#also catching a train in france? good luck. coming out of paris alive? good luck. nightclubs in Paris? good luck

[chqnified]

"we should go on a backpack trip across Europe" ....... Excuse me?!

[ulfwolf]

Into The Light -- Musing 196

The light perceives nothing but light —The boy unfurls

It set out as a ripple in my feet and rose from there. Up through my calves, up through my thighs, my groin, my stomach, my lungs and chest and throat and into and through and out of my head like a glorious geyser erupting.

In my journal I later descried this as an “orgasm of the soul”.

Yes, I am well aware that the word “orgasm” is somewhat tainted (carries some not necessarily desired baggage) and perhaps demeaning and should have no business encroaching upon a spiritual experience but the fact remains: that is what it felt like: a rush that rose and roamed past and a thousand-fold outdistanced its physical counterpart.

No, I am not saying that there is such a thing as a spiritual orgasm, I’m just saying that this is what it felt like—my kneejerk description once I had a chance to catch my breath and look that the experience with less orgasmic eyes.

Building up to this—

The year is 1968. The month is August. My fiancé is still off in London and by this time (she’s already a good month overdue to return) not being very faithful (was my guess—which turned out to be the case); and me, I am hitchhiking from one Swedish town to the next trying to find a job, as in trying to find a firm that not only deploys the computer system that at this point I am pretty expert at (as an operator), but also has an opening and likes what they see in me. A daunting and so far unsuccessful task.

The thing was that I had recently given my notice at the firm I had worked at for the last couple of years because I was going to France to be a poet (I had the notion that I had been Baudelaire in a previous life, so I was in effect going home—or so ran my reasoning, or what masqueraded as reasoning—I think more rational minds call it imagination).

My plan to return to my Baudelaire roots ran into some serious trouble, however—as if me not speaking even a little bit of French wasn’t trouble enough. As it happened, this was the very summer that the Paris students picked to revolt and the bus company that was to bring me home to Paris cancelled the trip and refunded me my ticket. No way they were going to France under these unstable circumstances, not recommended at all.

So, here I am, fiancé-less and stranded in Sweden without a job (my firm—all too happy to see the back of me since they had no use for dead French poets, apparently, and would not take me back) and by now also without a place to live.

So, I headed for Gothenburg (second largest city in Sweden). Gray day. Not warm. Dreary town. No jobs to be had.

I figured Malmo (third largest city) next, and hitched a ride with a trucker going in that direction. He could take me as far as Helsingborg, he said, a smaller town about thirty miles north of Malmo.

“You don’t want to go to Malmo,” he tells me me as we approach his hometown, and went on to tell me that Helsingborg was the much nicer town. Friendlier. Not sure where it ranked size-wise, but I took him at his word, and decided to try my luck there.

Still no jobs though. But the guy at the employment agency and I got along really well. Recently divorced he needed someone to talk to, so he treated me to a nice lunch and then offered me to stay at his place (a small house by the beach a few miles north of Helsingborg—a place called Viken) for the night, perhaps longer. Say, until I found a job. I gladly accepted.

He was a good and very kind man (see my “Leif the Kind” fragment in this section).

As a matter of fact, a few days later he did find me a job. Not a computer job, but as a nurse at the then Santa Maria Hospital, which was a psychiatric hospital catering for the less fortunate, mentally. Would I want it?

I knew nothing about nursing the mentally disturbed, but that, he said, was not a problem. The hospital would train me in what I needed to know.

It wasn’t like I was expected to treat anyone, he said, just look after them and clean the floors. Sort of lunatic-sitting with grown-ups in the building is how I understood it.

Well, beggars can’t be choosers and all that. Again, I gladly accepted.

And yes, the hospital did provide training (of sorts—see the “Crash Course” fragment in this section); and not only that, it also provided a decent salary and room and board as part of the deal.

By now, I’m a happy beggar.

So began my late summer at Santa Maria.

Now, an important part of this story is that at this time I have begun a quest. For real this time. And not a petty one either: No, the grand one, the one for truth. Truth (capital T).

