Perfect ten

Being in dreaming;
Florinda Donner Grau
prvi od nekoliko naj - momenata, po mojem izboru


"...
"Sorcerers," he went on, "make one see that the whole nature of reality is different from
what we believe it to be; that is, from what we have been taught it to be.
"Intellectually, we are willing to tease ourselves with the idea that culture predetermines:
who we are, how we behave, what we are willing to know, or what we are able to feel.
"But we are not willing to embody this idea; to accept it as a concrete, practical
proposition.
...
"And the reason for that is that we are not willing to accept that culture also
predetermines what we are able to perceive.
"Sorcery makes us aware of different realities; different possibilities, not only about the
world but also about ourselves, to the extent that we no longer are able to believe in even
the most solid assumptions about ourselves and our surroundings."
I was surprised that I could absorb his words so easily, when I didn't really understand
them.
"A sorcerer is not only aware of different realities," he went on, "but he uses that
knowledge in practicalities.
"Sorcerers know- not only intellectually but also practically- that reality, or the world as
we know it, consists only of an agreement extracted out of every one of us.
"That agreement could be made to collapse, since it's only a social phenomenon. And
when it collapses, the whole world collapses with it."
Seeing that I couldn't follow his argument, he tried to present it from another angle.
He said that the social world defines perception to us in proportion to its usefulness in
guiding us through the complexity of experience in everyday life.
The social world sets limits to what we perceive; sets limits to what we are capable of
perceiving.
"To a sorcerer, perception can go beyond these agreed-upon parameters," he stressed.
"These parameters are constructed and buttressed by words, by language, by thoughts.
That is, by agreement."
"And sorcerers don't agree?" I asked tentatively, in an effort to understand his premise.
"They do agree," he said, beaming at me, "but their agreement is different.
"Sorcerers break the normal agreement, not only intellectually but also physically or
practically or whatever one wants to call it.
"Sorcerers collapse the parameters of socially determined perception; and to understand
what sorcerers mean by that, one has to become a practitioner.
"That is, one has to be committed. One has to lend the mind as well as the body.
"It has to be a conscious, fearless surrender."
..."