"Pity them my children, they are far from home and no one knows them. Let those in quest of God be careful lest appearances deceive them in these people who are peculiar and hard to place; no one rightly knows them but those in whom the same light shines" Meister Eckhart
Hello All
I have a great admiration for true religious individuality. This does not include charlatens or people lost in imagination. As Meister Eckhart suggests, they are hard for us to understand. Where many find it comforting to talk of the unity of humanity in idealistic terms and shining platitudes, I admire those that have experienced the human condition for what it is in themselves as well as society and personally grown as a result in the direction of the true human spirit.
Simone Weil was, I believe, such a person. She was such an individual that she really is impossible to classify. She is one of those few that can only be called an "event." Gurdjieff's grandmother advised the young G not to do as others do. She would have loved Simone
It almost seems absurd that a woman born in 1909 and dies in 1943, living a brief 34 years, should now become for me not only one of the most profound female thinkers I've read but one of the most dedicated to be brutally honest with her beliefs in relation to herself. I've read some of her writings and will gradually read more but I am in awe that such depth, courage, and sincerity could exist in someone so young.
Needless to say, attempting to deal with what was obvious an inner calling annoyed many. She was very "odd." and probably even frightened some. It was part of a growing process in a world alien to her "being."
Talk about individuality. She was born a French Jew in a fairly well to do home and her parents were fond of Marx and Freud. When very young she was a brilliant anarchist, Atheist, and Marxist.. But not just a talker, she lived her principles and voluntarily entered factory work to experience the human condition.
Her life was so odd but completely genuine that Albert Camus said of her in a letter to Weil's mother in 1951:
Simone Weil, I still know this now, is the only great mind of our times and I hope that those who realize this have enough modesty to not try to appropriate her overwhelming witnessing.
For my part, I would be satisfied if one could say that in my place, with the humble means at my disposal, I served to make known and disseminate her work whose full impact we have yet to measure.
This is quite different from what was spoken of her when she graduated. Her honesty and dedication to truth was not appreciated. The Director of Career Placement, Ecole Normale Supérieure wrote:
We shall send the Red Virgin as far away as possible so that we shall never hear of her again
According to Francine du Plessix Gray in a recent biography of Weil, Pope Paul VI claimed her as one of the three—with Pascal and Bernanos—most important influences on his intellectual development. Yet Boris Souvarine, who had been head at one time of the French communist party, but later broke with Stalin, and who was the first to write an authoritative biography of the still living dictator, admired Simone immensely: "She's the most intelligent woman I've met since Rosa Luxemburg," he said.
Who else has been both admired by a Pope Paul V1 and Leon trotsky?
It was her incredible talent and her uncompromising desire to be real that allowed I believe a genuine transition in human psychological growth where she could understand the natural connection between the attractions of Christianity and Atheism. Now who but a true individual could grasp and reconcile such an apparent contradiction?
She experienced, I believe, something similar to what St. Paul did when she writes "Christ himself came down and took possession of me." It is notable that she writes: " God in his mercy had prevented me from reading the mystics, so that it should be evident to me that I had not invented this absolutely unexpected contact." It minimizes the role of imagination. Since she wrote this to a friend knowing she was near death, I don't suspect the usual urge to try and create appearance.
So how does she unite Atheism and Christianity? She does so with a realistic appreciation of the divided state of human nature without any condemnation. She had experienced both with pure intent so her connection was natural. Consider these two quotations:
1. "Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith: in this sense, atheism is a purification. I have to be atheistic with the part of myself which is not made for God. Among those men in whom the supernatural part has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong."
2. An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.
How can such a young person see what so many have missed? Religion isn't for consolation but awakening which the Atheist in their own way invites us to do. They rightly see the mockery that has become of religion but remain locked in denial of anything more. Both Atheists and the Religious will dig their heels in and snarl at one another while she only relates her experience of reconciliation. At one time in her life, as an Atheist, her concern was purely for the societal good . But her courage and desire for the truth itself required her to be open and not just close off in defense of an agenda. In this way she could experience what I believe to be the natural transition into higher understanding that our egotistic self justifications close us off to. Her individualism demanded being open to reality at the expense of her preconceptions.
Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace." Simone Weil
Only a few on our planet could equal her ability for conscious attention. Anyone in the work can profit by reading her notes on attention.
I wonder now if she had known Gurdjieff if he could have extended her life assuming that it would be worth doing. Perhaps she accomplished what was necessary for her to accomplish. Yet it is not necessary for her to give her attention so freely but she chose to do it for the sake of humanity. would G have advised differntly? I don't know since people on this level are out of my league.
Anyhow, I saw this trailor to a soon to be released documentary on Simone called "An Interview with simone weil" as a contribution to her 100th birthday 2/09. The film maker speaks of the privileged observer and how attention and her dedication to live without buffers may have led to an early death. But how many live such a life of truth as Simone? Even at fourteen she was called "home." Who am I to judge importance?
Excerpts from a letter Simone Weil wrote on May 15, 1942 in Marseilles, France to her close friend Father Perrin:
At fourteen I fell into one of those fits of bottomless despair that come with adolescence, and I seriously thought of dying because of the mediocrity of my natural faculties. The exceptional gifts of my brother, who had a childhood and youth comparable to those of Pascal, brought my own inferiority home to me. I did not mind having no visible successes, but what did grieve me was the idea of being excluded from that transcendent kingdom to which only the truly great have access and wherein truth abides. I preferred to die rather than live without that truth. After months of inward darkness, I suddenly had the everlasting conviction that any human being, even though practically devoid of natural faculties, can penetrate to the kingdom of truth reserved for genius, if only he longs for truth and perpetually concentrates all his attention upon its attainment. He thus becomes a genius too,
It was this power of attention that allowed her to see the world as meaningless and filled with "mad machines."
"To believe in God is not a decision we can make. All we can do is decide not to give our love to false gods. In the first place, we can decide not to believe that the future contains for us an all-sufficient good. The future is made of the same stuff as the present....
"...It is not for man to seek, or even to believe in God. He has only to refuse to believe in everything that is not God. This refusal does not presuppose belief. It is enough to recognize, what is obvious to any mind, that all the goods of this world, past, present, or future, real or imaginary, are finite and limited and radically incapable of satisfying the desire which burns perpetually with in us for an infinite and perfect good... It is not a matter of self-questioning or searching. A man has only to persist in his refusal, and one day or another God will come to him."
-- Weil, Simone, ON SCIENCE, NECESSITY, AND THE LOVE OF GOD, edited by Richard Rees, London, Oxford University Press, 1968.- ©
Simone lived without buffers and I wonder how Gurdjieff would have dealt with her if the opportunity arose.
Anyhow this video introduces the gift of attention. Did it kill her? I don't believe so. Such people as I've read are like comets who enter our lives, stir everything up, and move on. That she did and on her 100th birthday I will raise a toast in honer of the sincerity of her life and efforts in the quest to be real.
_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKFzgIRmZeU