Year Four

Aesthetic Exercises to Accept the Will and Mirror the Will of the World

Presuppositions

The will is the assertion of the body, both individually¾as the individual person attempts to extend himself in time and space¾and collectively¾as groups, both small and large, cultures, both minor and major, and the human species as a whole, attempt to extend themselves also in time and space.  This assertion¾continuous, natural and inevitable, amoral at its root while using morality and immorality to achieve its purposes, basic and raw, problematic¾works its way through time, a gaseous energy giving birth to the myriad forms.

At its most basic level, the will is sexual:  a mulching, devouring bog, hidden, subtle, sucking all orbiting forms into its viscous depths; a lightning bolt from a midnight sky, spewing fire and seed on the world.  Through the sexual will, tension is maintained, individuals are established on a hierarchy, bonds are forged and broken, individual lives are briefly and overtly extended past their deaths through memory, word and image, covertly extended through genetic and personal influence, and the species extends itself in time and space.

Beyond sex, the will directs itself at land:  the security of space, a portion of the earth for my family, my people; a symbol of strength and plenty, a diverse provider of indifferent beauty and sustenance for the bodies I consider linked to mine.  War is the mechanism by which the will trades in land; blood is shed for beauty, creation and destruction are bound.  Who does not hear the thorny call of war in the foundations of one’s will?  Who does not heed its call, though the obedience be vicarious, sublimated or complicit?  The war for land has many forms, and must be maintained continuously in the very mores of a land’s citizens long after the land has been won.  Blood becomes diffused; yet it still is blood, even though it be made into bricks and movies, cushions and prayers.

Beyond land, the will directs itself at society and culture:  the birth, growth, maintenance, regulation, and destruction of institutions, regimes, symbols, and procedures.  Like the will directed toward land, the will directed toward society and culture works itself individually and collectively, through the chaotic, organized system of many individuals exerting themselves, working with each other, often with many others, to an end, but an end which is also a beginning.

Beyond society and culture, the will directs itself at the species itself.  This collective self-direction partially brings us back to the basic level of sex, for as we said and everyone knows, sex is both the individual and collective will¾the common individual will, even as death is the common individual non-will.  Land and society and culture link the individual will and the common will; they provide flesh to human experience and bonds.  As the basic will directed at sex is dense with power, so is the species' will.  As the individual caught up in his sexual will is full of his ascendancy over other individuals¾though the moment he reflects, the completion of his ascendancy remains in doubt¾so the species caught up in its species will is full of its ascendancy¾though this fullness is diffused through its individual members, it frequently provides a bond between them.  Again, upon reflection, this fullness becomes dubious, but in the technological environment such reflection becomes difficult as its own species becomes all that is seen and the only mirror is itself, thus making external mirrors disappear and forcing reflection to become based on a new kind of a mirror:  an internal one, created by the power of the human spirit.  As the individual sexual will in its purity attempts to dominate over as many other bodies¾directly and indirectly¾in its lifetime, so the collective species will, through cooperative human efforts, attempts to dominate over as many other species in its lifetime as possible.  The metropolis is the embodiment and apex of this domination, where humanity feels supreme.  But, although these Aesthetic Exercises are not the context to pursue this issue, nature, to which humanity remains subject though it continually attempts an escape, has limits¾at its circumference, at its lows and highs¾and when these limits are reached, but movement still must be maintained according to the fate of a species’ genetic code, movement must go in the opposite direction, and so the dominated return to domination.

Beyond the species, the will directs itself at the universe.  Such direction is qualitatively different than the aforementioned directions, for the hierarchies inherent in sex, land, society and culture, and species, while not obliterated, give way to the hierarchy that is no hierarchy:  the swirling energy and sound of the whole.  Here, the will transforms itself; such transformation is a rare calling and, as such, while some argue that this calling is that of the human species itself¾its distinction¾the degree of its rarity bespeaks for its exception.

