If a noble spirit leaves their body, it causes no harm. No doubt a journey can be found pleasant for the sole reason that it has not yet been taken. Similarly, walking down the street in the opposite direction from one’s usual daily route can be entertaining. Period. The problem is that mediocre minds will try to imitate this experience. My father would have done better to put incarnation under lock and key. Obviously, I can understand his concern for human freedom. But the result of the separation between a weak mind and its body will prove disastrous for that individual and for others.
An incarnate being never commits abominable acts. If he kills, it is in self-defense. He does not get carried away without a just cause. Evil always has its origin in the mind. Without the safeguard of the body, spiritual damage can begin.
At the same time, I understand. I too am afraid of suffering. We seek to become disincarnate in order to ensure ourselves of an emergency exit. Tomorrow, I won’t have one.
-
This night I am writing from does not exist. The Gospels are categoricaclass="underline" my last night of freedom is set in the Garden of Gethsemane. The following morning, I am sentenced with immediate effect. I actually see this as a form of humanity: to make someone wait increases their torture.
And yet, there is this unexplored dimension that I don’t think I’ve made up: a time belonging to another order that I’ve inserted between myself and death. I’m like everyone, I’m afraid to die. I don’t think I will be given special treatment.
Did I choose? Apparently. How could I have chosen to be me? For the reason that governs the vast majority of choices: unconsciously. If we knew what we were doing, we would not choose to live.
Nevertheless, I made the worst choice. Which must mean that I was as unconscious as can be. At least when it comes to love, things don’t happen this way. That’s how you know you’re in love: because you haven’t chosen to be. People with big egos don’t fall in love, because they can’t stand not being able to choose. They are attracted to the people they pick: that’s not love.
In that inconceivable moment when I chose my fate, I did not know that it would mean falling in love with Mary Magdalene. Actually, I think I will call her Madeleine: I don’t like double names, and I find it tedious to call her the Magdalene. As for calling her Mary, that’s out of the question. It’s never a good idea to confuse your sweetheart with your mother.
There is no such thing as causality in love, because we don’t choose. We invent the notion of “because” afterwards for our own pleasure. I fell in love with Madeleine the moment I saw her. I could quibble: if it was my sense of sight that held the role of making me fall in love, one could attribute the cause to Madeleine’s extreme beauty. The fact is, she was silent, and so I saw her before I heard her. Madeleine’s voice is even more beautiful than her looks: had I come to know her through my hearing, the result would have been exactly the same. If I were to continue along this train of thought with my three other senses, my intentions would begin to verge on the shameless.
It’s not surprising that I fell in love with Madeleine. The fact she fell in love with me, on the other hand, is far more extraordinary. However, that is exactly what happened the moment she saw me.
We told each other the story a thousand times, knowing all the while that this fiction was getting carried away. It was a good thing we did: it gave us boundless pleasure.
“When I saw your face, I could not get over it. I didn’t know that so much beauty was possible. And then you looked at me, and it made things worse: I didn’t know anyone could look at me like that. When you look at me, I have trouble breathing. Do you look at everybody like that?”
“I don’t think so. I’m not known for it. And you’re a fine one to talk. Your gaze is famous, Jesus. People travel for miles to have you gaze at them.”
“I don’t gaze at anyone the way I gaze at you.”
“I should hope not.”
Love concentrates certainty and doubt: you are as sure of being loved as of doubting that love, not alternately, but with disconcerting simultaneity. If you try to get rid of your doubting side by asking your beloved a thousand questions, you end up denying the radically ambiguous nature of love.
Madeleine had known many men, and I had known no women. Nevertheless, our lack of experience made us equal. Confronted with what was happening to us, our ignorance was that of a newborn infant. The trick is in embracing this convulsive state with enthusiasm. I daresay I’m exceedingly good at it, and Madeleine is too. Her case is all the more admirable in that men have accustomed her to expect the worst, and yet she has not become mistrustful. To her credit.
How I miss her! I summon her in my thoughts, but it’s no substitute. Maybe it would be more dignified if I refused to let her see me like this. Still, I would give anything to see her again and hold her in my arms.
They say that love is blind. I have found it’s the opposite. Universal love is an act of generosity that presupposes painful clarity. As for the state of being in love, it makes us see splendors that are invisible to the naked eye.
Madeleine’s beauty was well known. However, no one knows better than I do just how beautiful she is. It takes courage to be able to stomach that much beauty.
I often asked her, and there was nothing rhetorical about it, “What’s it like being so beautiful?”
She tended to dodge the issue:
“It depends on who with.”
Or:
“It’s all right.”
Or even:
“What a nice thing to say.”
The last time I insisted:
“I’m not trying to be gallant. It really does interest me.”
She sighed.
“Until I met you, on the rare occasion when I was aware of it, I would feel nailed to the wall. Now that it’s you looking at me, I have learned to be glad of it.”
Among the things I did not tell her, for the very reason that it would confuse matters, there was this: of all the joys I had known with her, none could compare with the contemplation of her beauty.
“Stop looking at me like that,” she would say every so often.
“You are my glass of water.”
There is no greater pleasure than a glass of water when you are dying of thirst.
The only Evangelist who has shown talent as a writer worthy of the name is John. That is also why his words are the least reliable. “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst”: I never said it, it would have been a misrepresentation.
It’s no coincidence that I chose this part of the world: it was not enough for me that this is a place of political upheaval. I needed a land of great thirst. No other sensation more eloquently evokes what I seek to inspire than thirst. That is surely why no one has experienced it as often as I have.
Truth to telclass="underline" what you feel when you are dying of thirst is something you must cultivate. Therein lies the mystical urge. It is not its metaphor. When you are no longer hungry, that is called satiety. When you are no longer tired, that is called rest. When you cease to suffer, that is called comfort. When you are no longer thirsty, there is no word for it.
Language, in its wisdom, has understood that there must be no antonym for thirst. You can quench thirst, yet the noun for it does not exist.
There are people who do not consider themselves mystics. They are wrong. It takes only a moment of extreme thirst to attain such a state. And the ineffable instant when the parched man raises a glass of water to his lips: that is God.
It is an instant of absolute love and boundless wonder. Whosoever has this experience is bound to be pure and noble for as long as it lasts. I came to teach that fervor, nothing else. My message is so simple as to be disconcerting.