Art of Flux Thinking

Allow me to take you on a journey, grab a seat and you might possibly need a seat-belt – it will be a bumpy one. We are dirt cheap, all of us. We are the cheapest beings on the planet. We have no elegance, we lack daring, we lack passion, we lack what some would call naive foolishness. The kind of naive foolishness that makes every breath worth having. The kind of passion that enflames a heart and warms all that comes into contact with it… we’ve become cold creatures with every thought that tries to divorce itself from this necessity. We are all planets – where is the sun?

Iker was accidentally reading the following from a fascinating little soul…

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What Tarquin said where the poppy blooms was understood by the Son, but not by the messenger.

….

A young lad falls in love with a princess, the content of his whole life lies in this love, and yet the relationship is one that cannot possibly be brought to fruition, be translated from ideality into reality. The slaves of misery, the frogs in life’s swamp, naturally exclaim: ‘Such love is foolishness; the rich brewer’s widow is just as good and sound a match.’ Let them croak away undisturbed in the swamp. This is not the manner of the knight of infinite resignation, he does not renounce the love, not for all the glory in the world. He is no trifler. He first makes sure that this really is the content of his life, and his soul is too healthy and proud to squander the least thing on getting drunk. He is not cowardly, he is not afraid to let his love steal upon his most secret, most hidden thoughts, to let it twine itself in countless coils around every ligament of his consciousness – if the love becomes unhappy he will never be able to wrench himself out of it. He feels a blissful rapture when he lets it tingle through every nerve, and yet his soul is as solemn as his who has emptied the cup of poison and feels the juice penetrate to every drop of blood – for this moment is life and death. Having thus imbibed all the love and absorbed himself in it, he does lack not the courage to attempt and risk everything. He reflects over his life’s circumstances, he summons the swift thoughts that like trained doves obey his every signal, he waves his rod over them, and they rush off in all directions. But not when they all return as messengers of sorrow and explain to him that it is an impossibility, he becomes quiet, he dismisses them, he remains alone, and he performs the movement. If what I say here has any meaning the movement must take place properly. For the knight will then, in the first place, have the strength to concentrate the whole if his life’s content and the meaning of reality in a single wish. If a person lacks this concentration, this focus, his soul is disintegrated from the start, and then he will never come to make the movement, he will act prudently in life like those capitalists who invest their capital in every kind of security so as to gain on the one what they lose on the other – in short, he is not a knight. Secondly, the knight has the strength to concentrate the whole of the result of his reflection into one act of consciousness. If he lacks this focus his soul is disintegrated from the start and he will then never have time to make the movement, he will be forever running errands in life, never enter the eternal; for at the very moment he is almost there he will suddenly discover that he has forgotten something and go back. The next moment he will think it possible, and that is also quite correct; but through such considerations one never comes to make the movement; rather with their help one sinks ever deeper into the mire.

So the knight makes the movement, but what movement? Does he want to forget the whole thing? Because in that too there is a kind of concentration. No! for the knight does not contradict himself, and it is a contradiction to forget the whole of one’s life’s content and still be the same. He has no inclination to become another, seeing nothing at all great in that prospect. Only lower natures forget themselves and become something new. Thus the butterfly has altogether forgotten that it was a caterpillar, perhaps it can so completely forget in turn that it was a butterfly and that it can become a fish. Deeper natures never forget themselves and never become something other than they were. So the knight will remember everything; but the memory is precisely the pain, and yet in his infinite resignation he is reconciled with existence. His love for the princess would take on for him the expression of an eternal love, would acquire a religious character, be transfigured into a love for the eternal being which, although it denied fulfilment, still reconciled him once more in the eternal consciousness of his love’s validity in an eternal form that no reality can take from him. Fools and young people talk about everything being possible for a human being. But that is a great mistake. Everything is possible spiritually speaking, but in the finite world there is much that is not possible. This impossibility the knight nevertheless makes possible by his expressing it spiritually, but he expresses it spiritually by renouncing it. The desire which would convey him out into reality, but came to grief on an impossibility, now bends inwards but is not lost thereby nor forgotten. At times it is the unconscious workings of the desire in him which awaken the memory, at others it is he himself that awakens it, for he is too proud to want to let the whole content of his life seem to have been but a fleeting affair of the moment. He keeps this love young, and it grows with him in years and beauty. On the other hand, he needs no finite occasion for its growth. From the moment he made the movement the princess is lost. He needs none of this erotic titillation of the nerves at the sight of the loved one, etc., nor does he need in a finite sense to be continually making his farewell, for his memory of her is an eternal one, and he knows very well that those lovers who are eager to see one another one more time to say farewell are right to be eager, right to think it will be the last time; for as soon as may be they will have forgotten one another. He has grasped the deep secret that even in loving another one should be sufficient unto oneself. He pays no further finite attention to what the princess does and just this proves he has the movement infinitely. Here we have the opportunity to see whether the movement in the individual is proper or not. There was a person who also believed he has made the movement, but time went by, the princess did something else, she married, say, a prince, and his soul lost the resilience of resignation. He knew then that had not made the movement correctly; for one who has infinitely resigned is enough unto himself. The knight does not cancel his resignation, he keeps it, just as young as in the first instance, he never lets it go, simply because he has made the movement infinitely. What the princess does cannot disturb him, it is only lower natures who have the law for their actions in someone else, the premises for their actions outside themselves. If, on the other hand, the princess is similarly disposed there will be a beautiful development. She will then introduce herself into that order of knighthood whose members are not admitted by ballot but which anyone can join who has the courage to admit him- or herself, that order of knighthood which proves its immortality by making no distinction between man and woman. She too will have kept her love young and sound, she too will have overcome her agony, even though she does not, as the song says, ‘lie by her lord’s side’. These two will then be suited for each other in all eternity, with such a strict-tempoed pre-established harmony that were some moment to come, a moment with which they were nevertheless not concerned finitely, for in the finite world they would grow old – were such a moment to come which allowed their love its expression in time, then they would be in a position to begin precisely where they would have begun had they been united from the beginning. The one, whether man or woman, who understands this can never be deceived, for it is only lower natures who imagine they are deceived. No girl who lacks this pride really knows what it is to love, but if she is so proud, then all the world’s stratagems and ingenuity cannot deceiver her.

