— Rob Brezsny, Pronoia, from “The Experiment,” p. 7.
But I had remained forever coy, never playing with pronoia to make it more esthetically appealing to myself. I’d written nothing beyond the same one-sentence formulations that my predecessors had been content to with. Questions like, “What does pronoia have to say to someone who has just been widowed or been in a car crash?” or “It I believe in pronoia, will I get my dream job and find my perfect lover this week?” had never won my attention; let alone the subtler inquiries, like, “What would psychology based on pronoia look like?” or “Does pronoia require a belief in God?”
There at Burning Man, the Goddess of the sun finally thunderstruck me, forcing me to escape my lazy rut. I realized with a burst of rebellious joy that there was no reason I had to be loyal to the meaning of pronoia as promulgated by its originators. Pronoia didn’t belong to them or anyone. I could use it any way I wanted. I could stretch it and bend it to fit my extravagant needs.
My benefactor, the sun, slowly dipped beneath the horizon. The sky’s zenith had turned from purple to indigo. I sat down on the grey playa, facing the rising moon, and wrote for a long time on my baby wipes. The Beauty and Truth Laboratory had been born. The last line I wrote before trekking back to my camp to find my co-conspirators was a quote from the mathematician Ralph Abraham: “Heart physiologists find more chaos in the healthy heart than in the sick heart.”
— Rob Brezsny, Pronoia, p. 21.
We’re searching for answers so we can destroy them and dream up better questions.
— Rob Brezsny, Pronoia, p. 25.
Sacred Advertisement
Here’s a message from our spiritual patron Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in your reading have been like a blast of triumph out of Shakespeare, Seneca, Moses, John and Paul.” (The Portable Emerson, Carl Bode, editor)
— Rob Brezsny, Pronoia, p. 52.
Know what you want and all the universe conspires to help you achieve it.”
— Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist, quoted in Brezsny’s Pronoia, p. 87.
The soul should stand ajar
That if the heaven inquire,
He will not be obliged to wait,
Or shy of troubling her.
— Emily Dickinson, Poem 1055, Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, quoted in Brezsny’s Pronoia, p. 87.
Humankind was put on earth to keep the heavens aloft. When we fail, creation remains unfinished.
— Rabbi Menachem Mendel (Kotzker Rebbe), quoted in Brezsny’s Pronoia, p. 87.
The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
— Bertrand Russell, quoted in Brezsny’s Pronoia, p. 87.
Love the earth and the sun and animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and the crazy, devote your income and labors to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency.
— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, quoted in Brezsny’s Pronoia, p. 87.
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
— Friedrich Nietzshe, quoted in Brezsny’s Pronoia, p. 87.
In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it.
— Lao Tzu, quoted in Brezsny’s Pronoia, p. 87.
Rudolf Steiner believed that evil was comprised of two forces that were opposed to each other in many ways, though with a tendency to form an alliance. One force, associated with Lucifer, represents grandiosity, arrogance, and self-indulgence. The other, associated with Ahriman, is manipulative, acquisitive, and ultimately sterile. We owe art to Lucifer and technology to Ahriman. They have both played a necessary and constructive role at different stages of the evolution of consciousness, enabling human beings to find a path of development towards love, wisdom, and freedom. Thus, for Steiner, “the task of evil is to promote the ascent of man.” Because there are two forces of evil, not just one, good is not seen as being opposed to evil. The forces of good, associated with Christ, balance, redeem, and heal the two evil forces.
— Francis N. Watts, “The Spiritual Psychology of Rudolf Steiner,” an essay in Beyond Therapy: The Impact of Eastern Religion on Psychological Theory and Practice, G. Claxton, editor, quoted in Brezsny’s Pronoia, p. 126.
Ever since I learned to see three sides to every story, I’m finding much better stories.
— Rob Brezsny, Pronoia, p. 257.
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