The Red Book, page 29
You saw that it was the life of the whole and the death of each individual. You felt yourself entwined in the collective death, from death to the earth’s deepest place, from death in your own strangely breathing depths. Oh—you long to be beyond; despair and mortal fear seize you in this death that breathes slowly and streams back and forth eternally. All this light and dark, warm, tepid, and cold water, all these wavy, swaying, twisting plantlike animals and bestial plants, all these nightly wonders become a horror to you, and you long for the sun, for light dry air, for firm stones, for a fixed place and straight lines, for the motionless and firmly held, for rules and preconceived purpose, for singleness and your own intent.
The knowledge of death came to me that night, from the dying that engulfs the world. I saw how we live toward death, how the swaying golden wheat sinks together under the scythe of the reaper, 14/15 like a smooth wave on the sea-beach. He who abides in common life becomes aware of death with fear. Thus the fear of death drives him toward singleness. He does not live there, but he becomes aware of life and is happy, since in singleness he is one who becomes, and has overcome death. He overcomes death through overcoming common life. He does not live his individual being, since he is not what he is, but what he becomes.
One who becomes grows aware of life, whereas one who simply exists never will, since he is in the midst of life. He needs the heights and singleness to become aware of life. But in life he becomes aware of death. And it is good that you become aware of collective death, since then you know why your singleness and your heights are good. Your heights are like the moon that luminously wanders alone and through the night looks eternally clear. Sometimes it covers itself and then you are totally in the darkness of the earth, but time and again it fills itself out with light. The death of the earth is foreign to it. Motionless and clear, it sees the life of the earth from afar, without enveloping haze and streaming oceans. Its unchanging form has been solid from eternity. It is the solitary clear light of the night, the individual being, and the near fragment of eternity.
From there you look out, cold, motionless, and radiating. With otherworldly silvery light and green twilights, you pour out into the distant horror. You see it but your gaze is clear and cold. Your hands are red from living blood, but the moonlight of your gaze is motionless. It is the life blood of your brother, yes, it is your own blood, but your gaze remains luminous and embraces the entire horror and the earth’s round. Your gaze rests on silvery seas, on snowy peaks, on blue valleys, and you do not hear the groaning and howling of the human animal.
The moon is dead. Your soul went to the moon, to the preserver of souls.40 Thus the soul moved toward death.41 I went into the inner death and saw that outer dying is better than inner death. And I decided to die outside and to live within. For that reason I turned away42 and sought the place of the inner life.
The Anchorite
Cap. iv. Dies I.43
[HI 15] On the following night,44 I found myself on new paths; hot dry air flowed around me, and I saw the desert, yellow sand all around, heaped up in waves, a terrible irascible sun, a sky as blue as tarnished steel, the air shimmering above the earth, on my right side a deeply cut valley with a dry river bed, some languid grass and dusty brambles. In the sand I see the tracks of naked feet that lead up from the rocky valley to the plateau. I follow them along a high dune. Where it falls off, the tracks move off to the other side. They appear to be fresh, and old half-worn-away footprints run alongside. I pursue them attentively: again they follow the slope of the dune, now they flow into another set of footprints—but it is the same 15/16 set that I have already followed, the one ascending from the valley.
Henceforth I follow the footprints downward in astonishment. I soon reach the hot red rocks corroded by the wind. On the stone the footprints are lost but I see where the rock falls off in layers and I climb down. The air glows and the rock burns my soles. Now I have reached the bottom; there are the tracks again. They lead along the winding of the valley, a short distance. Suddenly I stand before a small hut covered in reeds and made of mud bricks. A rickety wooden plank forms the door where a cross has been painted in red. I open it quietly. A haggard man covered in a white linen mantle is sitting on a mat with his back leaning against the wall. Across his knees lies a book in yellow parchment, with beautiful black handwriting—a Greek gospel, without doubt. I am with an anchorite of the Libyan desert.45
I: “Am I disturbing you, father?”
A: “You do not disturb me. But do not call me father. I am a man like you. What is your desire?”
