CYCLE FOUR

1. Writing is a sort of drug ... analogous to alcohol or heroin. The writer takes volume, the novelist, or writer per se, most especially so.

2. To distinguish the 'outer thought' of talking to oneself from the 'inner thought' of thinking by oneself, and to contrast both of these with the 'outer prayer' of praying out loud and the 'inner prayer' of praying by oneself (to another).

3. 'Outer prayer', or chanting, is equivalent to outer light, whereas 'inner prayer', or contemplation, is equivalent to inner light, both of which contrast with 'outer thought' and 'inner thought' - the former equivalent to outer spirit and the latter to inner spirit.

4. Which is better - to pray or to think? The philosopher, who is a spiritual person, can only answer that question in terms of thought, since thinking is a spiritual use of the intellect, and accordingly it is better to think than to pray. Yet one shouldn't forget that, like prayer, thinking is also divisible, as between outer and inner, and that better than the ranting of 'outer thought' is the quasi-meditative sanity of 'inner thought', the gateway to the meditative Beyond (of pure spirituality). But if thinking inwardly is preferable to thinking outwardly, it could nonetheless be argued that even 'outer thought' is better than 'inner prayer' ... to the degree and in the sense that it is at least a thing of the spirit rather than the light, and accordingly stands closer, as 'bad God' vis-à-vis 'good God', to the salvation of 'inner thought'. He who prays in private to the Son may be objectively less 'diabolical' than he who prays in public to the Father, but he is still far from being even indirectly divine, like the ranters of the Blessed Virgin, who stand closer, in consequence, to the meditators of the Holy Spirit. For if the spirit is divine, then the light can only be comparatively 'diabolic', since objectively ranged against the subjectivity of the World and/or Beyond.

5. Just as there is 'outer thought' and 'inner thought', both of which are contrary to outer and inner forms of prayer, so there is 'outer reading' and 'inner reading', 'outer writing' and 'inner writing', 'outer speaking' and 'inner speaking', all of which contrast, as subjective to objective, with outer and inner forms of lecturing, printing, and talking (oratory).