don't turn your head
"Its genesis was one of those awakening visions which happen once in a lifetime when the miraculous landscape of reality is lit up by a sudden flash of lightning only to disappear again into the normal twilight world. But once the real universe has been tasted the old familiar one can never be quite the same.
It miraculously happened for me one spring morning in the bleak surroundings of a slum in the East end of London. Why it should have chosen such an incongruous setting is one of the mysterious jokes of existence. For the last fifteen years since that moment I have often found only helplessness in my attempts to explain how this real world appeared to me in that brief glimpse.
All that really can be said is that It just was. Time stopped, all and everything was intensified a thousand fold and existence shone in full ecstatic wonder.
As I watched Londoners in the street going about their lives there appeared a dark luminosity within each being. Yet at the same moment there was a strange feeling that they were no more than sleepwalking robots utterly oblivious to that shining nature within themselves. The life force of each person was somehow entrapped within a dull dreaming shell which seemed to prevent any contact with the real, and what could have been aflame with consciousness was gray and lifeless.
Only seconds before I had been exactly like that and the awful recognition came that while only a hair's breadth divided the two states, I could also fall back into forgetfulness. What had gone wrong? What had happened to everyone?"
- Yatri
Unknown Man: The Mysterious Birth of a New Species
"The conventional ego, the false passport, is built up from an edited picture album of our past. The version often seems more real than we are in the present moment. That is because here/now we are in constant flux and flow, but what we have been is nicely and securely fixed.
The false identity is frozen throughout time, a final static noun. And just because it is unchanging we become more clearly identified with that identity card than we do with the real living, moment-to-moment entity.
In order to support the new false self we have to become more and more identified with the past, with old knowledge and a fixed belief system which continue to bolster up our historical selves. And we forget there was ever anything else.
Man becomes a historical animal preoccupied with the past and the future, and here we encounter the strangest of paradoxes. The historical idea of self , the ego, requires a constant re-living of memories in order to sustain a continuity of its own. It is only aware of itself as a repeatedly up-dated autobiography. The ego does not actually exist - it is an illusion of continuity."
- Yatri
only the way you see it."
- Thaddeus Golas
But are they? If our senses, the senses of you and me who are looking through the window, were more adequate than they are, might we not see all six 'material' objects and the magnetic fields surrounding them, with the attractions-and-repulsions connecting them, as one continuous whole? Or might we not perceive the attractions and repulsions as visible, and the 'material' objects as merely inferential, so that the communications between them were real and continual and immediate, and their clamorous interchange of verbal reaction totally inexistent?"
- Wei Wu Wei
"Suppose a man got drunk and lost his awareness during that time. What happens when the effect of the alcohol goes away?"
"He becomes aware of himself again."
"This is how the external circumstances affect you."
- Ambalal Muljibhai Patel
"This state is not in your interest. You are only interested in continuity. You want to continue, probably on a different level, and to function in a different dimension, but you want to continue somehow. You wouldn't touch this with a barge pole. This is going to liquidate what you call 'you', all of you - higher self, lower self, soul, Atman, conscious, subconscious - all of that. You come to a point, and then you say, "I need time." So Sadhana (inquiry and religious endeavor) comes into the picture, and you say to yourself, "Tomorrow I will understand." This structure is born of time and functions in time, but does not come to an end through time. If you don't understand now, you are not going to understand tomorrow. What you are looking for does not exist. You would rather tread an enchanted ground with beatific visions of a radical transformation of that non-existent self of yours into a state of being which is conjured up by some bewitching phrases. That takes you away from your natural state - it is a movement away from yourself. To be yourself requires extraordinary intelligence. You are 'blessed' with that intelligence; nobody need give it to you, nobody can take it away from you. He who lets that express itself in its own way is a natural man."
- U.G. Krishnamurti
"As we are already that which we seek, all that is needed is a 180 degree turn to look one's self in the eye. But the courage needed to turn to face the Void or the 'Faceless' is far more than most of us possess. So we manufacture fantasy worlds of power, magic and the paranormal, and blissful flights to describe what we think enlightenment might be rather than truly facing its shattering nature."
