In the way of nature

Our eyes are the eyes of the earth. Our knowledge is the earth's knowledge. [share]

My magnificent master and great friend of many years ago, Heinrich Zimmer (1890-1943), had a saying: "The best things can't be told: the second best are misunderstood." The second best are misunderstood because, as metaphors poetically of what cannot be told, they are misread prosaically as referring to tangible facts. [share]

We are, in fact, productions of this earth. We are, as it were, its organs. Our eyes are the eyes of the earth; our knowledge is the earth's knowledge. [share]

"As viewed by astronauts from the moon, the Earth lacks those lines of sociopolitical division that are so prominent on maps. And as recognized here below, the web of interlacing socioeconomic dependencies that now enfolds the planet is of one life. All that is required is a general change of vision to accord with these contemporary facts. And that this will occur is certain. It is, in fact, already occurring. Moreover, the vision required is nothing new, nor unnatural. What are unnatural, artificial, and contrived, are the separations."

[share]

"One cannot predict the next mythology any more than one can predict tonight's dream; for a mythology is not an ideology. It is not something projected from the brain, but something experienced from the heart." [share]

The life of a mythology derives from the vitality of its symbols as metaphors delivering, not simply the idea, but a sense of actual participation in a realization of transcendence, infinity, and abundance. [share]

Indeed, the first and most essential service of a mythology is this one, of opening the mind and heart to the utter wonder of all being. And the second service, then is cosmological: of representing the universe and the whole spectacle of nature, both as known to the mind and as beheld by the eye, as an epiphany of such kind that when lightning flashes, or a setting sun ignites the sky, or a deer is seen standing alerted, the exclamation 'Ah!' may be uttered as a recognition of divinity. [share]

All mythologies, finally, are works of art . . . [share]

[Quoting Jean Erdman Campbell:] "The way of the mystic and the way of the artist are related, except that the mystic doesn't have a craft." [share]

In the way of nature one may experience, from time to time, glimpses of the world in this [transcendent] light - after the pelvic bioenergetic commitments have been honored and fulfilled, so that, freed from the dictatorship of the species, one is released to live as an individual (some little time, say, after the age of about thirty-five). [share]

The artist . . . is the true seer and prophet of his century, the justifier of life and as such, of course, a revolutionary far more fundamental in his penetration of the social mask of his day than any fanatic idealist spilling blood over the pavement in the name simply of another unnatural mask. [share]