Inner Octaves, by Michel Conge
A Hierarch of Understanding
My life and my death, my liberation or my downfall…these are not isolated things; they are continuous processes; they are consequences. Everything is combination or state.
It is in an organism destined for annihilation, that the imperishable ‘I’ must be born.
My aim can only be achieved by following an extremely rigorous line. If the descending current carries me away, I am taken farther from that line; if I deviate, I move away, along a loop that will lead me lower down.
In order not to deviate, I must learn to recognize the ideas that will enable me to encompass an increasing number of concerns and data in a single look. That will help me discover that deviation begins the moment I take a single idea or a single phenomenon for the whole. And yet, my very constitution obligate me to do just that, and when I turn toward the longed-for truth with only one of my functions, I deviate immediately. A search supported by the head alone can only lead me astray; a search based solely on feeling leads to equally meaningless notions.
Only by reaching a center of gravity in myself that is capable of reconciling my different aspects will I be able to keep to a precise line without deviating.
Just as I lose myself because I surrender to whatever function is dominant, similarly I lose myself if I think that my vision of things is the only right one.
My centers must contribute to my search, without any of them claiming to be the only one able to understand.
Each one of us must draw closer to the others without claiming to be the only one who understands. Just as one centre will watch over another, so too will each of us watch over the other.
Interview with Pauline de Dampierre
Parabola Magazine, 1985
Between the fully realized man who has attained the greatest development possible, and the ordinary contemporary man—“a slave entirely at the disposal of tendencies which have nothing to do with his true individuality”—there is room for another category of mankind: those who search for a way toward truth.
What interests me is what is at the source of what we call sin. Usually we see sin as a manifestation of a certain intensity, or as an action which is exaggerated, bad, harmful. But what is at the source of that action? Compared to the source, the action is only an excrescence—something that bursts through from an undercurrent which is always acting in human beings.
The undercurrent of tendencies from which these impulses arise is a part of the whole man.
Usually these tendencies have a much greater influence on our behavior than we imagine. They are always moving, and they are at the root of what has been called our automatism. If a person were to stop all his outer and inner movements at a given moment in order to see what is acting in him, he would nearly always feel a tendency which has about it something narrow, something heavy, something with a negative aspect that tends to be against, to be egoistic. All that is usually going on unseen. But if he tries to awaken to what is going on in himself, to be sincere, he will be able to witness, in addition to what could be called the “coarse” life in him, another life of another quality—much subtler, much higher, lighter—that is also a part of himself. The contact with this other quality of life helps him to have a quieter presence, a deeper vision. And he feels an urge at that moment to be open to a quality of this sort that would have a force, that would be a center of gravity. He begins to search for a way to serve what he feels would be his real being.
Then he begins to really know that if he lets his attention, his interest, to be taken by his automatic tendencies, it deprives him of contact with that other source of life he is searching for. It could be said that there is a continual tendency to sin, in that sense. When these sins are spoken of as deadly, it means that these tendencies—if they are allowed to rule—at every moment deprive the human being of the possibility of turning towards this real life.
To let oneself be continuously led by these automatic, nonconscious tendencies is …to be passive. And when a person is passive, the automatic begins to take the initiative, to direct him. When he turns towards something else…. When he makes a contact between the two… …Then the undercurrent is able to play its normal role—its very necessary role…..
In a way each one of these tendencies is there to sustain my life at a certain level; they are necessary and healthy. But if I live with them alone, I am an animal. A human being has to stand in between and not allow himself to be taken by these things; not to let them raise opposition and justification. For this he must not let himself identify with them, and this means he must not let them make him forget the one and only thing important for him.
One can feel these tendencies as inescapable parts of one’s nature which to a certain extent bring data about oneself and the external world.
I want to emphasize one aspect that is rarely brought to lights: the role of an inner search in relation to these underlying tendencies. You don’t so much think of them as bad, but you feel strongly, painfully, that they are harmful to what you are searching for. They are there and you don’t allow them to take too much place. You don’t reject them, but you don’t let yourself be engulfed by them, either. Through this process, something can be developed in us.
What is important is to begin to be able to hold oneself at the source. I heard during my Catholic upbringing that even a saint sinned seven times a day. But I would say the tendency to sin is at every second.
The wish for evolved being comes from another source. And the two parts must meet. They do not often meet by accident; they meet only when something is acknowledged and held in respect.
I would say that what is needed is not an equal force but another kind of force, more subtle, more active. As in chemistry, one can take a stone and introduce a very active substance and the stone will dissolve. well, the wish to be can be very active.
In fact it is not possible to experience an opening towards more freedom without obedience toward something higher. A human being has no other possibility. He may think he can be free, but he is either obedient and submitting to this higher, or a slave. But when he submits willingly, he may receive something of such a high quality that he will no longer be attracted to what enslaves him. Every time we are attracted, we think we find life in that attraction. But at the moment of submitting to this finer force, we feel life of such another kind that we are no longer tempted.