Timeless Abraxas

Woman and Man,

How fitting to refer to you as dramatically as that. Salute you by referring to your gender: generically. Not by your nationality or name, but instead, by one of the broadest definitions of your respective selves. I do that, of course, consciously, because I need as great an space as possible to get this idea out. This is an attempt at I am not sure what just quite yet. Perhaps, an attempt to share. Nothing else. An attempt to share.

Background: The text I enclose below was born on page #111 of a gift that I received on my 26th birthday: “Demian.” To date, one of the most special gifts I have ever received. Its significance is of such magnitude to me because Herman Hesse recounts recognition of self existence from the very moment of being child and infant. I did not think it possible to detail procedures, findings, conclusions at one point in time that is so distant to present and then speak to a man (me) in our times and ages in first person to the extent he does.

I felt I ought not keep this to myself. It would be tragedy to retain it, a simple reaction that is also egocentric. Sharing it does mean singling out a particular piece of literature from an entire work of art. A book from a shelf. A name, to be a point of reference to you. It also means putting forth a thought. This may be telling of what my psyche and mind currently find relevant when it may not necessarily be the case in eternity. It happens now, it is now, and the question of importance may or may not decay. I have felt, though, it is permanent. Relevance, I feel, shifts as we grow older, wiser, and become different from what we were. This text and conclusion seems, however, timeless to me at present and so I share it.

Dilemma-S: I have fought with the button for many reasons. One, I admire your intellects and singling out one particular text has to be telling and purposeful. You are well read, well felt, well lived. What can I teach you? Is this text relevant enough? I have asked these questions to myself many times. Two, a long time ago, I buried the notion of destiny as important to understand existence. I buried it as soon as I learned the concept of dialectia and swept aside my once beloved pre-Socratic school. Because I am optimistic in general, fate is in particular a very difficult concept for me to grasp or assign any validity to. In a way, I always felt fate assigns us to a powerless way of being. Three, and most importantly, Demian says more than the below. It is so much more. How dare I just choose, pick, and send.

Conclusion: I should dare. This book has given me blind hope. It has re-introduced me to me on a new physical, intellectual, and visceral life challenge. That is: “I am here to find the path to myself”. Finding the path to myself, in all, has been what I am here to do. I understand it now: fully. It is not an excuse but rather the greatest challenge.

Read away. Find the meaning of Abraxas. Find Abraxas. Anyhow… here goes. From Herman Hesse to you:

“At this point a sharp realization burned within me: each man has his “function” but none which he can choose himself, define or perform as he pleases. It was wrong to desire new gods, completely wrong to want to provide the world with something. An enlightened man had but one duty – to seek the way to himself, to reach inner certainty, to grope his way forward, no matter where it led. The realization shook me profoundly, it was the fruit of this experience. I had often speculated with images of the future, dreamed of roles that I might be assigned, perhaps as poet or prophet or painter, or something similar.

All that was futile. I did not exist to write poems, to preach or to paint, neither I nor anyone else. All of that was incidental. Each man had only one genuine vocation – to find the way to himself. He might end up as poet or madman, as prophet or criminal – that was not his affair, ultimately it was of no concern. His task was to discover his own destiny – not an arbitrary one – and live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was only a would-be existence, an attempt of evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one’s own inwardness. The new vision roles up before me, glimpsed a hundred times, possibly even expressed before but now experienced for the first time by me. I was an experiment on the part of Nature, a gamble within the unknown, perhaps for a new purpose, perhaps for nothing, and my only task was to allow this game on the part of primeval depths to take its course, to feel its will within me and make it wholly mine. That or nothing!”

Herman Hess, Demian