Christiane Singer on Spiritual Freedom: The Full CICNS Interview

Christiane Singer was a French-language novelist and essayist. A lecturer at the University of Basel and then at the University of Fribourg before devoting herself to writing, she followed the teaching of Karlfried Graf Dürckheim and received the prix Albert Camus in 1989 for Histoire d’âme. Sensitive to the situation of spiritual minorities in France, she offered this interview to the CICNS in Paris on 23 May 2006, less than a year before her death in April 2007 — a writer’s reading of the French anti-cult climate as a passing fever, and of spiritual experience as an inalienable personal freedom.

CICNS interview — full version. (English translation of the full-length interview published on the CICNS YouTube channel on 19 November 2014; recorded in Paris on 23 May 2006. The French transcript was machine-transcribed from the video and cleaned before translation; passages the machine could not reliably hear are marked [inaudible].)

[Interviewer]: Christiane Singer was a lecturer at the University of Basel, then taught at the University of Fribourg, before devoting herself to her literary work. She followed the teaching of Karlfried Graf Dürckheim, a disciple of C. G. Jung. A prolific writer, of Christian sensibility steeped in Eastern wisdom, she refrained from giving moral lessons and excluded all dogmatism. Her work and her personal reflection are centred entirely on the necessary reckoning with the spiritual risk that smoulders in the heart of each of us.

She wrote numerous novels and essays of great literary quality, including Histoire d’âme, which earned her the prix Albert Camus in 1989, La Mort viennoise, prix des Libraires in 1979, and more recently Éloge du mariage, de l’engagement et autres folies, N’oublie pas les chevaux écumants du passé, and Seul ce qui brûle. Christiane Singer died on 4 April 2007. She had just finished her last book, which recounts her experience through illness, Derniers fragments d’un long voyage. Sensitive to the situation of spiritual minorities in France, she wished to contribute to the CICNS’s work by offering us this interview, recorded in Paris on 23 May 2006.

[Singer]: Every society, as far back as one looks, has defended itself against everything that is not its reigning ideology. When I think, for example, of Voltaire, whom I adored — since I am an eighteenth-centuryist by training; I taught the Enlightenment at the university in Fribourg —, when you think of affairs like those of the chevalier de La Barre or the Calas affair, where, to discredit people, acts of sacrilege were invented — they had been heard cursing Christ, or whatever. And anyone could, in the end, discredit anyone, inform on anyone. That is to say, the situation was the reverse of ours. It was enough for someone to come and say: “My God, that man, [inaudible ?] at his house on Good Friday — and what was he doing at his house? Probably a black mass or who knows what,” and he was hanged, or in such discredit that his life was ruined.

But it is a consideration that becomes fascinating when you turn it around. That is to say: a society, a moribund ancien régime, tries to maintain, with every means at its disposal, a very rigorous, very moralizing system of thought, where really there is no departing from the law. And in the end, every society is a sort of parody of the same thing. In the society we live in, we are in a desperate belief in what we call science, without seeing that in this century, unfortunately, science and crime have been associated — I need mention nothing other than Hiroshima. To see that everything belonging to the most rigorous rationality is absolutely splendid: there is no danger. Everything belonging to chemistry or pharmacy is entirely… I can stuff myself with as many amphetamines as I like, no one will see the shadow of a reproach to make me. But if I suddenly start opening books that are not the books that usually circulate, but something a little mystical and nebulous… You see, when old words of humanity are then discredited, you say to yourself: this is not possible — what is going on? That is to say, every society lives in what Deepak Chopra magnificently calls a socially programmed hypnosis. We are inside it, as every society has been inside it. And in this socially programmed hypnosis, whatever is not of the order of profit, of the order of the measurable, is not politically correct.

