Here is one of a series of talks by spiritual
leader Lola McDowell Lee, spanning two decades
from the early 70s through the 90s. Lola was
a Zen roshi whose Rinzai lineage included Dr.
Henry Plutov and renowned Zen master Shigetsu
Sasaki. Lola was a religious scholar as well
as an ordained Christian minister. While the
talks are focused mainly on Zen and Buddhism,
Lola drew on many spiritual traditions, including
those of Jesus, Plato, Lao Tzu, the Hindu Vedas,
Meister Eckhart, and Gurdjieff. Well, either
you're all worn out from the weekend's set, or
you're not up yet, not awake yet. There's not
much strength in your singing at all, at all.
slurping along there okay we come finally to
the last of the Upanishad the last chapters the
last verses of it which read the face of truth
is covered with a brilliant golden lid That do
thou remove, O fosterer, for the law of truth,
for sight. O fosterer, O soul -seer, O ordainer,
O illumining sun, O power of the father of creatures,
marshal thy rays, draw together thy light, the
luster which is thy most blessed form of all,
that in thee I behold the Purusha, There and
there, he am I. The breath of things is an immortal
life. But of this body, ashes are the end. All
will remember that which was done. All will remember
that which was done. Remember. O Agni, knowing
all things that are manifested, lead us by the
good path to the felicity. Remove from us the
devious attraction of sin. To thee completest
speech of submission we would dispose. And I'm
going to pick up about where I left off last
Sunday, running out of time as I did. And I didn't
want to keep you sitting there any longer. And
we start out again then with this Surya, which
is, remember we're talking in terms of India,
India with her gods, and this pantheon where
all the energies and the forces have been named,
and they call them gods. So Surya is the... Supreme
truth. The supreme truth is labeled Surya. And
he is known as the revealer. And he is termed
sight. And so they call him the fosterer or the
increaser because it is he that opens our limited
beings. Into this infinite and luminous consciousness.
Truth. It is he that is the soul seer. The one
seer. He sees oneness. And he is the knower of
the self. So he is the ordainer. And it is Surya
that tries to lead us. On a direct. which is
called the law of truth to the truth, the so
-called correct principle of our nature. However,
his rays, that is his influence, you know, the
radiation of this energy becomes distorted and
it breaks up and is... disordered in our reflecting
and dividing mind our minds divide our minds
reflect and so it takes this energy of truth
and breaks it up and it is this breaking up in
our minds this distortion that forms the golden
lid which covers the truth we have the truth
only we have divided it and separated it, and
it's in a million little pieces in our minds.
It is fragmented, and the thing is to pull it
together. So the prayer to Surya is to put us
in a correct order and to draw the fragments
together into the unity of truth. So Surya is
in a way... the intuition or the knowing aspect
because it knows the self and it knows the truth
and it is the truth and so in this intuition
of this aspect of the mind we come across the
they do compare it to the gnostic idea the gnosis
as a power and it works in its own law that law
of truth And this gnosis whose nature is sight.
It is seeing. It is not conception. It doesn't
work with concepts. It is not conceiving. You
know, the sentence is, for the law of truth,
for sight. To see the self. The self vision.
which is in all vision, the self. This is Surya
in India. And, of course, the Gnostic idea is
Greek. It knows. The gnosis knows. It sees what
is true. Now, the face of truth. is covered with
a brilliant golden lid. We could call this lid
our objective self -conscious viewpoint. It's
our view. And it is broken up by our objective
self -conscious view. And then so it is covered
by our self -conscious view. We are, as man,
you know, mankind, humankind, we are mentally
oriented. We stand on two feet, and our head
is up in the air, and we stand somewhat upright,
that is, vertical. We are endowed with a difficult
-to -obtain human body, as the Tibetans put it.
As human beings, as man, we have mind. The word
man comes from the Sanskrit manu, which is mind
or man. Being a human being in that state we
have mind. The mind in its activity is our thoughts
and our thoughts lead us and it is surprising.
I think someday if you have not already seen
it you will be very surprised. How your thoughts
do lead you. We do their bidding. We're not even
aware that we're thinking. And yet what we are
doing is what is going on in the head. We're
acting it out. And then we wonder why we get
into trouble. So, you know, begin to watch what
goes on in here. What you're thinking. Because
what you're thinking you are doing. Watch your
thinking lest you befool yourself. Or as the
old Zen master put it, do not deceive yourself.