In infinite resignation there is peace and repose; anyone who wants it, who has not debased himself, can discipline himself by – what is still worse than being too proud – belittling himself, can discipline himself into making this movement, which in its pain reconciles one to existence. Infinite resignation is that shirt in the old fable. The thread is spun with tears, bleached with tears, the shirt sewn in tears, but then it also gives better protection than iron and steel. A defect of the fable is that a third party is able to make the material. The secret in life is that everyone must sew it for himself; and the remarkable thing is that a man can sew it just as well as a woman. In infinite resignation there is peace and repose and consolation in the pain, that is if the movement is made properly. I could easily fill a whole book with the various misunderstandings, awkward positions, and slovenly movements I have encountered in just my own slight experience. People believe very little in spirit, yet it is precisely spirit that is needed to make this movement; what matters is its not being a one-sided result of dira necessitas; the more it is that the more doubtful it always is that the movement is proper. To insist that a frigid, sterile necessity is necessarily present is to say that no one may experience death before actually dying, which strikes me as crass materialism. Yet in our time people are less concerned with making pure movements. Suppose someone wanting to learn to dance said: ‘For hundreds of years now one generation after another has been learning dance steps, it’s high time I took advantage of this and began straight off with a set of quadrilles.’ One would surely laugh a little at him: but in the world of spirit such an attitude is considered utterly plausible.

Infinite resignation is the last stage before faith, so that anyone who has not made this movement does not have faith; for only in infinite resignation does my eternal validity become transparent to me, and only then can there be talk of grasping existence on the strength of faith.

[Fear & Trembling, Soren Kierkegaard]

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Iker reading this dropped to his knees and began to weep. He saw his life come to fruition in these words. It tore him inside but with each tear he experienced a relief, a sense of composure, a sense of togetherness that he could not explain. He got up, dusted his shoulders, cut loose the strings that were pulling the limbs of his heart and continued his journey. He waved with a tearful nod at his Ilsara, she had been the messenger all along, but he never knew this, he was lost in her reflection – hopeless mirror that he is. He realized that he was the Prince, and Tarquin had sent him the message.

Love is either this risk, this pang of existence, this hurling into the abyss, so that in a moment one gains everything… in one breath of air one gains their life without a single sigh… or it is nothing at all. It is this or love has never existed, simply because it has always existed. Love and Faith are closely enmeshed, one cannot live and be in love without these two compatriots, this eternally wedded couple.

Iker was walking home alone one night; he’d just left Ilsara’s cold bed. The cool breeze plummeted his face and sprinkled subtle tears in his eyes. Walking down the dreary road he could not help but feel something very strange; he felt an immense sorrow, a deep sadness arose within him like a flash of lightning. Wondering where it came from, he could not come to grips with an answer. He stopped and just allowed his sorrow to take over him, he surrendered to it. As he stood there on the pavement, the cars with their headlights penetrating his eyes one after the other as they pass him by, the snake, the eagle and the child came to him again. They began to converse with him.

Snake: Why be darkened the world around thee?

Iker: I know not.

Eagle: Come thee from thy woman’s bed?

Iker: I do.

Child: Why dost thou sorrow, didst thou not depart happy?

Iker: I did.

Snake: Did she?

Iker: She did.

Eagle: Why dost thou sorrow?

Iker: I know not.

The Eagle left the child’s shoulder and bold as can be whispered thus in Iker’s ear,

Eagle: How didst thou get her, with joy or with sorrow?

Iker whispered meakly back,

Iker: With sorrow.

The Eagle flew back onto the child’s shoulder and the three of them disappeared. Iker’s sorrow lifted itself from his small, tilted shoulders and left him forever. He rang up his Ilsara and said thus onto her… “my dear, my sorrow has left me, I am ready – are you?”