And as it turned out, that hospital—of all places—was the perfect place for such a search, as the story will tell.

I cannot pinpoint when I, purely intuitively, conceived, or decided, that the capital-T Truth, the one we’re all looking for, and have been since time immemorial, is that truth that is proven by everything. By every single thing; it seemed obvious to me. Anything short of everything would not be the ultimate truth, would it?

Truth, to be ultimate, so my thinking went, in order to be the one and only superior, capital-T Truth, must prove everything, and must be proven by everything; or it would not be ultimate. Stood to reason, I figured. So, that decided, I set out to gather evidence.

What would prove the Truth? Who was to decide? Well, I was. By what criteria? By my own intuitive sense of what the Truth is. Hold up in court? Doubt it. Right for me? Absolutely.

It is a strange fact—and I believe it is a fact—that the spirit can tell the fake from the real. The spirit, once it actually takes the time to look, does know. As in you know when someone is lying to you. As in you know what is right and what is wrong. In your heart of hearts, you know. That’s the thing. You know.

And I felt that I would know truth when I saw it. So, as I said, I set out to find it, gathering evidence.

A smile—Truth.

A river—Truth.

A polluted river—Not Truth.

A flower—Truth.

The sunrise—Truth.

The sunset—Truth.

A tender kiss—Truth.

Greed—Not Truth.

A pen that works really well—Truth.

That particular cloud—Truth.

A seagull—Truth.

Jealousy—Not Truth.

Harm—Not Truth.

Happiness—Truth.

Hashish—Not Truth.

Friends—Truth.

A new toothbrush—Truth.

A broken mirror—Truth.

Seven years of bad luck—Not Truth.

A really good meal—Truth.

Imagination—Truth.

Delusion—Not Truth.

Beer—Not Truth.

Music—Truth.

Poetry—Truth.

Alarming News—Not Truth.

Grief—Truth.

Et cetera, et cetera.

No, I didn’t write these things down; rather, I placed them inside an imaginary frame, upon an imaginary canvas, and I knew that when I had collected all the evidence I needed to collect, the picture inside the frame would then come alive. And alive, it would be the Truth. This was another intuitive know, but there you have it. So, I continued my gathering of evidence.

An amazing incident provided a huge piece to his puzzle, provided a large Truth.

His name was Kaiser, or that is what he was called (see the fragment “Kaiser” in this section). He was a patient at Santa Maria, and had been there ever since the end of the Second World War, when he had been transferred from one of the German concentration camps to this Swedish hospital.

Kaiser had not spoken a word since his arrival—hence he was deemed seriously mentally ill. In fact, or so I was told, Kaiser had not even smiled since his arrival—more grist for the mentally-ill mill.

All day, he would shuffle around the ward (never lifting his feet to walk), head bowed down, face set in a permanent frown (not unlike President Nixon’s, come to think of it). Every now and then he would cast a furtive glance in your direction, or at someone else, then he’d shuffle on, on his endless, shuffling way.

He was considered un-reachable as a human being. Beyond help, really. And the only treatment he received was two large daily doses of those drugs that mental hospitals give patients to make them more tractable, and which makes keeping things (like floors) clean so much easier.

One day I decided (again, intuitively) to bring my guitar to the ward and sing for them. The head nurse saw nothing wrong with that, and agreed. Might even do them some good.

So, I sat down and began to play. Soon most of the day room had gathered around me, curious, scared, confused some, and some intent on touching me and my guitar to make sure that this was really happening.

This is when Kaiser stopped shuffling around, and instead almost stormed in among the gathered throng and physically pulled away from me those who tried to touch me or my guitar. Done making sure I was not interfered with, he planted himself right in front of me, standing straight, and with the biggest grin on his face, shining really.

I had a hard time believing my eyes (as did, it turned out, the other nurses as well). The moment was magical, and riding on this magic, I just kept playing and Kaiser kept smiling. Then it was time for their meal and their meds.

