- The kindest thing you can do for someone is to genuinely like them.
- Modern man’s hamartia: He mistakes raw intelligence for Wisdom and high technology for Civilization.
- All of the cells in the body make one Body, and all of the Bodies on Earth make one Spirit.
- To those who do not have self-knowledge, and who therefore do not have even the slightest idea of what to do with their lives, American society offers a simple and straightforward solution: work. This peculiar panacea is perfectly encapsulated in the motto of the highly civilized state of Oklahoma: “Labor Omnia Vincit.” For it is Labor—and not Amor—that conquers all. Indeed, it even conquers one’s inner emptiness.
- While listening to others talk about politics or religion, I have on many occasions been asked, “So what are you?” In my twenties and thirties, I always responded in the normal, acceptable way, saying something like, “I am a Christian” or “I am a Republican.” However, now that I am in my forties, I?respond differently: Asked about what I am, I do not answer with the name of a political party or religious sect. Instead, I simply say, “I am myself” or “I am Joel Wesley Kilpatrick.” Ironically enough, I have found that my recent identification with Myself is actually much more controversial than my earlier identification with Republicanism and Christianity—things that are not myself. Indeed, it seems that people would rather I said “I am a Nazi” or “I am a Satanist” than say “I am who I am.” For if I were merely a Hitler fan or a devil worshiper, then at least my interlocutors would be able to grasp me—if only to dash my head against a rock. But since I respectfully decline to identify myself with a social r?le or position, my questioners cannot touch me, and that, I fear, is what ignites the spark of aggravation within their hearts—the spark that soon becomes a cardiac fire of resentment. Thus, despite (or because of) my best efforts to be clear and honest about my Self, I become an untouchable—a pariah, a dalit—and consequently forfeit whatever chance I may have of being a friend.
- Since nothing is either good or bad in and of itself, bad taste is not liking something bad. Rather, bad taste is liking something that hurts you more than it helps you, or liking one thing when another thing would make you much happier. Because those with bad taste do not know (sapit) which things really help them or which things make them happiest, they lack self-knowledge; and because they lack self-knowledge, they are unwise. For Wisdom (sapientia or sophia) is nothing less and nothing more than knowing oneself, and knowing oneself is nothing less and nothing more than having good taste (bonum saporem).
- The greater good always contains at least several lesser evils.
- One cannot even begin to do good until one fully realizes just how much evil there is in the world.
- When I say, “Things do not look the way they appear to us,” I do not mean that things have different forms than those which we see with our Eye (Aisthesis)—e.g., that planets are cubical rather than spherical, or that frogs have five legs rather than four. Instead, I mean that things in and of themselves have no form at all. Thus, for example, the jagged Sawtooth Mountains in Anza-Borrego Desert: They are neither a row of tall triangular peaks (as the unaided Eye sees them), nor are they an array of tiny spherical atoms (as the electron microscope “sees” them); for both their macroscopic appearance (i.e., their mountainous triangularity) and their microscopic appearance (i.e., their atomic sphericalness) are forms, whereas the mountains intrinsically are formless. The upshot of this is that we humans are helplessly—and hopelessly—blind to what the Sawtooth Mountains, and all other things in this universe, truly “look like” in and of themselves. Indeed, we are so sightless that not even the highest possible technology—nay, not even Christ with his clay and spittle—can heal us of our handicap. For we are blind not because our eyes have failed, but because they work.
- If, in a dream, you are hiking through the desert, is it gravity that keeps your feet on the ground? Is it a steady stream of photons that causes your perception of the surrounding ocotillo, cholla, and creosote? Is it a heap of atoms that comprises the dry hills in the distance? (And are those dry hills really at a distance?) Clearly, the answer to all of these questions is No. For there is no gravity in the dream, nor are there any atoms or photons—nor any distance. Indeed, it is not gravity but your Imagination (Phantasia) that anchors you to the earth; it is not a flood of photons but your Imagination that produces your perception of the plants; and it is not atoms and space but your Imagination that comprises the desiccated slopes and makes them seem far off. And so it must be asked: If, in your sleeping dream, gravity is not needed in order for you to adhere firmly to the ground, then why should it be needed in the wild hallucination of your waking experience? And why should photons, atoms, and space be needed, either??
- There is no such thing as “gravity.” For the all-too-human idea of an attractive “force” (or really of any kind of “force”) does not have a physical correlative in the external world—it does not accurately represent an object in nature. Instead, this idiosyncratic (and idiomatic) idea functions as a noetic device or useful fiction, which humans can employ creatively to interpret their experience in a way that promotes their survival. Put differently, the idea of “gravity” is a specific reaction on the part of Man’s Thought (Nous) to external stimuli. Other beings in this universe may have radically different mental powers at their disposal. They may, for example, have a form of Nous that reacts to external objects in a breathtakingly different way than does the human form. Or they may have a different power altogether—a power that produces not ideas but some other kind of patheme that to Man is completely epekeinal. These alien beings could easily have an interpretation of the World that does not include the primitive idea of gravity, but rather involves a patheme that—when put into practice—enables them to survive in a much more effective way than we do. Put simply, aliens may have ideas that are considerably more useful than those found in our humble Physics—and perhaps that is why their pill-shaped UFO’s are able to move in ways that should, according to Newton, be impossible. They can defy gravity—because there is no gravity.
