Approaches to Inner Life, Part Two
Lanza del Vasto
Translated from
LANZA DEL VASTO, APPROCHES DE LA VIE INTÉRIEURE
ÉDITIONS DENOËL, 1962
On Truth
Let us first address ourselves to the head, in other words, to truth.
What is truth?
Truth, says the intelligent man, is the greatest sum of exact notions about the greatest possible number of things.
Truth, says the materialist, is what things are, outside of any intervention or arrangement by our intelligence.
Truth, says the scientist, is the conformity of our formulas, systems and measurements with the laws of nature as experience teaches us.
Truth, says the idealist, is the coherence of our thoughts and their conformity with the law of thought, for all “things” present themselves to our thought as images, that is to say thoughts, and any reference to an “exterior” is absurd and illusory.
Truth, says the mystic, is mystery, and mystery is what cannot be said.
Truth, says the believer, is God, and God alone knows God.
Truth, says the totalitarian democrat, is the opinion of the greatest number; and true politics is to ensure that the greatest number opines for what is suitable.
Truth, says the sophist, is what can be demonstrated with brilliance, and I can demonstrate with the same brilliance the “for” and “against,” which demonstrates that truth is the brilliance of my intelligence.
Truth, says the skeptic, is that no one knows the truth.
“What is truth?” asks Pilate to Jesus, and Jesus, the accused, does not answer. He does not answer Pilate because one does not cast pearls before swine, because nothing can be taught to a man who takes himself for a wit and asks with self-sufficiency: “Truth? Bah! What does that mean?”
Jesus answers Pilate with silence, and this silence means that truth is not a noise in the mouth.
That it is not any formula, any doctrine, any system, any science.
To true seekers of truth, to his humble disciples, Jesus had answered very clearly: “I am the Truth” (“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” John 14:6), and, further, explaining: “You will know that I am in my Father, that you are in me and that I am in you (John 14:20). And again: “That all may be one as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be one in us” (John 17:21).
And Buddha teaches: “The Self (Atma) is the master and the lamp of the Self.”
In a word: truth is to be one and united as the Celestial Father is one and the Son united to the Father.
Once again: what is truth? Truth is the Outside as well as the Inside.
For if we believe that truth is a sum of notions, the result of a calculation, any verbal or mental combination, we will understand nothing of words such as “Know the truth and it will set you free”1 or “truth and non-violence are one and the same thing.”2
But truth is being, and to be is to be one, unified, harmonious and where the outside expresses the inside.
What is the truth of knowledge? It is perception, through the external form of what lies beneath: of substance, of what is inside.
What is the truth of expression? It is sincerity.
What is the “truth of forms”?3 The splendor of the true?4 It is beauty.
What is the truth of actions? It is justice.
What is the truth of conscience? It is inner unification and self-knowledge.
What is the truth of love? It is the recognition of self in others.
What is the truth of religion? It is union with the unique One, in the depths of oneself.
Yes, what is Truth? It is the transparency of form.
There is one thing that, since the dawn of human thought, has always struck people with amazement, has awakened them from their awakening and their belief in reality: it’s that every night they sleep and almost every night they dream. And that after having dreamed, they wake up... Ah! it was only a dream! And while I was dreaming, I was sure I was there, with people, with things, with objects sometimes more real than any real object, which had a more vivid relief, which had a density of existence... like those things that one sees gleaming just before a storm. And then, it was nothing, it was drawn from the depths of myself, it has been buried, it’s gone: nothing remains of it and soon not even the memory. But the things that I see, this tree that is there, of which I say it is there, these people who are here, is it certain that they exist? How can one see that these are beings? For after all, nothing resembles a true image more than a false image. Put them side by side and you’ll see!
The whole problem of truth is to know the difference between the false image and the true image. And if I have defined truth in three words: “Outside as Inside,” let us say right away that the false image is the one that has no inside, that has nothing inside or that doesn’t have the inside that I attribute to it. Your portrait on a piece of paper, oh! it’s striking in its resemblance! one would think it’s about to speak! But I turn it over and I see that behind it is paper, whereas if I turn you around, I don’t see paper (at least I hope not).
The difference between the true image and the false image is that there is something inside, something behind. And this something that is inside and behind supports the image, makes it persist, makes it exist also for others, makes it subsist while I turn my attention to something else. Only, when I pay attention to it, all realities, plants and beasts, thoughts or stones, stars or men, all present themselves only as images. And one barely notices that being, the concrete, the substantial, is something that one never sees.
Matter -- have you actually seen matter yourself? Yes, matter completely bare, stripped of all form and all figure? Tell me a bit what it is, how it is, what it looks like. Have you really seen it? — “Well, I think I have seen it!... It’s not like your hazy ideas, it’s not like your utopias, your theories, your systems... Matter is somewhat there... It’s heavy, it’s compact, it’s hard, it’s firm, it holds together, it fits in the hand... that’s what’s real!”
