The question put forth must therefore be compelling—the hypothesis sufficiently original—within some difficult to define but communally established bounds. This means that the question must exist on the border between order and chaos;

Internal voices and imaginative experience become more likely under conditions of isolation, when external verbal communication is minimized, and in darkness and silence, where external sensory stimuli are dramatically reduced. This increases the likelihood of revelatory experience—for better or worse. At a deeper level, this may be because the

There are a near-infinite number of ways to categorize—hence, to perceive—a finite number of objects. We do not and cannot attend with equal devotion to everything occurring always and everywhere around us. Instead, with every glance, we prioritize the facts. In doing so, we attend to very little and ignore much. We do so in keeping with our aim.

The world cannot survive if it is ruled by sex or power. Those forces degenerate into tyranny and chaos intertwined, intermingled, and married when they are raised to the highest place.

We perceive, therefore, in accordance with our aim. That is a remarkable and insufficiently heralded realization, implying as it does nothing less than that both our misery and our joy depend on our values.

God is therefore the spirit who faces chaos; who confronts the void, the deep;

This is the microcosm long held to be the central feature of the human soul and a reflection of the broader cosmic order at its deepest levels, as well as the concordance between reality and psyche whose realization made the scientific endeavor itself both motivated and possible.23

(“I can abide by whatever values I choose”—something that almost immediately deteriorates into “I can do whatever I want” or, more accurately, “Whatever impulse grips me rules.”)

There can be nothing allowed in heaven that is not heavenly; nothing in Paradise that is not truly paradisal. Everything unworthy must therefore be cut or burned away.