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The Eternal Present · Spiritual awakening · 20 min
To explore the concrete paths of inner transformation.

Series: Towards spiritual sovereignty | Stage 4 — The victory of Constancy Previous article: The radiance of Compassion

No fruit without roots

By the end of the first three stages of this journey, something has been gradually consolidating. Love was first recognised as an infinite energy that sustains the universe and can flow through us if we consent to open a passage for it. Discipline then gave it form, a riverbed and a bank, transforming a generous but diffuse impulse into a focused and productive force. And from their slow convergence was born radiant compassion — that living fruit of inner transmutation, that warmth of one who has himself trembled and who, from that trembling, draws the strength to hold another’s hand.

But a single fruit is not enough to nourish an entire life. The tree must hold; its roots must sink deep enough to withstand the long droughts and the squalls of winter. This is precisely what a fourth quality of the soul brings: constancy — that perseverance which makes possible the victory over oneself, not the kind wrested in the blazing moment of a decisive test, but the kind built silently and stubbornly in the patient repetition of ordinary days.

A forgotten strength of our times

The human being, who struggles to see beyond his immediate needs, has little sense of the value of constancy, except as a guarantee of material security. He can barely glimpse its usefulness for his inner development, and still less for his spiritual progress. It takes a measure of maturity already acquired — having been confronted with the difficulty of changing oneself or bringing a demanding project to fruition — to accept that constancy alone will bring victory.

Our mercantile societies, driven by unbridled consumption and the planned obsolescence of products as much as desires, ceaselessly urge us to leap from one novelty to the next in a desperate pursuit of stimulation, as though it could fill our inner void. In this permanent agitation, sustaining a patient effort or remaining faithful to a commitment so often seems disappointing in comparison with the brilliance of the new, which fills us for a moment and wearies us immediately afterwards.

A strength for building and becoming

And yet anyone who undertakes a project that takes him out of the routine of ordinary life will inevitably confront the need to leave his comfort zone. Reaching that objective will demand that he surpass his habitual limits and sustain his effort over a greater or lesser period of time, depending on the nature of the goal. There then arises the difficulty of remaining constant, of continuing to advance whatever obstacles are encountered or whatever adaptations become necessary. For without constancy, the human being can obtain nothing lasting — whether in material achievement, inner development, or spiritual fulfilment. Yet we persist involuntarily in our most limiting habits whilst rarely finding the same perseverance for the efforts that might truly benefit us.

When we do manage to sustain effort over time, it is most often out of constraining necessity — working to ensure our livelihood, or studying to gain a qualification — rather than from a taste for accomplishing something that calls upon our potential for creativity and renewal. But if we come to understand the hold that a society has over us — one which urges us to chase after artificial needs — and if we gradually grow aware of the wealth of our inner resources, we shall find the motivation needed to commit to a patient effort and a solid constancy, so as to fulfil our true nature and unfold our personal path in the world.

Patience, perseverance, courage

Constancy is a subtle compound of three mutually sustaining forces: patience, perseverance and courage. It is patient because it is clear-sighted, knowing that every effort must be inscribed in time to yield the desired result — even for the most gifted of individuals. It is perseverance in the face of obstacles, always attentive to adjusting its pace in order to overcome unforeseen setbacks without exhausting its strength upon them. And it has the courage to rise again after a moment of weakness, drawing from the fall the lessons needed to resume its advance more wisely.

He who practises constancy must have the humility to accept putting himself into question — observing with sincerity his difficulties, and the distance still separating him from his goal — so as to deploy intelligently the talents and resources at his disposal and to compensate for his shortcomings without losing heart. In this way he is continually enriched by his confrontation with the real, seeking to adapt himself subtly to it rather than forcing his way towards his goal through excess of enthusiasm, which would quickly lead him to exhaustion.

A wisdom of rhythm

There is in constancy a wisdom of rhythm that our age has largely lost. An effective constancy must be loving, disciplined, compassionate, humble and dignified all at once. A constancy without love becomes aggressive rigidity that drives away those who accompany us. A constancy without humility becomes stubborn obstinacy that refuses to acknowledge its errors and presses on with decisions that can no longer be revised. A constancy without compassion is a cold mechanism, turned inward upon itself, incapable of taking into account the living world around it. What we seek is not the voluntarist contraction of one who clenches his teeth, but the dynamic openness of one who holds firm because he loves what he does and believes in what he is moving towards. True constancy does not smother the impulse: it extends it, nourishes it and gives it the duration without which it would be no more than a blaze of straw.

Just as the climber takes time to study the safest route and steady his breathing before tackling a difficult section, the spiritual seeker will try to embrace the roughnesses of daily life rather than impose his demands upon them. It is by finding within himself that space of quiet presence, to which he can remain subtly connected even in the heart of agitation, that he will discover the right and confident attitude to adopt before the obstacles that arise on the path, and will know how to recognise with gratitude the unexpected help that fortunate concurrences of circumstance sometimes provide.

Traversing the inner nights

In our spiritual evolution, to develop our qualities and transcend our fears, we must demonstrate a constancy that is at once optimistic and clear-sighted, one that will be strengthened by each small breakthrough towards greater light, and replenished through meditation or the prayer of the heart in moments of fatigue or doubt. It is important to keep our consciousness awake, in a benevolent attitude towards ourselves, so as not to be swept away by disappointment at our slowness or our setbacks, and thus to accept as serenely as possible the impermanence of our inner states, so readily influenced by outward circumstances.

For there inevitably come dark hours — not as signs of failure, but as those passages necessary to every authentic spiritual journey. These inner nights, which John of the Cross described with striking precision, do not mean that the path is false: they mean that something profound is in the process of transforming itself, at a depth our waking consciousness cannot yet grasp. Constancy is precisely this capacity to traverse our regions of shadow without fleeing them or dramatising them, trusting in that larger movement of life which carries us even when we no longer feel it.

Let us never forget that the path is long before we can begin to unify in a single direction of progress the multiplicity of figures that, within us, take turns holding the centre of our inner stage. We are like a theatre director watching his actors constantly steal the best role from one another, without yet having found the means to reconcile them and make them perform the play as he wishes. This is why on one day we feel we are advancing, whilst on another we suddenly feel weighted down and hesitant, without quite understanding why. What matters above all is to keep faith and to place one foot before the other, at our own pace.

The humility of the reed

Just as our body needs nourishment and rest to traverse the years in good health, our inner life needs to replenish itself and to breathe deeply so as not to become exhausted. Our constancy, for all that it must be sincere and determined, must not therefore harden into a proud and blind rigidity that would destroy the very inner strength we need to sustain it.

The task is to find, through a refined attention to our inner states and our real capacities, the right degree of self-demand — one that genuinely marks our will and our commitment, that obtains results little by little, whilst preserving that suppleness which prevents us from breaking. The reed that bends in the squall holds its ground without difficulty, whilst the mighty oaks sometimes end up uprooted. Let us have the humility of the reed: firm in its resolve to hold, yet with that lightness of yielding to the wind and playing with it.

The ardour of our constancy is ultimately but another gift of the Living, making it possible to exercise our human talents in order to evolve and transform the givens of our reality. This is why it is so important that it be directed towards noble aims that honour the best of our human condition. Let our constancy be that of the creator who is conscious of holding in trust that human genius which opens so many possibilities, and who gives thanks for it to the Infinite. May we use the forces and talents that come to us from the overwhelming mystery of Life to nourish an ever greater commitment to awakening our spiritual consciousness and spreading joy throughout the world.

The synergy of heaven and earth

When our constancy is thus placed at the service of a noble and spiritual aim, we gradually discover that it nourishes itself through a synergy between our inner determination and living forces that flow through us and exceed us, arising from that infinite vitality which sustains the universe. It is as though what seek to unite within us are, on the one hand, an openness, a kind of surrender and trust, and on the other, a keen will, the driving force of a measured discipline. Something difficult to define in words, since it is at once a releasing and a holding, which only a watchful alertness, a demanding presence to oneself, can keep in balance.

He who has this experience understands that his inner strength grows in proportion to the degree of his surrender, his emptying of what he believed he must defend in himself and what his habitual egotistic contraction has always protected. This contraction, as it releases, can allow other dimensions of being to awaken. The inner disorder of the acquired personality then gradually reorients itself in a single direction, in order at last to fulfil its role as vessel and mouthpiece of our spiritual essence. And this essence, in awakening, begins to perceive — as the Rig Veda teaches us: O Fire, thou art the son of Heaven through the body of the Earth — that it is at once the subject and the object of this circulation of forces between earth and heaven, between its infinitely small earthly presence, a speck of dust bounded in space and time, and the infinity of the universe.

The fidelity that sustains the living

In our relationship with others, constancy is a testimony of commitment that strengthens bonds, a harbinger of reliability and responsibility that inspires trust. It is always easy to show our neighbour our interest or our compassion in a punctual manner, on the occasion of some significant event. But persevering in support and love for the other over time, whatever the vicissitudes of his existence — whether he be in joy or distress, in abundance or poverty, acclaimed or held in contempt by others — or extending to him our compassion and the benefit of our forgiveness even when he goes astray in ways that harm us: this is a sign of the nobility we can attain when we elevate our spiritual consciousness and look upon our neighbour with the eyes of the heart. It is this unfailing fidelity, composed of patience and understanding, which can sometimes save a friend worn down by life from despair, and help him regain his human dignity by taking back the reins of his destiny.

Deprived of this capacity for attachment to the other that endures beyond every immediate consideration, delivered back to the inconstancy of relationships woven solely from interest, tribal reflex or self-centred love, the human being empties himself of the very substance of life — that infinite circulation of shared and transformed energies of which our life in common should, upon this earth, be the most sublime realisation.

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One perseverance, a thousand faces

In the constellation of the world’s spiritual traditions, this victorious perseverance has received different names in different languages and cultures, but its reality is everywhere the same: the sine qua non condition of all lasting transformation.

The Hebrew Kabbalah names this quality Netzach, victory, the fourth of the emotional sefirot of the Tree of Life. The Hebrew word netzach carries two inseparable meanings: victory and eternity, as though the tradition wished to convey that only constancy can inscribe human effort within a dimension that transcends time. Netzach is the force that refuses to capitulate, the vital energy that renews itself at each dawn after the night, and of which the kabbalists say it is the foundation of all genuine spiritual aspiration. Without it, Chesed, love, and Gevurah, discipline, remain fine intuitions without a tomorrow, and Tiferet, compassion, withers for want of being nourished over time. The Sefirat HaOmer, that counting of forty-nine days from Passover to the Giving of the Torah, is itself a school of constancy: each evening, one day alone is counted, one step alone is taken, and it is this accumulation of small faithful gestures that builds our capacity to receive the Revelation.

In Islam, spiritual constancy is expressed as sabr, patient endurance, and istiqāma, rectitude in the continuity of the path. Sabr is one of the most celebrated virtues of the Quran, mentioned in more than ninety places in various forms: not the resigned patience of one who merely endures, but the active composure of one who chooses to remain upright in the trial, grounded in his trust in G-d. Istiqāma denotes persevering uprightness, that effort to remain on the just path without being led astray by temptations or discouragements. The Prophet, when asked to sum up the whole of religion, is said to have replied: “Say: I have faith in God, then be upright” — thumma astaqim — placing constancy in rectitude at the very heart of the spiritual life. The Sufi masters deepen this notion through the figure of the maqāmāt, the stations of the heart on the path towards G-d: each station is acquired only through long residency, a repeated and patient practice, until it becomes the natural tonality of one’s being.

The Christian tradition has developed two complementary notions to describe this quality. The Greek hypomonē, often rendered as patience or endurance, literally denotes the capacity to hold firm under the weight, to remain standing under the burden without breaking or fleeing. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, traces a striking chain of transmutation: “tribulation produces patience, patience produces experience, experience produces hope”, as though the trial traversed with constancy were the only alembic capable of distilling pure hope. The Latin monastic tradition adds perseverantia, perseverance in the lectio divina and the daily rule, which Benedict of Nursia made the foundation of his Rule: “Ora et labora” — pray and work — each day, at the same hour, not seeking the extraordinary but deepening the ordinary. John of the Cross, finally, whose dark night of the soul is perhaps the most lucid description of what all spiritual seekers traverse in their passage through doubt and aridity, teaches that it is precisely constancy within that darkness which is the touchstone of true love.

In the Hindu tradition, constancy bears the name dhṛiti, resolute firmness, which the Bhagavad Gita places among the divine qualities of the accomplished being, alongside courage and purity. It is distinguished from mere obstinacy by its inner nature: it is not the rigidity of one who clings, but the stability of one who is rooted. The practice of tapas, the voluntary ascesis already evoked in the stage of discipline, yields its fruits only over time: the inner fire purifies the metal only when it is maintained patiently, without sudden force or slackening. The yoga tradition insists on the fact that samskaras, the psychic imprints that condition our behaviour, are transformed only through conscious and prolonged repetition of new attitudes: constancy is not a spiritual luxury, it is the very condition of all inner reprogramming.

Buddhism names this quality adhiṭṭhāna in the Theravāda tradition, unwavering resolve, one of the ten pāramitā or perfections that the Bodhisattva must cultivate on the path to awakening. It is distinguished from stubbornness by its grounding in wisdom (prajñā): one does not persevere out of pride or fear of failure, but because one has clearly discerned the right direction and remains faithful to it with suppleness. Tibetan Buddhism insists upon virya, the joyous and ardent energy of perseverance, that force which advances without wearying, not under compulsion but through love of what it moves towards. Milarepa, the great Tibetan yogi of the eleventh century, became one of the most venerated figures of the tradition precisely because his constancy in practice, despite years of trials and humiliations, illustrates that the door of awakening opens not to the most gifted but to the most persevering.

Taoism approaches constancy by what seems a paradoxical route. Whereas most traditions insist upon voluntary effort, Lao Tzu teaches jiān, perseverance as fidelity to one’s own deep nature rather than the imposition of will upon reality. Water returns often in the Tao Te Ching as the image of this perfect constancy: it never forces, it goes around, it seeps through, it always takes the most humble path, and it is precisely for this reason that it ends by wearing away stone. “Nothing under heaven is as supple and yielding as water, yet nothing is its equal for overcoming that which is hard and rigid”, says Lao Tzu in chapter 78. Taoist constancy is therefore less a taut will than a quality of attention, a fidelity to the natural movement of the Tao within oneself, which allows one to act rightly at the right moment with the minimum of effort, in what the tradition calls wu wei: action without unnecessary resistance, effort attuned to the rhythm of the real.

All these traditions converge upon a single deep conviction: constancy is not the quality of the strong, but that of the wise. It is not measured by the intensity of the effort expended but by the quality of the presence maintained. And everywhere it is recognised as what allows all the other qualities of the soul to bear fruit over time, to inscribe themselves not as fleeting sparks but as a real and irreversible transformation of being.

A few signposts for the path

These reflections on constancy are not intended to turn you into an indefatigable and indestructible walker. They are intended to help you recognise within yourself this capacity to hold firm, supple and determined at once, and to trust it, for it is there, even when you do not always feel it. If the love of the first stage was the sap, the discipline of the second the form, and the compassion of the third the fruit, constancy is the root: invisible, silent, yet alone capable of inscribing all the rest within duration.

To go further, you may wish to re-read the article Abecedary: H for Humility, which explores in depth this quality towards which our constancy naturally leads us.

1. A few questions to let resonate

Sit down in a moment of calm. Allow each of these questions to descend within you without seeking an immediate answer. What rises with a slight resistance is often the most precious.

On the reality of my constancy
Am I truly constant in the commitments that matter to me, or do I scatter my energies and abandon things the moment novelty fades? Does my constancy come from deep conviction, or from fear of failure, from habit rather than genuine will? Do I persevere out of love for what I am doing, or merely from inertia? And when I abandon a path, is it a wise decision or a capitulation before difficulty?

On the quality of my constancy
Is my constancy loving and supple, or so hard and demanding as to become crushing — for myself as much as for those around me? Do I know how to distinguish healthy tenacity from sterile obstinacy — that obstinacy which refuses to acknowledge its errors and invests itself in decisions that can no longer be revised? When I face an obstacle, do I try to force my way through or to find, like water, the most fitting path?

On my constancy in relationships
Am I reliable and present for those who matter to me — not only in happy moments but in times of trial or tedium? Is there someone in my life to whom I have promised a presence I have not sustained? What form of constancy in relationships do I wish to cultivate more?

On the source of my constancy
Do I attribute my capacity to hold firm solely to my own will, or do I recognise that it is also nourished by something that exceeds me? Am I capable of relinquishing control of the outcome whilst maintaining fidelity to the effort? Have I ever had the experience of that synergy between my own determination and vaster forces that were carrying me?

2. A few gestures for the week

Sustain a commitment for seven days
Choose a simple and concrete commitment — a brief daily practice, a few minutes of silence, a page of writing, a moment of attention to someone close to you — and keep to it each day for the full duration of this stage, without exception. Not to prove anything to yourself, but to feel from within what repeated fidelity to an intention builds.

Break a limiting habit
Identify a habit that holds you back or scatters you: a reflex of avoidance, a recurring distraction, a negative automatic thought. Choose just one. Observe it this week each time it arises, without judging it, but without yielding to it either. Constancy begins with this simple refusal, peaceful and decided.

Be patient with someone who tests you
Choose a person whose pace or manner of being usually makes you impatient. This week, offer them an entire and tranquil listening, without seeking to accelerate, to conclude or to correct. Constancy in relationship begins first with this quality of presence that does not grow discouraged by another’s slowness.

Enact a resolution immediately
If you make a decision to change in the course of this week, do not leave it sleeping in your mind: translate it into a concrete gesture as soon as possible, however modest. A resolution not immediately anchored in a real act risks evaporating before it has had time to take root.

Act for a cause that transcends you
Devote a moment this week to an action that does not directly serve your immediate interests: an act of support for someone, a contribution to a just cause, a gesture for something you believe the world needs. The highest constancy is that which takes root in something greater than oneself.

3. Celebrating this stage

At the close of these seven days, or however long you devote to this stage, take a moment to identify one small victory of constancy you have won over yourself. Not an exploit, but a faithful gesture repeated, a commitment held despite fatigue, a moment in which you chose to hold firm where you might have given up. Note it in a journal, or speak it aloud, with the quiet sobriety of one who knows that the great transformations are built of exactly these bricks, one by one, day after day.

For unacknowledged constancy discourages itself. What we receive with gratitude, we invite to grow. And it is upon these small, silent, accumulated victories that this spiritual sovereignty, solid and luminous, will gradually rise — the sovereignty we have come to seek together on this path.

Next week we shall discover how this constancy, once established, naturally opens the way to a fifth quality of the soul: humility full of gratitude, which does not weaken him who cultivates it but frees him from his last enclosures.

Good travelling to all.

© 2026 — Dialogues du Nouveau Monde — Jérôme Nathanaël

To go further

Have you encountered a practice, a discipline, an exercise, or an obstacle that has truly transformed you? Share your testimony in the comments — it will enrich every reader.

And if you wish to express yourself on a subject of spiritual awakening, send me a contribution of roughly one page for the Waymakers section. It will be published under your initials, a pseudonym, or anonymously, as you prefer. Other readers will be able to respond and dialogue with you.

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Article disponible en français
The Eternal Present · Spiritual awakening · 16 min
To explore the concrete paths of inner transformation.

Series: Toward spiritual sovereignty | Step 3 – The radiance of Compassion
Previous article: The effort of Discipline

The fruit of effort

At the end of the first two steps of this journey, something has begun to be transformed. Love, first recognised as an infinite energy that sustains the universe and can pass through us, has gradually found within us a more attuned form thanks to that ardent discipline which has given it its riverbed and its banks. Whoever has truly worked on these first two qualities of the soul, abundant love and rigorous discipline, now discovers that he begins to see them converge towards a third reality, higher and more luminous: active and radiant compassion.

For compassion is not simply a mixture of love and discipline, it is the fruit of a deeper inner transmutation. It is by sincerely trying to embody love, by coming up against his own limitations, by supplying the effort that discipline requires in order to come closer to it, that the spiritual seeker naturally develops this widened empathy for the difficulties of others. He has groped his way through his own inner labyrinth, he has measured the weight of his heaviness, and this experience makes him open to the path of every human being.

Knowing oneself in order truly to see

It is by moving beyond our ego and its visceral fear of lack, born of our mortality, as well as our representations and behaviours acquired under the influence of education, imitation and culture, that we can gain access to a right vision of ourselves and of others. This lucidity allows us to discern more clearly our real personal needs as well as the expectations of those around us, and to find a just balance between the two, so that we behave in a way that is attuned and conscious rather than impulsive and reactive.

So long as we remain conditioned by the distortions of our acquired personality, which dominates our essential being, we are deprived of that spiritual gaze which would assess situations and people truthfully. Our compassion remains at best random and subject to our moods of the moment, now overflowing, now absent, depending on the emotional state in which we find ourselves rather than on the reality of the other. As we gradually gain a clear vision of our own functioning, through self‑observation and that sincerity which allows us to look at everything without flattering or condemning ourselves, we shall in the end decipher the deep springs of our attitudes and feelings, and we shall begin to be able to find lasting harmony between our inner demands and our capacity to love.

True compassion or illusion?

The more we learn to know ourselves and to understand the driving forces behind our motivations and our behaviours, the more capable we become of discerning whether our impulse of compassion is borne by a truly disinterested intention of dedication towards another, and whether we are really ready to put ourselves in his place in order to understand his point of view or his needs and to welcome these as they are. This distinction is essential, because compassion can very easily become one of the subtlest guises of the ego.

Is our compassion nothing more than a passing emotional reaction that soothes our conscience without our being in any way ready to embody it in concrete terms? Is it a ruse of the ego turned back upon itself, content to tell itself that it is sensitive and empathetic, without wishing to leave its habits in order to take the risk of truly caring for the one who is in distress? Or is it perhaps the result of a sense of guilt created by the imbalance between two human conditions, a selective compassion that we would not feel with the same intensity, for example, towards a wealthy person struck by great misfortune? These questions deserve to be asked honestly, for they reveal to what extent true compassion is a demanding fruit.

True compassion, which springs from a real opening of the heart to love, is that capacity to feel and to sense by empathy the sorrows and difficulties of every human being we meet, even if he is a stranger, and to be ready to support and accompany him without any form of judgement or condescension. It does not judge, does not compare, does not rank sufferings. It simply stands there, available, with the quiet nobility of one who has learnt to stand upright through his own trials.

The maternal face of compassion

To picture this quality of soul that is compassion in all its depth, let us think of a mother’s love, attentive to the needs of her children, ready to comfort them when they face difficulties, naturally finding extenuating circumstances if they have acted badly. She watches to ensure that they may grow up surrounded by affection and safety, and she passes on everything she can to awaken them to life. This maternal love expects nothing in return, does not keep count, is not discouraged by setbacks: it holds fast.

Thus compassion bears this feminine aspect of tenderness and attentiveness to the other, and whoever develops it in himself gradually softens his character: he expects less from others for himself, and becomes towards them more generous and serene. Little by little he acquires a benevolent attitude towards everyone, which prompts him to lay aside any kind of prejudice as to another’s origin, social status or culture. He distrusts rumours and hasty judgements, and should he happen to hear some damaging information about someone, he suspends his opinion and takes the time to enquire from other sources. By practising active and concrete compassion, he becomes close to everyone and seeks to bring human beings closer to one another rather than to cultivate what separates them. Indeed, he feels intensely that common humanity which we share, that universal confrontation with the vicissitudes of an existence in which suffering and death constantly rub shoulders with the joys of everyday life.

All brothers and sisters in fragility

Thus compassion always goes to what is essential: recognising the other as my fellow man, my brother in humanity, without lingering over clothing, reputation, origin or social condition. For compassion, every being deserves consideration and love. Indeed, all alike, the poor vagrant as much as the illustrious figure, the cleaning lady as much as the head of state, share the same ontological reality, our human destiny, and the same metaphysical vocation: to bring their spiritual potentials to fulfilment, that is, to realise wisdom and love in concrete form and thus ennoble the world.

Compassion is therefore welcoming towards the stranger who comes to meet it, ready to share with him the best that is possible, disposed to learn from all in humility. It is concerned to lessen the suffering of humanity, not by becoming drunk on with fine ideas, but with the courage to act as far as possible in this direction, being first of all demanding with itself. In the midst of a world of injustice and violence, compassion resolutely traces the path of peace and reconciliation, and replaces condemnation and revenge with understanding and forgiveness. Since the one who develops active compassion has himself confronted the harmful tendencies that dwell in all human beings, he knows the real effort it takes to transmute our negative energies into forces of light and love.

Opening one’s inner frontiers

Establishing active compassion within oneself is the fruit of an effort to go beyond our limitations, by gradually escaping our atavistic reflexes of withdrawal and self‑protection. It is a matter of discovering that it is possible to love oneself differently and therefore to love the other in a totally new way, not by cultivating our fears and our guarded reserve, barricaded within our very limited field of life experience, but by giving ourselves the chance of an opening to the world that allows us to be enriched by every situation in existence and by every human encounter.

As we thus emerge from our inner confinement and open ourselves to the possibility of a bond of love with all living things, we also become more sensitive to the consubstantiality of all human beings. We enter a space in which reality, which we formerly perceived as fragmented and sometimes hostile, now appears to us as integrated and unified: an uninterrupted flow of energy and consciousness, of which every human being is a unique instance of freedom and individuality, not separated, however, from this shared abundance. The very idea of individuality becomes thinkable in a different way, since true compassion makes us feel that there is in us something of the other, just as there is in him something of ourselves. We then understand why both the Talmud and the Qur’an affirm that whoever saves a human being saves all humanity, and that whoever loves another with this true active compassion already loves all humankind.

Radiant compassion

My compassion becomes beautiful and radiant when it is spontaneous, humble and sincere. It is that gentle and tranquil energy which warms or consoles, that small delicate intention which underlines the happiness one hopes for the other, that attitude of non‑judgement and peace which allows the other to escape the disguise of falsehood or the urgency of flight. It is the friend who walks with you through dangers as through joys and helps you to journey in complete freedom.

It regards the other in his essential reality, beyond the contingencies of his condition, and welcomes him with all the respect due to his human dignity. It has the constancy of one who keeps his awareness and presence to himself awake, in order to stand with full nobility upon this passing earth, where the greatest riches are those of the heart. It is enduring in its love, because it knows how hard a man must toil in his inner labyrinth, cluttered with traps and distorting mirrors, before finding the exit and emerging again into daylight. This towpath, compassion has worn it away with its own laborious, obstinate steps, and how many times it has had to turn back in order to find again, back there at the last crossroads, the barely visible footpath. How could it do otherwise than blaze up in love for its unhappy human brothers and sisters, when it has needed, for itself, so much clemency, effort and patience in order to approach, slowly, the shores of freedom and light?

It is precisely this path travelled, this intimate experience of human fragility and of the grace that enables one to rise again, that gives compassion its particular beauty: it is lit from within. It is not the condescending pity of someone who watches suffering from some safe height, but the warmth of one who has himself trembled and who, from that trembling, has drawn the strength to hold another’s hand.

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One heart, a thousand faces

Within the constellation of humanity’s spiritual traditions, active compassion has been given different names according to languages and cultures. Yet its face is everywhere the same: the living junction between goodness and truth, between expansive love and the rigour that gives it form.

Hebrew Kabbalah situates this quality at the very heart of the Tree of Life, in the sefirah Tiferet, whose name means beauty and splendour. Tiferet is the central sefirah, the one that harmonises and transcends the two opposing pillars of Chesed, the expansive love of the first step, and Gevurah, the ardent discipline of the second. It introduces between them a third dimension, the truth of being, which is neither one nor the other and can therefore integrate them, giving them a shared and radiant countenance. The Zohar designates it as Rachamim, compassion, derived from the root rechem, the womb, underlining that compassion is not a feeling but an original warmth, a love that engenders and protects.

In the Christian tradition, the Gospels use, to describe the feeling of Jesus in the face of suffering, the Greek verb splanknizomai, to be moved in one’s very entrails, a physical and visceral compassion impossible to feign, which we find in the parable of the Prodigal Son to describe the father who runs towards his child as soon as he sees him in the distance. Meister Eckhart, in the Rhenish mystical tradition, speaks of Mitleid, co‑suffering, as the most immediate spiritual quality, that by which the divine itself is present in human suffering.

In Islam, the first two names of God that open each sura are Al Rahmân and Al Rahîm, the All‑Merciful and the Most‑Merciful, both derived from the same Arabic root rahma which, like rechem in Hebrew, evokes the womb. This convergence between the two Semitic traditions around a shared image is profoundly eloquent. Sufism prolongs this intuition with the notion of ithar, the preference granted to the other over oneself, which the masters regard as the highest degree of spiritual love.

In Hinduism, compassion is called Karunâ, a cardinal quality that the Bhagavad Gîtâ sees as an indispensable condition of Dharma, the realisation of the sacred duty of the incarnate being. It finds concrete expression in the principle of Ahimsâ, active non‑violence, not a mere abstention from harming but a vigilant attention to causing no avoidable suffering to any living being.

Buddhism makes Karunâ the second of the four Brahmavihâras, the sublime abodes of the awakened being, complementing Metta, loving‑kindness already evoked in the first step, but distinct from it through its specific orientation towards suffering. The figure of the Bodhisattva embodies this compassion at its highest degree: he renounces definitive nirvana in order to remain present to the world so long as a single being still suffers. In the Tibetan tradition, Avalokiteçvara, known as Chenrezig, is the Bodhisattva of universal compassion, whose mantra Om mani padme hum is regarded as the very vibration of this quality diffused throughout the cosmos.

Taoism places compassion among the three fundamental treasures of the sage. In chapter 67 of the Tao Te King, Laozi declares: “I have three treasures which I hold and cherish: the first is tenderness (ci)…”. Ci, tenderness‑compassion, is therefore the first of the founding virtues of the Taoist sage, the one that makes all the others possible. It is not an effort of will, but the natural course of the Tao in human existence, the gentleness of water which flows around obstacles without ever losing either its direction or its power.

All these traditions converge on a single conviction: compassion is not a feeling that one happens to experience or not according to circumstances, it is a quality of being that one develops, a dimension of consciousness one cultivates until it becomes the permanent tonality of our presence in the world. And everywhere it springs from the same source: the inner experience of one’s own fragility, traversed with honesty and sustained with dignity.

A few markers for the path

These reflections on compassion are not meant to turn you into some heroic figure with an infallible heart, but to help you recognise within yourself the seed of this quality and give it a little more space and light. If the love of the first step was the sap, and the discipline of the second the form that allows it to rise straight, compassion is the fruit: living, fleshy, offered.

As a complement, you may wish to reread the two previous steps of this journey, “The abundance of love” and “The effort of discipline”.

1. A few questions to let resonate

Sit down for a moment of quiet. Let each of these questions sink gently, without seeking an immediate answer. What rises up with a slight resistance is often the most precious.

On the nature of my compassion
Is my compassion tender and warm, or does it, without my noticing, take the form of pity, with all that pity can contain of condescension? Even if my intention is sincere, do those whom I help perceive it as an act from equal to equal, or as the gesture of one who bends down from above to below? Do I assess the real needs of the one whom I help, or do I give what relieves me of the pain of seeing him suffer?

On the truth of my compassion
Am I capable of truly placing myself in the other’s situation, of suspending my prejudices and projections in order to see him as he is? Does my compassion come from a guilt I am trying to dissolve, or from an authentic empathy? Am I more easily compassionate towards strangers than towards those close to me, because distance makes compassion less costly? Conversely, does my compassion for those close to me blind me to the needs of others?

On the constancy and humility of my compassion
Is my compassion reliable and enduring, or does it vanish as soon as I am caught up in my own concerns? Does my capacity to be compassionate give me, however slightly, a feeling of superiority over the one who receives? Am I aware that this ability to give of myself is itself a gift received, and not a distinction that places me above others?

On the dignity created by my compassion
Does my compassion strengthen the dignity of the one who receives it, or does it risk installing him in a dependence that ends by diminishing him? Do I help the other to stand up again and to find his own resources, or do I keep him in the position of one who receives? The highest compassion is that which renders itself unnecessary, by helping the other to reach the point of no longer needing it.

2. A few gestures for the week

Listening to the very end
Choose someone around you who is currently going through a difficulty. Offer him a moment of wholehearted listening, without interrupting, without trying to advise him, without bringing the conversation back to yourself. Simply listen with your whole being. Notice what is happening within him, and within you.

Helping according to real needs
Before you offer your help to someone, take a moment to ask yourself what he truly needs, not what you think would be useful to him. If you do not know, ask him. Then align your gesture with his answer, even if it takes you out of your usual ways of doing things.

An anonymous act
Perform, this week, an act of compassion which no one will know about, and from which you expect no recognition. Compassion that does not need to be seen is the purest of all.

Helping to rise, not to depend
Identify someone to whom you are in the habit of directly giving what he needs. Ask yourself whether you might help him differently: by strengthening his own resources, by showing him how to do something rather than doing it in his place, by encouraging him towards autonomy. The highest compassion is that which makes the one who receives it grow.

3. A celebration of this step

At the end of these seven days, or of whatever time you devote to this step, take a moment to identify a real act of compassion that you have carried out, however modest it may be. Not a fine intention left in your heart, but a concrete gesture that has touched someone else, strengthened his dignity, or created a truer bond between you. Note it down in a notebook, or say it out loud, with gratitude.

For compassion that is not acknowledged risks closing in on itself like a flower that finds no light. What we welcome with gratitude, we invite to grow. Through these accumulated acts of compassion, small and patient, the beauty of our being in the world is gradually built.

Next week, we shall explore how this radiant compassion, consolidated over time, becomes the constancy that holds, the silent victory of the one who does not let go.

A good journey to each and every one of you.

© 2026 - Dialogues of the New World — Jérôme Nathanaël

Next article : Toward spiritual sovereingty | Step 4 - The victory of Constancy

To go further

Have you encountered a practice, a discipline, an exercise, or an obstacle that has truly transformed you? Share your testimony in the comments — it will enrich every reader.

And if you wish to express yourself on a subject of spiritual awakening, send me a contribution of roughly one page for the Waymakers section. It will be published under your initials, a pseudonym, or anonymously, as you prefer. Other readers will be able to respond and dialogue with you.

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The Eternal Present · Spiritual awakening · 6 min
To explore the concrete paths of inner transformation.

Series: Towards spiritual sovereignty | Step 2 – The effort of Discipline
Previous article: The abundance of Love

Awakening and its demands

One who seeks to free himself from the sole grip of his ego, which confines him to surviving and keeping up appearances, begins to feel his spiritual essence awakening, that dimension of his being which belongs to the Infinite. He opens himself to that living energy of Love that nourishes the universe and begins to discover that it can move through him.

By choosing to make it the driving force of his existence, letting this energy spread within him and radiate through him into the world, he quickly runs up against the limits of his capacity for transcendence, as well as the diversity of situations and people.

He then discovers the necessity of channelling his will to love into a discipline that allows him to refine its concrete embodiment and give it a form suited to the constraints of reality. Through this effort, he experiences genuine inner transmutation and a profound transformation of his relationship with others.

