In his Revolt of the Masses, Ortega y Gasset states that, when the writer “picks up the pen to write on a subject that he has studied for many years, he must keep in mind that the average reader, who has never dealt with the subject in question, is not reading in order to learn something, but to pass his judgment on the writer, whenever what was written fails to coincide with the vulgarities that populate the reader’s mind.” According to Ortega y Gasset, this would be an effect – in the intellectual field – of an attitude typical of the masses in the modern epoch: the common man, as such, feels entitled to pronounce judgments, be they aesthetic, moral, political, etc. The author explains that the “fundamental rights”, that intellectuals in the 18th Century ascribed to every citizen “by birth”, the rights that had been declared in order to protect the inalienable dignity of the human being, have become pretexts for unfounded claims. “What was initially a juridical idea or ideal – the sovereignty of the unqualified individual, of the generic human being as such – has become a constitutive element of the psychological state of the average man” (idem). Indeed, this readiness to pass judgment does exist: on occasion we are truly left astonished by the presumptuousness that the average man has developed in intellectual matters. Curiously enough, it seems to be more licit in some (arbitrarily defined) fields than others. For instance – based on my experience in Italy and France – in the field of architecture the power of judgment would seem universal, and anyone feels entitled to declare that this or that building is “beautiful”, “ugly”, “horrible”, etc. Quite often a person who is not ashamed to admit that he understands nothing about wine, that his palate is unable to tell a mediocre wine from an excellent one, will be completely uninhibited when it comes to judging the architectural qualities (or lack thereof) in an urban project. Logically, then, a sommelier’s education should take much longer than an architect’s. We could add that this attitude is not always limited to the average man, but extends to a good share of the minority that should detach itself from the mass, namely, intellectuals and professors. In fact, due to a curious psychological twist, we often find that a cultivated person has the most limited views precisely in the field he knows best. In this case, we are dealing with an essentially intelligent, enquiring person; his will to know and to better himself will light up any time he perceives a novelty, an interesting concept, perhaps in a field fairly unknown to him and hence all the more enticing. But step into his field – the field in which he has constructed his superiority, his role – and you are faced with a different person, much more dogmatic, and much less inclined to consider a hypothesis that conflicts with his views. This is particularly apparent in disciplines such as sociology or art criticism, which today seem to be incredibly hollow. This capacity to maintain a “child-like” curiosity throughout one’s career is what distinguishes a “true intellectual” from an “intellectual labourer”. “To marvel is to begin to understand. It is the sport and the luxury specific to the intellectual” (idem). So far, we have demonstrated that, as a matter of fact, the contemporary reader is largely unprepared and even more often ill disposed to receive most information that could be useful to him. But immediately the danger arises that the intellectual, who has come to this conclusion, retreats into an “ivory tower”: he can then solipsistically claim any assertion to be true, on the basis that the reader will in any case dispute it because of its paradoxicality. At this point the intellectual ceases to question himself, and falls into a dogmatism of his own thought. Here I am thinking in particular of those who teach, write or speak about Ontopsychology without the attitude of a “true intellectual”. Given the many areas in which Ontopsychology challenges both vulgar and scientific opinions widely accepted in our society, they can rightly expect a certain degree of suspicion, of distrust, at times even of condemnation on the part of the common man as well as the academician. But this attitude (“they are not prepared to understand”) easily degenerates (“this is how things are, end of story”). The fact is that, typically, an Ontopsychology teacher has discovered the validity of this School through a moment of evidence – most often by observing or experiencing its efficacy in the therapeutic setting. Having recognised the validity of this particular application, he has then embraced the whole of the theory, from the revision of classical psychoanalysis, to the integration of the memetic model, to the elaboration on Scholasticism, etc. At this point, he may feel invincible, given that he has made such a complete theory his own. But this hiatus between a profound and personal experience (a moment of revelation, of inner growth) and other, subsequently acquired concepts is precisely where the danger lies. We could say that the initial evidence – more of which becomes accessible gradually, through time – is the entry point and a constitutive point of the theory: the only point that the individual truly knows. This entry point is but a very small part, compared with the whole of the theory. I am using the term theory precisely because, at this point, this is precisely what it is – a rational technique for which the individual lacks a proven application, the map of a vast territory of which he has visited only one county. Studies, experience and inner growth will hopefully lead the individual to develop, to rediscover, to experience an increasingly wide part of the theory, so that it is no longer acquired or learned knowledge, but becomes part of the evidence, of the individual’s authentic and operative knowledge. When the individual finds himself in the position of teaching or simply describing Ontopsychology to others, to the extent that he teaches this part, he is true; when he teaches the other, he is dogmatic. This explains the paradox by which the youngest in this field are sometimes the most dogmatic. Gabriel Marcel’s writing on technique can help to clarify this – after all, we are dealing with a rational technique. Marcel points out that our life and consequently our worldview has increasingly come to depend on technical, mechanical processes that contribute to what we normally refer to as “progress” or “comfort”. As a consequence, the person increasingly relies on external reference points, so that “the more humanity as a whole manages to assert its dominion over nature, the more the individual is enslaved by this conquest”. So, while “a technique is good in itself, because it incarnates a certain authentic potency of reason”, we must question the effects that that technique will have “on those who, without having contributed to its invention, become its beneficiaries.” The same thinking can be extended to scientific concepts: “the gravest error or greatest shortfall of scientism is probably its failure to question what science, or rather a scientific truth becomes, how it degenerates once it has been inculcated in individuals who have in no way participated to the scientific ascesis or the scientific conquest” (Les hommes contre l’humain, ’51). We can therefore conclude that our knowledge of
Ontopsychology (and here we should understand it in the broadest sense, as a current of thought going beyond a single School or a single thinker) is real to the extent that we have matured, lived and rediscovered its every concept. Conversely, when we express its concepts without having fully worked out their meaning, we lack credibility, because in this case – as explained with regard to techniques – we are proceeding “off centre”. Indeed, the image of Ontopsychology has been damaged mostly by those who have taken its conceptual framework “lightly”, without full mastery. Those who have taken the map for the territory. In fact, Ontopsychology cannot simply be studied; rather, it needs to be “crafted”. Studying only facilitates the occurrence of experiences that form our operative knowledge and its possible generalisations. The converse would be somewhat like expecting that an apprentice blacksmith, having studied the chemical properties of metal, and how they can be altered, would be able to seize the anvil and the hammer and forge a perfect artefact. The analogy is fitting, because humanity has had excellent blacksmiths for thousands of years, while the understanding of the intermolecular forces that confer metals different properties through beating and quenching is an extremely recent discovery. Likewise, humanity is still in the dark as to the exact functioning of neurons, infinitely more complex to gauge than the molecules in metals, yet it has always had masters, and their apprenticeship has resembled the blacksmith’s more than the academician’s. Many thinkers have admonished us that it is easy to abuse a thought. “Proudhon would say: ‘Intellectuals are light’, and it is, alas! terribly true, because of the profound reason that the intellectual does not deal with a resistant reality like the craftsman or the farmer, but works with words and paper suffers any offence” (Marcel, ibid.). And elsewhere: “the men of discourse, of the logos, have used it without respect or precaution, failing to realise that the word is a sacrament to be administered with great care” (Ortega y Gasset, ibid.). In summary, a true teacher of Ontopsychology should keep to the part of Ontopsychology that he has crafted through his personal development and experience, and that he can recognise as evidence. When we teach, we should limit ourselves to this part, that we have touched for ourselves. In reality, when we teach this part, it does not feel like teaching: it feels like saying something obvious. It is our listener’s wide-open eyes that tell us that we are introducing an element of novelty.
