From the surface to the depths

To do philosophy is to explore one's own temperament, and at the same time to attempt to discover the truth. Iris Murdoch.

According to our philosophy, humanity has a meaning and an orientation. It is progressively moving toward its ultimate perfection. This positive evolution proceeds, in part, from the progress of consciousness. Our consciousness, indeed, is slowly passing from a subjective vision to an objective vision. It leaves the egocentric "I" for the deep "self" (of which Carl Gustav Jung speaks, it seems to me).

The highest degree of the evolution of consciousness could be qualified as pure and objective consciousness — the consciousness of the ecstatic, of the saint. A level still very difficult to reach voluntarily for ordinary humanity (the constructive human). A level requiring too much ascetic effort for our unfinished minds.

This difficulty is in the order of things — it forms part of the logic of our evolution. To build our world, we must cast upon it a subjective gaze. We must be able to measure, judge, analyse, think, compare, pass things through the sieve of the ego. Because we reflect and act upon our world, our evolution is unique and effective. In pure consciousness, on the contrary, the gaze is contemplative and passive.

 

Philosophy of the human future

Toward absolute consciousness

 

 

 

Difficult ecstasy.

"Joy is our escape from time." Simone Weil

Humanity progressively elaborates itself, thanks to the energy of each human being. During this period of construction, humanity must act, build and create. And this obligation to action makes access to the state of pure consciousness — to ecstasy — difficult. Constructive humanity shapes the world for the accomplished human of the future. It develops the consciousness of humanity and gradually pushes it toward its highest degree of elevation. Once this maximum degree of consciousness is reached, our descendants will then access serenity, joy, quietude and contemplation. We, constructive human beings, are benefactors, philanthropists, altruists — without knowing it.

The philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre strongly underlines an aspect of consciousness on which we also wish to place emphasis. Many philosophers see in it a fullness of being — but this, Sartre tells us, is an inaccurate view. Consciousness is defined as presence to itself, but it is, by that very fact, non-coincidence with itself, for the subject, to be present to itself, must separate from itself; it is not fully what it is, and it wants to make itself be what it is not. G. Madinier, La conscience morale, PUF.

 

Being and beings

What I understand of Jean-Paul Sartre's explanation seems to me entirely correct. To be in its fullness, consciousness must live itself and not think itself. If it thinks itself, it becomes exterior to itself — it splits, in a sense. The thinking part will impose itself on the entirety of consciousness, preventing it from feeling things fully, from being fully pure. It will be in the world of the subject, of the me, of the I (the world of ordinary consciousness). This position of consciousness provokes action, intention, reflection, judgement and so on (or their negatives: the boredom of inaction, suffering, frustration). Absolute consciousness, on the contrary, produces contemplation and ecstasy.

Here we can distinguish being and beings. Being, to be Being, must annihilate the subject within itself — in other words beings.

• In ecstasy, it is Being that self-feels, that self-lives.
• In beings (in other words in ordinary life), it is the subject (the personality constructed by society and motivated by its needs, intentions and instincts) that feels and lives.

• The ecstatic being lives the sensations of Being (of God). In other words, the ecstatic, being in pure contact with Being (thus with God), lives its intimate nature (absolute love). We can therefore say of the ecstatic that they incarnate the energy of the creative principle. This is why in our philosophy we draw a parallel between ecstasy and absolute love — which is, in our view, the energy of the creative principle.
• Beings experience the sensations of the subject (of the person). They perceive things through their culture, their pathos, their impulses, their intentions, their ego.
  I am writing or dictating pages of philosophy, and my consciousness is entirely imbued with this work, this activity. It is closed to the exterior, to the world, to the trees and objects surrounding me.

 

God needs humanity in order to incarnate itself

Being needs beings in order to incarnate itself fully.
Therefore beings — in other words constructive human beings (of whom we are a part) — are essential to the total incarnation of being. We are essential to Being, but as constructive human beings. This is why it is so difficult for us to access ecstasy, beatitude, fullness. Being, to incarnate itself fully, must empty the subject of the human being it chooses. Being then becomes this absolute consciousness. This is beatitude, nirvana, ecstasy — it is Being in itself, self-feeling. This is why, in this experience, there is dissolution of the ego, of the me, that is to say of the subject, of the person.
We find here the entirety of the work of the ascetic.

In summary

The "imperfect I" corresponds to the banal consciousness through which things are seen through thousands of superficial and deceptive labels and stereotypes. The "perfect I" would correspond to an objective vision of things — or more precisely of "the thing", insofar as the object, emptied of its "labels" and "subjective attributes", offers a "unique and absolute essence" — an essence identical in all things. The perfect I offers a gaze freed from the subject and its stereotypes. Humanity then attains its pure consciousness, its osmosis.

Year 2001