When our essence claims its sovereignty

By developing a conscious presence to ourselves, we gradually learn to decentre from our habitual mode of functioning in order to begin observing it. This newfound inner freedom allows us to glimpse dimensions of our being that exceed the limits of our ego, that personality shaped since childhood by the necessities of social existence.

Our spiritual essence, long deprived of space and attention in favour of this instrument of embodiment, can then reawaken and seek to reclaim its rightful sovereignty over our existence. In trying to give concrete expression to this openness in our lives, through a renewed form of love for ourselves and for others, we collide with our inner agitation, our scattered attention, our fragilities, as well as the constraints of circumstance and the complexity of people.

It is therefore through an effort of discipline and personal rigour that we shall gradually learn to love ourselves better and to finely calibrate the way we express love within the ever-changing circumstances of daily life.

Discipline and self-love

In our modern societies, we are constantly at risk of being swept away by the prevailing current of ambient agitation and stress. Without a sustained effort of discipline and constant self-recollection, it is impossible to remain connected to our innermost being and to progress in our spiritual realisation. Every change in our life, in how we function as well as in the details of our daily routine, first requires a quality of self-presence that allows us to step back and preserve a space of inner calm.

It is there that we can find the resources needed to activate the best within ourselves: all those talents and qualities tied to our spiritual essence, which forms the foundation of our deepest human nature, our acquired personality being merely an instrument of embodiment called to serve its active expression in the world. And the driving force that enables this nature to flourish and find concrete expression in existence is none other than love, whose development is the primary intention of any authentic discipline of wisdom.

Thus, learning to love ourselves rightly means, first of all, accepting to make choices that restore our spiritual dimension to first place in our lives, sometimes renouncing common habits in favour of our inner awakening and our transformation. It also means loving others as they are, with the humility of one who knows his own limits, avoids judging the weaknesses of his neighbour, and stands ready to welcome them with an open heart, to share with them all that is possible.

From good intentions to small victories

How difficult it is to move beyond the good intentions that pass through all of us, and to become truly more open to others, more empathetic towards their concerns, more tolerant towards their ways of being, sometimes so different from our own. And what can be said of our capacity to truly love them as they are, with that compassion that dissolves obstacles and distances, and demonstrates that love is not an empty word but an active force capable of transforming situations?

How do we become ourselves the example that hints that love might, in the end, be the only solution left to try, to step back from the ferocity that threatens whenever human beings are crushed by injustice, fear, and frustration? Through discipline, always discipline, rigour and self-abnegation, but in the joy of feeling within oneself a larger, broader life growing, rich with so many precious discoveries to share!

Human beings have an incredible capacity to transform their existence in depth, to become the creators of themselves and to escape the limits that their visible condition seems to impose upon them. After every stumbling block, after every moment of weakness, it is enough to renew the effort, to better gauge one’s step, and to keep moving forward, gaining a little something here, a little something there. Those brief moments when we sense that a fragment of our frightened ego releases its grip and once again lets the loving life of the Infinite flow through us. Upon these small victories, slowly won over our inner heaviness and coarseness, the radiance of our spiritual sovereignty will ultimately rise.

Standing still in the maelstrom

The more we aspire to transform ourselves inwardly, once freed from the artificial models that drive consumerism and the performance of appearances, and the more we become aware that activating our potentials of wisdom and love will draw us closer to our true nature, the more we also run up against our inner weights and roughness, because they become more visible to us.

To these inner burdens are added the heaviness and fatigue generated by city life, for in our modern societies, crushed under noise and agitation, we often lack the time and space to catch our breath and find some relief. This is why it is so important to gradually cultivate great patience and to accept that the only guarantee of our success lies in the steadiness of one who moves forward resolutely, step by step.

The more we succeed in stepping back and remaining present to ourselves, attentive to our inner workings whatever the circumstances, the more we can hold ourselves like still points within the surrounding maelstrom and consciously choose what we integrate into our inner life. We shall also discover that we can consciously measure the concrete energy we invest in the present moment, according to the inner attitude we adopt. In a sense, it is like learning to optimise the settings of our being, the relationship between our body, our emotions, and our thoughts, so as to promote, as much as possible, our progress towards our goal: to become ourselves.

The craftsman and the Great Work

Just as the apprentice craftsman must practise for a long time, with modest materials and imperfect tools, before acquiring the skill and concentration needed to create the masterpiece that marks the completion of his apprenticeship, so the spiritual seeker engaged in the Great Work of his inner transmutation must accept working with both his strengths and his weaknesses, his blind spots as much as his moments of light, without seeking refuge in easy illusions about his condition.

But if he keeps his initial intention clearly in mind, to realise his true nature and to access wisdom and love, if he maintains an active discipline made of self-attentiveness (to see his real functioning) and measured effort (to change step by step), then his inner strength will grow and amplify; something of another state of consciousness will begin to crystallise within him.

The inner practice of sincerity and humility will gradually reveal dimensions of his being that had remained hidden, and potentialities he had been wholly unaware of. He will discover what self-love truly is, not the love of a false friend who leads one to doubt one’s possibilities and justify one’s retreats, but the demanding love of one who leads him towards the full light of his human dignity. It is upon this foundation of truth that genuine inner stability can develop, one that enables steady progress and the beginning of mastery over the tools of spiritual development.

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Ardent discipline

This inner discipline, this art of containing and directing vital energy rather than dissipating it, is what the Hebrew tradition calls Gevurah, ardent discipline, the second quality of the soul, whose cultivation begins in the second week of the counting of the Omer. Paradoxically, Gevurah does not oppose Chesed: it is the condition of its fruitfulness, for love without form or banks spreads thin and evaporates, whilst discipline gives it a riverbed and transforms it into a river capable of carrying ships. The Indian tradition of yoga calls this effort tapas, the inner heat generated by voluntary ascesis, which burns away the impurities of character as fire refines raw metal to liberate the gold. Sufism speaks of mujahada, the spiritual combat against the ego’s dispersing tendencies, which Ibn Arabi teaches is the ‘great jihad,’ far more demanding than any external battle, since it confronts the forces that resist within ourselves. In the tradition of the Desert Fathers, nepsis, sober watchfulness, that alert and tranquil attention that lets no distraction pass unrecognised, is the keystone of all authentic spiritual life. As for Taoism, which is sometimes mistakenly seen as a mere invitation to passivity, it in fact teaches wu wei not as the abandonment of all effort, but as right and economical action that does not oppose its force to that of things but joins it with precision, the supreme discipline of one who acts in perfect accord with the deep nature of reality. From all these paths emanates the same conviction: inner freedom is not received as a gift; it is built, patiently, through consented effort and benevolent rigour.

The inner temple

Having freed ourselves from our fears, which had tended to push us towards external models rather than daring to follow the call of our innermost being, we had found ourselves facing the difficulty of overcoming our inner burdens and the fear that it might be nearly impossible to move forward. But through the practice of intelligent and measured discipline, maintained with constancy, we shall gradually succeed in developing sufficient stability to no longer make our entire inner life dependent on the slightest unforeseen circumstance.

We then become capable of preserving within ourselves a deep space of serenity, one whose path we can find again without difficulty, from which we can observe the world and ourselves with benevolence and without judgement. We begin to catch a glimpse of what our spiritual sovereignty might be, of which this inner space is a kind of prefiguration.

It is in this secret hermitage that the spiritual energies circulate which can awaken our intuition; and it is in this inner temple that we can engage intelligently with humanity’s great sacred texts and find within them nourishment and guidance free from all dogmatism. It is from this still and tranquil place, that of genuine self-presence, that we can begin to think, feel, and act differently, and to express the very best of ourselves.

All the effort now consists in dwelling there as often as possible, even amid the surrounding agitation, so as to let wisdom and love grow within us.

A few guideposts for the path

These reflections on inner discipline are not meant to turn you into an unyielding ascetic, but to make you a more lucid craftsman of yourself. If the expansive love of the previous week is the sap that nourishes the tree, discipline is the form that allows it to grow straight and direct its growth towards the light. A ray of sunlight illuminates; a laser beam, concentrated at a single point, can pierce steel. Discipline is that beam. It does not punish: it orients, concentrates, and gives love its rightful measure and its full effectiveness in the real world.

As a complement, you may wish to reread the article Glossary: D for Discipline.

1. A few questions to let resonate

Sit in a moment of quiet. Let each of these questions descend gently, without seeking an immediate answer. What surfaces with a slight resistance is often the most precious.

On my relationship to discipline
Do I truly have discipline in my life, or do I often surrender to improvisation and distraction? Do I use my energies intelligently, concentrating them on what truly matters, or do I scatter them in all directions? Are there areas where I lack structure, and others where I am excessively rigid?

On the quality of my self-discipline
Is my discipline itself measured and respectful of my limits, or is it sometimes tyrannical, demanding the impossible and punishing imperfection? Do I regularly take a moment to take stock of my commitments and shortcomings, with clarity but without unnecessary harshness? Is my discipline driven by the desire to become, or by the fear of not being enough?

On discipline in my relationships
When I correct or criticise someone, a child, a loved one, a colleague, is it truly out of concern for them, or is there in my impulse a hint of concealed satisfaction or irritation? Does the way I set a boundary or make a remark leave the other person standing in their dignity, or does it diminish them?

On constancy and connection
Is my commitment to my inner practices regular, or does it only survive in good times? Do my demands on those I accompany help them to discover themselves and grow, or do they freeze them in fear? Does my discipline nourish in me and in others a growing sense of dignity and sovereignty?

2. A few practices for the week

Making a plan and observing it
Before beginning your day tomorrow, take ten minutes to write down three or four real priorities, not an endless list. At the end of the day, review them honestly: neither excessive satisfaction nor harshness, just the lucid eye of a craftsman on his work. Extend this practice over several days, gradually adding a longer-term horizon.

Before criticising, run it through the filter
Each time you feel a criticism rising towards someone, ask yourself one simple question before speaking: am I doing this out of love for this person, or to satisfy something within myself? If the honest answer is the second, wait for a more fitting moment. If it is the first, find the gentlest way to say it.

Repairing a past act of discipline
Think of someone you recently corrected, perhaps with too much harshness. Go to that person this week with a gesture of gentleness and recognition. Discipline is stronger when it also knows how to make amends.

Building a space of constancy
Choose one modest practice you wish to maintain regularly between now and the end of this journey: five minutes of silence in the morning, a few lines in a notebook, a mindful walk. Place it in your daily life not as an additional obligation, but as a space you offer yourself to return to yourself.

3. Celebrating this stage

At the end of these seven days, or the time you devote to this stage, take a moment to name one quality of discipline that you have strengthened or discovered within yourself this week. Not an achievement, but a small real movement: a priority held, a criticism held back at the right moment, a practice resumed after abandonment. Write it in a notebook, or say it out loud.

For discipline left unacknowledged withers like a plant without water. What we welcome with gratitude — even in its imperfection — takes root and grows. It is from these accumulated constancies that the solid ground of our inner sovereignty is built.

Next week, we shall explore how active compassion transforms discipline into radiance and love into concrete presence in the world.

May your journey be fruitful — to all of you.

© 2026 - Dialogues of the New World — Jérôme Nathanaël

Next article : Toward spiritual sovereingty | Step 3 - The radiance of Compassion

To go further

Have you encountered a practice, a discipline, an exercise, or an obstacle that has truly transformed you? Share your testimony in the comments — it will enrich every reader.

And if you wish to express yourself on a subject of spiritual awakening, send me a contribution of roughly one page for the Waymakers section. It will be published under your initials, a pseudonym, or anonymously, as you prefer. Other readers will be able to respond and dialogue with you.

New here? The Opening page introduces the author, the project, how to take part, contact details, and the agenda.

Article disponible en français
The Eternal Present · Spiritual awakening · 6 min
To explore the concrete paths of inner transformation.

Serie: Toward spiritual sovereingty | Step 1 - The abundance of Love
Previous article: Toward spiritual sovereignty - Introduction

Traversed by the Infinite

In my meditations and sometimes in my dreams, I feel what seems like an infinite Life, an eternal vitality, nourishing the universe in a constant movement of forces that balance and transform one another. And I myself, a tiny point lost somewhere in the immensity of this cosmos, am traversed and permeated by it. In this boundless Life, I breathe, I desire, I create, and I can grow. I can even, escaping the madness of men, learn to love and keep alive within me the hope of contributing to a more just world. And for that alone I give thanks, for being able, here and now, to be committed to this path of peace and beauty, and to walk it in fraternity with all those whose roads cross mine.

For this infinite Life, I always perceive it as an energy of Love that, behind appearances and the tumult of surfaces, patiently waits for us to become its hands, its voice, and its living word, to fullfill in the flesh of the world all the potentials for happiness, freedom, and splendor of which It has been, since the dawn of time, the promise tirelessly renewed at every dawn.

To become the conscious channel of this abundance of Love, to welcome it within oneself and radiate it outward, thereby participating in the slow and patient repair of the world, the tikkun olam, as the Hebrew sages say, this, to me, is the most sublime achievement to which a human being can aspire.

Presence to oneself, openness to the other

As we gradually awaken to this spiritual dimension, we discover that beyond the familial, social, and cultural determinisms that have shaped us, we can develop a quality of presence to ourselves that allows us to welcome our essential dimensions and thus understand ourselves more fully. By cultivating a mode of knowing that balances intuition and reason, we access to a psychospiritual understanding of ourselves that truly opens the path to our inner freedom — that path which will allow us at last to escape the shackles of our fears and our dependencies.

A more open state of consciousness then begins to transform how we see others: we cease to perceive human beings as separate and competing, and come to recognize them as co-responsible for their respective destinies, and as complementary in their differences. “Whoever saves one life saves the world entire,” both the Talmud and the Quran tell us. “Love your neighbor as yourself”, says Leviticus, “for he is you”, adds Rashi, the great medieval commentator. The living energy of Love that holds the universe together and makes spring bloom again is that same force which can, in the human dimension, nourish the most beautiful relationships, reconcile differences, enrich complementarities, and soothe conflicts.

If we open ourselves to this dynamic and consent to clearing within us the obstacles that lock us into our false identities and immediate self-interests, if we dare to let ourselves be traversed by this breath of the Infinite, we quickly discover how profoundly it can carry us toward an infinitely wider, more expansive way of breathing in our lives.

Am I in the abundance of love?

For authentic love, the kind that unfolds in spiritual life, is the most essential and most powerful dimension of all human existence. It is at once the origin and the foundation of every true relationship. Loving elevates us beyond ourselves: we escape the limits of our ego to genuinely welcome the life of the other, becoming aware that we can establish with them bonds of trust, complementarity, and mutual giving, and together build those spaces of sharing that make both of us grow.

Love allows us to apprehend the universe in its most sublime dimension: non-separation, the unity of the Living, Life with a capital L, in a word, it opens us to transcendence. But this breakthrough toward the Infinite plays out nonetheless in the most ordinary aspects of daily life, and depends entirely on our willingness to extend to the widest possible number this capacity to love that we all carry in the depths of our hearts. Let us ask ourselves plainly: am I in the abundance of love? Am I capable of loving others and giving freely, or do I love only those who are close to me and give back in return? Am I capable of reaching out to someone I don’t know?

In sincerely evaluating our capacity to love, we may discover that the desire to love is indeed alive within us, but that obstacles, accumulated disappointments, fears left unexamined, old wounds, limit its expression and narrow its radiance. If we consent to look at them lucidly and without judgment, to cross through them and move beyond, we will make a decisive discovery: the more our love grows, the more a deep sense of freedom, fullness, and peace settles within us.

Loving rightly

Love, like music, has several tonalities and several intensities. Depending on whether my capacity to love is directed toward my partner, my family, my friends, or my social connections, it will have neither the same face nor the same modes of expression. It will also vary according to the concrete possibility of expressing it toward any given person, something that depends both on the respective roles, the temperaments at play, and the singular history of each relationship.

But whatever its form, true love is first nourished by care for the other, without which it is nothing but self-love. It is fulfilled in our acceptance of loving the other as they are, without demanding that they become someone else, more aligned with our desires or expectations. Even if you perceive which choice or which change would allow the beloved to live more fully, never forget that the most beautiful love remains the one that shows without imposing, that inspires through example rather than pressuring through insistence.

Discipline your love: learn to sense what the other can receive, and hold to that limit with kindness. Do not read their behaviors or their words through your own lens, but genuinely put yourself in their place, welcome their way of being, different from your own, and become attentive to it. For by learning to measure your love according to the other’s capacity to receive it, you will discover that this discipline also protects you: it allows you not to lose yourself in the relationship and to live it in a balance that is both healthy and lasting.

If you develop toward those close to you this faculty of loving rightly, attentive to the other’s possibilities as much as to your own needs, respectful of their freedom to be themselves, it will naturally become easier to open yourself to strangers and to love them. Not with the love of a partner or a close friend, whose intensity and intimacy require time and shared history, but with that same quality of presence you have just cultivated: the care to understand, the readiness to give what the other can receive, the respect for their difference and their freedom.

The seed of Infinity we all share

Is it not already love, the kind whose Source surpasses us, to replace the habitual wariness that feeds all forms of violence with a willingness to experience the best with a stranger, according to the possibilities the encounter will offer? If we could, in all circumstances, transform our self-enclosure into a face radiating goodness and simplicity, and into that precious skill of exchanging a few generous or joyful words, we could then enrich one another by sharing, even for a brief moment, a little of our humanity, our dreams, or our sorrows.

For when we move beyond our ego, preoccupied with its own survival, to let speak within us what can connect us to the other, that seed of Infinity they too carry as a shared inheritance, something of a mysterious common vibration becomes possible between two beings who did not previously know each other.

Yet this capacity to love, more sentimental and intimate toward those close to us, yet generous and expansive enough to reach out to strangers in the hope of a genuine connection, can be thwarted at many turns by the vicissitudes of existence: moments of fatigue or weariness, setbacks and disappointments that come to dull our momentum.

Indeed, we cannot always be fully available to others. We live in cycles of expansion, contraction, and rest that affect every dimension of our being, and it is precisely by developing self-knowledge through conscious observation that we can gradually refine our way of being in relationship, aligning our availability with our actual state rather than with an ideal standard we cannot always sustain.

It is sometimes also legitimate to question whether it is even appropriate to express this love, when it runs up against relational difficulties with those close to us, or against the prejudices and rigidity of people we encounter. But if we manage to examine the situation without being trapped by our emotions, we will most often find that what is at issue is not the energy of love we carry, but the way in which we express it toward a particular person, ill-suited to what they can understand or receive in that moment.

The languages of love are as diverse as human beings are. If the other is waiting for a particular expression of affection or a particular form of welcome, because these correspond to what they practice naturally themselves, we find ourselves in misunderstanding and confusion, not for lack of love, but due to a lack of adjustment. In love as in chess, the quality of the relationship depends less on the force of our momentum than on our capacity to anticipate what the other can receive, and to adapt to it with flexibility.

Love is a work to be built

It is ultimately humility that makes the decisive difference, the kind that transforms love that waits and demands into love that understands and welcomes. In the face of the difficulties of human relationships which, even when carried by sincere feelings, run up against differences of temperament, outlook, and destiny, it is humility that frees us from rigidity and blockage, and opens within us the possibility of patience and constancy, those two qualities without which no lasting love can be built.

Humility strengthens the bonds between those who integrate it into their relationship and makes mutual forgiveness more accessible to them in moments of tension or disappointment. It allows the substitution of emotional outburst with the intelligence of the heart, that slow and attentive intelligence that takes the time to reflect before reacting, and to adapt to the other before asserting itself. For those who are humble have consented to see everything within themselves: their limits and their fragilities, their shortcomings as well as their qualities and their achievements, without flattering themselves for the former or condemning themselves for the latter. They strive therefore to act according to the best of themselves in daily life and to improve step by step. They have learned to love themselves as they are, a being on the way toward their spiritual fulfillment, neither perfect nor resigned.

This lucidity and this benevolent realism allow them to put themselves in the place of whoever stands before them. By stepping aside from their own personality, they can intuitively sense what is moving through the other and recognize in them their true alter ego. If they then persevere in love despite the obstacles, it is because they have understood that love is a work to be built , a shared work which, nourished by feeling but also shaped by time and skill, can attain, for those who devote themselves to it with constancy, the beauty and the fullness of a masterpiece.

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One face, a thousand names

In the constellation of humanity’s spiritual traditions, this primordial force of generous love has received different names according to languages and cultures, but its face is everywhere the same.

Hebrew Kabbalah names it Chesed, expansive love, the unconditional goodness that gives itself without calculation or measure, the first of the seven qualities of the soul that the spiritual seeker is called to cultivate at the heart of spring, as if nature itself were showing the way by making sap burst through the trees after the rigors of winter. The Sufis call it mahabba, that divine love of which Rumi says it is the hidden key to all existence, the living water that secretly traverses the most arid stones to make a spring surge forth at the most unexpected moment. Buddhism designates it as metta, the loving-kindness that knows neither borders nor conditions, which expands from the beloved to the stranger, then from the stranger to the adversary, until every living being is enveloped in the same radiance of benevolent attention. The Christian tradition names it agape, that gratuitous love of which John of the Cross says that “where there is no love, put love, and you will draw out love”, a formula that alone summarizes an entire life of practice. Confucianism recognizes in it ren, the humanistic benevolence at the foundation of every civilization worthy of the name, and Vedanta celebrates it under the name of prema, designating unconditional love as the very nature of the deep Self.

All these traditions converge on one conviction: love is not first a feeling that arises, but a capacity that one develops, a quality of presence that one cultivates day after day, until it becomes the permanent tonality of our way of being in the world.

A few guidelines for the journey

These few paragraphs are not meant to say everything about love, they are meant to reopen a door. For those who wish to linger a little longer, I offer below a few questions to meditate on and a few concrete gestures: to help us assess where we stand, with kindness and without judgment, and perhaps to make a first living move in the direction of this abundance of love we have just explored together.

As a complement, you may also want to revisit the article : Alphabet: H for Humility.

1. A few questions to let resonate

Take a quiet moment to sit with these questions, without trying to answer them too quickly. Let them resonate within you as you would let herbal tea steep, what surfaces spontaneously is often more revealing than what we seek to formulate.

On my capacity to love

What is my actual capacity to love others? Am I in the abundance of love or in a state of withholding? Do I give freely, or only when I’m sure of receiving something in return? Do I truly make room for the other in my life, or do I love from the comfortable distance of my own needs? Am I afraid to open up, to show vulnerability, to be hurt if I give too much?

On the way I express my love

Do I actually express what I feel, or do I hold it back out of fear of the other’s reaction? Do I speak the other’s love language, or only my own? Is my love adapted to what the other can receive, or do I sometimes overwhelm them to the point of flooding them? As Hasidic wisdom says: rain is a blessing because it falls in drops that do not flood the fields.

On the reach of my love

Do I love only those who resemble me or who give back to me? Am I capable of loving a stranger, of reaching out to someone I don’t know, without expecting recognition? Do I express my love only when it is comfortable, or also when it costs me something?

On the quality of my love

Is my love sufficiently disciplined, or do I sometimes become the support that someone takes advantage of, in the name of love? Do I truly respect the freedom and limits of those I love? Do I see them as they are, or as an extension of my own needs and projections? Does my love make me humble, or does it sometimes feed the pride as the giver?

On the constancy of my love

Does my love hold up through trials, through the highs and lows of existence? Am I prepared to fight to preserve a bond that matters? Does my love have endurance, or does it evaporate at the first disappointment?

2. A few gestures for the week

Helping according to the other’s needs

Identify a person in your circle who needs help right now. Offer your support not according to what you think would be useful to them, but according to what they tell you they need. If they don’t say, ask them. Then do it, even if it takes you outside your usual habits.

Reaching out to a stranger

Choose a moment during the week to spontaneously offer a gesture of love to a stranger, a warm word, a practical helping hand, a genuine smile. Observe what it produces in you, and in them.

Swallowing pride

Is there a person with whom you are on cold or tense terms, a close one, a friend, a colleague? Take the first step toward reconciliation, without waiting for the other to move. Not out of weakness, but out of nobility: those who truly love know that pride costs more than forgiveness.

Building together

Propose to someone you love to create something together, a project, a meal, a walk, a deep conversation. Love is not content merely to be felt: it is built, it is cultivated, it demands hands and time.

3. Celebrating this step

At the end of these seven days, or however long you devote to this step, take a moment to identify one concrete thing that your capacity to love has brought into your life, a strengthened bond, a reconciliation, an unexpected encounter, a shared joy. Write it in a notebook, or say it out loud. For love that is not recognized and celebrated risks going unnoticed, and what we celebrate, we invite to return.

And there it is, this first oasis on the journey. Next week, we will explore a second quality of the soul: how inner discipline, far from extinguishing love, gives it its true power.

Happy journeying to all.

© 2026 - Dialogues of the New World — Jérôme Nathanaël

Next article : Toward spiritual sovereingty | Step 2 - The effort of Discipline

To go further

Have you encountered a practice, a discipline, an exercise, or an obstacle that has truly transformed you? Share your testimony in the comments — it will enrich every reader.

And if you wish to express yourself on a subject of spiritual awakening, send me a contribution of roughly one page for the Waymakers section. It will be published under your initials, a pseudonym, or anonymously, as you prefer. Other readers will be able to respond and dialogue with you.

New here? The Opening page introduces the author, the project, how to take part, contact details, and the agenda.

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The Eternal Present · Spiritual awakening · 6 min
To explore the concrete paths of inner transformation.

Series: Toward spiritual sovereingty | Introduction

A demanding and luminous crossing toward authentic renewal

Spring offers us the chance to deeply experience the universal archetype of renewal. The Passover celebrations honor spiritual freedom and the victory of Life over the forces of death and confinement. In resonance with this twofold invitation, I propose a seven-week or seven-step journey dedicated to our inner and spiritual flourishing.

Together, we will chart the course of a demanding and luminous crossing, one that moves through progressive awakenings and patient work transforming our emotional life and our behaviors, toward an inner liberation sufficiently embodied to allow us to become truly ourselves in the truth of everyday life. This journey unfolds in seven stages, each to be claimed in one’s own way and at one’s own pace: yet we will have here a clear and concrete direction that allows us to move gradually from an intention of realization to its living enactment, not as an abstract promise, but as a transformation verified in the very flesh of existence.

This path begins first with a shift in perspective: learning to view the world and ourselves through the eyes of the soul, open enough to perceive the abundance of love-forces that nourish the universe and to become their conscious channel. We will then discover how a demanding yet benevolent inner discipline can transform this momentum into active compassion, calibrated to the constraints and harshness of ordinary existence. Then come patient constancy, lucid humility, and living gratitude, qualities less dazzling than love, yet equally decisive in the work of transformation, for they are what allows a sufficiently solid inner stability to take root within us , solid enough for that spiritual sovereignty to be built upon it, sovereignty that each of us senses as our highest calling, and that we will together dare to claim and embody.

The Exodus, the archetype of all liberation

This invitation to renewal takes on particular resonance when we recall that the festival of Pessa’h, which falls at the threshold of spring — the Hebrew Passover, of which the Christian Passover is the spiritual daughter — is not merely the memory of a political liberation. The Hebrew name for Egypt, Mitsraïm, derives from the root metsar, the narrow throat, the mountain pass, the stranglehold, and its dual suffix -ayim opens, in the spiritual and symbolic reading of this name, onto two simultaneous constrictings: the social and political enslavement that crushes bodies and strips beings of all dignity, and the spiritual stranglehold that imprisons consciousness within the limits of an identity reduced to survival, severed from its own depth. Yetsiat Mitsraïm, the Exodus from Egypt as told in the biblical text, is thus far more than a historical event: it can be read as the universal archetype of the twofold liberation that every human being is called to accomplish, first by defying the social conditions that crush them, then by breaking the inner chains that keep them enslaved to their fears, their automatisms, and their illusions about themselves.

For escaping one's inner Egypt, even through a decisive and courageous effort, is never more than the beginning of the journey. The newly liberated slave who desires to reclaim his deeper life soon finds himself crossing a vast and disorienting desert. And he is sometimes tempted to turn back toward the deceptive comfort of his illusions and his former confinements: at least he knew them, at least they belonged to him. Yet it is precisely in this desert, in this destabilizing void left behind by all true liberation, that the most decisive work begins: the work of patient interiority, of transformation quality by quality, until the day when, the traveler having reached the summit of his own secret mountain, Life speaks once again with clarity and directness.

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In Jerusalem as in Benares : the degrees of an inner temple

The Hebrew tradition has established a forty-nine-day count, the Sefirat HaOmer, beginning the day after Pessa’h and lasting for seven weeks, leading up to Shavuot, the festival commemorating the Giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. This counting is not a mere liturgical calendar: it is a symbolic illustration of that discipline of inner transformation which allows one to traverse the desert and reach its heights. It is organized around the seven great qualities of the soul, the midot, which Kabbalistic wisdom names the emotional sefirot, seven structuring forces of the human psyche: generous love (Chesed), creative rigor (Gevurah), harmonious compassion (Tiferet), victorious perseverance (Netzach), humility and gratitude (Hod), foundational stability (Yesod), and embodied sovereignty (Malkhut). Each week of the journey proposed here intuitively follows this movement, not as a pedagogical device, but because these seven dimensions are, at their core, the natural stages of any authentic inner transformation, in Jerusalem as in Benares, in Baghdad as in Kyoto.

It is indeed remarkable that most of the world’s great wisdom traditions have organized their path of spiritual transformation around comparable sequences, as if the human soul universally recognized this inner rhythm. Sufism unfolds the maqâmât, the stations of the heart on the road toward G-d; Tibetan Buddhism traces the path of the pāramitās, the perfections to be cultivated until awakening; the Vedanta tradition articulates its yamas and niyamas in a similar progression; and Christian mysticism, from the Desert Fathers to John of the Cross, has described the stages of the soul’s ascent toward divine union in closely parallel terms. All bear witness that inner freedom is not obtained all at once, but is conquered patiently, quality by quality, as one would climb the steps of an inner temple, each step revealing a wider horizon.

The caravan may now set out toward the first oasis !

© 2026 - Dialogues of the New World — Jérôme Nathanaël

Next article: Step 1 - The abundance of Love

To go further

Have you encountered a practice, a discipline, an exercise, or an obstacle that has truly transformed you? Share your testimony in the comments — it will enrich every reader.

And if you wish to express yourself on a subject of spiritual awakening, send me a contribution of roughly one page for the Waymakers section. It will be published under your initials, a pseudonym, or anonymously, as you prefer. Other readers will be able to respond and dialogue with you.

New here? The Opening page introduces the author, the project, how to take part, contact details, and the agenda.

Article disponible en français
The Eternal Present · Heritages · 27 min
To reread the traditions in order to understand what they have shaped and what they can still transmit.

Serie: The wound of Duality — and the Return. Article 3
← Previous article: The wound of Duality — and the Return (2/3)

This third and final article concludes a comparative journey begun in the two preceding installments.

The first article had drawn a map of the wound itself: how six major spiritual traditions — Kabbalistic Judaism, Christian mysticism, Islamic Sufism, Vedantic Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism — along with two twentieth-century voices, the Revelation of Arès and the Dialogues with the Angel, each name in their own way the fundamental separation of the human being from its Source, and what vision of the Absolute grounds, for each of them, the possibility of a return.

The second installment had followed these same traditions on the terrain of concrete paths: through what disciplines of the mind, what practices of the heart, what uses of the body, and what commitments in the world can the human being make of non-duality not a beautiful idea but a lived reality? It had shed light on a convergent anthropological sequence — mind, heart, body, action — that traditions independently discovered across several continents and several millennia.

This third installment now enters the territories the first two had left open: contemporary voices in all their singularity, the irreducible fractures between traditions, and finally the question this entire work had been silently asking from the start: what does the contemporary human being spiritually need, and what can be offered to them?

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IV. The paths of access: how does one cross the veil? (continued and conclusion)

5. Contemporary Voices: Dialogues with the Angel and Revelation of Arès

After this journey through millennial traditions, it would be tempting to look at the two contemporary voices carried in this article as mere confirmations or variations of what came before. That would be a misreading. They are indeed situated within this space of convergences — as shown at each cross-reference — but they bring elements that the millennial traditions did not formulate in quite this way: a non-duality embodied in historical urgency, rooted not in withdrawal from the world but in its radical transformation from within the self.

Mind: threshold-sentences, or the Word that works from within

The Dialogues with the Angel and the Revelation of Arès propose no systematic intellectual method comparable to the jñāna-mārga or to Mādhyamika prasaṅga. But they inherit this same foundational intuition: certain verbal formulations can work consciousness from the inside with an effectiveness that no explanation can replace.

Certain phrases from the Dialogues function in their own way as mahāvākyas: threshold formulas that are not grasped conceptually but which, when diligently meditated upon, cause consciousness to open onto something else. “You are my denser equal”: this affirmation addressed by the angel to the human being contains in condensed form an entire metaphysics of non-duality — the human and the angelic are not two species separated by an ontological hierarchy, but the same being, Life, in two degrees of density. Density is not inferiority: it is the necessary condition of manifestation in the world. “From Eternal Life, Temporal Life is born, and from Temporal Life, Eternal Life is born”: this formula resists all paraphrase — it does not describe a linear causal relationship but a living circularity that shatters ordinary time from within. “Be One within Yourself”: these four words from the Revelation of Arès contain the entire path — not unity with an external God, but the realization of a unity already present, buried beneath layers of inner division.

The Revelation of Arès develops an analogous demand through a different path. It insists, recurrently, on the necessity of emptying one’s mind of the vain sciences, this “reason” that claims to have an answer for everything — not to destroy intelligence, but to create the space in which other faculties can take over, where “the Breath” of Life can come and refresh spiritual intelligence. Aresian penitence — the turning of being, the fundamental change of direction — operates on the intellect precisely by clearing it of everything that makes it an obstacle rather than a bridge: ideologies, dogmas, human systems, all forms of institutionalized conceptual separation. What remains, once the clutter is dissolved, is not emptiness: it is Life, in its original clarity.

Synthetic convergence: this stripping away, one aspect of what the Revelation of Arès calls penitence, simultaneously joins Eckhart’s Abgeschiedenheit, Hasidic bittul, Mādhyamika śūnyatā, and the Taoist clearing of obstacles. All aim for the same free space — which each tradition names differently but which is recognizable by its quality: consciousness freed of its constructions does not find emptiness, it finds Life.

Heart: asking and giving, or the law of freedom

The Dialogues with the Angel belong to the family of the path of the heart through a fundamental structure running through all 88 conversations: the dynamic between asking and giving. The angel does not manifest unilaterally — it waits to be invoked. Asking — it is up to the human being to take the first step, to open the space, to create the crack in the armor of self-sufficiency or despair. The angel can only give if the human being asks. A gift without asking would be a violation of freedom, an imposition that would destroy precisely what it seeks to awaken. It is the asking itself — sincere, personal, often clumsy — that is already the beginning of the answer, because it signals the turning of being back toward its source.

The formulas from the Dialogues that belong to the path of the heart carry a different intensity from the intellectual threshold-sentences. “All love is a path toward the Light.” “Touch is the highest form of knowledge.” “Love is the only indestructible reality.” These formulas do not call for intellectual meditation: they call for resonance, for a recognition in body and heart of a truth the human being carries without having words to name it.