- ?It is because Man is conscious: That is why he is “the sick animal.”
- The profound psychological naivete of modern scientists lies in their belief that the images in our Psyche are identical to the objects in the external world. How many of them, for example, believe that the Earth is actually spherical? And how many, on the basis of this belief, are convinced that geometry is Truth? Of course, if the Earth really were spherical, then geometry would indeed be true: But the Earth is not spherical, and therefore geometry is nothing more than the description of an illusion—a logon that is just as false as the unreal object it describes.
- Since everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen happens in the Now—happens all at once—right Now I am camping at Corn Spring with my father, marveling at the bright Teacup asterism in Sagittarius as it rises above the pitch-black crests of the Chuckwalla Mountains. Right Now I am hiking with him up the Pacific Crest Trail near Lake Arrowhead, listening to the roaring sound of Deep Creek as it rushes southward down the steep ravine beside us. And right Now I am sitting on my bed in Oklahoma, watching him cry as he tells me that Mom is dead. Although in the conventional present that we call “now”—i.e., 8:50 PM on September 2, 2023—I am not with him, nevertheless, because I know that I am with him in Eternity, I no longer feel the pain of losing him.
- The first moment after Creation, the first Now: We are still in it—and have always been in it.
- The future has already happened. That’s how predetermined it is.
- God cannot “exist,” for if He did “exist,” then He would not be God.
- The most accurate description of God is silence.
- Because rock-and-roll songs are typically written by young people, most of them represent the raw and violent feelings—the tantrumous anger and melodramatic sadness—that necessarily come with being unwise. For while the stings of Fate only irritate the sapient, they absolutely torment the ignorant. Rock songs, therefore, are the pathetic (and frequently bathetic) lament of those who do not know how to think or feel about the painful experiences of life. They are the primal screams of uncivilized souls, bursting with the beauty—and the ugliness—of untaught, untrimmed, unripened Nature.
- None of the septillion soulless objects that exist beyond our Psyche is evil in and of itself. Which is to say: None of the inanimate pragmata in the universe has a Subjective Being (SB) that is evil. If, for example, you could see a coffee cup “from the inside out” instead of seeing it as you normally do, from the outside in, you would not find any negative pathemata. However, if you were to see a brain “from the inside out” (and you do), you would find a hideous mosaic of malignant pains and gruesome feelings—pathemata that are indeed evil. We animals, therefore, are the only beings in the universe that “contain” vileness and corruption. Out of the Pandora’s Box of our Emotion (Pathos) fly the Seven Evils of the Cosmos: “Physical” Pain (Algesis), Boredom, Heartache, Frustration, Hatred, Fear, and Anxiety. If, therefore, it is our intention “to take arms against” these Evils, then we must make ourselves the sole target of our campaign: We must waylay our very own Pathos with the double-edged sword of Philosophy until it loses its power to interpret pragmata as horrible pains and awful feelings.
- An idea plucked from the vine too early is tasteless and bitter.
- Despite what some have said, I actually do consider my audience when I write. It’s just that my audience is not a person or persons: It is God.
- Like Isis wandering the Sahara in search of the pieces of Osiris, we mortals must venture across the desert of our souls in a desperate quest for the half-buried fragments of ourselves. And then, once we have found them, we must reassemble them with the needle and thread of Logos and resurrect them with the animating breath of Pathos.
- The most satisfying way to communicate is to teach.
- It is much better to be a performer than to be a spectator. Who, for example, has more fun at a Ballet Folklórico: The beautifully dressed dancers stomping and twirling around on the stage, or the audience sitting and watching in their seats? And who has more fun at a Jazz recital: The musicians improvising as if they were possessed by the Holy Spirit, or the audience listening at their tables? Even more fun than performing, however, is creating. Imagine, for example, what it would feel like to compose the Heiliger Dankgesang, or to paint The Starry Night, or to write Hamlet. Indeed, imagine what it would feel like to make Man, Woman, and the Cosmos.
