Some are eager to be done with this life and get on to the next. Others deny that there is a next, while still others admit a next but are in no hurry to make its acquaintance. In the following remarkable passage Freya Stark, whose books I read in '95-'96 while sojourning in Asia Minor, explains her loss of interest in Rudolf Steiner:
There is little leisure to discover what lies around us, and so much — presumably — for what is beyond, and it has long seemed to me to be the behaviour of a rather ill-mannered guest on this planet to wolf down his earlier courses and ask for port and coffee straightaway." (Beyond Euphrates, p. 9)
In a similar vein, Henry David Thoreau on his death-bed was supposedly asked by a preacher if he had any intimations of the world to come. Thoreau replied, "One world at a time."
Related Posts (on one page):
- Thoughts on Travel
- Freya Stark on This Life
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4. Some undesirables: The skimmers, those who cannot read but only read-in. The sophists who, abusing argument, argue for the sake of argument. The ideologues, those who are out for power, not truth. The uncivil. The illogical. The politically correct. Worst of all, perhaps, are those who exemplify the anti-Socratic property: those who think they know what they don't know. If Socrates was famous for his learned ignorance, these types are marked by their ignorant unlearnededness.