There are some who pretend to exercise this universal will who would negate the hierarchies we have briefly outlined; but this negation reveals them as soft frauds.  True:  this exception will brings softness, but with it hardness, for not only is one’s individual life made insignificant, along with one’s strivings and ambitions, but the species to which one belongs, with its beauty and achievements, is brought to nothing.  How many can face such nothingness and yet be?  To maintain this combination stretches the dualities to the outmost of their tether and lives in the stretched tension.  This is the tension of the mystic and the artist¾the former who lives in teeming nothingness and does not create; the latter who lives in this same nothingness¾the fabric of the universe, below molecules, atoms, protons, quarks¾and does.  These three years¾the fourth through sixth¾are designed to embody the major manifestations of the will in the artist:  further strengthening, foundation, for her aesthetic womb.

Always, the will directs itself at the fundamentals of time and space, with the exception of when it directs itself at the universe, when the will becomes time and space and so negates itself.  We will speak more of this later.

The will is born to conflict:  conflict within the individual, as the will struggles with its various objects and with the other aspects of the individual (body, mind, soul, judgement); conflict between individuals¾inevitable, unpredictable, mild and severe, obvious and hidden¾between groups, nations and species.

The will is born to action and action is the evidence of its existence and legitimacy.  The philosopher and the sage may be suspicious of or deride action, but they are so and do so because of their orientation or age, and even they must act in minimal ways to live and fulfill their souls, even as they must depend on others to act to help them.  Where is the one who does not depend on action?  If you show him to me, then he depends on action.  This does not delegitimize the sage’s critique, but it does show that the sage’s critique is not the world in its entirety, but only a portion of it.  We may trust the sage more than the man of action, but this trust is innate to the essence of the respective vocation. 

The artist should know the will at all its levels¾from the sexual to the universal.

Meditations

The meditations should be reflected on before, during and after the acts of the will, according to one’s inclinations and ability.  For some, such meditations will occur naturally, even as one is giving oneself over to the will; for others, the activities will be too distracting, particularly in the first and second years, to adequately meditate on what is occurring.  Still for others, they will need to wait until the acts of the mind or even later, when they have gained sufficient experience to be able to reflect on what took place years before in their lives.

Meditate on the gap between the will’s intent and the will’s result.

Meditate on the shape of the will:  the hierarchies, the lines and triangles, of sex, land, society and culture, and species; the circle of the universe which embraces and does not deny all other shapes.

Meditate on the will’s inclusion within itself of its opposite.  Relate this to the will to life and death.  To what extent does the will desire to destroy itself?  Think on the relationship between will and fatigue.

Meditate on the bonds between the individual will and the collective will:  what strengthens and weakens them.

Meditate on the degree to which mind and will are antithetical, and the potential inevitability of this antithesis.

Meditate on the conflicting wills within the single individual; relate this internal conflict of the many wills within the individual to the external conflict between the many individuals within the one group and species.

Meditate on the relationship between will and love, including in this meditation both a general reflection and a specific reflection at each level of the will we discussed:  sex, land, society and culture, species, universe.

Meditate on the relationship between will and language, and whether language feeds the will.

Meditate on the will’s will to subsume everything into itself, to become one.  In relation to this, meditate on the relationship between will and number.

Meditate on the will’s tendency to ecstasy, misery and stability.  Are there specific tendencies of the will and/or specific characteristics of the context in which the will is exercised that contribute to its results?  In other words, to what extent is the will¾the relationship between its sources, motivations and effects¾arbitrary; to what extent are its non-arbitrary aspects¾if they indeed exist¾determinant and predictive?

Meditate on the relationship between the will and good and evil.  Relate your thoughts to each direction of the will.

Meditate on the will as a distinct faculty of the human soul, and its relationship to the other faculties.

Rationale

The will follows the body and precedes the mind.   The will is the first obviously distinct extension of the body, as we showed earlier when we explained the concentric circles of the will:  sex (the human body), land (the body of the earth), society and culture (the body politic), the species (the collective human body) and the universe (all bodies and their emanations).  The body has to be explored first, as it is the foundation of everything we are and do, think and strive for.  In moving to the will, we specifically explore the striving for what we are and do and think.

We must copulate to collectively survive, but we must will to manufacture and continually inhabit what we call the human world and to feel within ourselves that we are not simply beasts, continuing in perpetuity, but humans, gloriously bound to create a world of our own making.