Now, the mind in its substance or mind substance
is also the mind of God. Manu. Mind. Your mind.
Not the thoughts. That belongs to the world of
appearance and phenomena and so on. But the mind
itself. And you know the Christian scientists
have a good way of putting it. They say that
there is mortal mind, the way we ordinarily think,
and this is the imperfect mind. And then there
is the immortal mind, which is perfect. And they
say, therefore, be perfect. They don't say go
through a whole lot of rigmarole and purifying
processes. No, just be in that mind. Be perfect.
That mind is already perfect. Through our thoughts,
our ideas our concepts we have a knowledge we
have a knowledge of appearances this how it appears
to me this how it appears to me what it is in
its reality is covered by the way i see That
is an appearance in my world. If you're looking
at it, it is also an appearance in your world.
But in this world of appearances, in my world,
we arrange, and then we rearrange, and then again
we rearrange, for God knows how many times we
keep rearranging our thoughts. about the appearances,
not even acknowledging that they are appearances.
And with these arrangements and rearranging of
these appearances, we try very hard to infer
the truth. Some people befool themselves. they
begin to think of the inferences as reality.
Very easy to do. The inferences. I have deduced
this and this from these appearances, and now
I know. I have attained. I am enlightened. They
don't say I've inferred. Now Surya, the true
knowledge, true knowing, he is a true knower,
is the truth of existence as such, in its suchness,
or the truth as it is, in what it is. There is
a truth, and we call them many. In this world
of appearance, about appearances, I mean, we
do have natural laws, and we know that. The phenomenon.
I mean, there's such a thing as gravity. This
has to do with the moon and the tides and our
not flying off into space somewhere as we're
walking on the surface of this planet. There
is a truth about appearances and there is a truth
of non -appearance. And they call that the law
of truth, of non -appearance, of the noumenal
world. Now, the gods, the forces, the energies,
in which we went into some lessons back here,
the gods Surya and Agni, they work in us. They're
fellow conspirators in a way. And through them
we finally come to see the truth. The truth by
gnosis. Truth by sight. And this in turn sets
aside, as it were, our concepts and our percepts
and our inferences of the appearances. and replaces
it with the knowing of the self -vision, of the
self -seeing, of the self -knowing, just that
self. Now, to tread the path, as it's called
sometimes, and in our seeking, in our questing,
in our looking for the truth, It is very important
that we learn to see things as they are in our
world, my world. We must learn to see ourselves
as we are. And this is extremely difficult, to
see yourself as you are. And in this, we come
to rely on this gnosis. on the noetic quality
of the mind, to see ourselves as we are. For
without that intuitive action in us, we're only
one opinion looking at a bunch of opinions, or
we're looking with a concept at another concept.
We may call it I, but it is a concept, speaking
of other concepts. looking at other concepts,
opinions looking at other opinions. So where
are you in that? In all those opinions and inferences
and concepts and ideas and notions and what have
yous, where are you? And this journey home, for
we are all the prodigal son, we all begin, all,
begin this journey on this path home with a fundamental
falsehood we live and some people live all their
lives with this fundamental falsehood which is
very simple we believe that we have a separate
existence from all others and in this separate
nest we try to know Relations. Relations between
separate things in their separate states. We
want to know. We act out of a knowledge of appearances
that we have accumulated on the basis of being
separate one from the other. Everything is based
on our separateness. The ego is separate. Our
thoughts are separate. My thoughts are different
than your thoughts, aren't they? Sure. No, they're
not. Thoughts are thoughts. We believe in this
knowledge of separateness that we have accumulated.
And then we run around and look at the schools
and the seminars and things that are going on
now. About relations and relationships. Oh yes.
Oh you and I have a nice relationship. Which
you can have. Either a nice relationship. Or
a not so nice relationship. But you can have
it only. As long as you think of yourself as
being separate. Now that's the world of appearance.
in all of us in everybody i don't care who they
are everybody in our everyday ordinary actions
in the way we function every day no in our world
of separateness see me there is a seed of truth
we all have this seed of truth and this seed
must be allowed to sprout That is, it dies to
itself. And then we must allow it to grow. It
grows to be a tree. And this tree is called the
tree of life, which also grows in the garden.
And we begin then to eat the fruit of the tree
of life. instead of the tree of knowledge of
good and evil. Eating the fruit of the tree of
life, we shall be free. We are liberated from
the appearances of good and evil and the opposites.
