Stranger in a Strange Land

but I understand that they are just as casual about those collections as they are about that stack of dough upstairs. But Patty whisked me away when Mike turned the service over to his high priestess. I was taken to a much smaller auditorium where services were just opening for the seventh circle in-people who had belonged for several months at least and had made progress. If it is progress.
                "Jubal, Mike had gone straight from one to the other, and I couldn't adjust to the change. That outer meeting was half popular lecture and half sheer entertainment-this one was more nearly a voodoo rite. Mike was in robes this time; he looked taller, ascetic, and intense-! swear his eyes gleamed. The place was dimly lighted, there was music that was creepy and yet made you want to dance. This time Patty and I took a double seat together, a couch that was darn near a bed. What the service was all about I couldn't say. Mike would sing out to them in Martian, they would answer in Martian__-except for chants of 'Thou art GodI Thou art God!' which was always echoed by some Martian word that would make my throat sore to try to pronounce it."
                Jubal made a croaking noise. "Was that it?"
                "Huh? I believe it was-allowing for your horrible tall-corn accent. Jubal . . . are you hooked? Have you just been stringing me along?"
                "No. Stinky taught it to me-and he says that it's heresy of the blackest sort. By his lights I mean-I couldn't care less. It's the Martian word Mike translates as: 'Thou art God.' But our brother Mahmoud says that isn't even close to being a translation. It's the universe proclaiming its own self-awareness . . * or it's 'peccavimus' with a total absence of contrition or a dozen other things, all of which don't translate it. Stinky says that not only it can't be translated but that he doesn't really understand it in Martian-except that it is a bad word, the worst possible in his opinion and much closer to Satan's defiance than it is to the blessing of a benevolent God. Go on. Was that all there was to it? Just a bunch of fanatics yelling Martian at each other?"
                "Uh ... Jubal, they didn't yell and it wasn't fanatical. Sometimes they would barely whisper, the room almost dead quiet. Then it might climb in volume a little but not much. They did it in sort of a rhythm, a pattern, like a cantata, as if they had rehearsed it a long time . . . and yet it didn't feel as if they had rehearsed it; it felt more as if they were all just one person, humming to himself whatever he felt at the moment. Jubal, you've seen how the Fosterites get themselves worked up-"
                "Too much of it, I'm sorry to say."
                "Well, this was not that sort of frenzy at all; this was quiet and easy, like dropping off to sleep. It was intense all right and got steadily more so, but-Jubal, ever sit in on a spiritualist séance?"
                "I have. I've tried everything I could, Ben."
                "Then you know how the tension can grow without anybody moving or saying a word. This was much more like that than it was like a shouting revival, or even the most sedate church service. But it wasn't mild; it packed terrific wallop."
                "The technical word is 'Apollonian.'"
                "Huh?"
                "As opposed to 'Dionysian.' And both rather Procrustean I'm sorry to say. People tend to simplify 'Apollonian' into 'mild,' and 'calm,' and 'cool.' But 'Apollonian' and 'Dionysian' are two sides of the same coin-a nun on her knees in her cell, holding perfectly still and her facial muscles relaxed, can be in a religious ecstasy more frenzied than any priestess of Pan Priapus celebrating the vernal equinox. Ecstasy is in the skull, not in the setting-up exercises." Jubal frowned. "Another common error is to identify 'Apollonian' with 'good'-merely because our most respectable sects are all rather Apollonian in ritual and precept. Mere local prejudice. Proceed."
                "Well ... things weren't as quiet as a nun at her devotions anyhow. They didn't just stay seated and let Mike entertain them. They wandered about a bit, swapped seats, and there was no doubt that there was necking going on; no more than necking, I believe, but the lighting was very low key and it was hard to see from one pew to another. One gal wandered over