re(pair

.

not two

.

The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different.

–Hippocrates

.

self-identity

.

Each cell of a multicellular body has a self-identity; consciousness identifies with each of them as it carries out its individual conditioned functions. Any conglomerate of cells such as an organ that involves self-referential quantum measurement at the conglomerate level of functioning also has self-identity.

–Amit Goswami
Quantum Doctor

.

every(thing

.

Everything is natural. The light on your fingertips is starlight. Life begins with coiling — molecules and nebulae. Cruelty, selfishness, and vanity are boring. Each self is many selves. Reason is beauty. Light and darkness are arbitrary divisions.

Cleanliness is as undefinable and as natural as filth. The physiological body is pure spirit. Monotony is madness. The frontier is both outside and inside. The universe is the messiah. The senses are gods and goddesses. Where the body is — there are all things.

–Michael McClure

.

many mansions

.

What we call the body is not feet or shins,
The body, likewise, is not thighs or loins.
It’s not the belly nor indeed the back,
And from the chest and arms the body is not formed.
 
The body is not ribs or hands,
Armpits, shoulders, bowels, or entrails;
It is not the head or throat:
From none of these is “body” constituted.

If “body,” step by step,
Pervades and spreads itself throughout its members,
Its parts indeed are present in the parts,
But where does the “body,” in itself, abide!

If “body,” single and entire,
Is present in the hand and other members,
However many parts there are, the hand and all the rest,
You’ll find an equal quantity of “bodies.”

If “body” is not outside or within its parts,
How is it, then, residing in its members?
And since it has no basis other than its parts,
How can it be said to be at all?

Thus there is no “body” in the limbs,
But from illusion does the idea spring,
To be affixed to a specific shape—
Just as when a scarecrow is mistaken for a man.

As long as the conditions are assembled,
A body will appear and seem to be a man.
As long as all the parts are likewise present,
It’s there that we will see a body.

Likewise, since it is a group of fingers,
The hand itself is not a single entity.
And so it is with fingers, made of joints—
And joints themselves consist of many parts.

These parts themselves will break down into atoms,
And atoms will divide according to direction.
These fragments, too, will also fall to nothing.
Thus atoms are like empty space—
they have no real existence.

All form, therefore, is like a dream,
And who will be attached to it, who thus investigates!
The body, in this way, has no existence;
What is male, therefore, and what is female!


–Shantideva
The Way of the Bodhisattva

.

as above

.

As is the human body,
So is the cosmic body.

As is the human mind,
So is the cosmic mind.

As is the microcosm,
So is the macrocosm.

As is the atom,
So is the universe.


–The Upanishads

.

if I am not conjoined

.

If I am not conjoined through the uniting of the Below and the Above,
I break down into three parts:

the serpent, and in that or some other animal form I roam, living nature daimonically, arousing fear and longing.

the human soul, living forever within you.

the celestial soul, as such dwelling with the Gods, far from you and unknown to you, appearing in the form of a bird.
 

–Carl Jung
liber novus/ the red book
(black book 6- 1916)

.

infinite distances

 

.

Once the realization is accepted that
even between the closest human beings infinite
distances continue to exist, a wonderful living
side by side can grow up, 

if they succeed in loving the
distance between them which makes it
possible for each to see the other
whole against the sky.


–Rainer Maria Rilke

.

sitting together

.

We sit in this courtyard,

two forms, shadow outlines with one soul.

Birdsound, leaf moving, early evening star,

fragrant damp, and a sweet sickle curve of moon.

You and I in a round, unselved idling

in the garden-beauty detail.

The raucous parrots laugh,

and we laugh inside their laughter, 

the two of us on a bench in Konya, 

yet amazingly in Khorasan and Iraq as well.

Friends abiding this form,

yet also in another, outside of time, you and I.


–Rumi

 
.

questions

.

Consciousness is not mind; it is the ground of being, the ground of both matter and mind. Matter and mind are both possibilities of consciousness. When consciousness converts theses possibilities in a (quantum) collapse event of actual experience, some of the possibilities are collapsed as physical and some as mental.

In this way, consciousness clearly is seen as the mediator of the interaction between mind and body, and there is no dualism (Goswami 2000).

... What mediates the interaction of  mind and matter? Consciousness does. What maintains the parallel functioning of mind and brain? Consciousness does.

–Amit Goswami
Quantum Doctor

.

that, this

.

You cannot see That which is the Seer of seeing;
you cannot hear That which is the Hearer of hearing;
you cannot think of That which is the Thinker of thought;
you cannot know That which is the Knower of knowledge. 

This is your Self, that is within all;
everything else but This is perishable.

–The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

.

needful things

 .


Be suspicious of what you want.

—Rumi

.

the law that marries all things

.

1.
The cloud is free only
to go with the wind.

The rain is free
only in falling.

