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Chagall: "Isaiah's
prophecy"
(Isaiah 11/1-9)
The world freed from evil is necessarily freed from culture
I have lately begun reading
"And What You Shall Have Written (Le Pèlerin d’Arès) 1993-1996".
I
had not reread it since its publication, 1997. At that time some
brothers
and sisters criticized me for writing a book "complicated" or
"obscure",
some said "pedantic", so I was to consider it as a failure and quote
it as little as possible for fifteen years. Today it comes to me as
surprise to
find the book clear, accurate, helpful and interesting, but what I
notice above
all else is that in 1996, while I wrote it, my faith and thought were
completed,
achieved.
My deculturation was
through.
I was born spiritually.
Deculturation?
In a summer of the 90's, during a Pilgrimage in Arès, at an
exposé-debate, the
kind called workshop by some brothers, the issue was deculturation. A
pilgrim
rose from her chair and said, "You've said The
Revelation of Arès sets man free
(Rev of Arès 10/10), so it will lead man to deculturation.
This is
impossible. I think there will be just a change
of culture, a transition from the old culture to a new one, the Aresian
culture."
I replied, "No. Culture will disappear. Culture is deterministic.
Therefore
it disappears if man controls his destiny. The
Revelation of Arès calls the control of destiny penitence,
which is no moral submission,
to which culture reduces
it, but free powerful action of
recreation if the self through good.
Evil continuously regenerates
culture, both
of them constitute an equation which looks unassailable, whatever
variables get
into it. Wrong ! Good gets
rid
of culture and even paves eventually the Way
to Eden (Rév of Arès 35/2). This is as inevitable as the law of
relativity.
This is also a way of stating the Core
of The Revelation of Arès.
Culture ever since Adam's wrong
choice (2/1-5) has made mankind its draft team. It has harnessed,
bridled and
whipped men like horses drawing the wagon of fatality, which exists but
only to those
who have added a darkness side to
the
knowledge side of science (38/5) in
the tunnels (23/2) where faith and
doubt have forever passed each other for millennia.
Penitence, existential
insurgence if
ever there was one, can change
everything. It will bring down the idols
of the mind (the allegedly inescapable sociological
laws),
unharness the men, set them free
from
the coach of the princes and their
doctors (3/4), make each of them a colt
free from the harness and running
to
the goal he has set himself (10/10).
It
is indeed very difficult to imagine, from the dark tunnels where we
still
live,
what a changed world (28/7), a
world
without culture is going to be, but it emerges from The
Revelation of Arès that it is going to be
a process of diversifying in free
harmony, but no mere evolution in the harness
of a new culture.
Deculturation is very slow, of course. Repenting generations and repenting
generations will pitch camp on the
desert (24/4) or vacuum (23/5,
xxx/3,
xxxi/4) of culture. Deculturation is imperceptibly getting
completed,
however. A faithful of a church or a religion lives on faith, follows a
culture, never gets out of it. An Arès Pilgrim definitely unlike the
latter lives
on good, he is a penitent,
changes his life (30/11), is a spiritual peregrine again
like Abraham or Jesus, two great decultured men. Every day a penitent
prepares his own salvation,
but he also gets a bit of the
world out of the bog of culture, which has been sinking it down to the
sin of sins, the point of no-return of evil. Every
day he
loves and forgives his
neighbor a bit more, he gets a little more spiritual
intelligence, he sets himself a bit freer
(10/10) from all the prejudices that dim his discernment. He
reads
God's Word and, even though he is unlikely to memorize it ever, it
leaves its
mark on him a little more every day. He is less and less able to
distinguish it
from himself. His deculturation goes on and the next generations are to
carry
on with it until they stop measuring man's acts by the yardstick of
lifestyles,
of the "intellectually correct" and of laws, but measure them by the
yardstick of love.
Deculturation will reverse a
lot of values of culture. Property for example. For millennia culture
has made
property a nagging problem so much so that man is the property of
matter and
money more than the opposite. This is one of the least tragic aspect of
the
vacuum which culture is. Deculture will stop the perpetual leak of
everything
between man's fingers. Property, as it is as peculiar to man as his flesh,
his mind,
his soul (Rev of Arès
17/7), love, freedom, inventiveness, is to be forever, but
culture has
built up on property ideologies, like the right-wing one and the
left-wing one nowadays,
which have brought about much hatred, many fights, at times many
deaths, and have
not provided and will never provide global happiness; This is the very
subtle
meaning of the parable of the camel and
the needle eye (Matthew 19/24), which is absurd to lay stress
the absurdity
of culture, culture of vacuum.
Culture of vacuum? The grasping
man
has a bank account which, even when filled, looks always vacuum
to him. He will spend a lifetime operating the riches pump
and will miss the sublime destiny of a man made
God (2/12).The ascetic is generally thought of as the
grasping man's
opposite, but his life, even when filled with privation, looks always
vacuum to
him. He will spend a lifetime operating the harshness pump and will
miss the sublime
destiny of a man made God (2/12). These
are two extreme types
of vacuum culture disciples, but I
could
multiply the types along the scale of shades and by this puzzling,
decultured
demonstration remind that the Path
towards Life and Happiness
is elsewhere, in absolute freedom
(10/10), the only way out of vacuum.
Some men say they are in pursuit of ideals and go from a religion, a
philosophy, a politic, to another, but they do not change. They move
over
culture like over a billiard balls which do nothing but strike
together, clink
and make noises (ii/7-13, vii/4-16, etc.).
We Arès Pilgrims are out of the billiard, so we are never invited to
play it. This
is our grandeur. This is also one of the great difficulties our mission
meet
with in the world.
Last January 15th, a mission of ours in France kept open house on the
theme of
"Jesus' return". A visitor sat down by me and said, "You've never read
"Atheology" by Michel Onfray, I imagine…" I said, "Yes,
I did, I've read that book of frightening, erudite, rationalistic
propaganda."
He outraged said, "Propaganda?" I said, ""Honest sensible
people have inwardly or outwardly experienced Someone Else. The man
that
displays
that much erudition to treat them like dreamy or deranged or villainous
persons
is but a propagandist. Nazis likewise used to display science
against Jews and so did Soviets against all believers."
He said,
"Michel Onfray is a highly
cultured writer." I replied, "Exactly. Onfray is not a man of
knowledge, but one of culture. Culture is a glue which sticks men to
fixations, invariable values, so we Arès Pilgrims strive to unstick
them, set them free (10/10, 28/20)."
He looked me
up and down. I added, "Well, now you can easily define us as just the
opposite of Michel Onfray. Have you read The
Revelation of Arès?" He exclaimed, "But no! That's a book to
drive one nuts!" I said, "No,
that book makes you think. It decultures you." He got up and went out.
This
short heated exchange shows that there is no doubt but The
Revelation of Arès is one of the very scarce great times of
History when God appears and upsets all.
Deculturation is still an issue both misunderstood, unwelcome, and
yet
fundamental. In the missionary action we have not enough developed it.
So
people incline to regard The Revelation
of Arès as an alternative to religion, but it is not. It
assigns to faith a
quite different dynamic. It is a great leap towards another Creation,
for which
the Creator makes man his co-creator.
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