Robbins

"Ritual, usually, is an action or ceremony employed to create a unity of mind among a congregation or community. The Clock People see the keeping of the clockwords as the last of the communal rituals. With the destruction of the clockworkds, that is, the end of time, all rituals will be personal and idiosyncratic, serving not to unify a ommunity/cult in a common cause but to link each single individual with the universe in whatever manner suits him or her best. Unity will give way to plurality in the Eternity of Joy, although, since the universe is simultaneously many and One, whatever links the individual to the universe will automatically link him or her to all others, even while it enhances his or her completely separate identity in an eternal milk-shake unclabbored by time. Thus, paradoxically, the replacement of societal with individual rituals will bring about an ultimate unity vastly more universal than the plexus of communal rites that presently divides people into unwieldly, agitating and competing groups."


February 24, 1999