The Revelation of Arès names this same reality with an economy and a radicality reminiscent of the great formulas of contemplative traditions: “There is no faith but love, no law but the good.” This is not an ethical program — it is the description of a state of the transformed heart. Aresian prayer as Michel Potay describes and practices it is not a liturgy — it is a personal, free opening, addressed directly to Life without institutional intermediary, three times during the day and once at night (Rev. of Arès 12/5). This rhythm recalls the continuity of Sufi dhikr, the constancy of Hasidic devekut, the uninterrupted return of the nous to the heart in hesychasm. In all these traditions, frequency is not an external discipline: it makes possible the recognition that the heart, left to itself in the flow of ordinary life, tends to forget — and that remembering without cease is the path itself.

Noted divergence: what distinguishes the two contemporary voices from all the traditions we have traversed is perhaps that they propose no path withdrawn from the world. The angel of Budapest speaks to beings who live, love, create, suffer, and die in history — the Hungary of World War II. The Revelation of Arès speaks to beings who must change the world, not withdraw from it. This double anchoring — non-duality and total engagement in the world — is not formulated with such radicality in the millennial traditions, with the possible exception of Tikkun Olam and the bodhisattva vow. The contemporary voices make it their center, not their periphery.

Body: density affirmed and breath as prayer

The Dialogues with the Angel bring to the question of the body an affirmation that has no exact equivalent in any preceding tradition: “You are my denser equal.” The human being is not less than the angel: it is the same being in a state of greater density. Thus, this density is not a punishment, a fall, or an obstacle: it is the condition of a form of manifestation in the material world that the angel alone cannot accomplish. The dense human body is irreplaceable, not provisional. The angel needs the human hand to touch the world; the human being needs the angel’s eye to see what density conceals. This is an anthropology of complementarity, not of hierarchy.

The Revelation of Arès anchors the practice of self-transformation in precise and concrete acts: prayer as an opening to the given Word, penitence not as self-mortification but as change of behavior in daily life, the good accomplished as a concrete and embodied act. The body is the place where inner transformation must be verified — not its secondary instrument but its most reliable sign. A metanoia (Greek: deep change of intelligence, perspective, and direction of life), a teshuva (Hebrew: return to the source, return to God, return to the true self), that do not descend all the way into bodily acts — into the way one speaks, treats others, works — are not yet fulfilled: they are still only beautiful thoughts.

Conclusive convergence: this affirmation of the dense body as the irreplaceable site of divine manifestation joins, from an entirely different angle, Palamas’s defense of the purified body, Dōgen’s zazen as embodied awakening, and the body as royal road in Kashmir Shaivism. All these traditions — despite their radically different metaphysics — say the same thing on this precise point: the sacred is not despite the flesh, nor through the flesh as contingent instrument, nor beyond the flesh as future promise — it is in the flesh, available here, now, to whoever consents to be fully present within it.

Action: non-duality as a civilizational program

The two contemporary voices bring their most original and most urgent contribution at the level of action. None of the millennial traditions has formulated with such clarity the idea that non-duality is not only a possible individual realization but a collective vocation, a program of civilizational transformation intended for all — not for a monastic or academic elite. The Revelation of Arès formulates this program with striking economy: change the world by changing your life — not through political revolution, not through a social program, not through institutional conversion, but through the transformation of the very foundation of the human being, one person at a time, one act of good at a time, one spark lit one by one in the night of ordinary human consciousness.

The Dialogues with the Angel, for their part, raise the question of individual responsibility in building a new world from an expanded consciousness: “The new world can only be built of beauty” — not merely of justice or social efficiency, but of beauty, because beauty is the signature of the Living in matter, the proof that Life expresses itself freely within it.

Final convergence and line of horizon: these two contemporary voices do not conclude the journey we have just accomplished — they open it onto the future. They synthesize in contemporary, accessible language, without ritual prescriptions or dogmatic enclosures, what the millennial traditions had elaborated in their own idioms: non-duality is not a philosophical curiosity nor a mystical privilege. It is the natural vocation of the human being — what it is when it ceases to oppose its own nature. And in this recognition, all traditions converge, despite their irreducible fractures on which we will now dwell.

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V. The real fractures: four irresolvable lines

We have traversed six great families of spiritual traditions and two contemporary voices. We have woven between them a dense network of convergences. It would be tempting, at this point, to conclude that these traditions all say the same thing in different languages. That would be a misreading, and a form of intellectual laziness that would ill-serve each of them. The fractures that separate them are not misunderstandings to be dissolved: they reveal real disagreements about the very nature of the Real that they all seek to reach. Examining them honestly is an act of respect for their respective integrity — and a condition of any intellectually serious synthesis.

Four fundamental lines of fracture emerge. They do not fully overlap. Each one cuts differently through the landscape of traditions — and none resolves itself simply.

Fracture 1 — Self or dissolution?

The first fracture is perhaps the most deeply existential: what becomes of the person — the singular being, with their history, their relationships, their own consciousness — when they enter into union with the Absolute?

The pole of dissolution is represented, in its most radical formulations, by Shankara’s Advaita and by certain expressions of Sufism. For Shankara, the jīva, the individual soul, never had its own ontological existence: it was an appearance on the screen of Brahman, like a wave in the ocean. Liberation (moksha) is the recognition that this individuality was from the very beginning an illusory superimposition. There is no liberated jīva that continues to exist in union — only Brahman recognizing itself, without personal remainder or residue. Sufi fanāʾ, in its most radical formulations — precisely those that al-Junayd sought to temper — can drift in the same direction.

The pole of the restored person is represented with equal force by Teresa of Ávila — more herself than ever in the seventh dwelling — by Rāmānuja, for whom the love relationship between the soul and the divine is its own fulfillment and not a provisional stage, and by the Dialogues with the Angel: the angel and the human remain distinct throughout all 88 conversations, their communion does not dissolve the difference but deepens it until it transforms into partnership.

Between these two poles, intermediate formulations are numerous and subtle. Al-Junayd proposes baqāʾ — subsistence in God after extinction — where the person is restored, not annulled. Ruysbroeck formulates the soul as “flame in the fire” — united without merging. Palamas maintains the creator-creature distinction even in theosis — the human being becomes “god by grace” without ceasing to be human. Kashmir Shaivism affirms that pratyabhijñā does not dissolve the person but finally reveals it in its true nature: not an ego-centered construction to be destroyed, but a unique expression of universal Consciousness to be recognized.

The fracture is real and is not resolved by claiming that both poles aim at the same thing from different angles. Shankara’s Advaita and Teresa’s Christian mysticism do not say the same thing on this point: one affirms that the person was an illusion, the other that it is a permanently transformed reality. The question that faces us is not which of the two positions is true, but rather what kind of human being each position produces, and which of these beings is most apt to inhabit the world with justice, beauty, and responsibility.

Fracture 2 — Is the world real?

The second fracture cuts through the traditions differently from the first, but it is equally deep in its practical consequences.

At the pole of devaluation: Shankara’s Advaita is the clearest case — the phenomenal world is māyā, an illusory superimposition on the screen of Brahman. Original Buddhism is not far removed: saṃsāra designates the cycle of suffering, and liberation, nirvāṇa, is the extinction of the fires of greed, aversion, and ignorance, the end of conditioned rebirth. Even hesychasm, despite its profound dignity accorded to the purified body, retains a tension with the visible world: theoria is vision of the Uncreated Light, thus a passage beyond the simple sensory grasp of forms.

At the pole of valorization: Ibn Arabi is the most elaborate case — the world is tajallī, a precious and irreplaceable epiphany of Divine Being in which no form is accidental. Kashmir Shaivism affirms līlā — the spontaneous and delightful play of Divine Consciousness in matter. The Baal Shem Tov’s Hasidism teaches that every ordinary act is the site of a divine spark to be freed. Taoism celebrates the natural world as a direct manifestation of the Tao. And the Dialogues with the Angel formulate this valorization with unique density: “You are my denser equal” — matter is not a fall of consciousness, it is its irreplaceable form in manifestation.

The practical consequence of this fracture is considerable. Traditions that devalue matter tend to produce spiritualities of withdrawal. Those that affirm its value tend to produce spiritualities of engagement — in beauty, in creation, in the transformation of the world.

The Revelation of Arès takes a position on this point with exceptional clarity: change the world by changing your life — not withdraw from the world but transform it from within the self. This positioning brings it structurally closer to Tikkun Olam and the bodhisattva vow, and distances it from all spirituality of withdrawal. But this position exposes it to a fundamental objection that Shankara formulated with relentless rigor: if the phenomenal world is recognized as a possible site of authentic spiritual realization, how do we prevent this recognition from degenerating into adhesion to the world as it goes — to its seductions, its illusions, its compromises? Any spirituality of engagement must here walk a particularly difficult ridge: affirming that the world is the very place where good must be embodied, without ever forgetting that it is also the place where ego, forgetfulness, and falsehood perpetually reconstitute themselves. This tension between transformative presence in the world and vigilance toward its traps is one of the most difficult to sustain durably — and no tradition has resolved it once and for all.

Fracture 3 — Do you need a master?

The third fracture bears on the question: who is qualified to accompany spiritual realization, and under what conditions?

The traditions that answer with the absolute necessity of a qualified master are numerous and solid. Shankara’s Advaita requires the realized guru: direct transmission from consciousness to consciousness is irreplaceable. Zen insists on direct transmission outside the scriptures, from master to disciple. Sufism makes the sheikh the indispensable pivot of the path. Kashmir Shaivism reserves dīkṣā (initiation transmitted by an authorized master) to lineage masters. Hesychasm insists on the starets (the experienced spiritual elder) as a condition for safe hesychast practice.

The traditions that answer with the possibility of direct access are rarer but no less convincing. Rebbe Nahman’s hitbodedut is the most explicit formulation in Judaism: speak to God in your own language, without intermediary. The Revelation of Arès radicalizes this position to one of its most coherent expressions in modernity: Michel Potay’s teaching insists on absolute freedom of conscience — no human authority can interpose itself between the human being and its Source. The Dialogues with the Angel rest on the same structure: it is the angel that speaks directly, not an initiation system to be traversed.

This fracture has immediate practical consequences for anyone seeking a spiritual path in the contemporary world. Traditions that require a qualified master are coherent in their logic: without an external gaze, projections, illusions, and self-satisfactions can crystallize into solid and dangerous spiritual certainties. But they presuppose the existence and accessibility of an authentic master — which is, in the contemporary world, a rare and difficult-to-discern resource. Traditions that affirm direct access respond to a real urgency — the opening of the spiritual path to all. But they expose themselves to the inverse risk: the confusion between an ego that self-confirms in its preferences and a consciousness that is genuinely expanding. Lucidity about this risk is one of the most demanding forms of honesty in contemporary spiritual life.

Fracture 4 — Does history matter?

The fourth fracture bears on the question of the status of time and history in the spiritual vision of the world. It is perhaps the least obvious at first glance, but it is fundamental for understanding why spiritual traditions produce such different cultures and civilizations.

Traditions that inscribe realization in a logic of exit from time — nirvāṇa Buddhism, Shankaran Advaita, certain branches of Sufism — tend to view human history as a backdrop from which one must learn to free oneself, not as the theater of a fulfillment. Awakening is not in history — it is beyond it, or more precisely in the recognition that time itself is a construction of unawakened consciousness. This position has a rigorous internal coherence — and it produces, in its purest expressions, human figures of remarkable serenity and freedom.

Traditions that inscribe realization in a logic of transforming history — Kabbalistic Tikkun Olam, the Mahāyāna bodhisattva vow, and in a decisive way the Revelation of Arès — affirm that history is the very site where the fulfillment of the divine in matter is played out. Taoism occupies a singular position here: it belongs to this pole not through program or deliberate engagement in the world, but through a symmetrical conviction — that creative non-interference, when it is right, is the most effective form of action on the course of things. It thus situates itself at the boundary of both poles, testifying that the frontier between withdrawal and engagement is not always where one looks for it.

For traditions fully committed to this logic, history is not a backdrop to cross through — it is the stage of a real drama in which every human being is an irreplaceable actor. Time has a direction: not linear, not teleological in the Hegelian sense, but oriented by the possibility of a more just, more beautiful, more loving world. Every act of good counts — not only for the individual who performs it, but for the very texture of collective reality.

The Revelation of Arès is perhaps the path we have traversed that formulates this historical orientation with the greatest urgency and precision: the world can change because the human being can change. Not within a lifetime, not within a generation, not through revolution — but through the patient accumulation, generation after generation, of consciousnesses that have made the choice of active good. This vision is at once the most demanding and the most welcoming of contemporary spiritual positions: it does not promise paradise tomorrow, it affirms that every just act today is a real stone in an edifice built across the long arc of humanity.

Two secondary silences

Beyond these four major lines of fracture, two silences noted along the way deserve mention here as secondary fractures — no less real for being less systematized.

The silence on the body in Hasidic Kabbalah and in medieval Christian mysticism, and the silence on social action in classical Sufism and in medieval Christian mysticism, are not accidental omissions: they reveal unresolved internal tensions in these traditions, zones where the coherence of the spiritual vision has not yet produced all its practical consequences. Pointing to these silences is not a criticism — it is an invitation, addressed to these traditions themselves, to continue their own internal development where the path still has ground to cover.

The Sufi silence on collective transformation deserves particular attention here: it contrasts strikingly with the intensity of Ibn Arabi’s vision on the tajallī of the world, as if the fullness of the metaphysical vision had not yet found, in the classical corpus, its translation into a coherent social ethics. It is precisely on this point that Tikkun Olam and the bodhisattva vow bring what classical Sufism has not yet formalized.

These four fractures and two silences are not obstacles to dialogue between traditions — they are its conditions of depth. A dialogue that erases divergences to celebrate convergences is a courtesy, not a dialogue. Real dialogue begins where differences are named with precision, respected in their integrity, and interrogated for what they reveal about the complexity of the Real that each tradition seeks to inhabit.

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VI. What our time spiritually needs

We have traversed eight paths — six great millennial families and two voices that emerged at the heart of the twentieth century — seeking not to harmonize them by force nor to reduce them to a lowest common denominator, but to let them speak to each other in their convergences and confront each other in their fractures. This work was not erudite curiosity. It was an attempt to answer a question that did not arise with this acuity in preceding centuries, but which imposes itself on us with an urgency we can no longer defer: what does the contemporary human being spiritually need — and what can these paths, separately or together, offer them?

The diagnosis of our time

The contemporary human being lives in a paradoxical spiritual condition. On one side, they have unprecedented access in history to the totality of humanity’s spiritual heritages: the Upanishads are online, the Tao Te Ching can be read on the subway, the teachings of Tibetan Dzogchen are available in translation, Eckhart’s sermons can be downloaded for free. Never, in any previous civilization, has an ordinary human being had within reach such an accumulated wealth of human wisdom. On the other side, this unprecedented availability is accompanied by unprecedented superficiality in assimilation: one knows more traditions than any of our ancestors, but one lives them less deeply than any medieval monk. Access has been democratized; depth has become rare.

This paradox is not accidental. It is the symptom of a crisis deeper than simple secularized modernity — what the traditions themselves had diagnosed under different names: the wound of duality that is the subject of these three articles. The contemporary human being is perhaps separated from themselves, from others, and from their source in a specifically modern way — not because they would be less intelligent or less virtuous than their ancestors, but because the social, economic, technological, and ideological structures in which they live have systematically organized this separation as the ordinary mode of functioning. Analytical thought, the market, the digital, nationalism, consumerism, bureaucracy: all these systems function through cutting — they decompose, specialize, fragment, optimize each part separately. The overall vision, inner continuity, the sense of belonging to something greater than oneself — all of this has been progressively evacuated as non-measurable, non-profitable, non-operational.

It is in this context that the question of the spiritual vocation of our time takes its full weight. Not as a nostalgia for the epochs when religious traditions organized the whole of social life — those historical forms, with all they produced of real and precious, belong to a world that no longer exists in that form, and their shadows do not deserve to be idealized. But as a recognition that human beings cannot live for long, without serious damage, in the single horizontal dimension of existence, without interiority, without verticality, without contact with what precedes and transcends them.

What each tradition offers today

Each of the traditions we have traversed has something irreplaceable to offer the contemporary human being — not despite its cultural and historical specificities, but through them.

Kabbalah and Hasidism propose a cosmology of responsibility: every just act counts in the repair of the fabric of reality. In a world where the ordinary human being feels powerless before the magnitude of collective catastrophes, this vision is a powerful antidote to cynicism — it says that the individual scale is real and that nothing done with kavvanah, right intention, is ever lost.

Christian mysticism reveals a psychology of union that does not abolish the person, and in particular the conviction, carried by Teresa and Ruysbroeck, that the human being is more themselves in union with the Divine than in their separate autonomy. In an era where the dissolution of the self in digital flows and collective identities is a real danger, this affirmation of the transformed rather than dissolved person is precious.

Sufism expresses a science of the heart: a precise and rigorous practice of transforming deep emotions into instruments of spiritual knowledge. The dhikr is not an exotic practice reserved for Anatolian Sufis but a demonstration that conscious, oriented repetition can restructure consciousness at levels that willpower alone cannot reach.

Shankara’s Advaita brings the most radical philosophical dissolution of the illusion of separation available in the history of human thought. For the contemporary human being imprisoned in their narrative identity — their personal history, social status, ideological certainties — Shankara’s question “Who is the one who suffers?” is a surgery of consciousness of formidable effectiveness.

Kashmir Shaivism enables a joyful and guilt-free reconciliation with the sensory world — beauty, creativity, the body — whose forms secular modernity has reappropriated without retaining their substance. It says that beauty is not a luxury or a distraction: it is an epiphany of the Divine in matter, and the human being who creates or receives it consciously performs a real spiritual act.

Buddhism — Mādhyamaka, Zen, Dzogchen — deploys a psychology of liberation without an Absolute: a practicable path for the contemporary human being who can no longer believe in a personal God but who acutely feels the suffering of separation and the aspiration to a freer, lighter, more just consciousness. Sati, zazen, the recognition of rigpa — these practices require no prior metaphysical affirmation: they ask only for the disposition to sit, to look, to not flee from what is.

Taoism gives us a wisdom of non-resistance to the natural movement of things — a precious antidote to the generalized will to control that is one of the most destructive traits of technocratic modernity. It says that the best intervention is often the one that accompanies rather than imposes — a lesson that neither politics, nor medicine, nor education has yet integrated into their institutional practices.

But these traditions, taken in isolation in their inherited historical forms, cannot respond to the totality of what our era demands. They were born in social, linguistic, cosmological contexts that no longer exist. Their intact transmission in the contemporary world requires either a considerable effort of acculturation or a strong community of belonging — and in both cases, these conditions are the exception, not the rule. This is where the contemporary voices come in.

The specific contribution of the contemporary voices

The Dialogues with the Angel and the Revelation of Arès are not syntheses of the preceding traditions; they are not ruptures from them either. They are something rarer and more difficult to characterize: crystallization points, moments where human consciousness, brought into direct contact with something that surpasses it, can produce a new formulation that says something the existing traditions had not yet said with this clarity — or had not yet said for this era.

What the Dialogues with the Angel specifically contribute is an anthropology of partnered dignity. The human being is not the passive recipient of a descending grace, nor the laborious practitioner of an ascending path toward a distant summit: they are the partner of a Living being who needs them to manifest in the dense world. “You are my denser equal”: this affirmation is not a consoling flattery but a metaphysical statement about the very structure of reality. The human and the divine are not in a relationship of unilateral dependency; they are in a relationship of structural co-necessity. The angel cannot touch the world without the human hand. The human being cannot see their own depth without the angel’s gaze. This vision, which emerges in Hungary in 1943–1944, one of the darkest moments in human history, is an answer to a question the millennial traditions had not yet formed with this urgency: not how can the human being free themselves, but how can the human being and the Divine, together, traverse the night of history?

The Revelation of Arès proposes an ethics of collective transformation grounded in absolute individual freedom. No system, no institution, no dogma, no obligatory rite: only the conviction that every human being who changes from the very foundation of their being — and actively changes for the good — modifies collective reality in a way that surpasses what political or social strategies can produce. Change the world by changing your life: this program-formula is perhaps the most audacious and most coherent of all contemporary spiritual propositions, precisely because it offers no shortcut — no revolution, no reform, no forced collective conversion. Only the patient, discreet, irreducible work of a consciousness that transforms itself and, in doing so, liberates around it spaces of freedom and love that nothing else can produce.

Toward a spirituality of present time

What our comparative journey has rendered visible, and what we can now formulate with greater precision, is this: the spiritual vocation of our time is not a return to one of the traditions, nor a synthesis of all of them, nor their transcendence in a new religion. It is something more difficult and more demanding: learning to inhabit multiple levels of reality simultaneously — the particular and the universal, time and eternity, flesh and spirit, interiority and engagement, inherited tradition and living revelation — without reducing one to the other or sacrificing one for the other.

All the traditions we have traversed, in their convergences as in their fractures, share an affirmation about the nature of the human being: they are greater than they believe themselves to be. Greater than their personal history, greater than their fears and certainties, greater than the systems that organize them and the ideologies that name them. They carry within them — not as a potentiality to be developed but as a reality to be recognized — something that traditions call Brahman, rigpa, Uncreated Light, Tao, divine spark, Life. The names differ; the movement of recognition is the same.

This movement of recognition — the wound of duality beginning to close not through external will but through the slow, difficult, irreplaceable inner decision to see what is really there — is perhaps the only answer equal to what our era is traversing. Not because it would resolve the political, economic, or ecological crises by magic. But because it modifies the very quality of presence that the human being brings to face these crises, and it is this quality of presence, more than any strategy or program, that determines in the long run the direction that history takes.

“The new world can only be built of beauty,” say the Dialogues with the Angel. “Each free and loving soul liberates something in the world,” affirms the Revelation of Arès in other words. All the traditions we have traversed, from the depths of their irreducible differences, converge on this conviction: the transformation of the world begins where consciousness finally accepts seeing itself as it is — vast, free, luminous, responsible.

This beginning is always here, always now, always possible.

© 2026 - Dialogues of the New World — Jérôme Nathanaël

To go further

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The Eternal Present · Heritages · 56 min
To reread the traditions in order to understand what they have shaped and what they can still transmit.

Serie: The wound of Duality — and the Return. Article 2
← Previous article: The wound of Duality — and the Return (1/3)

The first part of this crossing had drawn a map: six major spiritual traditions, to which two voices that emerged at the heart of the twentieth century were added, each one naming in its own way the wound of dual separation and the return toward the deeper unity that precedes it.

But a map, however rigorous, does not cross any threshold on its own. It illuminates the landscape; it does not say, by itself, how to walk.

The decisive question now becomes more concrete: how does one actually cross the veil of duality? Through what disciplines of the mind, what practices of the heart, what uses of the body, what ways of inhabiting action and engaging with the world, can human beings make non-duality more than a metaphysical intuition or a beautiful contemplative idea — a lived, direct, continuous reality?

This second installment focuses on these pathways as they are deployed in the traditions already explored. The irreducible lines of fracture between them, the singular place of the contemporary voices, and the question of what these legacies can still say to our time will be taken up in the third and final article.

Let us now continue our exploration by entering the fourth part of this series.

IV. The pathways: how does one cross the veil?

After the mapping of visions comes the decisive question of the pathways. Spiritual traditions differ not only in what they say about Reality, but also in the practices, disciplines, and arts of living they offer to help human beings concretely cross the veil of separation.

These paths are neither arbitrary nor interchangeable. Each one responds, in its own way, to the question: how can non-duality become a lived reality?

The universal sequence: mind, heart, body, action

Before entering into the details of the pathways specific to each tradition, we must pause on something remarkable: the progression we are about to observe — from the transformation of the mind to that of the heart, from incarnation in the body to its radiance in action — is not a grid imported from outside to artificially organize resistant material. It is a sequence that the traditions themselves have articulated, each with its own priorities and emphases, as the natural order of spiritual maturation.

This is not a hierarchy of value among these dimensions of being, as if the body were worth less than the heart or action less than contemplation. It is a logic of genesis: one cannot act durably in a just manner without a gaze having first been converted; but a light that never descends all the way to gestures, breath, relationships, and works would itself remain unfinished.

Buddhism gives the most systematic formulation of this with the eight branches of the Noble Eightfold Path, which invariably begin with sammā diṭṭhi, right view. Not because this view is more precious than action, but because action without right view is blind — just as right view without right action remains barren: right view begets right intention, which begets right speech, which begets right action.

Advaita Vedānta in Shankara’s formulation describes an analogous progression with a different pedagogy: śravaṇa (hearing), receiving truth in the intelligence, precedes manana, working it in the intimacy of the thinking heart, which precedes nididhyāsana, contemplating it until it becomes incarnate in direct awareness. And the jīvanmukta, the living liberated being who crowns this journey, acts in the world not out of duty but by nature, as the sun illuminates without deliberating.

Lurianic Kabbalah articulates the same sequence through the three upper spheres of the Tree of Life: ḥokhmah, the flash of pure vision, non-dual intuition, descends into bīnah, understanding — the heart’s work of articulating and integrating — before reaching daʿat, direct knowledge, intimate union. This inner descent continues downward along the Tree, all the way to Malkut, the Kingdom — action in the world — where the Tiqqun Olam, the mending of creation’s fabric through every just act, is accomplished.

Hesychasm in Gregory Palamas’ rendering describes this movement in its own language: the noûs, the contemplative intellect — the summit of the human spirit — must first be purified and illumined by theoria, the vision of the Uncreated Light, before descending into the heart, where it finds its natural dwelling. It is from this heart, inhabited and stabilized, that the body can itself become a place of divine presence, as a subject of deification and not merely a vehicle — and that diakonia, service of the world, becomes an authentic expression of spiritual life.

Sufism names the same stages: maʿrifa, contemplative knowledge of the Divine, illumines maḥabba, the love that transforms the heart from its very foundations; this love takes flesh in the samāʿ and in bodily dhikr; and the being thus traversed becomes khalīfa, vice-regent of the Divine in the world — not out of ambition but because it has become transparent to That which seeks to manifest through it.

The Dialogues with the Angel unfold this same arc with arresting economy. The threshold phrases that work on the mind — “You are my denser equal,” “From Eternal Life, temporal Life is born” — precede the discovery of the law of the heart — “All love is a path toward the Light” — which becomes incarnate in the valorization of bodily density as an irreplaceable vocation, before radiating outward into creative calling: “The new world can only be built from beauty.”

The Revelation of Arès carries this same sequence to a prophetic and collective scale: the liberation of the mind from its systems — “Empty your head of vain sciences” — precedes the transformation of the heart through love alone — “There is no faith but love, no law but good” — which is expressed in the recovered dignity of the upright praying body, and finds its fulfillment only in repentance as a collective task: changing one person is changing the world.

What is striking about this convergence is that it is not superficial. It reflects a deep, shared spiritual anthropology that traditions have discovered independently across multiple continents and over millennia: the transformation of the human being follows a logic of propagation, from the inside outward, from the most subtle to the most dense, from vision to act.

One cannot reverse the order without betraying the movement: wanting to change the world without first having changed one’s gaze is like rearranging furniture in a house whose windows have not been opened. And contemplating the light without ever letting it pass through the body to reach the hands and the world means keeping a treasure locked away, suffocating from never being spent.

Let us now look, tradition by tradition, at how each of these paths takes on flesh — with its own methods, its particular insistences, its telling silences, and its unexpected convergences with the others.

1. The non-dualism of Being: the Abrahamic paths

The three great monotheistic traditions have each produced currents that pushed their monotheism to its most vertiginous consequence: if God is truly the One, if nothing exists outside Him, how can a human being still stand before Him without being, at bottom, in Him? In their mystical forms — kabbalistic Judaism, contemplative Christianity, and Islamic Sufism — they do not merely affirm the fundamental unity of Reality: they seek to let it traverse the intellect, the heart, the body, and action, until it ceases to be a doctrine and becomes the very fabric of Life.

A. Kabbalah and Hasidism

The mind: Hitbonenut, or the intellect that descends into the heart

In the Hasidic tradition, and more particularly in the Chabad movement elaborated by Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi (1745–1812) — the Alter Rebbe, founder of the Chabad-Lubavitch branch and author of the Tanya — hitbonenut (literally “inner contemplation,” from the root binah, understanding) designates a specific form of intellectual meditation that constitutes the pivot of the entire spiritual path. The process unfolds as follows: the practitioner chooses a concept from kabbalistic thought — the infinity of the Ein Sof, the omnipresence of the divine Presence, the deep identity of all things with their source — and subjects it to prolonged, intensive contemplation. He turns this concept over in all its aspects, exploring its implications, its nuances, its paradoxes, until it ceases to be an abstraction and begins to resonate in the totality of one’s being. Rabbi Schneur Zalman was accustomed to practicing hitbonenut for hours before beginning his prayer — not to accumulate additional knowledge, but so that intellectual truth might descend (yeridat ha-mohin) into the heart (lev) and transform his emotions into resonance with the Divine.

What radically distinguishes hitbonenut from simple intellectual study is its ultimate orientation. Study (limud) aims to understand. Hitbonenut aims at bittul — the nullification of the self, the dissolution of the perceived separation between oneself and the Ein Sof. The intellect is used not as an end, but as a bridge: it concentrates consciousness on divine truth until consciousness itself is transmuted, until the emotions (midot) — love, awe, joy — are ignited in the heart from this contemplated reality, and the separation between the thinker and the object of thought begins to dissolve into a state of non-dual presence. This movement — from hokhmah (the flash of pure vision) through binah (understanding) toward daʿat (direct knowledge, intimate union) — is the internal movement of the Tree of sefirot that hitbonenut seeks to reactivate in the practitioner’s consciousness. No longer as a map, but as a living itinerary.

Convergence: this movement of the intellect toward direct knowledge through prolonged contemplation — the intellect as a bridge that, once crossed, loses its own utility — will be found almost word for word in Shankara’s nididhyāsana, the third stage of the Vedantic path of knowledge. The underlying metaphysics are radically different: where hitbonenut aims at a living, loving union with a personal God, nididhyāsana aims at the realization of absolute identity with impersonal Brahman. Yet the pedagogical structure — the intellect concentrated until it transcends itself — is remarkably analogous.

The Heart: Devekut and Hitbodedut

The Baal Shem Tov (1698–1760), founder of the Hasidic movement in Podolia, accomplished within Judaism a revolution comparable to what Sufism had accomplished within Islam: shifting the center of gravity of religious practice from scrupulous observance of the Law toward a living, direct, and joyful relationship with the Divine. Devekut — literally “adhesion,” “attachment” — designates this state of continuous contact with the divine Presence that the Baal Shem Tov considered not the privilege of scholars but the vocation of every human being, accessible in the most ordinary acts of daily life. According to his teaching, there is not a single atom of reality that does not contain a divine spark — the nitzotzot of Lurianic Kabbalah. To cleave to God therefore does not mean turning away from the world, but learning to see through the world to its divine source, in every encounter, every gesture, every moment. In this perspective, joy (simhah) is not a secondary emotion but a central spiritual practice: it is the sign of living devekut, the fruit of the awareness of being carried by a loving Presence.

Hitbodedut, as taught by Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav (1772–1810), great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, constitutes the most personal and radically accessible expression of this path of the heart in Judaism. Where the Chabad lineage’s hitbonenut used intellectual contemplation of theological concepts, Rebbe Nachman’s hitbodedut is a free, spontaneous conversation — in each person’s native tongue, without pre-established formula, without liturgy, without intermediary. “Speak to God as you would speak to a sincere friend” — this is, in essence, Rebbe Nachman’s central teaching. He recommended practicing it daily, preferably alone in a secluded space (where every tree, he said, carries its own prayer up toward heaven), and addressing God in one’s own name, with one’s most naked suffering, most persistent questions, most simple joys.

What gives this practice its depth is precisely what makes it difficult for modern people: there is no method to follow. When one no longer knows what to say, one says that one no longer knows what to say. The truest sincerity itself becomes the highest form of devotion, because it shatters the illusion of the social mask we wear even in our relationship with the Divine.

Convergence: this formula-free, personal prayer, addressed directly to the Divine without institutional mediation or prescribed liturgy, resonates with two practices we will encounter further on: the ask/give structure of the Dialogues with the Angel — where the sincere, often clumsy request is already the beginning of the answer — and the Arèsian prayer as described by Michel Potay, addressed directly to Life three times during the day, once at night, without intermediary. Three traditions, three contexts, one shared conviction: the direct relationship between the human and the Divine is not reserved for an elite — it is the vocation of every human being who consents to present themselves there without a mask.

The body: a real presence, but poorly theorized

Kabbalah and Hasidism have not developed a distinctly formulated path of the body comparable to Zen zazen, tantric prāṇāyāma, or the Jesus Prayer in hesychasm. Yet the body is not absent: it is present in the swaying of prayer (shuklen), in dance, in sung fervor, in the physical joy of the festivals, and in a way of concretely inhabiting the relationship to the Divine in daily life.

But this presence most often remains practical, symbolic, and liturgical, rather than conceived as an autonomous spiritual path with its own pedagogy. This is not a pure absence, but a form of theoretical reserve — reflecting a broader tension within the Abrahamic traditions: on one hand, the world is a place of sanctification, human gestures can participate in Tiqqun, and the body can take part in prayer; on the other, a persistent wariness remains toward the flesh as a possible source of distraction, opacity, or dispersal.

This point deserves careful note, as it is not a secondary detail. It already anticipates one of the questions we will encounter further on: do all traditions grant the body the same spiritual dignity, or do some assign it only a supporting role where others make it a royal path of transformation?

Action: Tiqqun Olam, or repair as cosmic vocation

The doctrine of Tiqqun Olam — the mending of the world — constitutes Lurianic Kabbalah’s most original and ambitious contribution to universal spiritual ethics. For Isaac Luria (1534–1572), creation itself began with a cosmic catastrophe: the Tsimtsum (the contraction of the Infinite to create the space of manifestation), followed by the Shevirat Ha-Kelim (the shattering of the Vessels designed to contain divine Light), scattering myriads of divine sparks — the nitzotzot — into the depths of matter, covered by kelipot, the husks of opacity. The world as it is is not simply imperfect — it is fractured at the level of being itself — and the human being’s task is to free these sparks through every just act performed with kavvanah (conscious intention), every prayer carried to its depth, every gesture of love and truth. The mending of the world is therefore not an optional social improvement: it is the continuation of the creative act itself, the cooperation of the human being with God to rebuild the shattered unity of Being.

Convergence: this refusal to withdraw from the world as long as the last spark has not been freed — this vow to remain engaged until the accomplishment of total repair — is structurally analogous to the bodhisattva vow in Mahāyāna Buddhism: to remain in the cycle of existences until the last sentient being has been liberated. Two traditions separated by continents and centuries pose the same demand: inner realization is incomplete as long as it has not been translated into responsibility toward all. We will return to this in the Buddhist paths.

