Page 72
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Transcendence is defined as passing beyond illusion while leaving reality intact.
The line is aphoristic and clean, and its force comes from that precision. It refuses any spiritual language that escapes the real world, making transcendence a clarified relation to reality rather than a retreat from it.
Repeat of 'Magical Margin': transcendence as beyond illusion, not beyond reality.
This is a deliberate second placement of the line — the same single-sentence poem reappears as if the book is reminding itself. The comma before 'not reality' keeps the sentence from being smug; it reads like correction, not conclusion. The form is its own argument: an aphorism worth repeating isn't decoration, it's load-bearing.