This essay will help you get the most from your reading.  The way to do this might at first appear
daunting.  May the gods strike me down for wanting you to bring some discipline and awareness to
your reading!  But ask yourself: If you are going to read a book, wouldn’t you like to read it well?   
Wouldn’t you like to understand as much as possible in one reading so that you don’t have to go back
and read the book again, or finish the book having understood much less than you could have?  
Doesn’t such reading actually waste your time?  In short, some of what follows may strike you as a
pain in the bottom and as rather time consuming.  In truth, as with any set of skills, it takes more time
to learn but less time to use.  In the end your reading will become much more efficient than it is now.  It
may even become quite elegant.

The proofs for this abound.  You can shove a heavy box out of your way, or you can take just a
moment or two to get yourself into a position of mechanical advantage, thereby reducing the risk of a
pulled muscle, or a hernia, or an accident (like knocking something over in the process).  You can
bully your way through a disagreement with a friend or with the girl at the check-out counter, or you
can take the time to relax, determine their concerns, and get a much better outcome with far lower
levels of cortisol.  You can rush your way through a barely satisfying meal, you can carry all seven
bags of groceries, you can run to the phone every time it rings, you can race through the museum
and glance at every painting on exhibit.  But what do you gain and what do you lose?  What kind of
life do you want to live?  When you read, do you want to grow from it or not?

This text assumes you want to grow as much as possible from your reading.  I intend to help you get
into positions of mechanical advantage in relation to texts.  These are psycho-physical positions.  
Good reading involves certain movements, steps, and states.  It is a skill like any other.   Just as we
can make no perfect distinction between what an author said and how she said it, we can make no
perfect distinction between what you read and how you read it.  Reading is a full-body activity, a mind-
body activity.  Your intention in reading should be the same as your intention in any other activity:
freedom, expansion, awareness, and understanding.
The critic faces the challenge of connecting participants (makers, readers, viewers, listeners) in
art with the meanings and uses of art.  The critic has an obligation to inform the artist and the
participants about the way(s) the work achieves or fails to achieve effectiveness as a gateway (to
life, to more fluid life, to more skillful living, to an expanded awareness).  If she thinks the work
fails in any degree she should tell us so, she should demonstrate it, and, in the same breath, she
should show us in what ways it lacks usefulness or may even stagnate us.  If she thinks the work
succeeds, she should first of all allow it to change her, to open her to life; and furthermore, she
should defend it passionately, and she should patiently instruct us on ways in which we may enter
the work and, through it, enter life.  To some extent every viewer of art, every reader of poetry
and philosophy, must assume some of the responsibilities of the critic, as well as the discipline
required to allow a work to do what it can with us.
Like other nontraditional theories of truth, pragmatism holds a lot of potential for art and
philosophy.  (In the spirit of Peirce) many artists and critics find themselves asking, “What follows
if this is art?  How should I react to Duchamp’s Fountain?  What can I do with Whitman’s free
verse?”  And, specifically, a reader of a poem might ask, “Does this change me?  Is anything in
my life different because of this?”  These last two questions put a massive demand on both critic
and poet.   If the poet’s work does not change us, if it does not help us learn, if it does not free
our action, if it does not help us live, then pragmatically (and transformationally) it has no
meaning and no truth.  The poet faces a challenge to stay connected to life and language (the
artist in general must connect with her discipline, allow her discipline to guide her to life).  She
must dwell in truth, remain open to the covering and uncovering.  If she succeeds she creates
something useful and meaningful.  Note that this calls upon both the theory of truth as openness
and the Transformational theory of truth.  In writing poetry, in reading poetry, in living life as a
project, as a work of art requiring skill and poise, we abandon traditional conceptions of truth and
falsity and muster the courage to venture beyond good and evil. [Note:  Perhaps this puts to rest
Laura Riding Jackson’s concerns about truth and method . . . concerns which, oddly enough,
seem to constitute one of the major obstacles many poets must overcome if they are to write
great poetry.]
Perhaps the difference between correspondence and/or coherence on the one hand and
something like pragmatism on the other lies not in form but spirit.  While pragmatism may bear
certain formal resemblances to correspondence and/or coherence, it differs in spirit by saying that
truth in practice is all we will ever have, that we will never obtain a perfect one-to-one
correspondence between thought and reality.  Ideas are symbolic actions, and like any other
action they come down to relationships with reality, not exact representations of reality.

Another significant difference of spirit lies, at least in pragmatism, in the notions of “flowing human
intercourse” and reducing our hesitancy to act.  This allows a lot more into the discussion of what
counts as true; it breaks down hierarchies and democratizes knowledge.  Physics is not more true
or true in a better or more fundamental way than art or philosophy.  If poetry opens me, allows me
to flow, allows me to live more vitally, then it carries a major dose of truth.  Depression, frustration,
confusion, and restricted awareness constrain our activity and create hesitancy.
James and Dewey liked Peirce’s work a lot.  Each stressed slightly different aspects of it.  Dewey
defined truth as a solution to a problem.  He thought all our inquiries begin with problems,
questions, challenging situations, unexpected events, and so forth (note the similarity with Ortega
y Gasset).  Truth is that which presents a coherent and/or unified solution which eliminates our
hesitancy to act.  James claimed that true beliefs, “lead to consistency, stability, and flowing human
intercourse.”  The sensitive palate can detect hints of correspondence and coherence in these
new bottles.  They too would claim to give us consistency and stability and would eliminate our
hesitancy to act.  

It might make for an interesting exercise to explore to what degree a theory of truth actually frees
itself from correspondence and/or coherence.  It seems obligatory for a theory of truth to explain
how I can start in New York, get into a very complicated machine (a car or plane perhaps), arrive in
Chicago, have a surgery performed, watch television and my room (maybe hearing about a space
shuttle launch), and returned to New York a few days later.  How was the plane built?  Why does it
work?  How did the pilot find Chicago?  Why did the surgery work, how did they get men into
space?  If we believe there is a real world it seems we must include some kind of correspondence
between it and our ideas about it (and/or our consciousness of it, and/or our actions in it).  A
theory of truth must admit that we survive.
Note the emphasis on “we.”  In some ways pragmatism takes an antithetical stance toward
Cartesian thought.  Descartes’s Method begins with a solitary figure who doubts everything and
slowly removes doubt by means of the Frenchman’s supposedly infallible criterion of truth: the clear
and distinct idea.  For Peirce this is poppycock.  Human inquiry gets done through communal effort
which takes the existence of the world for granted and assumes the truth of past contributions to
knowledge until they have experimental (practical) reasons to doubt it.  Peirce sees truth as
composed of habits of action.  If we would not do anything different because of an idea, then that
idea is meaningless and has no force of truth. [Note: Pace Peirce, one wonders if, for instance,  
Einstein’s development of relativity theory did not involve some experience of clear and distinct
ideas.  One would wonder how big a role they play in poetry and art as well.  Descartes may have
stumbled onto a very important component of the phenomenology of truth, or grace, or elegance.  
Perhaps his principle applies in the realm beyond truth and falsity, with truth and falsity as special
cases.]
In Poetics Aristotle says, “ . . . the reason for the delight in seeing the picture [and, one would
presume, in hearing or reading the poem] is that one is at the same time learning – gathering the
meaning of things . . .”  In Ion Plato tells us that poetry is the voice of God in the discourse
between man and the divine.  Homer has Odysseus say, “All men owe honor to the poets –honor
and awe, for they are dearest to the Muse who puts upon their lips the ways of life.”

In The Republic, Plato gets more cautious: “And we may further grant to those of her defenders
who are lovers of poetry and yet not poets the permission to speak in prose on her behalf: let
them show not only that she is pleasant but useful to States and to human life . . .”

Keep in mind that poetry in praise of gods and heroes remains unaffected.  Plato’s target is “the
honeyed Muse” of lyric and epic poetry.  And do we not share at least some of his concerns?  Do
we not (some of us) balk at Nietzsche’s praise of the Borgias?  Did people not protest at Time’s
naming Hitler “Man of the Year?”  Have we not hesitated to write or make movies and art about
Hitler that would portray him as all too human, indeed (at least in some ways) a powerful human?  
Are we not afraid to relate to him, to sympathize and empathize?  Do they not still ask on
personality inventories if one has ever found oneself rooting for the villain while watching a movie?
And more: Do we not still struggle to decide what counts as art?  Do we not still try to distinguish
good art from slop, significant expression from emotional masturbation, big vision and big dreams
from narrow quotidian tunnel vision and banal or narcissistic dreams?

Plato has done nothing more than define the task of the art critic: How do we use this stuff?  How
do we decide which of it is useful in which is not?  This “use” is not a function of instrumental
reason, nor does it imply reification.  Rather it has to do with skill, poise, awareness, elegance,
and understanding.  A useful thing, a true work of art, contributes to our skill and poise.  It gives us
life skill.  It holds our head up, keeps us from slouching, keeps us from tightening down and in.  It
expands our consciousness.  It teaches grace.  It increases our integrity (Te).  It allows us to see
what is on the end of our fork.  It allows us to perceive new alternatives for action, new possibilities
for action.

You can readily grasp the great challenge the critic faces.  Her own awareness must possess a
remarkably fine calibration.  She must dwell in truth; i.e., she must stand with openness, take up a
fully open stance to the world and the work of art.  In fact, her work requires the same stance that
the artist himself must have.

The common sense of Plato’s concerns should reveal itself quite clearly.  An aesthetic
presentation of evil, weakness, or violence presents certain dangers.  The aesthetic currents of
life open you.  A young man leaves an action movie driving his car faster than normal (perhaps
dangerously fast); a body-worker becomes tense after a session with a certain client; an alcoholic
wife-beater raises another alcoholic wife-beater; a child plays video games and listens to violence
everywhere and then takes guns to school.  This litany has grey hair.  Does no one think of Plato
in the face of these old complaints?