There is something in us. There is an element
in us which frees us. It gives us freedom. It
leads us to freedom. We have this element already.
It is not something you have to go out and look
for. It is not something that you have to acquire.
You have it now. The element that leads to freedom,
it leads us out. And so in the story of... in
the myth or the legend of Jesus, he is called
Judas. It is the element which freezes. It allows
us out. Now, within every act, with every perception,
there is also this gnosis, this intuition, this
surya. We keep ourselves very, very busy falsifying
ourselves and our world in our thinking. And
yet all the while this intuition, which is in
every thought, it preserves itself. And it works
at all times to lead us to the truth. Behind
all of our labors, and we do labor to divide,
to differentiate, there is this insistent unifying
tendency, the knowing trying to become one. We
say we yearn to know. Oh, we want desperately
to know. There is a hunger in us to know. And
we yearn to know by the very knowing itself.
This gnosis, huh? Surya. And through the action
of Surya, of the truth itself, through this noetic
element of the mind, We arrive finally at a supreme
super -conscient state where the truth of things
is a total vision. It is self -luminous. And
this self -luminous, this supreme light, it is
called, the supreme will, the supreme delight,
the ananda of it, the Lord, it is called, the
parusha. the self -being. In this perfect seeing,
in that instant, you see, it is... In the Upanishads,
they say, Soham! Eli! In Buddhism, there is the
story of the little lion. you know, that mother
died giving it birth. She was hungry and she
was leaping at this group of sheep, you know,
and she died. And the sheep found this little
cub. So they raised it. They taught it to eat
grass and they taught it, Sheep language, you
know, bah. And it grew. And then one day, a huge
lion came by. And he saw this little lion eating
grass. Bah, you know. And he picked it up by
the scruff of the neck and took it to the pond
and said, look at yourself. You look like a sheep.
So he took it away and he fed it meat. And all
of a sudden, something happened to this little
lion. And this little lion roared a lion cry.
He was a lion, so he could cry like a lion. So...
You know, it's... It's Buddhism. But in the Upanishads
in India, you know, it's... EMI. It's this lion's
roar. The Purushas are there. EMI. The true identity,
so am. It is all and is that which transcends
all. Now through Surya, the soul seer, the one
and only seer, illumining the mind. and leading
the consciousness from mortality to immortality.
The sun as the doer, as the gate. The limited
consciousness steps through this gate into this
full, total consciousness. And the whole band
spectrum, you know. that has been spread out.
I went through that. Do you remember that? Do
you remember that? Okay. Energy is a band spectrum.
You let go of both ends, right back to a little
bitty mustard seed, as it were. The rubber band
snaps back into place. The supreme all -embracing
soul. So Surya represents the divine light. Represents
the truth. And Agni then, which is the fire god,
so to speak. To these ancient teachers, Agni
represented the divine force. or the power or
the will in consciousness not in your thoughts
the will in consciousness so then we have finally
a knowing knowing and will as a unity unity is
the true foundation there is a unity there is
one that's the true foundation This one has many
aspects. Now, as individuals in our separateness
in this world of appearances, we accept within
ourselves a division that there is out there
and there is in here. We have opposites out there
in here. We have high and low opposites. We have
hot and cold, near and far. We accept this division,
and it becomes our law. And it becomes the way
that we are governed. It becomes the way we think,
this division. And so... We isolate ourselves
in our egotistic limitations. The truth is very
obscure. We can't ever seem to find it, to pick
it up. We know it's there. We can feel it, but
how do I pick it up? So it's obscure, and we
work in ignorance. We are ignorant of it. In
all of our goals, our aims, what we want, and
the methods that we contrive to get what we want,
our manipulations for our success, we follow
all of this in a knowledge that is the information
that is accumulated about appearances and these
opposites which we make personal we have personal
knowledge which is governed by desire by our
habits of thought by our obscure subconscious
impulses and then into some lives you know a
broken or a partial or a shifting light. See,
the light in this instance being a transcendent
perception. Our knowledge is narrow in its objectivity.
Objects, objects, huh? Thoughts are even objects.
We are very narrow in our subjectivity. of this
I in here. Neither objectivity or subjectivity
in this sense is a unity. And it really doesn't
work with the will of the universe. So it is
said that our actions are crooked. It is not
one. Our actions are not one with this will of
the universe. Our actions are crooked. It has
many branchings. It hesitates and it fluctuates.
