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MY LIFE STORY |
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Last revised : Corrections made on May 25th, 2001 © copyright Michel Potay 2001 |
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In 2001 I am 72 years old. All my life I have been, though a nonconformist, a benevolent, honest, normal man. I have remained so since the extraordinary event which in 1974 and 1977 turned me into a man of public testimony. Today some people call me abnormal, dishonest and malevolent, merely because my testimony casts doubt on many values and authorities in force and invites man to change into good and, so doing from one man to the next and from a generation to the next, to change the world into good. Let my accusers, who pose as masters in truth, or in ethic, or even in christianity, take on the responsability for their shortsighted ideas, their rash judgements, and often their falsehood! What do these people reproach me with? They blame me for having succeeded in publishing The Revelation of Arès without any help, any help at all, of the publishers and mass media which control man's thinking, and for having successfully created the current of free hope that the event naturally inspires: the Arès Pilgrims. My appeal for spiritual liberation annoys religion and political ideologies, my appeal for universal love and forgiving annoys all those who live on men's division and disputes, and my call to every man to recreate himself good, strong and free all by himself annoys all those who presume that that thinking animal is unable to rise spiritually and morally without any authority, laws, dogmas, without any mass submissiveness. I am a disturber, a not very original one besides, because long before me other men, like Jesus mentioned below, put out a similar appeal with limited or suppressed success. But I am a disturber sure to be in the right, who is stubbornly acting so that that age-old appeal will be at last implimented by the generations to come. Although I do not approve of them and I keep on refuting them, I forgive those who fight against me through untruth, disinformation and spitefulness, whose beliefs my message thwarts. I understand their annoyance, because I too had to throw myself back into question twice in my life: on finding faith in 1965, then on receiving Truth in 1974 and 1977, but I have never slandered or threatened my opponents. I was born in 1929 in a working-class suburb of Paris. My father was an engineer and a communist, which I would also be later. My mother, who had been brought up in a convent, would turn socialist while becoming a social worker and dealing every day with the people's realities. I had a sister, my senior by two years. My father was not a nonbeliever, but was lacking in any religious concern. My mother was a Catholic, but rarely attended church. She descended from Vosges local squires. My father was born in Paris of Breton parents. The latter are worth mentioning. Mathurin, my fatherly grandfather, had been a missionary in Senegal from 1865 to 1880; he had given up the ministry to marry Mary, my grandmother, and set up home in the capital city. In those days the defrocked used to live in disgrace and in a social plight (the Church had not yet been parted from the State). That had made my grandfather suffer much, so that he had eventually agreed to the charity of the Russian embassy's chaplain who had invited him to attend the Orthodox liturgy on Sundays. Consequently, my father spoke well of the Orthodox church; which explains why I would opt for it later after my long atheistic period and my shorter experience in esoteriscism. A little devil, curious about everything, I had primary school teachers "red" but so competent and devoted to children that I would remain filled with intense gratitude to them all my life. Whoever has read my "Memories" knows that my pals were workers' slangy sons; they disorientated my provincial mother who called them "rascals". Later at public school my friends, who lived in residential districts, would never blot out my nostalgia for my childhood with street urchins. Like a lot of children in the Communist-controlled Paris suburbs I all at once attended the Catholic catechism and read "L'Humanité " (the communist daily). Under the German occupation forces everyday life was a terrible ordeal for modest people who could not buy food or coal on the black market. The Nazis used to hound the Jews, but the Communists as well, so that my father lived in anguish which brought about a hepatitis that carried him off at the age of 40, in 1942; I was under 13. Until then we had lived underfed; from then onwards we were going to live starving and without heating. It did my mother great credit for her raising two teenagers with her then meagre social worker wages. Our worries were far from being religious. A few signs might have heralded the path that the All Different would make me take, but we would not mention them until the Arès event occurred, 30 years later. In the forties they were just called "strange". A warm affection would unite us, I and my mother, until her death at the age of 92, but shortly after my father's death we fell deeply at odds with each other. Her conformity led her to mistakes in discernment and to the hypocrisy that the "right-thinking" used to call wisdom or reason. Our mutual views of man, of life, of the future, were conflicting; I suggested that we fled to England, but my mother threw up her arms and said, "In order to join an unknown general (De Gaulle), an adventurer?" I was nonconformist and I hated hypocrisy, in my mother's eyes a foolish behavior. Additionally, she developped a passion for spiritualism, which I could hardly endure, and she began an affair, which was to torment me very much. After the war, persistent poverty and my mother's private life (beyond doubt, I stood in her way) led me to enlist before call-up. A friend of my family had advised me to prepare for the entry exam for the naval academy while serving in the ranks rather than at public school in Paris. The navy was not my fate. My late father's communist convictions had turned up into my file. Some affinity with Communism made anyone a plausible Bolshevik spy. "There is no point in your passing the exam for the naval academy, you will be refused acceptance for security reasons," a contemptuous commander told me. At this I would feel immense regrets for a very long time. I had liked the navy from