Sometimes I wish that I could return to the state I was in before Chris and I embarked on the schizophrenic journey, the journey of awakening. I was superficially happy; I didn’t want to know about life’s darker side. I can’t go back to what was, and I also know that my life is much richer now, but still, there is this tinge of wishing that I didn’t know so much, perceive so much. If I feel this way, as a mere observer on this journey, imagine what the full experience must be like for Chris and others.
Most writers, poets and artists of all kinds have experienced what happens when everyday reality is stripped away. Aldous Huxley and Percy Bysshe Shelley come to mind:
“The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend”
― Aldous Huxley
Lift not the painted veil which those who live
Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
And it but mimic all we would believe
With colours idly spread,–behind, lurk Fear
And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave
Their shadows, o’er the chasm, sightless and drear.
I knew one who had lifted it–he sought,
For his lost heart was tender, things to love,
But found them not, alas! nor was there aught
The world contains, the which he could approve.
Through the unheeding many he did move,
A splendour among shadows, a bright blot
Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove
For truth, and like the Preacher found it not.
―Percy Bysshe Shelley
More on Huxley quote in this blog