The return to sensitive communication
according to ancient civilisations.

3 - The evolution of human communication (continued) :

    After the wisdom resulting from acquired experience, capable of defining rules of behaviour recognised by all, a regression in behaviour takes place.
    In the face of this fragile collective consciousness, a guide is needed.
In Moses, we see a dialogue developing between his desires, his doubts, his anger, and his God, who manifests himself as an inner voice with which he must come to terms. This voice indicates the difficulties he will encounter, at a time when violent impulses arise in him against those who flout his authority.
God is the voice of experience, trying to guide him along the path to peace and freedom.

B – Human evolution, its advances and regressions :

    Men have achieved freedom thanks to a leader capable of guiding them. But their evolution has barely begun : they are still children dependent on a protective and educational authority. Believing they have lost their guide, they return to their old beliefs. If they can't see the real world, they need tangible support.





    Moses acts as a responsible man. While leading his people towards freedom, he chose to isolate himself to find the answers to his questions.
For his part, Aaron appears as the archaic facet of Moses, still attached to the past and capable of leading the people back to their ancient beliefs [cf : Apis, Moloch]. People naturally trust him because he reassures them by responding favourably to their desires.










    For a people still blind and unadapted to freedom, rediscovering their ancient beliefs and images of their gods is reassuring.
What's more, the new support for their beliefs was not an adult animal, but the cow's calf. Although it has instinctive knowledge of its needs, its instincts have not yet had time to integrate into a community.
Immature people naturally give themselves the god that corresponds to the evolution of their consciousness.





    Aaron knows that the festival is an essential way of giving thanks to a patron god.





    The immaturity of men is evident in every one of their actions. They do not act to organise their lives, but, like children, they take an interest in their new toy and then content themselves with satisfying their immediate needs : eating, entertainment, sleep.





    There are two ways of understanding the text here.
1 - The god, like any person who runs a state, cannot stoop to educating his people. Having become aware of the situation, he needs a minister to intervene.

    2 - However, independently of his god, Moses, as a responsible and experienced leader, realised that without him, his people would descend into anarchy.
His experience enabled him to anticipate the difficulties to come.
It is this vision of Moses that we are going to look at: for us, the god here would be Moses' unconscious [cf : L'inconscient anticipe - in french].






    Moses knows how to listen to the voice within him that makes him foresee difficulties.
He knows the possible behaviours of a childlike people.This people, nourished by the beliefs and images of the gods of Egypt, is unlikely to set off in the right direction on its own.




    Moses' intuition comes from the role he has played between Pharaoh and his enslaved people : he knows the reasons of the one and feels the needs of the other.
A people reduced to slavery has no experience other than obeying the directives imposed from childhood : a stiff neck indicates this inability to turn their gaze anywhere other than in the direction they already know.
This is another example of the importance of the leader and his knowledge of people. It is as the representative of a just ‘evolution-god’ that he will be able to guide his people along the path of life.




    At that time, mentalities had not yet evolved : only punishment could control excesses, and Moses could not escape violent impulses.
Conversely, the person who knows how to be obeyed will become the leader of a great nation.







    This passage can be understood in three different ways:
1 - Moses speaks to God and, like Joseph and Jacob, negotiates with him.
2 - If God is only a powerful and authoritarian ‘Lord’ [cf : Gifts of land to the Hebrews], we can suppose that Moses finds in this passage the words he might have used when negotiating with Pharaoh for the freedom of his people.


3 - We can also assume that this dialogue is an inner one, between two opposing forces within him : compassion and anger.
He is the father who loves his children and wants them to be happy, while at the same time finding it hard not to be blindly obeyed.





    By questioning God's anger, Moses is addressing his own violent impulses.





    A people can only truly evolve if the authority that has guided it recognises its mistakes.
Moses drew on the history of his ancestors to learn from his own experience.
We can see here the inner journey of a man who confronts his religious convictions with the maturation of his thought.
Can Moses give up guiding his people despite the promises he has made to them ?






    In an instant, everything is reversed. The compassionate leader has just triumphed over the leader wounded in his pride.
No one can be just if he is guided by his impulses. Compassion must continue to underpin his governance.
Here we find the opposition between the reason that governs and the heart that feels and brings its own knowledge of the world.
Moses has just made an important choice: he has fully chosen his rediscovered sensitivity and compassion.




