Apples, Bananas, & Us
No Secret, No Misery, either
Things
are getting inexplicable
and why?
There is a magic
you may not know about,
but which we all
suspect
is there.
Apples and bananas,
A blue checked cloth,
Luminance,
like in Vermeer’s
eyes,
hiding,
but not really.
Hiding only
in the falsity
that the Existence is not Alive,
that misery exists.
It does, of course,
so much so that
people kill themselves
out of frustration
and pain,
or abuse others
instead,
for fun.
Apples and bananas
resting in a bowl,
doing nothing,
while you are miserable.
How did it happen?
How did we get so lost?
How did
simplicity
become so draggled
and tossed?
At this point, you’re expecting me
to throw up my hands
and say,
“I don’t know, either!
It’s simply sad,”
But, then, again,
I think I’ve become
bad.
Apples and bananas,
red and yellow,
a cloth with blue,
just being there,
and you can,
too.
__________________
In discussions of Spirituality, all kinds of up and coming Gurus will tell you there’s a Secret.
Well, why the hell is it so secret?
That’s often a trick to hook you. Maybe the Guru wants sex or power or money — or just to feel important because he or she is so scared … of death, of some unknown loss they, too, feel inside.
They’re no better than you.
There’s a real joy we all suspect. It’s not hidden. We’ve just been trained by stupid cultures and religions, education and parents, work and obligations, to be unhappy and tell ourselves it’s not there at all.
It’s an odd thing — and this point is subtle — If we let ourselves feel that everything is ALIVE, the apples, the bananas, the blue checked cloth, US, then it all changes in a flash.
Old religions claimed that “God” is separate from you. So you’re just effed, a slave to a Lord.
Or if it was a non-deistic religion, such as Buddhism, then everything is “impermanent.” Same idea: This life sucks and you have to “transcend.”
Think about it. Either way, you’re called on to be a masochist, somehow being unhappy with your present condition.
And that’s the only condition you have.
There really is a state called Enlightenment where sadness is impossible. That’s not to say that all the bad stuff that can and does happen in our lives is somehow denied. In fact, you feel the shit even more.
But the Aliveness previously mentioned simply changes things.
Why alive? The old religions are gone, but science has inherited the misconception that the Universe does not have Sensation, that it’s all dead. In fact, they’ve made it even worse! (Ouch)
In the old religions, at least the Deity was magical. Maybe you were just a schmuck, but the Lord of It All could do miracles. So there was something happening, even if you weren’t invited to the party.
Science, though, has really made a mess of things:
It’s ALL dead (Fred).
Just give up, Joe.
You’re just a shmoe,
Nowhere to even
go.
No afterlife. No magic, and, even, this is a subtle one — your own sense of being ALIVE is really an illusion. All the matter that makes you up is just dead, insensate. The electrical impulses of your nervous system are creating an illusion of aliveness, which then simply stops when your body dies.
Well, that sucks.
I’m here to tell you they’re wrong. You already know that — if you’re still reading this. (At least, I think so! (smiles)) If you’ve read some of my other stuff, you know I like to talk about what I call “Energy Meditation” or the “Secret History of Tantra.” (I do love a good sense of romance, and there really is a powerful Energy Meditative tradition we can call Tantra, but shamanism and psychedelics also figure into that history, too.)
These people, above mentioned, are wrong, just by the simple fact that the Universe is Alive. If the Existence is Alive, then you are, too. If it’s really that cool, then …
No need to transcend
This is
already
the End
(my friend.)
(Oh, god, I inadvertently did a Doors song. Sorry, Jim.)
I’m a scientist and a meditator, so if I tell you — from my own experience — that the Universe is Alive, I have to mean it, as in R-E-A-L-I-T-Y.
OK, I’ve worked on my energy meditation stuff for a really long time. (If I tell you I remember Eisenhower, will that scare you? (It scares me!))
The state we call Enlightenment has a scientific basis. Gautam Buddha says when he finally got there, he realized it was all “Nothingness.”
When the Emperor of China asked Bodhidharma what was the essence of his teaching, he simply said, “Emptiness, no holiness.” (That’s my favorite.)
In the 20th Century, Krishnamurti called it “The Pathless Path.”
Osho used every appellation under the sun, so I love him even more (and I’ve worked with him for not quite as long as my childhood memories of Eisenhower.)
Nothingness. Science. What’s up?
We know that the Universe started in a Big (Sexual) Bang more than 13 billion Earth Years ago. (I have to put in the Sexual just for fun, but it’s energetically true, the sense of that Biggest Bang.)
Physicists say that you can’t ask what came (oh god, another pun) before the Big Bang because time and space did not exist then. Nothingness.
Cosmologists now suspect that our Universe is not unique, that Universes may naturally bud off by a bit of quantum tunneling from a larger space, this very same Nothingness.
My experience has been that the Nothingness, the Emptiness, didn’t just create the world and scoot, like the Jewish God of my childhood, but is actually more akin, scientifically, to the Hindu conception of their God, Vishnu, who maintains the Universe.
Universes come from a place that has no time, no space, no no, even. That’s what Krisnamurti means by the Pathless Path. There you go!
Tilopa, who is an important Enlightened fellow in Tibetan Buddhism, said, “Mahamudra (his word for Enlightenment) rests on Naught.” On Nothing at all.
My experience has been that this Emptiness, Nothingness, again, did not just give birth to this Universe and then cease its friendship, but, like a good parent, enters EVERYTHING in every little quantum transition moment — and is powering this Universe, maintaining it, giving it Energy, and … there you go! …
Making It Alive.
______________
OK, I hope that was a good argument.
Catch you later -
