26 6 / 2009
"The Metaphysics of Quality says that what sometimes accidentally occurs in an insane asylum but occurs deliberately in a mystic retreat is a natural human process called dhyana in Sanskrit. In our culture dhyana is ambiguously called “meditation.” Just as mystics traditionally seek monasteries and ashrams and hermitages as retreats into isolation and silence, so are the insane treaded by isolation in places of relative calm and austerity and silence. Sometimes, as a result of this monastic retreat into silence and isolation the patient arrives at a state Karl Menninger has described as “better than cured.” He is actually in better condition than he was before the insanity started. Phædrus guessed that in many of these “accidental” cases, the patient had learned by himself not to cling to any static pattern of ideas - cultural, private or any other."
