Images Convey What's Nonverbal

       (Please see yesterday's post.)  Huston Smith's obituary in the L.A.Times, following his passing two weeks ago, revealed that Smith's friendship with Aldous Huxley led to Timothy Leary and to experimenting with mescaline.

       Smith later compared his first time drug-induced mystical vision to "plugging a toaster into a power line."  He also said he now understood the Bible's claim that no one could see God and live.

       Though he tried hallucinogens again, he soon gave them up.  Smith wrote in his memoir, "As Ram Dass told me, 'After you get the message, hang up.'"

       Once again the richness and vitality of imagery, metaphor and simile,  expresses the felt meaning of powerful experience.  Emotional states naturally channel us toward the nonverbal to get "what it's like" across.