$ The living sources of learning… the world, nature, the sun, the moon and stars. The living places and beings. These are the original school. The only true education happens in a universe-city, not a university. It is an education given only to those who become students of the real, not the descriptions and ‘ex plan ations’ composed by and for the benefit of human culture. Human culture is, by and large, a gigantic lying machine: it invents representations and then replaces their originary inspirations with these. This, it celebrates as progress or knowledge, but it is largely just murder.

The living books are everywhere… and yet so few will ever remember them. Or learn to learn with and from them, as we did when our species was young, and still immersed in the Garden of Wonders that is our living planet. That planet is vastly more intelligent than any culture. It is explosively more intelligent than the sum of our models and explanations. It is the original school… but the students have largely been stolen. By statues and pictures. By science and religion. By industry, war, and descriptions.

Now, even though they live in the school’s own body and halls… it is invisible to them. They see what is described. They see categories and their constituents. None can recognize the astonishing truth of nature: it is so far beyond our wildest fictions that it reduces them to nonsense. The intelligences we have sought in the future… or the sky… are all around us, right here. But we are busy killing them off so that we can continue to pretend to excellence, or mastery, or even … understanding.

Our pretenses are mostly murder.

Learn to read the living books again. It is our nature as a species to know and be this kind of student. It is not in our nature to obliterate the universe-city and the living beings, their lineages, their nobility… their places in the world and our souls… minds… and cultures.

Open the doors to the oldest library. You will find ecstasy and education, challenge, communion, fellowship… and missions… awaiting your recognition… beyond all descriptions. Beyond all representations.

Beyond.