The Burden of Sadness

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The Burden of Sadness

Is there another sadness besides that of death? Definitely not, because true sadness is black, devoid of charms, and dreamless. There is greater weariness in sadness than in melancholy, and it drives one to disgust with life, to acute depression.

The difference between sadness and pain: the former is dominated by reflexivity while the latter is weighed down by the fatal materiality of sensation. They both lead only to death, never to love or erotic exaltation.

Eros means unmediated living in the secret necessity of life which—given the essential innocence of any erotic experience—creates the illusion of liberty. To be sad or suffering, on the other hand, means to be incapable of participating directly and organically in the flux of life. Sadness as well as suffering reveals existence for us, for only through them do we acquire consciousness of our separation from the objective world, that anxiety which confers a tragic character upon our existence.

I AM LURED by faraway distances, the immense void I project upon the world. A feeling of emptiness grows in me; it infiltrates my body like a light and impalpable fluid. In its progress, like a dilation into infinity, I perceive the mysterious presence of the most contradictory feelings ever to inhabit a human soul. I am simultaneously happy and unhappy, exalted and depressed, overcome by both pleasure and despair in the most contradictory harmonies. I am so cheerful and yet so sad that my tears reflect at once both heaven and earth. If only for the joy of my sadness, I wish there were no death on this earth.

The Sense of Endings

I can only speak about the sadness and the joy of the end. I love only what reveals itself without reserve or compromise; you will never find it anywhere but in the convulsions of heart-rending sadness, the inebriation and excitement of last moments. Is not everything final?

What is the anxiety of nothingness if not the perverse joy of our final sadness, our exalted love for the eternity of nothingness and the transience of existence? Can it really be that for us existence means exile, and nothingness, home?

I must struggle against myself, fly into a rage at my destiny, blow up all resistance to my transfiguration; let there be only my desire for light and darkness! Let each one of my actions be either triumph or fall, flight or failure! Let life grow and die in me with the speed of a lightning bolt! Let not the pettiness and rationality of commonplace existence spoil the pleasures and torments of my inner chaos, the tragic delights of my final despair and joy!

To survive moments of extreme organic tension is not a merit but a mark of imbecility. Survive, only to return to the banality of existence?

Survival is equally meaningless after the experience of nothingness and after the paroxysm of sexual pleasure. I can’t understand why people do not commit suicide during orgasm, why they don’t think survival commonplace and vulgar. Such an intense though brief quiver should reduce us to ashes in seconds. 

But if it does not kill us, we should kill ourselves. There are so many kinds of death. Yet no one has the courage or the originality to attempt sexual suicide, a death no less absolute than the others but in which the passage into nothingness is made from heights of pleasure. Why not take this path?

A flash of bitter lucidity in the forgetfulness of sexual pleasure would suffice for sexual death no longer to appear as mere illusion. When men can no longer bear the monotony and the banality of ordinary existence, they will find in each experience of the absolute an opportunity to commit suicide.

The impossibility of surviving such extraordinary states of exaltation will destroy existence. No one will then doubt that it is possible to long for death after having listened to certain symphonies or admired a unique landscape.

Animal banished from life, man’s condition is tragic, for he no longer finds fulfillment in life’s simple values. For animals, life is all there is; for man, life is a question mark. An irreversible question mark, for man has never found, nor will ever find, any answers. Life not only has no meaning; it can never have one.

The Satanic Principle of Suffering

If there are happy people on this earth, why don’t they come out and shout with joy, proclaim their happiness in the streets?

Why so much discretion and restraint? If I were exuding permanent joy, serenity, and contentment, I would not hold it all inside me. I would generously share it with others. I would let myself be swept away by the buoyant energy that animates me. 

If there is happiness, then it must be shared and communicated. But maybe truly happy people are not aware of their happiness. Then we could lend them some of our consciousness in exchange for part of their infinite unconsciousness. Why is suffering all tears and screams, and pleasure, all quivers?

Were man as conscious of his pleasures as he is of his pains, he would not have to redeem the former. Wouldn’t the distribution of joy and sorrow in the world be more equitable then?

If pain is not easily forgotten, it is precisely because it occupies an important place in consciousness. The only people who must forget a lot are those who have suffered a lot. Normal people are the only ones with nothing to forget.

Through joy, spiritual or sensual, you naively partake of life; unconsciously you join in the dynamism of existence, each particle of your body vibrating with the irrational pulsations of the Whole.

Disjunction from the world through suffering leads to exces- sive interiorization and, paradoxically, to such a high level of consciousness that the world, with all its splendors and glooms, becomes exterior and transcendent. Thus deeply sundered from the world, so irredeemably lonely, how can we forget anything?

We want to forget only what made us suffer. However, through some cruel and paradoxical twist, memories vanish when we want to remember but fix themselves permanently in the mind when we want to forget. Men generally belong to two categories: those for whom the world offers opportunities for interiorization and those for whom the world remains external and objective. For true interiorization, objective existence is only a pretext. Only as such can it have any meaning at all, because an objective teleology cannot be elaborated and justified without a number of illusions.

However painful my agony, however great my isolation, the distance separating me from the world does nothing but render it more accessible. Although I cannot find in it either objective meaning or transcendental finality, existence, with its multiplicity of forms, has never ceased to be a source of both delight and sadness. At times, the beauty of a flower is enough to justify in my eyes the principle of universal finality while at others, the smallest cloud troubling the serenity of the sky rekindles my somber pessimism. Those who interiorize excessively discover symbolic meanings in the most insignificant aspects of nature.

Is it possible that I carry within me all that I’ve seen in my life?

