on accessing the level of truth, the level of source

 

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Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. 

On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery. 


—Cormac McCarthy
The Road

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the veins of the spirit

    

 

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Consciousness is reflected in a word as a sun in a drop of water. A word relates to consciousness as a living cell relates to a whole organism, as an atom relates to the universe. 

A word is a microcosm of human consciousness.


—Lev Vygotsky
Thought and Language, 2012, p.271 

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Plants are all chemists, tirelessly assembling the molecules of the world, and in their transactions with insects, birds, animals, and fungi, they find elaborate ways to defend themselves, to seduce pollinators, to confuse.


—Gary Snyder

 .

Every tree, every plant, has a spirit. People may say that the plant has no mind. I tell them that the plant is alive and conscious. 

A plant may not talk, but there is a spirit in it that is conscious, that sees everything, which is the soul of the plant, its essence, what makes it alive. The channels through which the water and sap move are the veins of the spirit.

—Pablo Amaringo

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here we stand

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I and this mystery; here we stand.

—Walt Whitman

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relevant to every(thing

 

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To demystify consciousness we must look beyond known physical quantities. But how? 

One possibility, simple and bold, is that individual particles themselves are endowed with an innate attribute of consciousness—call it proto-consciousness to avoid imagery of elated electrons or cranky quarks—that cannot be described in terms of anything more fundamental. 

That is, our description of reality must widen to include an intrinsic and irreducible subjective quality that is infused in nature’s elementary material ingredients. And it is this quality of matter that we have long overlooked, which is why we’ve so far failed to explain the physical basis of conscious experience.

How can a swirl of mindless particles create mind? They can’t.
To create a conscious mind you need a swirl of mindful particles.

By pooling their proto-conscious qualities, a large collection of particles can yield familiar conscious experience. The proposal, then, is that particles are endowed with a well-studied collection of physical properties (mass, electric charge, nuclear charges, and quantum mechanical spin) as well as the previously neglected quality of proto-consciousness.

Reviving panpsychist beliefs, whose historical roots reach as far back as ancient Greece, Australian philospher David J. Chalmers entertains the possibility that consciousness is relevant to anything and everything made of particles, whether a bat’s brain or a baseball bat.

—Brian Greene
UNTIL THE END OF TIME

(heroic)

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Sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, colour is colour, but in truth there are only atoms and the void.

—Democritus 460–c. 370 BC

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actually

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There is at the back of all our lives an abyss of light, more blinding and unfathomable than any abyss of darkness; and it is the abyss of actuality, of existence, of the fact that things truly are, and that we ourselves are incredibly and sometimes almost incredulously real.

It is the fundamental fact of being, as against not being; it is unthinkable, yet we cannot unthink it, though we may sometimes be unthinking about it; unthinking and especially unthanking. For he who has realized this reality knows that it does outweigh, literally to infinity, all lesser regrets or arguments for negation, and that under all our grumblings there is a subconscious substance of gratitude. 

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.


—G. K. Chesterton

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come to the conclusion

.

You know you are. 

How do you know it? 

And with what do you know it? 

This is the sum total of my teaching needed to put you on the right track, its very quintessence.

Come to the conclusion: I am unborn, I was unborn and I shall remain unborn.

Be aware of being conscious and seek the source of consciousness.

That is all.


—Nisargadatta Maharaj

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what is the standard of Reality?

 

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You want somehow or other to maintain that the world is real. What is the standard of Reality? That alone is Real which exists by itself, which reveals itself by itself and which is eternal and unchanging. Does the world exist by itself? Was it ever seen without the aid of the mind? 

In sleep there is neither mind nor world. When awake there is the mind and there is the world. What does this invariable concomitance mean? 

You are familiar with the principles of inductive logic, which are considered the very basis of scientific investigation. Why do you not decide this question of the reality of the world in the light of those accepted principles of logic? 

Of yourself you can say ‘I exist’. That is, yours is not mere existence, it is Existence of which you are conscious. Really, it is Existence identical with Consciousness.

—Ramana Maharshi

.