- Yatri
"The earth was the color of the sky; the hills, the green, ripening fields, the trees and the dry, sandy river-bed were the color of the sky; every rock on the hills, the big boulders, were the clouds and they were the rocks. Heaven was the earth and the earth was heaven; the setting sun had transformed everything. The sky was blazing fire, bursting in every streak of cloud, in every stone, in every blade of grass, in every grain of sand. The sky was ablaze with green, purple, violet, indigo, with the fury of flame. Over that hill it was a vast sweep of purple and gold; over the southern hills a burning delicate green and fading blues; to the east there was a counter sunset as splendid in cardinal red and burnt ochre, magenta and fading violet. The counter sunset was exploding in splendor as in the west; a few clouds had gathered themselves around the setting sun and they were pure, smokeless fire which would never die. The vastness of this fire and its intensity penetrated everything and entered the earth. The earth was the heavens and the heavens the earth. And everything was alive and bursting with color and color was god, not the god of man. The hills became transparent, every rock and boulder was without weight, floating in color and the distant hills were blue, the blue of all the seas and the sky. The fields were intense pink and green, a stretch of immediate attention. And the road that crossed the valley was purple and white, so alive that it was one of the rays that raced across the sky. You were of that light, burning, furious, exploding, without shadow, without root and word. And as the sun went further down, every color became more violent, more intense and you were completely lost, past all recalling. It was an evening that had no memory."
- J.Krishnamurti
"Every time a thought is born, you are born. When the thought is gone, you are gone. But the 'you' does not let the thought go, and what gives continuity to this 'you' is thinking. Actually there's no permanent entity in you, no totality of all your thoughts and experiences. You think that there is 'somebody' who is feeling your feelings - that's the illusion. I can say it is an illusion but it is not an illusion to you."
- U.G. Krishnamurti
Before our dreams (or terrors) persisted
in mythology and cosmogony,
even before time coined itself in days, there existed,
already, the sea. It was. There was always the sea.
But who is the sea? Who is that old, undisciplined,
violent creature, who's gnawing away under
the pillars of the earth, who's also chance and wind,
one and many oceans, and abyss and wonder?
Staring upon the sea, we see it as though
for the first time, sensing the splendor of all free
and elemental things: like afternoons, the glow
of the moon, or a blazing fire. But who is the sea?
And who am I? In time, when my days are passed,
and my final agony's done, I'll know, at last.
- Jorge Luis Borges
The paradox of the human mystery is that without a storehouse of knowledge in the form of language and symbols there can be no human phenomenon. Yet when that knowledge is used as if it is the actual direct experience of the individual, that selfsame storehouse becomes a graveyard turning humans into humanoids. When beliefs and symbols are identified as if they are the experiential world itself, then man becomes alienated from both himself and the world about him. Not only does he then live in a plastic universe, but he feels he does not need to explore it for himself. All a child has to do is look up his question in the answer book of the species and no further personal responsibility or curiosity is needed.
But truth is not so cheap. It needs courage and intelligence to explore unknown frontiers. Beliefs are cheap and they do seem great bargains at first. Ready-made answers are free. However, there is one small problem - there is no room for doubt. Doubt is the worm in the apple.
It is always the fear of a true-believer that somewhere, somewhen, someone will come along to disturb his cherished and borrowed ideas. Believers have to burn books, or heretics. At all costs they must repress that threat to their belief. If you have experienced the sunrise in the morning you don't announce, "I believe the sun." You have seen it. You know. Knowing is a direct experiential understanding, vibrant with life, authentic and individual. How can there be any doubt? You have seen the sun rise. But belief and knowledge can never be quite so sure; there's always a niggling doubt.
Beliefs are rigid, dead and frozen fish. If they ever did swim with life it was in the mind of the original innovator, who knew it. It was truth for him, without doubt or belief.
Truth is always individual, anyone else's truth is worthless. Truth is a non-transferable ticket which only bears one name."
- Yatri
Unknown Man
believe me,
than in half the creeds."
