Tim Miller

“All my life I have had a passionate desire to understand how our universe works. Why are our lives the way they are? Why is there so much suffering in life? Is there a larger intelligence operating in the universe, and if so, toward what end? What is the purpose and project of existence? In our culture's current materialist paradigm that reduces everything to physical matter, these questions are considered beyond the pale of genuine knowledge, and attempts to answer them are seen as being purely speculative enterprises. In my sessions, however, I was given the opportunity to explore these questions in exercises of profound experiential instruction choreographed by a vast intelligence. I was shown things that stunned and transfixed me, was allowed to experience things that completely reframed my understanding of existence.
What philosopher could turn down such an opportunity?
As this journey deepened, I found myself entering a spiraling love affair with this intelligence, a Being so vast I can only describe it using the vocabulary of the Divine even while the sessions themselves were repeatedly demonstrating how limited and childlike our historical conceptions of the Divine have been. I agree with Jonathan Goldman who in speaking of ayahuasca said, "The rituals of the Daime are not meant to be an 'experience,' but rather to provide a chance to interact intimately with a Divine Being of unimaginable intelligence, compassion, clarity, and spiritual power."* I do not know the limits of this Being and I hesitate to even call it a "Being" at all. As I have experienced it, it is the fabric of existence itself. I think of it as the generative intelligence of our universe, the Mind of the Cosmos-both transcendent source and manifest body of existence, beyond all categories of He or She yet infinitely more than any It.
Knowing that I could sustain the deepest intimacy with this intelligence for only a few hours on any given day and that I had no control over which session would become one of these magical days, I kept driving forward. When the communion opened, it was so intense that at the end of the day I would feel supremely fulfilled and at the same time achingly bereaved because I could not stay with my Beloved.
Everyone must choose a name for the Absolute, a title that approximates its truth, power, and beauty. Though I will use many terms to describe it in this book, in my heart of hearts I call it my Beloved. Once held in her embrace, once dissolved into her radiant splendor, I was hers forever. I will be hers until my last breath and after still. If my description tilts toward the feminine, it is because of two things-the specific story of creation that emerged on this journey and the love that reuniting with this reality awakened within me.”
― Christopher M. Bache, LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven

“He liked to get off by himself, a mile or so from camp, and listen to the country, not the men.”
― Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

“We are of the opinion that the strong man can afford to be gentle, while the weak and unsure brag and boast.”
― T. Lobsang Rampa, The Third Eye

“To me the front is a mysterious whirlpool. Though I am in still water far away from its centre, I feel the whirl of the vortex sucking me slowly, irresistibly, inescapable into itself. From the earth, from the air, sustaining forces pour into us—mostly from the earth. To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier. When he presses himself down upon her long and powerfully, when he buries his face and his limbs deep in her from the fear of death by shell-fire, then she is his only friend, his brother, his mother; he stifles his terror and his cries in her silence and her security; she shelters him and releases him for ten seconds to live, to run, ten seconds of life; receives him again and often for ever. Earth!—Earth!—Earth! Earth with thy folds, and hollows, and holes, into which a man may fling himself and crouch down. In the spasm of terror, under the hailing of annihilation, in the bellowing death of the explosions, O Earth, thou grantest us the great resisting surge of new-won life. Our being, almost utterly carried away by the fury of the storm, streams back through our hands from thee, and we, thy redeemed ones, bury ourselves in thee, and through the long minutes in a mute agony of hope bite into thee with our lips! At the sound of the first droning of the shells we rush back, in one part of our being, a thousand years. By the animal instinct that is awakened in us we are led and protected. It is not conscious; it is far quicker, much more sure, less fallible, than consciousness. One cannot explain it. A man is walking along without thought or heed;—suddenly he throws himself down on the ground and a storm of fragments flies harmlessly over him;—yet he cannot remember either to have heard the shell coming or to have thought of flinging himself down. But had he not abandoned himself to the impulse he would now be a heap of mangled flesh. It is this other, this second sight in us, that has thrown us to the ground and saved us, without our knowing how. If it were not so, there would not be one man alive from Flanders to the Vosges. We march up, moody or good-tempered soldiers—we reach the zone where the front begins and become on the instant human animals. An”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front