Sitting up in bed that night, writing in my journal, I noted this amazing Truth (referring to Kaiser): The Spirit, I wrote, is that thing in a human life which cannot be killed.

Kaiser’s spirit, however deeply it had been buried, rose to the surface that day, and erupted in a smile. I knew this was a truth, an incredibly valuable truth.

The next day the head nurse called me into her office. Quite something with Kaiser, wasn’t it? she said. I agreed.

“Interesting that it was music that finally made him smile,” she said.

“Amazing,” I agreed.

“Do you know what he was before the war?” she asked.

I didn’t know, and told her so.

“A concert pianist,” she said.

The impact of that almost made me cry. Kaiser was a musician who had just heard live music for the first time in twenty-five years, and that live music had brought him, the unkillable spirit, awake.

Into the frame of Truth, Kaiser went, smiling and all.

A few days later I had a vision of sorts (see “The Painting” fragment in this section). I saw life, the world, the universe, everything, as a painting set in a vast and beautiful frame. And everyone and everything in that painting looked up and said “good,” looked down and said “bad.” They looked up and said, “God,” looked down and said, “The Devil.” They looked up and said, “heaven,” looked down and said, “hell.” Looked up and said, “beautiful,” looked down and said, “ugly.” Looked up and said, “strong,” looked down and said “weak.” And so on through the seemingly endless dichotomies we surround and choke ourselves with.

Yet, for all these up-and-down certainties, all that I could see, standing outside and not being part of the painted (un-painted, as it were), was a painting: neither good nor bad, neither ugly nor beautiful; it was just a painting. An illusion.

I also saw that I would have to consider myself “painted” in order to buy into and experience (and live by) those dichotomies.

Another Truth: A good patient-friend of mine was six feet tall and all muscle, but with a mental age of perhaps five. He had gotten it into his head that I was a prince from India. Why? I wondered. Because I was not afraid of the elephants, he explained. Right.

I liked this man so much that I wanted to give him my gold puzzle ring, you know those that consist of six or eight interlocking strands of gold that you must put together just so, or they will remain six or eight separate strands (see the “Bror and the Ring” fragment in this section).

Having decided to give this to him, I realized that I would have to teach him how to put it together, for were I to give it to him, and were he to drop it and then not be able to put it together again, well, I was afraid that this would break his heart.

So, I told him I was giving him this ring, let’s just sit down and I’ll show you how it works. And so, we sat down and took it apart and put it together again many times. And then he tried many times, and failed many times.

I showed him many more times. He tried and failed many more times. I showed him again. He tried again. Failed again.

After what seems like an hour, he looks right at me and says, “Keep the ring. I can never learn how to put it together. And if I drop it, and it breaks, it would break my heart.”

Huge Truth.

One night I read an essay by Bertrand Russell where he proved to me that God (as I had thought of him up to this point—old man, long white hair, dressed in white, among the clouds, omniscient and more vengeful than forgiving) couldn’t possibly exist, at least not as bandied about. I saw it, and was immensely relieved to learn this. Huge weight off my shoulders, and:

Huge Truth.

I read other essays by other philosophers and then realized that all philosophers are “we” with each other. All are seeking the same truth. All are of the same mental race. (Huxley, whom I had not read at the time, called it “The Perennial Philosophy”).

And looking about, I saw many other mental races, and more clearly than the physical ones.

One night I realized with full clarity that Home is where you are. And that you cannot possibly be anywhere but Home, no matter where you go.

Huge Truth.

In some ways I felt like a growing river.

And then I wondered: What is it, really, that makes me think?

Again, intuitively (and I lived on this plane most of the time now—it is now September of 1968), I saw that the first thing that made me think was my body.

If thirsty I think of water, if hungry I think of food. If tired I think of sleep, if horny I think of sex. If hurting I think of lessening the pain. If cold I think of warmth, and vice versa. The body, and all its intricacies and its many currents of phenomena, yes, it certainly made me think.

All right, I reasoned, what if I did not have a body. What, then, would make me think? And, I also asked myself, absolute purity, wherein does it hide?