- Alfred Lord Tennyson
"The Master said, "Yu, have you ever been told of the Six Sayings about the Six Degenerations?"
Tzu-lu replied, "No, never."
The Master said, "Come, then; I will tell you. Love of Goodness without love of learning degenerates into silliness. Love of wisdom without love of learning degenerates into utter lack of principle. Love of keeping promises without love of learning degenerates into villainy. Love of uprightness without love of learning degenerates into harshness. Love of courage without love of learning degenerates into turbulence. Love of patience without love of learning degenerates into mere recklessness."
- Confucius
The Analects
"I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections. And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly, that I am ill. I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self, and the wounds to the soul take a long, long time, only time can help and patience, and a certain difficult repentance, long, difficult repentance, realization of life's mistake, and the freeing oneself from the endless repetition of the mistake which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify."
- D. H. Lawrence
Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl
themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the
way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re-
infolding,
entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of themselves a
visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by
minutest fractions the water's downdrafts and upswirls, the
dockside cycles of finally - arriving boat - wakes, there where
they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into
itself (it has those layers) a real current though mostly
invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing
motion that forces change -
this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets
what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing
is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by
each glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself,
also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something
at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through
in the wind, I look in and say take this, this is
what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen
now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only
something I did. I could not choose words. I am free to go.
I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never.
It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.
- Jorie Graham
"There are people one meets in books or in life whom one does not merely observe, meet, or know. A deep resonance of one's entire being is immediately set up with the entire being of the other (Cor ad cor loquitur) - heart speaks to heart in the wholeness of the language of music; true friendship is a kind of singing."
- Thomas Merton
The Red Diary
"I only wish I had such eyes," the King remarked in a fretful tone.
"To see Nobody! And at that distance too!"
- Lewis Carroll
"Even the intellectual understanding of the inexistence of our 'selves' is a rare and bitter attainment which few even attempt. And that is only the elimination round which qualifies us for access to Reality."
- Wei Wu Wei
a crystal willow, a poplar of water,
a tall fountain the wind arches over,
a tree deep-rooted yet dancing still,
a course of a river that turns, moves on,
doubles back, and comes full circle,
forever arriving:
the calm course
of the stars or an unhurried spring,
water with eyes closed welling over
with oracles all night long,
a single presence in a surge of waves,
wave after wave till it covers all,
a reign of green that knows no decline,
like the flash of wings unfolding in the sky,
I travel your body, like the world,
your belly is a plaza full of sun,
your breasts two churches where blood
performs its own, parallel rites,
my glances cover you like ivy,
you are a city the sea assaults,
a stretch of ramparts split by the light
in two halves the color of peaches,
a domain of salt, rocks and birds,
under the rule of oblivious noon,
dressed in the color of my desires,
you go your way naked as my thoughts,
I travel your eyes, like the sea,
tigers drink their dreams in those eyes,
the hummingbird burns in those flames,
I travel your forehead, like the moon,
like the cloud that passes through your thoughts,
I travel your belly, like your dreams,
your skirt of corn ripples and sings,
your skirt of crystal, your skirt of water,
your lips, your hair, your glances rain
all through the night, and all day long
you open my chest with your fingers of water,
you close my eyes with your mouth of water,
you rain on my bones, a tree of liquid
sending roots of water into my chest,
I travel your length, like a river,
I travel your body, like a forest,
like a mountain path that ends at a cliff
I travel along the edge of your thoughts,
and my shadow falls from your white forehead,
my shadow shatters, and I gather the pieces
and go with no body, groping my way,
...because two bodies, naked and entwined,
leap over time, they are invulnerable,
nothing can touch them, they return to the source,
there is no you, no I, no tomorrow,
no yesterday, no names, the truth of two
in a single body, a single soul,
oh total being...
