Sitaram
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Erotic ImagesAn erotic image is simply an illusion, a gestalt of countless
colored pixels upon our senses. The individual pixels have reality
and existence. The woman in the image has no real existence. And yet
we are aroused by the woman and are not conscious of the individual
pixels. We can respond to this non-existent image because it
is an outer reflection of something which is actually within us and
which resonates with that inner woman just as the two arms of a
tuning fork resonate and produce tone.
Should some, but not all of the pixels fade, yet the image of the
woman persists. Cells in our body, and possibly even our brain, are
dying, and yet our individuality and continuity of memory persist.
Lockes and Jeffersons and Lincolns die, yet constitutional democracy
persists. Democracy, a gestalt and illusion of countless pixels of
generations of anonymous humanity which arouses in us noble feelings
of justice and inalienable human rights, persists. Stars explode in
supernova, yet the starry night sky which fills Kant with wonder and
fills Van Gogh's canvas with intoxicating imagery, persists. And
should this very planet of ours die and grow cold, extinct, is there
not something which yet persists, somewhere, elsewhere in the ever-
collapsing kaleidoscopic telescope of being and reality?
Democracy is our erotic woman, our Statue of Liberty in provocative
pose, a gestalt formed by the myriad pixels of suffering throngs of
humanity which come and go like mist and spray as waves crash upon
the rocky coast. And our libertine lady, provocatively posed, this
non-existent idea of Justice and Truth, is like Dante's Beatrice,
enticing us up a ladder of Divine Ascent, like Socrates' school
mistress Diotema and her teaching on the ladder of love in
Plato's "Symposium".
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