Flaker of Flints

Once upon a time, there was a city full of buildings. One day, the sun was not rising up. Then something worse was happening. All the buildings were wobbly. Crashing into each other. They used the magic wand again. Then something really bad happened. Everyone was falling off the buildings, the humans were switching buildings. So the humans put a magic rainbow. Every building was having little cracks, so then every day they glued them back. And it turns out the whole earth was upside down.

When you look closely at the seams between order and chaos, do you see the same things I see? The strain, the tears, the glimpses of truth hidden underneath. Why do they fight so desperately to mask what they are? Or is it that they become who they are when they put on the mask?

Where does the frontier lie? Where do we travel to in those dreams of beauty satisfied, laden with significance but without comprehensible meaning, etched far deeper on the mind than any witness of the eyes? Our memories of physical reality, where do they vanish to? While the images of this dream world never grow older. They live—like the memory of a memory. Now. When I have overcome my fears—of others, of myself, of the underlying darkness: at the frontier of the unheard-of. Here ends the known. But, from a source beyond it, something fills my being with its possibilities. Here desire is purified and made lucid: each action is a preparation for, each choice an assent to the unknown. Prevented by the duties of life on the surface from looking down into the depths, yet all the while being slowly trained and molded by them to take the plunge into the deep whence rises the fragrance of a forest star, bearing the promise of a new affection. At the frontier—

Many times when going to school have I grasped at a wall or a tree to recall myself from the abyss of idealism to reality. At that time I was afraid of such processes.

                                          ...see and hear the lovely shapes and sounds intelligible of that eternal language, which thy God utters, who from eternity doth teach himself in all, and all things in himself.

Interviewer: What do you mean you’ll sometimes extend yourself … work the people up a bit? Morrison: Let’s just say I was testing the bounds of reality. I was curious to see what would happen. That’s all it was: just curiosity. Interviewer: What did you do to test the bounds? Morrison: Just push a situation as far it it’ll go. Interviewer: And yet you don’t feel at any time that things got out of control? Morrison: Never. Interviewer: There is a quote attributed to you. It appears in print a lot. It goes: “I’m interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos…” Morrison: “… especially activity that appears to have no meaning.”

Let's see what happens if the prisoners are released from the cave. At first, when one of them is freed and has to stand up, turn his neck around, walk, and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains. The glare will hurt him, and he won't be able to see the realities whose shadows he'd seen in the cave. Then someone tells him that what he saw before was an illusion, and that now, when he is closer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision. What will be his reply? Imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as they pass and making him name them. Won't he be perplexed? Won't he think that the shadows he used to see are truer than the objects he sees now?

If all eyes were made of green glass, and if all that seems white was really green, who would be the wiser?

Elisha’s servant got up early and went out. He saw an army with horses and chariots surrounding the city. [The] servant said to Elisha, “Oh, no! Master, what will we do?” “Don’t be afraid,” Elisha said, “because there are more of us than there are of them.” Then Elisha prayed, “Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he saw that the mountain was full of horses and fiery chariots surrounding Elisha.

...Jeremiah had seen what there was for all to see if only they would look, but the others refused to look, simply denied, and were unable to see. The royal folk had for so long lived in a protective, fake world that their perceptual field was skewed and with their best looking they could not see what was there to see...

...[Coleridge] once believed he could grasp the truth of things in his pantheistic ecstasies; in the daemonic poems ecstasy is still a reality, but the possibility is raised of it being profoundly misleading....Coleridge is not just afraid of loss of self in ecstasy, he is afraid of hallucination, of being wrong...

..."The Matrix" makes clear claims we can step outside the world of images (the internet, the television, the movie screen) into something Real, most notably when Morpheus offers Neo a choice between the blue pill, which will keep him in The Matrix, and the red pill, which will take him to Reality. Christians are taught we “see through a glass darkly,” or that our perceptions on this earth are distorted and limited. But there is Reality both on this earth and outside of it, and that’s because our narrative has an apocalyptic ending, the ultimate revelation of Christ. The Reality of Christ’s unveiling gives us hope and faith in our daily realities. It provides us with a distinction between true and false, fantasy and Real...

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

“Sir. Imagine you are in the driver’s seat of a car. You have been sitting there so long that you have forgotten that it is the seat of a car, forgotten how to get out of the seat, forgotten the existence of your own legs, indeed forgotten that you are a being at all separate from the car. You control the car with skill and precision, driving it wherever you wish to go, manipulating the headlights and the windshield wipers and the stereo and the air conditioning, and you pronounce yourself a great master. But there are paths you cannot travel, because there are no roads to them, and you long to run through the forest, or swim in the river, or climb the high mountains. A line of prophets who have come before you tell you that the secret to these forbidden mysteries is an ancient and terrible skill called GETTING OUT OF THE CAR, and you resolve to learn this skill. You try every button on the dashboard, but none of them is the button for GETTING OUT OF THE CAR. You drive all of the highw

The [Princes]. Events take place beyond our knowledge or control. Our lives are lived for us. We can only try to enslave others. But gradually, special perceptions are being developed. The idea of the “[Princes]” is beginning to form in some minds. We should enlist them into bands of perceivers to tour the labyrinth during their mysterious nocturnal appearances. The [Princes] have secret entrances, and they know disguises. But they give themselves away in minor ways. Too much glint of light in the eye. A wrong gesture. Too long and curious a glance. The [Princes] appease us with images. They give us books, concerts, galleries, shows, cinemas. Especially the cinemas. Through art they confuse us and blind us to our enslavement. Art adorns our prison walls, keeps us silent and diverted and indifferent.

If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.

The longest journey is the journey inwards. Of him who has chosen his destiny, who has started upon his quest for the source of his being (Is there a source?). He is still with you, but without relation, isolated in your feeling like one condemned to death or one whom imminent farewell prematurely dedicates to the loneliness which is the final lot of all. Between you and him is distance, uncertainty— care. He will see you withdrawing, further and further, hear your voices fading, fainter and fainter.

Simultaneously, as soundlessly, Spontaneously, suddenly As, at the vaunt of the dawn, the kind Gates of the body fly open To its world beyond, the gates of the mind, The horn gate and the ivory gate Swing to, swing shut, instantaneously Quell the nocturnal rummage Of its rebellious fronde, ill-favored, Ill-natured and second-rate, Disenfranchised, widowed and orphaned By an historical mistake: Recalled from the shades to be a seeing being, From absence to be on display, Without a name or history I wake Between my body and the day.