And what direction is best? Into what area should
I go? Where should I turn? What direction should
I go in? And then it comes the impulse to go
this way. And we start out on that and after
a few footsteps, well, now let's think this thing
over and let's go that way. And then again comes
the question, well, really, in what direction
should I go? And our concepts beat around in
our heads and they dash around in all these falsehoods
trying to find the truth. We pick up scraps.
We pick up fragments out of which we try to piece
a hole. We try to sew them all together and have
a hole. Patchwork, huh? And we stumble along
amongst our errors and the sins, as they call
it, to find the true and the right. Now this
word sin, many of us are conditioned to shudder
at this word. The Upanishad has the concept the
sin is that which excites and hurries the faculties
into a deviation from the good path. From the
straight path to the crooked path. It's that
which excites us. So this can be anything you
know. It can be any thought actually. Now some
of you realize this. It can be the most beautiful
of thoughts. It can excite you and lead you into
a crooked path. The most dazzling thought can
be a deviation from the good path. You know,
Meister Eckhart, he said, you know, the sun at
noon is in all its glory. You can pick up a tiny
pebble and hold it before your eye and you cannot
any longer see the sun. And so in your minds,
any thought, any thought, No matter how beautiful
you may think it is, how dazzling it may appear
to you, it hides the truth. A thought. The mind
is obscured because of thinking. The mind. And
there is a straight path, and it leads to what
they call infinite levels. vistas which we should
normally take toward our fulfillment but then
this that excites us what they call sin with
that we stumble along we are limited we have
this uneven crooked winding path. You go round
the mountain and round the mountain and round
the mountain instead of straight up. You know,
Jesus in the Gospel of St. Thomas spoke that
he was coming to make straight the way. He said
the crooked shall be made straight. That's what
he intended, straight the way. Now in our limited
human consciousness, you know, it is the eye.
We move our eyes constantly and we blink often,
frequently. We move because The eye consciousness
knows that the eye doesn't see everything. There's
a blind spot in the eye. So it moves. That way
it can take in the whole picture. If it didn't
move, it wouldn't see all of it. And so with
the mind, we have blind spots. We are a limited
human consciousness. And so we have neither this
single vision, this single eye. If thine eye
be single, thine whole house shall be filled
with light. Nor do we have a whole vision. We
don't have a totality of the will, and we don't
have the oneness of this transcendent. Very difficult,
then, to walk the straight path. Towards the
truth. We are led around by desire. And don't
kid yourself that you're not. We are exposed
to forces around us. Which I talked about. Way
back when. Second or third lesson. That if there
was some of these forces. If you were in harmony
with them. This you call pleasure. And if you
were not in harmony with them, you called it
pain. And the rest you ignored. You were indifferent
to. And the ego, you see, being that which holds
us in this limitation, doesn't really want much
harmony with these forces, because it opens it
up. and delimits it in a way. So how much pleasure
do you have in your life? Look back. And so we
suffer, and we have a life of falsehood in our
ignorance. And this we do not see in ourselves.
That we lie to ourselves, we don't see. We live
in a kind of a twilight and our senses perceive
and the mind interprets and then there is this
appearance in the consciousness and we extend
it in space -time and we objectify it in the
world and then again you're cognizing this object.
which you have projected, and you consider everything
out there as separate from yourself. In this
process, you know, naturally, our perception
is not total. And what we need, you know, is
whole seeing. Not just with the mind. this divided
mind but to see from within to see from this
element of gnosis not from a point of one phenomena
looking at another phenomenon but from the source
of all seeing in this subject object state we
we live as if it were in a twilight And in all
of our appearances and falsehoods and divisions,
there is a light trying to bring about a full
dawn of truth. Behind all of our mistakes, behind
all our errors, behind all our stumblings, within
us and transcending, there is will. There is
a kind of a secret will in us. But it tends toward
love and harmony. This is where will brings us.
And it is this will which is always trying to
bring together our crooked branchings into this
single path. The emergence in us of this will,
you know, to have it blossom out, the will and
the light. See, this is the condition of immortality.
Now, in this particular Upanishad, this will
is called Agni. In most of the Vedas, Agni is
called fire, except for the... Rig Veda, here
also it is called will. Will, the divine will,
the force of consciousness that works in us.
Agni is working and Surya is working and what
are you doing? Well, I sat ten minutes. Big deal.
