“The Kingdom of God is within you” is the title of a work by Lev Tolstoy in which he grapples, as he did his whole life, with the disparity between the truth he found in the Christian gospel and the reality of the church. It is a literalist (but of course selective) reading of the gospels designed to foment social change; quite akin (though very different) to liberation theology. Tolstoy’s work is particularly problematic in that he appreciates that change must take place in the heart and disowns the method of revolution while at the same time envisioning a revolutionized social order which, of course, has not come to pass (and certainly not by the methods he advocated).
There are, of course, any number of works of this kind in a variety of spiritual traditions. Typically, in this literature the current order is viewed as inferior to an envisioned order, reasons for this inferiority are advanced, and a method is advocated to realize progressive or apocalyptic change towards the pristine, Platonic, intended order of things. For a full understanding, this inner, discursive logic proper to the text must of course be placed in counterpoint to its social context and, subsequently, to its social history.
It’s easy to be dismissive, and necessary to be very critical, of any offered normative foundation for social change, which invariable instrumentalizes, desubjectivizes, its foundation in the individual perception and drive for social justice. At the same time, however, doing so distances us from the imperatives that we, too, recognize as such; cut off from the framed call to arms, our moral sense wanders and entropy prevails. Blinded by its contingency, we have no means to know or acknowledge the truth.
Gurdjieff’s message, as I perceive it, is to change only yourself. Go ever deeper and, when you believe you are finally fit to take up arms in the social arena, stop, and go deeper still. This counsel, which is widespread in oriental spiritual thought, appears, zen-like, to offend us, for to abnegate any effort to change society is the ultimate manifestation of non-violence and easy to portray, including to oneself, as narcissistic.
The first stage in spiritual life, it seems to me, is reached when All is Clear, But Nothing is as It Should Be. Of course, what is clear is destined to and must become clearer still as turbulence settles in the mind. Yet fundamentally, deep down, all is clear. In fact, if it is clear, it has always been clear, but now it is more conscious. Yet precisely this is seductive – you have acquired power, but you have not yet abandoned goals. You are waking, but you are more dangerous than when you were asleep – to me and to yourself.
To me, all is absolutely clear. I understand the “meaning of life”, I understand why we are as we are, I understand (though it is hard to implement) the way out of it, and I understand how the world should be, if it lived according to natural law. It is not like this at all, however; it falls catastrophically short. This does not only impact on the sustainability and quality of life on the planet. Much worse, it impacts painfully on my own ability to live freely. I have thrown off my own chains; but I cannot throw off those in which society has bound me. Like Prometheus, only eternal torture awaits me in the twilight space between God and Man. The Kingdom of God may be within me, but that is not where I want it; and so I am under pressure to act, to change my environment; to remake it (violently) according to this partial image; or, of course, to be driven insane by the frustration that this new order fails to materialize.
To renounce the impulse to change things, and to live with their scandalous imperfection, to live without a Heilgeschichte, is hard because the truth burns within me, too. I do not very well know what is the answer. I feel only that this passion and rage must be allowed to burn itself out. Only in this way will my environment work with me in synergy, and feed, not consume me. At some point the veil will be lifted and I will see that, even if humanity is fallen and suicidal, all that touches me is perfect.
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end, but I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
There was never any more inception than there is now
Nor any more youth or age than there is now
And will never be any more perfection than there is now
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing,
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing,
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.
This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
This the common air that bathes the globe.
This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger,
It is for the wicked just same as the righteous
Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?
Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the side of a rock has.
I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.