Sexus, Henry Miller, Vol. 1, pp.287d-290c, Foolish Power

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Henry Miller

The Rosy Crucifixion

Sexus

Volume Three

Chapter 10

pp.287d-290c

Foolish Power

Mr. Miller is on the subway. He received an urgent message. His lover Mona barely survived a suicide attempt. He expected this. So he's not surprised. Nor is he worried.

I knew also that her instincts would prevent her from accomplishing her end. (288a)

He is curious how she did it. But he hopes her story is convincing.

I did not want to hear some preposterous, outlandish tale which in my unsettled condition would cause me to burst out into hysterical laughter. (288b)

If the moment is too dramatic, he would be unable to keep a straight face.

Drama always affected me strangely, always aroused the sense of the ridiculous, especially when motivated by love. Perhaps that was why, in moments of desperation, I could always laugh at myself. The moment I made the decision to act I became another person — the actor. And of course I always overplayed the part. I suppose that at bottom this queer behavior was based on an incurable dislike for deception. Even though it meant saving my own skin, I hated to take people in. (288c)

Miller does not want his own influence to affect the woman's love for him. He wants the woman to be overcome by her desire, and be the assertive one who ensnares him.

There was no triumph or satisfaction in it for me unless the woman surrendered voluntarily. I was always a bad suitor. I became discouraged easily, not because I doubted my own powers but because I distrusted them. I wanted the woman to come to me. I wanted her to make the advances. No danger of her becoming to bold! The more recklessly she gave herself the more I admired her. I hated virgins and shrinking violets. La femme fatale! — that was my ideal. (288-289)

In love, we want to be enslaved. But to be enslaved is to create a fragile balance of power. This gives the slave power over the dominant one.

How we hate to admit that we would like nothing better than to be the slave! Slave and master at the same time! For even in love the slave is always the master in disguise. The man who must conquer the woman, subjugate her, bend her to his will, form her according to his desires — is he not the slave of his slave? How easy it is, in this relationship, for the woman to upset the balance of power! The mere threat of self-dependence, on the woman's part, and the gallant despot is seized with vertigo. (289b)

So no matter which position, slave or master, in both cases the lover is vulnerable to the other's power. But if they can both acknowledge that fact, they can both be free. But if it is just the man who submits utterly and overtly, then he traps the woman.

But if they are able to throw themselves at one another recklessly, concealing nothing, surrendering all, if they admit to one another their interdependence, do they not enjoy a great and unsuspected freedom? The man who admits to himself that he is a coward has made a step towards conquering his fear; but the man who frankly admits it to every one, who asks that you recognize it in him and make allowance for it in dealing with him, is on the way to becoming a hero. Such a man is often surprised, when the crucial test comes, to find that he knows no fear. Having lost the fear of regarding himself as a coward he is one no longer: only the demonstration is needed to prove the metamorphosis. It is the same in love. The man who admits not only to himself but to his fellowmen, and even to the woman he adores, that he can be twisted around a woman's finger, that he is helpless where the other sex is concerned, usually discovers that he is the more powerful of the two. Nothing breaks a woman down more quickly than complete surrender. a woman is prepared to resist, to be laid siege to: she has been trained to behave that way. When she meets no resistance she falls headlong into the trap. (289b-d)

Thus the ultimate lover is the man who plays the utter fool and unconditionally surrenders to the woman.

To be able to give oneself wholly and completely is the greatest luxury that life affords. Real love only begins at this point of dissolution. The personal life is altogether based on dependence, mutual dependence. Society is the aggregate of persons all interdependent. There is another richer life beyond the pale of society, beyond the personal, but there is no knowing it, no attainment possible, without first traversing the heights and depths of the personal jungle. To become the great lover, the magnetiser and catalyzer, the blinding focus and inspiration of the world, one has to first experience the profound wisdom of being an utter fool. The man whose greatness of heart leads him to folly and ruin is to a woman irresistible. (290a-b)

But those who are self-absorbed will not enter into such a overwhelming love.

