Profound Stillness

Huxley discusses how works of art and natural settings remind us in our unconscious of that "Other World," and transport us to that world even in the midst of our everyday lives.

This, he says, is the reason we value gem stones out of all proportion to their innate value.  Possessing them, we feel we are holding a piece of that numinous world.

Stained glass windows in cathedrals had the same effect on worshipers.  It was not until the Age of Reason that the church put so much influence on the written word and churches used clear glass in the windows so that the devotess could read their Bibles.

Marble and ceramics, highly polished, have the same effect on our unconscious.

This, I think, explains my own fascination as a photographer with shooting through windows and into mirrors.  The effect, for me, is enhanced when the objects are indistinct, diffuse, blurred.

The inhabitants of this Other World never "do" anything.  "Similarly the blessed never "do" anything in heaven.  They are content merely to exist."

"Action does not come naturally to the inhabitants of the mind's antipodes.  To be busy is the law of our being. The law of theirs is to do nothing."

"Profound stillness gives them their numinous quality, their power to transport the beholder out of the old world of his everyday experience, far away, toward the visionary antipodes of the human psyche."