Were I not to have a body, were I not to be influenced at all by its many needs and desires, I saw that all I have learned from others, from the world, would then make me think? My father’s little lessons, my mother’s, my teachers’ many instructions, and the many societal and environmental lessons I had learned from the moment I could perceive, yes, they made me think. They gave me a framework, values, they gave me solutions, they gave me entire philosophical systems, a psychological foundation, to think with. Yes, indeed.

But what if I didn’t have that? What if I had never been taught, indoctrinated, or influenced, then what would make me think?

I tasted this question with my entire being before the answer rose as a big sun within me. Then, it said, then I would make me think.

And this, I decided, would be the sphere or space of Free Thought, of certainty, of harmony, of purity. This truth rippled up and down my spine.

And then I wrote in my journal: “I experienced the proof that experience is a proof.”

Then I also concluded, that the truest state of existence, then, would be that after death: no body, no environmental indoctrination. Just You. And it never for a second occurred to me that I might cease to exist at body death. Not a chance.

This would also be the absolute purity I sought.

Then I wrote in my journal:

I have found the connection, all that now remains is to prove it to humanity.

The connection is cognizance of the space of Free Thought, the cognizance of this space’s unimaginable width.

It is this universal well, this core of truth that forms the pure thought.

You can call this core the Soul, or the Good, or God, or Brahman, et cetera.

Do I really see any limitations within me?

Are the any limits for Humanity?

No!

The absolute fulfillment is when everything, and I mean everything, is a proof for this core, for the soul.

No, the thought is larger than that, more nuanced.

I find truth in Plato, in Baudelaire, in a feeling, in an answer, in a smile, in all being.

Everything is directed towards the same core, everything a proof for the pure.

And it is when everything gives me impressions, when everything is absorbed to clarity, when everything proves the same thing, that truth has reached fulfillment.

Yes, I am convinced.

At that I put my journal down and tried to catch some sleep—with mixed success.

The following morning (no, I don’t think I slept much during the night) I went to see a friend of mine to share with him what I had discovered. The morning was warm for the season; I remember a light rain.

As it happened, my friend was not in, but his girlfriend was, and I just had to tell someone about this.

So, I sat her down, Listen, I said. Listen to this.

I asked her for pen and paper. She found some. I drew three concentric circles.

There are three concentric fields of thought, I said.

One, your body (pointing to the innermost circular field)—dictating thoughts of food when you’re hungry, sleep when you’re tired, water when you’re thirsty, sex when you’re aroused.

What if you can escape this circle?

Two (pointing to circular field between the first and second circle), indoctrination: education and upbringing—dictating thought based on others’ opinions, lessons learned, parental influences, experience, and so on.

What if you can escape this circle?

Three (indicating the circular field between the second and third circles), outside these first two fields lies the space of Free Thought, where You are free to do the thinking yourself.

This is where You make you think.

And at this very moment I awoke. As I outlined these fields to my friend’s girlfriend, it was as if I actually expanded outward beyond body, beyond indoctrination—as if I left them both behind and fully entered the space of Free Thought.

And while in the space of Free Thought the question simply arrived, and spoke itself: Is there a field outside the field of Free Thought?

In my next breath, the answer arrived, and it said, quite clearly: That would be “Nirvana.”

And as the word—it was like a whisper, as if an angel had stooped down to let me in on a secret—arrived, I felt a ripple in my feet, which grew to fountain up my legs and shot through my chest and head and into light: all was light. Intense, joyful, amazing, vibrant, light.

I was an I no longer, I was light, experiencing itself.

I don’t know for sure how long this lasted, a minute perhaps, maybe five, maybe longer, perhaps shorter. After a while (however long), the room softly returned and with it my friend’s girlfriend, who looked a little concerned perhaps. I looked up at her and all I said then was: “Now I know.”

I left then, and walked back to my own room. On the way I ate an orange. And as I ate it, I could feel each swallow slide down my throat and enter my stomach. I could I perceived everything about and inside my body.

