A Reflection on Mystical Anarchism in the Works of Gustav Landauer^217When consciousness becomes explicit to itself, Voegelin argued,
it unsurprisingly provokes fundamental bewilderment, because
At the centre of his existence man is unknown to himself and must
remain so...this situation of ignorance with regard to the decisive
core of existence is more than disconcerting: it is profoundly dis-
turbing for from the depth of this ultimate ignorance wells up the
anxiety of existence.^95Moreover, “[r]eality is not a static order of things given to a hu-
man observer once and for all; it is moving, indeed, in the direc-
tion of the emergent truth.”^96 Because the beyond has an indefinite
number of meanings, revealing itself to every person differently,
constituting, “different events in the philosopher’s life,”^97 mean-
ing does not repeat itself but reality remains in constant motion.
Thus, everyone undergoes constant change and flux as moments
of reality’s disclosure follow one upon another, producing con-
tinuous becoming and difference. The “I” is in a constant pro-
cess of unfolding, being new in every moment of its existence,
so that selfhood never comes to an end and ultimately cannot
be achieved, making attempts for reification superfluous and re-
vealing multiplicity as something that not only occurs between,
but within human beings, whose substance is essential instability.
From the realisation that this flux of being constitutes being in
the sense that one cannot exempt oneself from it, the belief that
human beings are merely being added to reality, or objects that
simply exist within reality is no longer tenable and the safety that
came with that view dissolves.
Landauer was aware of this, too, when he stated, “I leave be-
hind the only thing that seems certain within myself. I now flood
out into the uncertain world of hypotheses and fantasies.”^98 To
make reality luminous through consciousness or spirit is not to
find arche, a first principle or firm ground, but it is, on the contrary,
to realise that the “why?” and “what for?” that aroused the quest
remain unintelligible and must do so. While the horizon of the
beyond lures to be made intelligible, Voegelin argued, it withdraws
itself with every step that the seeker advances.^99 Hence, when
Voegelin spoke of the luminosity of the reality of being he did not
refer to reaching an objective fact of truth. Rather, he meant the
movement from suffering from estrangement from the prevalent