My soul’s cry
(Afterward to my book “Mother Earth’s final push — the story of humanity’s gestation”).
April 2016. Taken by a sudden surge of inspiration, I write a text filled with existential undertones even though I am a materialist atheist, a faithful member of the scientific vision of the world and of rationality.
«Who am I, anyway?»
I was born from darkness, descending from nothingness. I am the bud of one of the billions of billions of branches that connect me to the roots of existence, composed of particles from the origin of the universe. In my beginnings, I was nothing but hunger, cold and fatigue. Today, I am a myriad of questions. Why am I here? What is the meaning of all this? Where am I to go? What am I to do? And of course: who am I, anyway?
Equipped with language and reflexive tools of our times — rationalism and science — the question «who am I?» has a readymade answer. I am the original arrangement of all my lived experiences and the links and connections I have established between them. Every second, my unconscious mind processes the information transmitted by my five senses, interprets it according to my past experiences and makes a decision before it reaches my conscious mind. As each new experience is dependent on the previous one, the repetition of this cycle cements my being, making me more and more predictable, destined to move forward on rails until the end of my existence.
My free will exists only in an imagination, the fruit of my ego, which refuses to accept the implacable determinism of life.
«No. That’s not possible. There must be more. More to say, more to do…»
«Yes». «Yes» tells us culture, literature, human history, imagination, the irrational, the forbidden… All that is proscribed, dirty, vile, banal, all that remains of humanity in this rationalized universe. Who am I? I am on a perpetual quest, since my birth, programmed never to stop, to go further relentlessly. Even if the Earth is flat, even if I risk falling off its edge into a bottomless abyss, I will go to check it out because I want to know, I want to see, I want to feed my mind with more and more savory experiences, more and more original be they contradictory, to create junctions that will take my mind and body elsewhere, moved by surprise, bliss and wonder, to find a treasure and lose it for another treasure I do not yet possess, and that I may never have, but that is more magnificent and mysterious than any I’ve had before.
Who am I? I am disgust, laziness and boredom. All is known to me. Life has lost its mysteries. All the gods, old and new, are dead, the god-man has risen in their place, defecating from his putrid soul on their once immaculate and pure ideal thrones.
I know all, I see all: the make-up of things has no more secrets. Everything is a molecule, an atom, and what little is unknown has lost all its flavor. String theory, the Big Bang, a few simple words to try to define the unknowable, to apprehend the unapprehendable, to steal a magician’s trick without adding the slightest magic.
Who am I? I am a man-god who, by virtue of his newfound powers and in collaboration with other man-gods, was able to give birth to and maintain the only Demons to walk this earth, beings that are stillborn and yet so powerful that they enslave generations of humans one after another. They aim to standardize the rails so that all of humanity, once under their yoke, moves like a well-oiled machine tirelessly in one direction.
From a man-god, I have become a working ant, anonymous, replaceable; work to live, live to work, eat poo sleep, eat school sleep, eat work sleep, work, sleep, sleep, sleep…
Who am I? I am a Doctor summa cum lauda, Master and undisputed God of my microcosm, a small specialized cog that turns on itself relentlessly, without respite, interlocking perfectly with all these other cogs that turn, turn and turn endlessly until they churn up the very guts of the World.
Who am I? I am a free being, I can do anything or far from it. Tomorrow? I can fly to the end of the world, climb above the clouds, bury myself under the earth. Yet I am here, I remain here, I am weary, for my freedom was the ultimate treasure I had to seek, the one that was more magnificent and mysterious than anything else.
The supreme irony was that I was born into the most pernicious and sophisticated System ever invented by man-gods: the one that managed to equate unidirectionality with freedom, transforming my quest into a measured race, eat work sleep, but with total freedom. The Devil has won. While the universe is endless, humanity’s story has ended. «Sure, it’s not perfect, but this is the best we have found», they all say. Now, there is no point in looking for freedom, because in order to change anything, we have to show that we have something better to offer, based of course on the standards of methodologies set by the system itself. A system that measures its worth based on parameters it has determined. Thus, from tribal societies, through the first Empires, onto the great civilizations that existed all around the globe, followed by the fall of Empires, the birth of States, the advent of Kings going from their throne to the guillotine, the immutable struggle of humanity against its own creations should now stop because we stumbled into «democracy»?
