Preface
fallen over the face of humanity and this impedes it from A seeing what underlies things and what transcends them. A whole mysterious world brimming with beauty and poetry has been covered, leaving only the most obvious aspects of reality visible. What we perceive with our senses does not pass now through the deepest filters of intelligence, we do not weigh our resolve in our consciousness, we do not feel other beings with our heart. Of our neighbour we only know what he possesses, we only observe his gestures; we do not see anything behind his eyes, they are transparent orbs that tell us nothing and that he uses to see us in the same way. Such is our lack of communication that we talk of nothing but things and facts. Preoccupied with the tangible and evident, our psychic apparatus has become so sluggish that it does not perceive the spiritual; a shadow has been cast on all that is beautiful, what is elevated has been put out of reach and creativity is now hidden, and whatever is vital for our happiness slips through our fingers like water. And as we alienate ourselves from these life sources, we are left alone and isolated, while fear and selfishness grow in our guts. In this way the veil thickens and looms over man. There are few at present, too few, who lift up their heads from the human anthill to gaze at the stars, and even fewer who can appreciate the Order of the Universe. Alienated from it, we try to impose our animal "order" on the rest of creation! And then we are surprised by the ecological disequilibrium, the wars and the brutality of our species!
One needs to look back only briefly to realise that there is something strange in the fact that the human being, who has been able to get to know the world around him in such detail, cannot come to terms with the knowledge of himself. As we know, the rule is that each one thinks, or rather believes, that he knows himself quite well, that he conforms to and accepts the family and society that has been his lot, with the kind of mind that he has. Nevertheless, it symptomatic that those who know themselves better discover greater galleries full of surprises in the mind's labyrinth Is man thus destined to live resigned to his ignorance and a stranger to himself? Psychosophy's answer is a categorical No! The labyrinth has an exit. But... one has to penetrate the labyrinth, to plunge into the dark depths of the mind until one touches the very bottom, and this implies a sacrifice that very few are willing to make.
In the course of this book the main galleries that should be explored will be discovered, as well as those that it is advisable to avoid. Naturally, the author cannot discover the minor galleries to which the circumstances of life have led each one to, and neither those that each has constructed: as one tends to believe that it is the external circumstances that determine our lives and forget that each of us is creating our own reality. Many times, in fact, we go down slopes simply because they are easy to descend withour thinking about whether we will have to ascend them again later. But, in order to reassure and encourage the reader who is well disposed to these trials, the author must confess that it would not have occurred to him to begin to expose these paths of knowledge if he was not certain that they were real. These paths are not paved with reasons that are attractive or even, perhaps, convincing to the intellect. The author, it is true, has used reasons to express this reality, but these are not sufficient, the reader who wants to tread firm ground must see beyond them. The reasons are like a map, they are not reality. Although this is obvious it is not sufficient for the intellect, because as we will see, if man could leave the map that he has made of reality, he would also leave the dark labyrinth of his individual mind.
Although it does not appeal only to reason, this book inclines, like all philosophical essays, towards clarity. This means that it avoids all obscurantism or "esotericism". If the reader is searching for immediate or "magical", solutions he need not take the trouble to read these pages.
This work is one more call to spiritual life. By this I understand an artistic, ethical, contemplative, creative and harmonious life. In order to understand psychosophy it is indispensable to have an open and receptive spirit that is open to appreciating nuances. All fundamentalisms, religious and irreligious, including every fixed creed, will constitute an impediment to its understanding. This discipline is part of the direct knowledge of the essence of particular religions, and it maintains that the misuse and errors of the latter are a consequence of the lack of this knowledge. It is to avoid the deviations to which ignorance of this essence has led, that psychosophy induces wisdom.
About The Book
"Reader, the book that you have in your hands is an original work, rich in ideas and suggestions that deserve to be taken seriously for the good of each and every one of us, and for humanity in general. If we had to enrol it in a school or philosophical tradition we would do so within the framework of eternal philosophies as its source of inspiration is common to these schools and essentially coincides with them.
Besides this, the work has all the elements that constitute a true philosophy. The spiritual experience laid out in the First Part allows for a critique that, to my knowledge, has no precedents. The Second Part marks a milestone in the critical history of psychoanalysis, and for this reason will surely become a classic text, not in the sense of a scholarly text, but in that of a masterpiece."
Juan Adolfo Vázquez
Professor Emeritus at the University of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
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