The body
politic also will culminate in this divinity of the flesh, this body
imbued with glory, invested with divine power and might, the King, the
Emperor. In the body politic also I shall desire a king, an emperor, a
tyrant, glorious, mighty, in whom I see myself consummated and
fulfilled. This is inevitable!
But during the Middle Ages, struggling within this pagan, original
transport, the transport of the Ego, was a small dissatisfaction, a
small contrary desire. Amid the pomp of kings and popes was the Child
Jesus and the Madonna. Jesus the King gradually dwindled down. There was
Jesus the Child, helpless, at the mercy of all the world. And there was
Jesus crucified.
The old transport, the old fulfilment of the Ego, the Davidian ecstasy,
the assuming of all power and glory unto the self, the becoming infinite
through the absorption of all into the Ego, this gradually became
unsatisfactory. This was not the infinite, this was not immortality.
This was eternal death, this was damnation.
The monk rose up with his opposite ecstasy, the Christian ecstasy. There
was a death to die: the flesh, the self, must die, so that the spirit
should rise again immortal, eternal, infinite.
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