Agni is the leader of the journey. It's like
he's the horse that carries us over the road.
And very difficult to find in this mishmash that
we carry around in our consciousness. Difficult
to find in all of this that comes and goes because
we falsify so much. Through our desires, what
we want. So always is the admonition, observe.
And don't be like the woman who said she had
observed for nine months and she finally saw
a flower she'd never seen before. Observe your
thoughts. Observe your desires. Observe where
you're going. Be alert. Watch. Through this observation,
one begins to see this ego, as it were. Through
the practice of observation and meditation, one
can really get a handle on oneself, finally.
You can see what you want. And then you can ask,
do I really want that? And always ask, this desire,
this thing that I want, what is it going to bring
in its wake? We so blithely move into situations
which we think we want, which we think will make
us comfortable, which we think will give us security.
which we think will make us happy. But you know,
it's like a boat on the ocean. There is a wake.
There is something that comes after. The tail
of the dragon or the dragon tail. It's coming.
Just don't jump into something because it's handy.
And it's, you know, oh, it's going to make me
comfortable. I'm going to feel better now. What
cometh hereafter? To be able to look at your
desires objectively and to look at oneself subjectively.
We are objectively self -conscious. So don't
say, oh, poor me. Use your state. Use it. Now,
the myths, you know, of these gods of India and
the search, the search that we're on can be put
into any tradition, be it Hindu, you know, the
Indian thing. or Christian, or Jewish, or Buddhism.
It doesn't even have to be put into a religion.
But we do. We have it as a backdrop, a background.
Now, in this kind of a myth that they have in
India, with so this pantheon of gods, they had
as many gods as the Greeks had. Every force has
a name. They're all enumerated. Agni in action
prepares Indra. See? Indra, the luminous mind.
Indra, the shining mind that reflects everything
in her net. Indra, the finder of the truth. Then
Indra slays Vrtra, who is the coverer, who is
the veil. It is put away, it is destroyed, like
in Omar Khayyam, you know. There was a veil through
which I might not see. help it I had to go on
a little bit then of the thee and me who works
behind the veil I lifted up my hands to find
a lamp amid the darkness and I heard as from
without the me within thee blind before the phantoms
of false morning died Methought a voice within
the tavern cried, What? All the temple is prepared
within. Why nods the drowsy worshipper outside?
And as the cock crew, those who stand before
the tavern shouted, Open then the door. You know
how little while we have to stay. and once departed
may return no more. Come, fill the cup, and in
the fire of spring your winter garment of repentance
fling. The bird of time has but a little way
to flutter, and the bird is on the wing. Whether
at Naashapur or Babylon, whether the cup with
sweet or bitter run, keeps oozing drop by drop.
The leaves of life keep falling one by one. I
like him. People think he's written about some
drunken state, but he sure hasn't. Vitra is the
cover, Vitra the veil, behind which there is
a lamp. And this veil is destroyed by Indra,
the shining. And so the darkness is gone. And
this allows Surya to rise. And then it is Savitri
who is manifest in this world. This individual
in a state of immortality. Always life emerging,
life emerging, life emerging, always lifting
itself. to return to the Godhead. In all we do,
this is what we're doing, and we don't seem to
know this. Allow the life to emerge. Nature supplies
us with a body, and that's a very poor way of
saying it. The Tibetans say it much better. Having
been endowed with a difficult -to -obtain human
body, it is senseless to fritter life away. We
have difficulty keeping in mind that this body
is only a temporary coming -together of the elements
of nature. It's a little nitrogen, it's a little
hydrogen, it's got some calcium in here somewhere,
and it's got a few other minerals, and there's
lots of gas and lots of water. That's us, folks.
And we're so great, huh? Now, amongst these elements,
the Purusha has found a kind of a dwelling place.
And in this dwelling place he is divided. He
is the ear consciousness. He is the eye consciousness.
He is the mouth consciousness. He is the nose
consciousness. He is the touch consciousness.
In the sense system. And he has become so intrigued.
by all these appearances that he brings about.
But at the same time, he yearns to go home. He
has this ambivalence, as we all do. In order
to return, he must be himself. He must be one.
Therefore, in the... Old Testament of the Bible
we find, come ye out from among them and be ye
therefore separate. That is the separateness
of the one from the appearances so that it becomes
the witness thereto and is not immersed in them.
