Evola Individualização

Isto dito, convém tomar em consideração o terceiro elemento. No texto já indicado, diz-se que o olho hipersensível vê vagar o demônio, até que se apresenta para ele a ocasião de uma nova «combustão», quando apercebe a união sexual de um homem e de uma mulher que possam ser adequados como seu pai e sua mãe, ou seja, que possam apresentar-lhe uma hereditariedade correspondendo a seus fortes desejos. É então que se determina um fato, a respeito da doutrina em questão, que apresenta uma singular concordância de ideias com o que a psicanálise — apesar das deformações e exageros em todos gêneros — pressentiu em nossos dias, segundo sua teoria do libido e do complexo de Édipo ou de Electra. Com efeito, aí é falado de um desejo, que esta entidade pode conceber, seja para a futura mãe, seja para o futuro pai, e isto segundo sexo que foi o seu no curso da vida precedente, mas já extinta, — e de uma aversão correspondente para com o outro genitor. Segue-se uma identificação com a embriaguez e o desfrute do casal, por meio do qual a entidade penetra na matriz: e então se opera a concepção. Logo em seguida, se condensam ao redor dela diversas khandhas, quer dizer elementos concatenados de germinação, que se encontrarão na base do novo ser — e começa o processo fisiológico do desenvolvimento embrional, tal qual o conhece a genética contemporânea em seus aspectos exteriores, e tal qual o considera, nestas condições internas, a teoria relativa aos diversos outros nidanas, a respeito da qual nos resta ainda dizer.

Assim em última análise, se encontram presentes, no ser humano, três princípios ou entidades, aqueles mesmos que, no Samkhya, levam os nomes de karatia-çarira, linga-çarira e de sthula-çarira, e que as antigas tradições ocidentais conheceram como noûs, psyche e soma, e como mens, anima e corpus. A respeito destes últimos, convém relembra a estreita relação que concebida entre a alma, enquanto «demônio» ou «duplo», e o «gênio», enquanto «vida» e «memória» de um sangue dado e de uma camada dada: coisa que, por sua vez, remete à já indicada «via dos pais» upanixadica — pitr-yana — ao sendero que reconduz sempre ao nascimento, segundo a lei da concupiscência e do destino da existência samsarica. A «alma» (enquanto princípio distinto daquele que é propriamente espiritual), segundo a concepção originária, pertence precisamente a este plano, se funda mais ou menos com a entidade irracional que é o «demônio»: nos textos budistas da prajnaparamita, igualmente, a pessoa ou «alma» — pudgala — se confunde frequentemente com este princípio pré-formado, que assume a existência, enquanto vida de uma vida determinada, e que, desta, mantém junto os elementos, ao mesmo tempo que se mantém como uma força não ligada a eles, a qual não cessa de existir com a morte do indivíduo particular.

We have now to consider the third factor. In one of the texts we have just mentioned it says that the supersensible eye sees the daemon wandering about until an opportunity for a new "combustion" presents itself on the occasion of the meeting of a man and a woman who may be suitable as its father and mother, that is to say, who may present it with a heredity in accordance with its cravings. A thing then occurs, with reference to which the doctrine in question is singularly in agreement with what "psychoanalysis"—even with its various deformations and exaggerations—has presented to our modern eyes in the guise of theories of the libido and of the "Oedipus" or "Electra complex." The doctrine speaks, in fact, of a desire that this entity may conceive either for the future mother or for the future father, according to the sex to which it belonged in its previous and now exhausted life, and of a corresponding aversion for the other parent. An identification follows through the infatuation and delight of the pair, by means of which the entity enters the womb and conception takes place. Immediately the various khandha, the germinal chain of factors that will form the basis of the personality, condense around it, and from this point there follows that physiological process of embryonic development that, in its exterior aspects, is known to contemporary medicine. Its internal development is determined by the various remaining nidana, of which we yet have to speak.