“But these are not exactly examples of corruption by poetry,” you will say.  Yet if all those examples
vanished and poetry remained, would we turn our scrutiny to it?  Plato did, and rightly so.  The
aesthetic can open us even more dramatically than the kitschy or the mundane.  In our “culture”
the kitschy and the mundane take prominence because of sheer volume.

It takes a subtle mind, a strong mind, to appreciate the weakness or evil of, say, a character in a
narrative poem, without attaching to it, or to comprehend the difference between (and sameness
of) the power of a villain and the power of a hero. [Note: One would do well in this context to
remember Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, the publication and distribution of
which correlated with a rash of suicides throughout Europe and led to official bans in many places
(yes, young Werther kills himself—sorry to spoil it).  Modern researchers have found very strong
correlations for what they call the Werther effect.  For instance, a suicide receiving mass publicity
will usually correlate strongly with a sudden increase in suicide rates---not including the also
correlated increase in fatal automobile and airline “accidents.”  In this light, Plato doesn’t sound
quite so crazy, does he?]  Looking at the present situation one might feel an inclination to say, not
that Plato over-reacted, but that critics under-reacted: that they failed to meet his challenge; that
philosophy, art, and culture lack the maturity and strength to bear the responsibility of art.
We may have a long journey ahead of us to learn this responsibility – the same as saying we have
a long journey ahead of us to reclaim our freedom.  Plato accurately directs us to the proper
starting place for this journey: acknowledge that art (including poetry) matters, that it has an
important impact on us, that it changes us, that it shapes the way we live our lives.  And Plato tells
us what follows from this acknowledgment: we must with full awareness take up the challenge of
demonstrating the vitalizing aspects of art.  Once you acknowledge that art changes people you
have to ask how art can be “used” to change people, how it can be “used” to live our lives, how it
can be “used” to live better lives (again, a non-instrumental, non-reified using . . . a using without
a user).

The critic takes these first two steps with a single stride, the same stride she uses always and
ever: she shows us how to enter a work of art, how to open to it so it can lead us into Life.  The
truth of the work of art will lie in what we can “do” with it (i.e. its openness to Being-Becoming as
well as its potential to open us to Being-Becoming).

To better understand the truth of works of art we should consider some of the faces of truth itself.  
In the history of Western thought truth has appeared here and there as in a game of peekaboo.  
Like babies, each time it vanishes we think it has really gone, and each time it reappears we see it
as if for the first time.  In each of these reappearances we really do have a new face, a unique
face, though the faces certainly relate to one another.

The most commonly perceived face of truth is truth as correctness.  I wager that this face shows
itself in every culture.  In our culture its main criterion has been either correspondence or
coherence.  When confronting a work of art it makes sense at times to ask, for instance, “Does
this accurately represent sorrow?” or “Does this work stay consistent with itself?  If it has
contradictions, do they strengthen or do they weaken the work?”  With this last question you can
already see we have pushed this form of truth to its limit.  Strictly speaking, contradiction always
weakens an argument.

In the 20th century Heidegger challenged the conception of truth as correctness by proposing that
we understand truth as alethea, an uncovering.  This sounds nice and gives lovely visual images
in the mind: a shining truth, a showing, a lucidity (A phantom?).  It connects with epiphany and
carries with it the (spiritual) mystery of epiphany.  Heidegger deepened his conception by including
in it a simultaneous covering.  The elegance of this conception cannot be overstated. [Note that
we could also conceive of truth as that which allows the covering and uncovering–for instance,
Tao.  Tao is the source of the manifestations, the source of Yang (light, shining forth, an
uncovering) and Yin (darkness, concealing, receptivity).]

My own theory of truth gathers inspiration from Heidegger: truth is openness.  Connecting this
idea with Heidegger’s I would say truth is openness to alethea, openness to the covering and
uncovering of Being and beings.  

Truth as openness contains a subjective element.  In this regard it has a certain resonance with
Kierkegaard and Ortega y Gasset.  Perhaps the mere mention of resonance should lead our
thinking to Kierkegaard.  We could phrase the great Dane’s definition of truth as that which
resonates with our being.  This subjective truth relates to our passion, our internal world, and not
to any objective criteria.  Subjective truth involves commitment, a commitment to believe something
in the face of (objective) uncertainty.

Ortega y Gasset says that the one thing the human mind cannot tolerate is not being clear about
what it can rely on.  A thing becomes a problem for me only if I become aware of a lack of clarity in
my attitude toward it.  A woman becomes a problem when I do not know for sure if I love her.  The
atom becomes a problem when I do not know my attitude regarding its structure or if I cannot rely
on my predictions about its reactions.  The solution to a problem is not a scientific law but an inner
clarity of mind.  We become clear about (or settled into) our attitude toward a thing.  As Ortega y
Gasset says, I suddenly find, “among many ideas about [a thing] one which I recognize as my
actual and authentic attitude toward it.”  I might expand that a bit by saying that we find ideas
which we either recognize or accept (fully; i.e. not in bad faith or with false consciousness) as our
attitude toward a thing.  But this alteration strikes me as minor, and I find very compelling his basic
idea that to solve a problem (to locate truth) is,  “To fit myself in with myself, to be in agreement
with myself, to find myself.”  We quite naturally imagine an emotional content here too. [Note: You
may find it interesting to muse on the ways attitudes get embedded or codified into equations, and
in what ways this differs from or corresponds with their embeddedness or codification in scientific
intuition: sometimes a physicist can simply look at the problem and know the answer, sometimes
she guesses at the answer and goes through the calculations to make sure, sometimes she
cannot guess and works laboriously through the calculations, and in any of these cases the result
could surprise her.  You may also find it interesting to muse on the ways attitudes, emotions,
postures, rhythms, and so forth get embedded or codified into poetry, art, and philosophy (and the
sometimes surprising nature of the conclusions).]

This conception of truth contains tremendous depth and potential and its relationship to truth as
openness deserves extensive exploration.  We will postpone that for now.
Dialogic truth offers another face for our gaze.  This conception of truth has roots in the Sophist
tradition as well is in a certain interpretation of Aristotle.  Beginning with the latter, recall Aristotle’s
definition of man as the rational animal.  The word translated as ‘rational’ is ‘logos.’  Some
philosophers translate ‘logos’ as ‘meaning’ or ‘language.’  To take language as primary does not
mean we are irrational, but it does mean our rationality works through words, that it is somehow
mediated through symbols, signs, and sounds.  Humans are, in short, the language animal. [Note:  
Or the meaning animal . . . a very significant nuance.]  This means that any conception of truth
should recognize the role of language.

For Jurgen Habermas, a heavyweight of contemporary Continental philosophy, the idea of dialogic
reason reflects the role of language and serves as a model for finding truth.  He champions
dialogic reason as having special importance in the realms of morality and politics.  Habermas
sees dialogue as fundamental to authentic democracy.  He even feels that dialogue can establish
universally valid moral rules.  For Habermas, the single criterion for universal truth is unanimous
agreement in the context of  rational discourse.  The only power to which we should submit is the
power of reason, and if everyone can rationally agree on a moral or political rule, it’s as good as
true.

The idea of rational discourse might sound nice, but reflecting on the Sophist tradition could cause
us to raise our collective brow.  In this tradition we find plenty of room for purely rhetorical truth, a
kind of truth that may differ from Habermas’s dialogue if we include all means of persuasion (i.e.
not just reason, whatever that means).  Here truth becomes what I can convince you of.  This
conception of truth brings to mind the Spaniard Unamuno who said, “it is in the person who tells us
the truth, in the person who gives us hope, that we believe, not directly and immediately in the
truth itself or hope itself.”

The rhetorical aspects of truth hold an important place in an area of philosophical activity I call
Transformational Philosophy.  In this realm I define truth as that which changes us.  
Transformational Philosophy sees objective truth as a very small territory in an otherwise wild and
mostly unexplored landscape.

Related to this theory of truth is another: truth as connection.  Bishop Berkeley argued that the
taste of an apple lies not in the apple, nor in the taster, but in the meeting of the two.  Similarly,
Novalis claimed that the seat of the soul lies at the place where the inner and outer worlds meet.  
The notion of truth as connection takes its inspiration from these suggestions.  It also takes
inspiration from the world of Aikido.  Aikido is the name Ueshiba gave to his “Art of Peace.”  One
might translate the word Aikido to mean: the way of joining (or being in harmony with) the energy
of the universe.  So a rather mystical element influences this notion of truth.  In the East you can
find such a notion in many other physical disciplines in Japan and China, as well as in the Indian
tradition of Yoga (literally, the yoking or union of one’s “Self” to the ground of Being).  You can
also see it clearly in the Buddhist conceptions of compassion and the interpenetration of all being
(Thich Nhat Hanh calls the latter interbeing).  In the West you need look no further than Buber’s
notion of the I-You relation.  In short, many sources have given rise to this view of truth.  As
mentioned above, it relates to the Transformational view (and can in fact be considered a part of
it).  In the view of truth as connection, true and false as commonly conceived do not quite work.  
What counts is some change in the “subject.”  The subject must join with a situation totally, and
that act of joining is truth.  In this sense, truth is almost a verb.  But it has another aspect: this
joining allows certain potentials within the situation to emerge, and these potentials can be seen
as a kind of truth as well.  

