Fusion confusion! scolded my benefactor. He repeated it to us, this formidable formula he drew from I don’t know where. In any love relationship, he said, fusion is a dangerous thing because it leads to confusion. Fusion confusion? No, Flornoy, no my dear friend. I disagree. Fusion effusion is much better. Infinitely preferable, absolutely delectable, totally safe.
Effusion? What does that mean? Let’s hear Balzac. The accent with which Madame d’Aiglemont spoke these words painted an effusion of heart and an intimate emotion, of which it would be difficult to give an idea without using the word holiness. (source)Honoré de Balzac, La Femme de trente ans, Paris, 1832 Memories of the catechism: It is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit that will renew the creation.
The Love Being
In the mystical sense, bestowal is a grace, a power received that frees from the waves of tenderness towards every living creature. We experience pure love, which is also called unconditional love. In an explosion of serene joy, the bestowal is colored in desire of fusion with the Being Love, our sweet Master.
Everything I have told in these pages could be the fruit of my sick brain. The desire to relegate this organ to a subordinate role, that of a banal computer, no doubt testifies to the secret knowledge that I had of my main weakness. Will my passion for Nietzsche earn me his destiny, to end up crazy? Uncontrolled madness awaits me. No way. I will spare those who love me the terrible spectacle of such degradation.
The ego’s ultimate pants, die with dignity, leave in good health, bow out at the right moment, and a destiny at my hand is fulfilled. Take care of my exit from the stage, cabot under the light, actor in pursuit. The pope with his suite, the drunk with his drunk, the vat with his flight. It’s all me, it’s right now.
As has been said of Monsieur de la Palice, a quarter of an hour before my death I would still be alive.
Lapalissade
Have we not written nonsense about this poor La Palice! We have even distorted the spelling of his name. What an ignominy! To tell the truth, that Marshal of France who died in Pavia was the opposite of a fool. It is a great injustice to lend him stupid truisms, ignoring the bravery he showed in all his wars.
Here is the anecdote. The word lapalissade comes from the name of Jacques II de Chabannes, lord of La Palice known as «La Palisse», marshal of François I. But contrary to what one might think, he was not the author of any lapalissade. The soldiers of La Palice, to illustrate the courage shown by this marshal during the siege of Pavia (1525) where he died, wrote a song in his memory, in which is found the following stanza:
Alas, La Palice is dead,
He died before Pavia;
Alas, if he had not died,
He’d still tempting
His widow, Marie de Melun, inspired by this song, engraved as an epitaph on his funeral monument:
Here lies the Lord of La Palice.
If he hadn’t died, he’d still tempting.
At the time, there were two graphs for the lower case s: the s round (s) and the s long ( ſ ), which could be confused with a f. An error in reading made it read “Alas, if he had not died, he would still be alive”. Today, we still find this distorted phrase: “A quarter of an hour before his death, he was still alive”.
This explanation doesn’t make any sense in English, sorry for that. The precious thing was lost in translation.
Fusion desire
The desire for fusion is inherent in the human being. And this for a clear reason. Before birth, fusion with the mother’s body is a source of well-being, which translates into ineffable happiness for the fetus. This merger continues for a few hours, or a few months. And then she disappears and this sudden disappearance causes unspeakable suffering. The little child understands that he is not in his place. Its true place is elsewhere, where it is good to live, simply, to enjoy every moment, because the slightest moment of life is an ineffable happiness as long as one is connected to the Great Whole.
The child grows up. The pain never disappears from the heart. In most cases, in our materialistic age and in a world tainted by neglect and the lure of financial gain, the adolescent is cut off from his soul. The desire for fusion makes him seek the path of reconciliation, of deep, visceral union with the Great Whole, but nothing fills this void, nothing ends this unbearable expectation. And then comes the age of love.
I was a romantic child, but too young for human love. Girls didn’t fill me. Boys didn’t fill me. I needed stronger, broader. Something that transcends my unsatisfied life, my ever-disappointed aspirations. At twelve, I was ready to give my life for Jesus, whom I loved more than anything else. I stayed for long minutes, sometimes hours, contemplating the rather kitsch paintings that depicted his way of the cross in the church in my neighbourhood. I was insensitive to their bad taste. Their kitsch side was undetectable to me.
Illusion and confusion
The emotion overwhelmed me, I was full of gratitude for the immense gift he had made to us. He had without hesitation given his life for me. And I looked at him. And I admired him. I loved him.
