one of the most important elements in these traditions, in using language to make an end run around the verbal intellect, to affect a mode of consciousness not reached by the normal verbal intellectual apparatus.

the linear, cumulative mode of gathering knowledge is again contrasted with a holistic and tacit mode which can appear only when consciousness is organized differently.

in esoteric tradition is to receive unfamiliar information. Teaching stories purposely contain certain specially chosen patterns of events. The repeated reading of the story allows these patterns to become strengthened in the mind of the person reading them. Since many of the events are improbable and unusual, the reading of the stories begins to... See more

On the biological level, two cerebral hemispheres of the cortex are specialized for different modes of information processing. The left hemisphere operates primarily in the verbal, sequential mode; the right hemisphere primarily in a spatial and simultaneous mode. This right hemisphere mode is often devalued by the dominant, verbal intellect.

“The Ants and the Pen.”

An ant one day strayed across a piece of paper and saw a pen writing in fine, black strokes.

“How wonderful this is!” said the ant. “This remarkable thing, with a life of its own, makes squiggles on this beautiful surface, to such an extent and with such energy that it is equal to the efforts of all the ants in the world. And... See more

Reflection can mean both “to think about” and “to mirror.” Often an action caught in a story forms a pattern which is also present on another level of consciousness

The Man Who Walked on Water

A conventionally minded dervish, from an austerely pious school, was walking one day along a river bank. He was absorbed in concentration on moralistic and scholastic problems, for this was the form which Sufi teaching had taken in the community to which he belonged. He equated emotional religion with the search for... See more

The logic of these stories is not ordinary: it is more like that of the dream. In the stories, linear time, for instance, has little value. In fairy tales, events occur in, around, before, during, and after each other. Indeed, magic carpets exist here, which can transcend time. Many symbols in fairy tales, if looked at in terms of the psychology of... See more

we recognize only the familiar. Recall that we can hear our name quickly, at lower intensity than most other words. We can recognize an English word more quickly than a random sequence of letters. We see red sixes of hearts much more quickly than red sixes of spades.