For days after that I hardly thought a single thought. My head was like a quiet forest lake, no ripples.

I knew.

A boy unfurled.

 ::

P.S. If you like what you’ve read here and would like to contribute to the creative motion, as it were, you can do so via PayPal: here.

[ulfwolf]

The Art of Dying

*The Light*

It set out as a ripple in my feet and rose from there. Up through my calves, up through my thighs, my groin, my stomach, my lungs and chest and throat and into and through and out of my head like a glorious geyser erupting.

In my journal I later descried this as an “orgasm of the soul”.

Yes, I am well aware that the word “orgasm” is somewhat tainted (carries some not necessarily wanted luggage) and perhaps demeaning and should have no business encroaching upon a spiritual experience but the fact remains: that is what it felt like: a rush that rose and roamed past and a thousand-fold outdistanced its physical counterpart.

No, I am not saying that there is such a thing as a spiritual orgasm, I’m just saying that this is what it felt like—the knee-jerk description once I had a chance to catch my breath and look that the experience with less orgasmic eyes.

Building up to this—

The year is 1968. The month is August. My fiancé is still off in London and by this time (she’s already a good month overdue to return) not being very faithful (was my guess—which turned out to be the case), and me, I am hitchhiking from one Swedish town to the next trying to find a job, as in trying to find a firm that not only deploys the computer system that by now I am pretty expert at (as an operator), but also has an opening and likes what they see in me. A daunting task.

The thing was that I had recently given my notice at the firm I had worked at for the last couple of years because I was going to France to be a poet (I had the notion that I had been Baudelaire in a previous life, so I was in effect going home—or so ran my reasoning, or what masqueraded as reasoning—I think more rational minds call it imagination).

My plan to return to my Baudelaire roots ran into some serious trouble, however—as if me not speaking even a little bit of French wasn’t trouble enough. As it happened, this was the very summer that the Paris students picked to revolt and the bus company that was to take me to Paris cancelled the trip and refunded me my ticket. No way they were going to France under these unstable circumstances, not recommended at all.

So, here I am, fiancé-less and stranded in Sweden without a job (my firm—all too happy to see the back of me since they had no use for dead French poets, apparently, and would not take me back) and by now also without a place to live.

So, I headed for Gothenburg (second largest city in Sweden). Gray day. Not warm. Dreary town. No jobs. to be had.

I figured Malmo (third largest city) next, and hitched a ride with a trucker going in that direction. He could take me as far as Helsingborg, he said, a smaller town about thirty miles north of Malmo.

“You don’t want to go to Malmo,” he informed me en route. And when on to tell me that Helsingborg was the much nicer town. Friendlier. Not sure where it ranked size-wise, but I took him at his word, and decided to try my luck there.

Still no jobs though. But the guy at the employment agency and I got along really well. Recently divorced he needed someone to talk to, so he treated me to a nice lunch and that then offered me to stay at his place (a small house by the beach a few miles north of Helsingborg) for the night, perhaps longer. Say, until I found a job. I gladly accepted.

He was a good and very kind man (see my “Leif the Kind” fragment in this section).

As a matter of fact, a few days later he did find me a job. Not a computer job, but as a nurse at the then Santa Maria Hospital, which was a psychiatric hospital catering for the less fortunate, mentally. Would I want it?

I knew nothing about nursing the mentally disturbed, but that, he said, was not a problem. The hospital would train me in what I needed to know. It wasn’t like I was expected to treat anyone, just look after them and clean the floors. Sort of lunatic-sitting with grown-ups in the building.

Well, beggars can’t be choosers and all that. Again, I gladly accepted.

And yes, the hospital did provide training (of sorts—see the “Crash Course” fragment in this section); and not only that, it also provided a decent salary and room and board as part of the deal.

By now, I’m a happy beggar.

So began my late summer at Santa Maria.

Now, an important part of this story is that at this time I have begun a quest. For real this time. And not a petty one either: No, the grand one, the one for truth.

