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Stapledon, Olaf - Odd John - Why are we here?
Identifier
004886
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Olaf Stapledon – Odd John
‘Then tell me’ I said, perhaps rather excitedly, ‘what is the goal, the true life of the spirit?’
John suddenly grinned like a boy of ten..
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you’ he said…..
After a pause he added
‘Perhaps we might say this much about it anyhow. It’s not doing any one particular kind of thing, like miracles, or even good deeds. It’s doing everything that comes along to be done, and doing it not only with all one’s might, but with spiritual taste, discrimination, full consciousness of what one is doing.
Yes, it’s that.
And it’s more.
It’s – praise of life and of all things in their true setting’
Once more he laughed and said
‘What stuff! To describe the spiritual life, we should have to remake language from the foundations upwards’