Let us leave aside then the system-makers, the hazy utopians, the ethereal idealists... Let us turn to people who believe only in matter and who, believing in it as firmly as iron, have set about studying it. Some took microscopes, others telescopes, they calculated, observed, dug, stripped this form of all its forms like an onion: they removed one layer, and then another, and then another, and then they looked closer, then underneath, then above, then across, and this heavy, impenetrable, inert, concrete, solid, compact, smooth, irrefutable matter -- they found it completely hollow, made of particles moving in the void at dizzying speeds.
They captured one particle, they looked inside, they found another small particle spinning within; it was like a fly in a cathedral; and then, in this cathedral that was the fly, they saw a fly circling. Finally, falling from fly to cathedral and from cathedral to fly, they passed to the other side, into the void!
One would be quite wrong to think this discovery is new. The sages have always known that matter is something that closely resembles nothingness. The Upanishads denounced this illusion with cutting clarity; Buddha teaches: “Nothing exists that is a thing.” Plato regards things as shadows projected on the cave wall, and the question is knowing where the light comes from and what is the object whose shadow is projected, for it is not at all where one sees it.
The dreamer believes what he sees while dreaming, but eventually he wakes up and realizes there was nothing there. But how will the man who believes himself awake know that he has dreamed all his life? Let us not wait for the day of our death for that. Let us try to wake up while still alive! To pass through the scenery and touch the truth with our finger.
I have a shrub here before me... No, no, it’s a word that I put there, I have green color, I have grey color, a drawing that resembles that of a good painter well enough. How do I know what’s behind it, what’s underneath, what’s inside... It is futile for me to try to remove the bark, to strip away the appearances one after another. I will arrive at other appearances, which will be no less apparent than the first ones — and then I will arrive at seeing nothing at all. But that’s not truth.
And I was telling you: the cause of appearance cannot be found inside its effect. When you see a shadow projected against a wall, you must not try to lift the shadow to see what’s behind it; what you will find behind is the wall.
In this object here, in this shrub, we must find the substance projected under this form. Where is it?
Look! We speak of “object,” and of “objective truth.” And what does “object” mean? “Thrown against” or “projected.” The words say it. The words we use know things that we don’t know. If we want to think well, let’s question words.
Let’s now go in search of substance, of what’s inside... And this will not be just out of philosophical curiosity, but moral duty. For the first of objects whose reality I must prove to myself is the face of my neighbor. Does my neighbor exist, or am I alone in the world? Am I having debates with shadows? If you are shadows, I owe you nothing, I have no duty to shadows. I don’t have to give my love to appearances. As much as it matters to me to know that the exterior world is shadow, I am forbidden to believe that my human brother is one.
When I see my friend laugh, I am sure he is happy; when my wife cries, I feel tender towards her. But this gaiety, where do I sense it? And this joy, where do I see it? But this sadness, where do I touch it?
In him, in the depths of her? No. Where? In me.
Look! Here is the key. Here is the key to open the door of awakening, to leave the chamber of shadows!
But the trees, the sky, the earth, the waters, the clouds are like the face of my neighbor and I must ask: who is behind? Who is underneath? Who is inside?
And ask myself which path leads beyond, within, to the country of the real.
A path, you now know there is one, one only for you, which is: you!
For you are the only thing in the world that you can know from both inside and outside at once. Everything else is perceptible only from the outside.
In the smooth, strange and closed façade of vast nature, you are the only breach and the only opening.
You are the only path opened to the inside of everything else.
In you alone can you grasp and follow the passage from intention to act, from signification to sign, from meaning to word, this link from inside to outside which is called truth.
All the images that unfold to the four horizons, their reverse, their double is in me! Without which I would not know how to recognize them: “My eye would not see the sun if it were not of the same essence as the sun,” proclaims an Egyptian hieroglyph.
It is by their reverse and their double that I understand things: that I com-prehend them, take them — “cum,” with — with me; take them inside of me and from the inside; and by making them enter into me, I enter into them.
Therefore: all knowledge of another thing begins with self-knowledge and never goes deeper than this knowledge.
If I had never experienced gaiety nor mourning, the laughter or tears of others would be inexplicable grimaces to me.
Certainly, it does not depend on me that nature and qualities, resources and feelings of all beings have an echo in my being like the sea sounds in the depths of a shell. Let us listen to our soul and we will know that this is given.
Given by Whom, it would be worth knowing! But to one who does not know how to listen, given in vain. He who knows nothing of himself can know nothing of anyone or anything.
And now, let us reverse the proposition: “And if I knew everything about myself...” Shall we dare to complete the formidable sentence?
Let us dare!
“...then, I would know everything about everything.”
Let us dare, for it is not we who speak. It is the Upanishads that speak, it is the Bible that speaks, it is all the tradition of wisdom that speaks, and of all wisdoms. It is the inscription on the cave at Delphi that speaks: Gnōthi seauton: know thyself. For, by knowing yourself, you know all.
“O God,” says Saint Augustine, “If I knew myself, I would know You”: Noverim me, noverim Te, You, the ultimate and supreme truth, You, the reason, the clarity, the light of all things.