And as it turned out, that hospital—of all places—was the perfect place for such a search, as the story will tell.

I cannot pinpoint when, purely intuitively, I conceived, or decided, that the capital-T Truth, the one we’re all looking for, and have been since time immemorial, is that truth that is proven by everything. By every single thing; it seemed obvious to me.

Truth, to be ultimate, so my thinking went, in order to be the one and only superior, capital-T Truth, must prove everything, and must be proven by everything; or it would not be ultimate. Stood to reason, I figured. So, that decided, I set out to gather evidence.

What would prove the Truth? Who was to decide? Well, I was. By what criteria? By my own intuitive sense of what the Truth is. Hold up in court? Doubt it. Right for me? Absolutely.

It is a strange fact—and I believe it is a fact—that the spirit can tell the fake from the real. The spirit, once it actually looks, does know. As in you know when someone is lying to you. As in you know what is right and what is wrong. In your heart of hearts, you know. That’s the thing. You know.

And I felt that I would know truth when I saw it. So, as I said, I set out to find it, gathering evidence.

A smile—Truth.

A river—Truth.

A polluted river—Not Truth.

A flower—Truth.

The sunrise—Truth.

The sunset—Truth.

A tender kiss—Truth.

Greed—Not Truth.

A pen that works really well—Truth.

That particular cloud—Truth.

A seagull—Truth.

Jealousy—Not Truth.

Harm—Not Truth.

Happiness—Truth.

Hashish—Not Truth.

Friends—Truth.

A new toothbrush—Truth.

A broken mirror—Truth.

Seven years of bad luck—Not Truth.

A really good meal—Truth.

Imagination—Truth.

Delusion—Not Truth.

Beer—Not Truth.

Music—Truth.

Poetry—Truth.

Alarming News—Not Truth.

Grief—Truth.

Et cetera, et cetera.

No, I didn’t write these things down; rather, I placed them inside an imaginary frame, upon an imaginary canvas, and I knew that when I had collected all the evidence I needed to collect, the picture inside the frame would then come alive. And alive, it would be the Truth. This was another intuitive know, but there you have it. So, I continued my gathering of evidence.

An amazing incident provided a huge piece to his puzzle, provided a large Truth.

His name was Kaiser, or that is what he was called (see the fragment “Kaiser” in this section). He was a patient at Santa Maria, and had been there ever since the end of the Second World War, when he had been transferred from one of the German concentration camps to this Swedish hospital.

Kaiser had not spoken a word since his arrival—hence he was deemed seriously mentally ill. In fact, or so I was told, Kaiser had not even smiled since his arrival—more grist for the mentally-ill mill.

All day, he would shuffle around the ward (never lifting his feet to walk), head bowed down, face set in a permanent frown (not unlike President Nixon’s, come to think of it). Every now and then he would cast a furtive glance in your direction, or at someone else, then he’d shuffle on, on his endless, shuffling way.

He was considered un-reachable as a human being. Beyond help, really. And the only treatment he received was two large daily doses of those drugs that mental hospitals give patients to make them more tractable, and which makes keeping things (like floors) clean so much easier.

One day I decided (again, intuitively) to bring my guitar to the ward and sing for them. The head nurse saw nothing wrong with that, and agreed. Might even do them some good.

So, I sat down and began to play. Soon most of the day room had gathered around me, curious, scared, confused some, and some intent on touching me and my guitar to make sure that this was really happening.

This is when Kaiser stopped shuffling around, and instead almost stormed in among the gathered throng and physically pulled away from me those who tried to touch me or my guitar. Done making sure I was not interfered with, he planted himself right in front of me, standing straight, and with the biggest grin on his face, shining really.

I had a hard time believing my eyes (as did, it turned out, the other nurses as well). The moment was magical, and riding on this magic, I just kept playing and Kaiser kept smiling. Then it was time for their meal and their meds.

Sitting up in bed that night, writing in my journal, I noted this amazing Truth (referring to Kaiser): The Spirit, I wrote, is that thing in a human life which cannot be killed.

