This poem (I know) by John Lilly is helping me go through a very scary time in which I have one month left to find a suitable affordable appartement while going through great financial uncertainty.
First another passage from the book appendix 1: Reality to help clarify the poem.
Reality (excerpt)
The primitive Romans, in expressing what appeared to them the most real object, used the word res, a law-court.
A law-court in their time meant the power to judge over life and death, family and possessions, in short, everything that their existence consisted of. Their minds couldn't quite express the meaning of our word reality, so they used this appropriate word to signify the most positive fact of their life. Through successive generations res gradually assumed the meaning of the modern thing - an object of thought. Thing itself, in the original Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic, meant law-court. Here we have two separate primite peoples expressing their concept of reality by a law-court. Reality has evolved directly from these concepts.
(Kinda scary seeing how quite unreliable and expensive the "just-ice" systems of today are.)
"Res, the Lawcourt Reality" Poem by John C. Lilly,
7 sept 1969 (Appendix 2 of Simulations of God).
Res is the thing, the real a lawcourt.
What is so real as being in front of a court as defendant?
Those others in the court are human, I hope.
But they play an old honored game, as if not humane.
They use procedures, rules adapted to win or lose.
Win or lose what?
Everything in consensus group reality - money, property, wife, child, mistress, reputation, power.
Up against power, into court I go, propelled by lawyers.
The true nature of the game, the real rules cloaked in jargon, appals my naïve mind.
I shudder, shake, wish for more power, money, better lawyers - thus wishing, I fall into their game.
I lose.
By their judgment I am depleted of money, power, repute.
Why play? To lose? Why play to lose this game?
Outside of this game are other games, to avoid this one.
Direct messages of direct feeling - goodwill, friendship, the right people, the right activities.
Another reality, not res, the thing, the lawcourt.
Love everlasting, right living, right friends.
Trusting Them, out there, I go on.
First another passage from the book appendix 1: Reality to help clarify the poem.
Reality (excerpt)
The primitive Romans, in expressing what appeared to them the most real object, used the word res, a law-court.
A law-court in their time meant the power to judge over life and death, family and possessions, in short, everything that their existence consisted of. Their minds couldn't quite express the meaning of our word reality, so they used this appropriate word to signify the most positive fact of their life. Through successive generations res gradually assumed the meaning of the modern thing - an object of thought. Thing itself, in the original Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic, meant law-court. Here we have two separate primite peoples expressing their concept of reality by a law-court. Reality has evolved directly from these concepts.
(Kinda scary seeing how quite unreliable and expensive the "just-ice" systems of today are.)
"Res, the Lawcourt Reality" Poem by John C. Lilly,
7 sept 1969 (Appendix 2 of Simulations of God).
Res is the thing, the real a lawcourt.
What is so real as being in front of a court as defendant?
Those others in the court are human, I hope.
But they play an old honored game, as if not humane.
They use procedures, rules adapted to win or lose.
Win or lose what?
Everything in consensus group reality - money, property, wife, child, mistress, reputation, power.
Up against power, into court I go, propelled by lawyers.
The true nature of the game, the real rules cloaked in jargon, appals my naïve mind.
I shudder, shake, wish for more power, money, better lawyers - thus wishing, I fall into their game.
I lose.
By their judgment I am depleted of money, power, repute.
Why play? To lose? Why play to lose this game?
Outside of this game are other games, to avoid this one.
Direct messages of direct feeling - goodwill, friendship, the right people, the right activities.
Another reality, not res, the thing, the lawcourt.
Love everlasting, right living, right friends.
Trusting Them, out there, I go on.
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