A man and a woman. Sort of. Seated upon
a bench. Sort of. Can we ever be sure of
anything ? It's a picture, anyway. Seems to be.
I have it upon good authority, that we are
born, we do some things, and then we die.
One of the things that I like to do, is to
mess with images.
I create a ' reality ' that is not a ' reality '.
It's mine. I made it. Like, I like to conjure
up a couple of people sitting upon a bench,
who look unlike a couple of people sitting
upon a bench. Perhaps the ' unlikeness ' is so
pronounced that you see no man, no woman,
no bench ? Or, perhaps you do ?
She has just spoken, and said to him :
" Why do you ALWAYS say that ? "
And he replies, with a deep sigh, :
" I don't always say that ".
His right hand is resting upon her knee.
His left upon her left shoulder.
He knows exactly what she will say next.
He hears it in his mind before she speaks.
What does she say ?
I'll wager it's not what you think it is.
Don't worry about it. It's none of your
business. Their private concern. Don't
interfere. Let them sort it out themselves.
I heard that he has a problem over his
tax returns. I heard that she had a fight
with her sister. Gossip ! Return to the source.
That's all you need to know. Then you
know. That's all. That's everything.
The sky is as blue as it is sky.
In Taoism, the primordial One becomes
Two, yin and yang, in creation.
The Two become three, just as male and
female produce a child, and so on, in ever
increasing multiplicity and complexity, to
produce the ' Ten Thousand Things ', the
figurative description of the infinite variety
of forms and events which confront our
total experience.
The Tao is the endless source of this
uncountable flow of phenomena which
manifests as your life and being in the
world and the universe.
Always entering, always leaving, always
empty, always full. The Tao is not text.
The Tao does stand outside textuality.
The Tao is beyond the threshold of ' meaning ',
outside the periphery which encompasses the
imaginable, the conceivable, the conditioned.
Tao admits of no interpretation.
The old sages said that the adepts of
Taoism benefit the world, even though
they renounce it. If I renounce the world
I can fly upon the invisible bird of
unselfconsciousness, and go out beyond
Space, and wander through the villages of
Nowhere, making my home in the vast
open country of Emptiness. The perfected
mind is like a mirror in which Eternity is
reflected.
But, better still, is no perfected mind, no
mirror, no Eternity, no reflection....
How much better ?
Can you say ?
If you can, you are dead.
If you can't, you are dead.
What other option do you have ?
Quick ! Say ! Speak ! Tell me !
You useless person !
Some fragments of Chinese literature, predating
the Christian Era by several centuries, describe
five islands, somewhere off the coast of
Shantung Province, with peaks that soared up
thousands of feet into the clouds.
The valleys on these islands were a paradise
of perfumed flowers, and gaily plumaged birds
flying through groves of trees laden with
gems and jewels.
The inhabitants of these isles were immortals.
They were transparent, and could float in the
air from island to island.
These immortals made their homes in palaces
built of precious metals, and had rocks of jade
which exuded a sweet kind of water like wine.
All the animals and birds of these islands, as
well as the immortals themselves, lived upon
' ling chih ', or ' fungus of immortality ', which
they cultivated and harvested.
The birds sometimes carried some of this
fungus abroad in their beaks.
Presumably, the fungus contained psychoactive
chemicals of some sort, and acted as an
entheogen, as do similar fungi and plants,
such as ayahuasca or peyote, in other parts
of the world.
At the opposite end of the continental mass,
half a planet westwards, we find that here
the Celtic fringe along the Atlantic Coast had
its own quite similar version of the off-shore
paradise, which turns up frequently in the old
stories and folklore, and their own version of
the sacred fungus, the toadstools of the
Psilocybe species, Liberty Caps, commonly
called Magic Mushrooms, or, in Wales,
' Bwyd Ellyon ', the food of the elves
or fairies.
Ingestion of twenty or thirty Psilocybe
mushrooms floods the brain with serotonin
and other psychedelic chemicals, producing
a cascade of non-ordinary experiences well
beyond the horizon of normal descriptive
language, which lasts for several hours.
The same species of fungus was known to
the Maya, Mazatecs, and Aztecs, who used
them as a sacrament to assist divination. They
were called Teonanacatl, or ' God's Flesh '.
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