| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: ...
No one can duly appreciate the dialogues of Plato, especially the Phaedrus,
Symposium, and portions of the Republic, who has not a sympathy with
mysticism. To the uninitiated, as he would himself have acknowledged, they
will appear to be the dreams of a poet who is disguised as a philosopher.
There is a twofold difficulty in apprehending this aspect of the Platonic
writings. First, we do not immediately realize that under the marble
exterior of Greek literature was concealed a soul thrilling with spiritual
emotion. Secondly, the forms or figures which the Platonic philosophy
assumes, are not like the images of the prophet Isaiah, or of the
Apocalypse, familiar to us in the days of our youth. By mysticism we mean,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: with our ploughmen. Where a man in not the best of
circumstances preserves composure of mind, and relishes ale
and tobacco, and his wife and children, in the intervals of
dull and unremunerative labour; where a man in this
predicament can afford a lesson by the way to what are called
his intellectual superiors, there is plainly something to be
lost, as well as something to be gained, by teaching him to
think differently. It is better to leave him as he is than
to teach him whining. It is better that he should go without
the cheerful lights of culture, if cheerless doubt and
paralysing sentimentalism are to be the consequence. Let us,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft: crystal; the endless desert as well as the waving ferns beyond
the windows. I was awake and dreaming at the same time.
I do
not know how long or how far - or indeed, in just what direction
-I had walked when I first spied the heap of blocks bared by the
day's wind. It was the largest group in one place that I had seen
so far, and so sharply did it impress me that the visions of fabulous
aeons faded suddenly away.
Again there were only the desert
and the evil moon and the shards of an unguessed past. I drew
close and paused, and cast the added light of my electric torch
Shadow out of Time |