Something great flowed from his martyr face into my soul always ready to move. Yes, I would have given my life for him.
Later, I forgot about it. Bad priests suffocated in me the seed of the priesthood that grew in my heart. I no longer hold it against them, on the contrary. They turned me from error. I had grown up. So I transferred the absolute of my love to the girls. Overwhelmed, my eyes clouded with tears, I read Fournier and his great Meaulnes, Saint-Ex and his Little Prince, Dalens and his Prince Eric. Every night, I’d run out of sleep. Angry, I’d hit my Underwood ribbon like a deaf guy. I wrote poems to all the girls in the neighborhood. As time went by, my readings evolved. Cesbron, Cronin, Camus, Proust, and then Goethe, Die Leiden des jungen Werther. Rousseau, La nouvelle Héloïse.
And poets, all poets. Big and small. I was drunk reading. Carried by writing, I was already blackening notebooks. I was in love. I thought I was finally touching the fusion that I had missed so much since childhood. And I experienced confusion. I stayed there for many years, searching for the inaccessible star, always refused. Plunging me into another love affair, convinced that Louis Aragon’s Les Yeux d’Elsa or André Breton’s L’Amour Fou were the solution. I wrote miles of passionate statements. Adding more confusion.
Beyond Good and Evil
The philosophy class opened me in two. At last I was filled, more than by religion, more than by romantics, more than by poetry, more than by writing, more than by girls. I read Nietzsche, all of Nietzsche. And I thanked the Living that this pure genius existed. Without knowing it, I had become mystical. My parents’ religion had died for me, but the spirituality more vivid than ever. So I understood. Morality is a trap, like politics, like religions.
Everything is played out in us beyond social censorship. Long afterwards, the inner path marked by the major arcana of the tarot brought me the same tranquil certainty. Knowledge, the only one that matters, is played out beyond good and evil. The quest for happiness is an illusion. The end of suffering is a challenge. Could it be that Nietzsche opened my soul to the values of Buddhism? In any case, tired of my disappointing love adventures, I had understood a truth that I still cherish. Mystical bestowal protects from emotional confusion.
At the top of the hill, I set up three tents. One for Jesus, one for Moses, one for Elijah. They did not come. So I set fire to it. Three times, four times even, the fire cleansed the dross of my religious life. The wanderings of the past. The ignorance of the present. The aspirations of the future. And here we are tonight.
Cabal and Goslings
I’m still reading tonight. This time I read a rare book, as I sometimes offer myself: Christian Kabbalists of the Renaissance, by F. Secret. And I come across a reference to a treatise I didn’t know about, published in 1601 in Chieti, Italy. The treatise is called De osculo, Of kissing. It is subtitled: From the accord of ethnic and Christian philosophy. The author, a Mutius Pansa de Pennara, is a philosopher and physician. His name, if it is not a pseudonym, could translate into the Silent Belly. I would even say more thanks to the language of the goslings. Mutius PansaFrench : “panse” means “belly” will become: Silent Belly, and Penn Ara,French : Peine de l’ara the sadness of the parrot. What is this sadness? The speech … the word.
The name of this author clearly indicates to us that we must not seek toward the mind, but in the body, the mute belly. This is not a word of circumstance. The mouth remains silent, occupied that it is to the kiss, osculum. In addition to the Christianity he already knew, the philosopher studied all the “ethnic philosophies”, to use his vocabulary. These are the mysteries he lists: those of the Chaldeans (Hebrews), those of the Egyptians, Persians, Arabs, Greeks and Latins. (source)F. Secret, Christian Kabbalists of the Renaissance, p. 314
Nothing but that. One can only bow to his erudition. Yet he affirms it, not only by his name, Panse Muette, but also by the subject of his study, De osculo, Du baiser. I give the embrace and the kiss of peace to those who do me the honor of meeting me. It happens that through this kiss, a bond is established, stronger than words, beyond evils. My peace is established. The one I carry inside me, alive and peaceful. So, thanks to this book on the Christian cabal written at the dawn of the 17th century, I understood the reality of bestowal. Where it comes from. How it is transmitted.
Without knowing it, I wrote this article just for the last paragraph, the most beautiful one. It wasn’t planned. I was hoping to finish on Nietzsche. I had a nice fall, borrowed from Jacques Brel: and here we are tonight. But no. Too easy. The evening was just beginning. It was going to give me this beautiful revelation. The best things in my life have always been unpredictable.