Thus, finally, there are present in the human being three principles or entities, which are called in Samkhya, karana, liñga, and sthula-sharira. These are also known to the ancient Western traditions as nous, psyche, and soma, or as mens, anima, and corpus. In connection with these last, we should remember the strict relationship that was conceived between the spirit as daemon or double, and the "genius" as life and memory of a particular blood and a particular stock; a concept which, in its turn goes back to the Upanishadic "way of the fathers"—pitr-yana, to the path that continually leads back to birth according to the law of craving and the nature of samsaric existence. The anima, according to the original concept, belongs to this very plane, it combines more or less with the "daemon" as an irrational entity; and even in the Buddhist texts dealing with the prajna-paramita, the person or anima (pudgala) is often confused with this preformed principle that takes on existence as the life of a determined life, and holds together its elements; a principle that yet maintains itself as a separate energy, not bound to these elements, and that transmits itself through various lives.

In the texts of the oldest Buddhist canon (which is in Pali), things are often presented in such a manner that the daemon or samsaric entity seems to be equivalent to viññana, that is, to "consciousness," the third nidana. In reality, the two things, as we have said, are quite distinct: the identification is explained by the fact that, through what we may call an elective affinity or a convergence, an identification is made between the force from above that is carried down by ignorance, and this entity made of desire: this identification is entirely analogous to the identification of the same entity with the material that the future parents offer for its new manifestation of craving. "Consciousness," viññana, is not the "daemon"; it meets the "daemon," however, and identifies and joins itself with it at the moment when it achieves one of its individuations and incarnations; this requires, in fact, an already specified life-force and its craving. Thus, in the human compound there certainly exists a "daemon" that is the seat of a more than individual samsaric consciousness and to which there may also be attached memories, instincts, and causes of remote origin and this is the signification of the so-called alayaviññana, the "containing-consciousness" that receives all impressions both conscious and unconscious of a certain stock or current; yet there also exists in the human being a higher principle, but which ignorance and the asava have bewildered and obscured. This is a fundamental point, and if it is not kept in mind, large parts of the Buddhist ascesis will remain unintelligible.

It is said that at the point when the antarabhava, the daemon, enters the womb, and when the regrouping and solidification of the material elements begins around it, it "dies." By this we must understand the cessation of the continuity of consciousness, and this means that one does not in the ordinary way remember prenatal and preconceptional states either samsaric or transcendental. It is a kind of rupture, for, starting from this point, the fourth nidana, the interdependent correlation between consciousness and the psychophysical unity (nama-rupa) that individuates it, is established. For if consciousness, viññana, must enter the mother’s womb in order that "name-and-form" can originate, then there must, at the same time, be "name-and-form" so that consciousness can exist.

In the texts we find the following simile for the relationship existing between the three principles: the seed is viññana, consciousness, the earth is kamma, and the water that makes the seed grow into a plant is thirst. Kamma here is the force, already determined by the sankhara, that corresponds to the "samsaric entity," into which the descending principle (seed) enters and is brought to a fresh existence because there is craving. Only in cases of exceptional "descents," "fatidic" in nature, of beings who, having removed ignorance to a certain degree, are in their substance mainly composed of "illumination" (bodhi—this is the literal sense of the expression bodhisattva), is the "vehicle" they use in place of the antarabhava or entity of craving, a "celestial body" or "body of splendor" (tusita-kaya). In these cases birth takes place without any dissolution of the continuity of consciousness; the individual is in perfect possession of himself, he is imperturbable and has vision; and for his nativity he has a choice of the place, the time, and the mother.

Such views naturally reduce the implications of earthly biological heredity to merely relative importance. Heredity is considered here as something much vaster: as not only that which one inherits from one’s ancestors, but also as that which comes from oneself and from antecedent identifications. Indeed, taking heredity comprehensively, only the latter is essential as far as the core of the human personality is concerned. From a higher point of view, to leave this heredity out of account would be as absurd as thinking that chicks of different species are born only from eggs, without a corresponding animal heredity. Returning to the symbolism of burning: if we wish to find the origin of the fire that burns with some particular log, it would be absurd to trace the origin of the log to the tree from which it came, and that to the forest to which it belonged, and so on—at the most we could only discover the quality of the fuel. The origin of the fire must, instead, be sought in the nature of the fire itself, not in that of the wood, by tracing the spark that lit the flame, and then the flame from which the spark came, and so on. Equally, the most essential and truly "direct" heredity of a being is not found in the genealogy of its earthly parents. For beings are heirs and sons of action and not of father and mother. Besides one’s own heredity of body and soma, there is samsaric heredity and, finally, there is one’s heredity that is the principle "from above" clouded by "ignorance."