the first day. A young man ungrateful to his natural mother, I had found there something straightforward, like my real mother without knowing, of course, that my true mother would be Truth which God would bring me in spite of me 25 years later. In the end tuberculosis sent me from the fleet to a sanitarium. Here I took up my studies through correspondence courses. There were a lot of tubercular students in those days; university had set up a special organisation to follow their progress in sanitoria. Streptomycine appeared, it was the get-up-and walk! An engineer from 1954 to 1965, I lived comfortably at last. Despite my training at university, which industry considered almost valueless then, I succeeded by working hard in surpassing my colleagues trained in "grandes écoles"; at the age of 30 I managed a factory where big units of thermal transfer for chemical and petroleum plants, and the navy, of course, were engineered and built. Philosophywise I had become an atheist around 1948, an active communist from 1953, rather in the way of Gide, Malraux or Camus, but I was also a streetseller of "L'Humanité" on Sundays. As atypical and nonconformist in communism as I had been in adolescence, and as I would be in the service of faith, I had very eclectic relationships: stalinist Aragon, who was a friend as well as conventional admiral Conge, who asked me to illustrate a book by him in my spare time, and many others, leftists and rightists, representatives, ambassadors, scientists, poets, etc., whether wealthy or poor, who gave me or still give me much friendship, and, it goes without saying, ordinary women and men to whom I would permanently feel closely related. Around 1964, after the early savor of professional and material success had faded, the fundamental worry about mankind I had inherited from my father awoke within me. For a few industrial disputes, while defending my employer's position and avoiding despoiling the workforce at the same time, I learned from endless, sometimes overnight debates with the unions that no militant stuck to the Marxist line; their stereotyped formal language concealed an unconsciously romantic, irrational ideal. I felt that the materialistic organisation of society would never make man happy, who is much more stirred than I had realized by emotion, illogicality, loathing or even love (at that time the concept of love never crossed a "red" intellectual's mind). I understood that the irrational is irremediably living in man, that ignoring it was more than a political and economical mistake, it amounted to ignoring man's nature, man's meaning, and, I would understand it later, man's vocation. Nevertheless, until The Revelation of Arès came in 1974, I would maintain that only law, science, or a moral authority, could control or suppress the irrational, I would deny that only the individual could master it. In 1964, I wondered what nature man's irrational had really. I, an atheist, was to perceice some interesting hypotheses only very gradually. While hovering over the jungle of philosophy and metaphysics, I realized that not to mistake the unexplained for the unreasonable, the invisible for nothingness, was the neverending question. So, not in the flash of a miracle, but through slow thought, by slipping from communism (even so I would vote for communists until 1986) to humanism, I started the research that would lead me to faith. I took a year's sabbatical to carry on with my research, but I did not suspected that I would never return to my abacusses and my slide rule. After a lot of inconclusive twists and turns I came to the point where I had left the irrational sixteen years earlier: esoteriscism which my mother had held dear. Does esotericism give man a meaning and a right way to function? As a nonconformist little sensitive to gossips, I decided to check what was true and what was false experimentally in a domain which a great many people were fond of talking about, but never experimented thoroughly on. In Lyon I opened up an occultism consulting room (occultism was the word for esotericism in those days) under the pseudonym Berkeley after a philosopher of the irrational and empiricism with which I was going to proceed necessarily. At that time I only planned to investigate what I used to call the problem of the modern man much more rationalized, managed, politicized, subjected than man had ever been in history. I did not foresee that during the quest my atheism would desintegrate and I would be led awfully far, to religion. I brushed aside astrology quickly, the pseudoscientific structure of which allowed me to notice the emptiness easily. In other respects, the theories of Papus, Eliphas Lévy and some other occultists proved to be oddballs'; I dwelled upon Lancelin's theories for a while, but I also dismissed him. The only serious subject I had left was that of "man's innermost powers", as Hines said, who had directed a telephathy experiment for the US Navy during the subpolar cruise of the first nuclear submarine. I checked that well-trained intuition could generate clairvoyance, that a hand fondly put on a sick person could generate magnetism (an inappropriate but worldwide term), and that a mind focusing on an object, or a living being, or an immaterial thought, could act on them irrespective of distance. But those powers, which anybody possesses, what limits do they have? I developed them within me for suffering persons, testing several methods. I found out that those powers are uncertain, chancy, inconstant, but one should always try them in hopeless circumstances which the world abounds in. I began working on a thesis on the matter, but I would soon be past esoteriscism and discover religion. Let's notice, however, that in my spare time I would pursue that experiment for my years in clergy, and then for a while after Jesus' appearances (1974) and the Maker's revelation. In days of great precariousness it would help me provide for my family, publish The Gospel Delivered in Arès and face the cost of my first missions. I would definitively give up that practice in 1979, not out of shame, as some say, for to aid suffering people is nothing one should be ashamed of, but out of need to keep my energy and time. My spiritual mission requires my whole self. From 1965 to 1966 the observation of the unexplained human senses and powers led me to the great metaphysical questions: Science surveys but a fragment of man. What is man in its entirety? What bonds other than physical, chemical