To the woman who loves, that is to say. As to those who ask merely to be loved, who seek only their own reflection in the mirror, no love however great, will ever satisfy them. In a world so hungry for love it is no wonder that men and women are blinded by the glamour and glitter of their own reflected egos. No wonder that the revolver shot is the last summons. No wonder that the grinding wheels of the subway express, though they cut the body to pieces, fail to precipitate the elixir of love. In the egocentric prism the helpless victim is walled in by the very light which he refracts. The ego dies in its own glass cage. (290c)

Miller, Henry. Sexus: The Rosy Crucifixion. New York: Grove Press, 1965.

Bergson, Time and Free Will, Chapter 2, §76 "Our Successive Sensations are Regarded as Mutually External, like their Objective Causes..."

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Henri Bergson

Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience

Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness

Chapter II, "The Multiplicity of Conscious States," "The Idea of Duration"

Part XXVII: Real Duration

§76 "Our Successive Sensations are Regarded as Mutually External, like their Objective Causes, and This Reacts on our Deeper Psychic Life"

We previously addressed an example: a tradesman might set a price at 2.95 instead of 3.00 . We feel different about these two number, even though their quantitative difference is negligible. Instead, their qualitative difference is noticeable. This is because each part of a multiplicity has a certain qualitative feel to it, even before we count their numerical value. And then when we do count multiplicities, we do so by placing the heterogeneous parts into the homogeneous medium of ideal or real space. A bell's tolls are separated only by duration. But we do not count them until we place each toll into a different place in ideal space [see §57.]

Recall first his example of the pendulum. Consider just the pendulum swing and not our ego's consciousness of it. In objective reality, there is never more than a single swing in each moment. So it has no duration by itself. But consider now just our ego's consciousness, without regarding its specific consciousness of the pendulum. We see that there is the ego's pure heterogeneous duration whose moments interpermeate and thus are not external to one another. And because they are not external to each other, they do not relate to numbers, which do have this property. In order for there to be a succession of pendulum swings in our mind, we need to set side-by-side symbols for the oscillations. [see §68]

Bergson now draws a further conclusion.

We experienced in pure duration such events as the pendulum swings. To count them we laid-out symbols for them in a homogeneous ideal space. By this means we obtain a succession of events in a linear spatialized series. Such a linear series of events we consider to be the extension of time. The events occurred in a non-linear, non-spatialized pure duration. But they obtained linear temporality by means of symbolic substitution in ideal space. Bergson's claim is that this is the only means that we regard time as a homogeneous medium. (124a)

Now let's recall also the one-and-the-many nature of counted objects. The shepherd might think of each sheep individually. This allows one to be different from another. But, they are also all the same in another way. They are all sheep. So because they are distinguishable in one sense, and indistinguishable in another, we may say that there are so many different particular instances of the same general instance of sheep. In one sense they are many. In another sense they are one. So we unify them into one number that quantifies their multiplicity. [see §52.]

So let's return to the example of the symbols for pendulum swings laid-out in ideal space. Because they are homogenized and counted, we treat them as all the same. But because they each receive a different place in the homogeneous space, we regard each one as unique in this other way. And let's recall how in the previous section we learned that the addition of each number changes the qualitative feel of the whole group; for example, 3 appears, feels, and seems different to us than 2 does. So Bergson writes in this section that we obtain such a symbolic representation by means of considering each term in the series under a "double aspect:"

1) each term has an aspect to them that is the same for every term; we notice it when we think of their sameness. And,

2) each term has an aspect that is unique to itself. For, every time we add another term, we change the organization of the whole. Hence each one has an aspect that is qualitatively unique from the rest.

So in this way we may place a qualitative multiplicity out in space under the form of a numerical multiplicity. Then we may regard one sort of multiplicity as being equivalent to the other. This twofold process happens most often when we perceive external motion. The object is the same throughout each instance of our awareness of it. Thus we are given a series of identical terms. Now, each term in the series has a different location. However, each of these instances of our conscious occur in mental states that interpermeate. And we retain the former positions while perceiving the present ones. In this manner the images synthesize in such a way that they permeate, complete, and continue one another. So we see how the series of discrete heterogeneous terms synthesize into the homogeneous medium of spatialized motion. Thus it is primarily by means of motion that our internal sense of duration takes-on the form of a homogeneous medium, and hence thereby we project time into space.

