THE WISDOM OF SENSIBLE TRUTH

1. Truth, for anyone who arrives at it after a long and often difficult intellectual and emotional journey, is its own reward, beyond any financial or material value. For truth is more important to its devotee, the philosopher, than beauty, strength, or knowledge, and is something, moreover, that is beyond everything else - everything else, that is to say, but joy, which is that to which truth leads and by which it can be tested.

2. The poet revels in beauty; the playwright, or dramatist, in strength; the novelist, or writer, in knowledge; and the philosopher alone in truth. For the philosopher is the ultimate kind of literary figure, who goes beyond everyone else in his concern with what is ultimate.

3. Not the fieriness of metachemistry, nor the wateriness of chemistry or the vegetativeness (earthiness) of physics, but the airiness of metaphysics - this is the principal concern of the philosopher, whose interest in the ultimate element distinguishes him from those for whom fire, water, or vegetation (earth) are of principal concern.

4. Muddleheads there are and have, of course, long been, but the true or genuine philosopher is as much a creature of airiness, and hence metaphysics, as the genuine poet is a creature of fieriness, and hence metachemistry, or the genuine dramatist a creature of wateriness, and hence chemistry, or the genuine novelist a creature of vegetativeness, and hence physics.

5. All philosophers who are genuine know that truth is their principal concern, but only a rare type of philosopher can distinguish fool's truth from wise truth and identify with the latter, as indeed a philosopher should do. For truth is not germane to sensibility alone but is also to be found in sensuality, and it is in sensuality that it is cursed with folly, as opposed to being saved from folly by the wisdom of sensibility.

6. Yes, the highest type of genuine philosopher is a creature of wisdom, more particularly of metaphysical wisdom, and he knows that so long as people persist in metaphysical folly, the truth of sensuality, they will not be of the metaphysically Saved but, on the contrary, of the metaphysically Cursed ... with the folly of sensual truth.

7. Such foolish truth has as much to do with the ears and the consciousness that is into the ears aurally as wise truth has to do with the lungs and the consciousness that is into the respiratory essence of the lungs. Therefore the person whose habitual mode of metaphysical truth is aural is a fool compared to the one for whom metaphysical truth requires of consciousness a respiratory focus, having to do with the lungs and their will to breathe.

8. Of course, one must distinguish between primary truth and secondary truth in both metaphysical sensuality and sensibility, since before there can be aural consciousness or respiratory consciousness there must firstly be a consciousness which is given over, in metaphysical fashion, to either the ears or the lungs, as the case may be, and thus to that which hears or breathes but does not listen or meditate, like the consciousness in question.

9. For the consciousness that listens or meditates, depending on the context, is of the self, the central nervous system, but the organ that hears or breathes, again depending on the context, is a not-self, which is to say, an organ distinct from, though affiliated with, the self, and which enables that self - both the brain stem and spinal column of the central nervous system - to function in either a sensual or a sensible manner.

10. Thus we have to distinguish primary truth from secondary truth on the basis of this distinction between self and not-self, the one identifiable with the metaphysical ego and the other with the metaphysical will, whether in sensuality or in sensibility.

11. Now just as truth leads to joy, so we must distinguish between a primary and a secondary manifestation of joy, again on the basis of self and not-self, since the one is essential to the metaphysical self, whereas the other emanates from the metaphysical not-self and is thus less a matter of metaphysical soul than of metaphysical spirit.

12. Such spirit is, of course, germane to the airwaves in the context of sensual metaphysics and to the breath in the context of sensible metaphysics, but in both contexts it is a secondary order of joy compared to the joy which accrues to the self and to the self, more specifically, as soul. For only primary truth can achieve primary joy, not that which emanates from either of the metaphysical not-selves, the ears or the lungs, and is accordingly fated to remain secondary.

13. Metaphysical ego into metaphysical will equals metaphysical soul via metaphysical spirit, for once metaphysical consciousness chooses, in meditating, to identify with the lungs, it is borne out upon the selfless breath and encouraged to recoil to self more profoundly than would otherwise have been the case, thereby achieving its redemption in metaphysical soul - the soul of souls even for the metaphysical consciousness that, scorning sensibility, prefers to identify with the ears and to recoil from the cursed spirituality of the airwaves to self more profoundly.

14. Yet the latter redemption of metaphysical ego in metaphysical soul, of primary truth in primary joy, would be a folly in the persistence of aural sensuality and therefore not something to rank alongside metaphysical sensibility, which is the metaphysics of the Saved as opposed to the Cursed.

15. For the metaphysics of sensuality is ever subordinate to the metachemistry of sensuality, as sequential time to spatial space, and is therefore fated to 'look up to' what is in fact a blessed hegemony on the part of the latter, whereas the metaphysics of sensibility is hegemonic over the metachemistry of sensibility, as spaced space over repetitive time, and is therefore saved from any such foolish deference on the part of the metaphysically Cursed. And precisely in its elevated independence of such folly is metaphysical sensibility alone wise!

16. Thus he who climbs from time to space in a rejection of metaphysical sensuality is saved by the metaphysical sensibility which bears the name of ultimate wisdom (compared to, say, the penultimate wisdom of physical sensibility) and enables one to seek deliverance from egocentric universality in the trans-universal psychocentricity, so to speak, of the metaphysical soul, which is the joyful redemption of primary truth.

17. For truth, whether primary or secondary, of the self or of the not-self, is but a divine means to a sublime end, in sensuality no less than sensibility, and therefore something from which to seek redemption - and resurrection - in terms of the joy which is its just reward - spiritual in relation to the metaphysical will of secondary truth, soulful in relation to the metaphysical ego of primary truth.

18. And, to be sure, this distinction is paralleled in religion, in musical and meditative praxis, by the relationship, ever secondary, between the Father and the Holy Spirit (of Heaven) on the one hand, and the Son and the Holy Soul (of Heaven) on the other hand, so that Son-into-Father-equals-Holy-Soul-via-Holy-Spirit, whether aurally with regard to metaphysical folly or respiratorally, as it were, with regard to metaphysical wisdom.

19. For the Son is that which, corresponding to a primary order of deity, seeks deliverance from egocentric selfhood in psychocentric selfhood via the metaphysical will of the Father and the metaphysical spirit of the Holy Spirit of Heaven, the secondary order of deity and heaven which, whether associated with the ears and airwaves in relation to metaphysical sensuality or with the lungs and breath in relation to metaphysical sensibility, appertains to the not-self metaphysically and therefore to that which is truly a means for the self to achieve self-transcendence in the primary heaven, as it were, of the Holy Soul.

20. Thus both the will and the spirit of secondary truth and joy, secondary God and Heaven, are means for the primary truth and godliness of the Son to achieve His end in the primary joy and heavenliness of the Holy Soul of Heaven, which is His resurrection - and redemption - in the most sublime self-transcendence it is possible to experience. But it should be remembered that while this can be experienced foolishly in the cursed context of metaphysical sensuality, it will only be experienced wisely in the saved context of metaphysical sensibility, and that the wise God is ever superior to the divine fool.