Then, by asking questions methodically, he got me to recount in their proper sequence my own memories of that night; they were as written down above.… - René Daumal

" "

Then, by asking questions methodically, he got me to recount in their proper sequence my own memories of that night; they were as written down above. And I attempted a conclusion:

'And that's how I came to see that we were less than nothing and had no hope. After that, would it not be the right thing to go out and hang yourself?'

He laughed and said:

'But what could be more comforting than to discover that we are less than nothing? It's only by turning ourselves inside out that we shall become something. Is it not a great comfort to the caterpillar to learn that she is a mere larva, that her time of being a semi-crawling digestive tube will not last, and that after a period of confinement in the mortuary of her chrysalis, she will be born again as a butterfly — not in a nonexistent paradise dreamed up by some caterpillary, consoling philosophy, but here in this very garden, where she is now laboriously munching on her cabbage leaf? We are all caterpillars and it is our misfortune that, in defiance of nature, we cling with all our strength to our condition, to our caterpillar appetites, caterpillar passions, caterpillar metaphysics, and caterpillar societies. Only in our outward physical appearance do we bear to the observer who suffers from psychic shortsightedness any resemblance whatsoever to adults; the rest of us remain stubbornly larval. Well, I have very good reasons for believing (indeed if I didn't there'd be nothing for it but to go off and dangle from the end of a rope) that man can reach the adult stage, that a few of us already have, and that those few have not kept the knack to themselves. What could be more comforting?