To Look More Deeply

     There is no difference in principle between sharpening perception with an external instrument such as a microscope, and sharpening it with an internal instrument, such as one of these three drugs [mescaline, lysergic acid, and psilocybin]. If they are an affront to the dignity of the mind, the microscope is an affront to the dignity of the eye and the telephone to the dignity of the ear. Strictly speaking, these drugs do not impart wisdom at all, any more than the microscope alone gives knowledge. They provide the raw material of wisdom, and are useful to the extent that the individual can integrate what they reveal into the whole pattern of his behavior and the whole system of his knowledge. As an escape, an isolated and dissociated ecstasy, they may have the same sort of value as a rest cure or a good entertainment. But this is like using a giant computer to play tic-tac-toe, and the hours of heightened perception are wasted unless occupied with sustained reflection or meditation upon whatever themes may be suggested.
— Alan Watts, The Joyous Cosmology, pp. 20-21.

     Nowadays a man can belong to so-called cultured circles without, on the one hand, having any sort of conception about human destiny or, on the other hand, being aware, for example, that all the constellations are not visible at all seasons of the year. A lot of people think that a little peasant boy of the present day who goes to primary school knows more than Pythagoras did, simply because he can repeat parrotwise that the earth moves round the sun. In actual fact, he no longer looks up at the heavens. This sun about which they talk to him in class hasn't, for him, the slightest connection with the one he can see. He is severed from the universe surrounding him, just as little Polynesians are severed from their past by being forced to repeat, "Our ancestors, the Gauls, had fair hair."
— Simone Weil, The Need for Roots, Arthur Wills (tr.), pp. 45-46.

     The words addressed to Thomas, "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed," cannot refer to those who, without having seen it, believe in the fact of the resurrection. That would be praising credulity, not faith. There are old women everywhere who are only too ready to believe no matter what tale about dead people returned to life. Surely those who are called blessed are they who have no need of the resurrection, in order to believe, and for whom Christ's perfection and the Cross are in themselves proof.
— Simone Weil, Ibid., p. 269.

....The rainbows beautiful semicircle is the testimony that the phenomena of this world, however terrifying they may be, are all subject to a limit. The magnificent poetry of this text is designed to remind God to exercise his function as a limiting principle. "Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the earth."
     And like the oscillations of the waves, the whole succession of events here below, made up, as they are, of vibrations in balance mutually compensated — births and destructions, waxings and wanings — render one keenly alive to the invisible presence of a plexis of limits without substance and yet harder than any diamond. That is why things are beautiful in their vicissitudes, although they allow one to perceive a pitiless necessity. Pitiless, yes; but which is not force, which is sovereign ruler over all force.
     But the thought which really enraptured the ancients was this: what makes the blind forces of matter obedient is not another, stronger force; it is love. They believed that matter was obedient to eternal Wisdom by virtue of the love which causes it to consent to this obedience.
     Plato, in his Timeus, says that divine Providence dominates necessity by exercising a wise form of persuasion over it.
— Simone Weil, Ibid., p. 288.

     The order of the world is the same as the beauty of the world. All that differs is the type of concentration demanded, according to whether one tries to conceive the necessary relations which go to make it up or to contemplate its splendor.
     It is one and the same thing, which with respect to God is eternal Wisdom; with respect to the universe, perfect obedience; with respect to our love, beauty; with respect to our intelligence, balance of necessary relations; with respect to our flesh, brute force.
     A return to truth would make manifest, among other things the truth of physical labor.
     Physical labor willingly consented to is, after death willingly consented to, the most perfect form of obedience.
— Simone Weil, Ibid., p. 295.