A final area of truth to explore is pragmatism.  We can trace the origin of American pragmatism to
Peirce’s inquiries in science and semiotics.  Some scholars suggest that Peirce saw everything as
a sign and that semiotics underlies all his work.  Peirce himself perhaps saw his work as scientific
and experimental, and he called himself a laboratory philosopher.  This man of signs and science
developed pragmatism as a criterion of truth and meaning.  To find out what a thing means or if it
is true you simply map out the consequences of its truth or of a proposed meaning for it.  If we
want to look into relativity theory we simply ask, “If this were true, what would follow?”  Then we
check to see if we find the consequences.
1.  I have heard that Sri Aurobindo saw writing as his Yoga.  He may have thought it perfectly fine
for people to do a Yoga of poses, but his version of Sun Salutations and Downward Dogs
apparently involved postures taken in relationship to words and ideas.  Aurobindo, you see, wanted
to live a more Integral Yoga, a Yoga fully integrated with Life . . . Life as Yoga and Yoga as Life.  

2.  If one asks an enlightened poet how his day went, one should know what he means if he says,
“Oh, my day went very well.  I got up early and did two hours of Yoga . . .”  His Yoga,  his Work, his
act of union with existence: he wrote.  And one should suspect that the rest of his day involved a
continuation of this Work, this Yoga, in other forms.  The poet lives his poetry . . . he interacts with
the world through the devices of poetry and as a device of poetry. [Note: Likewise the
mathematician engages in the yoga of numbers, the teacher in the yoga of education, etcetera.  
And, for instance, note Nietzsche’s comment on the latter: “Whoever is a teacher through and
through takes all things seriously only in relation to his students–even himself.”  And of the scientist
he says, “The sage as astronomer.—As long as you experience the stars as something ‘above you’
you lack the eye of knowledge.”]

3.  In this regard I particularly admire Wallace Stevens.  Stevens worked  as a lawyer until his
death.  At the same time he wrote some of the best poetry of the 20th century.  Stevens saw poetry
as a viable alternative to religion at a time when some people realized that we had killed God.  In
short, Stevens saw poetry as a spiritual practice . . . as Way, as Tao.

4.  We can delineate at least three senses of Tao:

a) A metaphysical-intuitive sense; the experience of Tao as Tao; a moment---seconds, days,
lifetimes--of unity with Tao; what happens during Satori, kensho, deep epiphany, etc.  This is the
Tao that cannot be talked about, the thing-itself, the experience of it.

b) The theory of Tao; how Tao manifests in the world.  Having experienced Tao as Tao, I can now
perceive it as Te; I can see where and how Tao operates in the world, among the 10,000 things,
and I can talk about this in a coherent way.  I still cannot give you Tao, but I can give you
metaphors which can help bring you closer to Tao through an appreciation of its beauty and an
intellectual understanding of its principles and structures.  I want you to know that Tao surrounds
you, fills you, and can lead you beyond your self.

c) The practice of Tao.  The various disciplines and methods for the above-mentioned
transcendence .  These are ways to The Way.  This too is Tao without quite being Tao.  There is
no way to The Way; The Way is the way.  My discipline, my path, is Tao and (somewhat
paradoxically) serves to lead me to Tao.

5.  All disciplines serve to foster insight, to lead us from the known to the unknown, to  lead us from
re-action to action.  This constitutes their point and purpose.  And almost any discipline holds the
potential to induce spiritual insight–the ultimate unknown, the ultimate freedom from the known.  
The main purpose of most athletic disciplines is to induce kinesthetic insight.  But even here we find
fertile ground for spiritual understanding (the most obvious examples: kung fu, aikido, Zen archery).
[Note: Take a moment to notice what might at first glance seem a paradox of discipline: it almost
always relies on repetition to lead us to true spontaneity.  The martial artist repeats the same forms
(the same techniques and series of techniques) over and over in order to achieve freedom from
form and unity with the “opponent”; the student of Tea Ceremony has a precise choreography to
follow in order to achieve something unrehearsed and unchoreographed; and the poet invariably
follows a very strict pattern of work: the same places of writing, the same kind of pen, the same
clothes, the same kind of tea, a prescribed time of day and a set amount of time, a certain aesthetic
viewpoint, certain rules for lineation and rhythm and stress and weight of the words and lines . . . all
this in order to achieve something creative, something without rules because an inner necessity
has taken over, something original from unoriginal actions.  The discipline helps to set up an un-
willful state–an absence of free will as naively conceived and an openness to Free Will, a space-
time in which grace and the necessities of grace can arise.  In the end, the best artists completely
transcend their medium and its disciplines.]  

6.  Art as a discipline shows great propensity for spiritual insight.  The discipline of art serves
spirituality in two ways: 1) it provides a framework/method for expressing the metaphysical; 2) it
provides a method/framework (slight difference, an important nuance) for discovering the
metaphysical, for having metaphysical insight, and for allowing metaphysical understanding to
reveal itself.  

7.  The poet’s pen slices through the flesh and bone of reality and in the process (and by the
process) reveals the divine---the Nothing (the Nothing as manifest; the movements of the pen come
from epiphany and/or lead us to epiphany).

8.  This explains the accuracy of Eliot’s description of the poet, and the significance of Pound’s
description of the history of poetry.  The artist need not have any metaphysical insight for his
poetry to contain fruitful metaphysical suggestions and equivalences.

9.  Human beings and their art exist within the universe, as part of the universe, perhaps a
holographic part capable of expressing the whole, or at the very least capable of expressing
aspects of the whole.  The iambic pentameter reveals something about the universe.    The
universe does not distinguish between a fire set by man and a fire set by lightning (the Buddhist
metaphors relating to thunderbolts should come to mind).  Language exists, and by itself, within
itself, through itself, we learn about ourselves and our world–the world.

10.  The discipline of making art and the discipline of viewing or engaging art can lead us to Tao
(thus the importance of having discipline in viewing or engaging books, novels, poetry, and other
works of art).

11.  In Pound’s terminology, the contributions of the Inventors and Masters carry more significance
because they more likely arose from and/or can induce epiphany.

12.  The insights induced by artistic discipline fall into one of at least two categories: transcendental
or transcendent.   Insights into human-being-and-becoming-in-the-world are transcendental.  
Insights into Being-and-Becoming qualify as transcendent.  These two kinds of insight can
accomplish at least two important tasks: they can describe the structures of experience, and they
can improve our human structurings of experience.

13.  In a simplistic way of describing these two tasks we can say that art can help us answer two
questions: What does it mean to be here?  What does it mean to really be here?  Alternatively we
can phrase these overly-simplistic questions as: What is it like to be here? and What is it like to Be-
Become here?

14.  My being-in-the-world, the way I act in the world, creates meaning.  Restrictions in speech and
posture become  restrictions in meaning.  A stimulus encounter happens: the way I react bodily, the
thoughts I have, the words I say, define it; and the stance I had the moment before I encountered
the stimulus also influences the definition, the meaning.

15.  Whoever Works in a field of action makes meaning and meaning potential (as well as insight
potential).  The inventor of the iambic pentameter created a great deal of meaning and meaning
potential.  Shakespeare created a great deal of meaning and meaning potential.  We can say, with
William Carlos Williams, that poetry is a field of action.  Poets (and readers and lovers of poetry)
must act.

16.  Meaning exists in any field of action, even nonhuman, nonlinguistic fields of action.  We might
say that marks on a page represent a class of action.  But meaning derives from almost any action.  
This would include, for instance, the action of insects.  The spider wasp perceives the spider.  This
means the wasp can respond to the spider.  It responds by stinging the spider in such a way that it
paralyzes but does not kill the spider (a remarkable feat when you think about it, a feat requiring
fantastic precision).  The wasp then places the spider in a nest with one of its eggs.  These complex
actions carry meaning: they mean the wasp larva will have food when it hatches, they mean that
this mother wasp’s offspring will have better chances of survival, they mean this species of wasp will
have better chances of survival.

17.  Our own existence has no more solid meaning than that of the wasp.  Both meanings have
their root in action.  Just as a human could destroy the nest of the wasp, a meteor may strike the
earth and destroy the nest of man.  Anything can happen to tear apart the gossamer foundations of
these meanings.  Man’s meanings have no more profundity and no less contingency than those of
the wasp.  We are nothing special in the universe.

18.  But we should smile knowing we live in a universe of meaning.  Delicate, ephemeral,
contingent, and ultimately insubstantial.  And of all the animals on Earth, homo sapiens does enjoy
the distinction of living the most meaning-rich existence because of the fact that its vocabulary of
action has a greater breadth than that of any other creature we know.  

19.  Heightened Awareness, that deep and loving look of the mystic and the artist/poet, provides a
great deal of meaning for our existence.  Awareness opens up potential action sequences and
inhibits (or helps us to inhibit) re-action sequences, the mindless rehashing of old actions, the
acting out of our ideas even when those ideas and re-actions do not fit the situation at hand.  

20.  The best kind of action is intuitive/insightful/total.  It relates to the moment, to process and
event, to the logic and emotion of what exists in a given context.

21.  A thing is much more that you think it is because it is only what it is.  Thus it necessarily
outstrips your categorizations and limitations of it.  When the Buddha holds a lotus, the vast
majority see a “lotus.”  The word-sound and action-potentials arise immediately.  My stance to it
becomes set.  But through an open, active-contemplative, mindful awareness, the lotus and the
universe become luminous with meaning—that ultimate meaning which transcends meaning.  Re-
action ceases.  A new freedom emerges: we perceive things in their necessity, we participate in
necessity.

22.  Because of restrictions in action potentials and meaning relationships we experience many
moments of re-action (and freedom too).  Many animals (humans included), confused in a novel
situation (like reading a challenging poem), or bored in a seemingly old situation (like reading yet
another poem about love), resort to a re-action, a rehashing of behavior that perhaps involved
freedom in one context, but which constitutes slavery in the present situation.  Consciousness
provides the potential for greatly increased freedom because it allows us to maintain space-time in
which graceful action can arise, but far too often we humans simply re-act.

