Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? What do we live for? Why do we live..?
Unquestionably, the poor 'Intellectual Animal' mistakenly called man not only does not know, but also he does not even know that he does not know...
Worst of all is the situation so strange and so difficult in which we find ourselves; we ignore the secret of all our tragedies and, nevertheless, we are convinced that we know all...
Take a 'Rational Mammal', one of those people who profess to be influential in life, to the centre of the Sahara Desert; leave him there far from any oasis and watch from an aircraft all what happens...
Facts will speak for themselves; although the 'Intellectual Humanoid' professes to be strong and believes he is very much a man, deep down he is frightfully weak...
The 'Rational Animal' is a hundred per cent silly; he thinks the best of himself; he believes he can manage wonderfully by means of Kindergarten, Manuals of Courtesy, Primary, Secondary, High School, College, University, dad's good prestige, etc, etc, etc.
Unfortunately, behind so much education and good manners, qualifications and money, we know very well that any stomachache saddens us and that deep down we continue to be unhappy and miserable...
We only need to read the World History to know that we are the same barbarians of yesteryear and that instead of improving we have become worse.
This twentieth century with all its spectacularism, wars, prostitution, world sodomy, sexual degeneration, drugs, alcohol, exhorbitant cruelty, extreme perversity, monstrousness, etc, etc, etc, is the mirror in which we must look ourselves; there is, therefore, no weighty reason why we should boast of having reached a higher state of development...
It is absurd to think that time means progress; unfortunately, the 'learned ignoramuses' continue to be bottled up inside the 'Dogma of Evolution'...
In all the black pages in the 'Black History' we always find the same horrifying cruelties, ambitions, wars, etc...
However, our 'Super-Civilized' contemporaries are still convinced that War is something secondary, a passing accident having nothing to do with their so much crowed about 'Modern Civilization'.
Certainly, what matters is the way each person is; some subjects might be drunkards, others abstainers, some might be honest and some others crooks; there are people of all sorts in life...
The masses are the sum of the individuals; what the individual is, that is what are the masses, the Government, etc...
The masses are, therefore, the extension of the individuals; the transformation of the masses, of the peoples, is not possible unless each individual, each person, transforms himself or herself...
Nobody can deny that there are different social levels; there are people of church and people of brothel; business people and country people, etc...
Likewise there are different Levels of Being. What we internally are, magnificent or petty, generous or mean, violent or peaceful, chaste or lustful, attracts the diverse circumstances in life...
A lustful person will always attract scenes, dramas and even tragedies of lasciviousness, in which he will find himself involved...
A drunkard will attract drunkards and will always find himself in pubs and bars, that is obvious...
What will the usurer attract?, the selfish person? How many problems?, imprisonments?, misfortunes?
Nevertheless, embittered people, tired of suffering, want to change, to turn the page in their histories...
Poor people! They want to change and they do not know how; they do not know the procedure; they are in a blind alley...
What happened to them yesterday happens to them today and it will happen to them tomorrow; they always repeat the same mistakes and they just do not learn the lessons from life, no matter how hard it hits them.
Everything recurs in people's very own lives; they say the same things, do the same things, regret the same things...
This boring repetition of dramas, comedies and tragedies will continue as long as we carry within ourselves the undesirable elements of Anger, Covetousness, Lust, Envy, Pride, Sloth, Gluttony, etc, etc, etc...
What is our moral level?, or we should better say: What is our Level of Being?
As long as the Level of Being does not radically change, the repetition of all our miseries, scenes, adversities and misfortunes will continue...
All the things, all the circumstances that succeed each other outside ourselves on the stage of the world, are exclusively the reflexion of what we have inside.
We can solemnly state with very good reason that 'the exterior is the reflexion of the interior'.
When one changes inwardly and when such change is radical; the outside, circumstances, life, also change.
These days (year 1974) I have been observing a group of people who invaded someone else's site. Here in Mexico such people are given the curious name of 'PARACHUTISTS'.
They are neighbours of the Churubusco rural housing state; they are very close to my house. This is why I have been able to study them closely...
To be poor can never be a crime; that is not what is serious, but their Level of Being...
Everyday they fight among themselves, get drunk, insult one another, turn into murderers of their own companions in misfortune; they certainly live in filthy huts in which love does not prevail but hatred reigns instead...
I have often thought that if any one of these people were to eliminate hatred, anger, lust, drunkenness, curse, cruelty, selfishness, slander, envy, self-love, pride, etc, etc ,etc, from inside himself; he would then be likeable to other people, just by the Law of Psychological Affinities he would mix with people who would be more refined, more spiritual; these new contacts would be crucial for a finantial and social change...
This would be the system for such person to leave the 'pigsty', the filthy 'sewer'...
So, if we really want a radical change, the first thing that we must comprehend is that each of us (whether white or black, yellow or copper-coloured, ignorant or educated, etc) is at one 'Level of Being' or another.
What is our Level of Being? Have you ever reflected on this? It would not be possible to pass on to another level if we ignore the state in which we find ourselves.
We need to yearn for a true change, get out of this boring routine, of this life merely mechanistic and tiring...
