Lipton’s Journal/December 8, 1954/29

No saint can be a teacher. If there is God, and one arrives at Him, one has passed far beyond words, for words which are polar to meaning are the chains of society. To attempt to teach what one has learned is to return to words, to submit oneself to enslavement again, and so for whatever hint one gives of the direction one also adds falsehood upon falsehood. That is why mystical writers write so badly. What they seek to communicate is simply incommunicable, and the distortion into language properly punishes them be banality. What this means is that everyone must reach God alone. Even more difficult is that one must take the trip alone once one has determined to begin it, one cannot read one’s way to Truth, nor talk one’s way, one can only contemplate. The great artists are saints manqué—they return to reach; they are half-way posts; so long as one has not thought at all about becoming a saint they startle one into considering more, into thinking more, possibly feeling more, and so they encourage large renunciations of the world. But once one feels the other universe, there is no longer any help, only confusion if one looks for aid in books or other people. It is not a very human perspective, but perhaps man, somewhere, has lost the right to reach heavens of truth by brotherhood because brotherhood has been so abused, has been enlisted to the service of the world, of society. So one must go alone. Obviously, I never will. I am a teacher and a talker.