That stuff the adults dismissed as ‘play’ was the prodigy with which we acquired language and the ability to enter the world of ‘adult’ representational perception where that skill would be sacrificed to the gods of formalism via the acquisition of specific modes of relation to (and with) language and knowledge. But what we initially possessed vastly surpassed what we traded it for. Allow me to explain.

These faculties were not merely playful. They are perhaps better understood as modal instances of -directed dreaming- and they comprise the precursors to astonishingly profound experiences of genius (and communion) which depend upon them for their establishment, elaboration, and perfection.

They were not meant to disappear by being buried beneath the strata of the formally representational relationships with language and knowledge we used them to acquire. Their natural developmental tree would ordinarily proceed through a series of phases of evolution which lead to experiences of relational and intellectual ability (and experience) that make most common human minds look like cardboard cut-outs in comparison.

The reason this doesn’t happen for most of us is that virulently aggressive elements within our common relationships with language and knowledge actually attack and replace these capacities. Thereafter, we cannot even reasonably frame what happened to us, and we seek strange replacements such as primitive forms of trance and the experiences available through the use of psychedelics. But these replacements are nothing like what they crudely attempt to remedy. They do not return the capacities we lost to our common experience, and thus, comprise yet another set of replacements.

Einstein, Tesla, Lorca, Pessoa… Nin… Dali… Varo… Da Vinci… Hypatia… and other women and men throughout history… preserved specific aspects of these faculties (probably without being formally aware of this…) and saw them through many of their developmental phases. The results were invariably prodigious. And most of them were attacked. Can you now see why?

Recover and nurture the abilities of directed dreaming (and the related experiences of liquid identity that we mistakenly seek through intoxicants), and you will retrieve something that makes physical wings seem (almost) boring in comparison.

Along with the ecstasy of rediscovering the power and ability of your inherent intelligence… and the ability to communicate directly with nonhuman organisms… you will, as a side-effect, become contagious. Your presence and activities will commonly and almost accidentally awaken these experiences in others who are still available to wonder… and that could just possibly rescue our species … and our world.

And believe me, we need rescue. And we need it now.