 

 

There is no time in nature. There is rhythm in nature, yes. There is motion in nature. But the clock as a measure of motion is a human artifact. 

The world, as it spins on its axis, doesn’t tick.

—Alan Watts 1967

 

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As the self moves in this body from childhood to youth to old age, so it passes into another body at death. 

The wise are not confused by this change.

—Bhagavad Gita, 2.13

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A physicist is just an atom’s way of looking at itself. —Niels Bohr

   

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One can no longer maintain the division between the observer and the observed (which is implicit in the atomistic view that regards each of these as separate aggregates of atoms). Rather, both observer and observed are merging and interpenetrating aspects of one whole reality, which is indivisible and unanalysable.

Reality is what we take to be true. 

What we take to be true is what we believe. 

What we believe is based upon our perceptions. 

What we perceive depends upon what we look for. 

What we look for depends upon what we think. 

What we think depends upon what we perceive. 

What we perceive determines what we believe. 

What we believe determines what we take to be true. 

What we take to be true is our reality.


—David Bohm
Wholeness and the Implicit Order

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Physics says: go to sleep. Of course
you’re tired. Every atom in you
has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes
nonstop from mitosis to now.
Quit tapping your feet. They’ll dance
inside themselves without you. Go to sleep. 

Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch
by inch America is giving itself
to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness
lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch.
You aren’t alone. All of the continents used to be
one body. You aren’t alone. Go to sleep. 

Astronomy says: the sun will rise tomorrow,
Zoology says: on rainbow-fish and lithe gazelle,
Psychology says: but first it has to be night, so
Biology says: the body-clocks are stopped all over town
and History says: here are the blankets, layer on layer, 
down and down.


—Albert Goldbarth
The Sciences Sing a Lullaby

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sitting together

 

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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 

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sitting together

clearly

Earth and Moon as seen from Space by Japanese satellite Himawari-8

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The world is sacred, of course,
it is full of gods, numina,
great powers and presences.

We give some of them names –
Mars of the fields and the war;
Vesta the fire;
Ceres the grain;
Mother Tellus the earth;
the Penates of the storehouse.
The rivers, the springs.

And in the stormcloud and
the light is the great power
called the father god.

But they aren’t people.
They don’t love and hate,
they aren’t for or against.
They accept the worship due them,
which augments their power,
through which we live.


—Ursula K. Le Guin (1929 - 2018)

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This material dimension is just samsara. See it and you see samsara for what it’s worth. But what does it mean? 

Nothing but shifting names and changing forms. But when the ego drops away you experience this Flux. And it is beautiful not just because it is dazzling, but because the act of seeing it as it is necessitates the ego’s oblivion. The Veil is lifted and you see clearly.


—Chuang Tzu
excerpts

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wait - what ?

.

 

earthspeak

 

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Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.

—Rabindranath Tagore

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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

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I came to realize clearly that mind is no other than

mountains and rivers and the great wide earth,

the sun and the moon and the stars. 

—Dogen

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love, and do as you like! —St. Augustine

 

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People who exude love are apt to give things away. They are in every way like rivers; they stream. And so when they collect possessions and things they like, they are apt to give them to other people. 

Because, have you ever noticed that when you start giving things away, you keep getting more?


—Alan Watts

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Effortlessly,
Love flows from God to man,
Like a bird
Who rivers the air
Without moving her wings.

Thus we move in His world
One in body and soul,
Though outwardly separate in form.

As the Source strikes the note,
Humanity sings -
The Holy Spirit is our harpist,
And all the strings
Which are touched in Love
Must sound.


—Mechtild of Magdeburg
(1210-1282)

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free(dom

 

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Imagining we have free will is
exactly as if water spoke to itself:  

I can make waves 
(yes! in the sea during a storm), 

I can rush downhill 
(yes! in the river bed), 

I can plunge down foaming and gushing 
(yes! in the waterfall), 

I can rise freely as a stream of water into the air 
(yes! in the fountain), 

I can, finally, boil away and disappear 
(yes! at a certain temperature); 

but I am doing none of these things now, 
and am of my own accord remaining quiet 
and clear water in the reflecting pond.


