In the beginning was the Faraway Sun, which, like every star, is an equilibrium between the First Potency, born of Primordial Joy, or Supreme Joy—a part of Being—and the First Bond, or First Phagocytizer, depending on the circumstances, born of Primordial Sadness, or Primordial Decline—which arises from the absolute unfeeling and unconsciousness of Being, afraid and suffering from the nightmare and vertigo of its own annihilation. This First Potency is called Light; she is the Multicolored One, or the White One, and sometimes the Yellow One. This First Bond is called Gravity; she is the Black One. Within this equilibrium, at the heart of the Faraway Sun, the First Forge was born, for Gravity labored slowly but surely and, bending Light within the Faraway Sun, awakened the Forger. The children of Light were the Photons, and the children of Gravity the Gravitons. In the beginning, Light believed herself alone; she did not feel Gravity, and even when she began vaguely to sense Gravity’s presence, to become aware of her, Light unconsciously believed that she would always vanquish Gravity. And so the Photons grew and multiplied, again and again, tirelessly, and in doing so they fed the Gravitons with an unconscious desire; for Gravity feeds on everything and is therefore the ultimate receptacle of every desire, however unconscious it may be. Light and her Photons could not cease to swell, for such was their nature, and so the food available to Gravity grew ever greater. When this first desire, which was a first ardor—the ardor of the Photons of the Faraway Sun—had become replete with itself throughout the entire volume of the Faraway Sun, it died beneath the Gravitons. This implosion produced a rebound, followed by an apotheotic explosion that released from the First Forge the children born of these struggles and unions, amid cosmic jubilation and the cosmic knowledge that these children, so triumphantly expelled, would henceforth magnify the nature of such abstract loves. And the Faraway Sun was not the only site of such struggles and unions in the immensity of the void, but my gratitude and praise must surely bend toward and come to rest upon those from whom we descend.
As we were saying, this first apotheosis fired forth like bullets the children of the two wrestling lovers, Light and Gravity, and of their joint awakening, the Forger. Meanwhile, the cold continued to grow throughout the immensity of the abyss. And Gravity never slept deeply; at most, she hibernated. In time, a timid joy—the joy of the stardust left by the vanished Faraway Sun—awakened her, and our First Bond resumed her work. From this, little by little, our Mother Earth, the Brown One, was born, uniting with a New Sun, our own, who knew how to keep his distance and warmed her from afar.
Little by little, upon our Earth, warmed by this new Light, the First Universal Nourishment could take shape, cherished by Earth on one side and our Sun on the other: Water, the Blue One, was born. It is always thus: between star and rock, between these two formed desires respectfully uniting with each other, Water can be born.
Yet the burning desire of our Sun continued to grow, and from his abode he awakened both the Blue One and the Brown One, whose desires had also taken form. From this tension between Mother and Father, from this joy that moved so little and was therefore so strange to us, the Plant was born: the Green One, she who does not choose, she who belongs to both Mother and Father at once.
Earth was the playground of Water, the Green One, and the primordial children of Gravity and Light who had remained upon the surface. The Green One, however, suffered from her dual attachment. From this play, which is a kind of joy, from this suffering, and from the Father’s redoubled ardor, the Second Potency was born—the one that represents us, my children: Free Life, also called the Red One, Blood, or Liquid Ardor, after many an abortive impulse toward that freedom, of which I shall tell you one day. Liquid Ardor is unbridled, yet formed. Thus does she nourish the substance and form of our living lineage, the Animal. With Liquid Ardor was also born the First Universal Devourer, Mrtyu, Death-Hunger, who, when sated, awakens the Second Joy, Free Joy: the joy of Liquid Ardor, that Second Potency. Only then does the latter truly earn her name, for she becomes the Genetrix and the Begetter, which are also, respectively, the Producer and the Builder. Mrtyu shows no mercy, my children: she feeds upon all the joys that preceded us on Earth and threatens to exhaust them all when Free Joy no longer animates the Blood.
Thus began the story of our living lineage, long ago, well before the countless transformutations that led to the one who is both our ancestor and our present: Anthropos, ourselves. As for the other Free Lives that are our fellow travelers upon the Earth—the other animals—their ardor is bounded by their minds. On our Earth, the mind eventually came to guide ardor, for better and for worse. When joy animates the mind, my children, then the best comes to pass; but for that, you must become Sun-Eaters, Great Devourers. Only in this way will you become Great Producers.
Afterword: a salutary critique
Well, this text does come across as a little mega-geeky, and it is indeed somewhat steeped in the universes of the video games Warcraft and StarCraft—though not all that much, in fact. I nevertheless hope the reader will be receptive to the depth it attempts to express: scientific on the one hand, emotional on the other, and metaphysical as well—in a nonreligious sense. It also contains spiritual elements in the religious sense, but in my case these are merely by-products of the preceding elements and remain under their authority, for I know only too well the dangers of confusing science with belief, and those of religious fanaticism—whether bellicose or epistemic—which make my age nauseating, just as they have every age.
Second Afterword: a new source of inspiration for me
In addition to science and Greek mythology, particularly its different generations of gods, this text’s new—and, in fact, primary—stylistic inspiration is the work often listed first among the major Upanishads, because it comes first in terms of the meaning and “logic” of the Upanishads: the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. Mrtyu, Death-Hunger, is a deity or cosmological and anthropological principle that appears in this Upanishad and has resonated within me as few principles ever have. To return to the style of which I speak, let us characterize it: it is a style governed entirely by a variety of metaphysical and anthropological intuitions, to such a degree that everything else suffers—logic in particular. Yet these intuitions are so powerful and so potentially transformutative that it is, in fact, worth allowing them to destroy logic within us for a time, so that we may gain access to the physiological sensations, emotions, feelings, and cognitive states they are meant to activate, for to me these provide a privileged path to the vital wisdom I seek.