psychobabble

[Diana York Blaine]

To add to Don's gloss of Eliot's "old-age" Four Quartets:  "in my
end is my beginning" was the motto of Mary, Queen of Scotts, and this
(reversed) verson ends the East Coker section, as he begins to transcend.
BTW I guess there's nothing "new" about most "New Age" stuff.  Messages of
unity and wholeness are ancient;  it's our ability to comprehend and
practice them that need constant re-upping (you'll recall the recent
unpleasant exchange on connection and villages). After the "fortunate
fall" from the mother (RIP Mrs. Pynchon) and into language, we seek to get
back to that sense of oceanic unity *through* language, ironically enough.
Hence: literature. In an increasingly "broken" American culture, you 
find literature like Pynchon's which refuses that return at the same 
time it lusts for it. No wonder Eliot was attracted to England and
her Church of Totalizing Metanarratives (pace, Andrew).  Think of
Stencil's motto, by contrast: "approach and avoid" (mother) V.  -Diana