—Arthur Schopenhauer

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the law that marries all things

   

andy goldsworthy

. 

 

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

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there is nothing new under the sun –Ecclesiastes 1:9

 

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There is nothing new you will find here. 

The work we are doing is timeless. 

It was the same ten thousand years ago. 

Centuries roll on.


—Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

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question

.

Who is this self on whom we meditate?

Is it the self by which we see, hear, smell and taste,
Through which we speak in words? Is self the mind
By which we perceive, direct, understand,
Know, remember, think, will, desire and love?

These are but servants of the Self, who is
Pure consciousness.
The self is all in all.

He is all the gods, the five elements,
Earth, air, fire, water, and space; all creatures,
Great or small, born of eggs, of wombs, of heat,
Of shoots; horses, cows, elephants, men and women,
All beings that walk, all beings that fly,
And all that neither walk nor fly. Prajna
Is pure consciousness, guiding all. The world
Rests on Prajna, and prajna is Brahman.

Those who realize Brahman live in joy
And go beyond death. Indeed
They go beyond death.

Om shanti shanti shanti


—The Aitareya Upanishad, Part III
Eknath Easwaren version,
Easwaren's Classics of Indian Spirituality, Book 2

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question

 

. 

Do you think I know what I'm doing? 

That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself?

As much as a pen knows what it's writing, 

or the ball can guess where it's going next. 


—Rumi 

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tell me why

.

Our weaknesses are the way to God

Tell me why it is through the body
through torment of the body you speak to the spirit
why through leprosy fever deafness

You are a healer and not a priest
you take in your hands the head of the dying
from one lump you bring forth new life 
like bread you multiply the body

You come through bodies not through sunsets
and the hard strong hand of blood and flesh
holds in the palm like a sparrow
the muscle of the human heart


—Anna Kamienska
Astonishments

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Do not turn your head. 

Keep looking at the bandaged place.

That is where the light enters. 

And do not believe for a moment 

that you are healing yourself.

—Rumi

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there is a ground of unity

 

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If you cannot find a friend who is good, wise, and loving, walk alone, like a king who has renounced his kingdom, or an elephant roaming at will in the forest.


—Buddha

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There is a profound ground of unity that is more pertinent and authentic than all the unilateral dimensions of our lives. This we discover when we keep open the door of our heart.

This is one’s ultimate responsibility, and it is not dependent upon whether the heart of another is kept open for us.


—Howard Thurman
Stay Open

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The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking

it is necessary to go through dark and deeper dark

and not to turn


—Stanley Kunitz
The Testing Tree

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cosmic unit

  

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In an ideal world, as connectivity progresses, each human of our world would function the way a cell functions in a human body. We would see each other in the context of our individuality but realise how our individual actions both directly and indirectly affect the greater Earth. 

It would be as if our Atmans (our individual spirits) could merge into a Brahmin (a cosmic unity)

—Kiran Bhat

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All day I have been reading
about the invisible world, the one
that’s always trying to reach us. 

What if we could hear
the small round o’s of dirt,
the chant of stars and plants,
carbon and sulphur, calling to each other, innumerable
to innumerable, a throat at every blade of grass.

—Ellery Akers
Night: Volcano, California

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listen

Don Nace • Just Passing Through

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Here it is: the new way of living with the world inside of us so we cannot lose it, and we cannot be lost. You and me are us and them, and it and sky. 

—Ada Limon

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Our hands imbibe like roots, so I place them on what is beautiful in this world. And I fold them in prayer, and they draw from the heavens, light. 

—St. Francis of Assisi

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In the morning there is a meaning.
In the evening there is feeling.
 

—Gertrude Stein
Tender Buttons
1914

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largerloves

wait - what ?

.

if you live well

hero

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1. India

In India in their lives they happen
again and again, being people or
animals. And if you live well
your next time could be even better.

That's why they often look into your eyes
and you know some far-off story
with them and you in it, and some
animal waiting over at the side.

