hat follows is, I hope, a less important statement than the book that you just read. I believe that a book should stand on its own merits and not have to depend on the autopsy of analysis. Since it is a somewhat unusual book, however, I felt that I should explain some of my reasons for writing it.

I wrote The Mutual I because of my faith in our shared human nature - a faith which our society seems to discourage. If this book seems to exaggerate certain ideas or to contradict more conventional notions of truth, that was my intention. I believe, you see, in a special way of knowing, a certain inward vision which all of us share. While we share the faculty of common sense or conventional wisdom as well, that wisdom often represents our egos as absolutely opposed. Despite the many other virtues of our common thought, I consider that to be a moral error.

Our ordinary understanding seems, in fact, to interfere with our mutual insight (common cause) at enough points to warrant a questioning look - exactly the kind of look that I tried to take in The Mutual I.

Like the seers Ju Gun and Buddha Tom, I have found myself in the midst of a journey that others did not understand, a quest for deeper ways of knowing both myself and my world. It is the kind of journey our society seems routinely to discount, apparently because such journeys are considered impractical, or quaint at best.

Like young Jon, whose awkward figure hides the innermost truth, we can all discover windows, vistas, on the universal whole. Vision like that, however, is something that the worldly ego abhors. That is because such vision is, first and foremost, a radical vision of equality between persons.

As I said, we often paint such new ways of seeing as unworkable or sweetly out of touch (quaint). I strongly suspect that this is a defense against their power, for they really do tend to level the ego.

I stand behind this impractical and quaint book - the record of my own journey - because I wonder if impracticality and quaintness are even weaknesses.

For all we know, the truth may itself be impractical and quaint. For all we know, we may be designed as humans to cherish that truth, regardless of how it might be cashed or conform to other measures.

While such broad philosophical questions are interesting to raise, no one can answer them of course, and as usual they leave us in the dark. So my simpler question to you, dear reader, is this:

Could you hear the melody behind my words, the heartsong of The Mutual I? 

Trusting that you heard, I am ...

Sincerely yours,
Fred Cliff Leeds

Completed in El Paso, Texas on August 17, 2008.

© Fred Leeds, August 2008