Kaiser’s spirit, however deeply it had been buried, rose to the surface that day, and erupted in a smile. I knew this was a truth, an incredibly valuable truth.

The next day the head nurse called me into her office. Quite something with Kaiser, wasn’t it? she said. I agreed.

“Interesting that it was music that finally made him smile,” she said.

“Amazing,” I agreed.

“Do you know what he was before the war?” she asked.

I didn’t know, and told her so.

“A concert pianist,” she said.

The impact of that almost made me cry. Kaiser was a musician who had just heard live music for the first time in twenty-five years, and that live music had brought him, the unkillable spirit, awake.

Into the frame of Truth, Kaiser went, smiling and all.

A few days later I had a vision of sorts (see “The Painting” fragment in this section). I saw life, the world, the universe, everything, as a painting set in a vast and beautiful frame. And everyone and everything in that painting looked up and said “good,” looked down and said “bad.” They looked up and said, “God,” looked down and said, “The Devil.” They looked up and said, “heaven,” looked down and said, “hell.” Looked up and said, “beautiful,” looked down and said, “ugly.” Looked up and said, “strong,” looked down and said “weak.” And so on through the seemingly endless dichotomies we surround and choke ourselves with.

Yet, for all these up-and-down certainties, all that I could see, standing on the outside and not being part of the painted (un-painted, as it were), was a painting: neither good nor bad, neither ugly nor beautiful; it was just a painting. An illusion.

I also saw that I would have to consider myself “painted” in order to buy into and experience (and live by) those dichotomies.

A good patient-friend of mine was six feet tall and all muscle, but with a mental age of perhaps five. He had gotten it into his head that I was a prince from India. Why? I wondered. Because I was not afraid of the elephants, he explained. Right.

I liked this man so much that I wanted to give him my gold puzzle ring, you know those that consist of six or eight interlocking strands of gold that you must put together just so, or they will remain six or eight separate strands (see the “Bror and the Ring” fragment in this section).

Having decided to give this to him, I realized that I would have to teach him how to put it together, for were I to give it to him, and were he to drop it and then not be able to put it together again, well, I was afraid that this would break his heart.

So, I told him I was giving him this ring, let’s just sit down and I’ll show you how it works. And so, we sat down and took it apart and put it together again many times. And then he tried many times, and failed many times.

I showed him many more times. He tried and failed many more times. I showed him again. He tried again. Failed again.

After what seems like an hour he looks right at me and says, “Keep the ring. I can never learn how to put it together. And if I drop it, and it breaks, it would break my heart.”

Huge Truth.

One night I read an essay by Bertrand Russell where he proved to me that God (as I had thought of him up to this point—old man, long white hair, dressed in white, among the clouds, omniscient and more vengeful than forgiving) couldn’t possibly exist, at least not as bandied about. I saw it, and was immensely relieved to learn this. Huge weight off my shoulders, and:

Huge Truth.

I read other essays by other philosophers and then realized that all philosophers are “we” with each other. All are seeking the same truth. All are of the same mental race. (Huxley, whom I had not read at the time, called it “The Perennial Philosophy”).

And looking about, I saw many other mental races, and more clearly than the physical ones.

One night I realized with full clarity that Home is where you are. And that you cannot possibly be anywhere but Home, no matter where you go.

Huge Truth.

In some ways I felt like a growing river.

And then I wondered: What is it, really, that makes me think?

Again, intuitively (and I lived on this plane most of the time now—it is now September of 1968), I saw that the first thing that made me think was my body.

If thirsty I think of water, if hungry I think of food. If tired I think of sleep, if horny I think of sex. If hurting I think of lessening the pain. If cold I think of warmth, and vice versa. The body, and all its intricacies and its many currents of phenomena, yes, it certainly made me think.

All right, I reasoned, what if I did not have a body. What, then, would make me think? And, I also asked myself, absolute purity, wherein does it hide?

