Evola and Transcendence by Way of Struggle
GIVEN everything that has been taking place over the last few years, a period in which many of us have been pushed to the very limits of our patience, it is worth recalling the words of Julius Evola from a November 1943 article in the pages of Italy's daily newspaper, La Stampa:
“The maxim of ancient wisdom is that the events and aspects of life never count as much as the ability of having power over them and the meaning that is attributed to them.”
Evola points out that such knowledge is only available to a select few on account of mankind's endless propensity for complacency. To rise above the level of ordinary human emotion, therefore, is no easy task and yet if we look beyond that which is most obvious we can derive a great deal of value from life's most tumultuous and uncertain moments:
“Now the disrupted and tragic periods of history can cause, by the very forces they unleash, greater numbers of people who will be led to an awakening, towards a liberation. It is essentially from what is measured the most profound spirit of a race - its indomitability and its vitality in a superior sense.”
Evola goes on to explain that when an individual has forfeited everything, perhaps in the way that the wartime bombardment of a family home can lead to the loss of one's most valued possessions, it activates within the human condition another dimension and
“existence becomes relative - it is a tragic and cruel sentiment - but it can also be a catharsis, a way to prevent the sole thing that can never be affected nor destroyed.”
Even death, after all, does not represent the end and neither is birth a beginning. Evola is similar to the Neoplatonists and Absolute Idealists in the sense that he believes that our temporary condition of earthly finitude does not bring to a close the perpetual cycle that has us moving from one state of infinity to another. Needless to say, this attitude is clearly at odds with that of modern man and most people
“hold on to a tree trunk, which is nothing but the short stretch of an individual's existence, ignoring the reality that such a grip does not have any greater security than that of clinging to a clump of grass to save themselves from being carried away by a wild current.”
Indeed, once this materialistic superstition is overcome we can begin to think about freedom. We must take heart from the tragedies that confront us and use such experiences to create a profound sense of security by which detachment leads to a state of transcendence and overcoming. As Evola himself explains, a
“radical breakdown of the bourgeois that exists in every person is possible in these devastating times. Yet in these very times humankind can experience rediscovery and can stand before themselves to look at everything in harmony through the eyes of the beyond, to make once more essential and important what should always be in a normal existence: the relationship between life and more than life, between the human and the eternal, between the short-lived and the eternal.”
If we cannot transform our most intense and challenging periods of fear and foreboding into a towering pillar of strength that enables us to achieve liberation, then all is lost. If you are incapable of understanding this emancipatory concept, it is possible that you still have much to lose.