| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Master Key by L. Frank Baum: Earth people are so stupid and ignorant that you seem unlikely ever to
master the secret of electrical power."
"Oh, we have some great masters among us!" cried Rob, rather nettled
at this statement. "Now, there's Edison--"
"Edison!" exclaimed the Demon, with a faint sneer; "what does he know?"
"Lots of things," declared the boy. "He's invented no end of
wonderful electrical things."
"You are wrong to call them wonderful," replied the Demon, lightly.
"He really knows little more than yourself about the laws that control
electricity. His inventions are trifling things in comparison with
the really wonderful results to be obtained by one who would actually
The Master Key |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: and wisdom herself are the purgation of them. The founders of the
mysteries would appear to have had a real meaning, and were not talking
nonsense when they intimated in a figure long ago that he who passes
unsanctified and uninitiated into the world below will lie in a slough, but
that he who arrives there after initiation and purification will dwell with
the gods. For 'many,' as they say in the mysteries, 'are the thyrsus-
bearers, but few are the mystics,'--meaning, as I interpret the words, 'the
true philosophers.' In the number of whom, during my whole life, I have
been seeking, according to my ability, to find a place;--whether I have
sought in a right way or not, and whether I have succeeded or not, I shall
truly know in a little while, if God will, when I myself arrive in the
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: this way or that way as the course we sailed changed; I say when he
saw this he stood like one astonished and amazed. However, with a
little use, I made all these things familiar to him, and he became
an expert sailor, except that of the compass I could make him
understand very little. On the other hand, as there was very
little cloudy weather, and seldom or never any fogs in those parts,
there was the less occasion for a compass, seeing the stars were
always to be seen by night, and the shore by day, except in the
rainy seasons, and then nobody cared to stir abroad either by land
or sea.
I was now entered on the seven-and-twentieth year of my captivity
Robinson Crusoe |