Bring it out, this one. You know, Purusha must
extricate himself, is the way they say it. The
immortal breath, you know, this life principle
which maintains us. There's that. And the will
is the power behind the act of breathing. The
will is the energy of consciousness. It is present
in all forms. In the consciousness, in the subconsciousness,
in the superconsciousness, in the vital form,
in the physical form, in the mental form. And
it comes into its own when it finally emerges
into mind. Our actions are very circumscribed.
Because, you know, we live mentally. from moment
to moment. We cling to these things which attract
us or what we think we can use for our benefit.
In the world of appearances, egotistically viewed,
our benefit. We think we live in what we're doing.
Again, it's the old Zen story of this roshi who
was out working in the garden. And this man comes
to interview him and says, asks him, you know,
now that you are enlightened, what do you do?
And the Zen master says, I chop wood, I carry
water. What did you do before you were enlightened?
I chop wood, I carry water. But oh, the difference.
Oh, the difference. See? Yeah. We don't live
in what we're doing. Not really. We don't have
any control over what has been. But sadly, we
are controlled by it. We are, to some extent,
controlled to our past. The more we observe it
and look at it and set it in its place, objectify
it, the less we are controlled. See, this past,
most of which we have forgotten, but it hasn't
forgotten us. You know, I say it over, and it
is an old admonition, Look at what you're doing.
Look at what you're thinking. We should make
the very best choices that we possibly can instead
of jumping into things just because I like it.
It's going to stay with you. Once you jump into
it, it's going to stay with you. We live in an
activity. of appearances and we long for the
fruit of our activity we want all this praise
that we have done so and so and so and so and
so and so instead we should be living in the
soul as a soul and viewing the world of the appearances
you know from the point of being the witness
thereto the observer we thrash around in our
thinkings and willings while this true will remains
in the background not knowing that we don't know
that it is in our activities portions of it that
come through it is never bound by the activity
The divine will is one with all things. What
it is, it knows. It knows. What it knows, it
does. And then here we are. And the ego steps
in and interferes. And it brings about a disturbance.
It brings about a division. And our knowledge
is very partial and dubious. And yet all the
time it is striving to possess not only things
but that knowledge, that knowing. It wants to
possess them. We are not in the possession of
the being. We are in the possession of the ego.
What we are, we know not. What we know, we cannot
affect. This Upanishad, the Isha Upanishad, what
it does is invokes the will that we may be conscious
of our becoming so that we may become a power
of knowing and be self -possessed, not just laboring
with the whims of impulse and what the ego wants.
The sign, there is an indication of correct action
in us. And it is the surrender of the person
to the divine will. Will is not ours. It's not
mine. It's not yours. It's not individual even.
It is the will of the Purusha, who is in all
things and transcends all things. It is called
the will of the Lord. And when you do take this
step of trying to surrender to this will, you
are surrendering to your own future. No longer
just bumbling around then. You are surrendering
to your own future. You are surrendering to your
ultimate potential. Now life itself, whatever
you do, whether you surrender, if you don't surrender,
life itself remains the same. You don't change
it. And life itself is already perfect. But we
could try a little bit to surrender. Observe
what we're doing and surrender to something greater.
Even though you think maybe it isn't there. You
don't see it or you can't think it. But try it.
Surrender. Allow yourself to leave the crookedness.
And this way there comes about this acceptance
of life. The acceptance of things as they are.
Oh, Agni, it says in this Upanishad, lead us
by the good path for the enjoyment of the fruit
of our action. You know, oh God, all our deeds
destroy our sin of deceit. Oh, we'll remember.
Remember what was done. Oh, we'll remember. And
then, of course, the... That is full. And this
is full. This fullness has been projected from
that fullness. When this fullness merges in that
fullness, all that remains is fullness. Om, peace,
peace, peace. And I would like to read to you
one other thing from Savitri. But meanwhile,
is a shadow cast by a dream and to the musing
and immobile spirit life and himself don the
aspect of a myth the burden of a long unmeaning
tale for the key is hid and by the inconscient
kept the secret god beneath the threshold dwells
in a body obscuring the immortal spirit, a nameless
resident vesting unseen powers with matters,
shapes, and motives beyond thought and the hazard
of an unguessed consequence, an omnipotent, indiscernible
influence. He sits, unfelt by the form in which
he lives, and veils his knowledge. If you find
Lola's talks valuable, more will be posted in
weeks to come.