Pedro Lamarão

English translation of this article published February 28th, 2021.

Thou canst not charm the dolphin with silence, O my prophet!

Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente, cap. II, v. 44

Through my personal advernture, the notion of that a “process” is a thing divided in three steps recurs always and ever. I am no longer capable of saying honestly if I think like this because the idea is good or if I think the idea is good because I always think like this.

The three steps came to me initially via kung fu. In the martial culture that was transmitted to me, the transmission process happens in three steps, 守 «sau», 破 «po» e 離 «lei», interpreted as “obey”, “break” and “depart”. It is about the ordering of time, of a progression in time in three steps: first one must “obey” with the intent of traversing through “break” to reach “depart”. In my own words, it is about learning in the beginning to criticise in the middle and to abandon at the end.

This notion has marked me profoundly by its contrast with the typical ordering of things in esoteric systems and communities and their polemics. In this place, “degrees” represent merits and honors and hierarchical positions that people desire to obtain, occupy and enjoy, being the ideal subject he who obtained and possesses the most “degrees”. Whereas the sau-po-lei structure progress in the direction of its own abandonment, characterizing the ideal subject she who delivered herself from all this and therefore possesses nothing anymore.

The projection in time of these elements, the “degrees”, affected my perception, taking from it the hierarchical-positional character and emphasizing in it the character of “passage” and “progression”. Phrases such as “he who follows never surpasses” became totally lost on me: it became obvious that one first follows to later surpass. In retrospect, mundane experience confirms with no difficulty that drivers and pedestrians alternate between following and overtaking normally.

Only after living with this for good ten years with this conception I could integrate it to the scientific illuminist culture via the book Kabbalæ Trium Literarum. Originally, the פ ,י ,ג trilogy represented to me a mysterious paradox: “silence in speech”, “speech”, “speech in silence”. Only after integrating by virtue of kung fu the idea of the process were I capable of a new reading of this trilogy. My reading was reoriented by the “function of the 3 orders” in the sense of a “funcion” as what transforms this into that, as what passes from here to there. By this interpretant, I came to read abou the function “(from) speech in(to) silence”, the function “(in) silence” and the function “(from) silence in(to) speech”. That is, shut up, keep quiet and then speak.

Paedagogically, I understand the two trilogies to harmonize in the following manner: at the start of the process, coming from nothing, it is necessary to receive the thing as it is, suspending the intromission of what is preexisting. It is natural that there are so many preexisting things in the starting moment: the person has certainly been alive for a while and through this time accumulated things, thoughts, this and that. It seems to me that this point is absolutely offensive to the current generation of esoterics, which seek in “esotericism” and “occultism” a variety of forms of liberation from that which they perceive to be restricting them. After all, with the intent of liberation from that which wants to tell you what to be and what to do, what good is there in travelling to a world that wants to tell you what to be and what to do?

To me it is sufficient to observe that this obedience, this imitation, this shutting up is the first step in a process whose intent is to generate the next step, which I harmonize in the image of analysis, of reflection and deep criticism. I consider it easily accessible to the intuition of any adult that reflection follows experience: things we do for a long time, repeatedly, naturally lead to a deepening of thought, to analysis and criticism. We are led to reflect on that which we have continuously before us. There is no need for force, for demanding of even inviting this: it fatally happens at the proper time.

To reproduce in teachings the image of this deepening, of this analysis and this criticism can do no more than to invite people, precisely, to imitate this image, such that in appearance they are operating the second step but in reality there only in the first step. If this is intentional, that is perfectly reasonable. But actual critical thinking cannot be transmitted in this way. It must emerge spontaneously, legitimately, from a process initiated earlier, a process whose virtue is to prepare the appropriate conditions, in which the subject interacts personally with the actual thing, in which the person receives the thing as it is. Therefore it is the function of the first step to generate the conditions for the second.

In the arts of informatics, I have practiced a division in three that did not at first appear to me as coinciding with the previous one but that also derives from my experience in kung fu: to prepare, to execute, to verify. Nothing is done only in preparation. This will seem obvious, but, it is impressive how much activities “drown at the beach”. [1] Popular wisdom says to “don’t count your chickens before they hatch” [2] but it is not enough to wait for the egg to come out: one must verify its content. After an action, one must verify its result, assure it. In informatics, juniors will tell you that the program is ready when it compiles on their machine while seniors will tell you that the program is ready when it was actually executed and approved by some other person in some other place.

This process of preparing, doing and confirming is slowly integrating in and spreading through my ideas in various environments. Consider for example the practice of the “diary” in the process of Scientific Illuminism: it is about among other things a device of verification that allows, after the facts, to confirm it by narrative. Another person competent in the matter may recognize the marks of legitimacy embedded in the narrative. So also the saying: “it is not enough to do yoga but not greet your janitor” [3]: the intent must manifest in thought, words and acts. The fundamental and definitive mark of the art of making cakes is in that cakes are made and verified by eating.

Rephrasing, there is no interest, there is no relevancy in a spirituality or wisdom which does not culminate in its own transcendence and reintegration into things. The value of submitting oneself to the process is in the liberation from the process in a way that the after is fruitfully different from the before. A wise man may be very difficult to distinguish from an idiot if observe for a very small amount of time, but, given enough time, one must note the difference. In the absence of this difference, he will probably be just an idiot. The Fool of the end must be of a very different kind of Foolishness from the fool of the beginning.

[1] from the portuguese “nadar e morrer na praia”, “swim and drown at the beach”, that is, you survived drifting the open sea just to die near dry land.

[2] in portuguese, “não contar com os ovos no cu da galinha”.

[3] from the portuguese “não adianta fazer ioga e não cumprimentar o porteiro”, that is, it is not enough to practice spiritually but behave like shit.