Lisa (lkfox@gte.net) wrote:

Am reading CG's memoirs and am to the part where his father takes him on holiday after leaving the sanitorium. The following passage is striking, in my opinion:

And now I was to ascend this enormous mountain! I no longer knew which was bigger, I or the mountain. With a tremendous puffing, the wonderful locomotive shook and rattled me up to the dizzy heights where ever-new abysses and panoramas opened out before my gaze, until at last I stood on the peak in the strange thin air, looking into unimaginable distances. Yes, I thought, this is it, my world, the real world, the secret, where there are no teachers, no schools, no unanswerable questions, where one can be without having to ask anything.

Looking at this passage metaphorically, you could possibly make a connection between Carl's mountaintop excursion and individuation. Interested in hearing comments on this!

Lisa

Lisa,

I agree. This is a striking passage. Sunday past I was reflecting along similar lines regarding something Genl. Jan Smuts (South African philosopher-statesman, father of "Holism", 1870-1950) wrote regarding the "mountain" and his own encounters. These passages illustrates the point you make about individuation, I believe.....

On the 25th February 1923 Jan Smuts climbed Table Mountain to unveil a memorial to memembers of the Mountain Club who had fallen in the Great War of 1914-18. The Celtic Christians spoke of the "Mountain behind the mountain". Smuts first became acquainted with this "Mountain" as a small boy growing up on an African farm. He grew up between the Kasteel Mountain and the Great Winterhoek Range. He grew up, says Beukes, "a true child of nature". Smuts recalled once....

How well I remembered the years spent tending the cattle on the large farm roaming over all its far expanse of veld, in which every kloof, every valley, every koppie was endeared to me by the most familiar associations.

Month after month I had spent there in lonely occupation - alone with the cattle, myself and God. The veld had grown part of me, not only in the sense that my bones were part of it, but in that more vital sense which identifies nature with man.

Having no human companion I felt a spirit of comradeship for the objects of nature around me. In my childish way I communed with these as with my own soul; they became the sharers of my confidence.

THE SPIRIT OF THE MOUNTAIN

What is that religion? When we reach the mountain summits we leave behind us all the things that weigh heavily down below on our body and our spirit. We leave behind a feeling of weakness and depression; we feel a new freedom, a great exhilaration, an exaltation of the body no less than of the spirit. We feel a great joy.

The Religion of the Mountain is in reality the religion of joy, of the release of the soul from the things that weigh it down and fill it with a sense of weariness, sorrow and defeat. The religion of joy realises the freedom of the soul, the soul's kinship to the great creative spirit, and its dominance over all the things of sense. As the body has escaped from the over- weight and depression of the sea, so the soul must be released from all sense of weariness, weakness and depression arising from the fret, worry and friction of our daily lives. We must feel that we are above it all, that the soul is essentially free, and in freedom realises the joy of living. And when the feeling of lassitude and depression and the sense of defeat advances upon us, we must repel it, and maintain an equal and cheerful temper.

We must fill our daily lives with the spirit of joy and delight. We must carry this spirit into our daily lives and tasks. We must perform our work not grudgingly and as a burden imposed upon, but in a spirit of cheerfulness, goodwill and delight in it. Not only on the mountain summits of life, not only on the heights of success and achievement, but down in the deep valleys of drudgery, of anxiety and defeat, we must cultivate the great sprit of joyous freedom and upliftment of the soul.

We must practise the Religion of the Mountain down in the valleys also.

This may sound like a hard doctrine, and it may be that only after years of practise are we able to triumph in spirit over the things that weigh and drag us down. But it is the nature of the soul, as of all life, to rise, to overcome, and finally attain complete freedom and happiness. And if we consistently practise the Religion of the Mountain we must succeed in the end. To this great end Nature will co-operate with the soul.

The mountains uphold us and the stars beckon to us. The mountains of our lovely land will make a constant appeal to us to live the higher life of joy and freedom. Table Mountain, in particular, will preach this great gospel to the myriads of toilers in the valley below. And those who, whether members of the Mountain Club or not, make a habit of ascending her beautiful slopes in their free moments, will reap a rich reward not only in bodily health and strength, but also in an inner freedom and purity, in an habitual spirit of delight, which will be the crowning glory of their lives.

May I express the hope that in the years to come this memorial will draw myriads who live down below to breathe the purer air and become better men and women. Their spirits will join with those up here, and it will make us all purer and nobler in spirit and better citizens of the country.

...after lunch I looked at that great mountain behind Caledon (known as the Klein Swartberg) and my heart took flight, I said to the good people I was going up the mountain. They stared at me in astonishment. ‘It was too rough, I would lose my way. Nobody went up there.'

So I went up by myself, accompanied by my thoughts and memories, with the flowers and rare ericas and proteas smiling at me. Up and up until I was on the top and viewed the glorious landscape in that perfect air, and heard the grysbok [a small grey antelope] whistle and ‘was made one with nature' as Shelley described the feeling in his poem ‘Adonis'.

Then I came down a little way, took off my clothes, which are alien to that sort of surrounding and had a glorious sunbathe. I gathered many plants, and laden with inner and outward treasures I arrived back at Caledon in the evening.

Letter to Margaret Clark,
11 May 1925, quoted "The Religious Smuts" p.34f)

For we are indeed one with Nature, her genetic fibres run
through all our being, our physical organs connect us with
millions of years of her history; our minds are full of
immemorial paths of pre-human experience.

Our ear for music, our eye for art carry us back to the
early beginnings of animal life on this globe. Press but a
button in our brain and the gaunt spectres of the dim
forgotten past rise once more before us; the ghostly
dreaded forms of the primeval Fear loom before us and we
tremble all over with inexplicable fright. And then again
some distant sound, some call of bird or smell of wild
plants, or some sunrise or sunset glow in the distant
clouds, some mixture of light and shade on the mountains
may suddenly throw an unearthly spell over the spirit, lead
it forth from the deep chambers and set it panting and
wondering with inexpressible emotion. For the overwrought
mind there is no peace like nature's, for the wounded
spirit there is no healing like hers. There are indeed
times when human companionship becomes unbearable, and we
fly to nature for that silent sympathy and communion which
she alone can give.

Some of the deepest emotional experiences of my life have
come to me on the many nights I have spent under the open
African sky, and I am sure my case has not been singular in
this respect.

The intimate rapport with nature is one of the most
precious things in life. Nature is indeed very close to us;
sometimes closer than hands and feet, of which in truth she
is but the extension. The emotional appeal of nature is
tremendous, sometimes almost more than one can bear.

(From "Holism and Evolution", p.336f)