B. Christian Mysticism

The mind: Abgeschiedenheit and Theoria

The great Rhenish mysticism of the 13th–14th centuries — Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, Heinrich Suso, Ruusbroec — developed, from the Neoplatonic heritage and apophatic theology, a doctrine of the Grunt (the “ground of the soul”) that constitutes one of the most audacious non-dual formulations in Christianity. For Eckhart, the Grunt der Sele is not one region of the soul among others: it is the point where the soul and God share one single ground — Augustine’s abditus mentis. This is not a union acquired by spiritual effort — it is already there, primordial, permanent, but veiled by the agitation of discursive consciousness and the “images” (Bilder) that invade the mind until they hide the living God. Eckhart’s entire spiritual path aims at a single act: Abgeschiedenheit — detachment, stripping away — not first of exterior things, but of interior representations, the ego’s projections, even the images of God that clutter the soul to the point of hiding the living God from it. “The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me: my eye and the eye of God are one single eye.” This formula, which the Inquisition deemed heretical, is nonetheless the most precise description of what all traditions call the non-dual heart: not the meeting of two gazes, but the discovery that vision was one from the very beginning.

Convergence: this dissolution of images through Neoplatonic apophatic method will find an unexpected echo in Nāgārjuna’s method — though these two apophaticisms do not aim at the same horizon. Where Eckhart deconstructs to make room for an ineffable Presence that remains, Nāgārjuna deconstructs all the way to the end, without any positive residual ground. We will specify this divergence in the lines of fracture.

Hesychasm — from the Greek hēsychia, “inner silence,” “stillness” — is the great contemplative tradition of Eastern Christianity, of which Gregory Palamas (1296–1359), monk of Mount Athos and later Archbishop of Thessaloniki, is the most fully elaborated theologian. His path of the mind bears a precise name: theoria — a state of direct knowledge of God that the hesychast tradition considers accessible to the purified human being, not as an extraordinary experience reserved for a few, but as the natural goal of human life. Palamas’ spiritual psychology distinguishes two states of the noûs, the luminous center of human consciousness: dispersed outward, fragmented by sensory representations and the logismoï (thought-passions) that ceaselessly invade it; and restored to its natural state — gathered, concentrated in itself — capable of nepsis (sober watchfulness), of pure attention, free from images and discursive thoughts, and finally of accessing theoria, the vision of the Uncreated Light. Here, the intellect is not destroyed but transfigured: the noûs is restored, not annulled, in its vocation of contemplative knowledge of divine Reality.

Internal Divergence: where Eckhart dissolves all images of God through the apophatic path — all the way to the nameless Grunt, prior to any relation — Palamas carefully distinguishes the absolutely transcendent divine essence from the uncreated divine energies through which God genuinely communicates Himself to man. These are two non-dual Christianities that are not easily reconciled: in Eckhart, the Creator-creature distinction tends to dissolve in the common Grunt; in Palamas, it is maintained, but overcome through participation. This tension between dissolution and participation runs through all of Christian mysticism and foreshadows one of the major lines of fracture.

The heart: Thérèse and Ruusbroec, or the union that does not abolish

Saint Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582), in The Interior Castle, maps the human heart as a dwelling of seven concentric mansions, at the center of which God permanently resides — not as an outside guest, but as the flame at the heart of a candelabra, whose light illumines all the mansions.

What is striking is that this progression is described not as a mystical performance but as a love relationship that deepens: access to each mansion is not an achievement, but a deepening of trust, surrender, and love. The seventh mansion, the transforming union, is not the disappearance of the person but her full realization in relationship with the Divine: Teresa says she is, in that state, more herself than ever.

Ruusbroec, in the same vein, formulates this union through the image of the soul “as a flame in the fire”: inseparable but not merged, united but not dissolved. Union is not annihilation — it is an intensification of the person in relationship with God.

Divergence: this union that does not abolish the person stands in direct contrast with the Sufi fanāʾ in its most radical formulations, where the extinction of the individual self is the explicit horizon of the path. This is not a quarrel over words: it reveals a deep metaphysical divergence on the question of what becomes of the person in union with the Absolute — one of the major lines of fracture we will examine in the next section.

The body: the Jesus Prayer and the defense of the purified body

Hesychasm developed, within Eastern Christian tradition, a doctrine of the body in spiritual practice that constitutes one of its most original contributions to universal spiritual anthropology. Gregory Palamas defends, against the attacks of the Calabrian monk Barlaam, that the purified body can participate in deification — not as a spectator or passive instrument, but as a subject of transfiguration. The Light of Tabor, says Palamas, is not perceived by the physical eyes alone, nor by the intellect alone: it is perceived by the entire being, body included, when that body has been purified through years of practice.

The hesychast method involves a precise coordination between the Jesus Prayer — “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner” — and the cardiac breath: inhalation accompanies the first part, exhalation the second. Transmitted from spiritual father to spiritual father in the monasteries of Mount Athos, this discipline aims to make the entire body — muscles, breath, posture, heart rhythm — a single instrument of presence to the divine Light. When the practice deepens, the prayer begins to recite itself on its own, from a level of being deeper than conscious will: the body itself prays, and not merely the mind.

Convergence: this fine coordination between breath and prayer that hesychasm elaborates finds a direct echo in the tantric prāṇāyāma of Kashmir Shaivism — where breath connects the physical body and the subtle bodies — and in the Mevlevi Sufi samāʿ, where the rotation of the body becomes the instrument of the ego’s extinction. Three traditions, three bodily paths, one shared intuition: breath and bodily movement are not insignificant adjuncts to spiritual life — they are among its most direct levers.

Action: an Intense interiority, but a poorly articulated social ethics

Medieval Christian mysticism — whether Rhenish or hesychast — did not develop an explicit theology of action in the world comparable to the kabbalistic Tiqqun Olam or the bodhisattva vow. This does not mean that just action is foreign to it: caritas, the service of the poor, care for the sick and excluded, remain at the heart of the Christian ethos — and many mystical figures lived a remarkably concrete heroic charity.

But this active dimension most often appears as an implicit consequence of inner union, rather than as a dimension reflected upon in itself, with its own language and an overall vision of the world’s transformation. The contemplative tradition seems to maintain an unresolved tension between withdrawal into interiority — where everything unfolds, at the level of the Grunt or theoria — and the inscription of this union in structures of justice, peace, or a reorganization of the social fabric.

This is not an accidental lacuna, but a historical and spiritual choice whose weight must be assessed. Placed alongside the total engagement proposed by Lurianic Kabbalah with the Tiqqun Olam, or — in modernity — the Revelation of Arès with its call to “change oneself for the good, to change the world,” this relative withdrawal of Christian mysticism on the question of collective action outlines one of the major gaps we will encounter in the lines of fracture: between spiritualities of interiority first, and spiritualities that make the transformation of history a constitutive element of the path.

C. Sufism

The mind: maʿrifa, or seeing through the world to its source

Sufism is not primarily a doctrine but a path of consciousness transformation, whose intellectual cornerstone is maʿrifa — direct, immediate, non-discursive knowledge of the Divine — which is not the fruit of theological study but of a purification of the inner gaze. Ibn Arabi (1165–1240), in his doctrine of Waḥdat al-Wujūd (the Unity of Being), provided the most systematic metaphysical framework: there exists only one real Being — that of Allah — and all of creation is nothing but His self-manifestation (tajallī), the epiphany of His Names and Attributes through the infinity of their combinations. Every existent is a mirror in which a divine Name is reflected, a face through which the Divine contemplates Itself from a particular angle. Maʿrifa consists in seeing through each thing to the divine Name that grounds it — not abstracting the Divine from the world, but recognizing the Divine in each detail of the world, like light in each fragment of a prism.

Divergence: this vision of the world as tajallī — a precious and irreplaceable epiphany of divine Being — directly contrasts with Shankara’s māyā, where the phenomenal world is an illusory superimposition onto the screen of the only real Brahman. One of the sharpest fractures between non-dual traditions: where Shankara says dissolve, Ibn Arabi says celebrate. Their metaphysics lead to radically different practical attitudes toward the world, which we will examine in detail in the lines of fracture.

The heart: dhikr, or the three levels of remembrance

The central practice of Sufism is dhikr — literally “remembrance,” “recollection” — the rhythmic, intensive repetition of the divine Names until consciousness is saturated by the invoked Presence, to the point where the distance between the invoker and the Invoked begins to dissolve. The Quranic foundation is explicit: “Prayer keeps away indecency, but the remembrance of God is greater” (Quran 29:45). Ibn Arabi distinguishes three successive levels in the practice of dhikr. The first — dhikr al-lisān, the remembrance of the tongue — is the vocal repetition of the Name, accompanied by rhythm, breath, and bodily swaying: the entry into practice, where the physical repetition of the Name begins to imprint a reorientation of attention in the body. The second — dhikr al-qalb, the remembrance of the heart — is the state where the heart itself begins to invoke, independently of conscious will, as naturally as breathing. The third — dhikr as-sirr, the remembrance of the secret — is total transparency: it is no longer the human being who performs the dhikr, it is God who remembers Himself in the space the practitioner has become.

The fanāʾ — extinction — sought through this progression, is not an annihilation of the person but its transparency: al-Junayd of Baghdad (830–910), master of “sober” Sufism known for his silent dhikr, clarifies that the extinction of the self is always accompanied by a baqāʾ — a “subsistence in God” — where the person is restored, not annulled. Sufi love, as Rumi sings it in the Mathnawī, is therefore less a dissolution than a transfiguration: the reed cut from its original bed weeps — not in despair, but because the very separation is the condition of music. The lament of the ney is simultaneously the pain of separation and proof of the aspiration for return.

Convergence: the third level of dhikr — that level where “it is no longer the human being who invokes; it is God who remembers Himself” — joins what Shankara calls sākṣātkāra : the instant in which the knower, the known, and the act of knowing coincide in a recognition without remainder. Two traditions, two idioms, two profoundly different metaphysics — one single movement: the dissolution of the subject-object duality in knowledge itself.

The body: the mevlevi samāʿ, or the pivot between heaven and earth

Jalāl ad-Dīn Rumi (1207–1273), Persian mystical poet and founder of the Mevlevi order, made the dance of rotation one of the most sublime expressions of the path of the body in Sufism. The samāʿ — literally “listening” — designates the musical and dance ceremony that forms the heart of Mevlevi practice. The symbolic structure of the rotation is of remarkable cosmological precision: the semāzen turns counterclockwise, right arm raised toward heaven, palm open in a position to receive, and left arm lowered toward the earth, palm facing downward in a position to transmit. He is the pivot between heaven and earth, the channel of divine Presence toward creation. The rotation gradually accelerates until a state is reached where the ego, unable to maintain its narrative coherence at that speed, lets go — and it is in this freed space that fanāʾ opens. The semāzen does not fall: he is carried by something that is no longer him but belongs to him more deeply than he himself does.

Convergence: this body as a pivot between heaven and earth in Mevlevi rotation resonates with a central intuition of the Dialogues with the Angel: “You are my denser equal.” In both cases, matter is not an obstacle to be overcome, but the irreplaceable place of manifestation and mediation: the angel needs human density to manifest in the world; the Divine needs the semāzen‘s body to dance in creation.

Action: a spiritual chivalry, but little thought given to collective transformation

Like Christian mysticism in this respect, classical Sufism did not develop a detailed theology of action in the world comparable to the kabbalistic Tiqqun Olam or the Buddhist bodhisattva vow. This does not mean that ethics are foreign to it: futuwwa (spiritual chivalry), unreserved hospitality, service of the master and the companions, care for the poor and wanderers — these are constant dimensions of Sufi brotherhoods, and many Sufi figures exercised real social influence in their contexts.

But this action remains above all the natural radiance of a transformed heart, rather than an explicit project of reshaping collective structures. The Sufi thinks of himself primarily as a traveler toward God within the world, more than as a conscious agent of a history to be redirected; the priority is the transparency of the soul, not the reconfiguration of the social fabric as such.

Placed alongside Lurianic Kabbalah or the prophetic modernity of the Revelation of Arès, this restraint draws a distinctive tonality: the world is received as a place of tajallī — epiphany of Being — more than as a worksite to transform. This is one of the major gaps we will encounter in the lines of fracture: between traditions for whom spiritual fulfillment necessarily involves explicit responsibility toward history, and others for whom transformation unfolds first in the quality of presence — leaving to God the care of the world’s overall architecture.

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2. The non-dualism of Identity: the Hindu paths

If the Abrahamic traditions elaborate their non-dualism within a fundamental relationship between the human being and a God who stands before them — even in the most radical formulations of Sufism or Kabbalah — Hinduism enacts a break in register: non-duality is no longer the endpoint of a relationship; it is the very structure of reality. The human being does not rejoin Brahman — he discovers that he has never ceased to be Brahman. But Hinduism is not a monolithic tradition, and this non-dualism of identity unfolds there in two deep, contrasting tonalities: Shankara’s Advaita — austere and resolute — and Abhinavagupta’s Kashmir Shaivism — luminous and celebratory. These two voices respond to and contradict each other from within the same civilization; their tension is one of the most fertile in the entire spiritual history of humanity.

A. Shankara’s Advaita Vedānta

The mind: Jñāna-Mārga, or the intellect that devours itself to the Light

Shankara (788–820 CE) defines jñāna-mārga — the path of knowledge — as the royal road to moksha, liberation. If suffering arises from metaphysical ignorance (avidyā) — the misrecognition of one’s own nature — only direct knowledge can dissolve it at the root. Right action (karma-yoga), which purifies, and devotion (bhakti), which opens the heart, prepare the ground but do not by themselves uproot the illusion of separation.

Shankara’s pedagogy unfolds in three stages. The first, śravaṇa — “hearing” — designates the reception of truth revealed by the Upanishads and the qualified teacher: not passive listening but total attention oriented toward this single inquiry: what is Brahman, what is Ātman, and in what way are they identical? The second stage, manana — “reflecting, ruminating” — is the work of the intellect that turns this truth over in every direction, examining its implications, untying objections, eliminating misunderstandings, until it becomes a stable inner conviction. The third stage, nididhyāsana — “contemplating until deep integration” — is the uninterrupted contemplation of this truth until its incarnation in direct, immediate, non-conceptual awareness. This passage from concept to experience — this tipping from “I know Brahman,” which dissolves into “Brahman knows Itself in me” — is what the tradition calls sākṣātkāra, direct vision.

The Mahāvākyas — “Great Utterances” from the Upanishads, such as Aham Brahmāsmi (”I am Brahman”) or Tat tvam asi (”You are That”) — play here the role of tools of transformation more than doctrinal propositions. They must be actively meditated upon, confronted with every daily experience until the ego’s resistance crumbles and the subject-object duality in knowledge itself collapses. It is precisely this threshold-crossing that the entire jñāna-mārga aims at.

Convergence: Shankara’s three-stage structure presents a striking analogy with Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s hitbonenut: in both cases, the intellect is used as a bridge toward direct knowledge that surpasses it — not as a permanent dwelling. This rapprochement does not erase the deep divergence on the nature of the Absolute: it makes it more precise, and more instructive.

The heart: Shankara’s silence and Rāmānuja’s response

In Shankara’s pure Advaita, the path of the heart does not occupy a central place. Bhakti — loving devotion — is recognized as a valuable preparatory path, capable of purifying the emotions and orienting consciousness toward the Divine, but it remains structured by the duality of the devotee and the devoted-to — and therefore cannot, in this logic, accomplish the ultimate dissolution of separation.

It is precisely on this point that Rāmānuja (1017–1137), philosopher of Viśiṣṭādvaita (”qualified non-dualism”), opposes Shankara. For Rāmānuja, the love relationship between the soul and God is not a provisional stage destined to dissolve into a subjectless knowledge — it is ultimate reality itself, its crowning and its fullness. Devotion to Vishnu, total surrender (prapatti) to divine grace, are not crutches to be thrown away once knowledge is acquired: they are the highest form of spiritual life. The burning love poems of the Tamil Alvārs stand as living demonstration: the heart can reach directly what the long intellectual road seeks by other paths.

Divergence: a deep fracture between Shankara and Rāmānuja — absorption into the Absolute vs. accomplished relation with the Absolute — which we will encounter again in Section V under the question of the person’s destiny in union.

The body: silence and its reasons

Shankara’s Advaita does not develop its own path of the body. This silence is consistent with his metaphysics: if the phenomenal world is māyā — an illusory superimposition onto the screen of the only real Brahman — then the body belongs entirely to this relative order. The jīvanmukta, the living liberated being, continues to inhabit a body, but knows that this body is no more real than an image in a mirror; to make it an instrument of liberation would, in Shankara’s logic, amount to confusing ontological levels.

Divergence: this silence on the body will be one of the sharpest points of contrast with Kashmir Shaivism, which follows by a century and a half in the same civilization — and for which the body becomes instead a royal road of realization.

Action: structural tension and its modern resolutions

If the world is māyā, why engage in the mending of the world? Shankara responds through the distinction between two levels of truth: at the conventional level (vyāvahārika), ethical actions remain necessary and fully valid — the law of causality, the suffering of others, the obligation of just action are not denied; at the ultimate level (pāramārthika), only the knowledge of Brahman is liberating. The response is philosophically rigorous, but it leaves ethics in the order of the provisional, as if it were not rooted in the Absolute itself.

Vivekananda (1863–1902) and Gandhi (1869–1948) then made a decisive reinterpretation to extract from Advaita a robust foundation for action in the world. Vivekananda formulated a “Practical Vedanta”: if Brahman is the reality of every human being, serving the human being in distress is serving Brahman. Gandhi extended this logic in satyāgraha — resistance through truth: if the other is Brahman and so am I, any violence against them turns back against me; non-violence (ahiṃsā) becomes a metaphysical deduction from non-duality, not a mere moral ideal.

Convergence: where Mahāyāna Buddhism had from the outset articulated non-duality and compassion with the bodhisattva ideal, Hinduism had to rework Advaita from within to express its ethical consequences. The Revelation of Arès and the Dialogues with the Angel will formulate it differently still: their non-dualism is immediately ethical, because the unity of the Living is there the first word — not the last.

B. Abhinavagupta’s Kashmir Shaivism

A century and a half after Shankara, in the tenth-century Kashmir of Abhinavagupta (c. 950–1016), a non-dualism of an entirely different tonality takes shape. Where Shankara is austere, Abhinavagupta celebrates; where Shankara devalues the world as māyā to be dissolved, Abhinavagupta declares it līlā — spontaneous play — and spanda — the living pulse of Shiva’s divine Consciousness. Nothing is excluded from divine reality: passion, suffering, sensory beauty, the diversity of forms — all of it is vibration of the one Consciousness that plays at hiding itself in multiplicity for the joy of finding itself again.

The mind: Pratyabhijñā, recognizing what was never lost

The path of the mind in Kashmir Shaivism bears a revealing name: pratyabhijñā, “re-cognition.” It is not about reaching a new reality or dissolving an illusion through prolonged effort, but about recognizing what has always been there — what only the contraction of consciousness upon itself (aṇava mala) prevented us from seeing. Liberation is not an acquisition: it is a return to oneself, to what one is at one’s most primordial depth.

The philosophy elaborated by Utpaladeva and systematized by Abhinavagupta in the Tantrāloka and the Īśvarapratyabhijñā-kārikā affirms that Shiva’s Consciousness — free and joyful — is the very substance of every human being, not as a potential to develop, but as the actual and permanent reality of every instant of consciousness. Ignorance is not primarily a cognitive error to correct through the intellect — it is an existential contraction to release.

Convergence: this logic of recognition rather than acquisition connects directly to Tibetan Buddhist Dzogchen: in both traditions, awakening is the primordial nature of the mind, not a state to be reached. And it resonates, even more surprisingly, with Huangbo’s formula in Chan — Chinese Zen: “The only mistake is seeking.” Three traditions separated geographically and culturally, one shared fundamental intuition: what we are seeking, we already have — and it is precisely this frantic searching that obscures it.

The heart: līlā, or the joy of being in lhis world

Kashmir Shaivism proposes a movement inverse to Shankara’s: not a break with the world, but a joyful reconciliation with it as an expression of līlā — the spontaneous play of divine Consciousness. The world is no longer a screen to cross or a problem to solve; it is the stage where Consciousness plays at losing and finding itself. Every form — beautiful or painful, sublime or trivial — is a mask of Shiva, and joy (ānanda) is not an emotion among others: it is the fundamental tonality of the Absolute.

Convergences: this joyful celebration of the world as the play of divine Consciousness stands closer to the Baal Shem Tov’s Hasidism — which teaches that joy is a central spiritual practice — and to Ibn Arabi, for whom the world is a precious and irreplaceable tajallī, than to Shankara. It also resonates with the creative vocation expressed in the Dialogues with the Angel: “The new world can only be built from beauty.” In all three cases, matter and sensory beauty are affirmed as authentic expressions of divine reality, not as its poor relations.

The body: Prāṇāyāma and Kuṇḍalinī, or the body as the royal path

It is perhaps on the question of the body that Kashmir Shaivism most clearly departs from Advaita and delivers its most original intuition. Prāṇāyāma — mastery of the breath — rests here on a principle drawn from pratyabhijñā: this recognition of our deep nature as divine consciousness. If we are already this consciousness, prāṇa is no longer merely biological breath — it is the bridge between the physical body and the subtle bodies, between ordinary consciousness and expanded consciousness. The human body thus manifests the trace of śakti, the cosmic energy that animates all of reality. To act on the breath is therefore to transform far more than a bodily rhythm: it is to intervene at the very heart of cosmic consciousness.

The Shaivite tantric tradition describes kuṇḍalinī śakti — the dormant energy at the base of the spine — as a coiled serpent that adequate practice can awaken and guide through the chakras, our energetic centers, all the way to the crown of the skull (sahasrāra). The union of Shiva — pure and motionless Consciousness — with Shakti — dynamic manifested Energy — realized at the summit, is precisely the embodied non-dual realization: the body becomes the explicit place of union. The body is no longer a prison to transcend but a condensation of divine Consciousness in matter, whose transformation is simultaneously a transformation of individual consciousness.

Convergences: this ontological valorization of the body as the place and instrument of realization finds echoes in Palamas’ hesychasm — the purified body as the subject of deification — in Dōgen’s zazen — posture as awakening in act — and in the Dialogues with the Angel: “You are my denser equal.” In all these cases, material density is not an inferiority to compensate for — it is the necessary condition for a form of divine manifestation that pure light cannot accomplish alone.

Action: joyful engagement as expression of līlā

If all is play of divine Consciousness, if nothing lies outside Shiva, then engaging in the world — through creative action, loving relationship, or artistic realization — is not to leave the spiritual path, but on the contrary to fulfill it in full recognition of our divine nature. The human being who acts from pratyabhijñā acts neither to correct a cosmic error nor to obey an external law, but because Consciousness rejoices in manifesting Itself through him. Līlā invites him to participate in the play of creation with the lightness and precision of an accomplished artist.

Conclusive convergence for this section: this joyful, engaged non-dualism draws an unexpected line of continuity with the two contemporary voices. “The new world can only be built from beauty” (Dialogues with the Angel) and “the good accomplished” as the only law (Revelation of Arès) carry the same affirmation: right and beautiful action is the natural flowering of a consciousness that has recognized the fundamental unity of the Living.

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3. Non-dualism without an absolute: the Buddhist paths

In the first installment, we had sketched the broad landscape of Buddhism: Theravāda — guardian of the Pāli canon — where the not-self of the subject does not yet open onto a non-dualism of ultimate realities; then Mahāyāna, with Nāgārjuna’s Mādhyamaka and its doctrine of śūnyatā — the emptiness of all dharmas — and the Yogācāra vein, closer to an “original pure consciousness”; and finally three great contemplative traditions of recognition — Chan/Zen, Dzogchen, Mahāmudrā — where awakening is no longer conceived as a state to construct, but as a nature to recognize.

This second installment does not seek to unfold all these schools exhaustively. It focuses on three nodes where non-duality without an Absolute condenses into very different but secretly convergent pathways: the radical deconstruction of Nāgārjuna and the Mādhyamaka — which empties the mind of all its conceptual supports; the bare sitting of Zen — where practice and awakening are identified; and the recognition of rigpa in Tibetan Dzogchen — where the natural state of the mind is held to be always already present, veiled rather than absent.

A. Nāgārjuna and the Mādhyamaka: the mind without support

The mind: the Middle Way, or deconstructing until there is nothing left to deconstruct

Nāgārjuna, the second-century Indian philosopher, is the great founding figure of the Mādhyamaka school — the “Middle Way.” His gesture consists in applying, without compromise, the Buddha’s central intuition — the absence of a substantial self — to all phenomena, including the concepts that spiritual thought tends to absolutize: existence and non-existence, being and nothingness, permanence and impermanence, nirvāṇa and saṃsāra. His method, laid out in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (”Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way”), is a dialectic of deconstruction: for every conceivable metaphysical thesis, he shows that it is untenable — and the same holds true for its antithesis. The mind, deprived of every point of support, is forced to let go.

What Nāgārjuna aims at is not a new system, but liberation from the very need for a system. Emptiness (śūnyatā) is not a new absolute: it is the character of every thing — nothing existing in and of itself, everything existing only in dependence on everything else (pratītya-samutpāda). Even emptiness is empty: “Emptiness, poorly understood, destroys the ignorant — like a snake badly seized or a spell badly recited.” The goal is not to think emptiness, but to directly see that nothing is worth grasping; this seeing is already anattā — non-self.

Convergence / Divergence: the structure of the Mādhyamaka resembles, from a distance, the Christian apophaticism of the Pseudo-Dionysian tradition and of Meister Eckhart — but where Eckhart deconstructs images to make room for an ineffable Presence that remains, Nāgārjuna deconstructs all the way to the end, leaving no positive residual ground. And where Shankara dissolves the world into Brahman, Nāgārjuna also dissolves Brahman: śūnyatā is not even a reality — it is the absence of all intrinsic existence, including its own.

The heart: bodhicitta and karuṇā — compassion as the natural flowering of emptiness

In Mahāyāna Buddhism — which developed directly in Nāgārjuna’s wake — the doctrine of śūnyatā opens onto a radical ethical consequence: emptiness is never separate from compassion (karuṇā). The bodhisattva — the being who renounces “entering” nirvāṇa, final liberation from the cycle of existences, as long as a single being remains to be freed — embodies this union: to understand that all phenomena are empty of inherent nature is to simultaneously see that no being possesses a “self” to defend against others, and that the boundary between “me” and “others” reveals itself as conventional. Compassion here is not a moral supplement — it is the natural mode of existence of a consciousness that has ceased to believe itself separate.

The Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras — “Perfection of Wisdom Sūtras” — hammer home this double demand: prajñā (wisdom) that sees emptiness, compassion that embraces all beings. The iconic formula of the Heart Sūtra condenses this movement: “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form; emptiness is not other than form, form is not other than emptiness.” Seeing the emptiness of all things does not lead to cold disengagement — it leads to a radical tenderness: nothing is to be possessed, everything is to be cared for.

Convergence: this intrinsic link between non-dual vision and responsibility toward all resonates with the kabbalistic Tiqqun Olam. In both cases, personal realization is considered incomplete as long as it has not been translated into effective responsibility toward all beings.

The body: seated meditation and walking, the body as a field of non-grasping

In the ancient sources, the path of the body is not theorized as in Tantrism — but the body is constantly the field of exercise for right view. The Noble Eightfold Path begins with right view (sammā-diṭṭhi), but it continues in attention to the breath, to postures, to movements, to sensations: the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta (”Foundations of Mindfulness”) describes this patient work of observing the body, sensations, mental states, and phenomena as a school of non-grasping.

Seated meditation (śamatha-vipassanā) — which would later become zazen — aims less at “leaving the body” than at seeing that the body itself is nothing but a stream of sensations without an owner. To sit, to breathe, to walk with attention is not to sacralize matter — it is to see it as it is: impermanent, unseizable, without self. Satipaṭṭhāna — mindfulness founded on the body — is the first and most fundamental of the four foundations of mindfulness: before even turning attention to sensations, mental states, or phenomena, the practitioner learns to inhabit the body with total presence, to feel the breath as it is, to note each sensation without fleeing it or clinging to it. This work of the body is not a mere preliminary to spiritual life: it is already spiritual practice, because the body is the only place where one can truly meet the present moment.

Convergence: Dōgen’s zazen will develop this intuition to its most radical consequence: the correct bodily posture is itself awakening in act. We will return to this in the next section.

Action: the bodhisattva, or engagement until the last being

The ideal of the bodhisattva is without doubt one of the most radical figures of spiritual engagement humanity has ever produced. Its founding vow — not to “exit” saṃsāra, the cycle of existences, as long as the last sentient being has not been freed — immediately articulates non-duality and universal responsibility. Since there is no separate “self,” the liberation of one cannot be complete as long as others remain in ignorance.

This vow is not an external heroism — it is the logical consequence of a non-dual vision of emptiness. Where certain non-dual traditions can slide toward de facto detachment, the figure of the bodhisattva makes engagement in the world the criterion of the depth of realization.

Convergence: this grounding of ethics in the vision of interdependence — not in a divine commandment, not in natural law, but in the direct recognition that everything is connected to everything — resonates deeply with the logic of Gandhian non-violence: if the other is me in another mirror, to harm him is an act of self-mutilation. Practical conclusions converge even when metaphysical premises diverge radically.

B. Dōgen and Zen

The mind: zazen, shikantaza, and kōan — two pathways to immediate awakening

With Dōgen (1200–1253) — founder of the Sōtō school in Japan and author of the Shōbōgenzō — Buddhist Zen formulates a radical intuition: practice is not a means to awakening; it is awakening in act. The formula shūshō ichinyo — “unity of practice and realization” — breaks the mental structure by which awakening would be a distant goal toward which the practitioner gradually progresses. As long as there is a “self” that practices in order to later obtain a superior state, the fundamental separation has not yet dissolved; practice remains inhabited by the logic of acquisition. Shikantaza — “just sitting” — is the concrete translation of this revolution: sitting without aiming at anything other than the very act of sitting itself, without seeking, without any project of elevation, in the total nakedness of the instant.

Yet Zen does not exhaust its pedagogy in Dōgen’s path alone. The Rinzai tradition has developed, with the kōan, a complementary strategy: not quietly stabilizing consciousness in the simple fact of being seated, but pushing the intellect to its breaking point. Questions like “What was your face before your parents were born?” do not call for a logical answer — they aim to saturate the discursive mind until it ceases to function as the center of gravity of being. In both cases, the target is the same: to drop the illusion that one more thought could finally deliver the truth.

Convergence: by different means, shikantaza and kōan both join the Mādhyamaka’s intuition: the mind does not awaken by accumulating ever subtler formulations, but by ceasing to seek support in what can be formulated. Zen distinguishes itself from Nāgārjuna, however, by its style: where the Mādhyamaka dismantles conceptual handholds through dialectic, Zen short-circuits them through bare practice or through the shock of a lived paradox.

The heart: satori, or the compassion that follows the falling of boundaries

In Zen, the transformation of the heart is not primarily conceived as the slow cultivation of elevated feelings, but as the spontaneous consequence of kenshō or satori: the lightning flash of direct vision where the ordinary separation between oneself and reality cracks open. When a being ceases, even for a moment, to experience itself as an isolated fortress facing the world, compassion no longer needs to be commanded — it flows of itself from a perception that has become less defensive and less possessive. The tenderness that results is not sentimentality, but a sobriety of gaze: the less the self intervenes, the more the other appears in their own nakedness.

This logic explains why Zen can seem so little moralistic while being of extreme ethical rigor. It does not begin by saying “be compassionate” — it works to dissolve what makes compassion difficult: identity rigidity, cognitive grasping, and separation. Goodness is not added on top of vision; it is vision’s natural breath when nothing thick interposes itself between oneself and other beings.

Convergence: This compassion born of awakening joins the structure already underlined elsewhere: authentic realization never leads to indifference, but to a more just presence to others. It can thus be placed alongside the Sufi baqāʾ as al-Junayd conceives it: not the sterile disappearance of the person, but their return in a truer, more sober, more available quality of being.

The body: Dōgen’s zazen, or posture as incarnate awakening

It is perhaps on the question of the body that Dōgen formulates his most unforgettable contribution. With shinjin datsuraku — “shedding body and mind” — he is by no means inviting us to leave the flesh, but to discover that the body, properly held, breathed, and inhabited, becomes the very place where the opposition between body and mind ceases to be operative. Posture is not a backdrop to meditation: it is awakening taking form in matter.

Hence the almost liturgical precision of zazen: pelvis slightly tilted forward, spine elongated, chin tucked in, hands in hokkai-join resting on the thighs, supported by the lower abdomen, eyes half-closed, deep breathing rooted in the kikai tanden — the “ocean of energy” located below the navel. Nothing here amounts to gratuitous formalism; each detail aims at a balance between tension and release, vigilance and surrender, presence and non-grasping. The long, silent exhalation brings consciousness back below the mental chatter, to that more naked, almost biological layer of presence. Dōgen — and later Taisen Deshimaru in his work of transmission in Europe — insisted on this point: the correct posture does not accompany awakening, it makes it immediately operative.

Convergence and Originality: Dōgen here joins Palamas — who makes the purified body a subject of deification — and Nāgārjuna — who sees in the body a royal path of realization. But he adds a distinctly Zen radicality: the body is not merely capable of participating in awakening — it is awakening when it is fully seated in rightness.

Action: ethics beyond the law

Zen inherits from Mahāyāna the idea that ethics does not need to be grounded in a transcendent commandment in order to be absolute in its scope. If the substantial separation between self and other is illusory, harming the other is not only a moral fault: it is an error of perception. Right action then arises from ontological clarity, not from obedience.

This is why the bodhisattva ideal remains fully active in Zen, even as Zen distrusts grand discourses. Generosity, restraint, non-violence, attention to concrete reality, humble and just work — these are not virtues plastered onto awakening; they are the daily form taken by a less-separated consciousness. Where some spiritualities of the Absolute risk sliding toward withdrawal, authentic Zen makes the ordinary — sweeping, serving, walking, cooking, speaking — the very field of verification of awakening.

Conclusive convergence: this ethics without commandment joins, from another slope, the intuition that will appear further on in the Dialogues with the Angel and the Revelation of Arès: when separation dissolves, the good no longer appears as an external obligation, but as the natural form of a consciousness re-attuned to reality.

C. Tibetan Dzogchen: the recognition of primordial clarity

The mind: rigpa, or recognizing what has always been there

Tibetan Dzogchen — Atiyoga, “the Great Perfection” — pushes the Buddhist logic of recognition rather than acquisition to its extreme point. Rigpa — primordial awareness — is neither an elevated state to fabricate nor a distant summit to merit; it is the actual and permanent nature of the mind prior to any conceptual contraction. What we call the ordinary mind is nothing other than rigpa itself — but veiled, dispersed, covered by habitual mental constructs, as the sky remains present behind the clouds that conceal it. Thus, all of Dzogchen’s pedagogy aims less at building than at clearing away, less at producing a light than at letting appear a clarity already there.

It is here that the rapprochement with the pratyabhijñā of Kashmir Shaivism becomes particularly fruitful. In both cases, awakening does not consist in becoming other than oneself, but in recognizing what was never truly lost. The formula attributed to Huangbo — “The only mistake is seeking” — illuminates this logic well: not because no discipline would be necessary, but because tense searching nourishes precisely the illusion that awakening exists somewhere else.

