The Decisive Visit: How the System Defends Itself against an Independent Mind

The confrontation I went through in 1998 with what I call “the Administration” was not a passing friction with particular people or offices. At its core it was a clash between two powers: the power of material Concretion, which seeks to press the human being into a mould, and the power of independent Abstraction, which seeks to set him free. The event that settled in my memory as “the decisive visit” was no routine procedure. It was a reflex, a defensive reaction released by the system against a consciousness that had begun to grow in its own womb and threatened to break the monotony of the restraints it imposes on minds in order to survive. When I decided to reset my scales to zero and search for the pure essence — the truth that lies at the root of existence, beyond the reach of the self-appointed guardians of meaning — I was quietly declaring a direct connection with the first order of existence. In the calculus of material control, nothing is more dangerous. The traditional order draws its stability from keeping minds within the realm of Concretion, where people content themselves with husks and with reality as it is dictated to them. To search for the kernel is to pierce the dense layers of illusion and reach the source of divine wisdom directly. A consciousness that looks past persons and addresses itself to universal laws cannot be contained, and that is what provoked the Administration’s defensive response. That brief visit showed me that the fear of detachment is the driving force behind every structure that clings to rigidity. Freedom and detachment give a person the calm of independence; Concretion keeps him in the anxiety of dependence. From then on I was certain that my journey towards Abstraction was no longer a luxury. It had become an existential necessity, the only way to keep the Self from being stained by narrow human quarrels. The confrontation only strengthened my conviction that the truth needs no guards. It needs hearts brave enough to look behind the curtain and perceive the majesty of the Source and the greatness of an independent innate nature. Hashem Nassar All rights reserved