Homage to Silo

by Salvatore Puledda

The task that I have been assigned -- to trace the profile of a man like Silo and to pay him homage -- is not an easy task… Because Silo and his work do not fit the usual mold that is used by common sense and consolidated thinking habits when classifying the multiform diversity of human experience. Having been Silo’s disciple and friend for over 25 years, Silo is, to me, a very special man. What is more, he is unique. One could say that any person who is eulogized is special and unique. Could it be that the conventions of rhetoric force us to make something extraordinary of someone who would otherwise be common? This affirmation that Silo is a very special man, a unique man – and I make this affirmation with all sincerity and from the heart – is something that must be proven. This is what I intend to do in this brief speech.

I should make it clear, however, that I will not resort to the instruments of logic to sustain my thesis. I will not weigh the arguments in favor or against my affirmation on the balance of reason, for the simple reason that I am not qualified to do so. Silo and his work, the Humanist Movement, are integral parts of my life. They are, moreover, a great part of my life. It is not possible for me, therefore, to place the necessary distance between them and myself in order to attain a cold and impartial evaluation of the facts -- the type of evaluation that contemporary historians continuously invoke. I will instead, present my experience, narrate what Silo and the Humanist Movement have been and are to me, and what it has meant and means to me, to be Silo’s disciple, collaborator and friend.

My first contact with the Movement took place on June 1973. I was sitting underneath the statue of Giordano Bruno in Campo dei Fiori in Rome. The statue lies in the same spot in which, on January of the year 1600, the Inquisition burned a great humanist at the stake. He was burned for affirming– and it was an extraordinary vision of the future – that the Earth revolved around the sun, and also that the universe is as infinite as the worlds that give it life.

That plaza is a symbol of all the injustices committed against human freedom and against the flight of thought towards what is new and for the future. It was the place where young people, of different revolutionary tendencies after 1968, met and debated. As was usual in those days, I was engaged in a discussion about revolutionary strategy with an anarchist friend of mine. A young man, who was sitting next to us, listened to our conversation but did not get involved. When my friend and his group left, this young man asked me if I had ever heard of global revolution. He explained that this revolution would involve the external world, meaning the economic structures and the cultural and political superstructures, as well as the internal world, that is, the consciousness. He told me that no revolution could change the world through violence, and that the only way for a revolution to be possible was for a radical change to simultaneously take place in the interior of those who called themselves revolutionaries. He spoke to me about active non-violence, about the healing of suffering, about working with oneself in order to transform internally, and about the search for the meaning of life. He told me he was from Chile and that he belonged to the Siloist Movement -- a movement founded by a Latin American thinker whom they called Silo. He also told me that he was starting up a group to work on self-knowledge and he invited me to participate. Stung by my curiosity, I accepted and joined the group.

We worked for several months on a system of psychological and meditation techniques. I quickly realized that, although this work was within reach for common people, and appeared to be simple, in reality, it was an extremely refined synthesis of experiences from the most diverse cultural traditions of the West and the East. Some of the techniques came from modern psychology, others from Buddhism, others from Orphism, Christianity and Islam. It was a system that revealed both a vast knowledge as well as a great deal of work on simplification, adaptation and synthesis. But what seemed out of the ordinary to me about this work, was its ludic aspect: it had depth combined with a light, playful and enjoyable attitude. I understood then that there was an alternative to the cold inhumanity of academic psychology and the gloomy anguish of psychoanalysis. I discovered new things about myself, about my cultural and social conditionings, the roots of my violence and my suffering and my fears and my hopes. But above all, that great emptiness which I had always carried inside of me, opened up in front of me, that great emptiness that Silo had called «the non-meaning of life.»

In the following year, 1974, more advanced works were planned and would be carried out in Cordoba, Argentina. Various representatives from many Siloist groups would participate. As in Italy, groups had been started in other countries in Europe, in Latin America, Asia, and in the United States. With the consensus of my group, I made up my mind to go. That way I would get to know the country in which the Movement had started and, maybe, the founder in person too. As soon as I arrived in Buenos Aires I took a bus directly to Cordoba, and then a cab to the meeting place: a large country house in the outskirts of the city. As I stood in the entrance of the garden I saw some men in the distance, near the house. I shouted: «Is this the place for the gathering of the Movement?» «Yes, sir. Come on in, come on in, sir» they replied. I was ecstatic! I had finally arrived to the place I had dreamt of, some sort of paradise of the Movement! Reality, however, far surpassed my expectations. I soon realized that these men were soldiers and that they were pointing their machine guns onto a group of people, who were face down on the ground, with their hands behind their necks. These were my buddies from the Movement. What else could I do but join them.