The teachings of the Bardo Thödol extend this intuition to the threshold of death. They rest on the idea that at the moment when ordinary mental constructs dissolve, primordial consciousness can manifest in its most total nakedness; if the practitioner has recognized it during their lifetime, they can still recognize it at this decisive hour and be liberated within it. Death is therefore not conceived as an absolute rupture, but as a moment of truth where what has always been there — behind the theater of mental appearances — is revealed.

Convergence: where the Mādhyamaka empties the mind of all its supports, Dzogchen reveals what remains when no support is sought any longer. The emphases differ, but the shared aim remains the same: to let appear a space of freedom that ordinary consciousness masks from itself.

The heart: ultimate bodhicitta and relative bodhicitta

In Dzogchen, the dimension of the heart unfolds with remarkable subtlety through the distinction between ultimate bodhicitta and relative bodhicitta. The first designates the direct recognition of the primordial nature of the mind; the second, active compassion in the phenomenal world — the concrete concern for beings still caught in confusion and suffering. The one does not oppose the other: the first grounds the second, and gives it its rightness.

Knowing that all beings share the same veiled rigpa does not lead to indifference — it makes their suffering all the more poignant. To see the other in their deep nature, and to simultaneously see the thickness of the veils separating them from it, engenders a compassion of a particular kind: neither sentimental pity, nor confused fusion, nor moralism. It is a clear, lucid, stable compassion that accompanies without possessing and helps without substituting itself.

Convergence: this lucid compassion can be placed alongside the Sufi baqāʾ already invoked elsewhere: after the extinction of the separate self, what remains is not insensibility, but a more just, more sober, and vaster presence to the other. Two universes without direct historical debt arrive here at a strikingly similar human structure.

The body: breath, posture, and unfabricated presence

Dzogchen does not develop the same minute postural liturgy as Dōgen’s Zen — but it by no means disparages the body. As in Buddhism at large, breathing, posture, and attention remain indispensable places of stabilization; the key difference is that they are not valid as techniques for fabricating a superior state, but as means of ceasing to interfere with the natural state. The body then becomes not the object of heroic mastery, but the place of a just release — where the mind can finally cease contracting upon itself.

We find here, in a different tonality, the same fundamental trust encountered in Taoism and in certain aspects of Dzogchen already highlighted: the original nature of the human being — body and consciousness — is right, fluid, luminous. What causes the problem is not what must be added but what must be dissolved.

Convergence: where Zen makes the correct posture awakening in act, Dzogchen tends more to make just release the revelation of a clarity already present. Both converge, however, against any spirituality of fabrication: neither one conceives of awakening as the production of an artificial state.

Action: active compassion and right presence in the world

Dzogchen by no means abolishes the demand for action — it reformulates it from clarity. If all beings already participate in the same primordial nature, then engagement on their behalf does not come from an obligation imposed from outside, but from the recognition that their wandering and suffering are not truly separate from us. Right action therefore arises neither from guilt nor from moral heroism, but from lucid compassion.

It is in this that Dzogchen deeply converges with the bodhisattva ideal: not as a spectacular sacrificial figure, but as the natural consequence of a vision freed from separation. The being who sees more clearly does not leave others in their obscurity; they remain available — because the recognition of fundamental clarity makes compassion toward those who do not yet see it more urgent, not less.

Conclusive Convergence: from Zen to Dzogchen, late Buddhism thus shows two distinct but convergent ways of thinking a non-duality without Absolute: one insists on bare sitting, the exact gesture, and awakening as practice; the other on the recognition of primordial clarity and the lucid compassion that follows from it. In both cases, right action is not added to realization — it is realization’s natural flowering in the world.

4. The non-dualism of Fluidity: Taoism

The three great families of traditions we have just traversed — Abrahamic, Hindu, Buddhist — share, despite their divergences, a common structure: they aim at a state, a realization, a summit. The Taoist path enacts another fundamental break in register: it does not aim at a state to reach, because it does not begin from the premise that there is anything to reach. The Tao — elusive, unnameable, what precedes heaven and earth — is not a reality hidden behind the visible world that one must rejoin through spiritual effort. It is the very movement of reality, its natural flux, its inexhaustible spontaneity. The question is therefore not how to rejoin the Tao — it is how to stop opposing it.

The mind: The paradox as pedagogy

Laozi, who according to Taoist tradition composed the Tao Te Ching in the 6th century BCE — though his historicity remains debated — inaugurates a pedagogy of the mind that has no direct equivalent in any other tradition. He does not build a philosophical system, does not propose intellectual meditation. He places the reader before the impotence of their own thought through the deliberate use of paradox: “The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao” — first verse, first act of destabilization. “Non-being is useful,” “Silence is the greatest resonance,” “He who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know” — each formula is a small bomb placed under the foundations of discursive thought, not to destroy it but to reveal its own limits from the inside.

Zhuangzi, continuator and amplifier of Laozi, radicalizes this pedagogy still further through narrative, humor, dream, and absurdity: the cook who butchers the ox effortlessly because he follows the natural articulations of the animal; the butterfly who wonders whether it is a man dreaming or a man who is a butterfly; the King of Chaos whose emissaries pierce seven orifices to render him a service — and who dies from it. Each story is a Taoist kōan before the fact — an irruption of the unpredictable into ordinary logic.

Convergence and originality: the paradoxical pedagogy of Laozi and the narrative devices of Zhuangzi converge with the zen kōan — of which Taoism is historically one of the sources in China. Both use paradox not as a logical defect but as an instrument of transformation. But where the zen kōan aims at satori — a sudden awakening, a direct breakthrough out of discursive mind — Taoist pedagogy is more diffuse, more atmospheric: it does not seek a flash, but a progressive impregnation — like water that eventually passes through stone, not by force, but by constancy.

The heart: Wu Wei, or love without effort

Wu Wei — literally “non-action,” often translated as “acting without forcing” — is without doubt one of the most misunderstood Taoist concepts in the West, where it is readily reduced to a form of passivity. Yet it designates neither inaction nor withdrawal, but a way of acting that does not proceed from a tensed will seeking to bend reality to its own demands. It is an action attuned to the natural movement of things — like water descending to the sea with no apparent effort, finding its passage without violence. Wu Wei is therefore not resignation in the face of the world as it is, but the art of harmonizing with the Tao rather than pretending to constrain the course of things. This is why the image of water recurs ceaselessly in the Tao Te Ching: apparently soft and supple, yet capable of wearing away even the hardest stone.

Multiple convergences: Wu Wei resonates with the Baal Shem Tov’s Hasidic devekut — this adhesion to divine Presence in the most ordinary acts, without forcing or dramatizing. It resonates also with the līlā of Kashmir Shaivism, where right action is that which coincides with the spontaneous play of divine Consciousness. And it resonates finally with the structure of action in the Revelation of Arès: not political program nor social strategy, but the harvesting — that patient, repeated, humble gesture of the awakened one who does not seek to transform the world by force, but to embody a presence so just that others, by contagion, begin to move in turn. In both cases — Taoist and Arèsian — the transformation of the world passes through the transformation and radiance of the acting person, not through the imposition of a will upon reality.

The Body: Tai Chi and Qi Gong — the circulation of cosmic breath

Taoism has developed, in its practical branches — Tai Chi Chuan, Qi Gong, the internal martial arts — a culture of the body founded on a central principle: qi — vital cosmic energy, analogous to the Indian prāṇa — circulates naturally through the body when the body ceases to oppose it through rigidity, contraction, or excessive tension. Physical health, emotional balance, and spiritual realization are, in the Taoist perspective, aspects of the same phenomenon: the fluidity of qi in the body and between the body and its environment.

Taoist bodily work is not, like tantric yoga, an activation of a dormant energy to be awakened and directed toward specific centers — it is a clearing of obstacles, a progressive release of everything that prevents qi from circulating according to its own nature. Tai Chi’s movements — slow, continuous, fluid, in gentle spirals — do not seek to impose a form on the body but to discover the form the body itself wants to take when it is no longer constrained. This is Wu Wei applied to flesh.

Convergence: the Taoist principle of clearing obstacles rather than forced activation connects directly with tibetan Dzogchen’s pedagogy — where the aim is not to construct awakened consciousness but to clear away what masks it. Two very different traditions share the same fundamental trust: the original nature of the human being — body and consciousness — is right, fluid, luminous. What causes the problem is not what must be added but what must be dissolved.

Action: the sage without intention, or governing like the valley

Taoist ethics of action is one of the most radically anti-authoritarian and anti-programmatic that exist. The Tao Te Ching affirms that the best government is the one whose people do not know they are being governed; that the best teacher is the one whose student believes they learned everything by themselves; that the best warrior does not fight. This is not political passivity — it is a metaphysics of non-violent efficacy that affirms that the greatest force is the one that accompanies the natural movement of things rather than opposing it. The image of the valley returns as the Taoist metaphor of the ideal sage: low, open, receptive — and for that reason, everything flows through it and nothing ever fills it.

Divergence: this ethics of non-interference enters, however, into direct tension with the ethics of active responsibility we encountered among the Kabbalists (Tiqqun Olam), among the bodhisattvas, and in Gandhi. Taoism affirms that forcing the repair of the world can produce exactly the opposite of what is sought — that any action dictated by a preconceived idea of the good is liable to reintroduce violence under the cover of virtue. There is in this caution a real wisdom that the “repairing” traditions would do well to take more seriously. The tension remains open and fertile — and it is one of the lines of fracture we will examine in the next section.

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Provisional conclusion: the path is not yet Unity!

At this point in the crossing, a first truth emerges clearly: in the great spiritual traditions, non-duality is neither a disembodied speculation nor a luxury reserved for a few contemplatives withdrawn from the world. It always takes the form of a path, a discipline of being, a concrete transformation of the gaze, the heart, the body, and action. The languages differ, the metaphysics frequently oppose one another, the emphases range from austerity to celebration, from deconstruction to song — but all the traditions encountered so far agree at least on this: ordinary separation is not the ultimate horizon of the human being, and there are pathways for crossing through it and returning to Unity.

Yet this convergence must not deceive us. The further we advance, the clearer it becomes that these traditions are not simply saying the same thing in different words. They propose neither the same vision of the world, nor the same understanding of the person, nor the same relationship to the body, nor the same kind of engagement in history. The rapprochements we have been able to make are real; the fractures are equally so. It is perhaps in this double faithfulness — to the depth of the convergences and to the irreducibility of the divergences — that a spiritual approach worthy of the name becomes possible: one broad enough to listen, and rigorous enough not to conflate.

It now remains for us to cross a decisive threshold. The most pressing question is not only how the ancient traditions conceived the exit from duality — but what this question becomes in our late, fragmented, disenchanted world, saturated with information yet starving for Presence.

It is there that we will reconnect, in the final part, with the two contemporary voices already glimpsed — the Dialogues with the Angel and the Revelation of Arès — not as mere modern echoes of ancient wisdoms, but as singular, demanding, sometimes unsettling formulations of what a non-duality fully incarnate in historical urgency might look like today.

Next week, we will therefore resume from these two contemporary voices, before entering into the examination of the great lines of fracture that run through the whole of this inquiry: the destiny of the person in union, the value of the sensible world, the question of spiritual authority, and the status of time and history in the life of the spirit.

It is only by confronting these disagreements without artificially dissolving them that we can hope to discern, with a little more accuracy, what our era still expects from the traditions, what it can receive from the new voices of the twentieth century — and what it may perhaps need to learn to formulate by itself.

Read the third and final part: The Wound of Duality—and the Return (3/3). After exploring the paths of return, this final installment examines contemporary voices, the irreconcilable rifts between traditions, and the spiritual calling of our time.

© 2026 - Dialogues of the New World — Jérôme Nathanaël

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The Eternal Present · Heritages · 29 min
To reread the traditions in order to understand what they have shaped and what they can still transmit.

Serie: The Wound of Duality — and the Return. Article 1

It is a question human beings have never stopped asking, across every latitude and in every language: why do I feel separate? Separate from the Divine or the Absolute, separate from others, separate from nature, separate from myself. This wound of duality — this persistent sense of being an isolated fragment in an indifferent universe — is perhaps the most fundamental pain of the human condition. To address it, humanity’s great spiritual traditions have each elaborated, in their own idiom, remarkably deep and coherent maps of reality and paths of return.

This text is a crossing in three parts. Neither an inventory nor a comparative handbook, but an invitation to descend into the depths of several age-old traditions — kabbalistic Judaism, Christian mysticism, Islamic Sufism, Vedantic Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism — before giving voice to two twentieth-century spiritual voices whose freshness and urgency yield nothing to the authority of antiquity: the Revelation of Arès and the Dialogues with the Angel.

This first installment maps the veiling and its names, the diversity of visions of the Absolute, and the deep convergences between these traditions. The second and third installments — to be published next week and the week after — will explore the concrete pathways of access: how does one cross the veil? — before examining the irreducible lines of fracture between these traditions, and what they say together to an age that has lost its sense of the Sacred. The goal is not to force an artificial consensus among them, but to seek what they share — and what their irreducible differences reveal about the very nature of the Real that each one seeks to reach.

I. The fundamental question: what is the Real?

The inadequacy of ordinary perception

All great spiritual traditions share a common starting point. Ordinary human consciousness, when left to its habits, does not perceive the world as it truly is; rather, it perceives the world as it is perceived. It slices the world into pieces — me and you, inner and outer, sacred and profane, life and death — and mistakes these slices for absolute realities. In doing so, it misses something essential: a deeper unity that precedes and sustains all these distinctions.

This veiling bears different names across traditions. In Shankara’s Vedantic Hinduism, it is avidyā, or metaphysical ignorance, which projects māyā onto the Brahman, the absolute Consciousness-Being. In Buddhism, it is the mistaken belief in the existence of a fixed, independent self, or ātman, which the Buddha denies through the doctrine of anattā. This belief generates attachment, resistance, and suffering. For Sufis, it is the veil of ghaflah (forgetfulness), which prevents the heart from perceiving that all existing things are epiphanies of the divine. For Kabbalists, these are kelipot, or shells of opacity, that cover the divine sparks scattered during the primordial breaking of the vessels. In the Revelation of Arès, it is the Adamic fault, which is not a moral transgression, but rather an event of dualization. By emancipating himself from the Father through his own misdirected freedom, Adam became “dual, at once image and likeness of the Father and a thinking animal, king of the world.” For the Dialogues with the Angel, it is heaviness—the progressive densification of human consciousness that distances it from its angelic “luminous half”—not as original sin, but as a provisional condition whose overcoming is the very vocation of human beings.

All these traditions affirm that this veiling is not a primary, necessary condition; rather, it is a secondary fracture. Whether historical, cognitive, or karmic, depending on the perspective, it is real in its effects, but not in its foundation. Because it is not a primary condition, liberation, return, awakening, and deification are possible, depending on the vocabulary used.

The Absolute has many faces

Before proceeding, it is important to acknowledge a fundamental diversity that the syncretic temptation tends to erase: the names that different traditions give to ultimate reality are not interchangeable, and their differences reveal distinct worldviews.

Shankara’s Brahman, for example, is a pure, impersonal consciousness — without attributes (nirguna), without will, and without love in the relational sense. It is rigorously solitary at its core. It is designated by the triad Sat-Chit-Ānanda —Being, Consciousness, and Bliss—not as three qualities, but as one indivisible reality. At first glance, Ibn Arabi’s divine Dhāt appears similar — beyond all Name and Attribute — but it retains a core desire to manifest and be known, as expressed in the hadith qudsī: “I was a Hidden Treasure, and I desired to be known, so I created creatures.” The Kabbalistic Ein Sof is the boundless infinity of the Divinity, prior to all manifestation, yet unfolding with architectural precision through the sefirot. The Mādhyamaka Buddhist concept of Śūnyatā is different: not a positive Absolute, Consciousness, or Being, but the emptiness of the intrinsic existence of every phenomenon, including emptiness itself. The Taoist Tao refuses even language: “The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao.” In the two contemporary voices that close this mapping, ultimate reality is designated by a single word: Life — not as a biological metaphor, but as the name of Being itself: living, present, loving, and irreducible to any abstraction.

These are not mere terminological disputes. They signal metaphysical positions with considerable practical and ethical implications because the way one names the Absolute determines how one inhabits the world. Yet, these traditions also share something essential: ultimate reality is one, not multiple. The multiplicity we perceive daily is either derived, illusory, or a veiled expression of this fundamental unity.

II. Four major traditions of non-dualism

1. The non-dualism of Being: Abrahamic monotheisms

The three great monotheistic traditions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—have each produced mystical currents that push monotheism to its most extreme consequence. If G.od is truly the one and only, and nothing exists apart from Him, then how can a human being face him without being, in essence, in Him? The institutional orthodoxy of each tradition has often tried to suppress this question, which is the secret engine of all the great Abrahamic mysticisms.

Jewish Kabbalah

In Judaism, Kabbalah is an esoteric movement that developed from the 12th century onwards. It culminated in the 13th century with the Zohar, becoming more radical in the 16th century under Isaac Luria in Safed. Kabbalah is the most bold expression of non-duality. Its central concept is Ein Sof, which literally means “Endless.” Divinity in its absolute essence, prior to any name, relationship, or will. Ein Sof is not the personal God of the Hebrew Bible. It is divinity before all its actions, in a silence and fullness that no language can reach and that only the apophatic path can approach. The functional structure of Ein Sof is reminiscent of Shankara’s nirguna Brahman — but while Brahman remains radically impersonal, Ein Sof manifests itself in the ten sefirot. These are the attributes or spheres of divine energy that form the Tree of Life, the architectural structure through which infinite light journeys toward manifested creation.

In Lurianic Kabbalah, this process of emanation is preceded by the Tzimtzum, or the divine contraction. It is the withdrawal of the Ein Sof into itself, which frees up a space (tehiru) where creation can exist. It is a non-dualistic paradox of remarkable subtlety: the divine creates by erasing itself, and the world is only possible because the infinite consented to make itself small. According to the primordial catastrophe, or Shevirat Ha-Kelim (the Breaking of the Vessels), during creation, the vessels meant to contain the Light shattered. This projected divine sparks, or nitzotzot, into the depths of matter, which are covered by kelipot, or shells of opacity. The world, as it is, is a field of captive sparks yearning to return to their Source. The task of human beings—the teshuvah in its Kabbalistic dimension—is to free these sparks through every just act, every intentional prayer, and every gesture of love and truth. This is Tikkun Olam, the repair of the world. It is a simultaneous cosmological and human repair, mending the fracture of Being and the fabric of human relations. Divine sparks scattered throughout creation are not released in the solitude of individual consciousness; rather, they are released in the space that opens up between beings when a gesture of justice, tenderness, or truth bridges the distance that separates them.

The 18th-century founder of Hasidism, the Baal Shem Tov, further radicalized this non-dualism by teaching acosmism. This is not pantheism, which asserts that the divine is the world. Rather, acosmism asserts that the world has no independent reality and only exists in relation to the Ein Sof. Devekut, or adhesion to the Divine, is not a state reserved for a contemplative elite; it is accessible to every human being in daily life through prayer (tefilah), joy (simha), and right intention (kavanah). The boundary between the finite and the infinite is not ontological — it is cognitive. It is our fragmented gaze that creates the illusion of separation.

Christian mysticism

In Christianity, the most rigorously non-dualist tradition is Rhenish mysticism of the 13th–14th centuries, led by the Dominican Meister Eckhart (1260–1328). According to Eckhart, the soul possesses a “spark” (scintilla animae) that has always been united with the Divine. This divine entity is not the personal G.od of Trinitarian theology, but rather the Gottheit (Godhead), the abyssal ground that precedes the three persons. It is the functional equivalent of the Kabbalistic Ein Sof and the Shankarian Brahman. His central aphorism encapsulates his non-dual vision: “The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me.” There is no human gaze and divine gaze crossing each other; there is one act of vision in which the subject and object reveal themselves as identical at their core. His disciples — John Tauler, Henry Suso, and Jan van Ruysbroeck — developed this legacy with their own emphases. Ruysbroeck expressed this union in a way that no theological formula ever had: the soul is “like a flame in a fire” — it becomes inseparable without ceasing to be itself.

The Byzantine tradition of hesychasm, theorized by Gregory Palamas in the 14th century, proposes a different yet convergent path. Palamas distinguishes the divine essence, which is absolutely transcendent and inaccessible, from the uncreated divine energies through which God communicates with humans in contemplative prayer. This allows for a theosis (deification) that does not abolish the distinction between Creator and creature, but unites them in such an intimate way that the distance between subject and object disappears in the Light of Tabor — the uncreated light of Christ’s Transfiguration, which is accessible even to a body purified by the Jesus Prayer.

Islamic Sufism

In Islam, the most powerful and systematic non-dualist formulation is that of Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi (1165–1240). His doctrine of Wahdat al-Wujud (Unity of Being) asserts that only Allah truly exists and that all of creation is His self-manifestation (tajallī) through His infinite Names and Attributes. Each existent is a “mirror” in which a divine name is reflected and a “face” through which the divine contemplates itself from a particular angle.

Here, one sees the distance from Shankara, who declares the world māyā, or an illusion to dissolve. Ibn Arabi, on the other hand, declares it tajallī, or a precious and irreplaceable epiphany. Before Ibn Arabi, al-Hallaj (857–922) lived this non-duality thunderously: condemned to death for declaring “Ana’l-Haqq” (”I am the Truth”), he embodied fanā’—the extinction of the individual self in the divine presence—in which Hallaj is no longer speaking, but rather God through the empty space that Hallaj has become.

2. The non-dualism of Identity: Vedantic Hinduism

Of all the spiritual traditions, Hinduism — specifically the Advaita Vedanta school — has developed the most radical, systematic, and philosophically coherent non-dualism. Its most illustrious representative, Ādi Shankarāchārya (788–820 CE), deserves an in-depth examination of his work.

Shankara: the radical nature of identity

Shankara was born in Kerala and devoted his short yet intense life to traveling throughout India. He publicly debated his philosophical positions, commented on the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Brahma Sutras, and founded four monasteries (mathas) at the four cardinal points of India. His work constitutes a rigorous reinterpretation of the Vedic texts as well as an original, remarkably coherent metaphysical construct.

His central position is encapsulated in a sentence whose apparent simplicity conceals profound depth: Brahman satyam, jagat mithyā, jīvo Brahmāiva nāparaḥ — “Brahman is real, the world is illusion, and the jīva (the individual soul) is not different from Brahman.” Three propositions, one single movement: affirm the One, relativize the many, and recognize identity.

For Shankara, the Brahman is the only existing reality—pure Consciousness (Chit), pure Being (Sat), and pure Bliss (Ānanda), indivisible. “Aham Brahmāsmi” — “I am the Brahman” — drawn from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishad, is one of the four Mahāvākyas (literally: “Great Sayings”), revealed formulas from the Upanishads that aim to actualize the ātman-Brahman identity. Shankara places these at the heart of Vedantic teaching. Tat Tvam Asi — "Thou art That" —, from the Chandogya Upanishad, is the declaration addressed to the disciple that what you seek so ardently, you already are.

Māyā is the concept by which Shankara explains the perception of the world as being multiple, diverse, and autonomous. Māyā is neither real nor unreal in the strict sense; it is anirvacanīya, or indefinable. It is neither being nor non-being, but rather a superimposition (adhyāsa) projected onto the screen of Brahman by the power of ignorance (avidyā). The classic analogy is that of a rope mistaken for a snake in the dark. In the light of direct knowledge, the snake (the multiple world) disappears as an illusion and only the rope (Brahman) remains. This devaluation of the phenomenal world is the point at which Shankara departs most radically from all Abrahamic traditions, Kashmiri Shaivism, and, as we will see, contemporary voices. However, it has a rigorous internal logic. If Brahman is the only reality, then multiplicity cannot be real in the same way as Brahman.

From an ordinary perspective, the individual soul (jīva) is a distinct being subject to karma, the law of causality of actions, rebirth, and suffering. However, from the ultimate perspective (pāramārthika), it is always Brahman, misunderstanding itself. Just as the light of a lamp, when projected through different filters, appears multiple and colored without changing its nature, the Ātman (the deep Self) appears multiple and individualized without ever ceasing to be Brahman. Therefore, liberation (moksha) is not a transformation of the soul nor an ascension to Brahman; it is a reversal of perception (jñāna). The jīva realizes that it has never been different from Brahman. There is nothing to accomplish and nowhere to go—only the error that must be dissolved by the light of this realization.

However, the mind must be prepared to receive it. Shankara’s preparatory discipline (sādhana-catuṣṭaya) is rigorous and includes discernment (viveka) between the real and the unreal, detachment (vairāgya) from the fruits of action, the six inner virtues (control of the mind and senses, patience, concentration, faith, and aspiration for liberation), and an ardent desire for deliverance (mumukṣutva). Next is the relationship with the guru, whose role is not to impart knowledge the disciple lacks, but to reveal what has always been present: not an external transmission, but the removal of the blindness that prevented seeing. Finally, there is prolonged meditation on the Mahāvākyas until truth ceases to be an intellectual concept and becomes an immediate, continuous, lived reality.

The jīvan-mukta, or liberated being, continues to act in the phenomenal world. However, he acts like a mirror that reflects everything without retaining anything. He is not identified with the ego or ignorant of his own nature. The world continues to appear, and conventions remain fully operative at their own level (vyāvahārika). The law of cause and effect, the necessity of right action, and the reality of others’ suffering are not denied. However, they no longer hold any existential significance for him because the misconception that took them for ultimate realities has been dispelled — he knows that he is Brahman.

Kashmiri Shaivism: affirmative non-dualism

Centuries after Shankara, Abhinavagupta (950–1016) developed a radically different form of non-dualism in 10th-century Kashmir. This was far from Vedantic Kerala and in a profoundly different Tantric and Shaivite context. While Shankara devalues the world as māyā, which was to be dissolved, Abhinavagupta celebrates it as līlā (spontaneous play) and spanda (living pulsation) of the divine consciousness of Shiva, the personal Absolute of Shaivism. Nothing is excluded from divine reality. Passion, suffering, sensory beauty, and diversity of forms are all vibrations of the Single Consciousness that plays at hiding in multiplicity for the pleasure of finding Itself again. Realization (pratyabhijñā, or re-cognition) is not the dissolution of the world into the silence of the Absolute. Rather, it is the recognition at the heart of the sensible world that everything has always been Shiva playing with Himself. This position is structurally closer to Sufism, Hasidic Kabbalah, and two contemporary voices than to Shankara’s pure Advaita.

3. The non-dualism without the Absolute: Buddhism

Buddhism introduces a radically different perspective into the landscape of non-dualism than all previous traditions because it affirms no positive Absolute on which to base its non-duality, which is more disturbing to any substantialist thinking. Neither Brahman, Tao, Ein Sof, nor God—yet the non-duality is as radical as any other.

The historical Buddha taught anattā, or the absence of a permanent self. What we call “I” is a temporary aggregation of five skandhas, or aggregates: material form, sensations, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. These aggregates have no fixed substance. This is not yet non-dualism in the full sense, but it is its foundation: If I have no fixed, separate self, the boundary between myself and the rest of the world becomes porous.

Theravada buddhism

The Theravada school, a faithful guardian of the Pali Canon, stops there in its de-substantialization. Its Abhidharma philosophy maintains that, although the self is empty, the dharmas (elementary phenomena) that comprise it have a real existence, however fleeting it may be. Theravāda preserves a fundamental structural duality: saṃsāra and Nibbāna —the Pāli term for what Sanskrit calls Nirvāṇa. The former refers to the cycle of existences conditioned by karma and ignorance. The latter refers to the unconditioned state where this cycle ends without leaving any residue. Liberation is a transition from the former to the latter. This is a non-dualism of the subject, but not of ultimate realities.

Mahayana buddhism and Nagarjuna

Mahayana took a decisive step with Nagarjuna (2nd century) and his doctrine of shunyata: not only is the self empty of intrinsic existence, but all dharmas, without exception, are empty—including nirvana itself and emptiness itself. The formula is unequivocal: “Saṃsāra is no different from Nirvāṇa.” This is an unexpected point of contact with Shankara, who asserts that liberation is not in any other place than this world because the world is Brahman. Nāgārjuna asserts the same thing, but for a different reason: there is nowhere else to go. However, there is a significant difference: for Shankara, Brahman is real, and the world is an illusion; for Nāgārjuna, nothing has intrinsic existence, not even the positively named Absolute.

The great ethical contribution of Mahayana Buddhism is the bodhisattva ideal: a being who, having realized the emptiness of any distinction between the self and others, chooses to remain in the cycle of existence until all beings are liberated. While Shankara’s Advaita leads logically to an inward-facing liberation —for the jīvan-mukta, others are merely Brahman playing hide-and-seek—Mahayana asserts that if others are not inherently separate from me, my liberation without theirs would be a contradiction in terms. Universal compassion (karuṇā) is the natural extension, not an added moral component, of non-duality.

Yogācāra school

The Yogācāra school, also known as “Consciousness-Only” (vijñaptimātra), was developed by the brothers Asaṅga and Vasubandhu in the fourth or fifth century. This school approaches non-duality from a different angle, focusing on the non-separation of subject and object in consciousness. Everything experienced as an external object is a projection of storehouse consciousness (ālaya-vijñāna). Liberation consists of purifying this consciousness to reveal the nature of Buddha (tathāgatagarbha)—the primordial, awakened consciousness that is always present and never defiled. This notion of pure, original consciousness is closer to Shankara’s concept of Brahman than Nāgārjuna would have liked. The Mādhyamika masters did not fail to point this out.

This fundamental insight—that awakening is a nature to be recognized, not a state to be constructed—is present in both Tathāgatagarbha Yogācāra and Śūnyatā Mādhyamika. It finds its living expression in three major contemplative traditions of East and Central Asia.

Japanese Zen

In Japanese Zen, the heir to Chinese Chan (which itself emerged from the intersection of Mādhyamaka and Taoism), the practice of zazen is not a preparatory exercise for awakening; rather, it is awakening in action. Master Dōgen expressed this idea of the unity of practice and realization in the concept of shikan-taza: simply sitting without purpose or expectation as a direct expression of the Buddha nature already present.

Tibetan Dzogchen

Tibetan Dzogchen, literally “Great Perfection,” developed in the Nyingma and Bön traditions, takes this logic to its most radical conclusion: there is no practice toward enlightenment since enlightenment is the primordial nature of the mind prior to any practice. Its central teaching is based on rigpa, the primordial, clear, vast, and centerless awakened consciousness that constitutes the profound nature of all beings. This consciousness is not tainted by ordinary obscurations, no more than the sky is altered by passing clouds. Therefore, practice does not create rigpa; it dissolves the cognitive and emotional veils that prevent us from recognizing it directly.

Mahāmudrā and the Kagyu lineage

The Mahāmudrā of the Kagyu lineage, literally meaning “Great Seal,” is structurally analogous to Dzogchen, despite coming from a different tantric transmission. Mahāmudrā refers to the ultimate nature of mind—luminous, empty, and cognitively awakened—and to the path of gradually recognizing it. In both Tibetan and Zen traditions, the metaphor is the same: the goal is not to construct something that does not yet exist, but rather to cease obscuring what has always been there.

Chan master Huang Po formulated this convergence with disconcerting precision, and it resonates with equal force in all three traditions: “The only mistake is to seek.”

This is not because the effort is useless—all three traditions involve rigorous disciplines—but because seeking outside of oneself that which has never ceased to exist within oneself is the very structure of delusion. The paradox is complete: Practice is necessary but ultimately dissolves the seeker.

4. The non-dualism of Fluidity: Taoism

Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu’s Taoism offers perhaps the most poetically honest formulation of the Absolute in religious history. This is because they begin by recognizing the radical inadequacy of language. “The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao.” While Shankara builds an impenetrable philosophical edifice to designate Brahman, Lao Tzu immediately dismantles any system by pointing out that the Tao defies systematization.

The Tao is the void from which everything emerges and the fullness from which everything proceeds; it is both immobility and movement; it is the One of which the Two (Yin and Yang) and the ten thousand beings are expressions. Taoist non-duality does not say, “Everything is one” — that would still be too conceptual. Rather, it shows that the yin/yang duality is itself an expression of a deeper unity that can never be fixed in a formula but rather inhabited in the fluidity of existence.

The practical consequence of this vision is wu wei—non-action, effortless action, or action perfectly aligned with the natural movement of things, producing no resistance. Compared to Shankara, the contrast is striking. Advaita calls for a clean break with the world of māyā through discriminative knowledge, whereas Taoism seeks gradual harmonization, the release of resistance, and a return to natural fluidity. The non-dualistic view of evil is particularly significant here and is radically different from all Abrahamic traditions. Yin is not the enemy of Yang; rather, it is its necessary and complementary transitory phase. Darkness is not the opposite of light; it is a prerequisite for its emergence. Rest is not the opposite of movement; it is its breath. Emptiness is not the opposite of fullness; it is its receptacle.

From this perspective, what we call “evil” is not an autonomous ontological reality or an adverse power that opposes good from another principle. Rather, it is a phase of the total movement—a moment in the cycle when force withdraws in order to return stronger and darkness precedes light. The Tao Te Ching formulates this idea with disconcerting precision: “Return is the movement of the Tao.” Everything that descends rises again; everything that contracts expands—not out of naive optimism, but because polarity is the structure of manifested reality itself.

This intuition—that evil is good in gestation, that night is a necessary condition for dawn, and that trial is a disguised ascending force—will not remain confined to Taoism. It will pass through the centuries to resurface with striking vigor in occupied Hungary in 1943. “Evil is good in the making, but not yet ready,” as we shall see in Dialogues with the Angel—a phrase that could have come from the Tao Te Ching itself.

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III. Two Voices of the 20th Century: the Revelation of Arès and Dialogues with the Angel

These two texts are testimonies that emerged in the heart of the 20th century in conditions of existential urgency. They bear a spiritual message of such coherence and depth that it cannot be ignored in any honest mapping of contemporary non-dualism. A tradition implies transmission over several generations, a community of interpreters, and hermeneutic sedimentation—a duration that these two texts do not yet possess. Therefore, they do not have the authority of antiquity; they have the authority of freshness and urgency. It is precisely this freshness—the fact that they were spoken yesterday in our world, in our languages, and in the midst of our catastrophes—that gives them particular resonance for contemporary readers.

Two texts received in times of crisis.

The Revelation of Arès is a direct divine message that Michel Potay received in Arès, France, in 1974 and 1977, when the foundations of today’s crises were forming. The message unfolds in two stages: forty appearances of Christ in 1974 and five theophanies of G.od Himself in 1977. Recorded in two texts with radically different modes of expression but both strikingly original in style and theology, the Revelation of Arès is part of the full Abrahamic tradition of prophetic revelations. In this tradition, the Divine communicates directly with humans, without intermediaries, and with full authority as the Author of existence.

The Dialogues with the Angel emerged amid immediate and deadly violence in Hungary from June 1943 to November 1944. During this time, the Wehrmacht occupied the country, and mass deportations decimated the Jewish community. Four artists—Hanna Dallos, Lili Strausz, Joseph Kreutzer, and Gitta Mallasz—chose to live together in a decorative arts workshop in Budaliget to lead a more meaningful life. One day, after Gitta read a text to Hanna, Hanna simply said: “Be careful, it’s no longer me speaking!” She then began to convey words that clearly did not belong to her. Over the next seventeen months, Gitta recorded 88 interviews word for word. Hanna, Lili, and Joseph died in the camps. Gitta, the sole survivor, took the notebooks to France and published them in 1976 with Aubier.

