…BY ESSENCE…

Stage 30 / Tuesday 26 May / From Moissac to Auvillar / 22 km

 

Ah, how beautiful was the cloister in the St Pierre Abbey in Moissac where I meditated yesterday on my arrival. Without doubt, something to experience at least once in a lifetime! In walking around it, I felt the occult presence of numerous monks who, since its construction in the year 1100, had walked around it, praying for the world beyond their enclosure. Their lives were freely devoted to prayer for the existence of others. Denying oneself for the life of others … The very essence of abnegation!

 

And today, as my own cloister opens wide to the west, between plane trees that line the green path between the Two Seas canal and the Garonne, I meditate on what makes a thing exist, and without which it wouldn’t be: its essence. For example, what distinguishes a monk from another religious person, it’s this regulated life of prayer in a closed setting. Saying monk or nun means cloister. Whoever says cloister is saying the place where monks walk around in prayer, a healthy way of insuring that these prayer warriors have a certain physical exercise … The cloister, prayer, and abnegation are the essential essence of monastic life. Just as the essence of a triangle is to have three sides and three angles! Remove one of them, it is no longer; add one and it changes essence and becomes a quadrilateral!

 

Essence, therefore, is the essential: what is necessary, no more, no less, to characterize the existence of some distinct thing, without wanting to enumerate all the possible variations. For example, there is an infinite number of triangles according to the dimensions of the sides and angles, but the essential remains: three sides, three angles. I could also characterize the differences between two living beings researching their essence: to be a tree, for example, there must undoubtedly be nothing more nor less than a trunk and branches (roots and leaves being a bonus); to be animal it must be living with the faculty of feeling or moving all or a part of its body (which suffices to distinguish it from vegetal which doesn’t move or mineral which is not alive). Thus the coral, which responds to touch, is classified as animal life!

 

Let’s go on to living species, and what among them separates human from animal. The ability to think, to reason, to project far in time distinguishes them. For example I was able to plan my pilgrimage. No animal would do that. It would well be an accident that the migratory routes of swallows toward Africa in the autumn bring a few individuals from the Moorish chimneys of Morestel to the suburbs of Santiago de Compostela. I don’t believe, therefore, that pilgrimage per se can be within an animal’s capabilities, while it is in the human’s. I am the proof, and moreover, a lot of other humans were pilgrims before me.

 

Therefore, the reality of the essence would be its aptitude to make something exist, including the possibility for a fact to appear. I recognize the probable objection: “But all humans don’t make a pilgrimage!” To which I would reply, “Agreed, but a pilgrimage is something possible to a human, whether he does it or not, therefore this is a trait which distinguishes him from animals for which the same is certainly not the case.” Essence therefore is in the domain of the possible. Without implying, for all that, that every individual of the human species should undertake a pilgrimage in order to qualify as a human! Let’s say that there pre-exists in a human the possibility of pilgrimage, by his faculty to think and find reasons to do so: it is therefore “of his essence to do so,” without the act of doing it necessarily following.

 

And I myself am among those persons who have freely chosen to walk toward Compostela. My present existence can therefore boast of two attributes: human and pilgrim. I have one thing in common with my fellow human beings: thinking. But I also am part of a minority which, in its existence, has chosen to become a pilgrim! Mathematicians, who love logic, would say that the human essence is a necessary but albeit insufficient condition as attribute to an individual pilgrim …

 

But the tribulations of these pilgrim individuals in no way affect the living species which is of human essence. It is simply interesting to state that the only humans who become pilgrims are those whose modes of thinking, perhaps for many reasons, bring them to take to “the way.” As if that were pre-inscribed in their individuality. As if some way of thinking pre-existed in them, unformulated until it manifests itself and sets them moving toward the goal.

 

A subconscious make-up which becomes concrete for certain people, at a certain time, and not at all for others! Predestination? Was this pilgrimage inscribed long ago at the heart of my existence, while it wasn’t for others?

 

Now, the ability to think did not prevent the earth from existing before the appearance of the human race. One might also suppose that this aptitude will disappear irremediably when the extinction of the sun will bring the disappearance of all life on our planet. “Oh existential anguish! Truly unique to the human being!”

 

This leads me to consider that finally existence is “the fact of being” and the essence designates “that which constitutes the nature of a being.” And, even more admirable, I realize that, for the human being, the essence is the place where consciousness is possible. It is at the same time this same consciousness that renders the essence conceivable! It is a support for the existing that it designates!

 

In the set theory of mathematics, one would say that consciousness is a property common to all humans, necessary for defining this collectivity. It could be said that all the humans that exist make up the “human set.”  And that in this set there is a sub-set of pilgrims! The big question still being debated is of course whether humans are the only beings gifted with consciousness. There is talk of a chimpanzee in a Swedish zoo capable of projecting: he accumulates projectiles in a hidden place which he then enjoys bombarding on the visitors who come to contemplate him!

 

On the contrary, is it possible that human beings can deny themselves a conscience? Refusing the ability to think? The proverb says: “Science without conscience is only the ruin of the soul!” And in fact, one can well imagine the spiral into which might fall the one who flouts all conscience, and would say that he has lost all common sense. He surely risks adopting a behavior that will rapidly exclude him from his fellow-humans and make him a pariah. There’s a good chance that his morals without hope will lead to nihilism, and his survival in society will become extremely problematic. He could well become an outrageous criminal, like Anders Breivik in Norway (2011).

 

Therefore essence has an influence on existence, at least it gives it “a sense”, but this is a difficult reality to weigh up : for one must admit that on one side essence seems necessary in order to foster existence ; and on the other hand, all existence can potentially be the source of new essences! Descartes versus Sartre! Might I have come back to the dilemma of the chicken and the egg?

 

I cross the bridge over the Garonne. My body, to which I have given little thought during today’s stage, being so absorbed by my reflections on what constitutes the nature of being, feels no sign of fatigue in climbing up the south bank of the beautiful river. On the other hand, like Asterix’s Roman of “I think, therefore I am,” my head is truly knocked out and weighed down by all this reasoning I have stored there. I have the impression once again that I’m going round and round regarding the preeminence of a mysterious consciousness about the fact that I exist! I must rest!

 

Look, how fortuitous, here is the grain market of Auvillar, famous for its circular architecture. Which way shall I go around it? Will I go in the right direction? Will I find the right exit toward a comfortable hostel, after resting on a bench to resume my thoughts? And once more, I fear that my notes are going to overflow onto a second page! I mustn’t let this become a habit, for that too would be senseless!

 

The grain market of Auvillar