Re: Why I Wrote *The Emperor's New Clothes*


"The emperor liked the sound of this -- and why wouldn't he? How often
did he get the chance to wear beautiful new clothes and teach his
people a lesson in religion? He couldn't wait to put them on in public.
And in a matter of days, the two tailors promised, he would get his
wish. Both swore that they would outdo themselves. They said that the
latest clothes from their spiritual loom would excel anything it had
woven before. And when the emperor saw his new clothes for himself, he
believed it. . . if the emperor *said* he saw his clothes, if he
*believed* he saw his clothes, if he *repeated* to himself over and
over again that he saw his clothes, who's to say he didn't?"

Brent,

I suppose this is a peril of writing stories like this. To me there is
nothing in the above that implies two members of the House are fooling
the other seven -- which incidentally I definitely do not believe. It
expresses my feeling that, when taken to excess, this talk of how
something can't be understood because it is *spiritual* goes too far.
Why are there two tailors? Only because there were, I think, two in
the telling of Andersen. At any rate, I remember there being two
tailors in the illustrated Disney version I grew up with -- the one
with a lion for an emperor and where he walks around not naked, but in
long underwear. And since I still see the old Disney illustrations
when I imagine the story, that's how I told it. But you have every
right to read what you read in the story, but I have the right to
assert that this says as much about you as about me.

You also raise a very important question in the later part of your
message. "I don't know how to establish world peace, I don't know how
to eliminate world hunger: do you Honestly. Do you?" I confess Brent
that I don't know the answer any more than you do. But the difference
is that I am impressed by the solutions offered by the House *in direct
proportion* to how rational those solutions appear. If they cannot be
understood by reason, by what the Master calls "the established logical
modes of the intellect," how can I approve of them?

Brendan

.

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