MONDO EXTRAS

The Journal of Impossible Things includes the quote maius intra qua extra: "What is inside is greater than what is outside." That's the TARDIS, but it's also the fob watch, and John Smith, and Martha, and Tim Latimer. And the Doctor too, though it'll take him forever to realize it. One of the most useful Gnostic concepts is theoretical: imagine that the soul doesn't rest inside the body -- that the body, and everything else, rests inside the soul. By truly experiencing oneself, Doctor and Master and Companion, Shadow and future and past, one achieves knowledge of God, which is all those things -- but only if the opposite holds true, or else you're on the solipsist bullshit wagon. Through the experience of God, or one's connection to Everything Else That There Is, can you really know where you're at, at your most central? If your soul is imagined as being of infinite radius and circumference, then there's no difference between the Bad Wolf, the experience of infinity, and the Doctor himself: eternity. The Master's problem isn't madness, not even the madness of war: it's his belief that there's a fundamental and insurmountable difference between him and anything else. The Master believes that he's alone. He is mistaken.

They sing: "There's no discouragement/ Shall make him once relent/ His first avowed intent/ To be a pilgrim." They sing: "Then fancies fly away,/ He'll fear not what men say,/ He'll labor night and day/ To be a pilgrim." They sing: "Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, Sed nomine tuo da gloriam. "Give glory, God, give glory, not for us, God, but for Your name." Is this the stupid faith of boys heading off to war? Or is it something only John Smith is strong enough to show us?