- January 17, 2023. Tahquitz Falls. I am on duty as a Tribal Ranger, standing uniformed on the mica-sprinkled shore of the wide, shallow pool that sits at the base of the waterfall. Since I am responsible for the safety of the visitors who are busy wading in the pool, I am hardly paying any attention to the natural features that surround me: the sixty-foot-high walls of wet gneiss, the white spray from the gushing water, the thick mist carried by the cold wind, and the faint, tiny rainbow that haunts that mist—a rainbow that can be seen only from where I am standing. Then—unbidden—one of the factoids that I always relate on my guided tours comes to me: Three-thousand years ago, the great ancestral chief, Ivanganet, named this sixty-foot-tall waterfall Pal-hani-kalet, which means “Water Falling Down.” As soon as the factoid fades, I notice that almost half of the thirty-or-so guests are busy looking at the falls through the tiny screens of their smart phones, trying to get the right focus and the right angle—trying to fit the whole waterfall within the frame. Then—uninvited—the lyrics of an old System of a Down song flash through my mind: Life is a waterfall: / We’re one in the river / and one again after the fall. Now I tune in to what the guests are saying. “How pretty!” exclaims a gray-haired, hat-wearing woman as she leans on her trekking poles. “It’s beautiful,” asserts a tattooed teenager as she struggles to get her combat boots on over her wet feet. Pretty? Beautiful? What useless—what meaningless—abstractions! Then I remember the last time I went to Yosemite with my parents: In the chilly morning of our second day there, we climbed hundreds of slippery, stone stairs to the top of Vernal Falls, but the mist was so thick on the way up that we were completely drenched and freezing cold. Then an image of my father’s dead body flashes before me, followed by the first line of the Lord’s Prayer: Our Father, which art in Heaven. Now my consciousness returns to the shallow pool, and I behold something quite unusual: a young, heavy-set man being baptized in the frigid water by several of his fellow churchgoers. As soon as he stands up—his eyes still staring into the sky—every one of the guests begins to applaud and cheer, so I applaud and cheer, as well. Then I wonder, What is the waterfall without these added layers—without all of the thoughts and memories, all of the smart phones and abstractions, all of the baptisms and applause? What is it in and of itself? Then the alarm on my phone goes off: It's four o’clock—time for every guest to hike down the one-mile-long trail that leads back to the parking lot. “Alright, everyone!” I shout. “It’s time to head back to your vehicles: The trail closes in an hour!” As soon as the last guest leaves the shore, I begin to make my way down to the Visitor Center. But before I get very far, I take a look back at the walls of gneiss, the white spray, the thick mist—and feel nothing.
- It is mid-April—wildflower season in the desert. Hiking up the rocky, uphill trail that leads to Tahquitz Falls, I pass seas of purple canterbury bells, oceans of blue phacelias, islands of white fiesta flowers, clumps of red chuparosas, and bunches of orange fiddlenecks. As I listen to the buzz of the honey bees and watch them gently alight on the blooms, my Mnemosyne—for some cryptic reason—floods my consciousness with painful memories: Dad telling me, after I stopped practicing Christian Science, “You’ve turned against us, Joel”; and my Aunt Nancy saying, after I confessed to her that I was contemplating suicide, “Just don’t do it on your new mattress.” Stung by these dark recollections, my Pathos swells with gloomy, heart-wrenching feelings, and for a few protracted moments I am deeply depressed. But then I kneel down and run my fingers through the canterbury bells, and the memories mysteriously evaporate. Now, for some inexplicable reason, I feel at peace; and the thought—along with the trust in that thought—comes to me: This is heaven. For a few blessed seconds this thought is the only patheme in my Soul—indeed, it is my Soul. But then a new thought blossoms within me: It is what Jesus always says to those who were healed by his presence: Thy faith hath made thee whole. Now a warm breeze moves over the flowers, making them flutter and sway, and I remember another logion of Jesus: When asked by his disciples when the Kingdom of God will come, he responded, “The kingdom of the father is spread out upon the earth, [but] people do not see it.” As I rise up from my crouched position, the thought, This is heaven, appears once again, although now it is so dim that it can barely be seen against the black background of my consciousness. Unwilling to see it vanish entirely, I repeat it to myself—“This is heaven”—and with a smile, I continue on my way.
- I am hiking with my fellow rangers on the Cedar Spring Trail, roughly twelve miles west of Pinyon Flat, deep within the dark-green mountains that loom over the desert to the north. ?Although I’ve been to the Flat dozens of times with my father (and nearly a dozen times without him), I have never been to this remote swath of wilderness. Our job today as rangers is to maintain the last mile of the three-mile-long trail by smoothing it out with Mcleods, shovels, and rakes. As I hike along at the rear of the pack, I notice the way the morning light illuminates the tall, dry grass that grows in the meadows which line the trail. Then I think, I am the first Kilpatrick ever to see this place—and the last. Every hundred feet or so the trail passes under an arching canopy of oak—a sylvan door that whispers, “Go further.” And so I go, though with every step I take, a new feeling—a feeling I have never had before—grows more powerful inside of me. Pressed down by its weight, I begin to walk slowly—as slowly as a deacon walks down the nave with his smoking censor, as slowly as a father walks down the aisle his with his only daughter. Then I think, This place is the Future, while Pinyon Flats is the Past. And then I begin to reflect on the beauty of this wilderness—how, with its wide swaths of ribbonwood, manzanita, and juniper, it may seem plain at first, perhaps even monotonous, but once it has bled fully into one’s Soul, once it has shared its essence with one’s Heart, it proves to be as beautiful as any place on Earth. Still transfixed by this bright new world—still gripped by this natural symbol for What Will Be—I stand there and watch the way the shafts of morning light pierce through the gaps between the thick, drooping branches of oak. That’s when Cesar calls out to me from ahead on the trail: “Hey, Joel! Why are you going so slow?!” “I’m just admiring the scenery!” I shout—and then I run to catch up.
