CYCLE FIFTY-THREE

1. Appearance is synonymous with perception and essence synonymous with conception, so we may confidently maintain that the perceptual is always apparent and the conceptual always essential, since the one is outer and the other inner. However, as we have seen, both form and content can be perceptual or conceptual, outer or inner, depending on their physical/metaphysical status.

2. There is nothing better, or more divine, than conceptual form and nothing worse, or more diabolic, than perceptual content - the difference, in short, between culture and barbarism, or Being and Doing.

3. The conceptual content of civilization and the perceptual form of nature constitute phenomenal alternatives which, as man and woman, tend to react against and attract each other in terms of Taking and Giving.

4. To progress from the perceptual form of nature to the conceptual form of culture, as from beauty to truth, is to evolve from Giving to Being, which is the salvation of the World.

5. To regress from the conceptual content of civilization to the perceptual content of barbarism, as from knowledge to power, is to devolve from Taking to Doing, which is the damnation of the Overworld.

6. The conceptual form of culture is never more divine than in the Spiritual Being of the elemental supreme noumenal self whose will and soul are One, through meditation, with the Holy Spirit of Heaven.

7. The perceptual content of barbarism is never more diabolic than in the Sensual Doing of the elemental primal noumenal not-self whose not-will and not-soul are One, through hearing, with the Clear Fire of Time.

8. Content, whether perceptual or conceptual, is always quantitative, whereas form, whether perceptual or conceptual, is always qualitative.

9. Hence both knowledge and power are quantitative, as befitting civilization and barbarism, whereas both beauty and truth are qualitative, as befitting nature and culture.

10. The quantitative, which is objective, can be thought of in terms of particles, whereas the qualitative, which is subjective, should be thought of in terms of wavicles.

11. It is on account of its qualitative nature that sin can be saved by the qualitative culture of grace, passing from the realm of outer form to the realm of inner form.

12. Short of converting to qualitative nature, the quantitative civilization of crime can only be damned by the quantitative barbarism of punishment, passing from the realm of inner content to the realm of outer content.

13. Damnation to barbarous punishment can only be avoided by civilized criminals if they convert to natural sin and thus abandon their criminality. For sinners, who are one, in their phenomenal self, with perceptual form, can be saved to the grace of conceptual form, whereas criminals, who are one, in their phenomenal not-self, with conceptual content, can only be damned to the punishment of perceptual content.

14. A world of realist and socialist and republican and humanist sin ... is more pleasing to God than one dominated by materialist and capitalist and parliamentary and nonconformist crime. God loves sinners because they can be saved by and to the grace of His idealism and corporatism and totalitarianism and, above all, transcendentalism.

15. God's love of sinners is the divine counterpart to the Devil's hatred of criminals, since criminals, in their materialism and capitalism and parliamentarianism and nonconformism, besmirch the world that he rules over, and he will damn them to the punishment of his fundamentalism and authoritarianism and communism and, above all, naturalism, if they persist in their criminal folly.

16. By contrast to the Devil's hatred of criminals, God's love of sinners is premised upon a comprehension of the fact that, in their indulgence of perceptual form, they are wise after a (phenomenal) fashion and need only accept conceptual form, through Him, to become supremely wise in the divine wisdom of supreme noumenal self, rising from pleasure through beauty to joy through truth.