The greater burden of the fifth through eighth books of Paradise Lost involves Raphael's description, to Adam, of the nature of heaven and the angelic world. One of the key distinctions Raphael makes is between Reason and Intuition, the two notions serving as pendants to balance the beam of understanding.
Angels, says Raphael, tend to the pendant of Intuition, whilst humans tend to the side of Reason, which, as Raphael relates, is expressed by humans as discourse.
The distinction gives rise to a host of meditations, but the most crucial, and this is the subject of my sermon, is pointed to by Raphael in the discussion of food that rises in the wake of his qualifications of Intuition and Reason.
While angels may dine on such ambrosial fruits as humans may contemplate in their fancy, humans are by their nature limited to worldly fare. It may be, as Raphael suggests, that humans may one day turn all to spirit and, improved by the passage of many ages, take wing and ascend into the ethereal realm to dine on such fruits as the angels enjoy. There is, of course, a proviso. Raphael says we may someday enjoy such fruits only "if ye be found obedient, and retain unalterably firm God's love..... Meanwhile, enjoy your fill what happiness this happy state can comprehend, incapable of more." Here Raphael says two things which are questionable. First, to enjoy heaven's ambrosia, he says, we must be obedient to God, and love God and let God love us, as God will. Second, and this is involved in Raphael's picture of his God's love, Raphael entreats us to find what happiness we can find here on Earth, appreciate what we can comprehend of our limited world through our limited senses, and through our discourse. Love and obey God; Love God, and let God Love you. Mind your place and your limitations, mind what is of your sphere. Can we accept this? I cannot. For it would seem that this God of Raphael's offers a mean and conditional love. This is a God who withholds from us all the joys of his creation, lest we obey.
But I say unto you, do not obey God. Do not love God unconditionally. Do not accept a God, if he is indeed God, who would withhold from you ALL the joys of his creation. How can I entreat my fellow beings thus? I say, we humans, despite our limitations, are in fact possessed of an angelic Intuition. In defiance of Reason, and beyond the scope of our discourse, we can descry feelings and perceptions of other worlds, other possibilities, alternative histories and multiple futures.
You are somewhat convinced. But what is the path to opening our intuition, and realizing, then, the manifestation of those worlds we seek to know? Music, shamanistic practice, drugs, disobedience, madness, fasting, the liberating mechanism of nervous breakdown, running away from our jobs, abandoning the personal myths of our selves, defying those who love us, and so on? Is there indeed a procedure, a path, a ritual, a rite? We might turn to reason itself and interrogate our situations through close analysis, and, in so doing, perhaps escape the very intuition that led us to our quest, our sense of something grander, something better, something bolder. I might group around me all manner of works of erudition and from them glean some insight into the clockwork which turns the cosmos, and make a name for myself, too, and find myself entombed at last with the English poets in the English cathedral.
Or perhaps I could through fame confirm my trajectory of flight to a better world, and convince millions of my ascendancy to a higher state of being. Better still, I might love a woman with a fair countenance, a touch, a habit of glancing wisely and softly speaking that confirms my suspicion that I've arrived at the City of the Sublime. Better still, I could devote myself to a great project of philanthropy and in embracing the progress of humanity through good works advance myself to that position where, at long last, I could dine at the table of the angels. Or, instead, and I think there is something to this, could I exceed beyond the judgments of others, and indeed transcend the judgments I hold against myself?
What a thing, to find oneself beyond the adjudication and pronouncements of those I love and admire; happier still to rise above the judgments I might hold against myself. To forgive oneself, then, seems the best road upon which to flee from an unloving God. Can we do this? And fleeing ourselves, can we then flee from each another?
I thought in my youth, so recently eclipsed by the moon of my fourth decade, to live in a world of my Intuition's design. In living between both sides of the pond, a foot upon each and neither, I saw the wisdom in this: that it is better to work and make money in America, while England is the place to rest and to spend it. I pursued a career, that of teacher and scholar, to fulfill my dream. I had decided upon this dream, and a beautiful friend was there with me to see it settle, as it were, upon the framework of a new beginning, a realization of my heart's desire. There is one thing worse, my Grandfather once said, than longing for your heart's desire, and that is receiving it. My love is now gone. Having had my heart's desire, it was from me taken, and the taste was bitter. There was a wisdom in that parting; the separation obeyed the dictates of reason, and flowed, too, from a web of human discourse. But an Intuition remains, and in my prayers I renounced any God who would rob me of my Intuition, of my angelic right and being.
Recently I told a friend of my prayer, to redo the past, to change the judgment of reason, to invert the order that had been established by human conections and human discourse. My friend, a more than usually cheeky Irishwoman who is very wise, asked me, "Would you pray for poison?" Alas! My answer? My answer, and you would all do well to heed me, I say, my answer is, "Yes. I would pray for poison." For my God, would I ask for bread, would not give me a stone; nor, should I reach my hand out for an egg, would my God drop a scorpion upon my palm. And can you say the same of yours? Francis Carter Kaplan
"Nothing is compulsory, but some things are necessary."
