Aug 11, 2009

Verses on Wisdom

That which I am, if I am finite,
is a part of the Infinite,
  And since all parts of the Infinite are the body of the Infinite,
    therefore I am the Infinite.

I am the Infinite.
Everything I do is the Infinite.
The Infinite is me.
There is no separation between us.
I am the Infinite.

The barrier that separates me from attaining wisdom
is a real barrier,
  But I cross it in an instant
     when the Infinite has blown away the smoke.

I seek truth,
but in what?
If I want truth that is utterly reliable,
then only the Infinite can supply.
I, a finite thing, am different every moment,
and satisfying ideas shift and swirl.
But what is still here, amidst the chaos?
Even when I am gone, what remains?
The Infinite.

My past habits constrain,
dreams echo in new circumstances;
so I experience repetition.
But let me remember my true identity,
and I experience freedom from karma.
The repetition ends.
Then I find circumstances are what they are,
instead of vehicles to relive the past.

Death no longer signifies loss or change;
   I grieve no more, because the Infinite is real to me.
Illness or the strains of poverty become sweet,
though it seems insane to think so.
   Even the slander of fools becomes sweet,
     though I wish they could taste this sweetness,
     and not the bitterness of cyclical existence.

One needs no longer to reach for heavens,
or be demoralised by the hells of human society.
But live moment by moment,
seeing the Infinite in everything.
  The burden of human suffering lifts,
     and one can function as Nature permits.

Aug 5, 2009

The Significance of the Pseudonyms

All communication of truth has become abstract: the public has become the authority; the newspapers call themselves the editorial staff; the professor calls himself speculation; the pastor is meditation; no man, none, dares to say I.

But since without qualification the first prerequisite for the communication of truth is personality, since "truth" cannot possibly be served by ventriloquism, personality has to come to the fore again.

But in these circumstances, since the world was so corrupted by never hearing an I, it was impossible to begin at once with one's own I. So it became my task to create author-personalities and let them enter in the actuality of life in order to get men a bit accustomed to hearing discourse in the first person.

Thus my task is no doubt only that of a forerunner until he comes who in the strictest sense says: I.

But to make a turn away from this inhuman abstraction to personality — that is my work.

— Kierkegaard, mid-1849

Away with revolutions, and "we, the avant-garde"

The wrong way is much too close, wanting to reform, to arouse the whole world — instead of oneself, and this certainly is the wrong way for hotheads with a lot of imagination.