May
15, 2001.
There is a man who lives on a
road which some people believe leads to The Center Of The World:
a place whereat is stored a
Great Secret Knowledge
which settles all matters that
trouble men;
the home of those who have achieved
an enhanced state of consciousness, and who will tell others how to do
so;
a location that is the true
Shangri La of the mind.
And the man opens his house to
travelers who pass
in search of the wondrous site,
and welcomes them to stop, and refresh themselves.
And some times their inquiries
regarding what he may know about their desired destination
leads him to comment thereon;
the following was one such.
*****
"Nomads like you seek more from
the mind than
nature normally provides.
What you want is for the experience
of each day
to have a more memorable impact
on your consciousness than it does now.
The physical senses in every
creature are programmed to be attuned to things appropriate
to that creature, and to store
pertinent memories
upon which it can later call
to its advantage.
Same also with man, but with
the addition of the
less structured sense of thought.
Thought, like his other five
senses,
helps a man orient himself in
his environment,
and distinguish friend from
foe,
and situations of danger from
those of safety;
it has the added feature of
being able to hesitate,
and analyze conditions rather
than just
automatically reacting thereto.
This inner, abstract activity
not only increases man’s odds of physical survival, but also furnishes
him with a unique playground wherein he can frolic,
unencumbered by the normal restraints
of
material reality, and the laws
of physics.
Thought, in addition to making
men live long,
also makes human existence the
singular,
extraordinary experience it
is,
and gives it its indescribable,
mysterious taste.
Thought does double duty:
on one hand it is practical,
on the other, recreational.
Most people however, avail themselves
of its strictly pleasurable side only in a second-hand manner,
(that is): they seek & ingest
only activities that originated in some other man’s thoughts, rather than
in their own,
and are satisfied with this
as, ’mental entertainment,’
(e.g. they read stories that others have authored, rather than writing
their own).
A few wanderers such as yourselves
are
exceptions to this standard
arrangement,
and demand more from the recreational
side of thought than thought can give you;
your type have called this longing
by a variety of metaphysical, pseudo-spiritual, hocus-pocus
names throughout the years, but its true source & nature
is as just described.
From this expedient, verbal starting
point,
additional expositions on this
matter that interests you could go in numerous directions, but for today
--
in this one.
You who endlessly travel, and
who seem mentally untethered & unaligned are not at all satisfied with
your thoughts’ memories of yesterday.
Your other senses make appropriately
vivid note of
past physically significant
events, but your thoughts’
recollection of yesterday’s
non crucial, social existence
is a memory so faint & vague as to be
unworthy of the name;
it fits the basic definition
of memory,
but it is memory-without-passion;
a photograph with no clear outlines,
or details;
if pressed, your thoughts can
give a most crude
report perhaps of where you
were physically during the previous
day, but can tell you nothing about where you were mentally at the same
time.
There is no doubt that you were
alive yesterday,
but barring some extraordinary
physical occurrence,
you have no passionate
memory of that period, or of where you were in your inner mental
world.
You physically existed yesterday,
but as for conscious awareness
--
-- you might as well have
been in a coma.
This is the case with all men,
but none give it any special
notice but you.
You want to feel, down to the
marrow of your bones,
a thrill, an excitement,
the impact of a constant consciousness
of simply being-alive-and-able-to-think-about-being-alive.
There is a similarity to the
vicarious enjoyment ordinary thrill seekers can feel any time they recall
previous dangerous physical activities,
but in your case you want to
continually experience the same passion regarding your past inner activities,
(a hunger for which, [you may
note],
life has provided no drive-up
window.)
All in all, what you seekers
really seek is to have a constant, deep-felt, awareness of having been
alive -- both physically AND internally -- yesterday.
That is exactly the longing
that motivates your wandering;
it is the reality behind all
of the methods ever proposed to achieve a new state of mind.
Whereas the standard for man’s
consciousness is to be on constant call for survival related activity,
and at other times, available
for pleasurable pastimes,
it is only in the former that
substantial memories are formed -- and then, not in the area of conscious
thought;
what in essence you people are
demanding
is to have equally impressive
& passionate memory
of your consciousness IN
consciousness.
What you people want is for your
inner experiences to make a much
stronger impression on your memory
than they now do;
you feel that the very act of
being alive does not have a
great enough impact on your consciousness,
and you want every second of every day
to be as real & alive to
you at the present moment
as you think it should have been at the time you lived it.
That, dear travelers,
is the true name of the place
you are looking for.
The well is out back -- help yourselves.”
J
..........(The man thought of his house as having a
name: "JOIE’ DE VIVRE TO THE BONE.")
|