The water is free only
in its gathering together,

in its downward courses,
in its rising into the air.

2.
In law is rest
if you love the law,
if you enter, singing, into it
as water in its descent.

3.
Or song is truest law,
and you must enter singing;
it has no other entrance.

It is the great chorus
of parts. The only outlawry
is in division.

4.
Whatever is singing
is found, awaiting the return
of whatever is lost.

5.
Meet us in the air
over the water,
sing the swallows.

Meet me, meet me,
the redbird sings,
here here here here.


—Wendell Berry

.
andy goldsworthy
.

finishing up

.

I wonder if I know enough to know what it's really like
to have been here: have I seen sights enough to give
seeing over: the clouds, I've waited with white
October clouds like these this afternoon often before and

taken them in, but white clouds shade other white
ones gray, had I noticed that: and though I've
followed the leaves of many falls, have I spent time with
the wire vines left when frost's red dyes strip the leaves

away: is more missing than was never enough: I'm sure
many of love's kinds absolve and heal, but were they passing
rapids or welling stirs: I suppose I haven't done and seen
enough yet to go, and, anyway, it may be way on on the way

before one picks up the track of the sufficient, the
world-round reach, spirit deep, easing and all, not just mind
answering itself but mind and things apprehended at once
as one, all giving all way, not a scrap of question holding back.
 

–A. R. Ammons
five branch tree

.
whiskeyriver
.

cutie

.

four words

 

.

Every child has known god,
not the god of names,
not the god of don’t,
not the god who does anything
weird,
but the god who only knows four words
and keeps repeating them, saying:
“Come dance with Me."

Come
Dance.


–Hafiz

.

we are all just walking each other home –Ram Das

.

Strange and beautiful
Are the stars tonight
That dance around your head
In your eyes I see that perfect world
I hope that doesn't sound too weird

And I want all the world to know
That your love's all I need
All that I need
And if we're lost
Then we are lost together
Yea if we're lost
Then we are lost together

I stand before this faceless crowd
And I wonder why I bother
So much controlled by so few
Stumbling from one disaster to another

I've heard it all so many times before
It's all a dream to me now
A dream to me now
And if we're lost
Then we are lost together
Yea if we're lost
Then we are lost together

In the silence of this whispered night
I listen only to your breath
And that second of a shooting star
Somehow it all makes sense

And I want all the world to know
That your love's all I need
All that I need
And if we're lost
Then we are lost together
Yea if we're lost
Then we are lost together 

.

 .

Ahead By A Century

First thing we'd climb a tree and maybe then we'd talk

Or sit silently and listen to our thoughts
With illusions of someday casting a golden light
No dress rehearsal, this is our life
And that's where the hornet stung me
And I had a feverish dream
With revenge and doubt
Tonight we smoke them out
You are ahead by a century (this is our life)
You are ahead by a century (this is our life)
You are ahead by a century
Stare in the morning shroud and then the day began
I tilted your cloud, you tilted my hand
Rain falls in real time and rain fell through the night
No dress rehearsal, this is our life
But that's when the hornet stung me
And I had a serious dream
With revenge and doubt
Tonight we smoke them out
You are ahead by a century (this is our life)
You are ahead by a century (this is our life)
You are ahead by a century
You are ahead by a century (this is our life)
You are ahead by a century (this is our life)
You are ahead by a century
And disappointing you is getting me down 

 💗

"If we were on a star, what would we see of that which exists on the earth?"

.

If we found ourselves on a star, and if, from there we could see the life on our planet, we should not see modern civilization. We should for example see the events occurring in Egypt in the time of the Paraohs.

–Alexander Ananoff


Although the interval of time that ... elapses between the moment when we perceive the image of an object and that at which it "left" may be infinitely short, the principle involved is the same as that which relates to the thousands of years taken by the image of the star to reach us.

In both cases the conclusion is: "those things we see are images of the past".

...

Is there any reason for lingering to discuss problems of this kind? –The Masters who inculcate the Secret Teachings do not think so ... the objects providing the subject on which our cleverness is exercised have no real existence.

What has to be understood is that theories and doctrines of all kinds are the fabrication of our mind.


–Alexandra David-Néel
The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

.

inner architecture

.

A person's life consists of a collection of events, the last of which could also change the meaning of the whole, not because it counts more than the previous ones but because once they are included in a life, events are arranged in an order that is not chronological but, rather, corresponds to an inner architecture.

–Italo Calvino

...

You must be ready to accept the possibility that there is a limitless range of awareness for which we now have no words; that awareness can expand beyond range of your ego, your self, your familiar identity, beyond everything you have learned, beyond your notions of space and time, beyond the differences which usually separate people from each other and from the world around them.

–Walter Evans-Wentz
The Tibetan Book of The Dead

.
whiskeyriver
.

the blessedness at the heart of things

.

