A Treatise of Revolutionary Psychology 

CHAPTER I

THE LEVEL OF BEING

Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? What are we living for? Why are we living? Unquestionably, the poor “intellectual animal” mistakenly called man not only doesn’t know, but furthermore doesn’t even know that he doesn’t know.

Worst of all is the so strange and difficult situation in which we find ourselves: we don’t know the secret of all our tragedies and yet we're convinced that we know it all.  Take a “rational mammal,” one of those people who think themselves influential in life, to the middle of the Sahara desert, leave him there far away from any oasis, and from an airplane observe everything that happens.  The facts will speak for themselves: although the “intellectual humanoid” thinks himself strong and believes himself to be very manly, deep down he is frightfully weak.  The “rational animal” is one hundred percent foolish; he thinks the best of himself; he thinks he can marvelously evolve by means of kindergarten, etiquette manuals, elementary school, high school, university, the family name, etc., etc., etc. Unfortunately, behind all that education, polite manners, titles and money, we know very well that any stomachache makes us sad and that deep down we continue being unhappy and miserable.  We have only to read world history to know that we are the same barbarians of yesteryear and that, instead of improving, we have become worse.  This 20th century with all its spectacle, wars, prostitution, worldwide sodomy, sexual degeneration, drugs, alcohol, exorbitant cruelty, extreme perversity, monstrosity etc., etc., is the mirror in which we must see ourselves, so then there is no good reason for us to boast of having reached a higher stage of development.

To think that time equals progress is absurd. Unfortunately, "educated ignoramuses" continue to be bottled up in the "dogma of evolution."  In all of the black pages of our dark history we always find the same horrifying cruelties, ambitions, wars, etc., nevertheless our "supercivilized" contemporaries are still convinced that this matter of war is something secondary, a fleeting accident that has nothing to do with their much lauded "modern civilization."

Certainly what really is important is each person's way of being.  Some people will be drunkards, others temperate; some honest and others shameless. In life there is something of everything.  The mass is the sum of the individuals. What the individual is, is what the mass is, the government is, etc. So then the masses are the extension of the individual.  The transformation of the masses and of nations is not possible if the individual, if each person, is not transformed.

No one can deny that there are different social levels.  There are people of the church and people of the brothel, people of commerce and people of the land, etc. So also are there different Levels of Being.  What we are internally—generous or petty, selfless or stingy, violent or calm, chaste or lustful—attracts the diverse circumstances of life.

Lustful people will always attract and find themselves involved in scenes, dramas and even tragedies of lasciviousness.  Drunkards will attract drunkards and will always find themselves in bars and taverns, that's obvious.  What will the userer attract?  And the egotist?  How many problems?  Jail?  Disgrace?

However, embittered people, tired of suffering, want to change, to turn the page of their story.  Poor people!  They want to change and they don't know how; they don't know the procedure.  They are in a dead end street.  What happened to them yesterday happens to them today and will happen to them tomorrow.  They always repeat the same errors and they don't learn the lessons of life even under fire.  Everything in their lives repeats.  They say the same things, do the same things, lament the same things.  This boring repetition of dramas, comedies and tragedies will continue as long as we carry inside of us the undesirable elements of Anger, Greed, Lust, Envy, Pride, Laziness, Gluttony, etc., etc., etc.

What is our moral level?  Or better if we say: what is our Level of Being? As long as the Level of Being does not radically change, the repetition of our miseries, scenes, misadventures and misfortunes will continue.

All things and all circumstances that happen outside of us on the stage of this world are exclusively the reflection of what we carry inside of us.  We can with good reason solemnly declare that "what is outside is a reflection of what is inside."  When a person changes inwardly and that change is radical, then what is exterior—circumstances, life—also changes.

Lately (1974) I have been observing a group of people who invaded a neighboring piece of land.  Here in Mexico those people are given the curious qualifier of "paracaidistas" [English: “parachutists”].  They are neighbors of the Campestre Churubusco district and are very near my house, which is the reason that I have been able study them closely.

Being poor is not a crime, but the serious problem isn't in this, but in their Level of Being.  Daily they fight amongst themselves, get drunk, insult each other and become murderers of their own companions in misfortune.  They certainly live in filthy shacks in which hatred reigns instead of love.

Many times I have thought about the fact that if any of those persons were to eliminate from within themselves the hatred, the anger, the lust, the drunkenness, the gossip, the cruelty, the egoism, the slander, the envy, the self-love, the pride, etc., etc., etc., then other people would like them.  By the simple Law of Affinities they would associate with more refined, more spiritual people.  Those new relationships would be definitive for an economic and social change.  That would be the system that would allow them to leave the "pigsty", the filthy "sewer."

So then, if we really want a radical change, what we must first comprehend is that each one of us—white or black, yellow or red, educated or uneducated—Is in one Level of Being or another.

What is our Level of Being?  Have you ever thought about that?  It wouldn't be possible to move on to another level if we do not know what state we're in.