    Each rule of life is written in two ways:
- one, written on the visible side, is most often experienced as a coercive law,
- The other is written on the invisible side, and can only be read by those who feel that behind the law lies the heart and respect for all beings and all things.





    A written law is addressed to reason and has no other purpose than to regulate relations within society. It differs from the moral sense which only comes into play if we act for both our own good and that of others. However, this law is inspired by it to establish its rules.
We find here the way in which evolution unfolded [cf : l'évolution des moyens de communication] : it began with the development of sensitive perception, then, with the need to communicate, languages appeared and succeeded one another in different forms: body language, facial expressions, vebal language.




    While Aaron is close to the people, Joshua is close to Moses : they represent two other facets of Moses' personality.
Aaron is the one who hears the needs of the people. Joshua, on the other hand, interprets the cries he hears in his own way, without feeling what they express.





    Moses doesn't judge negatively, he listens, able to describe what he hears and feels.
But has his inner workings been fully realized ? If he is capable of empathy, will he be able to make it triumph ?




    Confronted with the spectacle of his people's regression, he regresses himself, and allows the all-powerful Lord to resurface within him, ready to consume his people [cf. Exodus 32:10].


    Here we find a characteristic of the human personality : it is capable of understanding life through reasoning, capable of explaining it in writings that fill entire libraries, but it fails to apply this knowledge.




    Despite the accumulated knowledge, the exercise of wisdom is difficult when anger arises.
Moses punishes!




    Moses looked for a scapegoat. First of all, it was his servant Aaron.
In this sense, he put on the garb of the almighty god who was preparing to punish his people for their disobedience [cf. Exodus 32:10].





    Aaron, another facet of Moses, shifts the blame onto the people.
Each event leads to a chain reaction to determine who is responsible and what solution needs to be found.





    We have seen the different paternalistic personalities of Moses, authoritarian or compassionate.
Aaron shows himself to be a father who does not seek conflict and grants his children whatever they ask of him.




    He prefers to justify himself rather than take responsibility for his actions.




    Moses, for his part, cannot accept the dishonor that affects his people and reflects on him.




    We have seen the different personalities of Moses, compassionate or authoritarian.
Now he is back in charge of his people.
Will he do so as a democratic leader, or as an autocrat ?
Will he guide or punish ?




    A liberated people can fall back into their mistakes. The same applies to the guide who, having fought against tyranny, also becomes a tyrant.
Just when order seemed to have been restored, Moses allows himself to be carried away by anger: only the death of the guilty parties is the solution. To justify his decision, he invokes the word of God.





    Moses was transformed into a bloodthirsty leader in the image of his god.
It is a long and difficult road from the moral sense he recognised inwardly to putting it into practice.






    We can see how progress can vanish in a short time : evolution has just turned into regression.
Examples of such massacres can be found down the centuries, whether religiously or politically motivated. 25 centuries later, in another part of the world, we will see the same massacres blessed by a patriarch claiming to be of the same god.




---------------------------
Moses' inner dialogue will now become a dialogue with the god.
Unable to accept his disobedience, Moses blamed and punished his people.
He will now justify himself by invoking the Eternal to support his decisions..
----------------------------




    Moses has abandoned all empathy. He is guided only by his role as representative of a sovereign god.
He recognizes a single sin : disobedience. His “all-powerful” god became his only justification.





    In addressing his god, Moses is acting as a prosecutor condemning an act of lèse-majesté.
He is awaiting divine judgement.





    Moses can only forgive his people with the consent of his god.





    For Moses' god, the only guilty party is the one who doesn't blindly obey.





    The people had already been punished by Moses, but that's not enough : the god of Moses is preparing his own revenge.





    When he strikes, it is as an autocrat, because his people do not share his vision of the world.
The evolution of man has been aborted, because the written law has proved incapable of transforming souls.




    So, in this remote period in the history of the Middle East, the scribes were perfectly aware of the failings of the people, as well as those of their leaders.
Every era has had its share of visionaries [cf : the influence of Hammurabi's code on the Hebrews.] capable of speaking to a blind people who, even today, remain deaf to their enlightened advice.













4 - Le "miracle" de la communication empathique : (In french)


Bibliographie :