Alexandra David-Néel

“To be fiercely opposed to any leveling down.”
Our friend is indulging himself today, venturing into the philosophical realms he so loves, by evoking and sharing with us the reflections of Alexandra David-Néel… who, known as Alexandra, was actually named Alexandrine. A writer and explorer, a renowned orientalist, this woman led an absolutely extraordinary life. Born in Saint-Mandé, she died in Digne, but between these two cities she traveled extensively throughout the Far East, where she was a leading authority. What an extraordinary destiny for someone who, initially, was named Alexandrine… a sort of verse with two sets of six syllables… in the feminine form…
Antoine Marquet

By Christian Morisot
Alexandra David-Néel said: “The greatest service one could render to a human being was to make them intelligent. Helping people rise up didn't mean giving them money, but culture, a well-formed mind. Giving money to a fool is useless; they don't know how to spend it. The rich shouldn't fall down the social ladder, but it was the poor who should rise. One must be fiercely opposed to any leveling down.”

These are rather troubling statements. How could we make a human being more intelligent when our brain matter, from birth, no longer develops, adapts to its environment, and the number of neurons cannot increase in either quantity or quality, even decreasing in intensity with age?

Everyone should have options regarding their life paths and choices, but to achieve this, taking politics as an example, to be part of an organization, one would need to know all the parties. Similarly, to choose a religion, one would need to know other religions. We must consider the diversity of ideas to allow for the right choice: “we are baptized at birth.”

There should be no compromise on living what we believe and what we actually experience. Ideological lukewarmness, or the failure to put professed ideas into practice, must be recognized as unacceptable. The speeches of political parties are hollow, and everyone knows that, faced with reality, all too often only lies disguised as enticing promises remain.
The world is a mirage, and we are but shadows.

Human beings are first and foremost a product of their environment. When cells emerge from the depths of the seas and differentiate from protoplasmic matter, it is because favorable circumstances determine this transformation. The evolution of cells then unfolds according to the environments with which they come into contact. It is to the influence of these surrounding circumstances that we owe our existence as humanity. At a certain point, the plant world and animal cells were our primitive ancestors.

But from the moment of its awakening to consciousness, the first feeling that emerges at the origin of human thought is fear and the desire for protection. Humans did not feel they possessed the necessary strength to fight against nature and began to desire to escape its absolute domination, seeking protectors outside themselves whom they believed to be more powerful, and relinquishing the responsibility for their defense to them. Thus, humans become slaves to the chimeras they have created, forgetting that these chimeras exist only through them; they submit to their fictions. The masters command in the name of some idol called God, idea, or principle; they do not need to be present to obtain the source from which they derive their authority. The first lawgiver was a priest, the first social system was theocracy, which is merely a form of obedience.

Human life is like a beach that high waves sweep over and then begin again. The waves recede, and the beach is once more what it was before…