I: “I come without desire, I have come to this place in the desert by chance, and found tracks in the sand up there that led me in a circle to you.”
A: “You found the tracks of my daily walks at daybreak and sunset.”
I: “Excuse me if I interrupt your devotion, it is a rare opportunity for me to be with you. I have never before seen an anchorite.”
A: “There are several others whom you can see further down in this valley. Some have huts like me, others live in the graves that the ancients have hollowed out in these rocks. I live uppermost in the valley, because it is most solitary and quiet here, and because here I am closest to the peace of the desert.”
I: “Have you already been here long?”
A: “I have lived here for perhaps ten years, but really, I can no longer remember exactly how long it is. It could also be a few more years. Time passes so quickly.”
I: “Time passes quickly? How is that possible? Your life must be frightfully monotonous.”
A: “Time certainly passes quickly for me. Much too quickly even. It seems you are a pagan?”
I: “Me? No—not exactly. I was raised in the Christian faith.”
A: “Well, then, how can you ask whether time drags on for me? You must know what preoccupies a man who is grieving. Only idlers grow bored.”
I: “Again, forgive me, my curiosity is great, what then do you occupy yourself with?”
A: “Are you a child? To begin with you see that I am reading, and that I keep regular hours.”
I: “But I can see nothing at all with which you could occupy yourself here. You must have read this book from cover to cover often enough. And if it is the gospels, as I suppose, then I am sure you already know them by heart.”
A: “How childishly you speak! Surely you know that one can read a book many times—perhaps you almost know it by heart, and nevertheless it can be that, when you look again at the lines before you, certain things appear new or even new thoughts occur to you that you did not have before. Every word can work productively in your spirit. And finally if you have once left the book for a week and you take it up again after your spirit has experienced various different changes, then a number of things will dawn on you.”
I: “I have difficulty grasping this. The book remains one and the same, certainly a wonderfully profound, yes, even divine matter, but surely not rich enough to fill countless years.”
A: “You are astonishing. How, then, do you read this holy book? Do you really always see only one and the same meaning in it? Where do you come from? You are truly a pagan.”
I: “I beg you, please don’t hold it against me if I read like a pagan. Let me talk with you. I am here to learn from you. Consider me as an ignorant student, which I am in these matters.”
A: “If I call you a pagan, don’t take it as an insult. I used to be a pagan, too, exactly like you as I 16/17 well remember. Therefore how can I blame you for your ignorance?”
I: “Thank you for your patience. But it matters very much to me to know how you read and what you take from this book.”
A: “Your question is not easy to answer. It’s easier to explain colors to a blind person. You must know one thing above all: a succession of words does not have only one meaning. But men strive to assign only a single meaning to the sequence of words, in order to have an unambiguous language. This striving is worldly and constricted, and belongs to the deepest layers of the divine creative plan. On the higher levels of insight into divine thoughts, you recognize that the sequence of words has more than one valid meaning. Only to the all-knowing is it given to know all the meanings of the sequence of words. Increasingly we try to grasp a few more meanings.”
I: “If I understand you correctly, you think that the holy writings of the New Testament also have a doubleness, an exoteric and an esoteric meaning, as a few Jewish scholars contend concerning their holy books.”
A: “This bad superstition is far from me. I observe that you are wholly inexperienced in divine matters.”
I: “I must confess my deep ignorance about these things. But I am eager to experience and understand what you think about the multifaceted meaning of the sequence of words.”
A: “Unfortunately I am in no position to tell you everything I know about it. But at least I will try to make the elements clear to you. Because of your ignorance I will therefore begin elsewhere this time: What you need to know is that before I became acquainted with Christianity, I was a rhetorician and philosopher in the city of Alexandria. I had a great throng of students, including many Romans, a few barbarians, and also some Gauls and Britons. I taught them not only the history of Greek philosophy but also the new systems, among them the system of Philo, whom we call the Jew.46 He was a clever head, but fantastically abstract, as the Jews are wont to be when they devise systems; moreover he was a slave of his own words. I added my own, and wove an atrocious web of words in which I ensnared not only my listeners, but also myself. We rioted terribly among words and names, our own miserable creatures, and accorded divine potency to them. Yes, we even believed in their reality, and believed that we possessed the divine and had committed it to words.”
