Course XXI - Teaching 16: Imaginative Monologues as Preparation for Meditation

First Monologue: Loneliness and Introspection. One is not absolute; one is not autonomous in the individual world. You cannot be autonomous even by living alone in an island lost in the ocean, because we are the logic result of a chain of lives and deaths that are beyond our will. You are determined by society –by the present and past society. We think in a circle of ideas, which is common to Humanity as a whole; we have ideals of our time. When society falls sick, we are also sick although the individual life may be perfect. We were not born now in vain and at any time. What has been the cause of this birth? We do not know, but certainly we know that we were born at certain place and time, and willy-nilly we have to accept the rough guidelines of our times.
But in this mechanic determination is the motor of your absolute individuality, which is not dependent upon a general mechanism of life, but upon it own laws. Life as a whole –actions, concerns, wishes and dreams– is on the periphery of one’s personality; but gradually one burrows little pieces of human life and sets them in the gear of the inner motor. This way one expects gradually to retire, migrate from periphery to center, and to move actions and thoughts as a whole from the unconscious mechanism of social habits to the individual inner motor. When you are in a lonely and introspective state, you sense the noise of this hidden motor and gradually discover its characteristics.
Second Monologue: Fictitious death. To die is a perfect medicine for diseases of life. Death of life, ordinary death contains medicine and forgetfulness at the same time. You die, and ties disappear, because you have to go, you have to disappear; later ambitions for building beautiful things also disappear.
But the sovereign spirit of man has discovered that he can die and heal his diseases, being forgetfulness unnecessary; that is to say, we can be present and truly do all those beautiful things we wished to do, but that we were unable to do by lack of proper means. To die in life; here is the discovery of the creative spirit.
Physical death is always the great teaching: it does not teach resignation or repentance –it teaches rebelliousness against the blind impulse of our habits and instincts, and against stupidity in front of life, against wickedness and against laziness letting years pass with no valid actions.
To die in life; that is to say, to die in virtues of death; to live with perfect detachment from those who are dead. To kill the so-called goods, virtues, abilities, education, class, heritage, wishes, hope, dream and treasures of Humanity; and to be pure action, both inner and outer action, but being detached from these things, not touching the inner being because we are dead within. The soul is not terrestrial and cannot be touched because resides in the world of hereafter.