and psychical ones does man have with the universe and its forces? And between him and society? So I came to study the religious explanation for man, I found it no less convincing than the rationalist explanation, I found faith, I opted for the Orthodox Church, in which I got fully involved in complying to my conviction just as I had always done. An Orthodox ecclesiastical rule required me either to be a bachelor and necessarily a monk, or to be a secular priest and necessarily married. I wanted to be a monk, but my bishop considered me useful in the world. So I asked for the hand of a young lady in marriage whom I had cured, whose kindness, ingenuousness and intelligence had moved me: Christiane. She agreed. From the marriage solemnized in Bourges in 1968 a great conjugal love and three daughters: Nina (1969), Anne (1970) and Sara (1975) were to come into existence. Invariably regardless of the generally accepted values, I had agreed in 1969 to be ordained by a then disparaged Russian prelate, whose episcopate was regarded "nonexistent", and would be recognized only after his death. Likewise "nonexistent" would be considered by the traditionalist churches the episcopate that I accepted two years later in order to assume the representation in the West of the Living (or Renewed) Church (a denomination adopted in 1925 by the clergy that recognized the Communist State) the unearthing of which Brezhnev, who had taken up an idea of Khrutchev, had instigated for political reasons. That episcopate might well be posthumously recognized, which would be insignificant anyhow, because I have given up religion. In the orthodox church to declare "nonexistent " the titles granted to those who disturb is traditional. In 1973 my superior in rank asked me to have my apostolic mail pass through the Soviet Embassy in Paris. I was a communist, but a French citizen, so I disagreed; I was released from my office. While waiting for a new appointment I withdrew to Arès (Gironde, France) intending to experience original Christiandom lived through again together with a few of my faithful. Along with my family I arrived in Arès on January 3, 1974, I immediately swaped my cassock for overalls and a toolbox in order to renovate the dilapidated small property I had purchased there. It was under those unusal circumstances that Jesus' appearances started on January 15; they would last until April 13. From that time on my story is better known, notably through The Revelation of Arès and my many writings in Le Pélerin d'Arès (The Arès Pilgrim or The Pilgrim to Arè). I am recalling a few things about it, even so. The Nazareth carpenter as large as life spoke to me forty times in a hall under repair. His revelation was terrible to me: Religion's dogmas and observances are either superstitions or by no means decisive in man's salvation; active good is more important than faith; any good man, even a nonbeliever, is justified; each man and the world's salvation originate from spiritual selfrebuilding (penitence) free from any harness; absolute freedom is more fruitful in good and happiness, and less hazardous, than any system; the Father has faith in man as an individual able to become a God, whom no institution or law has any grounds for representing and ruling as such. I understood that the Father does not govern man, evil is always initiated by man, man permanently is free to apply for his benefit and for his life or to ignore for his misfortune and for his death the Creation's age-old Call engraved on his flesh. Destroyed were my trust put in the centuries-old wisdom and all the beliefs I had gained since my conversion, except the concept of God, and perhaps not even that, for Abraham's God that Jesus brought back in his word had few things in common with my theology. Theology, sacraments, clergy, I was prompted to forsake freely in order that I would live and teach a very simple, though robust and brave spiritual life, the only solution to evil. I admit that between May and October 1974 I twice or thrice felt longing to live on as if nothing had happened, but my memory could not mask either the physical fact of Jesus' having moved up and down before my very eyes, having touched me, and spoken to me ringingly, or his warning, "Don't turn round and go back (39/6)" All the same, it would take three or four years for me to become converted to his message, I mean, to live fully and naturally up to that message, which I entitled The Gospel Delivered in Arès. Until 1977 we, Christiane and I, endured more than a moral upheaval a social drama, because most of our friends and relations abandoned us. We crossed a cruel wide desert before the men and women turned up that would believe in me. At this point an important remark is relevant. Is there any reasonable person unaware that by claiming that she or he has seen Jesus alive he or she is bound to meet a kind of civil death? The deniers and cursers cannot in good faith accuse me of having thought up that supernatural event. First, because the serene deep faith I used to put in the orthodox doctrine and prayer and in my priesthood prior to 1974 sheltered me from such a caprice. Second, because they know or they guess that it would take madness and attraction for social suicide to set up such a hoax, a source of foreseeable hardships for its originator, and that it would take still more madness to commit it again four years later, while I was still being bogged down in big troubles. In the 1977 automn I witnessed five theophanies, or appearances of the Maker, whose message I simply entitled The Book, which bore aout and enriched The Gospel Delivered in Arès, but that event increased the world's incredulity and the many problems it had already posed for me. Since then, I have been forever spreading the Arès message. That mission has experienced ups and downs. As the Father did not only overcharge me with a supernatural fact that would prove very difficult to peddle through the skeptical, cynical, despiritualized, modern world, but also provided his message with clarifications that deny many fashionable beliefs: reincarnation, superstitions, etc., flights of enthusiasm followed by desertions with the people that the supernatural attracts more quickly than the truth have frequently occurred. The Arès Pilgrims, however, have multiplied and have made themselves apostles. The point of nonreturn was reached rather long ago. No adversity will ever kill an expectation that is to grow bigger and bigger. |