I: “But Philo Judeaus, if this is who you mean, was a serious philosopher and a great thinker. Even John the Evangelist included some of Philo’s thoughts in the gospel.”
A: “You are right. It is to Philo’s credit that he furnished language like so many other philosophers. He belongs to the language artists. But words should not become Gods.”47
I: “I fail to understand you here. Does it not say in the gospel according to John: God was the Word. It appears to make quite explicit the point which you have just now rejected.”
A: “Guard against being a slave to words. Here is the gospel: read from that passage where it says: In him was the life. What does John say there?”48
I: “ ‘And life was the light of men and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not understood it. But it became a person sent from God, by the name of John, who came as a witness and to be a witness of the light. The genuine light, which illuminates each person, came into the world: He was in the world, and the world became through him, and the world did not recognize him.’—That is what I read here. But what do you make of this?”
A: “I ask you, was this ΛΟΓΟΣ [Logos] a concept, a word? It was a light, indeed a man, and lived among men. You see, Philo only lent John the word so that John would have at his disposal the word ‘ΛΟΓΟΣ’ alongside the word ‘light’ to describe the son of man. John gave to living men the meaning of the ΛΟΓΟΣ, but Philo gave ΛΟΓΟΣ as the dead concept that usurped life, even the divine life. Through this the dead does not gain life, and the living is killed. And this was also my atrocious error.”
I: “I see what you mean. This thought is new to me and seems worth consideration. Until now it always seemed to me 17/18 as if it were exactly that which was meaningful in John, namely that the son of man is the ΛΟΓΟΣ, in that he thus elevates the lower to the higher spirit, to the world of the ΛΟΓΟΣ. But you lead me to see the matter conversely, namely that John brings the meaning of the ΛΟΓΟΣ down to man.”
A: “I learned to see that John has in fact even done the great service of having brought the meaning of the ΛΟΓΟΣ up to man.”
I: “You have peculiar insights that stretch my curiosity to the utmost. How is that? Do you think that the human stands higher than the ΛΟΓΟΣ?”
A: “I want to answer this question within the scope of your understanding: if the human God had not become important above everything, he would not have appeared as the son in the flesh, but in the ΛΟΓΟΣ.”49
I: “That makes sense to me, but I confess that this view is surprising to me. It is especially astonishing to me that you, a Christian anchorite, have come to such views. I would not have expected this of you.”
A: “As I have already noticed, you have a completely false idea of me and my essence. Let me give you a small example of my preoccupation. I’ve spent many years alone with the process of unlearning. Have you ever unlearned anything?—Well, then you should know how long it takes. And I was a successful teacher. As you know, for such people to unlearn is difficult or even impossible. But I see that the sun has gone down. Soon it will be completely dark. Night is the time of silence. I want to show you your place for the night. I need the morning for my work, but after midday you can come to me again if you like. Then we will continue our conversation.”
He leads me out of the hut, the valley is covered in blue shadows. The first stars are already glittering in the sky. He leads me around the corner of a rock: we are standing at the entrance of a50 grave cut into the stone. We step in. Not far from the entrance lies a heap of reeds covered with mats. Next to it there is a pitcher of water, and on a white cloth there are dried dates and black bread.
A: “Here is your place and your supper. Sleep well, and do not forget your morning prayer, when the sun rises.”
[2] The solitary lives in endless desert full of awesome beauty. He looks at the whole and at inner meaning. He loathes manifold diversity if it is near him. He looks at it from afar in its totality. Consequently silvery splendor and joy and beauty cloak diversity for him. What is near him must be simple and innocent, since close at hand the manifold and complicated tear and break through the silvery splendor. No cloudiness of the sky, no haze or mist is allowed to be around him, otherwise he cannot look at the distant manifold in the whole. Consequently the solitary loves the desert above all, where everything nearby is simple and nothing turbid or blurred lies between him and the far-away.
