© 1997 François Dupont
© 1997 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
| Meeting of September 21, 1997 in Villebon-Sur-Yvette | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 5 — Autumn 1997 | Coherence, or Principle of Evanescence? |
Sources:
Personal research on the famous quote, with a very hard life, attributed to Malraux:
“The next century will be religious or it will not be.”
have led to astonishing discoveries, revealing at the same time an unknown dimension of this great writer and this outstanding politician. Among these is the fact that an agnostic of the stature of Malraux had been interested, throughout his life, in the metaphysical aspects of existence, art and extraordinary personalities, such as, for example, Charles de Gaulle.
Another strange observation is that this French Minister of Culture (1959-1969) clearly predicted the decline of materialism and institutional and dogmatic religions from the 21st century. And this, however, not without having foreseen a regrettable transition according to him, that is to say the rise of backward religious fundamentalisms.
Let us correlate this with this statement from UB 195:9.3: “Urantia is now quivering on the very brink of one of its most astounding and exciting epochs of social adjustment, moral stimulation, and spiritual enlightenment.”
The two particularities of the mental life of this illustrious man prompted us to delve more deeply into his ideas on the Beyond.
Thus the famous phrase repeated ad nauseam, above, would be a falsification and an occultation of an extract from an authentic text (Conféré Réf. 3), published in the periodical “Preuves” of March No. 49, of which here is the correction: “The capital problem of the end of the century will be the religious problem in a form as different from the one we know, as Christianity was from the ancient religions…”
This is not a joke because Malraux speaks of an inner reality, of a transmission of the sacred, which he would have experienced in Japan in the temples of Tsé, Hyoto and Nara.
But who would have benefited from hiding the true meaning of this text? Let us leave the answers to the critical knowledge of each reader.
Here is what Malraux wrote (Ref. 3) to support the fact that it is not at all a question of religion in the restricted sense of the term: “the sacred is felt, is lived and is not thought…”
“The language of inner reality pre-exists art, but art reveals it…”
“Everything ultimately happens as if religions were nothing other than the successive librettos of an immense music, and as if this music was only transmitted to us through the communion of works of art…”.
Let us then examine the etymology of the word agnostic, the -a of which is the equivalent of a negation and the root, gnostic from the Greek gnôsis, means “knowledge”. The designation, “the Gnostics” was applied to a sect, a trend of religious research in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD, and which presupposes that there exists a science, superior knowledge of divine realities, necessary for the salvation of men. This trend was fought by the representatives of official Christianity of the time.
A modern agnostic denies this possibility of knowing the transcendent and declares that man in himself is inaccessible to the unknowable. In other words, any metaphysical theory, like any theology, is useless for the salvation of man.
And Malraux, the absolute agnostic, will reject all dogma, all religious teaching, to preserve only individual sensitivity to a very pure contact with an enigmatic reality. A reality that he strives, despite himself and despite his convictions, to define, to capture in words.
Thus works of art, which defy the centuries, are “true creations” in the biblical sense, coming from an inner reality, visiting the artist or revealing itself to him, often towards the end of his life, where he will be allowed to create his most grandiose works.
Ex: “the Pieta Rondanini” by Michelangelo
Titian’s “Pieta of Venice”, Rembrandt’s “Toledo” and “the Visitation” by Greco.
Often, to designate the creative spirit behind the masterpiece, it was enough for Malraux to use the term “presence”.
Towards the end of his life, his notebook took the form of a triptych: - the Supernatural - the Unreal - the Timeless. That is to say three notions according to which he clumsily tried to classify the great works and his impressions of the same.
The three terms: The Supernatural, the Unreal, and the Timeless are qualifications of this “mysterious presence”, which is maintained throughout the history of humanity. Masterpieces are illuminated by and radiate continually this enigmatic presence.
The three names baptize three turns of phrase, three accents according to which the Other World delivers itself, frees itself and reserves itself through the great works (See Ref. 2).
I believe it is unnecessary to indicate all the resonances evoked in the mind of a seasoned reader of the L.U., each time he immerses himself in the fascinating reading of the romantic, critical and artistic work of this great man. Let us simply underline his disgust for crystallized theologies and faiths, as well as the morontial values that he attributes to works of art with his own words…
Let us especially note the progress of the Spirit, even among so-called non-religious people…
What joy to know that everything contributes to revealing the inaudible, the invisible and the unknown of the Beyond, even in the depths of the unconscious of each sincere seeker.
Francois Dupont
| Meeting of September 21, 1997 in Villebon-Sur-Yvette | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 5 — Autumn 1997 | Coherence, or Principle of Evanescence? |
Definition from the Larousse dictionary: AGNOSTICISM: Any doctrine which declares the unknowable inaccessible to man or which considers all metaphysics as useless (Addition from the reading committee) ↩︎