Navigation brought man face to face with the uncertainty of destiny, where each is left to himself and every departure might always be the last. The madman on his crazy boat sets sail for the other world, and it is from the other world that he comes when he disembarks. This enforced navigation is both rigorous division and absolute Passage, serving to underline in real and imaginary terms the liminal situation of the mad in medieval society. It was a highly symbolic role, made clear by the mental geography involved, where the madman was confined at the gates of the cities. His exclusion was his confinement, and if he had no prison other than the threshold itself he was still detained at this place of passage. In a highly symbolic position he is placed on the inside of the outside, or vice versa. A posture that is still his today, if we admit that what was once the visible fortress of social order is now the castle of our own consciousness.
Michel FoucaultRelated topics
absolute boat castle clear comes confinement consciousness crazy departure destiny division exclusion face fortress geography imaginary inside last left mad madman man might medieval mental navigation now once order outside passage place position posture prison real role sail serving situation social society threshold uncertainty underline vice world today gatesRelated quotes
Take a moment to remember the times on your own spiritual quest when you felt most enthusiastic. We want to pinpoint the times in which we felt more God conscious and devotional than ever before. Conversely, look at the times when you felt unenthused and do a similar analysis. These questions might help stimulate your thought process: Are you enthusiastic about your existence as a servant of the Lord? Are you enthusiastic to follow the basic principles that will help elevate your consciousness? Are you enthusiastic in the association of saintly people? Are you enthusiastic about what you can experience in your purest state? We must examine our spiritual life on a daily, weekly, and even yearly basis. This examination will help us recognize how various activities and thoughts affect us. We should note how the quality of our experiences varies according to our absorption in the process of bhakti.
Bhakti Tirtha Swami
Lacan conceives the difference between the two deaths as the difference being real (biological) death and its symbolization, the settling of accounts the accomplishment of symbolic destiny (deathbed confession in Catholicism, for example). This gap can be filled in various ways; it can contain either sublime beauty or fearsome monsters: in Antigone's case, her symbolic death, her exclusion from the symbolic community of the city, precedes her actual death and imbues her character with sublime beauty, whereas the ghost of Hamlet's father represents the opposite case, - actual death unaccompanied by symbolic death, without a settling of accounts - which is why he returns as a frightful apparition until his debt has been repaid. This place between the two deaths, a place of sublime beauty as well as terrifying monsters, is the site of das Ding, of the real-traumatic Kernel in the midst of symbolic order.
Slavoj Žižek
Once again, I experienced that overwhelming joy in the universe that I had felt in London outside the V and A. But this time, my consciousness of the world seemed larger, more complex. It was the mystic's sensation of oneness, of everything blending into everything else. Everything I looked at reminded me of something else, which also became present to my consciousness, as if I were simultaneously seeing a million worlds and smelling a million scents and hearing a million sounds-- not mixed up, but each separate and clear. I was overwhelmed with a sense of my smallness in the face of this vast, beautiful, objective universe, this universe whose chief miracle is that it exists, as well as myself. It is no dream, but a great garden in which life is trying to obtain a foothold. I experienced a desire to burst into tears of gratitude; then I controlled it, and the feeling subsided into a calm sense of immense, infinite beauty.
Colin Wilson
If, therefore, our personal religious life is likely to be sapped by our devotion to social work, it would be a calamity second to none. But is it really likely that this will happen? The great aim underlying to whole social movement is the creation of a free, just, and brotherly social order. This is the greatest moral task conceivable. Its accomplishment is the manifest will of God for this generation. Every Christian motive is calling us to do it. If it is left undone, millions of lives will be condemned to a deepening moral degradation and to spiritual starvation. Does it look probable that we will lose our contact with God if we plunge too deeply into this work? Does it stand to reason that we shall go astray from Jesus Christ if we engage in the unequal conflict with organized wrong? What kind of ‘spirituality' is it which is likely to get hurt by being put to work for justice and our fellow-men?
Walter Rauschenbusch
...our geographical position put us in the centre of markets. That was one of the great strengths of our position. We did not have to look merely into Europe; we could look outside. We had our relationships with the Colonies overseas, later the Dominions; with the United States; with all continents, just because we were not tied up with the Continent of Europe. Now we are to be tied. It might be right, it may be wrong; but do not make any mistake: it is entirely different from anything we have had before. We are to become part of a larger whole, an appendage to Europe. It may be right now, but, historically, that has not been our position. We may have been at the centre of markets, but we have not been in one market and out of the others. We have had to fight against hostile tariffs; we have had to keep our end up. We have never put ourselves into a position in which we were inside a ring-fence with a number of Continental Powers. Make no mistake: it is an entire change.
Clement Attlee