23.  Through awareness we focus on what is.  This produces understanding, an active and
symbolic relation to the options available because of what is.  The most gracious, elegant, effective
action will be the most necessary one.  Poetry (and all art) helps to increase our awareness.  It
helps us to see what is.  

24.  Our ways of speaking and thinking and acting can become limitations to our ability to actually
perceive what’s on the end of our fork.  They limit our ability to engage reality.  The mark of wisdom
is flexibility.  We should seek a rich vocabulary of experience, the creativity to notice/formulate
elegant metaphors, and the flexibility to abandon, or at least challenge, our metaphors and are
vocabularies–and the genius to invent new ones.  As Nietzsche said, we don’t need the courage of
our convictions, but we do need the courage to question our convictions.

25.  Our ideas become habits, convictions that we rarely bother to examine.  Even our emotions
become habits, firm structures that delude us into thinking we have got our flimsy existence held
firmly in place.  We are held alright . . .

26.  But the emotions of poetry, like all genuine emotions, happen anew each time we experience
them.  We stagnate when we try to hold on to or preserve yesterday’s love.  Today’s love must
arise like a phoenix, each resplendent plume reflecting aspects of what has passed as well as what
exists here and now.  And thus poetry never ends.  New metaphors, new joy, new nausea, new Bliss
will emerge, ebb, and flow onward.

27.  The job of the poet/artist (like that of the philosopher/mystic) is to help us enter life, to immerse
ourselves in life as a mystical-artistic experience, to take up life as a Work, a project, an activity
requiring skill and poise.  The aesthetic undertone, the artistic ostinato of all human activity,
explains why we must look to the arts, to poetry, literature, sculpture, painting, music, theater, and
genuine philosophy.  Every statement made by the artist/mystic points in some way to how one can
enter life and how one takes up living given the structures and structurings of human experience.

28.  Because of the foolishness of mind-body separation, we forget how much of this structuring of
experience happens “somatically.”  We forget that we take a stance toward the world, toward events
and situations in the world.  We forget that we hold ourselves in certain ways.  We never ask
ourselves how we are facing the world, whether we are trying foolishly to confront it or instead trying
graciously to join with it.  A depressed man holds himself in particular ways and faces the world with
characteristic stances.  All the characters of literature have movements and rhythms that give them
away.  Being/Becoming-in-the-world is action-in-the-world: movements, rhythms, ways of the body-
mind, gestures and gesticulations of the body-mind, intonations of speech, sighing, breathing,
slumping, singing.  Our way of Being/Becoming-in-the-world involves certain kinds of talking, certain
pictures in our mind, certain feelings in our body, certain ways of emoting, certain postures and
posturing’s – in short, ways of the organism as a whole.  We might even call it Te and translate ‘Te’
as “Integrity.”

29.  The artist-poet gives us new vocabularies of experience, new potentials for action and
perception.  She helps us Integrate, she increases our Integrity, our Te.  She provides us with
elegant metaphors, fictions that open us, sublime lies that reveal central truths.  

30.  Poetry can lead us from the known to the unknown.  All true progress moves in this direction.  
Resist the temptation to behave like the drunk looking for his keys.  You know the story: A man
leaving a bar sees a drunkard crawling around on the sidewalk under a street lamp.  “What are you
looking for?” he asks.  “My keys,” says the drunk.  The man starts to help the drunk to find his
keys.  They spend 15 minutes looking.  Finally the man says to the drunk, “Are you sure you lost
them here?”  “I’m sure I did not.  I lost them over there,” he says, pointing toward a dark alley.  
“Then why in hell are we looking here?!” the man says.  The drunk replies frankly, “Because this is
where the light is.”

31.  The Sufi version of the story brings out another facet.  In that version, the Sufi master
searches for the keys to his house (which he lost inside the house) outside of his house, in the
daylight.  The house is the temple (or lotus) of the heart.  It is the abode of Allah (Brahman).  

32.  In the Western version, with the drunk, we must pay special attention to that dark alley.  It
invokes the labyrinth.  And it invokes the quest for the grail.  A knight embarking on the quest for
the grail will enter the forest at precisely the point he judges most dark and foreboding.

33. We should note Jung’s discovery that the coniunctio, the alchemical union of opposites, takes
place during the New Moon (not the Full Moon as one might expect).  The New Moon is completely
dark.

34.  Which do you want: the meaning of life, or the experience of living?  

[Note: Those familiar with the work of Martin Buber will understand my reservations about this final
formulation.  The passionate life of Krishnamurti raises similar concerns.  The problem comes to
this: what do I “mean” by the term ‘experience’?  One could say that Buber’s term ‘experience’
corresponds to my term ‘meaning’ and to Krishnamurti’s notions of ‘thought,’ ‘knowledge,’ and
‘reality.’  My use of ‘experience’ corresponds to Buber’s use of ‘relationship’ and to Krishnamurti’s
use of ‘truth,’ ‘intelligence,’ and ‘awareness.’  In any case, the reader must take great caution here.  
One tries to intellectualize everything, one undergoes instead of going, one fantasizes instead of
living.  The whole point is to connect with life, to join with the energies of life (from which you can
never separate anyway).  A truly good work of art can make you susceptible to authentic
connection, to genuine living of life as opposed to ideas about living.  The poem can help one move
away from the known and into the unknown, which means an abandonment of power, violence, and
conflict.  To want to know what a poem means is to want knowledge, which is to want power.  To let
a poem open you, to allow it to make you susceptible to a spontaneous and authentic connection to
the energies of life is, in my terminology, to have a genuine experience–without any having, without
anyone to have it.  Just experience, connection, harmony . . .]     
In preparing this text I asked a very remarkable woman, a university professor of all things, what
problems she encountered in trying to teach poetry.  She responded in part by relating a joke of
Woody Allen’s that Jack Kornfield related to her via one of his books:  Woody Allen says something
like, “I’m taking a speed-reading course.  Last night I read War and Peace in 20 minutes.  It’s about
Russia, right?”  With her students she encountered the problem that all they want to know is, “What’
s it about?”

Many of us have this desire to cut to the chase.  An odd expression, really, but one we use with a
certain level of emotional urgency.  Impatience perhaps.  Maybe we should ask why we want to
chase things at all and what we think we are chasing.  In the case of poetry one might say that there
is nothing to chase.  One cannot, then, cut to the chase—unless one wants to chase one’s own tail .
. . a wild goose chase of sorts.  

Poetry serves as a great model of reading because nowhere in it is there something to chase.  Give
up all chasing and you have the best chances of actually discovering what it’s all about—all of it.
But poetry also makes a great model for reading because it stresses the aesthetic component of
thinking which we in the Western tradition have seemingly stifled.  You really must allow the images
of a poem to work on you.  You must allow the poem to provoke connotations, connections, visions,
sensations, contexts, and more.  The poem simply happens – the way life does.  This holds for
works of nonfiction as well.  These works spontaneously arise, along with their authors, along with
their historical epochs.  In nonfiction works we often forget the important role of the aesthetic.  Ask
any mathematician about the elegance of equations.  Ask any anthropologist about the weight of the
narrative dimension of theories regarding man’s origins and development.  All scientists look for
beautiful theories.  All of them research beautiful things.

Poetry argues, too.  It has a logic.  The ideas fit the way the sequence of events in a nuclear
reaction fit, the way the notes in a symphony fit, the way parts in an engine fit.  All have a harmony,
a beauty, and a logic.  

I do not mean to reduce the world to aesthetics.  I mean to not reduce the world at all.  I mean to say
that the world simply is.  It does not take sides.  And yet in its relation to us we inevitably run into
necessary grace: beautiful things that simply cannot have alternate structures.  
The poet’s job, like the scientist’s, involves a great deal of inhibition.  The poet doesn’t DO poetry.  
The words come out.  She has little say in what appears on the page.  The structure of her
consciousness will influence what comes out, but she only changes that indirectly.  She has slightly
more direct control, if we can call it that, over what stays on the page.  She can exclude words,
change words, resist the urge to tell the “truth,” regulate the rhythm, overcome fear, enjamb a line,
and so on.

The poet receives the literary device as a gift.  Her ego may want to claim credit for its design, but
one should simply expect this of most egos and move on-- without taking it seriously.  The universe
does not care a wit if any of us recognize the gifts it constantly offers, or if we use them to expand.  
The gifts come regardless.  

And we make a false dichotomy between reader and writer.  Another act of ego that we should
simply expect and move beyond without taking it seriously.  “What’s it about?” takes the dichotomy
seriously, and it takes seriously not only the ego asking, but also the ego of the poet.  

“What’s it about?” also dichotomizes viewer and object.  We forget that the poem could just as easily
ask us the very same question: “What are you about?  What do you mean?”  This will to meaning of
ours has a place of course.  But it can get out of hand . . . and ultimately we must transcend it.          
Ernest Becker once claimed that we often cannot even perceive a thing unless we can respond to it,
unless we can engage it with actions.  Ideally we produce a total organismic response: the whole of
us responds.  Here body-mind barriers break down, and we understand Minor White’s complaint that
too often people talk photographs instead of experiencing them.  Despite poetry’s linguistic nature,
the same holds true of it: we often want to talk poetry instead of experiencing it.

