Mary Olivier: a Life

The Hegels had come: The Logik. Three volumes. The bristling Gothic text an ambush of secret, exciting, formidable things. The titles flamed; flags of strange battles; signals of strange ships; challenging, enticing to the dangerous adventure.

After the first enchantment, the Buddhist Suttas and the Upanishads were no good. Nor yet the Vedânta. You couldn't keep on saying, "This is That," and "Thou art It," or that the Self is the dark blue bee and the green parrot with red eyes and the thundercloud, the seasons and the seas. It was too easy, too sleepy, like lying on a sofa and dropping laudanum, slowly, into a rotten, aching tooth. Your teeth were sound and strong, they had to have something hard to bite on. You wanted to think, to keep on thinking. Your mind wasn't really like a tooth; it was like a robust, energetic body, happy when it was doing difficult and dangerous things, balancing itself on heights, lifting great weights of thought, following the long march into thick, smoky battles.