"Seers come in all sizes and shapes"
"Do you mean to say that there are different kinds of seers?"
"No. I mean that there are scores of imbeciles who become seers. Seers are human beings full of foibles, or rather, human beings full of foibles are capable of being seers. Just as in the case of miserable people who become superb scientists.
The characteristic of miserable seers is that they are willing to forget the wonder of the world. They become overwhelmed by the fact that they can see and believe that it's there genious that counts. A seer must be a paragon in order to override the nearly invincible laxness of our human condition.
More important than seeing is what seers do with what they see."
"What do you mean by that, don Juan?"
"Look at what seers have done to us. We are stuck with their vision of an Eagle that rules us and devours us at the moment of our death."
He said that there is a definite laxness in that version, and that personally he did not appreciate the idea of something devouring us. For him, it would be more accurate to say that there is a force that attracts our consciousness, much as a magnet attracts iron shavings. At the moment of dying, all of our being disintegrates under the attraction of that immense force."
That such an event was interpreted as the Eagle devouring us he found grotesque, because it turns an indescribable act into something as mundane as eating.
Thanks Bob May for the quote.
"Do you mean to say that there are different kinds of seers?"
"No. I mean that there are scores of imbeciles who become seers. Seers are human beings full of foibles, or rather, human beings full of foibles are capable of being seers. Just as in the case of miserable people who become superb scientists.
The characteristic of miserable seers is that they are willing to forget the wonder of the world. They become overwhelmed by the fact that they can see and believe that it's there genious that counts. A seer must be a paragon in order to override the nearly invincible laxness of our human condition.
More important than seeing is what seers do with what they see."
"What do you mean by that, don Juan?"
"Look at what seers have done to us. We are stuck with their vision of an Eagle that rules us and devours us at the moment of our death."
He said that there is a definite laxness in that version, and that personally he did not appreciate the idea of something devouring us. For him, it would be more accurate to say that there is a force that attracts our consciousness, much as a magnet attracts iron shavings. At the moment of dying, all of our being disintegrates under the attraction of that immense force."
That such an event was interpreted as the Eagle devouring us he found grotesque, because it turns an indescribable act into something as mundane as eating.
Thanks Bob May for the quote.