A human being can establish his name¾regardless of the merits or demerits of such establishment, an issue we shall not discuss in this context¾based solely on mastery in the areas of body and will; it is, in fact, often necessary to only exercise one’s body and will to achieve success in human affairs¾mastery in mind and soul being a severe impediment to effective action, mastery in judgement depending on the form of politics in vogue in one’s particular time and space.

However, the artist lives at the intersection of name and namelessness, action and reflection, and while she must establish the basis¾both animal and human¾of the totality of human personhood through embodying the primary modes of the body and will, she is a severely stunted artist and not one whom we address in these Exercises if she, like many warriors, businesspeople and politicians, stop developing herself at the end of body and will, or if these two faculties be dominant over the faculties yet to be discussed.  The artist is a mirror of the universe; the body and the will are the universe’s brute foundations; such foundations are necessary¾let this necessity be always kept in mind¾but they are not its excellence.

Method

In this second phase of the Exercises, we explore the will through three distinct years:  war, business and politics, and non-will.  War is linked to land, business and politics to society and culture, and non-will to the universe.

The initiate will have adequately explored sex in the first phase, the body phase.  The will for the species is partly an outcome of sex, as we’ve discussed above, and partly the bond formed in war, and society and culture, and thus will be integrated into the first two years of this phase.

The reader will observe that the first two years of this phase are qualitatively different than the third year, in the way that the will negates itself when it mirrors the universe.  This qualitative difference will become apparent as we progressively discuss each of the three years in this second phase. 

Fourth Year:  War

War is the visible manifestation of the will to land.  Historically, it has bound man to blood and blood to land.  Now, the earth being cultivated and blood being hidden, war may be changing its nature and function; the initiate should reflect on this.

However, the focus of this year is action, not reflection, and the initiate should engage herself for the year in active military duty.  This duty should not be in a management, strategic or support role¾for example, as a general, doctor or priest¾but as a fighter; the closer the fighting is to land and blood, the better, although we acknowledge the increasing difficulty of obtaining such work in war.  The initiate can consider either service as a dedicated fighter or as a mercenary.  While terrorist activities could be considered, they should be engaged in as a last resort.

While the initiate should not gratuitously damage and destroy buildings, land and people, it is likely that she will do so in the course of duty.  Not only is it likely, but, from the perspective of this phase of these Exercises, desirable, for such is the nature of war, and should the initiate not experience such destruction, she will not have truly internalized war’s spirit.

The initiate should not shrink from destruction, carnage, the slaughter of innocents, the annihilation of people, buildings, architecture of a significant nature, priceless art, vast libraries and collections of specimens and history¾a people’s cultural memory.  She should not shrink from rape, dismemberment, quartering, hanging, burning and burial alive, the removal of eyes, starvation, the humiliation, torture and death of the enemy before loved ones, the drinking of and bathing in blood, using frozen bodies as toboggans, castration, sodomizing children, bestiality, tying scalped heads to branches to form trees of hanging heads.  In short, the initiate should give herself to the raw butchery, glory and rights of war.

War concerns change through destruction, and destruction is achieved by the direct combat of individual bodies, albeit increasingly with the aid of technology.  Through destruction, the new arises:  new names, new borders, new structures, new stories.  Without destruction, all would be repetition.  War is the most visible collective mechanism of destruction.  It illustrates most directly the nature of the collective will and the base hopes and fears of individuals and groups.  Through blood and horror, the initiate should listen to the mutterings, screams and sufferings of the dying and survivors, of those who love and hate them.  The initiate should search for the space between the rhetoric of the two battling sides, for in this space¾hidden, silent, dark¾a curious unity can be found.

Many initiates will be maimed or lost during this year, but those that survive will have absorbed important truths, for the shrouds of society cover a motley host of necessities to which we are all subject in our mortal chains, and these truths will be there in the initiate’s foundation to use for creating a mirror of the world.  Without them, the artist’s work will lack the gravity requisite for any creation of substance.  Let the initiate maim and slaughter, and let her come to the edge of losing her soul.