What business is it of yours? Me, I have a feast when I am in Paris, when I have to come and do interviews, workshops and a thousand things: I am plunged into life, whereas otherwise I live somewhat withdrawn from city life, since I live in the countryside. And suddenly I hear, permanently, pouring down on me, a kind of sugary syrup. Permanently there is a voice trying to persuade me. Everywhere there are radios switched on — you may not realize it, because you live in the city. I assure you: in any café where you come to have a coffee, you are told: “Do you love your mum?”, or, a little as I am doing in parody: “Mother’s Day is coming, you absolutely must buy her this, buy her that.” Imagine that I interrupted this syrupy flow, that I bought a piece of airtime and said, myself: “Dear friends, above all buy nothing for your mothers, but go to them, take them in your arms, and tell them: whatever the misunderstandings between us — and life is rich in them, in misunderstandings, in frictions, in difficulties between the generations —, I come today to tell you something I have perhaps never told you so clearly: I thank you for my life. But above all buy nothing, I beg you, buy nothing. It is not a matter of buying things.” Imagine: I think I would be prosecuted for unacceptable use of advertising.

But all this — why can we not laugh? It is terrifying, there is something terrifying about it, but we must keep this kind of humour before things. Every society is this socially programmed hypnosis. The problem is to live in it respectfully, to find in it a way of serving this world, and above all not to merge entirely with this social reality. That is it. Obviously, everything is set up so that this merging should be total — so that not a hair of me should stick out from the representation of the contemporary citizen. But I have this freedom. I have this freedom to move in this society, to serve it, to stay close to my own truth and to radiate it into this society. That is to say: I do not despise this form — one form among all the forms of closure of the mind that every society is — and, on the other side, I open my mind and live in it as I can, mentioning to others: “Hey, do not confuse what you are living with the whole of life.” The problem is not to move in a society in its form of closure, but to be conscious of it.

“Is that enough?” No! I am going to fissure it by being conscious of it, you understand? What is not in my temperament — less and less than it was in my youth, of course — is to brandish banners. Because I noticed, you know, that the more you are in an attack, the more you are in an aggression, the more you reflect the grimace of the adversary, and you end up becoming him. For one Che Guevara who has the luck to die before holding power, how many faithful Castros who will wade in their swamp. You understand? That is to say: if I really enter into this brutal confrontation, I am going to resemble my adversary. How to find forms that will let me keep this quality I defend before the world? That is all. That is, all the same, an incredible question. And without cowardice — I am not saying: let us act as if we had not seen; far from it. But let us find ways to carry high this memory of who we are, of this core of immortality that inhabits us and constitutes the dignity of man, and not to allow, in the places where I move on this earth, that this be forgotten. And each of us in the place where we are — so that there is created that famous, incredible network where, from one consciousness to another, the contagion passes, the contamination of light. And that is a representation I hold to be well founded and that I have lived my whole life. And I assure you that I am astonished at the power this gentle revolution has. I do not know what to call it: a kind of non-renouncement, of non-renunciation of the great intuitions we have had on this earth. On the contrary, you let them grow in you, a whole life long, and then you bear witness to them. But without going to war.

I will tell you: I see an indirect homage paid to the religious, to this religious dimension of man. That is to say: if so many forces must be mobilized to discredit it, it must have power inside the human being. It is obvious that man is irremediably religious in the depths of his being. For how could he not be? It is inside him, this core of immortality which is there, which is indestructible, which can be covered with rubble, which can be made unconscious — but 100 %. But it is there. And it is obviously a colossal power of freedom. But man does not want freedom. I always come back to that hallucinating chapter in The Brothers Karamazov, you know, the passage of the Inquisitor — in that dialogue with the Inquisitor and Christ, where it finally turns out that the one thing men do not want… “But what have you come to bring us? Freedom. Can you not see that they do not want it! And you have come back now, putting everything in disorder, where we had created a fine, well-structured Church, where we hold them well — and here you come again, you come creating disorder again.” And it is in the freedom of love, in the freedom of the phenomenon of reliance — of re-connection with what is higher than us —, there is a boundless freedom.