They took us to a prison in Cordoba where we spent three days on a strict diet and very cold conditions. No specific charges were ever brought up against us. We were in the Movement and that was enough. It didn’t take me long to realize that the Movement’s country of origin had fallen into the hands of a group of sadistic assassins, as had most of Latin America, and that the Movement was being persecuted in spite of developing only non-violent activities. Soon afterwards, Silo was imprisoned in Buenos Aires after attempting to give a public speech.

As soon as we were released, we finished the works that were scheduled and I left for Mendoza to meet Silo, who, I had been told, wanted to meet the Italian representatives. I saw him for the first time at a coffee shop where he had agreed to meet us. He was standing by the bar talking to some people. In the meantime, while I sat at a table waiting for him to finish, I began to study him. He was wearing a beige suit, a tie with tiny geometric designs and polished shoes. I could not believe how bourgeois he looked. This was not possible -- a revolutionary, a teacher, wearing a tie? This was all wrong! I was expecting some kind of hybrid between Che Guevara, an Indian guru and a Mexican witch doctor. I wanted something out of the ordinary, something extraordinary, something colorful and exotic. Instead, I had in front of me, a normal man, wearing bourgeois clothes, a tie and everything. I tried to console myself by recalling that Magritte -- perhaps one the most visionary of modern artists -- had always dressed like that, in gray or brown colors, with a tie. And that he had spent most of his life with the same woman in a small middle-class neighborhood of a rain city. But my disenchantment imposed itself. At that moment, Silo turned around and smiled at me mockingly, as if he had perceived what I was thinking about.

We then talked without haste… and on the days after that. I was interested in the bases of his ideas. What he presented to me, was something entirely new, at least for the existing Western cultural background. In so many words, he spoke of a global theory of the human consciousness. In order for all of us to understand each other, this was an open theory, not a closed system in the sense that the term had in the 19th Century. Anyone minimally informed about the contemporary situation of psychology, its incoherent babbling, its fruitless search for a foundation on which to anchor the chaotic mass of data and procedures, would well know, that it was extremely risky to propose a global theory of the human consciousness. If such a theory proved to be coherent, exhaustive and efficient, it would mean an enormous scientific leap, perhaps comparable to the introduction of the experimental method in the natural sciences.

I realized that, in the theory that Silo proposed (and that he would develop in great detail in the lessons he would teach in Corfu, Greece the following year), a massive amount of information, experiences and procedures fit together neatly. Evidence obtained by experimental psychology, behaviorism, Gestalt and deep psychology, also fit together neatly. Much disputed phenomena such as sensation, perception, dreams, hypnosis, altered states of consciousness and such, were coherently and elegantly explained. What impacted me the most, however, was the theory of images because it was entirely original and because it «grounded» certain intuitions held by Sartre and the latter Jung who wrote Psychology and Alchemy. Silo’s theory of the image was the link between physiological and psychological explanations, and the image, as he understood it, constituted the union of somatic aspects and behavioral aspects. To act on the images, then, meant to intervene on individual and collective human behavior… A vast horizon of research and experiences lay before my eyes.

This is when I started to think that Silo was a special man. And I told myself that what Alcibiades once said of his teacher Socrates in the encomium, that Plato later reproduced in one of his most beautiful dialogues, the Symposium, was also valid for Silo. In the same way that Socrates hid a great interior beauty behind a satirical façade, behind Silo’s plain middle-class appearance there lay an intellectual audacity and a revolutionary drive I had never seen before in any political leader or fashionable guru. I must also add that, with time, it became clear to me that Silo’s external appearance and life style was a strategic choice. One the one hand, this was a mimicking act that protected him. It made him less visible in a society that was somewhat provincial and conservative. On the other hand, this approach allowed him to get close to regular people, common men and women to whom his message is intended.

But the original contributions of Silo are not limited to the field of psychology. As years have passed, Silo has produced pioneer works in the fields of historiography, sociology, politics and religion that have touched upon almost all the fundamental aspects of human behavior. Through these works, Silo has delineated a new conception of the human being, and a universal political project -- a new Utopia for a globalized world which we are already living in, and which he announced with uncanny anticipation.

