As Fernando Pessoa wisely recommended, the creation of imaginary friends, the exercise of mental conversations that would never be carried out in life, the realization of the impossible by the mind, all this, besides the benefits from the infinite novelties, brings invaluable contributions to the organization of reasoning. It is a practice that tests limits, exposes counterpoints, broadens horizons, and fills the need arising from the limitation of experience. The mind is strengthened because it has exercised and learned more, thought takes on more solid contours, and the habit, with time, becomes a healthy, pleasurable, and irreplaceable psychic and existential need.
It Seems That the Traits Placed by Dostoevsky…
It seems that the traits Dostoevsky placed, especially, in the personality of Myshkin would be inconceivable to someone who never observed them acting in real life. Inconceivable because they would seem absurd and unconvincing. But there it is: this innocence that seems to be and is not stupidity, this absolute lack of astonishment, this benevolence without limits, this speech that errs in the choice of words, this acting that is a little shy, a little confused, that seems indecisive and generates so much strangeness… All this complexity that always seems to be what it is not, added to the look of those who know and accept it, without fear, without surprise, without judgment and without reaction, leads those who observe it to a perplexity that logic is unable to explain. Reasoning cannot accept what it sees and, lacking a better explanation, puts everything on the account of folly and absurdity. Myshkin, however, is real, and contrary to the expectations of a race imprisoned in the meanness of spirit, he shows that the human soul, by raising itself up, gets rid of what ties it to the ground.
The Full Objectivation Operated by Modernity…
The full objectivation operated by modernity and the subsequent indoctrination of the masses to this peculiar way of looking at reality has produced individuals lacking a most important mental faculty. Trained to consider certain hypotheses forbidden, the new minds already grow up with a deficit of possibilities, which are torn out at their roots. More and more it seems obvious that the greatest misery of this age is that it has objectified the human being, and therefore destroyed his transcendent dimension, reducing him to the limited and corrupted character of ordinary matter. The consequences of this terrible night of the human spirit range from dehumanization to dumbing down, from cultural destruction to moral regression, from chaos to the vacuum that has become characteristic of it. How was it possible to reach this point? Once again, it seems right when Tolstoy says that there are historical circumstances that seem defined by a greater force—we are left, as always, with astonishment and hesitation in conjecturing the whys…
Although Much Is to Be Gained and Something Can Be Learned…
Although much is to be gained and something can be learned about the mind through dream interpretation, one must be very careful not to fall into the tempting stupidity of rationalizing the non-rationalizable. It is certainly very useful to be aware of what goes on in states where consciousness volatilizes; there is much to be learned and the exercise is quite stimulating. What one must not do is succumb to the logical need to attribute meaning to spontaneous, unpredictable, irrational manifestations. A careful study, with time, points out connections, coincidences, and perhaps one or another circumstantial or emotional archetype particular to the analyzed mind. The rest varies as experience, temperament, real-life circumstances, recent events, and also the unlimited imagination vary. Considering all this, it must be admitted that, although often misused, this is an intriguing study, to say the least.