The life of the solitary would be cold were it not for the immense sun, which makes the air and rocks glow. The sun and its eternal splendor replace for the solitary his own life warmth.
His heart longs for the sun.
He wanders to the lands of the sun.
He dreams of the flickering splendor of the sun, of the hot red stones spread out at midday, of the golden hot rays of dry sand. 18/19
The solitary seeks the sun and no one else is so ready to open his heart as he is. Therefore he loves the desert above all, since he loves its deep stillness.
He needs little food since the sun and its glow nourish him. Consequently the solitary loves the desert above all since it is a mother to him, giving him food and invigorating warmth at regular hours.
In the desert the solitary is relieved of care and therefore turns his whole life to the sprouting garden of his soul, which can flourish only under a hot sun. In his garden the delicious red fruit grows that bears swelling sweetness under a tight skin.
You think that the solitary is poor. You do not see that he strolls under laden fruit trees and that his hand touches grain a hundredfold. Under dark leaves the overfull reddish blossoms swell toward him from abundant buds, and the fruit almost bursts with thronging juices. Fragrant resins drip from his trees and under his feet thrusting seed breaks open.
If the sun sinks onto the plane of the sea like an exhausted bird, the solitary envelops himself and holds his breath. He does not move and is pure expectancy until the miracle of the renewal of light rises in the East.
Brimful delicious expectation is in the solitary.51
The horror of the desert and of withered evaporation surround him, and you do not understand how the solitary can live. 19/20
But his eye rests on the garden, and his ears listen to the source, and his hand touches velvet leaves and fruit, and his breath draws in sweet perfumes from blossom-rich trees.
He cannot tell you, since the splendor of his garden is so abundant. He stammers when he speaks of it, and he appears to you to be poor in spirit and in life. But his hand does not know where it should reach, in all this indescribable fullness.
He gives you a small insignificant fruit, which has just fallen at his feet. It appears worthless to you, but if you consider it, you will see that this fruit tastes like a sun which you could not have dreamt of. It gives off a perfume which confuses your senses and makes you dream of rose gardens and sweet wine and whispering palm trees. And you hold this one fruit in your hands dreaming, and you would like the tree in which it grows, the garden in which this tree stands, and the sun which brought forth this garden.
And you yourself want to be that solitary who strolls with the sun in his garden, his gaze resting on pendant flowers and his hand brushing a hundredfold of grain and his breath drinking the perfume from a thousand roses.
Dull from the sun and drunk from fermenting wines, you lie down in ancient graves, whose walls resound with many voices and many colors of a thousand solar years.
When you grow, then you see everything living again as it was. And 20/21 when you sleep, you rest, like everything that was, and your dreams echo softly again from distant temple chants.
You sleep down through the thousand solar years, and you wake up through the thousand solar years, and your dreams full of ancient lore adorn the walls of your bedchamber.
You also see yourself in the totality.
You sit and lean against the wall, and look at the beautiful, riddlesome totality. The Summa52 lies before you like a book, and an unspeakable greed seizes you to devour it. Consequently you lean back and stiffen and sit for a long time. You are completely incapable of grasping it. Here and there a light flickers, here and there a fruit falls from high trees which you can grasp, here and there your foot strikes gold. But what is it, if you compare it with the totality, which lies spread out tangibly close to you? You stretch out your hand, but it remains hanging in invisible webs. You want to see it exactly as it is but something cloudy and opaque pushes itself exactly in between. You would like to tear a piece out of it; it is smooth and impenetrable like polished steel. So you sink back against the wall, and when you have crawled through all the glowing hot crucibles of the Hell of doubt, you sit once more and lean back, and look at the wonder of the Summa that lies spread out before you. Here and there a light flickers, here and there a fruit falls. For you it is all too little. But you begin to be satisfied with yourself, and you pay no attention to the years passing away. What are years? What is hurrying time to him that sits under a tree? Your time passes like a breath of air and you wait for the next light, the next fruit.