I will not analyze the works of Silo here. Instead, I will limit myself to consider the most profoundly innovative aspects that make some of his works distinct.

In the essay entitled Historiological Discussions, which is dedicated to the analysis of unresolved problems in the field of the philosophy of history, Silo takes the connecting thread of a discussion that Heidegger had initiated, and gives it continuity: The impossibility of laying out any historical discourse without having previously clarified what is to be understood as «temporality»; without having previously clarified --to put it in less precise but more simple words -- what the temporal functioning of the consciousness is, and in what way this functioning is related to external time, in other words, with the world, with events external to the consciousness. Following Heidegger’s thought and that of his teacher, Husserl, Silo finds the root of the dynamics of history in the intrinsic temporality of human consciousness; in the constant tension of the consciousness to futurize, to project. In reviewing an intuition by Ortega and Gasset, Silo sees in the different generations –generations with different mental times and different cultural landscapes—the incarnation of that dynamic. History is made by the dialectic between generations. In history, it is also the future that prevails –the human projects clash with the existing reality. This is how, to make history is, above all, to make history of the future, in other words, a history of the human projects that attempt to transform the present. This angle surpasses the well-known debate of the sixties between Sartre and the structuralists about the meaning and intelligibility of human history, and would therefore grant Silo a well-respected position within the philosophy of history’s present-day, not too bright, scenario.

Another very original and prolific contribution from Silo to the sciences of history –a contribution which is at the same time a cultural and political project—is the new interpretation which he gives to the concept humanism. The conventional historical definition considers humanism as a characteristic cultural phenomenon of the West, linked to a precise historical period and place, that begins in Italy and then spans the whole of Western Europe during the Renaissance. Humanism places man and his dignity at the center of everything. It sees it as the supreme value, in contrast to a concept of worthlessness brought about by the Christian Middle Ages. Renaissance Humanism produces a transformation at the core of Western Civilization that will make it distinct from all the other traditional civilizations. But, for Silo, humanism is not solely a European phenomenon. For him, humanism can be found in all the great human civilizations, at very precise historical moments. It had another name, of course, because the cultural contexts of its manifestation were different. But, owing to a few fundamental indicators, humanism can always be identified. These indicators are: the importance and centrality that are given to: the human being, his dignity and freedom; the work for peace and the rejection of violence; the equality of all human beings; the respect for the different beliefs and customs, and to the development of science. Due to the fact that humanism manifests itself in the peak moment of all cultures, for Silo, humanism --better still, a New Universal Humanism that he advocates -- is precisely the answer to the clashes taking place between cultures. All of which takes place in a world forcefully unified by the media, but profoundly divided when it comes to religious beliefs, values and lifestyles: a world in which the specter of fundamentalism and religious wars seem to be surfacing once again.

In this world that has lost the meaning of the future, the meaning of the project --a world that awaits the arrival of the new millennium with anguish, Silo proposes the Great Utopia for the next millenium. He proposes the creation of the Universal Human Nation that embraces each and every group of people on the planet at an equal level without destroying their cultural uniqueness. He proposes, furthermore, the Humanization of the Earth, in other words, the progressive disappearance of physical pain and mental suffering thanks to the advances of science; a more just and egalitarian society that would eliminate all forms of violence and discrimination; and the reclaiming of the meaning of life. This project, which is intended for the whole of humanity, places Silo among the great modern utopists, such as Giordano Bruno, Thomas Moore, Campanella, Owen, Fourier and even Marx himself. Here, utopia –which means a place that does not exist — represents an image, a project that guides and organizes the present, and drags it to the future. It is a project launched to the new generations that will need to be given impulse from here, from Latin America among other places

I was saying, that through his works, Silo has been creating a new image of the human being in contrast to today’s prevailing image. This same work was developed by the first humanists of the Italian Renaissance, such as Pico de la Mirandola. The first humanists proposed the image of a being that was conscious of his own dignity and freedom and that has faith in his ability to transform the world and build his own destiny. This is how they struggled against medieval Christianity, which placed Man inside a dimension of sin and pain. Furthermore, it conceived him as a being that could do nothing but aspire for a distant God’s forgiveness. The modern image of the human being proposed by scientific rationalism, and which almost everyone in the Western world believes to some degree, is more positive, only in appearance, than the image offered by medieval Christianity. A much darker and enigmatic god has replaced the Christian god: Chance, in other words, a fortuitous god. The human being has been reduced to having a mere zoological dimension, meaning that now he is a hairless monkey that has evolved for millions of years thanks to the environment and casual mutations. He is, furthermore, a biological machine -- a thing that is determined by his chemical composition, in other words, by genes that are inherited and by the stimulation from the surrounding environment. In this dimension, as a «thing,» there is no space for freedom and choice, there is no space for the intentional construction of a future. Life, therefore, looses its meaning and becomes an absurd race towards death.

