Clippings

I was a gamble of Nature, a throw of the dice into an uncertain realm, leading perhaps to something new, perhaps to nothing; and to let this throw from the primordial depths take effect, to feel its will inside myself and adopt it completely as my own will: that alone was my vocation.

For them mankind — which they loved as much as we did — was a fully formed entity that had to be preserved and protected. For us mankind was a distant future toward which we were all journeying, whose aspect no one knew, whose laws weren’t written down anywhere.

…this whole God, both in the Old and the New Testament, may be an outstanding figure, but He’s not what He should really represent. He is goodness, nobility, the Father, beauty and also loftiness, sentimentality — all fine! But the world is made up of other things, too. And all that is simply ascribed to the Devil, and this whole part of the world, an entire half, is swept under the table and buried in silence. In the same way, they praise God as the Father of all life, but when it comes to sex life, on which life after all depends, they simply bury it in silence and as much as possible declare it to be sinful, the work of the Devil! I have nothing against honoring this God Jehovah, not in the least. But my opinion is that we should honor everything and hold it sacred, the whole world, not just this artificially detached, official half! And so, alongside the divine service for God, we must also have a service for the Devil. I think that would be proper. Or else, people would have to create some new God, who would also include the Devil within Himself, one in whose presence we wouldn’t have to shut our eyes when the most natural things in the world take place.

Everyone lives through this difficult period. For the average person it’s the point in his life when the demands of his own life clash most violently with the world around him, when his forward path must be fought for most bitterly. Many experience this death and rebirth, which are our destiny, only this once in their life, when childhood decays and slowly disintegrates, when all that has become dear to us is about to leave us and we suddenly feel the solitude and deathly chill of outer space around us. And very many are hung up for good on this reef and for the rest of their life cling painfully to the irretrievable past, to the dream of the lost paradise, which is the worst and most murderous of all dreams.

Even innocuous people are hardly spared from coming into conflict, one time or more in their life, with the lovely virtues of piety and gratitude. Everyone must at some time take the step that separates him from his father, from his teachers; everyone must taste a little of the toughness of solitude, even though most people can’t stand much of it and soon knuckle under again.

Even as a small child I had occasionally had a leaning toward looking at bizarre natural forms, not as an observer, but surrendering myself to their unique magic, their confused but profound language. Long, woody tree roots, veins of color in stones, patches of oil floating on water, cracks in glass — all such things had occasionally cast a strong spell over me, especially water and fire, as well, smoke, clouds, dust, and most particularly the moving dots of color I saw when I shut my eyes. …

… The contemplation of such shapes, the surrender to irrational, confused, rare natural forms, engenders in us a feeling that our own mind is in harmony with the will that gave rise to these forms — we soon feel the temptation to look on them as our own caprices, as our own creations — we see the borderline between us and nature tremble and dissolve, and we become acquainted with the mood in which we don’t know whether the images on our retina are coming from external impressions or from within us. In no other way than through this practice do we discover so simply and easily how very creative we are, how much our soul always participates in the perpetual creation of the world.

The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.