This holds also for repetitions of other discrete external phenomena. For example, we might hear a series of hammer falls against an anvil. As pure sensations, these sounds form an "indivisible melody." (125a) And just as the addition of new notes changes the character of the whole, so too would such a repetition of hammer blows give rise to this sort of a dynamic progress. Yet, we know that each fall of the hammer has the same objective cause: the smith's mighty arm. So we "cut up this progress into phases which we then regard as identical." (125b) But as identical, all the phases would be indistinguishable from one another. So to conceive their multiplicity, we must set-out each term into its own place in an ideal homogeneous space. Yet also, what separated each hammer blow was a duration of consciousness. So the ideal homogeneous space that the hammer-sound's symbols now take-up would be extensional homogeneous time. Bergson calls this time "the symbolical image of real duration." (125bc)

So, our ego comes into contact with the external world "at its surface." Here we find such things as clangs of hammers falling upon anvils. These successive sensations are experienced in the pure duration of our consciousness. Because this pure duration is heterogeneous and discrete, there are no temporal extents that separate each moment of consciousness. So they all dissolve into one another [i.e., they contract into one another.] Nonetheless, we know that each term is brought about by a new instance of an external cause, in this case a new swing of the smith's arm. Thus we know that objectively speaking, each hammer-fall is external to the others. So we can also consider them as being distinct from each other as well. In this way, we come to view our "superficial psychic life" as operating in a homogeneous (temporal) medium.

But we may also dig deeper below this superficial psychic life. We could penetrate into the depths of consciousness. Here we find the more fundamental cause for our symbolic representations: "the deep-seated self which ponders and decides, which heats and blazes up." This deeper self undergoes a series of changing states that permeate one another. If we separate the states to place them into homogeneous extensive space, they "undergo a deep alteration." Nonetheless, the deeper self is one and the same as the superficial ego. For, they both seem to endure in the same manner. And yet, it is only our superficial consciousness that is cut-up into parts that are external to one another. Underlying this superficial consciousness are also distinct segments of our deeper and more personal undivided progress of durational states. But even though they are distinct, they are not external to each other like the superficial segments are. Recall that both superficial and underlying consciousnesses endure in the same way. So what we do is we correlate each mutually-external superficial segment to its concurrent respective underlying inseparable segment. We saw that material objects obtain their mutual externality by means of their placement in homogeneous space. This mutual externality that the objects acquire then "reverberates and spreads into the depths of consciousness." Then, little-by-little we distinguish our sensations according to their external causes. By this means, our feelings and ideas separate from one another just like their contemporaneous sensations do. (126b)

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Images from the pages summarized above, in the English Translation [click on the image for an enlargement]:

Images from the pages summarized above, in the original French [click on the image for an enlargement]:

Bergson, Henri. Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, Transl. F. L. Pogson, (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2001).

Available online at:

http://www.archive.org/details/timeandfreewill00pogsgoog

French text from:

Bergson, Henri. Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience. Originally published Paris: Les Presses universitaires de France, 1888.

Available online at:

http://www.archive.org/details/essaisurlesdonn00berguoft

Husserl Ideas §54 Continuation: Accidental and Relative, and Necessary and Absolute Consciousnesses

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Nature is annihilated when there are "no harmonious concatenations in which experienced unities might become constituted," and thus no such animate organisms as humans (127b). And yet even no longer a human, one's consciousness remains "a stream of absolute mental processes with its own essence" (127bc). Hence "identical personal psychological properties" would no longer manifest (127d). We really can imagine such a bodyless and psyche-less consciousness when we consider the circumstances when "the intentional unities of experience, organism, psyche, and empirical Ego-subject" do not become constituted (127-128).

All empirical unities, and therefore also psychological mental processes, are indices pointing to concatenations of absolute mental processes having a distinctive essential formation; . . . all are, in the same sense, transcendent, merely relative, accidental. (128a.b)

In contrast to empirical mental processes is its underlying absolute mental process, which is not a "metaphysical construction" but is rather is an absoluteness indubitably demonstrable by means of attitude change. Hence all empirical unities are merely intentional and hence "relative" (128c).

Husserl, Edmund. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book. General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology. Transl. Fred Kersten. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1982.