Who am I? I am the inextinguishable spark attached to every soul, the one that breaks down walls, that overcomes mountains, the one that seeks and destroys balls and chains, any constraints, whatever they may be. I have defeated Empires, I have defeated Kings, I will also defeat the Devil who whispers to me with his little voice to lay down my arms because I have won the battle. They call me freedom, but I am more than that. I am curiosity, the eternal seeker, the one that seeks without knowing what it seeks, without a particular goal, without morals, without good, without evil, without limits, without end, interwoven in the deepest chromosomes of life. I stretch out in all directions, I am the incarnation of free will, because as long as I am alive, tomorrow, everything remains possible.
Who am I? I am infinity, because only the infinite makes me a fully-fledged human being.
I rediscovered this text in 2022 while proof-reading my book, “Mother Earth’s final push: the story of humanity’s gestation”, before publishing it. Following the writing of this text, I discover blockchain technology and bitcoin in July 2016. The following year, in 2017, I stumble upon the Relative Theory of Money. The puzzle pieces start to come together in my mind. And finally, in January 2018, my worldview shifts. The seed I had planted in 2016, with this text, this existential cry, has sprouted and I find myself swept along by the current of life.
It’s January 2018, it’s been two weeks since I last slept. Obsessed with the collapse of our societies, the end of the world, I see signs of it everywhere. The financial system is on the brink of a major crash, climate change is upon us, we are sitting on an arsenal of nuclear weapons powerful enough to blow the planet up several times. The birth of my daughter in 2017 has heightened my existential anxieties. Now I’m not only afraid for myself, for my future, but also about hers. I wanted answers, I wanted to know: «Why are we here? What are we playing at?» Until then, I was a perfect little atheist materialist. God was for the «weak-minded», those who needed some comfort, and weren’t strong enough to face the «truth»: the universe has no meaning, we are biological machines a tad more sophisticated than a chimpanzee, our actions are determined by the mechanical workings of our universe, by billions of chemical reactions that happen without our awareness and outside of our control. Our consciousness is only the product of chance, a «side effect» of the sophistication of our brain, of our evolution. But fear of death caught up with me, and I fell headlong into the abyss created by the materialist vision of the universe, a meaningless black hole.
I started watching videos on various topics to try to fill my loss of meaning, my existential crisis: philosophy, neuroscience, politics, sociology, ethics, evolutionary psychology…
Nothing gave me satisfaction. Then I came across a debate between Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson, a two-hour video focused on a key philosophical question: «What is Truth?» That was the first domino to fall, setting off an unstoppable chain reaction. I couldn’t sleep. Ideas were popping up in my head without my being able to control them, without my being able to identify their origin. Ideas that challenged many of my beliefs. This went on for a little over two weeks. I could no longer concentrate at work. I had an incessant need to write. More than 70 pages of ideas transcribed in a jumble without any coherence. Later on, I was able to put some order into all of this, by familiarizing myself with the kind of literature I had never touched before: books on spirituality and esoteric experiences.
After my two weeks of insomnia, my wife started to get seriously worried. The less I slept, the more ideas and thoughts came to me, but the more I lost my footing, the more delirious I became. At the time, I thought I was some kind of prophet, alone in a reality where everyone else was asleep, that I had to «save» humanity with the «revelations» I had received. Eventually, I ended up in a hospital emergency psychiatric unit, convinced that the end of the world was near, that a nuclear attack was imminent, that I was about to die, and that I had to leave some sort of summary of my revelations to be used by the lucky survivors. After about an hour of madness, they gave me two sleeping pills and I slept for 18 hours straight. When I woke up, a series of serendipitous coincidences or «synchronicities» (a term I didn’t know yet) pointed me in the exact direction I needed to go to make sense of everything I had experienced.
My wife persuaded me to see a psychologist. She called a friend of mine who recommended a psychologist not far from our home. Normally, she would not accept new patients but made an exception for me. The first time we met, I explained everything to her, everything I had experienced, my revelations, my visions, my thoughts and she gave me a book. When I started reading it, I knew exactly what was in it. Its contents allowed me to give a coherence to the ideas I had transcribed a few weeks earlier. This book talked about spirituality in a way that was very similar to what I had experienced or «channeled» (a word I didn’t know at the time either).
My spiritual awakening was triggered by this question, asked in a naive, open way, without expectation of any answer, without any preconceived ideas: «What is the Truth»? And I got what I asked for. What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? What is the true nature of God? As it says in the Bible, Matthew 7:7 «Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.»
At that moment, I knew that my life would never be the same. It’s impossible to pretend you haven’t seen or experienced something of this magnitude. After the take-off, it was time to land, to bring this experience back into «reality», into the 21st century, into the world as it is and not as I had dreamed it. A spiritual awakening can be dangerous, and the abstract «world of ideas» is a tempting place to hide, to protect oneself from material, physical, biological life, filled with imperfections, pain, suffering and sorrow.