This happens because we get very neurotic in the face of poems.  As Becker points out, “We
become paralyzed to act unless there is a verbal prescription for the new situation.”  Confronted with
anything, new or seemingly old, we try to interact with it based on the known.  The poem presents us
with a new situation.  We want to resolve it based on our already-held ideas.  In terms of our will to
meaning, we want it to already have a meaning--- one that fits in with our current constellation of
meanings.  Thus we ask, “What’s it about?” i.e. “Which of my word-formulae will formulate this and
pin it, wriggling, to the wall of my idea collection?”

But I say with Wallace Stevens: poetry should carry us beyond our ideas.  It should present, not
ideas about things, but the things themselves.  In this regard I will quote Minor White:
“So many documentary photographers claim ‘to photograph things as they really are’ that we forget
to question their ability to see the ‘separate reality’ (Castaneda) underlying life or the photograph.  
Are they merely projecting an ego version of reality?  Does the photographer sighting through his
camera ever take a ‘long loving look’ at the visual event, or the world, similar to the intensified
objectivity of the contemplative?”

The question, “What’s it about?” comes down to documentary.  The viewer wants to document the
poem, to say what it is really about, when in fact a great poet has already done  the proper
documenting.  It stands before you.  You must simply take a long, loving look at it, at Life–the way
the poet did.  You must have an openness to experience which, in the best cases, involves setting
ideas and meanings aside.  Our ideas and meanings become fortresses within which we hold out
against reality’s assault.  You cannot win such a battle.  So why not join with the enemy?

To join with this enemy involves a surrender of ego, but not a dejected one.  It should feel like the
joining that happens when a sword master confronts his opponent: an active, dynamic, relaxed,
peaceful, intense, compassionate joining.  To join the poem like this reveals the poem’s only
possible “meaning”: you.  Not that you can only read yourself into it.  That occurs at superficial
levels of interaction.  At the highest levels of potential of the very greatest works, the transcendence
to which they point reveals that the poem is you–because you do not exist as a separate entity.  The
universe gave birth to the poem.  The poem has no meaning but merely reveals and covers.  It
reveals and covers you.  Some might say that we humans are inscribed in language, but perhaps
we should say we are inscribed in Life, in the Nothing.  The Nothing gave birth to Nature, and Nature
gave birth to language.  The sounds of language live, and they reveal life because they are life.  
The objects of the world at which the poem looks lovingly are no different than we . . . they are
artefacts.

To get a little further into this matter, and I do think it may prove helpful and interesting, we should
start another appendix, because going further will push us into even more esoteric territory.  It will
involve a slight change in writing style.
The Principles of Syntopical Reading

Adler and Van Doren think that a good high school education should provide us first and foremost
with the skills of analytical reading.  Most high schools fail to do this.  But these skills stand as a
prerequisite to great achievements in higher education, and certainly in some way they also stand as
a prerequisite to democracy.

Once we get into college, the dynamic duo say that we should learn syntopical reading.  It helps refine
our analytical reading skills, helps us engage more deeply in the conversation of ideas, and it stands
as a prerequisite to great achievement in graduate education.  I take the following summary mostly
verbatim (with your open body-minded indulgence):

I. Survey the Field (preparatory work to syntopical reading)

1. Create a tentative bibliography.
2. Inspect all of the books on your list in order to determine which belong to your project.

II. Syntopical Reading Proper

1. Inspect the books you have chosen in order to find relevant passages (with a smile behind your
eyes).

2. Bring the various authors to terms with each other by creating a neutral vocabulary of the subject
which you can use to integrate the idiosyncratic terms and ideas of all or nearly all of the authors
engaged in the discussion.  

3. Establish a set of neutral propositions for all of the authors by laying out the questions your
authors have taken up explicitly or implicitly.

4. Define the major and minor issues of the discussion by laying out the consonant and dissonant
answers the authors gave to the various questions.  Keep in mind that an issue may not exist explicitly
between two authors.  An author may take an implied stance toward an issue as a consequence or
sideline of her principle discussion.

5. Analyze the discussion by structuring the questions and issues in such a way as to  throw the most
light possible on the subject (it helps to breathe while doing this).

You may benefit from a few comments here.  In creating a tentative bibliography you will rely on
knowledge, intuition, and luck (the latter two often manifest better when your body-mind expands into
a relaxed intensity).  Certainly you will use electronic searches.  But also spend some time walking the
aisles where you find some of your books to see if anything catches your eye.  You will also shape
your bibliography as you perform inspectional readings on candidate books.  You may uncover
references in one book that lead you to many great and unexpected finds (while you may end up
discarding as unimportant the very book that led you there).  Resist the temptation to take everything
as important.  You must eliminate many texts from your bibliography so that what remains represents
the most significant material.

As you go on to do an inspectional readingof  the books of your official bibliography you will look for
relevant passages and simultaneously rank the books to determine which ones will demand more
thorough analytical reading (some of this you will do during your first inspectional reading, the one
that determined the official bibliography). [Note: Generally speaking, the first inspectional reading (the
initial spade work in preparation for syntopical reading) mainly involves skimming; now you will spend
more time dipping in here and there, and you will get through each book with a good idea of what it
contains as a whole (as well as an idea about which parts may carry the most weight).]  Some books
will get no more than inspectional reading, some will need analytical reading in a few or several
sections, and one or two may merit a full analytical reading.  Because of the demands of analytical
reading, you cannot expect to read very many whole books analytically given the time constraints of
most research projects.  But most projects will require you to at least read many sections of books
analytically, and some projects may require you to read several entire volumes analytically.  One of
the biggest mistakes you can make in research is not making a proper determination of which books
and which parts of books you should read analytically.  Do not give equal amounts of your time to
every item on your bibliography.  You must get through some of the items very quickly in order to
have time for everything else you need to do.  You must make critical decisions about what you think
carries the most importance for your project.  You will play a very human game here.  Bring as much
art into it as you can.

Indeed, much of the job of syntopical reading involves a good deal of creativity.  You must create
metaphors that capture the meanings and ideas of the various authors engaged in the discussion at
hand.  Your metaphors will need (openness of course, and a free neck, and breathing, and) terms,
propositions, and structures (arrangements, relationships).  You will usually demonstrate the
elegance of your metaphors by using quotations from each author that indicate how those metaphors
capture the meanings of the respective authors.  When you have finished you will have woven
something like a net of Indra, with each idea and image of yours reflecting as many of the ideas and
images of the various authors as possible, thus capturing as much understanding from the discussion
as you can.  Easy, right?
To elaborate on each of these rules in detail would amount to rewriting Adler and Van Doren’s book.  
And in fact I do not think it necessary.  Many of the rules should, on reflection, strike you as perfectly
clear.  If you need more detail on them I encourage you to go straight to the source.  It will prove
useful, though, to take the time for a few comments on a handful of these rules (while continuing to
have a free neck and natural breathing).

Turning first to rule 2, I want to point out that you have not fulfilled your obligations as a reader if you
cannot give someone the gist of a book in a sentence or two.  Clearly you will leave out a great deal
of the impact of the book.  You may love the book and feel it unjust to encapsulate it.  Not a good
enough excuse.  We all have to learn the skill of encapsulating things: ourselves, our jobs, our
children, our loved ones, our day, our concerns.  When at a party someone asks what you do, they
do not want to hear a detailed account of what makes you who you are from Freudian, Jungian,
Marxist, and Buddhist perspectives.  Nor do they want a philosophical monologue on the impossibility
of defining yourself for them.  They want a nutshell.  Your job comes down to giving a nut interesting
enough to raise their appetite for more, or one boring enough to free yourself from the conversation.  
The same holds true for books.  And if you love a book, do it the service of coming up with a
sentence or two that seductively encapsulates the whole.  If you hated the book, do not spare the
rod–but do not spare the wit either.  (Some might say that modifiers do not belong in such a
summary.  They would say one’s summary should not begin, “Well, the book amounts to a stunningly
boring attempt to describe the historical forces that brought about the . . .”) I should point out that I
do not entirely agree with much of what I wrote in this paragraph, but I still think it basically useful.
Rule 3 gets ignored so often that I must plead its case (while you open yourself to hearing about it).  
If someone proposed a house design to you, how would you want to judge its merits?  Let’s say they
show you a layout.  You look at the page and you see a foyer.  “Here you have the foyer,” says the
designer.  You see nothing else on the page.  “From the foyer,” she continues, “you can enter a
sitting room on the right.”  She produces a second drawing showing a sitting room.  You see nothing
else on the page.  Just a layout for a sitting room.  “You might also enter the dining room, off to the
left after you leave the foyer,” she says, producing yet another layout.  She proceeds room by room
for a dozen rooms.  By now you have no idea how one room relates to another.  You ask, “Do you
have a layout for the whole house?”  “No.”  “What?  You don’t have a single picture that shows me
how all the rooms relate to one another, how you have arranged them, their relative sizes, how they
fit to make up the whole?”

The analogy makes the point clearly.  You will not get the fullest understanding from a book until you
can see its whole structure laid out in front of you.  It takes far less time than you think, and the depth
of the reward will surprise you.  You want the outline to go on one sheet of paper, or for longer works,
on one side of several sheets of paper so you can lay them all out and look at the full structure of the
book at once.  And then you should do the same thing for key chapters and sections and any parts
that you had trouble comprehending. [Note: You may end up using different terms than the author in
naming the various structures.  For instance, the author may call a chapter, ‘Human Character as a
Vital Lie.’  You may like that just fine, or perhaps in your outline you will put that in parentheses and
in big letters write, ‘Personality as Understood in Light of Existentialism and Psychoanalysis.’  That
author may have a section in that same chapter titled, ‘Full Humans and Part Humans,’ which you
may call, ‘A Basic Contradiction of Therapy.’  And that author may be, in your opinion, missing a
section title which you would like to insert.  In other words, he may think there are two distinct parts to
a chapter while you see three.  Or perhaps he made no divisions at all in his chapter and you must
name and place them entirely by yourself.]  A text amounts to nothing more than a constellation of
relationships: relationships between words, images, ideas, metaphors.  The text records how an
author, a particular creature of flesh and blood, related herself to the world, how she related things in
the world, how she saw things, how she moved, how she lived in the world in a body-mind, in a
society, in a historical moment.  You must see these relationships.  You must see the structure of the
text.  When you look at the structure of a text laid out you stand in a position of mechanical
advantage, and you enjoy a marvelous perspective. (Keep breathing.  It’s okay.  It’s not that hard to
do this.  As with many of the suggestions in this text, you will come up with so many excuses for not
following this one.  But you will actually enjoy the task if you only allow yourself to begin it–and you
will enjoy your reading more, too.  You can use crayons and make mind maps if you like.  Use words,
pictures, sarcasm, whatever.  Try it.  You will reap great rewards.)