The fact that these two texts were received during the same period, with their publications following each other almost without an interval—the Gospel given to Arès, the first part of the Revelation, in 1975; Dialogues with the Angel in 1976; then, in 1978, the beginning of the publication of the Book from the theophanies of 1977— is a coincidence that I have never ceased to meditate on. However, their respective contexts differ in nature, and this difference itself is instructive.

In Dialogues, destruction is immediate; three of the four protagonists die in the camps, and the luminous word emerges from the heart of annihilation. In the Revelation of Arès, the catastrophe has not yet occurred—it is a premonition in a world that believes itself rebuilt. Night declared on one side, night foreseen on the other: and in both cases, the same paradox that non-dualism has always been able to formulate—the Real does not depend on conditions.

What deeply unites them?

The two texts have numerous structural similarities that justify reading them together.

First, they both name the ultimate reality: Life. The Revelation of Arès states, “Life is being in the infinite, and life having spread throughout this infinite, to be human is to live among countless living beings.” The Dialogues say: “Our life is a transition to the ONE LIFE.” And again: “From eternal life comes temporal life, and from temporal life comes eternal life.” This lexical coincidence is not insignificant; it signals the same profound ontological intuition: the Absolute is not a cold abstraction—not Shankara’s impersonal Brahman, not the de-substantialized Śūnyatā, and not the unspeakable Tao—but rather, a living, dynamic presence that is personal without being personalistic.

Secondly, both reject the dissolution of the person in the Absolute. While Shankara absorbs the jiva into Brahman completely, Theravada Buddhism seeks to escape saṃsāra, and even the most radical Sufism celebrates fanā as the annihilation of the ego, these texts firmly maintain that the person is not an obstacle to union; rather, he is its condition. “One cannot skip the passage through individuality,” say the Dialogues. “The human being is free to be nothing or to reintegrate into Being beyond the Infinite,” says the Revelation of Arès. In both cases, individual freedom is not a residue to be dissolved, but rather, an absolute dignity to be fulfilled.

Michel Potay compares the Revelation of Arès to Shankara: “Shankara is non-duality, with no separation between the being that is each of us and the Whole. This is evident in the Revelation of Arès. Be One in Yourself (xxiv/1).” However, he also emphasizes the differences between the two. While pure Advaita absorbs individuality into Brahman without remainder, the Revelation of Arès preserves individual freedom as a constitutive dignity of the human being, not as a residue to be dissolved.

Thirdly, the Revelation of Arès and the Dialogues with the Angel both affirm the reality and value of the world as a place of transformation. Matter, history, relationships, beauty, and suffering are not illusions, expendable epiphanies, or mere conventions. It is here, in the density of the real world, that reunification with Life takes place. The Revelation of Arès makes collective ethical transformation—love, forgiveness, peace, and the intelligence of the heart—the royal road to this return. The Dialogues with the Angel make the creative vocation of humans their watchword: ‘Creators, not dreamy, sleepy consumers.’

Fourthly, both texts establish a non-dualistic view of suffering and evil. The Revelation of Arès does not present evil, suffering, and death as an eternal metaphysical reality but as a temporary consequence of misguided human freedom. This consequence is reversible through penance—not contrition, but a rebirth of life itself through constant improvement. The Dialogues express this idea strikingly, with a profound echo of Taoism: “Evil is good in the making, but not yet ready.” The burden, the obstacle, the trial — “they become a gift, not a punishment”, because they are the necessary resistance that allows the ascending force to exert itself.

What sets them apart?

These profound similarities should not obscure the real differences that make the two texts complementary rather than identical.

The Revelation of Arès is a direct divine word, without an angelic intermediary, in the full Abrahamic tradition. In contrast, the Dialogues are mediated by an angelic figure — “The Angel is my life-giving half, and I am his life-giving half”; “You are my denser equal” — whose relationship with humans is constitutive of non-duality. In this relationship, two halves of a single being seek each other in structural reciprocity. This reciprocity between humans and angels is nonexistent in the Revelation of Arès, where the relationship with the Creator is asymmetrical by nature. It is the unique contribution of the Dialogues to the mapping of non-dualism.

The Revelation of Arès has an explicit eschatological and communal dimension: penance as the collective transformation of all humanity over generations—the Tiqqun of an entire species. The Dialogues focus on the fulfillment of the individual in their relationship with the angel. Their scope is more personal and silent on collective and cosmological dimensions. These two differences complement each other: one reminds us that spiritual transformation is a collective task involving the destiny of all humanity, and the other reminds us that it begins in the most immediate intimacy—between a human being and the most luminous part of themselves.

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Provisional conclusion: the map is not the territory!

Here is the map—or rather, the maps. There are at least six of them, some of which overlap and some of which are irreconcilable. Kabbalah, Christian mysticism, Sufism, Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, and Taoism are six ways of naming the same wound and designating the same foundation of unity. They are six architectures of the Absolute, whose differences are revelations of the nature of reality that each seeks to attain, not inaccuracies to be corrected. Emerging in the heart of the 20th century and its dangers are two voices that name this reality with a single word: Life. These voices refuse with remarkable firmness to dissolve the person into unity on the pretext of reaching it.

However, a map, no matter how detailed, is not the territory. The most urgent and concrete question that now arises is not how these traditions name what separates us. Rather, it is: How do they propose to cross the veil? What disciplines, practices, and arts of attention have they forged so that knowledge of non-duality becomes a lived reality and not just a beautiful idea? When their paths diverge—on the value of the world, the destiny of the individual in union, and spiritual authority—are these divergences obstacles or doors of their own kind?

The second part of this journey will explore these questions.

→ Next article: The wound of Duality — and the Return (2/3). How the great spiritual traditions, their maps of consciousness, and their practical methods outline paths for transcending duality and returning to unity.

Read also: A word that circulates #2 — and digs into a real question! A dialogue between two readers on spiritual discernment and the Revealed Word, a compilation of four days of comments on this article.

To go further

Kabbalah

— Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Schocken Books
— Daniel C. Matt, The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism, HarperOne

Christian Mysticism

— Meister Eckhart, The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart, trans. Maurice O’C. Walshe, Crossroad Publishing
— Jan van Ruysbroeck, The Spiritual Espousals and Other Works, trans. James A. Wiseman, Paulist Press

Sufism

— Ibn Arabi, The Bezels of Wisdom (Fusūs al-Hikam), trans. R.W.J. Austin, Paulist Press
— William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn Arabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination, SUNY Press

Advaita Vedanta

— Adi Shankaracharya, Vivekachudamani (The Crest Jewel of Discrimination), trans. Swami Prabhavananda & Christopher Isherwood, Vedanta Press
— Eliot Deutsch, Advaita Vedanta: A Philosophical Reconstruction, University of Hawaii Press

Buddhism

— Nāgārjuna, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā), trans. Jay L. Garfield, Oxford University Press
— Matthieu Ricard & Trinh Xuan Thuan, The Quantum and the Lotus, Crown Publishers

Taoism

— Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, trans. Stephen Mitchell, Harper Perennial
— Chuang Tzu, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, trans. Burton Watson, Columbia University Press

The two contemporary voices

— Gitta Mallasz, Talking with Angels, Daimon Verlag
— The Revelation of Arès, Éditions Adira (bilingual French-English edition)
— Michel Potay, Blog — michelpotayblog.net — open access, ongoing commentaries

© 2026 - Dialogues of the New World — Jérôme Nathanaël

To go further

Do you see, in our time, a spiritual or cultural heritage that remains active, for better, for worse, or in some ambiguous fashion? Share your reading in the comments to spark discussion.

And if you wish to share more broadly your reflection on the heritages that shape us, send me a contribution of roughly one page for the Waymakers section. It will be published under your initials, a pseudonym, or anonymously, as you prefer. Other readers will be able to respond and dialogue with you.

New here? The Opening page introduces the author, the project, how to take part, contact details, and the agenda.

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The Eternal Present · Heritages · 19 min
To reread the traditions in order to understand what they have shaped and what they can still transmit.

René Daumal, seeker of truth and disciple of enlightenment

René Daumal was born on March 16, 1908, and died on May 21, 1944. He was a French writer and poet whose fame is more established in the English-speaking world than in his native France. This differential recognition perhaps reflects French culture’s difficulty in embracing its children who venture into the perilous territory of radical metaphysical quests. French culture often prefers to celebrate virtuosos of the word over explorers of being. Daumal belongs resolutely to the latter category: seekers who prioritize inner transformation over literary performance. Nevertheless, his work displays remarkable mastery of poetic and novelistic expression.

He is the author of La Grande Beuverie, a novel presenting a caustically humorous critique of society’s workings and human behavior’s pretenses, and the allegorical novel Le Mont Analogue, subtitled “A novel of symbolically authentic, non-euclidean mountain-climbing adventures.” These two works are not mere literary exercises but stem directly from Daumal’s friendship with Alexandre de Salzmann, a student of G. I. Gurdjieff, and the radical self-work he undertook as a result. Encountering Gurdjieff’s teachings marked a decisive turning point for Daumal, transforming his youthful intuitions into a rigorous discipline and his romantic aspirations into daily asceticism.

He also wrote numerous articles on Hindu spirituality, which he studied in texts after learning Sanskrit at a young age. This demonstrates the thirst for direct knowledge of sources that characterizes true spiritual seekers. He also left behind enlightening poems, such as La Guerre Sainte (The Holy War), which is a parable of the inner war he waged to attain true being. This struggle is recognized as the true jihad by all authentic traditions: the fight against our automatic mechanisms, comfortable illusions, and existential slumber.

He died of tuberculosis at the age of 36. He had probably contracted it at a younger age by poisoning himself with tetrachloromethane (CCl₄). He used this chemical to kill the beetles he collected and to deliberately immerse himself in comatose-like states of intoxication. These extreme experiences resemble what some would later call near-death experiences. This approach testifies to the sometimes dangerous intensity of his quest.

In 1928, René Daumal founded the magazine Le Grand Jeu in Paris with Roger-Gilbert Lecomte, Roger Vailland, and painter Josef Síma. It was a cry of revolt against a rationalist West that had forgotten the core of absolute truth, as stated by “the Vedic Rishis, the Kabbalist Rabbis, the prophets, the mystics, the great heretics of all time, and the true poets,” notably Rimbaud. In 1930, Josef Síma painted a portrait of René Daumal that captures the burning intensity of this young man in search of the absolute. The magazine published three issues between 1928 and 1930, but the fourth issue was never published.

After the magazine ceased publication, when the dazzling intuitions of youth called for method and discipline, Daumal encountered the teachings of Gurdjieff. He followed and put these teachings into practice until his death, finding in them the structure necessary for fulfilling his deepest aspirations.

Gurdjieff’s teachings: a framework for understanding the poem

To fully grasp the significance of Daumal’s poem about the desire to exist, it is helpful to review some key concepts from the teachings of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. At the beginning of the 20th century, this Caucasian master developed a system integrating Eastern and Western wisdom into a practical synthesis for contemporary humans.

Gurdjieff taught that ordinary people live in a state of sleep: an existential somnambulism where the individual believes he is awake, conscious, and in control, when he is actually functioning mechanically. He reacts automatically to external and internal stimuli and remains a prisoner of habits, conditioning, and identifications that constitute his ego, or what Gurdjieff called the “false personality.”

From this perspective, ordinary human beings do not possess any real inner unity. They are a multiplicity of fragmented and contradictory “selves” that follow one another according to circumstances. Each “self” momentarily takes itself to be the center of the person and speaks on its behalf without any real continuity or coherence. This fragmentation explains why we make decisions we don’t keep, experience overwhelming emotions, and have thoughts that arise without conscious direction. Gurdjieff made a radical distinction between “personality,” the social and psychological construct consisting of imitations, roles, borrowed opinions, and defense mechanisms, and “essence,” the authentic but generally underdeveloped core of the human being—that which is truly original and unique within us.

From Gurdjieff’s perspective, working on oneself consists of developing this essence and creating a true inner unity, which he called the “Real Self” or the “Inner Master.” It also involves gradually awakening from the sleep-like state in which we spend our existence. This work requires conscious effort and voluntary suffering—that is, accepting the dissipation of our illusions, recognizing our true state, and persevering in exercises and self-observations that enable this transformation. Gurdjieff also emphasized the notion of “self-remembering,” which consists of dividing one’s attention between the object of one’s activity and one’s presence while performing that activity. This creates a state of consciousness superior to ordinary consciousness.

In light of these teachings, Daumal’s poem reveals its full depth and technical precision. It is not an abstract poetic meditation, but rather a cartography of states of consciousness and stages of spiritual awakening traced by someone who was walking this arduous path.

The poem: a map of awakening in eight stages

René Daumal was a great seeker of truth and a mountain enthusiast who understood that climbing peaks was a living metaphor for, and a concrete practice of, spiritual elevation. His poem on the desire to be summarizes the journey that leads human beings from their ordinary state to the realization of the need for spiritual development and, therefore, for self-improvement in order to attain a fulfilling life.

Each line of the poem marks a stage in the process of disidentification and awakening. Here is what it tells us:

“I am dead because I lack desire,
I lack desire because I think I possess,
I think I possess because I do not try to give;
In trying to give, you see that you have nothing,
Seeing that you have nothing, you try to give of yourself,
Trying to give of yourself, you see that you are nothing,
Seeing that you are nothing, you desire to become,
In desiring to become, you begin to live.”

The illusion of possession and spiritual death

“In desiring to become, you begin to live,” René Daumal tells us in a conclusion that retrospectively illuminates the entire journey. We then better understand the meaning of the first sentence: “I am dead,” which implies spiritual life because I have no desire for it. I have no desire for it because I believe that life boils down to having and accumulating possessions rather than developing my being and accessing a broader dimension. This statement is a brutal diagnosis of the ordinary state of humanity. It is similar to what Jesus said when he told us to “let the dead bury their dead” and what Sufi mystics said about the carefree, distracted man who is absent from himself.

This spiritual death is not like physical death. It is an absence of true life within biological activity itself—an existence reduced to mechanical, vegetative, and reactive functions. It is deprived of the specifically human dimension: awakened consciousness, presence to oneself, and the capacity for true, unconditioned choice. In Gurdjieffian terms, this death refers to the state of the machine man: a biological automaton that functions according to established programs without ever accessing the inner freedom that defines an accomplished human being. Why does this state of death persist? Because there is no desire to escape this condition; there is no aspiration for something greater, more real, or more alive.

This first sentence tells us a lot in a few words: “I am dead because I lack desire; I lack desire because I think I possess.” I am dead to spiritual life because I do not seek it. I do not seek it because I am content to possess goods and objects. This gives me an illusion of security and identity, which is enough for me. Contemporary society, with its cult of consumption and obsession with material accumulation, meticulously maintains this illusion. It makes incessant promises of happiness through acquiring new objects, experiences, and statuses. This extinguishes spiritual desire under successive layers of artificially created, outward-looking desires.

However, as Daumal implicitly suggests, we can broaden the meaning of “possess” beyond material possession. We can talk about possessing knowledge, diplomas, social recognition, power over others, psychic powers, healing abilities, and paranormal faculties. Daumal warns us with lucidity that possessing such powers does not necessarily mean entering spiritual life, which involves working on one’s being rather than one’s having, however subtle it may be. How many contemporary spiritual seekers stray into the quest for powers—or siddhis, as they are called in the Hindu tradition—and imagine themselves progressing spiritually when, in reality, they are merely enriching their arsenal of possessions? They are merely shifting the mechanisms of greed and identification that chained them to the material plane to the subtle plane!

The test of giving and the discovery of inner emptiness

The text continues with relentless logic: “I think I possess because I do not try to give. In trying to give, you see that you have nothing.” This proposition deserves careful consideration because it reveals the mechanism by which the illusion is maintained. As long as we don’t truly try to give, we can believe that we have something valuable, that our lives are full, and that we have something to share. It is the very act of wanting to give that reveals the emptiness of our supposed possessions and exposes the futility of our accumulations. It reveals that we hold nothing essential.

Remember that René Daumal wrote this dry text to provoke reflection rather than to offer illusory consolations. He resolutely places himself on the level of spiritual life rather than on the level of ordinary social exchanges. He tells us that when we try to give something essential—to pass on something that could truly help another person develop—we discover that unless we have undertaken authentic personal development and worked on ourselves in the Gurdjieffian sense, we have nothing fundamental to pass on. We have nothing that can truly awaken, elevate, or transform another person.

This discovery can be devastating to the ego, which is identified with knowledge, opinions, culture, and status as an educated or spiritually advanced person. People can come to understand that what they have is worthless and that they have nothing that stands up to authentic spiritual demands when they desire to give something essential or aspire to offer something truly valuable to others. One can own an entire library of sacred books and still not have integrated a single truth into one’s being. One can know all the sutras and mantras by heart and still not have transformed a single fault. One can speak eloquently of compassion, presence, and awakening and still not have developed the slightest real capacity in these areas.

Then, realizing that he has nothing essential to give, a person arrives at the following realization: he decides to give himself. “Seeing that you have nothing, you try to give of yourself; trying to give of yourself, you see that you are nothing.” This passage marks an intensification of the existential and spiritual crisis. After discovering that our possessions are vain, we discover that our very being is insubstantial. In trying to give themselves, human beings confront their internal contradictions, inner instability, lack of unity and continuity that characterizes their ordinary state, and lack of fulfillment.

This experience corresponds exactly to what Gurdjieff called the “shock of awareness” of our true state. We discover that we are not a unified “I,” but rather a multitude of contradictory “I’s.” We realize that we lack a genuine will, possessing only fleeting desires. We acknowledge that we are not fully conscious, but rather, we are immersed in a state of sleep. We recognize that we do not truly exist in the strongest sense. How can we give ourselves if we do not exist in a unified and conscious way? How can we offer our presence if we are absent from ourselves? This discovery can lead to despair or, as the rest of the poem shows, to a genuine desire for transformation.

The desire to become and entering into true life

“Seeing that you are nothing, you desire to become. In desiring to become, you begin to live.” These last two propositions mark a decisive turning point: the moment when the destruction of illusions becomes creative rather than merely destructive, and when the relentless diagnosis of our condition opens up the possibility of transformation. Recognizing our own nothingness is not a nihilistic observation that leads to resignation or depression. Rather, it is a liberating vision that dissolves false identifications and enables the emergence of an authentic desire to become. This desire is to develop a true being and build an inner unity — the “real I” of which Gurdjieff speaks.

This desire to become is the driving force behind spiritual work—the energy that enables us to persevere in conscious efforts and accept the voluntary suffering inherent in any real transformation. It is no longer the desire to possess, which characterized the state of spiritual death; rather, it is the desire to be, to fulfill oneself, and to realize the dormant potentialities of our essence. This desire defines true life: “in desiring to become, you begin to live.” In its fullest sense, life begins with the aspiration to transform oneself, with commitment to the path of spiritual development, and with the start of work on oneself.

This final formulation reveals a paradoxical truth: we only truly begin to live when we recognize that we were dead, attain being when we accept that we were nothing, and desire authentically when we cease to believe that we possess anything. Spiritual life begins with dying to illusions, being born into awareness of our true condition, and awakening the desire for transformation, which marks our entry into the process of becoming truly human.

Encountering others as a revelation: the relational dimension of awakening

This text is so radical and dense that each of its parts would require a lengthy discussion, given the depth and multiplicity of its implications. It reveals what may be the most essential yet neglected teaching in contemporary spiritual approaches. Daumal describes the discovery that occurs when we encounter another person in the context of a relationship within the intersubjective space where our desire to give something essential manifests itself.

When René Daumal realizes that he has nothing of value to offer the other person and that he is not sufficiently developed or accomplished to be worthy of this essential gift, he understands the significance of this encounter. This relational dimension of spiritual awakening deserves our attention as it contrasts sharply with popular spiritual quest imagery of withdrawal from the world, meditative isolation, and escape from complex or distracting human relationships.

Daumal tells us that it is precisely in the encounter with the other, in the desire to transmit, and in the aspiration to help someone else on their path that our true state is revealed. The other person becomes a merciless yet liberating mirror and a catalyst that precipitates a beneficial crisis of awareness. As long as we remain alone with our practices, meditations, and spiritual readings, we can maintain the illusion of progress, construct a flattering image of our development, and identify with our experiences and intellectual understandings.

As soon as we decide to help others by accompanying them in their transformation and offering them something that can truly awaken them, rather than giving them superficial advice or passing on bookish knowledge, we are confronted with the crucial question: What do I have to give? Who am I to claim that I can guide someone else? What transformation have I actually accomplished within myself? Confronting others with the desire to give is therefore a decisive test that reveals our true level of being, not our apparent level of knowledge or practice.

Gurdjieff emphasized the importance of group work, considering that the friction, relational difficulties, projections, and resistances that emerge in a collective context are irreplaceable material for personal growth. We cannot truly know ourselves in isolation because our defense mechanisms, identifications, and illusions only manifest fully in relationships. Others force us to step outside our comfortable mental constructs and confront our reality through their mere presence, reactions, and needs.

Resonances with universal spiritual traditions

The mapping of awakening proposed by Daumal in his poem is reflected in many spiritual traditions, attesting to its universal truth rather than its literary originality. In Buddhism, the path begins with the noble truth of suffering (dukkha), corresponding to Daumal’s recognition of spiritual death. It continues with identifying the cause of this suffering as attachment and grasping. Daumal calls this “believing oneself to possess.” Buddhist renunciation (nekkhamma) resonates with the realization that “we have nothing,” and the practice of generous giving (dāna) reflects the attempt to give, which reveals our emptiness.

In the Christian mystical tradition, we find the same structure in Meister Eckhart’s teachings on absolute detachment and spiritual poverty. “As long as man still has within him the desire to fulfill God’s most cherished will, that man does not have the poverty we are talking about,” he writes. This indicates that even spiritual desire must be transcended to attain pure receptivity, where God can be born in the soul. This radical poverty corresponds to Daumal’s “seeing that one is nothing,” and the birth of God in the soul corresponds to the desire to become, which brings one into true life.

In Sufism, this progression is expressed through the stations (maqamat) and states (ahwal) of the spiritual path. It begins with conversion (tawba) and rejection of the material world (zuhd) and progresses toward the annihilation of the self (fana) and subsistence in God (baqa). “Seeing that one is nothing” corresponds to fana, the dissolution of the ego that precedes the emergence of the true being unified with the Real.

The convergence of the great spiritual traditions on this fundamental structure of the path—the recognition of the state of sleep or spiritual death, the dissolution of illusions and identifications, the death of the ego, and the rebirth of authentic being—confirms that Daumal is describing an experiential reality accessible to anyone who engages in the work of inner transformation, rather than inventing an abstract theory.

Implications for the contemporary spiritual quest

In today’s world, which is marked by a proliferation of often-superficial spiritual offerings, the commercialization of wisdom as a consumer product, and the confusion of psychological well-being with spiritual transformation, Daumal’s poem serves as a much-needed reminder of the demands and radicalism inherent in any authentic spiritual path. Our era loves easy promises, quick techniques, and spectacular experiences that don’t require us to question our way of life or our psychological makeup.

The personal development market offers thousands of methods to “improve” our lives, increase our performance, and optimize our well-being. But how many of these approaches truly address the question of being? How many invite us to recognize our spiritual death, our lack of essential qualities, and our emptiness in our ordinary state? Most contemporary approaches, on the contrary, reinforce the ego by promising more control, power, success, and happiness. Thus, they add additional layers of illusion rather than dissolving them.

Daumal’s poem reminds us that authentic spiritual transformation requires to go through the crisis of recognizing our true state and destroying illusions. This process may seem negative, but it is the necessary condition for reconstruction on solid foundations. The poem invites us to distinguish between having and being, possession and essence, and accumulation and transformation. He warns us against the pitfalls of spiritual possession, where we collect experiences, teachings, powers, and initiations without ever truly transforming ourselves.

He also emphasizes the importance of authentic desire and the aspiration to become, which can only emerge after false desires oriented toward possession are dissolved. This desire for transformation is a precious gift—a grace that cannot be commanded, but rather arises from the encounter between ruthless lucidity about our current state and the intuition that another way of being is possible. Cultivating this desire and protecting it from the countless distractions of contemporary life—giving it priority over all other desires—is a considerable spiritual task in itself.

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Towards a concrete practice of awakening

How can we translate the teachings of this poem into concrete actions? How can we transition from an intellectual understanding to a lived application in our daily lives? Here are a few ideas inspired by Daumal’s text and the Gurdjieffian teachings from which it stems.

First, cultivate the ability to observe yourself without judgment or justification. Look at your internal mechanisms—thoughts, emotions, sensations, and reactions—with the same objectivity as a naturalist observing natural phenomena. This observation gradually reveals our lack of unity, our mechanical functioning, and our multiple identifications. Thus, it creates the conditions for the awareness Daumal speaks of.

Practice self-remembering in ordinary situations, which is the division of attention that allows us to be aware of what we are doing and the fact that we are doing it, the object and the subject, and the outside world and our inner presence simultaneously. This practice gradually develops continuous self-awareness, which constitutes the beginning of inner unity.

Regularly examine your possessions—material, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual—and ask yourself, “What do I believe I possess?” How do these possessions define my identity? What would happen if I lost them? This investigation reveals the identifications that keep us in a state of spiritual death and opens up the possibility of true detachment.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, engage in relationships with others with the intention of giving something essential—not to satisfy your ego or to feel useful, but as a genuine act of spiritual generosity. It is through this commitment to relationships that our limitations and illusions will be revealed and the authentic desire for transformation will emerge.

René Daumal’s poem does not offer easy consolation. Rather, it provides a rigorous map of the spiritual territory, tracing the path that leads from death to true life. We must follow it with courage and perseverance, knowing that “in desiring to become, we begin to live.”

© 2026 - Dialogues of the New World — Jérôme Nathanaël

To go further

Do you see, in our time, a spiritual or cultural heritage that remains active, for better, for worse, or in some ambiguous fashion? Share your reading in the comments to spark discussion.

And if you wish to share more broadly your reflection on the heritages that shape us, send me a contribution of roughly one page for the Waymakers section. It will be published under your initials, a pseudonym, or anonymously, as you prefer. Other readers will be able to respond and dialogue with you.

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The Eternal Present · Words of Life · 27 min
To read the great spiritual words as living sources.

Introduction: the contemporary reader’s malaise

We live in an era saturated with texts. Never before has humanity had such immediate and massive access to writings from all times and all traditions. Yet never, perhaps, has it been so incapable of truly reading—that is, of encountering a text in the depth of what it has to say, without immediately reducing it to what we want to find in it.

This difficulty reaches its paroxysm when it comes to what I call the Words of Life: those foundational ancient writings—Torah, Qur’an, Gospels, Vedas, Tao Te Ching, Pali Canon, but also recent ones—Revelation of Arès, Dialogues with the Angel—which carry within them a word that aspires to transform the one who approaches them. For these texts don’t merely transmit information; they interrogate our existence, they call us to transform ourselves, they place us before ethical and spiritual choices that engage our entire life.

Yet, precisely because they touch the most intimate part of ourselves, we almost never truly read them. We believe we’re reading the Torah, the Qur’an, or the Gospels, when in fact we’re merely projecting onto them our familial conditionings, our inherited fears, our beliefs imposed since childhood, our undigested revolts, our needs for security or rebellion. Each reading then becomes a mechanical reading, governed by unconscious automatisms, fragmented by the plurality of contradictory “I’s” that succeed one another in us without coherence. And the text, instead of interrogating us, transforms itself into a simple mirror of our projections—a mirror that reassures or frightens us, but never truly encounters us.

How do we escape this impasse? How do we learn to read truly, so that the text can unfold its own word without being immediately domesticated by our conditionings? How do we avoid the twin pitfalls—the naïveté that accepts everything without critical distance, and the cynicism that rejects everything while claiming to demystify? How do we practice a free reading, neither submitted to the external authority of an institution or dogma, nor delivered to the relativism that dissolves all meaning?

These are the questions I would like to try to answer here, drawing on the hermeneutical treasures of several traditions—Paul Ricœur’s philosophical hermeneutics, Talmudic hermeneutics as deployed by Marc-Alain Ouaknin, and the teachings of Krishnamurti and Gurdjieff on consciousness and conditioning. Together, these approaches outline the contours of a hermeneutics of freedom: a way of reading that honestly recognizes our limitations, refuses all dogmatic closure of meaning, and places itself in the service of a real transformation of being.

I. Recognizing conditioning: where I come to the text from

The invisible threshold: we never arrive alone

Before even opening a sacred text, I must recognize an uncomfortable truth: I never arrive alone to reading. I am accompanied by silent generations, by unavowed prohibitions, by undigested hopes, by sedimented collective wounds. My reading is never virgin; it arrives loaded with religious or anti-religious heredity, with words heard in childhood, with inherited fears, with hopes transmitted through imitation.

Krishnamurti starts from an implacable diagnosis: the human being is integrally conditioned. This conditioning is not partial—some “bad habits” that could be corrected by an effort of will. It is total, and touches all dimensions of our existence: our biology (instincts, bodily reactions), our family history (parental models, inherited traumas), our culture (language, values, norms), our religion (imposed beliefs, images of God, fears of sin), our ideologies (political systems, class belongings, national identities).

As Krishnamurti affirms: “The mind is therefore conditioned in its entirety; there is no part of the mind that is not conditioned.” This means there exists no “free zone” from which one could objectively observe other conditionings. We are entirely caught in the net.

The plurality of “I’s”: who is reading at this instant?

Gurdjieff introduces a psychology radically different from classical psychology: “This ‘I’ does not exist, or rather there are hundreds, thousands of little ‘I’s’ in each of us.” We believe we are “one.” We say “I think,” “I want,” “I believe.” But this unity is an illusion. In reality, we are a chaotic multiplicity of contradictory “I’s” that succeed one another without coherence: the intellectual “I” that reads a philosophical text, the emotional “I” that seeks consolation in a psalm, the fearful “I” that seeks security in a dogma, the rebellious “I” that rejects all religious authority, the sentimental “I” that is moved by a prayer, the cynical “I” that demystifies everything.

These “I’s” don’t know each other. Each pretends to be “I,” each pretends to speak in the name of the person’s totality. But in reality, they succeed one another mechanically, governed by automatic associations, habits, conditioned reactions.

This fragmentation has direct hermeneutical consequences: depending on which “I” dominates at the moment of reading, the same text will be understood differently. Monday morning, dominated by the “intellectual I,” I read a verse as an abstract ethical principle. Tuesday evening, after a dispute, dominated by the “wounded emotional I,” I interpret it as a condemnation of those who hurt me. Wednesday, in a depressive state, I understand it as a personal reproach. Thursday, after a calming meditation, it becomes a call to spiritual transformation. None of these “I’s” remember what the other understood. Each believes its reading is “the true one.”

The three disconnected brains

Gurdjieff specifies this fragmentation by distinguishing three “centers” or “brains”: the intellectual center (thought, analysis, logic), the emotional center (feelings, desires, affective attractions and repulsions), and the motor center (the body, physical habits, rituals, automatic gestures). In the ordinary person, these three centers function in a disconnected manner.

When I read a sacred text, my intellectual center can understand the literal meaning, analyze the structure, spot contradictions. My emotional center can be moved, overwhelmed, inspired—or on the contrary frightened, revolted. My motor center can mechanically repeat ritual gestures (crossing oneself, prostrating) without intelligence or emotion truly participating. This disconnection produces partial and distorted readings: I can “understand” an teaching intellectually without feeling it emotionally, and thus without it transforming my life. Or I can be moved without understanding, and fall into sentimentalism. Or I can practice a motor ritual without either intellectual or emotional engagement.

Concrete examples: how conditioning filters reading

A Jew reads the Torah. But is it his Orthodox grandfather reading in him? Is it the Shoah filtering his understanding? Is it the rebellion against family traditionalism already structuring his hermeneutics?

A Christian woman reads the Gospel. But is it the fear of original sin imposed by her mother that orients her reading? Is it her conscious feminism that makes her waver on certain Pauline verses?

A Muslim reads the Qur’an. But does he carry his father’s Arab nationalism, the fear of infidels taught by the mosque, or the sincere desire for social justice?

In all these cases, the authority of the text becomes a pretext to legitimize what the conditioning has already decided. It’s not a morally “bad reading”; it’s a mechanical reading, governed by invisible automatisms.

The preliminary task: to observe without judging

Faced with this diagnosis, two attitudes are possible—and both are traps. The first consists of denying the conditioning, pretending one can “read objectively” or “simply follow what the text says.” This naïveté is a form of blindness. The second consists of despairing: “If I’m entirely conditioned, how could I ever truly read?” This despair is a form of resignation.

Krishnamurti proposes a different path: observation without the observer. Normally, when we “observe” something (in us or outside us), there is an observer (the “I” that looks), an observed (what is looked at), and a distance between the two. This distance immediately creates a duality: the observer judges, compares, evaluates, rejects or accepts what it observes. And this observer itself is the product of conditioning.

Observation without the observer consists of observing conditioning without judgment, without seeking to suppress it, correct it, flee it. Of seeing how the observer itself (the “I” that claims to observe) is part of the observed conditioning. Of remaining in this observation without seeking a solution, without wanting to transform what is seen. Krishnamurti affirms that if the observation is total, the conditioning dissolves by itself. Not by will, not by effort, but by the simple clarity of vision.

Gurdjieff, for his part, proposes self-remembering: being present simultaneously to oneself and to what one is doing. It’s a state where I see what I’m doing (for example, reading a text), I see myself doing it, I see which “I” dominates at this moment, I see how my intellectual, emotional or motor center reacts. This self-consciousness is not natural. It comes in flashes, briefly, then disappears. But when it’s present, it creates a space of freedom: I’m no longer identified with my reaction, so I can see it for what it is (a conditioned mechanical reaction), and let the text resonate differently.

II. Deconstructing historical layers: the specific problem of ancient texts

The hermeneutical palimpsest

Ancient foundational texts—Torah, Qur’an, Gospels, Vedas—carry upon them hermeneutical strata accumulated over centuries. Each generation has commented, interpreted, used these texts for its own needs. These interpretations have sedimented like geological layers: rabbinical, patristic, juridical commentaries; theological dogmatizations (Trinity, redemption, nature of Christ); political instrumentalizations (justification of wars, colonizations, dominations); pedagogical simplifications (catechisms, vulgarizations); sclerosis in rituals emptied of meaning.

The text I hold in my hands is never naked. It bears the scars of everything that’s been done with it. My first task is not to “understand” it immediately, but to become conscious of these accumulations, like removing the layers of an old painting to find the original layer—not through sterile archaeology, but through reverence for the force of what resists wear.

Concrete examples:

• The Torah read through the medieval prism of the Zohar is not the Torah read through a 21st-century historical-critical contextualization.

• The Gospel of Matthew was “Christianized” (transformed into a doctrine of salvation) very differently from what the first Jewish communities of Jerusalem who composed it taught.

• The Qur’an has known periods of interpretative closure (the “gates of ijtihad closed” in the 10th century) and periods of openness. Each political era has bent it to its needs.

