Dear Friend,
Did I write here the story of the man who was imprisoned in a slave labour
camp during the war, finally released he came to live in England, who
slowly he descended into a depressive illness of utter melancholy while
those who had enslaved him were set immediately free to become some of the
most successful industrialists in the new Europe? He spoke to me of a day
when, sitting by the river bank a swan glided up, left the river and set
itself beside him, laying its head upon his shoulder as if to convey its
total empathy with his innermost state. He was to remain there in that
position for over an hour. Fearful of the swan at one remove, entranced by
another. Sensitivity can love at more than one remove; disturbing normal
chains of time <>boundedness.
Dear At,
If only we could sit down with poor Michael Faraday;-( How kind you were
to bring him to my attention, I would otherwise have paid him no regard.
What great strength I collected today from his creative collapse and by
your fractal tree new shoots gather to burst;-), --" Andrew, when I say I
am not able to bear much talking, it means really, and without any
mistake, or equivocation or oblique meaning, or implication, or
subterfuge, or omission that I am not able, being at present rather weak
in the head and able to work no more." And this as a result like Newton at
the same age, of a nervous breakdown. His were then the 'stable delusions
of paranoia' - a visionary who saw lines of stresses surrounding all
things as 'curves in space', lines of force, a universe patterned by these
things 'ray-vibrations' giving birth within him;-) to the dynamo and
electric motor.
"He (Faraday) found general theorems requring mathematics of the highest
order by a kind of intuition, with the security of instinct, without the
help of a single mathematical formula..." [Von Helmholtz in his Faraday
memorial lecture] Koestler speaks of Faraday in the same sentence as
Vincent van Gogh naming his vortices in his skies. I recall covering every
book i ever had at school for years in whirlwind forms while staring and
dreaming of sitting alone in fields, at the edges and in remoter corners
looking back into onto myself trapped into the tyranny of the boxbrained
mindsets of subject, object....noun. And Einstein wrote, " The words or
the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role
in my mechanism of thought. The physical entities which seem to serve as
elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which
can be voluntarily reproduced and combined..." And you know I thought of
Jan Smuts and what he wrote about men being picture makers, I quote from
my own book (huge grin) and from a letter to dear friends, why oh why did
not my teachers tell me these things? << I learn this evening from this
book that in 1931 Smuts gave a lecture to the Royal College of Science who
had just elected him their President, "He presented the view of man as a
'picture making animal'" Smuts could not scientifically refute the second
law of thermodynamics with its view that, " Our origin is...accidental,
our position is exceptional and our fate is sealed, with the inevitable
running down of the solar system,..." No he stated, " The human spirit is
not a pathetic wandering phantom of the universe, but is at home and meets
with spiritual hospitality and response everywhere. Our deepest thoughts
and emotions are but responses to stimuli which come to us not from an
alien, but from an essentially friendly and kindred universe." Elsewhere
Smuts notes, " It is the nature of the universe to strive for and slowly,
but in ever increasing measure, to attain wholeness, fullness and
blessedness....Wholeness, healing and holiness -- all expressions and
ideas springing from the same root in language and experience -- lie on
the rugged upward path of the universe and are secure of attainment -- in
part here and now, and eventually more fully and truly. The rise and
self-perfection of the Wholes in the Whole is the slow but enerring
process and goal of this Holistic universe."
Great men enjoy great peace most simply. Smuts found peace, " I again
sleep outside and in the early dawn the birds come to look for seeds quite
close by my bed, invisible behind the netting."
These words resonate around my inner cosmos tonight, -"invisible behind
the netting."
Invisible, behind the netting?
Love.
Andrew
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