“Where we had thought
to travel outward,
we shall come to
The Centre of Our Own Existence.
And where we had thought
to be alone,
we shall be
with all The World.”
-- Joseph Campbell
" It's key to understand that to be A Hermit in this society does not necessarily mean that you have nothing to do with people.
People start to want to find you, because you must have special power. Back in Alexandria, their baby is sick.
"Maybe you, oh hermit, living on locusts and out in the desert, have some spiritual power to help my baby."
This is Shamanism. It happens in all sorts of religions.
You can't just be A Shaman,
a medicine man, a wise man,
and hold down a
regular old job.
Or you can, but it helps. And that's the conceit of a lot of TV ideas, secret heroes. They're the real estate agents, but they're battling the forces of darkness.
But generally, most of the time,
you've got to be special,
and you've got to look special.
And you've got
to be a reject.
You can't have a spouse, kids,
a mortgage, a garden, a swing set.
You've got to be A Seer.
You've got to have
Your Vision focused
on The Other World.
Ponticianus tells Augustine about these men, and his response is not only to be impressed by them, but to be humiliated by them.
First of all, here are these guys who are intoxicated with God, while I'm still thinking about My Career. But -- and this is the ancient world speaking -- they are uneducated, these monks of Egypt.
They didn't study The Republic, the Hortensius, the Timaeus, the rhetoric of Quintilian, the Satires of Juvenal.
They don't know anything about this.
They're uneducated people. Many of them are illiterate. And yet they are closer to God.
They have an apprehension of The Divine that causes them to Renounce The World, whereas we -- Augustine says of him and his circle -- we "lie here groveling in this world of flesh and blood, while they storm the Gates of Heaven."
And this is the moment of his conversion. "
