Not only am I not doing terribly well at writing the chapter (though it has made an awful lot of progress in the last couple of days), I keep spamming LJ and poking at the 'Spock reads Eckhart' fic, and not really getting very far after the first two paragraphs. Which, it dawned on my horrified mind, look suspiciously like an attempt to write Vulcan mysticism... (which is suspiciously like Plotinus, with the emphasis on gnosis rather than on the response to the Good and to beauty).
*sigh* I think I'm losing the plot. Actually, I think I lost it some time ago.
Humans, reflected Spock, tended to be irrationally fascinated by Kholinar. Mostly they doubted that it was even possible – purge all emotions? Permanently? Well, perhaps that was possible for a cold-blooded Vulcan, but humans could certainly never… It was generally pointless to try to remind them that Vulcan blood was , in both the literal and metaphorical sense, considerably hotter than that of humans, and boiled over, if not kept in ruthless check. The conversation generally ended with the human pulling a baffled face, and say “But why would you want to?”
Sometimes you met someone who was recently bereaved, or who had had their heart broken, and they’d laugh bitterly, and say, “I’d sign up for that.” But they never really meant it, as far as Spock could see, and while it wasn’t totally unknown for Vulcans to attempt to seek Kholinar after a loss, they were almost never accepted by the masters, and if they were they almost never succeeded, until their grief had faded. The desire not to feel after a great loss was itself an emotional response, not to be compared to the soul’s striving towards freedom, order, and simplicity. The goal was a greater perception of the truth, a keener sight for the reality underlying the universe unblinded by one’s own self and the clouds of one’s own emotion, not merely the avoidance of pain. A contemplation which, as it became more perfect and the self became more transparent to that reality, became a return to the source from which all being flowed, in a union closer even than that of the melded katra of spouses.
... After which reflection, something actually has to happen, and I'm not yet sure what! Except I think Buddhists have to at least be mentioned, too, and I don't know all that much about Buddhism.
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