The first thing that we must understand with absolute clarity is that each of us --whether burgeois or proletarian, well-off or middle-class, rich or poor-- is really at this or that Level of Being...
A drunkard's Level of Being is very different from an abstainer's, and that of a prostitute is very different from a maiden's. This that we are saying is unanswerable, irrefutable...
Reaching this part of our chapter, we do not lose anything with imagining a staircase that extends upwards from below --vertically and with many, many steps...
Unquestionably, we find ourselves on one of these steps; on the steps below there will be people worse than us; on the steps above there will be people better than us...
Clearly, on this extraordinary Vertical, on this wonderful staircase, we can find all the Levels of Being... every person is different and nobody can refute this...
Undoubtedly, we are not talking now about beautiful or plain faces, nor is it a matter of age. There are young and old, elderly people already about to die and babies just born...
The question of time and age; all that being born, growing, developing, marrying, reproducing, growing old and dying, is exclusive of the Horizontal...
The concept of time does not fit in with the 'Wonderful Staircaise', with the Vertical. On the rungs of this ladder, we can only find 'Levels of Being'...
People's mechanical hope is worth for nothing; they believe that things will get better with time; this is what our grandparents and great-grandparents used to think; facts have served precisely to prove the opposite...
The 'Level of Being' is what counts, and this is Vertical; we are on one rung, but we can climb on to another rung...
The 'Wonderful Staircase' we are talking about refers to the different 'Levels of Being', it certainly has nothing to do with linear time...
A higher 'Level of Being' is immediately above us at every instant...
It is not in any remote horizontal future, but here and now; within ourselves; in the Vertical...
Obviously, as anyone can understand, both lines --Horizontal and Vertical-- are found in our Psychological interior, moment to moment, and they form a Cross...
The personality develops and dwells on the Horizontal line of life. It is born and dies within its linear time; it is perishable; there exists no tomorrow for a dead person's personality; it is not the Being...
The Levels of Being; the Being itself, is not of time, it has nothing to do with the Horizontal line; it is found within ourselves. Now, on the Vertical...
It would be manifestly absurd to seek our own Being outside ourselves...
There is no harm in establishing the following as a corollary: Titles, degrees, promotions, etc, in the external physical world, would in no way bring about genuine exaltation, revaluation of the Being, our passing on to a higher step on the 'Levels of Being'...
It is not unappropiate to remind our readers that there exists a mathematical point within ourselves...
Unquestionably, such point is neither found ever in the past, nor in the future...
Whoever should want to discover this mysterious point, must look for it here and now, within him or herself, exactly at this instant --neither one second ahead, nor one second back...
The two beams of the Holy Cross, Vertical and Horizontal, meet at that point...
We find ourselves, therefore, before two Paths at every instant: the Horizontal one and the Vertical one...
It is ostensible that the Horizontal one is very 'twee', there walk all those who follow the crowd, there walk 'the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker', 'Tom, Dick and Harry'...
It is evident that the Vertical one is different; it is the path of the intelligent rebels, of the Revolutionaires...
When you remember yourself, when you work on yourself, when you do not identify with all the problems and sorrows of life, you are in fact on the Vertical Path...
Certainly, to eliminate negative emotions is never an easy task; to lose all identification with our own lifestyle; problems of every kind, business, debts, payment of installments, mortgages, telephone, water, electricity, etc, etc, etc...
Obviously, the unemployed, those who for one reason or another have lost their job and are out of work, suffer owing to lack of money, and to forget their case, not to worry or identify with their own problem, turns out to be terribly difficult in fact.
People who suffer, who cry, those who have been the victims of a treachery, of a betrayal in life, of ingratitude, of a calumny or a fraud; really forget about themselves, about their intimate Real Being, completely identify with their moral tragedy...
The work on oneself is the fundamental characteristic of the Vertical Path. Nobody could tread the Path of Great Rebelliousness if he never worked on himself...
The work to which we are referring is of a Psychological kind; it deals with certain transformation of the present moment in which we find ourselves. We need to live at instant to instant...
For example, a person who is desperate because of a sentimental, finantial or political problem, has obviously forgotten about himself or herself...
If such a person stops for an instant, observes the situation and tries to remember himself, and then makes an effort to understand the sense of his attitude...
If he or she reflects a little and thinks that everything passes, that life is illusory, transient, and that death reduces to ashes all the vanities of the world...
If that person understands that her problem is really nothing else than an 'empty flare-up', a will-o'-the-wisp that soon dies out, he will quickly see with surprise that everything has changed...
To transform mechanical reactions is possible by means of logical confrontation and the Being's Intimate Self-Reflection...
It is evident that people react mechanically when faced by the diverse circumstances of life...
Poor people! They always tend to become victims. When someone flatters them, they smile; when humiliated, they suffer. If they are insulted, they insult; if they are hurt, they hurt; they are never free; their fellow men have power to drive them from joy to sorrow, from hope to despair.
Each of those people who go along the Horizontal Path, is like a musical instrument on which every other fellow man plays what he wants...
Somebody who learns to transform the mechanical relations, goes in fact up the 'Vertical Path'.
This represents a fundamental change in the 'Level of Being', which is the extraordinary result of 'Psychological Rebelliousness'.