I like rule 5.  Adler and Van Doren do a wonderful job of discussing terms.  They tell us right away
that, “A term is not a word.”  Indeed, authors often uses phrases as terms (“Knight of Infinite
Resignation,” the “for-itself,” “Oedipal Complex,” and so on), and they  may use two different words to
express the meaning of a single term (“Original Mind” and “Buddha Nature”).  According to Adler and
Van Doren, “a term is the basic element of communicable knowledge . . . . we can think of terms as a
skilled use of words for the sake of communicating knowledge.”  Find and understand the author’s
terms and you win a stunning victory, if not the war.  Of course, given that a term is not a word, you
cannot rely solely on a dictionary to understand a term–although a dictionary may help
tremendously.  You must rely mainly on context–i.e. on things that manifest within the text itself.  Use
as much of the text as you can to understand a term.  Your deepest understanding of a term may
come from the text as a whole.  (How are your shoulders?)

Making a distinction between words and terms relates to a more general distinction you must make in
applying the rules for interpreting a text (rules 5-8).  As Adler and Van Doren put it, “The greatest
error you can make in applying these rules is to suppose that a one-to-one relationship exists
between the elements of language and those of thought or knowledge.”  For our purposes it helps to
think that language consists of words and sentences, while thought and knowledge consist of terms,
propositions, and arguments.  Just as words and terms differ (a single term may require many words
to express its full meaning, and an author may use different words to express the same term),
propositions and sentences do not neatly correspond.  A sentence may contain several propositions,
and in some cases a proposition may consist of several sentences.  And an argument will usually
have its propositions spread out over many sentences and paragraphs.

As readers we must sift through the many words and sentences of a text in order to find the important
ones that contain key terms and propositions (with as much integrity in our body-mind as we can
muster).  We want to locate the sentences that mean the most to the author of the text---his babies,
so to speak.  Adler and Van Doren put it like so: “From the author’s point of view, the important
sentences are the ones that express the judgements on which his whole argument rests . . . . He may
comment on the works of others.  He may indulge in all sorts of supporting and surrounding
discussion.  But the heart of his communication lies in the major affirmations and denials he is
making, and the reasons he gives for doing so.”

This strikes me as one of the most philosophically juicy statements of their entire book.  It cuts to the
bone: the author of a text, a man or woman of flesh and blood, must choose things.  She or he
inevitably values certain things above others.  This fact accompanies one aspect of our humanity.  As
finite embodied beings we move in certain ways, we look at certain things; and these movements,
these glances, reveal our thinking.  The author weaves the text, like a web, the images and
metaphors emerging from him, through him, revealing what he wishes to catch, what has caught him,
(what may catch us), what he cares about or hungers for.  This might help you grasp more firmly the
connection between how you read and what you read.  Every action makes a statement about what
you value, what you care about, what has caught you and what you want to catch.  When you allow
freedom and openness to catch you, you merge fluidly into the web of Life.  When you regress your
eyes, obsess your thoughts, tense your neck, or hold your breath, you get stuck on the surface of
the web like a fly.  The fly can argue about points all day long.  But this does nothing to change his
fate.  

In achieving a position of mechanical advantage with respect to a text you want to create a space, an
opening that will allow you to join with the author’s energy, her intent, her care.  You want to know
where her mind is and where her center is.  She stands and walks in front of you, and the text reveals
her stance (ideas, images, terms, propositions) and her motion (metaphors, arguments, analysis,
implication).  Join with her energy, with the direction of her motion, by keeping your own center.  One
of the ways to do this is simply to put her propositions into your own words and to point to examples
from your own experience to illustrate them.  Try to live the ideas of the text.  Give them your voice,
your breath, your motion, and relate them to your embodied experience.  (Breathe.)
The Rules for Analytical Reading

I. The First Stage of Analytical Reading: Rules for Answering the First Question of Reading, “What
is this book about as a whole?”

1) Classify the book according to kind and subject matter.
2) State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity.
3) Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation, and outline these parts as you have outlined
the whole.
4) Define the problem or problems the author has tried to solve (you damn well better know what the
author is up to).

II. The Second Stage of Analytical Reading: Rules for Answering the Second Question of Reading,
“What is being said in detail, and how is it being said?”

5) Come to terms with the author by interpreting his key words.
6) Grasp the author’s leading propositions by dealing with his most important sentences.  
7) Know the author’s arguments: find the paragraphs that state the important arguments of the text;
or, find a sentence here, a sentence there, another over here, so that you can compile a sequence of
sentences that state the propositions of the author’s arguments.
8) Determine which of his problems the author has solved, and which he has not; and of the latter,
decide which the author knew he had failed to solve.

III. The Third Stage of Analytical Reading: Rules for Answering the Third and Fourth Questions of
Reading, “Is what is being said true in whole or in part, and if so what significance does it hold?” (a.k.
a. “Rules for Criticizing a Book As a Communication of Knowledge”–more importantly, are you
breathing?  are you directing your eyes?)

A. General maxims Of Intellectual Etiquette

9) Do not begin criticism until you have completed your outline and your interpretation of the book.  
(Do not say you agree or disagree until you can say, “I understand.”)
10) Do not disagree disputatiously or contentiously. (And do not forget where you are.)
11) Demonstrate that you recognize the difference between knowledge and mere personal opinion by
presenting good reasons for any critical judgment you make.

B. Criteria for Disagreement [NOTE: You must fulfill at least one of the following three criteria in
order to disagree with a book.  If you have come this far in your reading, you must have understood
the text.  If you cannot fulfill one of the following three criteria, you must admit that you agree with what
the book says, at least in part (see point 15 below).  You may not like what the book says, but you
must have the intellectual integrity to admit that you agree. (Are you breathing?) Furthermore, if you
agree, and if the book has practical or philosophical significance, you cannot in good conscience fail
to change your life (unless you already live in alignment with the metaphors of the text).]

12) Show wherein the author is uninformed.
13) Show wherein the author is misinformed.
14) Show wherein the author is the illogical. (While breathing, keeping yourself open, sensing your
feet, sensing the air, remembering your self and your environment.)

C. Special Criteria for the Suspension of Judgement
15) Show wherein the author’s analysis or account is incomplete.  (NOTE: Fulfilling this criteria allows
you to suspend judgement of the text, or to agree in part while suspending judgement on the whole.  It
does not entitle you to disagree.  If you cannot fulfill the requirements for disagreeing with a text, and
you cannot demonstrate any incompleteness in the text, and yet you still feel unconvinced, you must
either acknowledge that you did not actually understand the text or that you have read in bad faith.)
A Few Notes on Getting Through Difficult Passages

Before presenting a summary of the rules of analytical reading I would like to make a some
suggestions about getting through really tough passages.  First try reading the passage  out loud.  
Do this at least five times.  You may want to try standing, pacing, moving in some way while reading
the passage out loud.  Between readings pause to consider the context of the passage.  How does it
relate structurally to other passages?  Are there terms in the passage?  Are you breathing?  Is your
neck free?  Do you need a break?  Do you need to consult the dictionary?  Do you need to write
some notes?  Are there any other passages that might shed light on this one?  Take very careful
note of grammatical structure, word choice, prepositions and how they are bound, possible irony,
references to earlier passages or other authors, etc.

If reading it out loud does not induce any breakthrough, try writing more.  Do some free-noting.  Or
write out what you think the passage means.  Or copy the passage word for word.  Or write what you
think you would need to understand in order to understand the passage (“I would understand this
passage perfectly if . . .”).  

If writing does not work, go back to speaking.  Try talking through the ideas.  Go step by step.  Read
a bit and say, “Okay, I get you so far.  You are saying . . .”  Then read some more and talk through
that.  You can get rather dramatic about this and do it Gestalt style by imagining that the author is in
the room with you, sitting in a chair.  Talk to him (talk to the chair).  Get lively.  Get up and walk
around.  Raise your voice a bit.  Ask him if he’s nuts.  Ask him what in hell he meant.  Then try to
answer for him: What would he say?

If psychodrama fails, sleep on it.  Sleep often releases insights.  You can also try asking others to
look at the passage.  You can also try looking on the internet or in critical journals.  But take any
outside input with some distance, even if it comes from an expert.  You must face a text alone.  Only
you can live it in your life.  (Take a moment to run your fingers over the page.)

Adler and Van Doren devote a substantial portion of their text to describing 15 rules of analytical
reading.  These rules apply most directly to works of nonfiction, but with certain adaptations they
have application to literature as well.  On pages 163-4 they provide the following summary (taken
mostly verbatim–and you might want to open yourself while reading this . . . breathe, release any
unnecessary tension, allow your neck to be free, allow your shoulders to move away from each other,
think open, light, free, smile):
Analytical Reading

Adler and Van Doren argue that we cannot do good reading unless we get into the habit of asking
four fundamental questions (with body-mind integrity, I would add):

1) What is this book about as a whole?  (What does the book do or try to do?  What is its theme?)–
Largely an inspectional task, but analysis may change your initial conclusions.