For Silo, the human being is an historical and social being. Its inherent dimension is not a biological one -- it is freedom. For Silo, the human consciousness is not a passive reflection of a natural world. It is, rather, intentional activity – an incessant activity of interpretation and reconstruction of the natural and social worlds. And even though the human being participates in the natural world for the reason that he has a body, the human being does not have a nature, a definitive essence like all other natural beings. He is not only the past, that is, something given, built and finished. The human being is future, he is a project for the transformation of nature, society and himself. Silo, against all forms of determinism an dogmas that freeze and block the development of humanity, continues developing the same philosophical line that, through the central idea of human freedom in the West, can be traced from Pico de la Mirandola to Sartre. He gives it new life and transforms it into a cultural and political project, the Humanist Movement.

At this point, one could think that the religious dimension would be foreign to Silo’s ideas. Nothing could be further from the truth. The search for the meaning in life and transcendence, in sharp contrast to the absurdity of death, are at the heart of Silo’s work. Nevertheless, like Buddha, Silo asks no one to believe, through faith, in his ideas about the divine. Nor does he have the intention of proposing a new religion with rites and dogma. He offers ways and experiences, so that each person can individually verify the truth or the usefulness of what he says. To my understanding, the transformational disciplines, such as Transcendental Meditation, for example --which are experimental ways to approach a higher level of consciousness—constitute the most extraordinary and profound aspect of his work. Two of his most beautiful writings always refer to this subject. The first is Death, a lesson he gave in the Canary Islands in 1976. Here he analyses the illusory roots of the fear of death, following a rigorous rational process, which in the Western world, has only one precedent with Epicurus. The other, The Meaning of Life, was presented in Mexico City in 1980. It describes in detail the different attitudes that one can take in front of the meaning of life and in front of transcendence. In this speech, in spite of having declared his unshakeable faith that death does not stop existence, but that it is simply a step towards immortal transcendence, Silo proclaims for all, the freedom to believe or not to believe in God and in immortality.

All of these things lead me to consider Silo a very special man. What is more, he is unique. I must also boldly point out that, although Latin America’s remarkable culture has produced great revolutionaries, writers and artists, Silo is the only thinker that has worldwide dimension.

But I am certain that at this stage, some of you must be asking yourselves: «Yes, but who is Silo in the private sphere? It is widely known that men who have been great in their fields of action --even those who have contributed to change the face of the world, have proven to be quite small when it comes to affection, friendship, and human relationships in general. It is also widely known that, as Napoleon would say, no man is great to his butler, who knows of a man’s dark side, his weaknesses, and the twitches that appear with time and familiarity. So, what is Silo like to someone like you, who has been so close to him for so long, as his disciple, collaborator and friend?

I must say that one of the aspects I most value about Silo’s character is his sense of humor. He has a knack for capturing the funny or the grotesque side of situations and of people. This quality causes people who come close to him to feel uneasy; those people who believe that a great thinker should have a puckered brow, and is distant and boring. Silo can play and laugh like a child. He is continuously marveled by the great human comedy. But his laughter is not distant, nor does it reveal a sense of superiority with respect to the endless stupidities that weave the life of men, great and small. Just like the two sides of a coin, at the other side of his laughter there is patience and compassion in the way he looks at the misery and the greatness of the human condition, because Silo is above all, in my opinion, a good man. For myself, his greatest quality is kindness. What else can I say?

Only this. Lately, and in spite of the length of time we’ve known each other, I have been asking myself a question that gets stronger each time. Who is Silo, really? And then, in order to find the answer I followed the advice he himself gave me when I was looking for the answers to important questions about my life. I launched the question to the most profound place in my consciousness, and waited for the answer. This was the answer: Silo is a guide, an initiate, someone who holds the key to open the door to the world of the spirit.