I have just heard, from an old friend who lives in Ecuador — and who, incidentally, founded there the only Dürckheim centre in Latin America; she is an extraordinary woman, who is 94 today and has done magnificent work; on the night of the passage to the year 2000, the president of the Republic of Ecuador even came to meditate with her; she is a woman of great renown in her country, whose name is Vera Kohn —, and she told this little story, this extraordinary little story, of an Indian woman she knew, who was sentenced to twenty years in prison, probably for life, because she killed her husband: she killed him with a knife. And he had been the family’s torturer for years — she knew who he was, but it was horror. And one night, in total despair, she kills him. She is put in prison, and Vera says to her only, as she leaves: “Listen, whatever befalls you, whatever happens to you, do not forget that in you there is something no one can destroy. Whatever they may make you undergo: it is without importance, it is without danger. You are indestructible in the deepest part of yourself.” Thirty years later, she sees at her door an old woman, completely toothless, [inaudible ?], who catches her as she passes and says to her: “Do you recognize me?” She says no. “Marie, thirty years ago, I was put in prison.” She says: “You see, if I am alive, if I am sitting here in front of your house, it is because I never forgot what you told me. They made me undergo the worst abuse — prison, in Ecuador. But I was never afraid, do you hear? Your sentence inhabited me.” And for me, that is the religious dimension in human existence. It is such a factor of freedom that in the heart of the worst prisons, the worst propaganda, the worst processes of dehumanization, the being remains intact. Whoever has found again this core of immortality within is unassailable, is indestructible, impossible to destroy.

And that is it — and that is what frightens any government, any form of government: what do you want to do with beings of such freedom? It is as if it were a fissure through which all the water of the cistern will drain away. One tries to hold everything nicely together, so that everything goes well, and then… [inaudible ?] There it is, this opening of freedom.

I have just seen a film by a very great Austrian filmmaker who died a few years ago, Axel Corti. It is a film about a resister — and yet it is not one. “The Jägerstätter case”, it was called. He is a man who was enrolled in the Führer’s armies, and then who was there, who was seated, and when they said “you must get up”, he said: “I cannot go. I cannot. You — you can go. I have no intention of persuading anyone.” It is an incredible example, because there was no form of ideology. There is simply: me, what I am inside myself — he said “the Christ inside me”: it is this indestructible core. For him, it was called Christ, this indestructible core. He says: “I cannot go and kill. I cannot. I want to persuade no one of anything, but I cannot get up from this chair.” And what is extraordinary — and the film shows it — is that the whole family mobilized, all the friends, to tell him: “Listen, don’t be a fool, you cannot behave like everyone else.” He said: “But I want to persuade no one of anything.” He is the most naked being; he is an incredible figure, and the film is overwhelming. He says: “I cannot. If you — you can; I cannot.”

And what is tragic, what is terrifying, is that so few beings have access to this eternity that founds them. But at the same time — this is the experience I have, and it fills me with wonder —, it takes so little to awaken the memory in beings. And all the work I do in my writing — but indirectly; it is not that I tell myself… —, it is by remaining intimately linked to this intensity that inhabits me and has never let go of me; I deserve no credit for that. I have, since childhood — born under the bombs, born after the war in such an ambient disaster —, known that whatever happens to me, I fear nothing. I can die tomorrow, no matter: I have, within this life and this death, nothing to fear. I cannot help it, but everything I have been able to write, everything I have been able to do in my life, radiates from that. And I also have the extraordinary happiness, in lectures, in encounters, of touching that in others, because we are communicating vessels. And that is the great hope: we are communicating vessels. We are not, as society wants us to believe, shackled in our individuality. Contemporary society has fractured the body of humanity into thousands of isolated beings. Why? To be able to sell a few more washing machines — well, I say it as parody, but it is a bit that. But in truth, we are all linked to one another. That is to say: very, very different on the surface, but when you reach the depth and the water table, suddenly there is only one. And there, when you go down to the required depth, it is a phenomenon of resonance. Suddenly, you are there. And everyone remembers. And for me, all the joy I have in writing and going toward others, in being among others, is for those moments when readers, or people at a lecture, come and tell you: “I have touched something I had forgotten for thirty years. I had it in childhood, I had it in adolescence, I had it at that time — and suddenly, I have it again.” That is it.

