nice Ähnlichkeits

Mindsprinter quoting Coomeraswamy:

The supreme achievement of the individual consciousness is to lose or find (both words mean the same) itself in what is both its first beginning and its last end: "Whoever would save his psyche, let him lose it."

Alan Watts at Seeker after Truth:

[...] if a person has so-called ’strange’ experiences, and endeavors to communicate these experiences–because naturally one talks about what one feels–and endeavors to communicate these experiences to other people, he is looked at in a very odd way and asked ‘are you feeling all right?’

Here I think we can get close to the heart of the controversy over the role of artists. I hope I have argued effectively, though obviously not exhaustively, that there is no society. Still there is a need, I think, amongst us for people who are honest of their experiences. One cannot expect an administrative assistant (or whoever) who is un-cannily shocked by the corner of the stairs outside her apartment building to take two weeks off and exhaustively explore the nature of elevation, the sacred geometry of corners, the breathing of wood versus the temporary calamity of concrete. We can hope that she tries. We can encourage the accounting clerk typist to sign up for those poetry classes. But to answer Watts' question above, I think it important to have people, no matter how strange and befuddled and mystified we are, willing to say, "Yes, just fine, thanks."