Is it necessary to say that Self-Knowledge has no direct relationship with introspection or psychic analysis, whether romantic or medical?
Self-Knowledge is a spiritual discipline, a millennial tradition with universal and immutable methods.
Every person having a self and the Spirit blowing where it will, one finds it everywhere, though in different forms. It conforms to its nature in that it suffers only the minimum influence of country, climate, race, epoch and even religion.
Whatever one says about it, it has nothing particularly Hindu about it, even though Hindus have always devoted themselves to it with particular intensity.
In Latin Christianity, it is the privilege of all great mystics and particularly of the profound and sure Carmelite tradition.
It is customary to say that one cannot venture on these paths without the direction of a master, and sometimes even that one has no right to. This is indeed the rule. But the rule has had illustrious exceptions. And even one whom a good master has instructed learns the essential from himself and from God.
It is customary to warn against the danger of exercises, and indeed it easily happens that one goes off track through disordered, excessive and discontinuous practices, that one falls into discouragement if one is not transported to seventh heaven, or falls into illusion or presumption, or even into terror, as soon as one encounters even the slightest “supernatural phenomenon.”
But too often one forgets to point out the danger of not doing any exercise at all, the frightful danger of remaining as we are.
Yes, you will say, but how to concentrate on the effort of knowing oneself without turning away from the world and closing in on oneself? And if we turn away from the world, how will we penetrate it?
There is indeed here a whole play of closings, openings, and reversals that needs to be explained.
But first, let us ask ourselves what the simple word “Inside” means. Inside what? Inside each thing and in everything. The Inside is like a dimension of the Real in everything. The Inside is the inside of the Outside. One is therefore correlative to the other, equivalent, if not coextensive: a front and a back.
Between one and the other, there is less opposition than correspondence, and the passage happens through reversal.
The degrees of interiority form an infinite series. What is interior in relation to this is exterior in relation to that.
Let us consider the exterior face, the exterior world (we are more naturally inclined to it). Let us try to define the character of the exterior world. I would say that the character of the exterior world is that each part of this exterior world is exterior to all others. Is that clear?
I see someone shaking their head with an air of doubt. They are right, it’s not clear, because it’s not quite true. The exterior world is not exterior enough to match this definition. Its exteriority is relative and impure. Of purely, absolutely exterior, there is only Space.
Space is a marvelous object to contemplate and easy to know. It is a totally empty object, empty of matter, empty of life and empty of being. It can be populated with planes, lines, figures, but all these objects with exact edges are empty. They are made of points. And what is a point? A thing without quality or quantity. And when you take from a thing quantity and quality, what remains? Nothing. The point equals one in relation to all the rest, but in itself it equals zero.
Good! Geometric space, which envelops everything, is all made of these points.
Which gives us: zero multiplied by zero to infinity. Are you following?
This geometric space which is cast over everything like a net, everything assimilates to it in a certain way. Everything bathes in it and assimilates to it through surfaces. I specifically say “through surfaces,” because nothing is absolutely exterior.
In all beings, even in a grain of sand, there is the surface, the appearance, the image, the outside, and there is, inside, a nucleus, a substance, something underneath, precisely what makes it what it is.
To very different degrees, there are things that come closer to space. What assimilates best to space? Well, Matter in question, of which one doesn’t know if it is full or empty. To the extent that it is empty, it perfectly assimilates to space. And to the extent that it is full, it assimilates to the geometric point. And, to that extent, it is calculable and explicable through the ways of exterior intelligence.
Let us see then that being has two faces: this is where we pick up our thread: the inside and outside from which we started.
To recognize that our knowledge of the exterior leaves a remainder, does not exhaust the subject, does not exhaust being and doesn’t even touch it, should not leave us inert and passive, but should awaken in us a demand: that of discovering the way to reach being, to enter inside, into the interior world — because the Inside is also a whole world. The reverse of the other. How to define it? By reversing the definition of the other.
We have said that the exterior world is that in which each thing is exterior to every other thing. Let us say: the interior world is the world in which each thing is interior to every other. Things are implicated in one another in the interior world. And it happens that the container is contained by the contained.
No? Let me explain: I understand my friend, that is to say I take him into myself. And my friend understands me, that is to say he takes me into himself. If I take him into myself, I am his container. And if he takes me into himself, it’s because he contains his container.
You see how, in the interior world, all parts interpenetrate better the deeper one descends. At the bottom of the interior world, there are no more parts, there is only unity.
We have posed the Self as “being part” (a human and exterior way of speaking), being part of the interior world. It is the part of the interior world that we can grasp. But the interior world is all connected to itself. So if one grasps a part of it, one grasps it in its entirety.
So if you enter into a part, into a parcel, into a spark, into a drop, into an atom of the interior world, you enter into the entire interior world. And if you have the happiness and grace to enter into your self which is a spark, a drop, an atom, a tiny parcel of the interior world, you enter into the entire interior world. Noverim me, noverim Te... Which is what needed to be demonstrated.
John 8:32
Gandhi
Book of the Dead (Egyptian)
Plotinus