Apropos of recent posts a bit of information for those who may perhaps be losing the thread
"Philosophers such as Plato understood well that to be simply told or exteriorly shown the truth was insufficient. Words, formulas and phenomena were not realities in themselves but only shadows of reality*. Rather, the only possibilty to actually know the truth was to
become that truth. From the initial vow, a student entered into a lengthy gestation period in which he assembled in himself the moral, intellectual, and spiritual faculties necessary to sustain him through the difficult trials of the epoptic experience, his birth into the new world of "
That which is""
*See a previous post.
a320
Rabelais eh - quotes are difficult on a public site
just come across this little gem by Jonathan swift - I'm sure others know it but it seems worthy of repetition
"There is a gulf where thousands fell,
Here all the bold advent'rers came;
A narrow sound tho' deep as hell,
‘Change Alley is the dreadfull name.
Nine times a day it ebbs and flows,
Yet he that on the surface lies,
Without a pilot seldom knows
The time it falls, or when ‘twill rise.
Subscribers here by thousands float,
And jostle one another down,
Each paddling in his leaky boat,
And here they fish for gold and drown.
Now buried in the depths below,
Now mounted up to heaven again,
They reel and stagger to and fro,
At their wits' end, like drunken men.
Meantime, secure on Garraway cliffs,
A savage race, by shipwrecks fed,
Lie waiting for the foundered skiffs,
And strip the bodies of the dead"
all good stuff