It is frightening to think that all those landscapes, books, horrors, and sublimities could be amassed in one single brain. I feel as if they have been transferred into me as realities and that they weigh heavily upon me. Sometimes I am overcome and I would prefer to forget all. Interiorization leads to inner collapse, because the world penetrates you and crushes you with its over- bearing weight. Is it surprising, then, that some would have recourse to anything—from vulgarity to art—in order to forget?

I HAVE NO ideas, only obsessions. Anybody can have ideas. Ideas have never caused anybody’s downfall.

An Indirect Animal

All men have the same defect: they wait to live, for they have not the courage of each instant. Why not invest enough passion in each moment to make it an eternity? We all learn to live only when we no longer have anything to expect, because we do not live in the living present but in a vague and distant future. We should not wait for anything except the immediate promptings of the moment. We should wait without the consciousness of time. There’s no salvation without the immediate. But man is a being who no longer knows the immediate. He is an indirect animal.

Nothing Matters

Everything is possible, and yet nothing is. All is permitted, and yet again, nothing. No matter which way we go, it is no better than any other. It is all the same whether you achieve something or not, have faith or not, just as it is all the same whether you cry or remain silent. There is an explanation for everything, and yet there is none. Everything is both real and unreal, normal and absurd, splendid and insipid. There is nothing worth more than anything else, nor any idea better than any other. Why grow sad from one’s sadness and delight in one’s joy?

What does it matter whether our tears come from pleasure or pain?

Love your unhappiness and hate your happiness, mix everything up, scramble
it all!

Be a snowflake dancing in the air, a flower floating down-stream!

Have courage when you don’t need to, and be a coward when you must be brave! Who knows?

You may still be a winner!

And if you lose, does it really matter?

Is there anything to win in this world? All gain is a loss, and all loss is a gain.

Why always expect a definite stance, clear ideas, meaningful words?

I feel as if I should spout fire in response to all the questions which were ever put, or not put, to me.

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• Central For Inquiry (CFI) • Skeptical Inquirer • Free Inquiry • Point of Inquiry ------------------------------------------------------------ 1. Yang nyata ialah manusia itu sendiri bukan tuhan, bukan manusia pikiran tuhan, tetapi tuhan adalah pikiran manusia, agama tidak merubah kenyataan dan mengukir sejarah, tetapi manusia itu sendiri yang merubah dan mengukirnya. Bukan tuhan yang menciptakan manusia tetapi tuhan adalah angan-angan manusia. Agama tidak merubah kenyataan tetapi menusia bisa merubah kenyataan. 2. Agama ialah proyeksi manusia : tuhan, neraka, surga, malaikat. Kenapa? Karena manusia butuh tempat untuk mencurahkan keluhan karena dunia tanpa hati, jadi penderitaan tempat lahirnya tuhan. Dengan demikian agama disebut keterasingan manusia dari kehidupan karena struktur masyarakat tidak mengizinkan secara penuh perealisasian diri sendiri, sehingga manusia membangun kerajaan angan-angan (agama). Dalam kenyataan manusia menderita lalu ia mengharapkan surga 3. kenapa agama khayalan, karena agama tidak inderawi, sedangkan manusia inderawi, manusia penuh dengan kepastian sedangkan agama berbau unsur spekulatif, unsur yang tidak bisa diterima secara ilmiah 4. Jadi agama dan tuhan ialah ciptaan manusia itu sendiri, tetapi manusia itu sendiri lupa dengan ciptaanya (seperti pada zaman jahiliyah dahulu sebelum nabi muhamad dating : orang-orang kafir zaman dahulu mengukir tuhan dari kayu dan batu, yang kemudian disembahnya, sama seperti kita kini yang memproyeksikan tuhan lalu menyembahnya). Agama penyembahan tuhan terhadap dirinya sendiri. Agama penyembahan manusia terhadap ciptaanya sendiri 5. Sehingga khayalan atau angan-angan itu mempunyai eksistensi realitas yang membuat manusia takut dan harus menyembahnya dan tuhan mempunyai hakikat lain yang manusia harus sembah. Sifat-sifat itu yang membuat manusia egois. 6. Penderitaan manusia ialah tempat lahirnya tuhan, penderitaan yang memaksa manusia mengasingkan diri ke dalam agama, itulah dasar yang menyebabkan manusia merasa butuh agama dan tuhan 7. Teologi harus diganti menjadi antropologi dan agama ialah candu rakyat. 8. Kritik agama hanya meruska bunga khayalan pada rantai, bukan bunganya yang harus dipatahkan tetapi rantai itu sendiri. Rantai (factor yang menyebabkan manusia mengasingkan diri ke dalam agama) 9. Kita seperti wayang dengan penuh kesadaran dan kemauan tetapi kita tidak bisa lepas dari tangan sang dalang. 10. Kalau semua ini benar, maka manusia bukan merealisasikan keinginanya tetapi mengharapkan berkah dariNYA (proyeksi manusia itu sendiri/perubahan pasif) 11. agama ialah keterbatasan: agama melarang kita bergaul dengan duniawi, sehingga kita hanya memikirkan surgawi Tanpa agama kita bisa hidup lebih baik, tanpa mengaharapkan hibah/welas asih dariNYA, hanya mengandalkan kenyataan dan diri sendiri. 12. Kepasrahan adalah kelemahan agama 13. Tuhan seperti halnya dengan setan, bila ia terus diyakini dengan adanya exsistensinya maka semakin berkuasalah ia, kita seperti member roh kepadanya dengan keyakinan kita. GROUP : https://www.facebook.com/groups/scientistsecularist