Work, employment, useless toil, and why not to get a job

"All men should possess a 'visionary faculty'. Men do not, because they live wrongly. They live too tensely, under too much strain, 'getting and spending'. But this loss of the visionary faculty is not entirely man's fault, it is partly the fault of the world he lives in, that demands that men should spend a certain amount of their time 'getting and spending' to stay alive. ĽThe visionary faculty comes naturally to all men. When they are relaxed enough, every leaf of every tree in the world, every speck of dust, is a separate world capable of producing infinite pleasure. If these fail to do so, it is man's own fault for wasting his time and energy on trivialities. The ideal is the contemplative poet, the 'sage', who cares about having only enough money and food to keep him alive, and never takes thought for the morrow."(The Outsider, p241)^{^[3]}

The last sentence of this quote from Wilson is reminiscent of Christ's exhortation to "Take no worry about what you will eat, or what you will put on", but instead to "consider the lilies in the field", who "reap not, neither do they sow." This is an appeal to live ever in the moment, to not let the mind confuse us beyond the miracle of the day. ^{^[4]}

As to the need to cease 'getting and spending', in order to have more life: This is the realization that would drive Henry David Thoreau out to Walden Pond where he would build a small hut, live like a pauper, and write a book trying to persuade as many others who were brave or dissatisfied enough to do the same; it is the same realization that would cause Thomas Traherne to "live upon ten pounds a year and go in leather clothes, and feed upon bread and water, so that I might have all my time clearly to myself..." (Centuries, p284). It is the same realization that would cause Colin Wilson to sleep on Hampstead Heath in order to pay no rent so he could write instead of working; this same necessity would cause Henry Miller to stoically refuse any 'job', and instead live on air and handouts for much of his writing life ^{^[5]}; this realization would make Herakleitos into an ignoble beggar, and a noble wiseman; it would send the Chinese poets of old out into the hills to do nothing but drink wine and idle in the glory of the day; it is the same realization that would force the author of this work to construct a small squatter's hut in the forest on the outskirts of the city limits so as to live cheaply and freely rather than be condemned to the slavery of useless toil.

[3] An example of what might happen when we do relax and let go of all thought and worry comes from Eckhart Tolle’s response to a person’s description of their exalted state; he offers to them: “You were free of time for a moment. You moved into the Now and therefore perceived the tree without the screen of mind. The awareness of Being became part of your perception. With the timeless dimension comes a different kind of knowing, one that does not ‘kill’ the spirit that lives within every creature and every thing. A knowing that does not destroy the sacredness and mystery of life but contains deep love and reverence for all that is. A knowing of which the mind knows nothing.” (The Power of Now, p45)

[4] Rumi wrote: "Be helpless and dumbfounded,/ unable to say yes or no./ Then a stretcher will come/ from grace to gather us up."

[5] I parenthesized the word 'job' in this sentence so that we could take note that this word is certainly a descendent of 'Job' from the Old Testament, whom, you will recall, was caused to suffer, at Yahweh's own hand, endless losses due to no apparent fault of his own, and so this word has, theologically, come to have the symbolic meaning of 'righteous suffering'; we should take note therefore that our society's word for work (i.e. job) takes its name from this very disconcerting, disquieting account of Yahweh's aggressive attitude towards his innocent creations; we should be aware that when we 'take a job' we ‘take on Job', and, in the act of serving Mammon, we sublimely receive the same unfortunate circumstances Job unwittingly found himself in.