spirit-auger

Updated: June 26, 2025

When a man thinks of himself and wants other people to think of him as an institution as a kind of church of course it makes him very unhappy to believe he is wrong, but the minute he thinks of himself as a means to an end, thinks of his personality as a tool placed in his hand for getting what he wants or what a world wants the minute a man thinks of himself as a kind of spirit-auger, or chisel of the soul, or as a can-opener to truth, which if it is a little changed one way or the other, or held differently, will suddenly work changing himself toward himself, and believing what he would rather not, becomes like any other invention or discovery, a creative pleasure.

Gerald Stanley Lee - The Ghost in the White House : Some suggestions as to how a hundred million people (who are supposed in a vague, helpless way to haunt the white house) can make themselves felt with a president, how they can back him up, express themselves to him, be expressed by him, and get what they want