2) What is being said in detail, and how is it being said?  (What are the main images, metaphors,
ideas, and arguments?)–Both an inspectional and an analytical task.

3) Is what is being said true, either in whole or in part?  (You should strive to understand as best you
can what the book tries to do and how it tries to do it.  Once you understand what the book is about
you should fulfill your responsibility as a reader and judge the strength of the book.  Is it a vitalizing
thing or not?)–Mostly an analytical task, though syntopical reading may change your initial
conclusions.  (Do you have integrity in your spine right now?)

4) What is the significance of what is being said? [This connects to the third question in that you
must not only ask if a book has valid metaphors, but you must go on to ask if anyone should care
about them.  Maybe the truth of the book amounts to a tautology (do you need to look that word up–
in a dictionary?).  Maybe it has given you great information, but you see nothing following from it.  Or
maybe the book actually changes the way you see the world, or changes the way you think you
should act in the world.]–Both an analytical and a syntopical task.  (Did you lose your smile again?)

You must develop the habit of asking these four questions every time you read a text.  For Adler and
Van Doren these questions define the obligations of every reader.  Poor readers fail to ask the right
questions in the right order, and thus they get few answers from a text.
The Other Face of Inspectional Reading: Get Through the Book at Least Once!

After all that preparatory work you may think yourself ready to begin reading the book.  Correct.  But
probably not in the way you imagine.  Analytical reading has a relatively slow pace and does just what
its name implies: it breaks a book down.  But first you must get a grasp of the whole.  Many books
appear in the minds of their authors as a single body, an entity, a complete being.  (How do your hips
feel?)  They cannot see all the parts in detail, but they can feel the whole as a presence, an intention,
an illumination.  With any good work you want to get this same feel, whether poetry, play, fact, or
fiction.  And the more difficult the book, the less you should expect to understand in this first reading.  
You must always use your judgement to discern the proper reading speed for any text.  (Are you
regressing your eyes through the text?  Are you using your finger to help direct your eyes through
the text?)  With a work of fiction, your first reading will proceed at your normal reading speed, slowing
for certain passages to savor them and read them out loud.  You will go back later to read some
passages with great analytical care (especially passages you have marked with your pencil or those
in which you inserted a bookmark or post-it).  Do not skim on the first reading, but do not let yourself
get bogged down anywhere.  With a work of nonfiction you want to push the speed as far as you can,
skimming large portions if necessary, but without missing the flow of the argument.  Even if you know
in advance that you want to read the work analytically, you still want to get through a full inspectional
reading of the text.

With some books you will need to do no more than the seven steps of stage one inspectional
reading.  With others you will need to go on to the other stage of inspectional reading and get
through the whole book, making notes along the way.  Many books require no more of you.  Others
demand that you move on to analytical reading.
The Second Level of Reading
When we engage ourselves in inspectional reading we want to get the most information from a text in
the shortest amount of time.  Perhaps you have run across a book and you want to decide whether or
not you should read it at all, and if so, how carefully.  Not every book merits our attention.  (How do
your shoulders feel right now?  What sounds do you hear in the room?)  And not every book
deserves or requires analytical reading.  But maybe someone has assigned you the task of reading a
book analytically.  You will still want to lay a good foundation for analytical reading.  In either case,
good inspectional reading skills will help you enormously.  Indeed, you should think of inspectional
reading as a necessary prerequisite to analytical reading.  Your inspection of a book consists of
Seven Steps.

Step One: examine the title page of the book.  Not the cover, but the title page itself. Subtitles often
fail to appear on the cover.  You want to know the most complete version of the title the author gave.  
Examine the words of the title and ask a few questions (while breathing):

a) Can you absolutely give a brief definition of the words of the title?  You may want to look up a word
or two.  Even if it looks familiar.  If you came across The Sacred and the Profane, could you tell
someone specifically what ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ mean?  Not in a general way, but specifically?  
Remember that the etymology of the words may prove illuminating (so may an erect spine and an
integrated body-mind).

Note that some words used in titles cannot receive a proper definition in a dictionary.  A book called
The Use of the Self contains the philosophically sticky words ‘use’ and ‘self’.  And those words
become elevated to the status of terms in the text because they receive special connotations by
means of the text.  Furthermore, some books amount to a definition of a word or words in the title, or
at least a deepening or expanding of the way we define a word.  Synchronicity, by Carl Jung, defines
the word.  The Concept of Dread at least deepens or expands our understanding of the word ‘dread’.  
We may look at Life and realize we never understood our own Dread until Kierkegaard spoke to us;
we may look at a painting or read a poem and then realize that we have never really seen the night
sky until we saw it as Van Gogh or Neruda did (of course, you can see it better if you remain open
and keep breathing).

b) Also ask yourself what connotations and metaphors might exist in a title.  If we see a book called
The Necessary Angel we might ask ourselves what this “angel” is.  Surely Wallace Stevens did not
mean a literal angel.  So what is this angel and what makes it necessary?

Step Two: examine the dust jacket if the book has one, or the back cover.  Look at the publisher’s
description of the book.  Authors often help prepare these statements, and they might lend some
insight.  Also look at comments by reviewers.  Take them with a grain of salt, but keep in mind they
may reflect an authentic response to the book.

Step Three: look at the table of contents.  Carefully.  Get a very good idea of the structure of the
book.  Try to see how the chapters relate to each other, to the title, to the whole.  If you already own
the book, make notes on the table of contents (with a relaxed hand).

Step Four: look at the index.  Determine which words and names appear frequently throughout the
book.  If you own the book, circle key words.  Note any inclusions or omissions in the index that
surprise you.  (Have you furrowed your brow?)

Step Five: look at the preface, introduction, and foreword.  The preface often contains a succinct
statement of the author’s intentions in writing the book and what he thinks the book does.  The
introduction often goes further in overviewing the text.  A foreword usually comes from the pen of
someone other than the author, often a fairly well-respected thinker whose opinion you should take
not as gospel but as worthy of regard.  Taken together, the author’s view of the work and the view of
the writer of the foreword will often give you a wonderful picture of the intentions of the book.  If you
already know you will read this book, read the preface, foreword, and introduction with great care and
attention.  If you are trying to decide whether or not to read the book, skim–but slow down at key
points. [Note: Beware of introductions to works of literature.  You should usually read introductions to
books of poetry before reading the poems.  But introductions to plays, novels, and stories often spoil
the plot and you should save them until you finish the book.  But make a point of going back and
reading them!]

Step Six: go back to the index and table of contents and decide, based on everything you know so
far, which parts of the book seem most pivotal in terms of fulfilling the author’s intentions.  Look at
those chapters, especially the first and last pages, which often contain summaries of the contents of
the chapter. (What is the quality of the relationship between your head, neck, and back right now?  Is
your neck free?  Is your spine long and full of life?)

Step Seven: dip into the body of the book, dawdling here and there to inspect certain sections and
get a feel for the author’s style and rhythm, and for how the intentions and arguments of the book
unfold.  Make a special point of reading any conclusionary chapters or pages.  Some authors put a
“Conclusions” chapter at the end of their books.  Others simply make conclusionary statements at the
end of the final chapter.  Look at them carefully.  (Now that you find yourself at step seven, can you
remember step one?  You might want to write the steps as a list in the margin–while breathing.)
Depending on your level of skill and the difficulty of the text, this inspection will take anywhere from a
few minutes to an hour.  That’s right: up to an hour.  The better you get at this, the less time it takes.  
But a difficult book demands a great deal from you.  Better to invest your time than to waste it by
diving in blindly.  You will get much further much faster (in the end) by reading properly.  (Note that
you have come to page 21 . . . time for a break.)  (I’m serious.)
The First Level of Reading
As for elementary reading, most of us leave the public education system with a pretty good handle on
it.  We understand, even if largely intuitively, the majority of the rules of grammar, and we all have
quite sizeable vocabularies.  But when reading a good book we will often have to look up certain
words in a dictionary or even an encyclopedia, and we must sometimes carefully examine the
grammatical structure of certain sentences to make sure we understand their meaning.  More
importantly, most of us need to work on certain habits of reading which we do not learn very well in
school.  (Are you still breathing?)  

An essential set of such habits has to do with the eyes.  Here are my suggestions on how you should
use them:

First, make sure you have pleasing, adequate light (silly, but we so often overlook it).

Second, make sure you have bookmarks and post-it notes.  Place a bookmark in the book at a page
you expect it will take you 10 minutes to reach.  If you read about 1 page per minute, place the
bookmark 10 pages ahead.  Each time you reach the bookmark you will take a moment to look in the
distance, perhaps out a window.  This will help prevent overuse of near vision (you have read more
than 10 pages at this point, so I suggest you take a break).  When you move the bookmark 2 or 3
times in a row, consider taking a few minutes to stand up and  walk around the room (you might even
do a few squats or walk up and down some stairs) in order to prevent overuse of your attentional
resources (and to help prevent varicose veins, hemorrhoids, etc.).  Learning seems to increase when
done in intervals of 20-30 minutes.  (Are you frowning?  Are your eyes bright?)  You do not need a
long break, but you should rest your attention and allow what you have learned so far to sink in, the
way you would water a dry plant not by pouring all the water in at once, but rather by pouring a little,
then letting it sink into the soil, then a little more, and so on.  When you return to your place of
reading you might want to take a few minutes to do some free-noting.

