Submitted by Majrelende in nameless (edited )

Imagine that there is a forager; they bring home a basket of acorns, and divides the fruit between themself and seven others. Because the soul follows the body around, it must be that the soul of the oak tree enfolds the eight people who ate the fruit of the oak, and the part that later is pooped out to become the earth. That must mean, then, that the eight humans are indeed not eight people but one, and that their singular selfhood also includes oak trees the earth.

The scientists also say that the oak is made of a star, so ancient we could not begin to imagine. So then, the eight people, Earth, and Heaven are all one thing; they are a star.

They say that stars are made of the ancient and primaeval fog from which Nature shaped the world. So, then, are all things one because they are the primaeval fog?

One hand is not cut off to appease the other. There is no sacrifice, only shifting and transformation. A loaf of bread in the bowels should not protest at leaving and becoming the earth, because that is what it was made for; a human at their deathbed should not protest about becoming the earth, because that was what they were made for. A mountain is sure to crumble and become dust, but from that dust will spring great and beautiful forests, and one day those forests will again be pressed into stone, and the mountains will be young and magnificent once again. One must pity Mr. Bentham for his immortality.

When I go to the high places to pray for rain and leave offerings to Wind, rain comes. Sometimes, after I am called to the high places but before I set off, I hear it said that rain comes, even before I pray. Are time and space illusions? Does the future make the past so, or the past the future, like Nature telling a long story to their child, whose only question is "Why?" or "What next"? Does one thing cause another to happen, or is it like a great unknowable monolith, where time and causality have no meaning? Is it because the rain would come, that pulled me to come? Those who pay attention to the signs of the gods often find that they can make sense of nothing at all, that cause and effect are all jumbled and mixed together so as to be indistinguishable.

When I speak to others in the language taught by the wind, we become confused, as one person. The heart of being is revealed, and our disagreements and differences fade into the water, as Heaven and Earth are one. But are we really one? When the ten thousand things all go their separate directions, that is when Nature is fulfilled. The Devil cuts them apart, sets them on the wrong path, and when two things that should not be the same become the same, they are cut off from Nature, and in that way oneness divides. But does oneness divide? If the Devil hadn't made paths in the first place, then wouldn't everyone be going on the path that Nature made for them? The ancient tasks of everyday life are waiting. Shouldn't we be ignoring these things and going off to fulfull them?

Are you confused? I am. Being confused is better than being mistaken. The Devil divides and makes things seem in opposition to each other, but one who confuses, means melts together. If you break a knife in half, don't you want to melt it together again so it can be useful and fulfill its purpose? This is how confusion is useful. When the ten thousand things are scattered and in pieces, we should confuse them, muddle them, make them unreadable and unknowable, and in that way bring them back to patient Nature. So one must confuse themself before they can confuse the ten thousand things, and heal the wound that the Devil made in the world. How? The Devil is contradiction and chaos itself. It is as if a mountain suddenly crumbled, all at once; the Devil is the crumbling, and the one who made the mountain crumble. Contradiction is even more incomprehensible than confusion, and self-created too. The Devil, whatever it is, isn't a hypocrite in that regard.

If you ever feel a need to contradict someone, then do your best to avoid it, because you will let the Devil in, who thrives wherever there is division and strife. If what they say is indeed false of Nature, then you should treat their words no differently than you do the ugly whining of engines, because the two are more akin than not. If someone pays heed to falsehoods and half-truths, then they are more akin than not to those who believe that the honking of cars or the whining of engines is genuine conversation. When they are treated as such, when the one who listens to them is confused, then won't they become confused? They expect at least a rebuttal, a defense, but how should they trust their own words if all that with which they are met is confusion? This is the genius of Socrates; he could avoid attack and defense, and prove people wrong just by being confused. Nothing is done, yet all is accomplished. Socrates did nothing, confused and blockish as a river-stone, and yet the state was so threatened that it prosecuted him for it.

Imagine, if we all spread confusion and uncertainty, a plague that sickens and infests the certainty, the assurance of the Kingdom of Hell, that maddens rulers with doubt, and infects the people with non-desire and non-action, so that all they want to do is to fulfill their purpose. Ideologues stutter and cannot form their words, officials fail to discern what is useful from what is useless. Civilisation falls in on itself, and we don't have to do a thing except to be confused!

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