Seth: A brilliant mind

Fri, 2 Jan 2004 20:43:57 

Subject: The Lost Sessions

now partially recovered.

9/27/72 and 5/19/73.

Given for Richard Bach, author of _Jonathan Livingston Seagull_, and his

editor Eleanor Friede who was to type them up and give them to Jane and

Rob.

She recently sent them to Tam (w/some pp. missing) who sent them to me

who sent them to Rob who acknowledged they were missing all these years.

She wrote in a note to Tam about them, "Not much here."

From 9/27/72:

           

[In the margin for this paragraph, EF noted this was about Truman Capote

who she knew and who adamantly believed there was nothing beyond this

physical life.  The material here might also apply to someone like Carl

Sagan methinx.]

         

         "A brilliant mind can often turn into a black light, that blots

         our reality, and a brilliant mind, focused in one direction

only,

         also creates what it perceives, and in its intensity therefore

         exaggerates that which it perceives. So that often in

objectively

         recording facts you have instead a one-dimensional picture

         that does not represent reality, but a surface thread stretched

         through events, upon which upon which the cautious may tread.

         It is a way of making order to events that you do not

understand,

         and of assuring yourself that you have control. You are

terrified

         that you will slip from the thread, and so you make it 

         therefore heavier, and strong. And in so doing, you make sure

         that you do not look left or right, or above, much less below.

         And when you think you are looking below, and bringing up

         information from beneath, you are instead merely following

         the ravelings from your small thread. The brilliant mind has been

         used by many, not as a method of perfection, but as a black light:

         to blot out illumination, and it dazzles others, but it blinds the

         self."

         --Seth