your shoes that every nail will seem like a finger, capable of testing the rock and gripping it firmly; they will become a sensitive and reliable tool, like a part of yourself. And yet you were not born with them; and yet, when they wear out, you will throw them away and remain what you are.

Your life somewhat depends on your footwear. Care for them properly, but a quarter of an hour per day will be plenty, for your life depends on several other things as well.

A climber far more experienced than I told me, "when your feet will no longer carry you, you have to walk with your head." And that's true. It is not, perhaps, in the natural order of things, but isn't it better to walk with your head than to think with your feet, as often happens?

If you slip or have a minor spill, don't interrupt your momentum but even as you right yourself recover the rhythm of your walk. Take note of the circumstances of your fall, but don't allow your body to brood on the memory. The body always tries to make itself interesting by its shivers, its breathlessness, its palpitations, its shudders, sweats, and cramps. But it is very sensitive to its master's scorn and indifference. If it feels he is not fooled by its jeremiads, if it understands that enlisting his pity is a useless effort, then it falls back into line and compliantly accomplishes its task.

The Fabricators of Useless Objects

The fabricators are unbelievably ingenious. Everything is grist to their skills. I even caught sight of one or two who could make the most useful things quite unusable and this, in their language, they call the greatest achievement of art. One of the cleverest of them had just completed the construction of a perfectly uninhabitable house and, seeing my astonishment, condescended to explain:

"When a tree grows, it's not to provide homes for birds. The bird is a parasite on the tree just as human beings are parasites on houses. The building which I have created is itself its own meaning. See how simple, how bold the lines! a cement pole sixty meters high supporting those double-walled rubber globes! (And indeed the effect was of a bunch of gigantic red currants painted in many colors.) No walls or roof or windows; it's a long time since we jettisoned such superstitions. Each globe is decorated inside in accordance with my specifications, and a central lift enables the visitor to inspect them without fatigue. The temperature is kept exactly at the ideal level for the ideal human organism as defined by our experts. It is the only temperature at which nobody feels comfortable: some shiver and others sweat. That's how science in this day and age serves art to make houses uninhabitable. This one should last at least six months."

Raymond Abellio

"Ce n'est pas parce que deux nuages se rencontrent que l'éclair jaillit, c'est afin que l'éclair jaillisse que les nuages se rencontrent"

Daumal

"chaque fois que l'aube paraît, le mystère est là tout entier"

Eckhart

The Eye with which I see God is the same Eye with which God sees me.

-Meister Eckhart