Procrustean skull

People who hate the infinitude of reality have procrustean skulls. What refuses to fit inside the mind is chopped to fit or pulverized and poured in. (Transcendence is an experience — an intuition  of otherness or beyondness they’ll tell you.) …Or exiled and attacked as an enemy, because you can have your enemy …Or exiled and worshipped, because you can have your religion, and your object of worship, too …Or dominated and trained to stay curled up tight in a brain-sized ball …Or failing these: annihilated.

Look where the violence is directed, and there you will find God. Look into the origin of the violence and there you will find the mind who needs to be the know-all, be-all and, if necessary, end-all.

The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less then hee
Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n.
— Milton

2 thoughts on “Procrustean skull

  1. Counterpoint: Those who hate Procrustean skulls hate the infinitude of reality, failing to see their role in the matter.
    “I appreciate the infinitude, unlike those other[ed] Procrustean skulls!” And so the Procrustean skull becomes God, however inverted.

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