But the Oriental musician has a rough notation which he uses only as a reminder of a melody. He learns music, not by reading notes, but by listening to the performance of a teacher, getting the “feel” of it, and copying him, and this enables him to acquire rhythmic and tonal sophistications matched only by those Western jazz artists who use the same approach.
British American author and lecturer (1915–1973)
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But Jesus had to speak through a public-address system — the only one available — which distorted his words, so that they came forth as the bombastic claim to be the one and only appearance of the Christ, of the incarnation of God as man. This is not good news. The good news is that if Jesus could realize his identity with God, you can also — but this God does not have to be idolized as an imperious monarch with a royal court of angels and ministers. God, as “the love which moves the sun and other stars,” is something much more inward, intimate, and mysterious — in the sense of being too close to be seen as an object.
I could make a strong, if not conclusive, case for the idea that plants are more intelligent than people — more beautiful, more pacific, more ingenious in their ways of reproduction, more at home in their surroundings, and even more sensitive. Why, we even use flower-forms as our symbols of the divine when the human face reminds us too much of ourselves — the Hindu-Buddhist mandala, the golden lotus, and the Mystic Rose in Dante’s vision of Paradise. Nothing else reminds us so much of a star with a living heart.
But just exactly what is the “good” to which we aspire through doing and eating things that are supposed to be good for us? This question is strictly taboo, for if it were seriously investigated the whole economy and social order would fall apart and have to be reorganized. It would be like the donkey finding out that the carrot dangled before him, to make him run, is hitched by a stick to his own collar.
For the good to which we aspire exists only and always in the future. Because we cannot relate to the sensuous and material present we are most happy when good things are expected to happen, not when they are happening. We get such a kick out of looking forward to pleasures and rushing ahead to meet them that we can’t slow down enough to enjoy them when they come. We are therefore a civilization which suffers from chronic disappointment — a formidable swarm of spoiled children smashing their toys.
A Chinese philosophical work called The Secret of the Golden Flower says that “when purpose has been used to achieve purposelessness, the thing has been grasped.” For a society surviving to no purpose is one that makes no provision for purposeless behavior — that is, for actions not directly aimed at survival, which fulfill themselves in being done in the present and do not necessarily imply some future reward. But indirectly and unintentionally, such behavior is useful for survival because it gives a point to surviving — not, however, when pursued for that reason. To play so as to be relaxed and refreshed for work is not to play, and no work is well and finely done unless it, too, is a form of play.
The answer to the problem of suffering is not away from the problem but in it. The inevitability of pain will not be met by deadening sensitivity but by increasing it, by exploring and feeling out the manner in which the natural organism itself wants to react and which its innate wisdom has provided.
Protogenesis The Seven Secret
Sayings of God Before athe beginning when God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form, and void: and darkness was upon the face of the deep, God said bI AM THAT. And it is so. Also, being in eternity which is neither linear nor sequential, where all is nowever, God said, YOU MUST DRAW THE LINE SOMEWHERE. And it was drawn. But it was no dreary straight line or flat wall, for God then said, HAVE A BALL. And there was a ball, in the image whereof all stars and planets came to be formed. Thereupon God said, THERE ARE TWO SIDES TO EVERYTHING. And there are: the inside and the outside, the dense and the spacious, the right and the wrong, the left and the taken, for, as it is written, cOne shall be taken, and the other left. And God said, IT MUST BE IN TIME. And thereafter it was, is, and will be, for as it is written again, dAs it was in the beginning is now, and ever shall be, through all ages of ages. Amen. And forthwith God said, SPACE IT OUT. Whereupon it came to pass that, beside this and that and now and then, there is also here and there. And God beheld ehow firm a foundation this was and said unto himself, GET LOST. And there you are.
We suffer from the delusion that the entire universe is held in order by the categories of human thought, fearing that if we do not hold to them with the utmost tenacity, everything will vanish into chaos.
We must repeat: memory, thought, language, and logic are essential to human life. They are one half of sanity. But a person, a society, which is only half sane is insane. To look at life without words is not to lose the ability to form words — to think, remember, and plan. To be silent is not to lose your tongue. On the contrary, it is only through silence that one can discover something new to talk about.
To love there must be union with the beloved, but also separation. For love is a creative tension; it is like the string of a musical instrument — -a single string yet pulled in opposite directions. If there is too little tension, or if there is too much so that the string breaks, it will give forth no sound. The perfection of love is like the perfect tuning of the string, for love attains fulfillment as there is the maximum of union between two beings who remain definitely separate. Unity in duality is the law of the finite.
Where there is to be creative action, it is quite beside the point to discuss what we should or should not do in order to be right or good. A mind that is single and sincere is not interested in being good, in conducting relations with other people so as to live up to a rule. Nor, on the other hand, is it interested in being free, in acting perversely just to prove its independence. Its interest is not in itself, but in the people and problems of which it is aware; these are “itself.” It acts, not according to the rules, but according to the circumstances of the moment, and the “well” it wishes to others is not security but liberty.