Recognizing these layers is not skepticism; it’s hermeneutical honesty. It’s seeing how truth has been transmitted and how it may have been locked in dead dogmas.

The school of suspicion: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud

Paul Ricœur forges the concept of the “school of suspicion“ by bringing together three thinkers who all three practiced a hermeneutics of demystification. Marx suspects that consciousness is determined by economic infrastructures. Nietzsche suspects that truth, morality and religion hide the will to power and resentment. Freud suspects that the conscious ego is governed by repressed unconscious forces.

For Ricœur, this hermeneutics of suspicion is necessary but insufficient. It practices the deconstruction of illusions—but it cannot stop there without falling into nihilism. For if all meaning is only illusion to be demystified, then reading becomes impossible: there’s nothing left to encounter in the text.

The creative dialectic: suspicion and restoration

Ricœur therefore introduces a creative tension between two opposed but complementary hermeneutical orientations:

The hermeneutics of suspicion—the “will to suspect”: it demystifies the illusions of consciousness, practices an archaeology of meaning (return to hidden origins: unconscious, economy, will to power), aims to unveil what is masked, repressed, distorted.

The hermeneutics of restoration—the “will to listen”: it restores the full meaning of symbols, myths, foundational texts, practices a teleology of meaning (orientation toward a promise, a vocation, a call), aims to welcome what gives itself in the symbol, the text, the word.

This dialectic is formulated in the famous axiom: “The symbol gives rise to thought.” The symbol is neither an enigma to decrypt (hermeneutics of suspicion alone), nor a transparent evidence (first naïveté), but a donation of meaning that calls for a creative interpretation.

Toward the second naïveté

One of Ricœur’s most important concepts is that of “second naïveté” or “post-critical naïveté.” It’s not a naive return to first belief, as if critique had never taken place. It’s a dialectical movement in three stages:

1. First naïveté: immediate belief, spontaneous adherence to religious symbols, myths, sacred texts.

2. Critique: passage through suspicion (Marx, Nietzsche, Freud), deconstruction, structural explanation, demystification.

3. Second naïveté: a mediated belief, passed through the sieve of critique, but which rediscovers the capacity to listen and welcome meaning without being naive in the first degree.

As Ricœur says: “In and through critique, tend toward a second naïveté.” This formula summarizes the entire orientation of his hermeneutics: one must cross the desert of suspicion to rediscover, on the other side, a living and responsible relationship to symbols and foundational texts.

Honest hermeneutics is not the flight from presuppositions, but their courageous clarification. It’s about learning to dialogue with the text knowing that I don’t arrive virgin, but refusing to let my approach violate or impoverish it. It’s a discipline: the one that consists of maintaining a creative tension between trust (the text has something to say to me) and critique (the text must not be a mirror of my projections alone).

III. Jewish hermeneutics: a rampart against dogmatics

“Elu ve-elu divrei Elohim hayyim”: Both are words of the Living God

At the heart of Jewish hermeneutics lies a principle that perhaps constitutes one of the most revolutionary affirmations in the history of spiritual thought: “Elu ve-elu divrei Elohim hayyim”—”The words of some and the words of others are words of the Living God.”

This affirmation emerges in the Talmud (Eruvin 13b) after three years of disputes between the School of Hillel and the School of Shammai, two rabbinical academies that opposed each other on almost all halakhic (legal) questions. A heavenly voice (bat kol) intervenes to decide: both are right.

This formula must be understood in a conditional form: “If there are words of some AND words of others, then these are words of the Living God.” In other words: plurality itself is the condition of living truth. It’s not despite the contradiction that the two positions are true; it’s because of their dialectical coexistence that they manifest the divine word.

This implies a radically different conception of truth: it’s not monolithic (one single correct answer), but polyphonic (several legitimate answers in creative tension).

The mahloket: controversy as sacred principle

The mahloket (מחלוקת) is controversy, hermeneutical dispute between masters. But it’s not an accident, a dysfunction that should be resolved. It’s the very heart of the Talmud, its normal mode of functioning.

As a commentary specifies: “Controversy becomes an integral part of the production of law and constitutes the testimony of its vitality.” It’s no longer an exceptional case, but the normal mode of truth’s appearance.

Fundamental characteristic: no third term comes to suppress the contradiction. In Hegelian dialectic, thesis and antithesis are surpassed in a synthesis. In the Talmud, there is never any synthesis. The two positions remain, alive, unresolved, in permanent tension.

As a commentator formulates it: “Between two masters who discuss, there is a void. The mahloqet proceeds from empty space, which is the original place of all questions.” This “void” is not a lack; it’s the space of hermeneutical freedom, the opening that prevents dogmatic closure.

A remarkable commentary breaks down the word mahloket into M-hlq-t: between the two letters of the word “death” (met = מת), duality (hlq) interposes itself and prevents death from constituting itself. Controversy prevents the death of thought. When a thought freezes into a single doctrine, it becomes “thought thought” (dead). The mahloket maintains “thinking thought” (alive).

Contrast with Christianity: councils and dogmas

Christianity, from its first centuries, took a diametrically opposed path. Faced with the plurality of interpretations on the nature of Christ, the Trinity, redemption, the Church convened ecumenical councils whose function was to definitively settle theological questions.

Each council produces a creed (symbol of faith) that all Christians must accept under pain of being declared heretics. This clear boundary between orthodoxy (right doctrine) and heresy (false doctrine) is accompanied by sanctions: excommunication, persecution, burnings, wars of religion.

In Talmudic Judaism, such a situation would have given rise to a mahloket: the two positions would have been recorded in the Talmud, debated, and neither would have been anathematized.

Marc-Alain Ouaknin: “Reading in bursts”

Marc-Alain Ouaknin, a french philosopher and rabbi, shows that Talmudic hermeneutics anticipates, enriches and surpasses modern philosophical hermeneutics. For Ouaknin, the Talmud is not merely a religious text; it’s a living hermeneutical practice, a model of reading that liberates meaning instead of freezing it.

The title of his major work, Lire aux éclats (1989), is programmatic. “Reading in bursts” (lire aux éclats) means several things at once: reading in a fragmented, burst manner (refusing linear and totalizing reading); reading until meaning bursts (pushing interpretation until significations multiply, disperse, open infinitely); reading in joy (bursts of laughter, amazement—Talmudic reading is erotic, playful, alive, not a pious chore).

Ouaknin shows that the Talmud structurally calls its readers to complete it. The Talmudic text is holed, enigmatic, contradictory by design. It resists immediate comprehension, not through obscurantism, but to arouse hermeneutical desire.

A Talmudic image that Ouaknin frequently uses: “How does the infinite that becomes text in the finitude of the text accept this finitude? A text—the Torah—is like God who is imprisoned in the finitude of a text.” And the answer is very important because it explains why there’s a sort of obsession with study: “The masters say that studying, giving infinite meaning, is liberating God from the finitude in which He accepted to enclose Himself to speak to men.”

This hermeneutics of reading is radical: to interpret is to liberate God. The human is responsible for God, responsible for His freedom. This joins Ricœur’s intuition according to which the text is not a dead object, but a living word that awaits being actualized in reading.

The refusal of all authority: Krishnamurti

Krishnamurti formulates in 1929 his most famous declaration: “Truth is a pathless land.” This affirmation has radical hermeneutical consequences. This means that no religious organization can lead to Truth, no creed or dogma can enclose Truth in a formula, no priest or guru (including Krishnamurti himself) can pose as an obligatory intermediary between man and Truth, no ritual or psychological technique can “produce” Truth.

And, by extension: no sacred text can be read as an “authority” to which one submits. This doesn’t mean sacred texts are “false” or “useless.” It means they can only be truly read if one refuses to give them an external authority that would short-circuit our direct observation of reality.

IV. Specificity of recent Texts: welcoming direct polysemy

A fundamental difference

Recent texts—like the Revelation of Arès or the Dialogues with the Angel—pose a hermeneutical question different from that of ancient texts. Ancient texts require that one deconstruct the accumulated historical layers to rediscover the original voice. Recent texts, for their part, have not yet known this sedimentation. But this doesn’t make them “easier” to read. On the contrary: they present an infinity of coexisting significations right now, without the reassuring filter of established commentaries.

Dialogues with the angel: deliberate enigma

The Dialogues with the Angel, transmitted by Gitta Mallasz between 1943 and 1944 in occupied Hungary, are composed in a fragmentary, enigmatic, highly symbolic language. No doctrine to unfold, but resonances to let vibrate. Each sentence is itself a question addressed to the reader.

Take this example: “The Angel is my vivifying half and I am his vivified half.” This sentence refuses to be clarified. It plays on androgyny (fusion of sexes), duality (two beings who form only one), inverted hierarchy (who vivifies whom?), passivity-activity (vivifying/vivified), invisible-visible (the Angel = the invisible, me = the visible), consciousness-matter (one thinking, the other acting).

Gitta could have clarified, formulated a doctrine. She chose to leave the sentence in suspension, rich with its unresolved tensions. It’s a poetic and hermeneutical choice. This means that when one reads the Dialogues, one must not seek to resolve the ambiguities. One must settle into them, inhabit them as one inhabits a cathedral: complexity is the message, not an obstacle to overcome.

Revelation of Arès: architected ambiguities

The Revelation of Arès, transmitted by Michel Potay in 1974 and 1977, also presents deliberate ambiguities: who speaks? (Jesus? God? Mikal?) What meaning? (literal? symbolic? prophetic?) What call? (personal transformation? collective transformation? eschatology?)

These ambiguities are not “defects” to clarify, but riches to let resonate. The text possesses a poetic density independent of the explanations Potay may have given of it. And it’s precisely this openness that keeps it alive, not frozen in an orthodoxy.

“Reading in bursts”: each word as prism

Reading in bursts means recognizing that each word of a “sacred” text is a poetic crystal: it doesn’t possess one color, but a thousand. Depending on the angle by which I illuminate it—the angle of my present suffering, my intimate quest, my existential questions—the crystal will send back a different facet to me.

Take the word “Silence” in the opening of the Dialogues: “In the beginning was Silence.” What is this Silence? The absence of speech? The unexpressed fullness? The space of listening? Death? Gestation? Waiting? Eternity? None of these meanings is “wrong.” Each is legitimately inscribed in the word, waiting for the reader who will illuminate it through their own story, their own quest.

This is not a negative indeterminacy; it’s the very richness of poetic language. It’s also why the same text can speak to me differently each time I reread it—not because it changes, but because I change. And at each new angle of my existence, the crystal offers me a new resonance.

Three levels of resonance

Reading at three levels means that I never reduce the text to a single “correct interpretation.”

Level 1: Lexical-Poetic
The word in itself, its multiple vibrations, independently of my history. “Silence” vibrates with the concepts of totality, potentiality, eternity, death, gestation. These vibrations exist before I encounter them.

Level 2: Autobiographical-Intimate
What the word awakens in me on my personal path at this moment. If I’m going through an existential crisis, “Silence” may call to me as an appeal to recollection. If I’m fragmented by the noises of the world, “Silence” speaks to me of recentering. If I’m going through mourning, “Silence” may resonate as death or transformation. None of these readings is “wrong”—they’re all true for me, at this moment.

Level 3: Archetypal-Universal
What the text teaches about the human condition beyond ages. How Life emerges from primordial Silence = eternal question about origin. How the human can become “half of the Angel” = question about human participation in the divine.

These three readings don’t oppose each other; they mutually illuminate. That’s why, when I reread the text in six months, with a heart transformed by life, other resonances emerge: the text remains the same, but I have changed.

Hermeneutical synchronicity

One of the marvels of poetic reading of these contemporary texts is this faculty of “spontaneous consonance“ with ancient traditions. Without scholarly study, without “cultural references,” simply by reading with the heart, I discover myself in dialogue with Moses, Buddha, Rūmī, Francis of Assisi. It’s not because I’m “learned”: it’s because, beyond diverse forms, an Eternal Wisdom expresses itself.

A recent Word of Life, precisely because it remains open and non-dogmatic, lets this Wisdom circulate freely, crossing centuries and traditions like water finds its way in the ground. That’s why one can read the Dialogues with the Angel by “seeking echoes”—not as erudition, but as recognition: “Ah, this is what the ancients meant!”

V. Silence as pedagogy: learning to listen before speaking

Silence is not absence

We live in a world of incessant speech, reactivity, prefabricated responses. We have lost contemplative listening. Silence is not absence; it’s active fullness. It’s the space from which speech surges. It’s the implicit horizon without which each word falls dead.

Poetic reading of a foundational text requires the learning of silence—not as flight, but as the capacity to hold open a space in which the ancient or contemporary Word can resonate without being immediately domesticated. This silence is a discipline: it’s refusing mental reactivity, accepting the discomfort of waiting, letting oneself be questioned rather than seeking immediately to interpret. In this silence, the text begins to speak with its own voice, freed from my projections.

Method inspired by Lectio Divina

The practice of Lectio Divina (reading a short passage several times in silence) is not exotic or exclusively Christian. It’s a model of what it means to encounter a text.

First reading: welcome without analysis. Let the text resonate. “What does the text say?” not “What should I think of it?”

Silence of 5-7 minutes: it’s long, it’s like an eternity for the modern mind. Here, conditioning emerges: impatience, need for answer, automatic interpretation, flight toward reassuring meaning.

Second reading: meditation. “What does the text say to me today, for my life, for my questions?” Here, personal resonance begins, without replacing the text with a projection.

Silence again: let the gap deepen between what I heard and what I understood.

Third reading: prayer or response. It’s I who speak now, in dialogue with the text, not as submission, but as reciprocity of engagement.

Final contemplation: remain in silence, beyond words.

VI. The non-dogmatic ethical demand

The text interrogates me

The Words of Life are not doctrines to believe. They pose an existential question: how will I live? What justice will I serve? What is my share of responsibility in this world?

Deuteronomy says it with radical sobriety: “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil... I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life, that you and your descendants may live.”

The Qur’an: “To each of you We have prescribed a law and a path. And if God had willed, He would have made you one community, but He wished to test you by what He has given you.”

The Gospel: “Love one another” is neither a codified morality nor sentimentality. It’s a demand that places me before my own resistance, my own conditioning of fear.

Reading the Words of Life is not an intellectual matter. It’s entering into a Covenant: accepting to be questioned by a demand that exceeds my capacities, that tears me from my habitual complacency, that makes me responsible before the other and before my own hidden essence. This demand doesn’t need to be wrapped in a dogma to be true. It suffices for me: it puts me to work, day after day, in a way that transforms my way of seeing and acting.

Responsibility without guilt

Authentic reading doesn’t end when I close the book. It continues in the way I live, in the choices I make, in the way I inhabit this demand without ever being able to completely satisfy it.

This liberates from dogmatism: I don’t have to believe an exact creed, but I must embody a concrete responsibility. And this embodiment will always be imperfect, always in question. It’s precisely this assumed imperfection that keeps me humble, that prevents me from claiming to possess truth, that maintains me in the search and leaves me open to dialogue.

Conclusion: toward a sovereign and responsible reading

Truly reading a sacred text therefore perhaps requires a fourfold discipline.

With Ricœur, I learn to cross the desert of suspicion without losing the capacity for listening. I recognize that my presuppositions exist, I clarify them, I submit them to critique—but I refuse to stop at the cynicism that dissolves all meaning.

With Talmudic hermeneutics as Ouaknin deploys it, I accept that the text remains infinitely open, irreducible to a closed doctrine. I honor the mahloket, controversy as sacred principle. I recognize that “the words of some and the words of others are words of the Living God”—that plurality itself is the condition of living truth.

With Krishnamurti, I observe how my conditionings project onto the text their own fears and desires. I refuse to give the text an authority that would short-circuit my direct observation. I practice observation without the observer, this clarity of vision where conditioning dissolves by itself.

With Gurdjieff, I recognize that depending on which “I” reads at this instant, the text will say something different. I practice self-remembering, this presence to myself that unifies my reading and makes it coherent. I understand that truly reading requires preliminary work on being, not just an accumulation of knowledge.

These four approaches don’t oppose each other: they complement each other to form a hermeneutics of freedom, where reading is no longer just interpreting, but becoming capable of encountering.

This freedom is not that of arbitrariness (”everyone reads what they want”). It’s a responsible freedom: I’m free in my interpretations, but I must answer for their consequences. I’m free to question the text, but I must accept that it questions me in return. I’m free to refuse all external authority, but I must assume the ethical demand that emerges from dialogue with the text.

Neither dogmatism, nor relativism. Neither blind submission, nor cynical rejection. A sovereign and responsible reading that honors the dignity of the text as much as the dignity of the reader. A reading that recognizes that truth is not monolithic, but polyphonic. That it’s not possessed, but sought in dialogue. That it never freezes into dead doctrine, but always remains alive, open, in movement.

This is the reading I seek to practice. This is the reading I invite everyone to practice. Not as a technique to master, but as a way of inhabiting the world—with reverence, with demand, with humility, with joy.

For to truly read the Words of Life is to accept being transformed by them. It’s to consent that our life itself becomes a reading—an incarnated interpretation, imperfect, always in question, but faithful to the call that has been addressed to us.

© 2026 - Dialogues of the New World — Jérôme Nathanaël

To go further:

Paul Ricœur (1913-2005)

French philosopher of hermeneutics and personalism, who developed a thought articulating the hermeneutics of suspicion (Marx, Nietzsche, Freud) and the hermeneutics of restoration, aiming for a post-critical “second naïveté” capable of welcoming the full meaning of symbols.

Major works:

• De l’interprétation. Essai sur Freud (1965)

• Le Conflit des interprétations (1969)

• La Métaphore vive (1975)

• Temps et récit (3 volumes, 1983-1985)

• Soi-même comme un autre (1990)

Marc-Alain Ouaknin (1957-)

French philosopher and rabbi, specialist in the Talmud and Jewish thought, who renewed contemporary hermeneutics by showing that Talmudic reading anticipates and surpasses modern hermeneutics through its structural refusal of any dogmatic closure of meaning.

Major works:

• Lire aux éclats. Éloge de la caresse (1989)

• Le Livre brûlé. Philosophie du Talmud (1986)

• Concerto pour quatre consonnes sans voyelles. Au-delà du principe d’identité (1991)

• Méditations érotiques. Essai sur Emmanuel Levinas (1992)

• Bibliothérapie. Lire, c’est guérir (1994)

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986)

Indian philosopher and spiritual teacher who dissolved the Order of the Star in the East in 1929 to affirm that “Truth is a pathless land,” developing a radical thought on the total conditioning of the mind and observation without the observer as a path to liberation.

Major works:

• Freedom from the Known (1969)

• The Flight of the Eagle (1971)

• Commentaries on Living (1956-1960)

• The First and Last Freedom (1954)

• This Light in Oneself (posthumous, 1999)

Georges Gurdjieff (1866-1949)

Spiritual teacher of Armenian origin, founder of the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, who taught that the ordinary human being is a multiplicity of contradictory and mechanical “I’s,” and that only self-remembering can lead to a unified consciousness.

Major works:

• Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson (posthumous, 1950)

• Meetings with Remarkable Men (posthumous, 1963)

• Life Is Real Only Then, When “I Am” (posthumous, 1975)

• Views from the Real World (posthumous, 1973)

• In Search of the Miraculous (by P.D. Ouspensky, 1949)

Gitta Mallasz (1907-1992)

Hungarian graphic artist of Jewish origin, who transcribed between 1943 and 1944 (during the Nazi occupation of Hungary) a series of spiritual interviews with a voice she calls “the Angel,” constituting one of the most powerful mystical testimonies of the 20th century.

Major work:

• Talking with Angels (complete annotated edition, 1988 English / 1990 French integral edition)

• With Françoise Maupin, Les Dialogues tels que je les ai vécus (1984)

• With Roger Bret, Les Dialogues, ou l’enfant né sans parents (1986)

• With Dominique Raoul-Duval, Les Dialogues, ou le saut dans l’inconnu (1989)

• With Dominique Raoul-Duval, Petits Dialogues d’hier et d’aujourd’hui (1991)

Michel Potay (1929-2025)

French prophet, former Orthodox priest, who claims to have received in 1974 and 1977 (in Arès, France) a revelation he calls La Révélation d’Arès, calling for a radical ethical transformation of humanity through the return to penitence, love, and spiritual freedom.

Major works:

• The Revelation of Arès (1995)

• And what you shall have written 4 (1997)

• And what you shall have written 3 (1993)

• And what you shall have written 2 (1991)

• And what you shall have written 1 (1990)

To go further

What does this text make audible for you today? Leave a sentence, a resonance, a disagreement, or a glimpse of light in the comments, so that the word may continue to circulate.

And if you wish to share your reading of a spiritual word, send me a contribution of roughly one page for the Waymakers section. It will be published under your initials, a pseudonym, or anonymously, as you prefer. Other readers will be able to respond and dialogue with you.

New here? The Opening page introduces the author, the project, how to take part, contact details, and the agenda.

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The Eternal Present · Spiritual awakening · 9 min
To explore the concrete paths of inner transformation.

Have you ever heard, at the turn of a fleeting silence or during an intense emotion, that inner voice whispering in undertones that there exists within you a more luminous reality than the simple sequence of your days and daily routines?

This intuition, sometimes subtle, sometimes compelling, is that of your spiritual essence. It is the unique and precious seed that forms the very foundation of your real identity. But most often, social influence and the demands of adult life have progressively covered it with a veil of oblivion, leaving it undeveloped and rarely glimpsed behind the mask of your acquired personality.

Classical psychology and personal development generally consider human beings in three dimensions: the body, emotions, and intellect. While useful, this view remains incomplete. The great wisdom traditions invite us to consider the human being in their fullness. They reveal five dimensions, two of which are latent and yearning to be awakened. This awakening can radically transform our experience of life and allow us to access a vaster reality.

A spiritual map of the human being

Our personality has been built through educational and cultural mimicry in reaction to the family, social, and transgenerational universe in which we grow. It is expressed through three dimensions:

• the physical dimension encompasses the body, its needs, abilities, and limitations;

• the emotional dimension encompasses the vast register of our feelings, from joy to sadness and from love to fear;

• the intellectual dimension encompasses thought, logic, and the capacity for analysis and conceptualization.

Beyond these three dimensions accessible to the personality, we can, by developing our intimate essence, awaken two higher spheres. I qualify them as such because they touch on the spiritual level of life and constitute the true driving force of our authentic human fulfillment.

The higher emotional dimension is the seat of unconditional love. It allows us to love without expectation or condition and to welcome the other in his or her totality, beyond any preference or rejection.

The higher intellectual dimension is the seat of authentic wisdom. It transcends duality, embraces the unity of life, and connects the individual to universal intelligence.

Our highest destiny is to awaken these two latent functions, thereby revealing the unique essence we have always carried within us and which forms the basis of our dignity and human uniqueness.

The mechanical sleep of ordinary consciousness

We can live an entire existence without truly understanding what causes in us so many recurring difficulties and unexplained suffering because we remain in total ignorance of our real functioning.

Our personality exerts crushing dominance over our true essence. It struggles with the perpetual agitation of the multiple selves that comprise us and take turns at the helm depending on the circumstances. It suffers from the disharmonious workings of our physical and instinctive, emotional, and mental dimensions, which function without coordination or intelligent hierarchy.

This inner anarchy is explained by the fact that our essence, which alone can allow us to access consciousness and self-control, has remained underdeveloped, to the benefit of a personality that has become hypertrophied due to the need to have an interface with the outside world. But as its name, from the Latin persona meaning mask, indicates so aptly, its accelerated development has masked our essence to the point that we have often lost awareness of its very existence.

A salvific break and the call of the essence

But one day, a strong, unexpected event occurs that shatters our most ingrained habits and solid reference points. Whether it is a painful ordeal, a life-changing encounter, or an existential crisis, this is precisely the opportunity to respond to that little inner voice of the essence that, perhaps since forever, urges us to truly be, to exist beyond social masks and conventional roles.

In this sudden breach opened by life—sometimes at the cost of great suffering—it then becomes possible to undertake this true, patient work on oneself. This arduous awakening process requires total consistency and honesty, but it opens the door to true life.

This demanding process necessarily begins by developing a particular ability: that of observing oneself while continuing to live everyday life, without withdrawing from the world but remaining present in it in a new way: conscious and deliberately attentive to what is at play within us.

Discovering how we really function

By gradually strengthening our ability to observe ourselves and be present to ourselves, not constantly scattered, captured by the outside world, we will begin to glimpse how we really function. However, this requires doing so without complacency but without judgment and with the utmost sincerity toward ourselves.

As we do so, we will gradually cease to identify exclusively with our physical appearance, changing emotions, and proliferating thoughts. This gradual dis-identification, far from being a negation or a rejection of these dimensions, is rather a liberation. We finally recognize these vehicles for what they are: precious but temporary instruments and not our essential being.

Our authentic and strong desire to reveal our spiritual essence in all its original splendor and to put our physical, emotional, and mental dimensions at its service rather than letting them govern us anarchically then begins to grow stronger. This marks the beginning of a fundamental inner reorganization where the natural hierarchy of being is gradually restored.

The progressive awakening of our higher dimensions

The higher emotional and intellectual dimensions can then begin to awaken slowly, as the work of consciousness and presence deepens and as we begin to experience the living reality of our spiritual essence, which regains its rightful place at the heart of our existence.

This awakening allows us to gradually escape the exhausting alternation of opposites and contradictions that characterizes ordinary consciousness: the perpetual swing between attraction and repulsion, agreement and disagreement, and pleasure and displeasure. Within oneself, a still and serene space establishes itself, strong with quiet lucidity, and begins to sustain itself, even amidst difficulties.

This space allows us to not only understand intellectually but also feel in our entire being the fundamental unity of the world and the invisible yet real connection between all things—this universal fabric that links every being, event, and manifestation of life in a cosmic symphony of dizzying beauty.

It is in this inner temple, sheltered from noise, agitation, anger, and fear, that the fragrance of gratitude can rise like pure smoke, and that the song of the soul responding to its Creator can blossom.

Unconditional love as fulfillment

In this new unified perception, we begin to perceive the other as our true fellow, beyond superficial differences, cultural affiliations, or personal preferences. Naturally, without effort or artifice, the capacity to discover and embody unconditional love begins to grow within one. This love depends neither on the qualities of the other, nor on his or her actions, nor on his or her conformity to our expectations. It springs spontaneously from the recognition of our common humanity and our shared participation in the sacred mystery of existence.

It is in this unconditional and unreserved love that the promise, inscribed in our essence from the origin, is fulfilled, thereby revealing the highest dimension of our spiritual nature and finally allowing us to fully live what we are called to be.

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The urgency of an inner awakening

In light of the current state of our world, marked by a growing mechanization of existences and a despair that progressively wins over hearts and minds, undertaking this work on oneself is not merely a spiritual luxury reserved for a few isolated seekers, but rather a vital necessity for humanity as a whole.

Prisoners of a withering materialism and an automatic way of functioning that alienates human beings from their deepest nature, our contemporary societies call out with all their silent sufferings for a return to the essential: an authentic reconnection with this true and intimate essence that slumbers within each of us.

This divine part that dwells in our most secret being—this sacred spark that spiritual traditions from all horizons have recognized and honored under a thousand different names—has never ceased waiting patiently for us to turn to it.

Every loving being illuminates the world

Our mechanized world urgently needs to hear its luminous song again—that forgotten melody that alone can guide our civilization toward profound re-spiritualization and restore the meaning it so cruelly lacks. Each individual who embarks on this inner journey and dares to confront their mechanisms to awaken their essence becomes a beacon of light in the darkness of collective ignorance. They are a living witness that another way of being in the world remains possible.

The time for hesitation or indefinite postponement of what constitutes, fundamentally, our most authentic vocation and sacred responsibility is over. It is now, in the present moment of your life, that this work must begin or continue, for it is from the sum of these individual awakenings that the collective surge our era so desperately needs to rediscover the path to its lost dignity and true fulfillment may arise.

Tomorrow, let us bring forth a new dawn for humanity!

© 2026 - Dialogues of the New World — Jérôme Nathanaël

To go further

Have you encountered a practice, a discipline, an exercise, or an obstacle that has truly transformed you? Share your testimony in the comments — it will enrich every reader.

And if you wish to express yourself on a subject of spiritual awakening, send me a contribution of roughly one page for the Waymakers section. It will be published under your initials, a pseudonym, or anonymously, as you prefer. Other readers will be able to respond and dialogue with you.

New here? The Opening page introduces the author, the project, how to take part, contact details, and the agenda.

Article disponible en français
The Eternal Present · Heritages · 30 min
To reread the traditions in order to understand what they have shaped and what they can still transmit.

Dedicated to the memory of Dan Elkayam, a 27-year-old Frenchman, and the other 15 Jewish people, including a 10-year-old girl, who were murdered on January 14, 2025, on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, simply because they were Jewish. They were celebrating the first night of Hanukkah when the attack occurred.

Hanukkah: more than a holiday, a philosophical tension

Historically, Hanukkah commemorates the Maccabees’ victory over the Seleucid occupiers in the 2nd century BCE and the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem. The rabbinic tradition superimposed the miraculous story of a single vial of pure oil that kept the Temple Menorah burning for eight days, the time needed to produce new oil according to ritual standards, on this military and political event.

To commemorate the light that refused to go out, Jewish families light the candles of the Hanukkah menorah every evening for eight days. This illuminates the winter night and bears witness to their faith in a transcendent dimension beyond the limitations of our human condition.

Beyond the narrative of warriors and miracles, Hanukkah embodies a significant philosophical tension: the encounter between “Athens” and “Jerusalem” — two approaches to life, one based on reason and intellectual inquiry and the other on revelation and spiritual fidelity to a covenant. This duality leads us to reflect on the enigmatic blessing Noah gave his three sons, Shem, Japheth, and Ham, as they left the Ark and set out into the renewed world after the Flood.

Beyond its Jewish roots, let us restore this holiday’s light for each of us. This is possible if we are willing to enrich ourselves spiritually through meaningful human experiences. Let us rekindle this universal spark and accept the invitation to draw on ancient wisdom to illuminate our present.

First, we will examine the story of the Maccabees and the deeper meaning of Antiochus’s four prohibitions. Then, we will explore the philosophical tension between Athens and Jerusalem. Finally, we will discover how Noah’s blessing of his three sons, Shem, Japheth, and Ham, sheds light on our contemporary condition and offers a prophetic key to reestablishing the balance of our civilizations.

Hanukkah: an investigation into a revolt

Before we expand our discussion to symbolism, let us first clarify the historical context. The Hanukkah story is not a fairy tale but an account of a significant geopolitical crisis coupled with an intra-Jewish civil war and a fierce struggle for cultural identity.

The setting is the Hellenistic stranglehold.

In the second century BCE, Judea was a buffer zone between two superpowers that had inherited Alexander the Great’s empire: the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids of Syria. Following a period of Ptolemaic tolerance, Judea fell under Seleucid control around 200 BCE.

Greek culture was the standard of “modern” civilization at the time. In Jerusalem, some of the priestly elite—the “Hellenizers”—adopted Greek customs, such as language, philosophy, and gymnastics, to integrate into the universalism of the time. This created a social and religious divide between the “progressive” urban elite, who were open to cultural compromise, and the rural population, who were resistant to Greek customs and remained faithful to the Torah.

The spark: the madness of Antiochus IV

The conflict erupted during the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–164 BCE). This authoritarian king, burdened by war debts to Rome, had his eye on the Temple treasury. Above all, he dreamed of unifying his diverse empire through forced Hellenization.

In Jerusalem, corruption plagued the High Priesthood. Jason and then Menelaus bought their positions from the king and introduced pagan customs. This culminated in the scandalous construction of a gymnasium where people practiced sports naked, just a stone’s throw from the Temple.

In 167 BCE, following a riot that he interpreted as a rebellion, Antiochus crossed a new threshold. A polytheist, he launched a religious persecution that was unprecedented in the ancient world. He transformed the Temple of Jerusalem into a sanctuary of Olympian Zeus, imposed the sacrifice of pigs there, and promulgated decrees that prohibited the pillars of Judaism—circumcision, the Sabbath, the study of the Torah, and the sanctification of the new month—on pain of death.

The Maccabean revolt (167–164 BCE)

Resistance came not from the city but from the hills. In Modiin, Mattityahu, an elderly priest and a Cohen from the Hasmonean family, refused to sacrifice to an idol. In a fit of holy anger, he killed an apostate Jew and the king’s officer before fleeing to the mountains with his five sons.

Upon Mattityahu’s death, his son Judah, known as ha-Maccabi (”the Hammer”), took the lead in the uprising. Outnumbered and outgunned, the rebels waged a highly effective guerrilla war against the heavy Seleucid phalanxes. They fought on two fronts: against the Greek occupiers and the Hellenized Jewish collaborators.

Victory and Dedication

In 164 BCE, Judah recaptured Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. On the 25th day of the month of Kislev, they purified the sanctuary, destroyed the desecrated altar, and consecrated a new one. This is the literal meaning of Hanukkah: “inauguration” or “dedication.”

According to the Second Book of Maccabees, a fascinating historical detail is that the reason the festival lasts eight days is not because of the oil. Rather, it is because the fighters, who were living in hiding in caves, had been unable to celebrate Sukkot, which also lasts eight days, two months earlier. The first Hanukkah was therefore a “make-up Sukkot” celebration in the middle of winter.

From war to miracle: the transformation of the narrative

This is where history gives way to spirituality.

Contemporary texts, such as the Books of Maccabees, glorify the military exploits and warrior zeal of Judah Maccabee without ever mentioning the oil. Six centuries later, however, the Talmud takes a dramatic turn. Downplaying the war, it focuses solely on a supernatural event:

Why is there silence about the military victory?

First, for political reasons. The Hasmonean dynasty, descended from the Maccabees, ended up betraying its ideals. They usurped the kingship, which was reserved for the Davidic line. They also accumulated priestly and royal powers illegitimately. They were cruel to the Sages. Flavius Josephus recounts in his Antiquities of the Jews that King Alexander Jannaeus had eight hundred of them crucified. The rabbis were therefore wary of this warrior memory, which had become a burden.

Second, for reasons of survival. After the bloody suppression of the Bar Kochba revolt against Rome in 135 CE, glorifying military nationalism would have been suicidal for the dispersed Jewish communities.

To “save” Hanukkah, the Sages disarmed it. They turned their gaze from the sword of men to the divine light. Thus, Hanukkah transformed from a celebration of national independence into a festival of spiritual survival—the triumph of a small, pure vial against the darkness of the world.

The four prohibitions: destroy the soul, not the body

For Hebrews faithful to tradition, the decrees of Antiochus IV Epiphanes represented not only political oppression and a restriction of religious freedom but also an attempt at ontological annihilation. Unlike other enemies of Israel, such as Haman in the Purim story, who sought to destroy bodies through physical genocide, the Greeks aimed to destroy the Jewish soul through cultural and spiritual genocide.

Let us examine precisely what these four prohibitions meant in the Jewish consciousness of the time and why they struck at the very heart of Hebrew identity.

Shabbat: God’s kingship over time

To the Hellenistic mindset, which was focused on efficiency, production, and outward appearances, the weekly rest of Shabbat seemed absurd and unproductive — almost a sign of idleness.

