The Flame Alphabet Second Selection

"I did not give up on my religion. I found only that I no longer required reminders, assertions, repetitions, harangues. Nothing outside myself. Whatever I believed played on inside me with no help from the radio. I'd heard enough for a lifetime. I found I could do without more things to misunderstand." (pg 275)

This passage is interesting because it represents the state of completely internalized, abstract concepts that Samuel and others strived to achieve the entire time they spent as dedicated followers of their sect of "Forest Judaism." Even though Burke claimed that he was the one true source from which teachings could be heard, this blind, unquestioning faith is exactly what caused them to stray from enlightenment. We see this when LeBov reveals that Burke's sermons were simply an old recorded loop, and Thomas was simply another of his own false identities; willingly preventing thought and critical analysis, while theoretically could make you more receptive to organic feelings and religious ideas in their pure form, also puts you in a position of extreme vulnerability as there is no way of knowing that someone is taking advantage of you-- or is simply misguided as well. A sermon by its very nature is already tainted, from a secondhand source. The only way to be truly confident in the infallibility of an idea or spiritual feeling is to have it originate from within, and to keep it your own. You avoid the marring influence of comprehension because you are not attempting to wordlessly feel something as described by another, instead it keeping on the fringe of your consciousness where you can feel what you mean without putting it into organized thought. This makes me think about those who reject modern organized religion in favor of their own manifestation of spirituality, and I wonder at what point they decided that this style of prescribed religion was not pure enough for them.