You see, I am very respectful of all the revealed religions, of all the revealed forms, and then of all the spiritual traditions. It is marvellous that there are many of them — may there be still more. But it is to this core that I am linked. And I always ask myself which way of living makes one happier, makes one freer, makes one more joyful. And if that is the case, it is good. I take pleasure in speaking of what inhabits me, and it resonates in other hearts. It is as simple as that. It is so simple: everything is a phenomenon of resonance. And that is why any war against spirituality has no chance.

And that is what almost moves me to tenderness, when I see them struggling like devils to prevent people from joining a reflection of spirituality. Me, it makes me smile — I apologize, but in a certain sense, it does not terrorize me at all. I have known atheist persons of such moral height, of such ethical height, that I bow. So it is not even of that order. It is simply: there is a ferocity in a certain part of the population, which refuses to tolerate that there could be another form of existence. That is to say, fundamentalism is at least as much in the anti-religious as in the religious. There is, as in any reigning ideology, a kind of latent ferocity at not being made to have its nose rubbed in the pee like a puppy — by someone who says: “But no, life can be otherwise too.” No, no — that, they do not want. Above all not. Because it would represent a danger that puts their whole system in danger.

But there will be a moment in existence — you must wait for them at the turning of a death, of an illness. Life takes it upon itself to fissure the most concreted ideologies. Let us act where we can: to act in the simplicity of being, without any missionary spirit, without trying to persuade people of anything whatsoever. I do not see what I am persuaded of. I can only bear witness that in me is a core of immortality that allows me to live free and joyful. That is all. It is not bad, but that is all. Today, I have this way of saying it. Tomorrow, I must expose myself to the wind of the being of that day, the genius of each day. It is not of the order of the repetitive: today I have this form of expression; tomorrow it will be another. I let the wind of life pass through me. I let the wind of this certainty…

I recently wrote a book on transmission and education. Sometimes, in writing, one writes so much more beautifully than one can express oneself in spoken language. In the first passage, I write something like: “I have no belief, or perhaps I have only one, but that one has soaked everything. No thread of my life has remained dry.” Life is sacred. This absolute consciousness, in every cell, that life is sacred. Yet we live in a world where life is a mechanism. But no problem: there is a moment when, in a lived experience, in a situation of life, a vertiginous abyss opens. “So I am not what I had believed.” Something… Me, I have an incredible faith in this potential of the living. It waits for you at the end of the road, in any circumstance whatsoever.

I must admit that I, for my part, have never encountered it like that, in a dialogue, as we are here, face to face. If you give me a long moment to talk with anyone at all, there is a moment — there is always one — when, behind all a person’s closures, a fissure opens. And suddenly, you see: ah yes, everything that is important on this earth happens from gaze to gaze. That is the great disaster of too many machines in our lives. I do not demonize machines, computers, far from it — they are magnificent aids, good valets de chambre, good servants. But woe to us if they become our masters, woe to us. Me, if I serve under someone, it is not going to be under a machine, I can swear that to you. I am ready to put myself at the service of life, but not at the service of a machine. So, simply to feel: but at the service of what am I putting myself, here? I am mad, no?

The work you are doing, I find that splendid. Because it is so important not to act as if one did not see that there is a witch-hunt of laughable clumsiness. Me, I find it so derisory that I say to myself: it is not possible that everyone does not burst out laughing when commandos of gendarmes arrive in a place where people are questioning themselves about life, or allow themselves to speak of questions of depth. It is so burlesque. There are certainly stories — of which you have spoken — that are of the order of the criminal; but those are the business of the courts, that is quite obvious. But that is 1 % — and at 99 %, you have people who gather to touch together, to make echo in themselves of this depth. And that, I find, is so important. You know, there is a pastor, at the time of fascism, who said a sentence that has remained famous. He said: “Yes, when the Nazis came to arrest the Jews, we said to ourselves: well, my goodness, well… — I looked away a little. Then the communists: they exaggerate, they are a bit extreme in their convictions; and we are not going to do them so much harm, we will put them somewhere for a while. And then it was the Catholics, then it was the Protestants — all those who raised their voice; they were not many, but there were some. And now, who is going to be there to say halt?” Hence the importance, if I evoke something like that, of beginning, obviously, as early as possible, of saying: but careful, careful, there are [inaudible ?] — it is so grotesque to fire shells at sparrows that were pecking joyfully. It is monstrous.