Were I not to have a body, were I not to be influenced at all by its many needs and desires, I saw that all I have learned from others, from the world, would then make me think. My father’s little lessons, my mother’s, my teachers’ many instructions, and the many societal and environmental lessons I had learned from the moment I could perceive, yes, they made me think. They gave me a framework, values, they gave me solutions, they gave me entire philosophical systems to think with. Yes, indeed.

But what if I didn’t have that? What if I had never been taught, indoctrinated, or influenced, then what would make me think?

I tasted this question with my entire being before the answer rose as a big sun within me. Then, it said, then I would make me think.

And this, I decided, would be the sphere or space of Free Thought, of certainty, of harmony, of purity. This truth rippled up and down my spine.

And then I wrote in my journal: “I experienced the proof that experience is a proof.”

Then I also concluded, that the truest state of existence, then, would be that after death: no body, no environmental indoctrination. Just You. And it never for a second occurred to me that I might cease to exist at body death. Not a chance.

This would also be the absolute purity I sought.

Then I wrote in my journal:

I have found the connection, all that now remains is to prove it to humanity.

The connection is cognizance of the space of Free Thought, the cognizance of this space’s unimaginable width.

It is this universal well, this core of truth that forms the pure thought.

You can call this core the Soul, or the Good, or God, or Brahman, et cetera.

Do I really see any limitations within me?

Are the any limits for Humanity?

No!

The absolute fulfillment is when everything, and I mean everything, is a proof for this core, for the soul.

No, the thought is larger than that, more nuanced.

I find truth in Plato, in Baudelaire, in a feeling, in an answer, in a smile, in all being.

Everything is directed towards the same core, everything a proof for the pure.

And it is when everything gives me impressions, when everything is absorbed to clarity, when everything proves the same thing, that truth has reached fulfillment.

Yes, I am convinced.

At that I put my journal down and tried to catch some sleep—with mixed success.

The following morning (no, I don’t think I slept much during the night) I went to see a friend of mine to share with him what I had discovered. The morning was warm for the season; I remember a light rain.

As it happened, my friend was not in, but his girlfriend was, and I just had to tell someone about this.

So, I sat her down, Listen, I said. Listen to this.

I asked her for pen and paper. She found some. I drew three concentric circles.

There are three concentric fields of thought, I said.

One, your body (pointing to the innermost circle)—dictating thoughts of food when you’re hungry, sleep when you’re tired, water when you’re thirsty, sex when you’re aroused.

Two (pointing to circular field between the first and second circle), education and upbringing—dictating thought based on others’ opinions, lessons learned, parental influences, experience, and so on.

Three (indicating the circular field between the second and third circles), outside these first two fields lies the field, the space of Free Thought, where You are free to do the thinking yourself.

This is where You make you think.

And here is when and how I awoke. As I outlined these fields to my friend’s girlfriend, it was as if I actually expanded outward beyond body, beyond indoctrination—as if I left them both behind and fully entered the space of Free Thought.

And while in the space of Free Thought the question simply arrived, and spoke itself: Is there a field outside the field of Free Thought?

In my next breath, the answer arrived, and it said, quite clearly: That would be “Nirvana.”

And as the word—it was like a whisper, as if an angel had stooped down to let me in on a secret—arrived, I felt a ripple in my feet, which grew to fountain up my legs and shot through my chest and head and into light: all was light. Intense, joyful, amazing, vibrant, light.

I was an I no longer, I was light, experiencing itself.

I don’t know for sure how long this lasted, a minute perhaps, maybe five, maybe longer, perhaps shorter. After a while (however long), the room softly returned and with it my friend’s girlfriend, who looked a little concerned perhaps. I looked up at her and all I said then was: “Now I know.”

I left then, and walked back to my own room. On the way I ate an orange. And as I ate it, I could feel each swallow slide down my throat and enter my stomach. I could I perceived everything about and inside my body.

For days after that I hardly thought a single thought. My head was like a quiet forest lake, no ripples.

I knew.

(c) Wolfstuff

http://wolfstuff.com/aod-intro