Dictated at the Néctar Restaurant, for the January 1982 Newsletter.

ILLUSION OF THE SENSES

And as much as the eyes can see, I was looking at a face that, according to the beauty standards conceptualized according to my knowledge, presented itself as angelic.

Suddenly, a desire to deepen eyesight, since a question was present in my mind, “Could she be capable of doing evil?”

The face scanned by eyesight that scrutinized, in the attempt to find an answering sign, made me acknowledge the limit of that sense.

Immediately after this discovery, a sound came to be, as if helping to expand the limit of Feeling: hearing was manifesting itself. The audible sound, putting letters together, was forming words that answered, “Yes, this angelic face can do evil.” Next, other words saying, “Why? When? What for?” Once again at that bordering crossroads was that sense, that was asking because, logically, it had no more answers!
I light a cigarette and wait. The question was pulsating through the sense just used: Why does such beauty reverse into such ugliness, given by the acts she can and does perform?

The smoke, penetrating through the nostrils, awakens new sensitivity. It was smell, joining its companions in helping find the desired answers.

I go up to the angelic face and feel the smell of the exhaled carbon dioxide, and ask myself, “How could such purity, oxygen, go in, and such a foul-smelling combination come out?” The sense of smell explains, telling about the internal environment, the external, their combinations, their alchemy, their transmutations.

And it immediately appeals to touch, asking, in turn, the same question, “Why can such external beauty manifest, in certain circumstances, so much wickedness?”

Touch, both crude and subtle, can’t find an answer, and asks, “Why do I exist, if not to compare the roughness and softness of the existing beings?”

A glass of wine happens before me. I drink it. Suddenly, I awaken to the taste of things. It is taste manifesting itself, showing it exists. I ask it the question, “Why, what for, until when can the external sweetness come to be bitter?”

Simultaneously to the question, a cup of coffee was placed on the table. The meal was ending, when taste answered, “If now, with your appetite satisfied, you were given the opportunity to start all over again, what would your conduct be? Certainly, you would have recognized yourself in full satisfaction. Where is the attracting beauty now, if you no longer want it?”

Would the attraction of beauty be in the object beheld, or within the beholder?

If you answer this, you will certainly recognize why the angelic face can act with wickedness. Certainly then, you will no longer feel attracted by beauty, ephemeral, but by Purity, Eternal.