Well — but I think it is a kind of flare-up, of flare-up of fever; but me, I do not see it in the rest of Europe — or else, am I mistaken? Me, I live in Austria, I do many workshops and lectures in Germany: I have never heard similar stories told. Me, I think the French have made themselves the cantors of rationalism, etc., and perhaps it has gone to their head in a morbid way — you know, there is always a morbid flare-up of any quality whatsoever. For me, reason is splendid — do not make me reject reason, I who so adored the philosophers of the Enlightenment —, but it seems to me that there is in it such a madness… Or else a way of diverting attention from the real problems — you know very well, it is a phenomenon that is well known and very often practised. I can only say thank you that there are people who commit themselves to this vigilance and who support the people who are suddenly in a situation of being prosecuted over nothing; and that this should keep, deep within them, this conviction that they are carried by all the others, that they are not alone — that is something incredibly capital. So truly, I salute this activity greatly, and I hope with all my heart that this flare-up of morbid fever will come down again — it is a kind of acme, but one that subsides. It seems to me so senseless that I cannot believe it; I cannot believe in a continuity.

The most overwhelming phenomenon that accompanies an opening of the soul is really this phenomenon of communicating vessels: to feel to what point each person embodies another quality, another way of being in this search, in this work. There are even some that are a bit eccentric, a bit very primary, very infantile, very juvenile, very awash with illusions. One passes through that — those are the phenomena of childhood. There is also a maturation in our inner voice, in this inner questioning. When I think of what accompanied me thirty years ago, it makes me smile today, the way I would have expressed it, does it not? But that is no reason to fight it as something noxious. We are searching… It is a call of being, which slips through where it can and which will find its way.

But I do not know what to say… For my part, I know very well that when I read this dossier you sent me, I am appalled — and in an enormous gratitude that it is possible to inform oneself about this, and to see that there really are measures in the anxiety of the public authorities… Measures… madness, really! A kind of mad exaggeration, which suggests that people are quite happy to divert attention from other malpractices. It is truly an activity of destruction of human capital. Because it is not harmless. It is not harmless to introduce chemistries of transformation into our body — into this incredible instrument of an extraordinary sensitivity that our being is, that our mind is, our body, our mind. To go, with a disconcerting ease, distributing this whole pharmacy — it is terrible. Me, I find it hallucinating. That seems to me a problem incomparably more grave. Even I have received threats for saying certain things. So, I can tell you, I can imagine that there, there is a whole other energy behind it. There is a whole other force. But, in saying: well, so you really want people to go mad, no? I would really like to live in a society where one does not create all the conditions required to make someone mad or desperate. When a being has been cut off from his inner source, what do you want him to cling to? So, he is offered medication. You understand? That — that is in the social order. It is accepted. It is fine. [inaudible ?] as a doctor who prescribes to the first woman who says [inaudible ?] — no problem. There. No, but I am saying — I am drawing a caricature. I know there are prodigious doctors, people full of dedication. Listen, one is obliged to caricature when one describes a phenomenon like this one. But there are many who are in an absolute cynicism. I have truly been warned.

Me, I have very often, for example, the phenomenon of the passage of menopause, which is an extraordinary passage: the transformation from this fecundity of the body to the fecundity of the spirit. There is something that happens, which is prodigious, in the ripening of man, in the whole phenomenon of ageing, for example. One does not need all this machinery of things and of products, of products to swallow, if one is conscious that something immense and beautiful is happening in you. And me, I went through it, but I never took the shadow of… — without influencing all women by telling them: do not take products. There are surely gentle ways of accompanying it, that is quite possible. But me, I am far too curious and passionate about what is happening in me. I have just read an extraordinary book on the poet Joë Bousquet, who [inaudible ?], and who says, at the end of his life: “I want to die with my eyes open — above all, not to enter death with my eyes blindfolded.” He puts all this energy into… — and there is in me this same fire, of telling myself: what there is to live, I want to pass through it. It is not a way of being crude, of being hard on oneself, not at all. I assure you, it is so impassioning to pass through what happens in a human body, in a human soul, in a destiny — since my life is the microcosm of all human life. It is incredible. Me, I am passionate about observing what happens in me in the phenomenon of maturation, of ageing. So the idea of taking hormones, things of that kind… And very often I have said it in lectures; it has truly happened to me several times to be challenged by doctors, once by a journalist, who told me that what I say is very dangerous. Well then — I continue. You can see very well what I do. But I try to persuade no one. I simply say: there is this, and then there is another possibility.