For Hebrew thought, however, it is the seal of creation. It attests that the world unfolded in six symbolic stages by a Creator who then chose to withdraw. This withdrawal leaves room for humans, the crowning glory of the sixth day. Humans are invited to perfect creation and cultivate and keep it, provided they do not confuse good and evil.

Shabbat is a time of clarity: a time to cease doing in order to remember why we do; a time to recognize that humans are not absolute masters of nature, but rather God’s stewards; a time, in the beautiful words of Abraham Heschel, to build a “sanctuary in time.”

Prohibiting Shabbat reduces the individual to the status of a slave to matter. It enslaves one to the blind cycle of production and denies transcendence, confining humans to a profane, linear, and purely economic time.

The sanctification of the month (Kiddush haHodesh): control of the calendar

The prohibition against sanctifying the new month (Kiddush HaHodesh) is less well-known, but it was strategically devastating. The Hebrew calendar, which is based on lunar cycles, depended on the direct testimony of individuals who witnessed the appearance of the new moon. This testimony was validated by the Sanhedrin and then communicated from person to person.

Therefore, Jewish time is not automatic; it is constructed each month through the word and testimony of men. It is no coincidence that the first commandment given to the Hebrews, even before the Exodus from Egypt, was to define the beginning of the month. Controlling one’s time and consciously aligning with the cosmic rhythm was a way to break free from the dual slavery of Egypt, both social and spiritual.

However, without this monthly proclamation, it was impossible to determine the dates of festivals, causing the entire ritual structure to collapse. By disrupting this mechanism, Antiochus sought to destroy sacred time. If the people no longer knew when Passover occurred, they could not celebrate their liberation. Symbolically, they would return to exile.

This prohibition was intended to desynchronize the Jews from their history and the divine will, plunging the community into chaos.

Circumcision (Brit Milah): the Covenant in the flesh

In Greek aesthetics, absolute perfection is a harmonious and natural human body. In the gymnasium, a temple of Hellenic culture, the cult of the unmarked, unaltered naked body is celebrated. Circumcision was seen as barbaric mutilation there.

For Hebrews, however, it is the indelible mark of the covenant inscribed in the flesh on the eighth day, well before consciousness awakens. It proclaims that nature is not an end in itself but rather something to be perfected in order to be sanctified. Humans are not born complete; they must “cut” away part of their raw nature to make room for the divine. Even sexuality is called upon to transcend the purely animal realm and become a sacred mission.

Prohibiting circumcision, the Brit Milah, meant wanting to break the unbroken chain since Abraham, who left Babel to follow one God. Antiochus’s goal was clear: to abolish transcendence and make Jews like any other people, subject only to the law of nature and orphaned from their covenant.

The study of the Torah: the breath of life

For Hebrews, the Torah is much more than a book. It is the living Word and the matrix upon which the world was built. Its study is the breath of the Jewish soul and the act that keeps the world in balance. While all traditions accord their founding texts a central place, here the Torah is perceived as an organic link between God, the people, and the cosmos.

By banning its study, the Seleucids intended to cut off the source of transmission and dry up the source of life. Kabbalah recalls this fundamental equation: “Israel, the Torah, and the Holy One, blessed be He, are one.” Breaking this link condemns Jewish identity to death.

A people that no longer reads its foundational texts forgets who they are within a generation. Therefore, the decree aimed to transform Judaism into harmless folklore—an empty shell without intelligence or spirit—destined to dissolve into Greek culture.

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Athens and Jerusalem: two relationships with the world

These four prohibitions implicitly draw a fundamental dividing line between two visions of humanity and the cosmos:

Athens: reason as measure

Athens celebrates autonomous reason, visible beauty, harmonious measure, and technical mastery of the world. According to Protagoras’ formula, man is the measure of all things. Perfection lies in the balance of forms, rational contemplation, and the fulfillment of nature as it presents itself. The Greek cosmos is an intelligible order (kosmos) governed by immutable laws that philosophy and science can grasp through intellect alone.

Jerusalem: unfinished creation

Jerusalem, on the other hand, proclaims the primacy of listening to the revealed Word and spiritual questioning at the heart of the Covenant. There, man is not measured, but rather, he responds. He is called, challenged, and required to choose between life, which is based on an ethic of sharing and love, and death, which is the consequence of refusing to participate in the sacredness of creation. Perfection is not immediately given in nature but must be achieved through creative obedience to the divine principles underlying the universe. The Hebrew world is not a closed kosmos but an open, unfinished creation striving toward its final redemption. Time is not cyclical, but rather, it moves toward fulfillment—a tikkun olam, or repair of the world.

The how and the why

Athens favors the visible, while Jerusalem favors the invisible. Athens venerates the natural body, while Jerusalem inscribes it in the Covenant through circumcision. Athens seeks truth through philosophical dialectic; Jerusalem, through the study of the Torah. Athens builds marble temples; Jerusalem builds sanctuaries in time. One exalts the universal through abstraction; the other, through spiritual existentialism and a responsibility to bear witness. One aspires to knowledge; the other, to holiness.

Athens asks, “How?” How should we live in the world? How should we use it wisely and with moderation to achieve human fulfillment—eudaimonia, the good life? Jerusalem, on the other hand, places the why at the heart of everything: Why are we here? What meaning should we give to our presence in space and our future in time? How can we consciously participate in a living power that transcends and encompasses us?

We are heirs of both cities.

This opposition is not a sterile clash between civilizations but rather a creative tension that runs through Western history. Whether we like it or not, we are heirs to both cities. Hanukkah asks each generation not to choose one over the other but to know how to inhabit this dual heritage without betraying critical intelligence or fidelity to transcendence. It is about thinking without giving up belief and believing without giving up thinking.

The Key to balance: Noah and his three Sons

The tension between Athens and Jerusalem that Hanukkah highlights is no accident. It stems from an ancient prophecy written at the dawn of our renewed humanity after the Flood.

According to the Bible, the Flood was triggered for a specific reason: the humans of that time were nothing but basar (בשר) and ‘hamas (חמס)—flesh and violence (Genesis 6:11-13). This was not just physical violence, but total violence: sexual transgressions that broke sacred boundaries, pagan cults that enslaved the human will, and crime that spilled blood without reason. It was tohu-bohu, a return to primordial chaos. Antediluvian humanity had mixed what God had separated, confusing beast and man, matter and spirit, reason and instinct. All order was collapsing. Humans had lost their fragile spiritual compass.

According to rabbinic tradition, the Flood lasted forty days—the time necessary for the soul to unite with the embryo and give it form—before Noah emerged from the Ark with his sons and the animals he had brought with him. Noah replanted a vineyard, became drunk on its wine, and revealed his nakedness. Ham mocked him, while Shem and Japheth covered him out of respect. Then, the three sons received a blessing from their father—not empty promises, but a prophetic destiny that would shape the centuries to come.

Adam = Mah: man is question

Before we examine this blessing, I would like to share a Kabbalistic detail that once surprised and struck me. Hebrew tradition employs gematria, the practice of assigning a numerical value to each letter. Two words have the same gematria value of 45: Adam (אדם), the primordial man before the fall into the confusion of good and evil; and Mah (מה), the eternal question. “What? Why?”

This numerical coincidence reveals an ontological truth: the essence of being human is to both exist and question. Unlike animals, who simply live their lives, humans cannot exist without wondering why they exist. From the beginning, humanity has carried this tension within itself; it must constantly question the mystery of life to give its existence meaning.

The three dimensions of humanity

Let us now examine Noah’s blessing. Our goal is not to extract religious dogma, but rather to discover gems of meaning beneath the surface of the words that challenge our understanding of the world, ourselves, and our responsibility as human beings facing the future.

Below is my personal translation of Noah’s blessing to his sons after leaving the ark. Noah says:

Shem: the Name, the identity, the Word

Noah first blesses “the G-d of Shem” — not Shem himself, but the relationship that Shem has with the divine. Shem (שם), whose name means “name” in Hebrew, embodies the power to give a name, establish identity, and say who one is — thus understanding the profound nature of the named thing or being.

This is exactly what Adam did in Paradise. Before he and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden because of their spiritual fall—the consequence of their confusion between good and evil, between good unity (tov - טוב) and the brokenness of evil (ra’ - רע)—he was able to name the animals. This gesture could be interpreted as total knowledge of each vital energy.

By doing so, Adam gave meaning, intelligence, and belonging to each creature. In Hebrew thought, a name is not an arbitrary label; it is the essence of the named thing. To name is to create meaning and transform chaos into kosmos. The word creates, orders, and reveals.

From Shem to Jerusalem

According to the Bible, Shem is the father of the Semites, and tradition links him to Jacob, the father of the Hebrews. In the 11th century, Rashi, the great commentator on the Torah and the Talmud, wrote the following commentary on Genesis 25:27: “Jacob was a man of integrity, dwelling in tents” (yoshev ohalim - יושב אהלים). According to Rashi, these tents are “the tent of Shem and the tent of Eber.” Through this enigmatic phrase, Rashi reveals that Jacob frequented the tents of the sages—the custodians of a spiritual tradition dating back to the time of the Great Flood.

This chain of transmission would never be broken. The Hebrews descended into Egypt because of famine during Jacob’s time and his twelve sons’. They would later leave under Moses’s guidance. Much later, Solomon built the Temple in Jerusalem. Throughout these stages, we see that Shem symbolizes the thinking of Jerusalem: the primacy of the Word, the transmission of meaning, the listening to Revelation, the mastery of sacred time (the calendar and new months), and the respect for mystery.

The Temple built by Solomon and desecrated by Antiochus is precisely the one that the Maccabees re-inaugurate. Therefore, the story of Hanukkah is part of this long, unbroken chain: from Shem to Abraham, from Abraham to Jacob, from Jacob to Moses, from Moses to the Temple, and from the Temple to the Maccabees. With each generation, the same question arises: how can the Word be preserved in the face of world empires ?

Shem, the man of meaning:

By reading the following episode carefully, we can clearly see Shem’s attitude and respect for the sacred.

He precedes Noah’s blessing. After drinking new wine, Noah becomes drunk, strips naked in his tent, and of his three sons, only Shem takes the initiative to bring a tunic and cover his nakedness out of respect for his father. A peculiarity of the Hebrew text reveals this: the verb “to take” is singular. It could therefore be translated as: “Shem, followed by Japheth, takes...” Shem leads Japheth in this act of reverence, respecting his father’s privacy. This marks the boundary that opens up to transcendence and mystery. This foreshadows the future blessing in which Japheth is asked to dwell in Shem’s tents. Here is the text:

Japheth : expansion, beauty, and reason

Then Noah said to Japheth, “He will make him, Japheth, extensive—he G-d.” Here, the verb expressing the divine action to come and the name of the one who receives it are formed from the same root, which conveys the ideas of extension, expanse, and openness. Japheth embodies expansion, exploration, and taking possession of the visible world. He is the rationalist who measures, classifies, builds cities, and constructs the order of things technically.

Vowelizing this Hebrew root differently also yields the word “beauty.” According to Jewish tradition, Yavan, the son of Japheth mentioned in Genesis 10:2-4, is associated with Greece, notably in the Babylonian Talmud (Tractate Megillah 9a). Didn’t the Greeks first represent the human body in an idealized way? Were they not the inventors of philosophy, science, politics, and the arts? These disciplines guided the entire intellectual evolution of the West, as well as the development of technology and social organizations.

While Shem emphasizes spiritual questioning, transcendence, ethics, and overall, verticality and meaning, Japheth represents horizontality and the desire Japheth represents horizontality, the desire to master the visible universe, to understand it and use it to serve his ambitions in ever-greater expansion—even to the point of wanting to conquer Mars today!

This blessing will spread far and wide. The peoples descended from Japheth—the Greeks, the Indo-Europeans, and the West, in general—will dominate geographically and intellectually. Japheth symbolizes Athens’s way of thinking: autonomous reason, exploration, technê, the how of the world.

Ham and Canaan : strength, energy, and impulse.

Ham literally means “heat” or “raw energy.” It is impulse and passion—the force of nature. His son, Canaan, does not receive a blessing; he must become a servant. Why? Because Ham saw his father’s nakedness—his weakness, limitations, and finitude—and, instead of covering it with respect, exposed it publicly to mock it. He turned sacred fragility into derision. He refused to honor the paternal principle of transcendence—the limits beyond us. His descendants, in a spiritual sense, bear the consequences.

What are we to understand? Everything pertaining to materiality —power, strength, abundance—must do teshuvah (תשובה), a Hebrew word that literally means “return” or “response.” Unlike Christian “repentance,” which is based on guilt and shame, teshuva is the process of returning to one’s original essence. It is the rediscovery of one’s true soul, unaltered by selfishness, pride, greed, and domination. It is a path back to God through reconciliation with the divine, which is achieved through humility. It is the reparation that transforms evil into good, when, according to the Talmud, “faults become merits.”

This is exactly what Noah’s blessing reveals to us: “Blessed be Adonai, G-d of Shem, and may Canaan be a servant to him.” When strength is put at the service of transcendence and wisdom rather than selfish power, it becomes a blessing.

Reconciliation: Japheth in the tents of Shem

The crucial prophetic turning point is this: “Japheth shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan shall be a servant unto them.”

This is the key to the mystery. Japheth—representing reason, expansion, and technical beauty—will only be blessed if he enters the tents of Shem. In other words, rational strength, intelligence, and the ability to master the world must be placed under the roof of the revealed Word and the spiritual wisdom it enables. Japheth will only be great if he agrees to serve something greater than himself. Greek beauty will only be a blessing if it recognizes transcendence. Reason will only be wisdom if it bows down before Mystery.

Canaan—pure strength, unbridled energy, and material resources—becomes the servant that enables Japheth’s project: inhabiting the world with intelligence and reason while remaining oriented toward the tents of Shem. This allows Japheth to maintain direction, meaning, and the sacred. Servile strength—that is, strength submitted to the spiritual order—finds its greatness here by becoming the driving force of civilization. Ham’s raw heat, born of his refusal to show respect, becomes work accomplished in the service of the Covenant. Energy becomes creative when it obeys.

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The tripartite architecture: a lesson in history

Noah does not divide humanity into three rival groups. Instead, he proposes a tripartite spiritual architecture applicable at both the civilizational and personal levels.

• Shem: the heart, meaning, the Word, listening to the why

• Japheth: the head, reason, expansion, controlled how

• Canaan: the hands, energy, strength put at the service of the project

When Japheth lived under Shem’s roof

This prophecy orders history: for millennia, Japheth will live in Shem’s tents. Western civilizations will nourish their spirituality from Jewish, Christian, and then Islamic sources. Platonic Greece will seek God. Legal Rome will be steeped in the Torah. The Renaissance will resurrect antiquity, but the Protestant Reformation will restructure the West. Modern Athens built its cathedrals of knowledge—universities, museums, and libraries—in honor of the quest to improve the human condition and keep Shem’s tents intact.

Beyond the criticism that lucidity compels us to acknowledge about religions—fallible human constructs that have experienced serious deviations throughout history, some more than others—they have taken the place of Shem’s tents by transmitting wisdom and spirituality to enrich searching souls.

When Athens forgets Jerusalem

When Japheth tries to build his own tent, when the West tries to live by reason without listening to the transcendent, when Athens wants to be autonomous and forgets Jerusalem, that is when ‘hamas arises—the new violence. This process takes several generations because fundamental societal changes are slow. Gradually, Japheth, deprived of Shem’s spiritual vigilance, loses control of Canaan who then regresses to the deviance of his father Ham, which he was supposed to repair. Even worse, instead of following Shem’s example of covering his father’s nakedness, Japheth follows Canaan into cynicism, the loss of all values, and the rejection of all limits.

So, instead of slowly emancipating itself, humanity regresses into new forms of barbarism at the individual and societal levels: unbridled consumerism among the wealthy, accumulated anger among those struggling to make a living, violence among those who no longer respect anything but their instincts, nihilism of totalitarianism, ideology that takes itself for truth, technology without ethics, beauty devastated by meaninglessness.

The Maccabees: a prophetic rebellion

By banning the Torah and forcing Hellenization, Antiochus IV Epiphanes attempted to overturn Noah’s balance. He wanted Japheth to build alone, outside the tents of Shem. Like the small vial of oil that burned for eight nights instead of one, the Maccabean revolt is a manifestation of rebellion—not against reason or Hellenic beauty, but against their claim to autonomy.

Japheth in the service of Canaan

We are indeed living in an age where Japheth has left the tents of Shem to run after Canaan.

This is why we are gradually approaching a dangerous deadline—the point at which humanity will largely lack ethical reference points and transcendence to strive for improvement. Personal development alone cannot remedy this because it can easily tip over into selfishness if self-improvement is not part of relationship with others. It will only slightly delay the return of humans to a level where they will be nothing more than bassar (בשר) and ‘hamas (חמס)—flesh and violence.

When reason loses its soul

Contemporary technology, extreme bureaucratization, artificial intelligence, and transhumanism are examples of Japheth in his apotheosis, subject to Canaan. However, without Shem, Japheth is a genius without conscience and beauty without soul. Technical reason can optimize extermination as effectively as production. It can create weapons capable of destroying all of humanity. It can enslave consciences through surveillance, nudging, and data manipulation.

This is one form of modern ‘hamas: organized, rational, invisible violence that commodifies and dehumanizes everything, slowly depriving people of the space and silence necessary to reconnect with themselves and question meaning once again. These are not the ancient wars where spilled blood cried out from the earth. Rather, they are systemic, integrated forms of violence that destroy the soul before the body and serve the appetites of Canaan, master of the world.

The three contemporary crises

The loss of meaning (Shem abandoned)

Our Western societies have developed immense knowledge, which today feeds the data farms of generative intelligence. However, they have forgotten to pass on the reason for living. Science explains how atoms work, but it does not answer the question, “To what end?” We accumulate data, not wisdom. Information, not meaning.

Younger generations in the West are asking themselves, “What’s the point?” Why study, work, and build if it’s just to perpetuate a meaningless system? This questioning is reflected in the high rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide among Western teenagers. This can be seen in the burnout epidemic among graduates who discover that their work has no purpose other than profitability. It can also be seen in the rise of addictions—to screens, substances, and online gambling—as desperate attempts to fill an existential void. Additionally, it can be seen in the demographic crisis, where people hesitate to have children because they cannot offer them a desirable future.

The fact is that Japheth has built a technically advanced civilization without foundations. The tents of Shem—the place of transcendent meaning, of the Covenant, and of the Word that gives direction—have been abandoned. Religions have failed to renew their language and relationship with the world, which has accelerated this abandonment.

When the servant becomes master (Canaan gone astray)

The energy of Canaan—the raw force of nature, matter, and time—no longer serves a common purpose. It has gone mad and been hijacked by multinational corporations and the powers of money. The fossil fuels we extract from the Earth, the data we extract from private lives, and the atoms we split are Canaan gone astray. It refuses to play its role as a driving force in service to humanity in order to satisfy its desires for power and domination.

This drift takes many forms: artificial intelligence deployed without prior ethical debate in the service of mass surveillance or behavioral manipulation, social networks designed to maximize addiction rather than authentic connection, and transhumanism that promises to “transcend” humanity without asking where or why.

We are witnessing chaos in the form of climate change, species extinction, migratory movements, information overload, and the psychological exhaustion of individuals bombarded with stimuli. We believed that we could use energy, time, and resources without limit or responsibility to Shem. This belief is creating a chain of imbalances that will ultimately threaten our survival.

The fragmentation of humanity

Without the balanced tripartite architecture of Noah—Shem establishing meaning and ethics, Japheth translating them into reason, and Canaan realizing them in reality—our societies are fragmenting. The technocratic elites —Japheth given over to his pride, have cut themselves off from the people who are still searching for meaning and feeling a vague inner call to connect with Shem but are unable to find a satisfactory answer.

Shared narratives that structure societies are collapsing, giving way to identity tensions that function by opposition. Everyone becomes someone’s enemy, and doors to dialogue are closing. It is becoming increasingly difficult to establish a collective project that provides meaning and direction for the future.

Relighting the Hanukkah menorah: a message for our times

This is where Hanukkah takes on a prophetic significance for our era. It does not say, “Let us return to the past. Let us abandon Athens for Jerusalem.” Rather, it makes a more nuanced and demanding statement: relighting the light is to restore the tripartite architecture.

The small vial of pure oil is the Ark of the Covenant, the embodiment of the Word that creates meaning. It is unique and inviolable, bearing the seal of the high priest. It belongs to no one else. It cannot be secularized, functionalized, or monetized. It simply is. It is Shem.

However, this light must illuminate a nine-branched menorah. The Hanukkah menorah is not the Temple menorah. It is a simple candlestick for everyday life and for the home. It says, “This transcendent light, this revealed Word, dwells in our ordinary lives, our streets, and our families.” It is Japheth who enters the tents of Shem—the technology of the candlestick (simple, reproducible, durable), the art of burning oil, the calculation of the eight days.

And Canaan? It is the work done to maintain this light—the hands that craft the Hanukkia menorah, press olives to make oil, and pour it every evening. It is matter’s energy put at the service of the sacred.

A call to our civilizations

To the technological West, Hanukkah asks: “Do you recognize that your reason, your beauty, your technical power must dwell in a house that transcends them? Do you accept that science is not an end, but a means? That technology serves ethics, not the other way around?”

This means restoring, in our universities, in our businesses, in our governments, the place of wisdom—not as a concession to the past, but as a necessary condition for survival.

To religions and spiritual traditions, Hanukkah also asks: “Do you recognize that Japheth—reason, criticism, science—is not your enemy, but your ally? That God does not fear questions? That faith that refuses critical debate is very little faith?”

This is what the Maccabees said when they reopened the Temple: they did not deny Greek science; they only refused to allow it to replace Revelation.

The light that refuses to go out

Why do the Hanukkah lights burn for eight days? Because beyond six days of work, beyond the seventh day of rest (Shabbat), there must be an eighth day—the day when humans start again, this time aware of their past mistakes. The day when they build with wisdom. Hanukkah is the irruption of eternal possibility into finite time. It is a rejection of determinism. It is the exercise of human freedom to rebuild the right order.

Then, despite the shortage, this light burns. Despite the fact that there was only enough oil for one day. It is the triumph of quality over quantity. Not of economic calculation, but of trust. Not violence, but fidelity.

Hanukkah offers a synthesis to our divided societies: not the identity-based withdrawal of a Shem who would survive alone or a Jerusalem closed in on itself; not the imperialism of reason of a Japheth without Shem or an autonomous Athens; not the domination of material appetites of a wayward Canaan, but rather, a path that presupposes the reinauguration of the temple of humanity that is our Earth. This path reestablishes a balance in which each of them rediscovers what makes them noble: Japheth returns to the tents of Shem; Canaan agrees to serve with dignity once again; and Shem recognizes the greatness of Japheth and the energy of Canaan.

This is what it means to inhabit the dual lineage of Athens and Jerusalem. It means thinking without giving up believing and believing without giving up thinking.

The final invitation

Each evening of Hanukkah, one more flame is added to the menorah, until there are eight. This represents a growing movement and an increase in light. In other words: “Light does not diminish when shared. It grows.” Each time someone rekindles the Word in their heart, home, or community, darkness recedes.

In our age of fragmentation and violence, this is a prophetic statement. It shows that it is possible to gradually restore the proper order and reintroduce meaning and connection. This will not be achieved through force or violent revolution, but rather through quiet fidelity, day after day, to a flame that refuses to be extinguished.

For each of us, this can begin by:

• rehabilitating spaces of silence in the face of information overload (mastering Canaan);

• cultivating philosophical and spiritual questioning beyond technical efficiency ( Japheth seeks Shem);

• passing on meaningful stories to future generations (dwelling in the tents of Shem).

We must choose practices that connect us rather than practices that isolate us.

This requires patience. Tenacity. Daily courage. But it is possible. Every gesture counts. Each rekindled light calls for the next.

© 2026 - Dialogues of the New World — Jérôme Nathanaël

To go further

Do you see, in our time, a spiritual or cultural heritage that remains active, for better, for worse, or in some ambiguous fashion? Share your reading in the comments to spark discussion.

And if you wish to share more broadly your reflection on the heritages that shape us, send me a contribution of roughly one page for the Waymakers section. It will be published under your initials, a pseudonym, or anonymously, as you prefer. Other readers will be able to respond and dialogue with you.

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Article available in French
The Eternal Present · Spiritual Awakening · 11 min
Exploring the concrete pathways of inner transformation.

Being oneself is by no means self-evident. Our days sometimes reveal a being who eludes us and retains its share of the unexpected. In the wake of life’s accidents, the questions return: who am I, and what is the meaning of my life? The answers we offer remain forever insufficient. They cannot grasp our living reality beyond the reach of words.

What if the adventure of being were a matter of inner growth? A journey whose very dynamic signifies our identity? It would then be a question of ceasing to apprehend ourselves through a fixed image — one we then seek to impose upon others in a perpetual theatre of shadows.

The inherited identity

The idea we hold of ourselves evolves throughout existence. From the image reflected back by our parents to that which we perceive as we become adults, our identity transforms according to the rhythm of our experiences.

It is the external world that furnishes us with the tools to understand ourselves. Under its influence, we gradually form our manner of thinking and of finding our place. What determines the person we become is the confrontation between our own dispositions and the universe in which we grow. First the family and its history, then the social and geographical context, and finally the cultural and political milieu with its organisation, its fashions, and its prejudices.

Our psychic life is oriented by our childhood within the family environment. It is there that our inner mechanisms for managing otherness take shape. Our vision of the world is constituted during adolescence, in an alternation of adoption and opposition towards newly discovered ideas. By the time we leave the parental home, our personality is formed, as is our manner of regarding ourselves.

Yet these elements result above all from the unconscious impregnation of external influences. They are the consequence of the conditions linked to our birth. They are not the fruit of an inner growth conducted in an awakened dialogue with the world.

Most human beings do not question this process except during shattering events, or following the slow inner erosion produced by the gap between their daily existence and their intimate being. So long as their modes of thought and action yield satisfactory results, they challenge nothing.

But should the equilibrium break, a phase of introspection begins — one that is sometimes painful. The person then perceives the inadequacy between their genuine needs and the direction their existence has taken. They sense how distorted their idea of themselves truly is. They feel impelled to evolve by an urgency that is the expression of their intimate being in suffering.

It becomes necessary for them to undertake a work of self-understanding, a journey to untangle the complexity of their personality and to reconnect with their essential being. It is in this reappropriation that a more authentic life opens up — one that honours their original singularity.

The masks of everyday life

For a long time, we content ourselves with a functional, outward image: I am so-and-so, I come from such-and-such a family, I practise such-and-such a profession. We identify with our name, with social roles, with a culture. These reference points furnish us with a reassuring representation of ourselves and of the world.

We advance in this manner, preserving an inner equilibrium that is sometimes precarious. But inner movements pass through us, emotions overwhelm us, which overflow this simple image we ceaselessly repeat. The gazes of others astonish or discomfit us, yet we continue to assume roles ill-adjusted to our being, for fear of losing our social existence.

All these events gradually open fissures in our inner citadel, and through them seep doubts and anxieties. We begin by repelling them, plunging into easy distractions, for we refuse the confrontation with that inner voice that wishes to question us.

And we continue our pursuit of all manner of illusions, until the day when a lightning-bolt intuition recalls us to ourselves. Or else an unhappy event strikes us — the death of a loved one, a separation, a burnout. There we stand, alone upon the deserted shore of that inner island we had always taken care to avoid.

In that instant, everything that had assured us of being ourselves has shattered. We find ourselves breathless, the heart heavy with all the buried griefs and all the humiliations endured by our inner child.

Yet this difficult passage can open us to a new horizon. It can allow us to discover unknown aspects of our potential and to set out towards the most intimate reaches of ourselves.

What has just been broken is broken by the effect of a kind of blessing. Our fictitious protections against the fear of the unknown and our illusions about ourselves are laid low. All these artifices that reduce us to quasi-automatic mechanisms and deprive us of perceiving our singularity are annihilated.

This difficult laying bare is the occasion to set out in search of who we truly are — to journey patiently towards the oasis where we may unfold the full dimension of our being. It is in this movement that a more fluid and more liberated identity defines itself.

The quest for the true self

He who accepts these questionings finds himself stripped of all the reference points that had assured him of his being. His situation resembles that of desert nomads who must quit a refuge that has grown precarious. They set forth on a perilous journey towards a new oasis. Organising their provisions, setting out, confronting the expanse of sands — all this becomes an imperative.

The same holds true for us. Were we to silence this inner voice, we would expose our future to the certain resurgence of this call. It would then make itself heard in a more violent manner — through a more acute crisis, or through grave illness.

So long as we refuse to regard our inner realities, we shall be confronted with fresh warnings, in forms increasingly critical. We must therefore set ourselves in motion. Accept to journey towards oneself. Make of these crises the occasion for significant progress — a beneficial transition towards a truer and more profound self.

Our surface identities are fragile. They are constituted solely from the impregnation of familial inheritance and the culture of our age. It is as though we had been manufactured to fulfil functions that ensure the perpetuation of a certain type of society. Our initial singularity must restrict itself to finding a form compatible with recognised models; failing which, we are driven out beyond the common camp.

This social and spiritual stranglehold reduces the human being to an atrophied version of himself. Until the flash of an intuition passes through him and begins to awaken him, or until the accidents of life strike him and set him moving once again towards himself.

Thus Abraham, our distant ancestor, hears the words in Genesis: “Go forth to yourself, leave your country, your lineage and your father’s house, towards the land that I shall show you.” I interpret: “Go forth to yourself” — towards your real and singular being. “Leave your country” — differentiate yourself from the ambient culture. “Leave your lineage” — free yourself from your psychogenealogical inheritance. “Leave your father’s house” — escape the state of mind of your family. To go “towards the land” — the new mental space — “that I shall show you” — that the inner voice shall cause you to discover.

Are we not all, at some moment of our existence, like this Abraham? Summoned to set out in quest of a more authentic self?

The Abrahamic call to liberation

Moving towards oneself requires, above all, that we confront the truth of what we are — that we begin to know and understand what constitutes us in order to draw from it what is truly our intimate essence.

Yet to know oneself, one must keep one’s own company. Engage in dialogue with oneself. Question and confront oneself. This demands that we counteract the modern habit of losing ourselves in a profusion of distractions — festive evenings, addiction to screens, compulsive purchasing. All these external impulses create a surface agitation. They draw a thick veil over our interiority, as though we were afraid of encountering ourselves.

This is the primary and foremost difficulty facing one who would truly be himself. He remains caught within a network of dependencies and automatisms. For many people, finding oneself alone in silence is an ordeal that can trigger such distress as to explain the growing recourse to everything that avoids this confrontation — deadening oneself with diverse activities and consumptions, and when that no longer suffices, with alcohol, drugs, or anxiolytics.

And yet it is indispensable to access the depth of one’s interiority in order to be attentive to all that passes through us — not in a morbid, narcissistic contemplation, but in that active observation which requires a neutrality and the complete absence of judgement or interpretation of what we discover.

The principal prayer of the Mosaic revelation begins with “Shema Israel” — “Hear, O Israel.” It addresses itself to every human being, called to learn through listening. This same revelation tells us: “Thou shalt make no idol, nor any likeness.” These words alert us to the danger of concrete images and mental representations — to the risk of finding ourselves enclosed within fixed states of consciousness. And the great peril of this domination by the visual complicates the access to listening to oneself.

Hearing is the most acute sense of the foetus. It develops before sight. Thus, when we have not yet entered the world of separation, it is hearing that takes precedence. It is therefore naturally through listening to oneself that we shall accede to our inner truth.

Listening to oneself

Drawing near to our most intimate essence demands a subtle listening to oneself. In the mental domain, this means discerning between our inner voice and all the chatter with which our brain is invaded — influenced by teachings and media that promote the opinions of the age, or by omnipresent advertising, charged with deciding our desires.

It is important to become conscious of the impact of a society’s global state of mind. A great number of our ideas and beliefs rest upon no conscious reflection whatsoever. They are prejudices, hasty conjectures provoked by our milieu, our era, our education.

Are you aware that there exists today a highly refined technique called nudging? This combination of the results of psychology and neuroscience serves to influence our desires and convictions. Through the multiplication of indirect suggestions carried by the media and social networks, it succeeds in orientating our motivations. In the political field, this was analysed as early as 1988 by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman in their book Manufacturing Consent.

He who wishes to form his own thought freely will need to extricate himself from the grip of his society’s culture, by proceeding with a humble and lucid examination of his certainties. This process is a patient labour of personal reflection, but equally of active observation of our behaviours. Certain prejudices can only reveal themselves to us when they are caught in our own reactions.

Imagine you harbour a particular antipathy towards a certain profession. At an evening gathering, you meet someone with whom you feel at ease. They confide to you that they practise this very profession. Immediately, something shifts in your emotions and in your body. You no longer see the person for themselves. You are possessed by your mistrust, and your demeanour grows cold.

Thus, to journey towards oneself: to take one’s distance with respect to the profusion of information that surrounds us, to fall silent in order to return to one’s own thoughts, and to rid oneself of the parti pris that possess us — here is an indispensable step towards liberty and self-awareness.

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Towards transmutation

To advance towards that which is essential within us, we must examine our manner of thinking, for our modes of thought determine our relationship to the world, to others, and to ourselves. They determine the manner in which we receive our emotions and the direction that our ambitions and our dreams take.

To know ourselves genuinely, we must listen to all that passes through us, in a wholly free manner, without opposing any resistance. If we cannot succeed in freeing ourselves from the power of our mental faculty, an entire part of our interiority will remain inaccessible to us.

We must plunge into ourselves as the diver descends into deep waters, for we are often unknown to ourselves. We survive, sheltered in the meagre space where we tolerate encountering ourselves, whilst refusing to frequent within ourselves that which frightens, disgusts, or disappoints us.

Yet all of this constitutes us. To know ourselves is to accept seeing it and acknowledging it. Were we to cease fearing ourselves — our insufficiency and our fragility — we might begin to understand who we are, and find our dignity in the acceptance of our condition and in our effort to evolve.

This attitude of total honesty with oneself finds little correspondence in our age. In our societies, the dominant forces push us to desire social success and to content ourselves with being simple producer-consumers. The way of spiritual development is not a priority.

And yet no one can fully realise themselves without understanding that it is possible to find, in the very depths of oneself, the springs by which to recreate oneself — more conscious, more free, more wise, and more loving. In this way we may accede to a more intense life.

The first step will be to accept tearing away all the veils of illusion — those that prevent us from living in the demanding light of one’s own truth. From this lucid knowledge, it will be possible to engage in a slow transmutation of our inner dross, so as to cause to be born there the roses of the spiritual Eden, whose splendour shall illuminate the world with a new beauty.

© 2026 — Dialogues du Nouveau Monde — Jérôme Nathanaël

To go further

Have you encountered a practice, a discipline, an exercise or an obstacle that has truly transformed you? Share your testimony in the comments — it will enrich every reader.

And should you wish to express yourself on a subject of spiritual awakening, send me a contribution of approximately one page for the section The waymakers. It will be published under your initials, a pseudonym, or anonymously, according to your wishes. Other readers will be able to respond and engage in dialogue with you.

New here? The Opening page introduces the author, the project, how to participate, contact details, and the agenda.