“The great ones do not set up offices, charge fees, give lectures, or write books. Wisdom is silent, and the most effective propaganda for truth is the force of personal example. The great ones attract disciples, lesser figures whose mission it is to preach and to teach. These are the gospelers who, unequal to the highest task, spend their lives in converting others. The great ones are indifferent, in the profoundest sense. They don’t ask you to believe: they electrify you by their behavior. They are the awakeners. What you do with your life is only of concern to you, they seem to say. In short, their only purpose here on earth is to inspire. And what more can one ask of a human being than that?”

Henry Miller

Sexus – 1928

“As to salvation and all that… The greatest teachers, the true healers, I would say, have always insisted that they can only point the way. The Buddha went so far as to say: “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”

Henry Miller

Sexus – 1928

To put it in the simple way it came to my mind, I would say that it was like this: everybody becomes a healer the moment he forgets about himself. The sickness which we see everywhere, the bitterness and disgust which life inspires in so many of us, is only the reflection of the sickness which we carry within us. Prophylactics will never secure us against the world disease, because we bear the world within. No matter how marvelous human beings become, the sum total will yield an external world which is painful and imperfect. As long as we live self-consciously we must always fail to cope with the world. It is not necessary to die in order to come at last face to face with reality. Reality is here and now, everywhere, gleaming through every reflection that meets the eye. Prisons and even lunatic asylums are emptied of their inmates when a more vital danger menaces the community. When the enemy approaches, the political exile is recalled to share in the defense of his country. At the last ditch it gets dinned into our thick skulls that we are all part and parcel of the same flesh. When our very lives are threatened we begin to live. Even the psychic invalid throws away his crutches, in such moments. For him the greatest joy is to realize that there is something more important than himself. All his life he has turned on the spit of his own roasted ego. He made the fire with his own hands. He drips in his own juices. He makes himself a tender morsel for the demons he liberated with his own hands. That is the picture of human life on this planet called the Earth. Everybody is a neurotic, down to the last man and woman. The healer, or the analyst, if you like, is only a superneurotic. He has put the Indian sign on us. To be cured we must rise from our graves and throw off the cerements of the dead. Nobody can do it for another – it is a private affair which is best done collectively. We must die as egos and be born again in the swarm, not separate and self-hypnotized, but individual and related.

Henry Miller

Sexus – 1928

Ja em perdonareu però he tingut la gosadia de començar un blog. Que ja sé que no feia cap falta i com diuen sempre: ja està tot escrit. Però què voleu que us digui, llegeixo els articles dels altres i em fa enveja com s’expressen, com endrecen les idees i com les envien al món. No sóc prolífica ni tinc una ment brillant però com a tots els que ens interessem pel què passa al nostre entorn, ens agrada influir-hi, poc o molt.

Què carai, no em fa res admetre-ho: sóc addicta a tenir influència. A interaccionar amb els altres i que les meves idees tinguin impacte i a deixar-me impactar per les idees dels altres. Per poc que sigui, ja em satisfà. Per exemple, quan faig un tuit i veig que l’han llegit i que el tema qualla i que es discuteix animadament. O quan llanço una idea i la veig replicada, treballada i evolucionada en els discursos d’amics i companys. O encara millor, quan veig els que no em tenen cap simpatia copien les paraules que faig servir. Això sí que m’agrada. Una esgarrifança de satisfacció em recorre l’espinada. Ai, vanitat, vanitat! I què voleu fer-hi? És natura humana. Qui estigui lliure del goig d’influir que llanci la primera crítica.

En qualsevol cas, abans de posar-vos a criticar sense manies, feu-me un favor. Si veieu que xerro d’un tema i us ve el pensament que “la molt lloca ara desgrana una versió patxanguera de les disquisicions de Matxinkowski sense haver-ne llegit ni mitja paraula” o en general trobeu que tinc llacunes culturals insultants i indecents, feu-m’ho saber amb carinyo aquí sota ↓ als comentaris. Com que no sóc una persona gaire llegida potser necessitaré ajut. Mitja vida l’he passat entre números i l’altra mitja l’he dedicat a divertir-me, així que pot molt ben ser. Qualsevol suggeriment de lectura serà benvingut: literatura, filosofia, articles, el que sigui. Que no vol dir obeït, alerta. Farem el que podrem. Tingueu compassió.