to love is to battle, if two kiss
the world changes, desires take flesh
thoughts take flesh, wings sprout
on the backs of the slave, the world is real
and tangible, wine is wine, bread
regains its savor, water is water,
to love is to battle, to open doors,
to cease to be a ghost with a number
forever in chains, forever condemned
by a faceless master;
the world changes
if two look at each other and see
I follow my raving, rooms, streets,
I grope my way through corridors of time,
I climb and descend its stairs, I touch
its walls and do not move, I go back
to where I began, I search for your face,
I walk through the streets of myself
under an ageless sun, and by my side
you walk like a tree, you walk like a river,
and talk to me like the course of a river,
you grow like wheat between my hands,
you throb like a squirrel between my hands,
you fly like a thousand birds, and your laugh
is like the spray of the sea, your head
is a star between my hands, the world
grows green again when you smile,
eating an orange,
the world changes
if two, dizzy and entwined, fall
on the grass: the sky comes down, trees
rise, space becomes nothing but light
and silence, open space for the eagle
of the eye, the white tribe of clouds
goes by, and the body weighs anchor,
the soul sets sail, and we lose
our names and float adrift in the blue
and green, total time where nothing
happens but its own, easy crossing
- when was life ever truly ours?
when are we ever what we are?
we are ill-reputed, nothing more
than vertigo and emptiness, a frown in the mirror,
horror and vomit, life is never
truly ours, it always belongs to the others,
life is no one's, we all are life -
bread of the sun for the others,
the others that we all are -
when I am I am another, my acts
are more mine when they are the acts
of others, in order to be I must be another,
leave myself, search for myself
in the others, the others that don't exist
if I don't exist, the others that give me
total existence, I am not,
there is no I, we are always us,
life is other, always there,
further off, beyond you and
beyond me, always on the horizon,
life which unlives us and makes us strangers,
that invents our face and wears it away,
hunger for being, oh death, our bread.
- Octavio Paz
That's where the light enters you. And don't believe for a moment
that you're healing yourself."
- Rumi
we must
we must bring
our own light
to the
darkness.
nobody is going
to do it
for us.
as the young boys
ski
down the
slopes
as the fry cook
gets his last
paycheck
as dog chases
dog
as the chessmaster
loses more than
the game
we must bring
our own light
to the
darkness.
nobody is going
to do it
for us,
as the lonely
telephone
anybody
anywhere
as the great beast
trembles
in nightmare
as the final season
leaps into
focus
nobody is going
to do it
for us.
- Charles Bukowski
Septuagenarian Stew
First it too entered a dream state - the "Divine Dream". The first dream was of creation and, in exactly the same way as we identify with the impressions of our own created dreams, Existence did likewise.
It is said that the "Divine Dream" took the form of the trinity of; "Sat" (power), "Chit" (knowledge) and "Anand" (bliss). But on awakening as a human these divine aspects became Energy, Mind and Body because they existed on the lower levels of manifestation.
Now Existence finally awakens but now the problem is that It only does so at the level of the human. It experiences Itself as us. The Void has gained consciousness in this way, but only in our gross form. It no longer dreams the Divine Dream of Creation, and It now is no longer unconscious, but It has managed to awaken with a false awareness and a false identity. When the Void awakens to ask "Who am I?" the answer is the false: "I am human." The face in the mirror is quite oblivious to its true Reality as the Eternal and Infinite Radiant Void. The evolution of consciousness has been gained at a bizarre cost.
So here we can view the so-called journey in an entirely different light. Only by re-tracing the steps of the Divine Dream, consciously following all the stages back to the Original State of Void can we finally understand "Who am I?" For, when last in that state the Void was unconscious and asleep but now the face in the mirror is conscious of its true self and can answer with an ecstatic cry "I am VOID." This is surely the ultimate in both human absurdity and ecstatic cosmic humor. For here is the great joke: the whole quest was a dream and that final recognition is the belly laugh of Existence.
When the void looks into the mirror
It sees us
When we look into the Void
we see the mirror
When we look in the mirror
We see the Void
When the mirror looks in the mirror ...
It laughs."
- Yatri
do the work -
and what’s the Work?
To ease the pain of living.
Everything else, drunken
dumbshow."
- Allen Ginsberg
Mind Writing Slogans
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- Sam Abrams
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