The observation of our society as it is: it is a society that bites its own tail. That is to say, one that produces systems of thought, and reality reflects them back to it permanently. You know the magnificent analysis — which is sublime. It turns: we produce ways of seeing the world, and then we reflect them. That is to say, nobody studies reality or nature any more; we permanently study systems and models. We are locked in there, shackled in there, and we turn, we turn, we turn. Well. In that system… — it makes me die laughing: I was recently rereading the Heptameron of Boccaccio, and I find it so extraordinary, especially in the Decameron: you have characters who are going to leave Florence, which is invaded by the plague, and who go to withdraw to shelter, and they are going to tell each other, for days on end, bawdy stories, because that is difficult to do in the midst of a society still under surveillance. In our day, what we call workshops — it is a bit the same thing: they leave the city, but not to tell each other bawdy stories — because that is authorized in the city — but to speak of God. So me, I find that it is such a droll reversal that I would almost like to write a Decameron of today: a group of beings who leave the police surveillance of the city to go and shut themselves away somewhere in the countryside, in a place where there are many beings, [inaudible ?] of their experiences of depth. It would be beautiful, no? It is coming to me — see, you are giving me the idea of an extraordinary book. The only thing one can say is: wake up from that hypnosis — but laugh at yourselves. What are you letting yourselves be locked into?

But me, I encounter… — look: I am talking with you, I am going to go for a walk during the day, I am going to meet various people — but each one has the nostalgia of being, the nostalgia of the [inaudible ?]… [inaudible]

… your body does not receive the signal of something truly nourishing, feeding, deep. So, the sensation of famine is always there. And it is the same thing in a world where information is received by the ton. But we are crushed under this weight, but we are not nourished. I remember those graffiti on the university of Berlin, where I had been invited a few years ago — something I had found overwhelming: “You smother us with information, but you give us no knowledge, nor wisdom.” And it is that notion of being locked under this multitude of things. And every being carries, in the depths, the nostalgia of it. He sees very well that he roams like a starving wolf through life, from relationship to relationship, from disrespect to disrespect toward the other. We consume one another. We treat the other human being like a disposable object — a little bit here, a little bit there. And we notice: but what is this — so empty and lost? You can keep adding more and more relationships, more and more things, more and more — it never carries the weight. Why? Because it lacks depth. We die starving amid mountains of things.

I am at the heart of the paradox. I am profoundly in despair at seeing in what a mechanistic way life is lived, and how much our children, in the schools, are massacred by ideology. Nothing but demands, nothing but rights — which will never find satisfaction — and no notion of duty, no notion of putting oneself at the service of this life, of seeing what you have received on this earth. There is no education of the being — education in the etymological sense, educare, to lead out, to enlarge the vision of the world. There is no enlargement of the being that is proposed inside the school. You understand — we, we still learned English with Shakespeare’s sonnets. Someone who has read Shakespeare knows the intensity of things. But someone who learns English… — I see it in today’s textbooks: you go shopping at the supermarket with Mrs Brown, and what are the products called in the… No, listen to me: you understand that this is amputating the beings of Europe, it is clipping the wings of children, to make educations that do not put them in contact with the highest quality of humanity. Only the best is good enough for children. Only great literature, the most consummate, the most delicate art, is at the measure of our children. To teach what humanity has produced, has secreted, at its highest, its greatest: that is the nourishment for our children. And what is being done? You see, that is it. And that — I am… Me, I am at a loss. Truly, often, I am totally in despair. But at the same time, I am in a mad hope at the heart of despair. You see? That is how it is.

