heâs stand-up, but he sure can be a son of a bitch.â In ourselves and others, we find this constant interplay of good and bad.
If we are going to talk about these matters, I think we would do well to approach them with the confidence that humans have the right to explore anything and everythingâat our spiritual peril, but we do have the right. It seems to meâhow to put it?âI see no reason for a divinity to put everything into a Book and expect that to be our only guide. He gave us free will. Or She gave us free will. Once again, letâs leave gender out of it. If we were given free will, then the Book is the first obstacle to it.
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Whatâs the role of the senses?
I would say the senses were given to us by God. If Iâm ready to go in for speculations such as these, I would even go so far as to say that mind may have been the contribution of the Devilâor, at least, more so than God. How can I justify such a remark? Animals seem to function extraordinarily well on their instincts and their senses. To a large degree, they have communityâants, bees, all the way up to primates. There is an extraordinary amount of communication we can witness in animals, and they are undeniably superior to us in one manner: They donât go around slaughtering one another in huge numbers. If, by every other mode of moral judgment, we see ourselves as superior, still we know that animals left to themselves are not going to destroy the universe. But we could. So it may be a true question: Did the Devil invent mind? Or is this still Godâs domain? Or, more likely, does the search for dominance there become the field of battle?
There is no question in my mind that the Devil did enter mind. And, not being the first Creator, did His best to invade the senses as well, to corrupt the senses. But the question is sufficiently complex to assume that the senses are neither wholly God given nor Devil ridden.
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But the line you quoted, which has puzzled me for decades, is âTrust the authority of the senses.â
St. Thomas Aquinas said that, and Hemingway, in his way: âIf it feels good, it is good.â Iâve never read Aquinas in depth, but I was taken with the notion that the most formal of the Catholic philosophers had presented this rule of thumb. What I think it meansâleave Aquinas out of itâis that we must trust the authority of the senses because that is the closest contact we have to the Creator; however, it is a most treacherous undertaking. As anyone whoâs ever enjoyed a drink knows, the authority of the senses on a boozy spree is exceptional. You feel so much, see so muchâand thatâs even more true on marijuana. You trust the authority of the senses until, perhaps, they become so intense that God and the Devil seem to be there working with you full-time. Weâve all had the experience of an extraordinary trip on drink and/or pot, but what I know is that the end result is as often disaster as happiness. I wonât pretend that every time you get drunk beyond measure nothing good will happen. It occurred to me at a certain point in my life that I had never, up to that moment, gone to bed with a woman for the first time without being drunk. Since some of the most important experiences of my life occurred that way, I can hardly wish to argue that drink serves the Devil alone. Given the rigors of modern society, itâs possible weâd never get anywhere without liquor or pot.
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You have me thinking of Blakeâs line: âThe road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.â
Itâs implicit in what I just said, but I think Iâd be happier if the line had gone: âThe road of excess
can lead
to wisdom.â Iâm not in favor of excess because Iâve ruined too much in just that way. Blake did have an apocalyptic mind,