Husserl Ideas §53 Animalia and Psychological Consciousness, summary

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Animals have conscious mental processes, hence there are consciousnesses which are also natural objects; however we said before that consciousness is absolute (124c).

Consciousness becomes a natural object only through its relation to its physical organism (125a). And it is only by means of these unions that individual beings may collectively constitute a world (125b).

Consciousness loses nothing of its essence by being embodied (125c); although, it becomes something additionally: "a component part of Nature" (125d). But in this consciousness appears something transcendent: "a sequence of conscious states of an identical real Ego-subject" (125-126).

Two attitudes are found in these transcending apperceptions: 1) the psychological attitude "in which our naturally focused regard is directed to mental processes," and 2) the phenomenological attitude which is combined with the first attitude and is turned toward absolute pure consciousness belonging to an Ego-subject (126b.d). Only when consciousness loses its "intentional form" does it become pure consciousness that is no longer an event in Nature (126-127).

Husserl, Edmund. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book. General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology. Transl. Fred Kersten. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1982.

An Annihilatable World for Consciousness Alone in Husserl Ideas I §49

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Previously Husserl noted that if there were actual worlds, they would be intersubjectively linked such that no transcendent reality would outlie them. However, this fact does not imply that there necessarily must be some world or physical thing in existence (§49 109bc).

Although the world’s existence must correlate to our experiences, our consciousness could flow forth without the existence of a world [CS: given the transcendence of the ego]. It is possible that instead of seeking harmonious experiences, we tend toward conflictual ones that create illusions concealing no deeper truths, and we may no longer have cause to constitute physical things: “in short, that there might no longer be any world” (109c.d).

However, despite an annihilated world, vague but unstable objects might be constituted, although they are no more than “mere analogues of intuitions of physical things” that are “incapable of constituting conservable ‘realities’” (110a).

Yet, even if the world be annihilated, consciousness would remain, so long as it perseveres, even if in a world of illusion. Although, such a consciousness would be modified (110b). At any rate: “no real being, no being which is presented and legitimated in consciousness by appearances, is necessary to the being of consciousness itself” (110c).

Immanent being thus is indubitably absolute being, because it cannot be nullified. However, a transcendent world always refers to some actual consciousness (110c).

Husserl wonders if the transcendent world exists, taking into account the presupposition that it is given-to and refined-by a stream of consciousness and also that this consciousness is operating normally (110-111).

It seems that even a transcendent world would be inherent to consciousness’ processes, rather than merely correlated to it (111b). Both an immanent and a transcendental being are still both being, and “things which are essentially akin, the respective proper essences of which have a like sense, can become connected in the true sense of the word, can make up a whole” (111b). But despite their common category, when we conceptually distinguish these two types of being, “a veritable abyss yawns between consciousness and reality” (111c).

For this reason, pure consciousness “must be held to be a self-contained complex of being, a complex of absolute being into which nothing can penetrate and out of which nothing can slip, to which nothing is spatiotemporally external and which cannot be within any spatiotemporally complex” (112a).

Thus the spatiotemporal world, which contains human Egos as subordinate realities, nonetheless is no more than an intentional being for those Egos: it is a “being for a consciousness...beyond that it is nothing” (112b).

Husserl, Edmund. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book. General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology. Transl. Fred Kersten. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1982.

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Husserl Ideas I §48

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There is no logical contradiction in saying: it is possible for something real to exist outside this world. But in order for such a transcendent world to be demonstrated, there must be an actual Ego who experiences that demonstration (§48 108a).

But if such an Ego may experience the exterior world, then it is possible for any Ego whatsoever to have this capacity (108b). These Ego’s may come to mutual understandings about the world, and may join their chains of experiences together to form one common intersubjective world (108c).

So if all Egos’ experiences can be interlinked into one intersubjective world, then there cannot be any realities outside our one intersubjectively-shared spatiotemporal world (108-109). For, if there some other exterior reality, again, there need potentially be Egos to experience it, and hence those experiences would be joined all together again into one interlinked world without some reality outside it.

Husserl, Edmund. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book. General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology. Transl. Fred Kersten.The Hague: Nijhoff, 1982.