Who would want to happen just once?
It's too abrupt that way, and
when you're wrong, it's too late
to go back - you've done it forever.

And you can't have that soft look when you
pass, the way they do it in India.

2. Having It Be Tomorrow

Day, holding its lantern before it,
moves over the whole earth slowly
to brighten that edge and push it westward.
Shepherds on upland pastures begin fires
for breakfast, beads of light that extend
miles of horizon. Then it's noon and
coasting toward a new tomorrow.

If you're in on that secret, a new land
will come every time the sun goes
climbing over it, and the welcome of children
will remain every day new in your heart.
Those around you don't have it new,
and they shake their heads turning grey every
morning when the sun comes up. And you laugh.

3. Being Nice And Old

After their jobs are done old people
cackle together. They look back and shiver,
all of that was so dizzying when it happened;
and now if there is any light at all it
knows how to rest on the faces of friends.
And any people you don't like, you just turn
the page a little more and wait while they
find out what time is and begin to bend
lower; or you can turn away
and let them drop off the edge of the world.

4. Good Ways To Live

At night outside it all moves or
almost moves - trees, grass,
touches of wind. The room you have
in the world is ready to change.
Clouds parade by, and stars in their
configurations. Birds from far
touch the fabric around them - you can
feel their wings move. Somewhere under
the earth it waits, that emanation
of all things. It breathes. It pulls you
slowly out through doors or windows
and you spread in the thin halo of night mist.

—William Stafford
ways to live
written just over a month before William Stafford's death in August, 1993
hero

.

need, then, is the net for all things. —Rumi

   

Paris at night, from the International Space Station

huge image, click on

.

 

In this world, time has three dimensions, like space. Just as an object may move in three perpendicular directions, corresponding to horizontal, vertical, and longitudinal, so an object may participate in three perpendicular futures. 

Each future moves in a different direction of time. Each future is real. 

At every point of decision, the world splits into three worlds, each with the same people, but different fates for those people. In time, there are an infinity of worlds.


—Alan Lightman, American physicist, writer, and social entrepreneur. He is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Einstein’s Dreams, London, Vintage, 2004. 

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We cannot live only for ourselves.

A thousand fibers connect us

with our fellow men;

and among those fibers,

as sympathetic threads,

our actions run as causes,

and they come back

to us as effects.


—Herman Melville
(1819 - 1891)

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sight

   

.

Once

a single cell

found that it was full of light

and for the first time there was seeing

when

I was a bird

I could see where the stars had turned

and I set out on my journey

high

in the head of a mountain goat

I could see across a valley

under the shining trees something moving

deep

in the green sea

I saw the two sides of the water

and swam between them

I

look at you

in the first light of the morning

for as long as I can

—W. S. Merwin
hero

.

My eyes were glued on life and they were full of tears. —Jack Kerouac

.

Your retina is physically bombarded by photons, giving rise to the mechanics of sight. Coded chemical information begins to course through the optic nerves leading from the eye to the brain. These data have no color in them, however, because photons are colorless, and so are optic signals. Color is known in consciousness alone.

That is how the quality of knowingness is embedded in existence. 

You could not be here without knowingness, which applies not just to colour but to all five senses.


—Deepak Chopra
Total Meditation

.

The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.

The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. 

Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man’s mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.


―Cormac McCarthy
Blood Meridian

  

.

 

The apathy that the gaze of the animal expresses after the combat is the sign of an existence that is essentially on a level with the world in which it moves like water in water.


—Georges Bataille
Theory of Religion

 

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the perfume of lucid sight

 

.

It is understood that
Sleep is the desire for
A period of rest
For the body.
It is less understood that
Sleep is the desire for
A period of rest
Away from the body.

What constitutes the sense of 'I am this' is
Constantly changing while
What constitutes the sense of 'I am' is unmoving.
The shift in the attention from
The former to the latter is
The perfume of lucid sight.


—Wu Xin (Wu Hsin, 无心)
The Lost Writings of Wu-Hsin

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