This song is so beautiful.

This face tattooed on my face.

Brave New Nineteen Eighty-Four.

    Wrightwood. Cal.

21 October, 1949


Dear Mr. Orwell,


It was very kind of you to tell your publishers to send me a copy of your book. It arrived as I was in the midst of a piece of work that required much reading and consulting of references; and since poor sight makes it necessary for me to ration my reading, I had to wait a long time before being able to embark on Nineteen Eighty-Four.


Agreeing with all that the critics have written of it, I need not tell you, yet once more, how fine and how profoundly important the book is. May I speak instead of the thing with which the book deals — the ultimate revolution? The first hints of a philosophy of the ultimate revolution — the revolution which lies beyond politics and economics, and which aims at total subversion of the individual's psychology and physiology — are to be found in the Marquis de Sade, who regarded himself as the continuator, the consummator, of Robespierre and Babeuf. The philosophy of the ruling minority in Nineteen Eighty-Four is a sadism which has been carried to its logical conclusion by going beyond sex and denying it. Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World. I have had occasion recently to look into the history of animal magnetism and hypnotism, and have been greatly struck by the way in which, for a hundred and fifty years, the world has refused to take serious cognizance of the discoveries of Mesmer, Braid, Esdaile, and the rest.


Partly because of the prevailing materialism and partly because of prevailing respectability, nineteenth-century philosophers and men of science were not willing to investigate the odder facts of psychology for practical men, such as politicians, soldiers and policemen, to apply in the field of government. Thanks to the voluntary ignorance of our fathers, the advent of the ultimate revolution was delayed for five or six generations. Another lucky accident was Freud's inability to hypnotize successfully and his consequent disparagement of hypnotism. This delayed the general application of hypnotism to psychiatry for at least forty years. But now psycho-analysis is being combined with hypnosis; and hypnosis has been made easy and indefinitely extensible through the use of barbiturates, which induce a hypnoid and suggestible state in even the most recalcitrant subjects.


Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. Meanwhile, of course, there may be a large scale biological and atomic war — in which case we shall have nightmares of other and scarcely imaginable kinds.


Thank you once again for the book.


Yours sincerely,


Aldous Huxley

"Hafiz, a Sufi poet, expressed in poetry love for the divine, and the intoxicating oneness of union with it.  Hafiz, along with many Sufi masters, uses wine as the symbol for love. The intoxication that results from both is why it is such a fitting comparison. Hafiz spoke out about the hypocrisy and deceit that exists in society, and was more outspoken in pointing this out than many poets similar to him."

http://peacefulrivers.homestead.com/hafiz.html

❝ Inevitably anyone with an independent mind must become ‘one who resists or opposes authority or established conventions’: a rebel. If enough people come to agree with and follow the Rebel, we now have a Devil. Until, of course, still more people agree. And then, finally, we have… Greatness. ❞

Aleister Crowley

What a creeper/genius.

As there is strength

in blackness

a deep control

a calla flare

trumpets

grace corporeal

there is a steady hand

adjusting child lace

and bravery’s face

in veil inviolate

there is a steady hand

adept in heavens skin

spending into black

where pure hearts

are kin.

❞

Patti Smith, Memorial Poem (for Robert) 

❝ Love in action is always about service, what we do to enhance spiritual growth. A focus on individual reflection, contemplation, and therapeutic dialogue is vital to healing. But it is not the only way to recover ourselves. Serving others is as fruitful a path to the heart as any other therapeutic practice. To truly serve, we must always empty the ego so that space can exist for us to recognise the needs of others and be capable for fulfilling them. The greater our compassion the more aware we are of ways to extend ourselves to others that make healing possible. ❞

Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions

❝ We’re all just walking each other home. ❞

Ram Dass

SAME SAME

❝ Beneath my hands
your small breasts
are the upturned bellies
of breathing fallen sparrows. ❞

Leonard Cohen, The Spice-Box of Earth