I’m still in the landing phase. My daily challenges are mundane things: enjoying ice cream, spending time with friends, planting vegetables, playing sports, getting involved in «material», real, concrete projects. My being almost got sucked into the «world of ideas», where everything is perfect, where everything exists and coexists in peace, at a less dense, less material level of reality, but at the cost of abandoning my «physical» body. Going back down to the human level, where things are imperfect, difficult, progressive, frustrating, slow, relative, was a real challenge. I still find myself daydreaming, my head elsewhere while someone is talking to me, or while I play with my children. These last few years have felt like a long detox after an overdose of «Truth», or at least something that smelled and tasted like it from my human perspective. At the time of my awakening, I was not aware of the «filters» that I had unconsciously applied to the «Truth». Most of these filters are presented at the beginning of this book as the «initial assumptions». Indeed, no human can perceive things without a filter. There is always a filter, always an assumption, and my assumptions include: the fact that the universe and life have a meaning, that humans are part of the universe and that they have a reason for being, that behind an apparent complexity lies a hidden simplicity.
And these filters, or beliefs, are of paramount importance, because this is the reason why some scientists will come up with formulas that are incomprehensible to the average person, while others will speak in allegories and metaphors that are accessible to everyone.
The belief in an infinitely complex universe becomes a distorting filter applied to the «truth». Each filter has its advantages and disadvantages. Each person is free to modulate his or her beliefs and adapt his or her filters according to what he or she is looking for.
The «truth» as filtered in the book I wrote, “Mother Earth’s final push”, is simply a correspondence between the inside and the outside, nothing more. But it is bound to evolve, like everything in this universe. «Truth» is therefore instrumental to experience. One must adhere to a specific «truth» as opposed to another in order to experience that «truth». And at some point, that «truth» becomes obsolete. This was the case with the monotheistic «truth», and we are also reaching the limit of what can be experienced with the scientific «truth». Thus we’re just expanding our framework for experience, by moving to a spiritually based «truth». And this book proposes one «framework» among others, with certain principles and limitations which will affect our experience. Will this «truth» be adopted? Who knows. In any case, it will not be based on its «truthfulness,» but rather on a kind of natural selection that goes far beyond my will or the will of others. My «truth» will be selected according to its ability to allow the universe to continue to experience itself through us, and to evolve the quality of consciousness.
This book is a first sketch of what I experienced, what I could bring back from this awakening of consciousness. The new paradigm I adopted, and shared throughout this book, helped me to find a meaning to life. I no longer have existential anguish, nor a visceral fear of death, I am no longer obsessed by the end of the world, I no longer feel the desire or the need to demonstrate, to denounce, to condemn or to judge. I am less and less «against» and more and more «for». I live my life, I try to reconnect with my ability to make choices. I also write… But I don’t pretend like I’m saving the planet or humanity. If I do these things, it’s for me, because I enjoy it, because I’m passionate about it. My challenges are no longer «global», they are personal. My existential questions relate to my everyday life. For example, when a mosquito keeps me awake at 2 a.m., I wonder if God or the universe has a sadistic side. This book is, in a way, my sharing of a self-help therapy, as someone who needed to «know» to stop stressing and living in fear. Now that I am reassured at the «macro» level, it is at the «micro» level, in my daily life, that I stumble and stammer. Because if it is possible, through this book, to find a meaning to life, it is not the same thing as finding a meaning to one’s life.
On that front, I am still searching, but I accept that this will probably always be the case, since in the end, my life will consist of endless opportunities to get to know myself, nothing more and nothing less. Who is «Martin»? And what better way to find out than through life, filled with various experiences.
I accept that I am human. That «truth» will not help me get up in the morning. That like everyone else, I have challenges, because that’s the way it is in the «world of experience», as opposed to the «world of existence» where you can just be. As Heraclitus said, «Nothing is permanent except change».
I hope that this book will help those who will be called to read it, and that it will be able to facilitate and accompany the transition we are in, to live it better, in serenity and peace, and to take the time to get to know ourselves, and through this daily discovery, to transform reality around us in a way that is much more profound and perennial than a cosmetic transformation imposed by a few people at the top of a power pyramid.
Basically, the most important thing is to live one’s life by constantly trying to answer these two questions: «Who am I? What could I become»? The questions at the root of everything, representing both the problem and the solution to everything. And if we agree to play the game, and to answer these questions daily, we will have the opportunity to (re)discover ourselves, to learn to know ourselves, and we will finally be able to really enjoy our short visit in human form in the infinity museum.