Nothing is lost. It is probable that what is probable is going to take place — but it is not improbable that what was not probable should take place. That is the intelligence of the living, the madness of things. In each of us there can be this force that makes another dimension of being rise. And we are all called, each in the place where we are — since each of us carries in him the entire history of humanity. To fracture this representation that we are isolated from one another: I speak, me, with the language of humanity; I think with the brain of humanity; this body I have is the body of humanity, after half a million years of evolution. Nothing of all that which does not belong to us. And everything I bring to life, everything I manage to make blossom, I do it for all my own, for all the others — and with all the others. To reopen our vision of the world would be something… That is it. Something so primordial.

It is heartrending that there really is a kind of conspiracy against the spirit. It was already Bernanos who said: “Our society is the most enormous conspiracy against the spirit that has ever taken place.” It is as if everything were mechanized to the very end. Spirituality — many deplore it, many are afraid of it — is leaving, is quitting the institutions, is overflowing the religious institutions, and is going to irrigate channels that had been left dry, that had been left empty. And that frightens many. Me, it does not frighten me, because I have so… — exactly the contrary. It puts man in his… — each of us in his total responsibility. That is to say: we are the link between earth and heaven. Each of us is that witness. And that, again, is an extraordinarily positive aspect of our era, and one that our era allows us to live. Since everything is indifferent to everyone, since each one is indifferent to everyone, there is nevertheless an incredible network of freedom. One can experience spirituality. And to experience spirituality is to live it, for example, in one’s body.

Me, I had a very impassioning approach: I had the luck to work a great deal with breathing and the body in my life, and to notice that this thing I inhabit was an instrument so incredible, so prodigious — such as the imagination does not give. I am inside a miracle, in this body, in this being, in this breathing. And that, of course, animates the consciousness I have that an existence is sacred, that every existence is sacred. Well then, that — I would tend to say: believe only what you experience. Experience within yourself — by taking the time to enter into relation with your being, by creating spaces of silence where nothing happens, where I am neither going to go and listen to someone else, nor going to go and see; but to be in this silence of being: to sit in my garden, to feel the earth under my feet, to hear a bird singing, the wind caressing me — to feel the thickness of being.

You know, what we are witnessing is the disappearance of reality. I believe, as Baudrillard said, that it is the disappearance of reality that is the phenomenon of our contemporary world. We are entering a world of total virtuality, where nothing nourishes, since everything is of the order of artifice. So, simply, this experience of each person, which is within the measure of each person, of re-making the experience within oneself. And then, once you have felt that… When you have walked in the night, for example — a whole night, crossed the night; take a walk in a forest at night —, to touch again that which breathes around us. And all these ways of touching again, in oneself and through oneself, and through this extraordinary antenna that the body is, the subtle, sacred character of existence. That — that is a way of putting the salt back into the sea. It spreads into all beings, this sensation. You experience that this life is not of the order of… — it is not a matter of being a good citizen, squarely settled in one’s… Although I have all the duties of a citizen, and I respect them and honour them — but I am not only that. I am not going to close my identity onto that reality.

And so there is a possibility, in the contemporary world, an immense one, of freedom, of experimentation with life, with the sacred, with the encounter with others where this lived experience is shared — those extraordinary rendezvous with being in a life, in daily life. You will now be able to tell one another what happened this week that touched each one of us. It is marvellous. That is it. That is the religio, the religio: the re-linking to depth, to what is beyond. “There is another world, but it is in this one,” said Éluard. And this verification — you can make it at any instant. And it is this invitation that is probably disquieting for the institutions: it is that this experience of being, each person is in a position to have it for himself, too. Too. And then, afterwards, to rejoin this experience. But no one can entrust our experiences of being to an institution. I delegate my powers to no one — neither in the political order, nor in the religious order. I experience, and then I rejoin my human brothers in other networks, in other [inaudible ?] splendid ones. But this experience — I have to have it myself. It no longer puts me at the mercy of a master-thinker outside myself — he reflects something back to me, if he is of quality. But this experience, I have to have it myself. So it puts me beyond the reach of all abuses of power, whatever they may be.