Third, as you move your eyes through the text, make sure you inhibit the tendency to look back over
words and sentences you have just read.  This tendency is known as eye regression.  It can also be
called mind wandering.  It simply amounts to not using the eyes properly, especially in their
relationship to the brain.  To help inhibit this tendency, place your finger on the page and move it
through the text (just beneath the words you are reading) with a rhythm that seems almost too fast for
you (or, in the case of a very difficult passage, at a rhythm far slower than usual).  Make sure you
keep your eyes in sync with the movement of the finger.  Try if you can to test the boundaries of
speed.  Keep in mind that the speed must fluctuate from book to book and even from place to place
within a particular book.  (Can you sense your back right now?  Do you have freedom in the muscles
of your neck?)  Some sentences require great care, some deserve delicate savoring, some merit
nothing more than skimming.

Remember that reading involves directing the eyes (and the Self) in a certain way.  When you sit
down to read you must commit to this directing of the eyes.  When you find yourself distracted from a
text, when you find your thoughts abandoning the text, realize you have given up your commitment.  
What we call mind wandering amounts to nothing more than not doing what we intended to do in a
particular context.  The decision to read implies a decision to move the eyes through the text, and
using your finger unquestionably helps sustain this intention.  (Notice the feel of the paper in your
hands.  Notice the feel of the pencil.)

Another aspect of elementary reading that we often overlook has to do with vocabulary building.  
Make a point of looking up unfamiliar words and trying to learn them.  We often fail to grasp the
meaning of a sentence because we have misunderstood a key word.  The larger your vocabulary,
the better the quality of your reading.  But do not allow vocabulary to interfere with reading.  (Are you
directing your eyes steadily or are you regressing?)  In many cases you will want to jot a word down
and look it up later.  Unless the word plays a key role in a section of text, get the best meaning you
can from the context and then write the word down so you can learn it.  A more subtle and nuanced
examination of words does not come to the fore until you begin reading a text at an analytical level.  
Levels of Reading
Adler and Van Doren (wait a minute . . . you DID stop to align yourself to the task of reading, right?)
discuss four levels of reading: elementary reading, inspectional reading, analytical reading, and
syntopical reading (it only takes thirty seconds to align yourself to the task of reading . . . so if you
haven’t done that . . .).  Elementary reading has to do with simply understanding what the sentences
of a book say.  Inspectional reading has to do with getting a general idea of what a book is about and
deciding if and how well you want to read it.  If you do want to read the book, inspectional reading
provides a necessary foundation for analytical reading.  Analytical reading is the best kind of reading
you can give to a book.  And syntopical reading is reading that synthesizes ideas from more than one
book.  Thus each new level requires mastery of the one that came before it.  (Have you made any
notes yet?)

With respect to the latter three levels, each has a certain kind of note making that goes along with it.  
In doing inspectional reading you make structural notes, notes that help reveal the basic parts of the
text and their relationship with each other and the whole.  In analytical reading you make conceptual
notes that help you understand the images and metaphors of the text and which help you to evaluate
their truth and significance.  In syntopical reading you make dialectical notes, notes that indicate the
shape and tone of the larger dialogue and discussion in which the author has engaged.
One Last Requirement
The most important thing, the most fundamental, the most overlooked . . . when you see it you will not
take it seriously enough, you will think it goofy or commonsensical, but I must tell you the first and last
requirement of good reading: Awareness.  See your reading as a cosmic event: a yellow star burning
eight minutes away, a moon revolving in phases and pulling the water within you, cars outside
consuming the refined essence of trees that died a hundred million years ago, you sitting at a table
made by an illegal immigrant, a book in your hands written by the child of immigrants . . .  Think of the
ideas of a book as intersections in a web.  Stare only at the intersection and you have nothing but a
point.  Include in your vision as many intersections as possible, and also the threads and the spaces
that lead everywhere–even to you.  You belong to the web and must help weave it.  Do not forget
yourself when you read.  Do not forget “the sun, the moon, trees old and young.”  The universe
reads when you read.  You are the vehicle by means of which reading happens in the world.  Do not
lose yourself.  

How do you keep yourself?  Awareness . . . an openness, an opening to the universe as it manifests
with you.  You, and the book, and the ideas of the book, and the chair, and the tea all manifest
together.  This may sound like metaphysical malarkey, but I tell you I make the most practical
statements possible.  Remember: we can make no perfect distinction between what you read and
how you read it.

How can you grow from a book if you hold yourself tightly while reading it?  If you want more freedom,
openness, and awareness in your life, you should try to get it from every activity.  If you want to gain
awareness from your reading (from the books you read), ask for it from your reading–from the very
actions of reading.  If you do nothing but stare at points when you read, you will become quite good
at constricting yourself.  If you do nothing but disappear into the arguments and images of a book,
you will become quite good at not being present.  You must open at every turn of phrase or
argument.  And you must remain present, even as you fully experience the grandeur of a book’s
greatest metaphors.  Reading can and should be an activity of presence. [Note: I am reminded of
The Way of Zen in which Alan Watts mentions Dr. Kunihiko Hashida, “a lifelong student of Zen and
editor of the works of Dogen” who never practiced formal zazen but rather saw his study of physics
as his personal brand of zazen.  According to Watts, Hashida saw this zazen not as studying science,
but as sciencing.  Do you read fiction, or do you fiction?]

We naturally marvel at the fact that we can dance on the beach with Zorba the Greek while sitting in
our living room, and we can listen to a bird with Robert Frost, and feel the cold lake water on the
body of Hesse’s Joseph Knecht.  In some sense we do these things simply because we can.  At the
same time, we should remain present, because trying to escape fully to that beach, to that wood, to
that lake, amounts to bad faith.  We cannot escape our presence here, no matter how much we try to
avoid it.  And in actuality a book cannot work its full magic on us unless we allow its metaphors and
ideas to open us where we stand, and then take that opening with us as we move in the world.  I
cannot help but think of Thomas Keating’s comparison of contemplative spirituality to the questioning
in the garden of Eden: God asks Adam and Eve, “Where are you?”  The universe never stops asking
that one question.  Our Work in life fundamentally involves hearing it, keeping it in mind like a
mantra, and allowing it to open us.  A great challenge we face in reading, or in any other activity that
can draw us in, lies in understanding the difference between absorption and attachment.  True
absorption in reading is like true absorption in doing physics or practicing flower arranging.  But,
more often we escape and attach rather than opening up and discovering more freedom.  
Words and ideas can affect us profoundly, and at times they can do so in spite of our selves.  
Sometimes they actually pry us open like verbal crowbars.  We can optimize their effect with
awareness.  Good books should enrich the way you live—art and literature can exist as powerful
elements of ethical living.  Our ideas often change quite easily.  But to change our mode of living, to
live more openly . . . that can prove quite challenging.  How can a book begin to help you do this if
you do not move differently after reading it?  How can it help you if you do not pay attention to how
you move while reading it?  

Thinking and feeling take place in a body-mind.  Yet even the most sensitive people will abstract their
thinking, feeling, and reading.  What you think, feel, and read should be lived.  It will help you a great
deal to follow this metaphor and think of reading as a set of actions which involve positions of
mechanical advantage.  You want to engage in action when you read–-mindful action.  My
suggestions so far, and the ones that follow, may sound strange if you usually become abstract in
reading and thinking.  Nonetheless they will help you read better.

First, before you begin to read, take a moment to actually prepare your system for reading.  Inhibit
your desire to grab a text and tear into it.  An Olympic judo player doesn’t just jump in front of an
opponent.  He takes time to warm up: loosen the shoulders, the neck, the wrists, the legs.  A golfer
doesn’t just swing at a ball.  She not only loosens up first, but then she takes a few practice swings
while standing at the tee.  

Loosen your shoulders, neck, eyes, legs and back before reading.  Then close your eyes for
perhaps 30 seconds while holding an intention to read and asking your system to align itself to the
task.  You will do a great service to yourself.

In asking your system to align itself to the task of reading, part of your thinking should go to the
quality of integrity you have in your body-mind.  Actually check some of the major muscle areas and
actively inhibit any excess tension there, particularly in the neck, face, chest, lower back, and upper
back.  Ask your neck to free itself so your head can rest at ease on the very top of your spine in such
a way that your entire torso can open up (think UP as you do this and you will actually feel your spine
lengthen as you release unnecessary tensions).  Check in with your breathing.  Make sure you do
not hold your breath.  You should check in on the freedom of your neck, spine, hips, shoulders,
back, and breath throughout the activities of reading.  As you write notes in your book or in a journal,
notice the openness of your writing hand, your chest, your neck, your eyes.  Do you grasp or
receive?  Do you clamp down, do you tighten up, do you hold your breath?  (Are you holding your
breath now?)  Do you get hung up on points, or do you see the expanding web of living ideas?  And
for heaven’s sake, what kind of facial expression do you have?!  Have you lost your smile?
Keep checking on these things as you read.  Realize you can read better if you direct your energy to
things that enhance reading.  Directing your energy to slumping your shoulders, tightening your
neck, holding your breath, vanishing into an argument or image, grasping at ideas, regressing your
eyes, and other similarly inelegant actions will only lessen the intensity with which you can experience
a text.
Before Beginning: Materials to Have on Hand  

In order to read well you will need the following:

1) A good place to sit.
Taking time to arrange yourself matters more than you can imagine.  Where to read and how to use
yourself while reading is a problem which you must solve.  The act of reading places considerable
demand on your system.  For instance, if you sit when reading, consider that the act of sitting puts
30% more pressure on the spine than standing.  Reading also puts considerable demand on the
eyes, postural muscles, and the sitting bones.  You need adequate lighting, good cushions, and a
desk or stand that brings the book to a proper height.  Consider having a reading table made