In a different mode, or another plane of being, music is the equivalent of some of man’s most significant and most inexpressible experiences. By mysterious analogy it evokes in the mind of the listener, sometimes the phantom of these experiences, sometimes even the experiences themselves in their full force of life — it is a question of intensity; the phantom is dim, the reality, near and burning. Music may call up either; it is chance or providence which decides. The intermittences of the heart are subject to no known law.

...

After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. Music “says” things about the world, but in specifically musical terms. Any attempt to reproduce these musical statements “in our own words” is necessarily doomed to failure. We cannot isolate the truth contained in a piece of music; for it is a beauty-truth and inseparable from its partner. The best we can do is to indicate in the most general terms the nature of the musical beauty-truth under consideration and to refer curious truth-seekers to the original. Thus, the introduction to the Benedictus in the Missa Solemnis is a statement about the blessedness that is at the heart of things. But this is about as far as “our words” will take us. If we were to start describing in our “own words” exactly what Beethoven felt about this blessedness, how he conceived it, what he thought its nature to be, we should very soon find ourselves writing lyrical nonsense… Only music, and only Beethoven’s music, and only this particular music of Beethoven, can tell us with any precision what Beethoven’s conception of the blessedness at the heart of things actually was. If we want to know, we must listen — on a still June night, by preference, with the breathing of the invisible sea for background to the music and the scent of lime trees drifting through the darkness, like some exquisite soft harmony apprehended by another sense.


–Aldous Huxley
Music at Night and Other Essays

.
via Maria Popova at Brainpickings
see entire article here
.

co-inherence

.

The chooser's happiness lies in his congruence with the chosen,
The peace of iron filings, obedient to the forces of the magnetic field.

Calm is the soul that is emptied of all self,
In the eternal moment of co-inherence.
A happiness within you - but not yours.


–Dag Hammarskjöld
from Markings

.

the thing felt

.

In that high place in the darkness the two oddly sensitive human atoms held each other tightly and waited.

In the mind of each was the same thought.

‘I have come to this lonely place and here is this other,’ was the substance of the thing felt.


—Sherwood Anderson

.

Atoms are not things. –Werner Heisenberg

 

–Neil deGrasse Tyson

.

Goethe on Science, excerpts

.

We can never directly see
what is true, that is, identical with
what is divine: we look at it
only in reflection, in example,
in the symbol, in individual
and related phenomena.
We perceive it as a life
beyond our grasp,
yet we cannot deny
our need to grasp it.

...

The highest achievement of the human being as a thinking being is to have probed what is knowable and quietly to revere what is unknowable.

 ...

Science of nature has one goal:
To find both manyness and whole.
Nothing 'inside' or 'Out There,'
The 'outer' world is all 'In Here.'
This mystery grasp without delay,
This secret always on display.
The true illusion celebrate,
Be joyful in the serious game!
No living thing lives separate:
One and Many are the same.


–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(1749 - 1832)

.

a contemporary

 

.

What if I came down now out of these

solid dark clouds that build up against the mountain

day after day with no rain in them

and lived as one blade of grass

in a garden in the south when the clouds part in winter

from the beginning I would be older than all the animals

and to the last I would be simpler

frost would design me and dew would disappear on me

sun would shine through me

I would be green with white roots

feel worms touch my feet as a bounty

have no name and no fear

turn naturally to the light

know how to spend the day and night

climbing out of myself

all my life

 
—W. S. Merwin

.
merwinconservancy
.

runnng on rain and air

.

Every year a given tree creates absolutely from scratch ninety-nine percent of its living parts. 

Water lifting up tree trunks can climb one hundred and fifty feet an hour; in full summer a tree can, and does, heave a ton of water every day. 

A big elm in a single season might make as many as six million leaves, wholly intricate, without budging an inch; I couldn't make one. 

A tree stands there, accumulating deadwood, mute and rigid as an obelisk, but secretly it seethes, it splits, sucks and stretches; it heaves up tons and hurls them out in a green, fringed fling. 

No person taps this free power; the dynamo in the tulip tree pumps out even more tulip tree, and it runs on rain and air.


–Annie Dillard
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

.

within this tree

.

Within this tree

another tree

inhabits the same body;

within this stone

another stone rests,

its many shades of grey

the same,

its identical

surface and weight.

And within my body,

another body,

whose history, waiting,

sings: there is no other body,

it sings,

there is no other world.


–Jane Hirshfield

.

odd discoveries

 

.

We leave traces of ourselves wherever we go, on whatever we touch. 

One of the odd discoveries made by small boys is that when two pebbles are struck sharply against each other they emit, briefly, a curious smoky odor. 

The phenomenon fades when the stones are immaculately cleaned, vanishes when they are heated to furnace temperature, and reappears when they are simply touched by the hand again, before being struck.


–Lewis Thomas
The Lives of a Cell

.