JASON ARTHUR BOWMAN
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
If there is a fear of falling, the only safety consists in deliberately jumping.
Marcel Proust
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music – the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.
…
If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.
…
The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
…
From Leaves of Grass:
Long enough have you dreamed contemptible dreams,
Now I wash the Gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and
of every moment of your life.
Long have you timidly waded, holding a plank by the
shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea, and rise again and
nod to me and shout, and laughingly dash with your
hair.
….
Why should I wish to see God better that this day?
I see something of God in each hour of the twenty-four, and
each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own
face in the glass;
I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every
one is signed by God’s name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that others
will punctually come forever and ever.
….
I too am not a bit tamed….I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp of the roofs of the world.
An adventure is never an adventure when it’s happening.
Challenging experiences need time to ferment,
and an adventure is simply physical and emotional discomfort
recollected in tranquility.
The future is an infinite succession of presents and to live now, as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
From Love in the Time of Cholera
“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”
From the Shatapatha Bramana, 6th Centure BCE:
After death you will find yourself wandering through a haze, shouting without being heard, but all the sudden it will be you who hear. You will become aware that someone is following you like an animal in the forest, only now in the darkness of the heavens. The person following you is your oblation, the being composed of the offering you made in your life. In a whisper he will say to you, ‘come here, come here, it is i, your self.’ And in the end you will follow.
From Ka by Roberto Calasso:
Far easier to think of one’s self as a ghost imprisoned in a box of skin and bone, surrounded by objects as stable as they are solid. But for anyone who opens his eyes on that other thought, all this falls apart and can never be restored-the thought: that the existence of the universe is a secondary and derivative fact with respect to the existence of the mind.
Whether the world be a hallucination or the mind be a hallucination, whether all return or all appear but once, the suffering is just the same. For he who suffers is a part of the hallucination, of whatever kind that may be. What then is the difference? This: whether in the sufferer there is-or is not- he who watches he that suffers.
Nothing can be exterminated because everything leaves a residue and every residue is a beginning.
The esoteric is the thought closest to the visions things have of themselves.
From Even Cowgirls Get The Blues
“Perhaps a person gains by accumulating obstacles. The more obstacles set up to prevent happiness from appearing, the greater the shock when it does appear, just as the rebound of a spring will be all the more powerful the greater the pressure that has been exerted to compress it. Care must be taken, however, to select large obstacles, for only those of sufficient scope and scale have the capacity to lift us out of context and force life to appear in an entirely new and unexpected light. For example, should you litter the floor and tabletops of your room with small objects, they constitute little more than a nuisance, an inconvenient clutter that frustrates you and leaves you irratable: the petty is mean. Cursing, you step around the objects, pick them up, knock them aside. Should you, on the other hand, encounter in your room a 9000 pound granite boulder, the suprise it evokes, the extreme steps that must be taken to deal with it, compel you to see with new eyes. And if the boulder is more special, if it has been painted or carved in some mysterious way, you may find that it possesses an extraordinary and supernatural presence that enchants you, and in coping with it–as it blocks your path to the bathroom–leaves you feeling extraordinary and supernatural too. Difficulties illuminate existence, but they must be fresh and of high quality.”
From Another Roadside Attraction
“Nothing in the vegetable world succumbs. It simply drops away and then returns. Energy is never destroyed. We planted our dead the way we planted our seeds. After a period of rest, the energy of the corpse or seed returned in one form or another. From death came more life. We loved Earth because of the joy and good times and peace of mind to be had in loving it. We didn’t have to be saved from it. We never plotted escapes to heaven, we weren’t afraid of death because we adhered to nature and its cycles. In nature, we observed that death is an inseparable part of life…The idea of a spiritual-invisible being was the result of the new and unnatural fear of death. And the idea of a supreme spiritual being is the result of becoming alienated from the workings of nature: When man could no longer observe the solid material processes of life and identify with them, he had to invent god in order to explain how life happened and why death happened.”
From Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates
“Tennessee Williams once wrote, ‘We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.’ In a certain sense, the playwright was correct. Yes but oh! What a view from the upstairs window!
What Tennessee failed to mention was that if we look out of that window with an itchy curiosity and a passionate eye; with a generous spirit and a capacity for delight; and, yes, the language with which to support and enrich the things we see, then it DOESN’T MATER that the house is burning down around us. Let the motherfucker blaze”
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.”
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
“Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.”
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”
“That which is impenetrable to us really exists. Behind the secrets of nature remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything we can comprehend is my religion.”
We have not come here to take prisoners,
But to surrender ever more deeply
To freedom and joy.
We have not come into this exquisite world
To hold ourselves hostage from love.
Run my dear.
From anything
That may not strengthen
Your precious budding wings.
Run like hell my dear
From anyone likely
To put a sharp knife
Into the sacred, tender vision
Of your beautiful heart.
We have a duty to befriend
Those aspects of obedience
That stand outside of our house
And shout to our reason
“O please, O please,
Come out and play.”
For we have not come here to take prisoners
Or to confine our wondrous spirits,
But to expereince ever and ever more deeply
Our divine courage, freedom, and
Light!
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
When the clock strikes me
the big hand will realize the grandeur
of its illusion
and will begin to shrink
in its own eyes
while the little hand
marvels at the ball of energy
spinning from its palm
when the clock strikes me
everything will stop
and that which was nothing
will become the beginning again
when the clock strikes me
numbers will backfire
symbols will become
that which they symbolize
and sayings like ‘out of the blue’
will reveal their hidden origin
when the clock strikes me
people will gather to deconstruct
the myths and fables
that conspired against them
and every new song
will be an antivirus
for an old belief
when the clock strikes me
women will close their doors
jump, dance, and bang the walls
in remembrance of their future selves
while men fight internally
to recall the recipe for freedom
when the clock strikes me
men will recall the recipe for freedom
and will begin to form
rescue teams for dreams deferred
when the clock strikes me
some people will have to die
when the clock strikes me
children will find it cool
to be playful
and adults will find it worthwhile
to play like children
when the clock strikes me
the story of jesus
will simply be told as a children’s story
where his name will be replaced with the name of every newborn
and families will celebrate every birth
as the rebirth of the messiah
and all people will think of all people
as chosen
when the clock strikes me
buddha will still be laughing
when the clock strikes me
the powers of being will prevail
over the powers that be
when the clock strikes me
thugs and poets will laugh at themselves
businessmen will serve humanity
world leaders will turn to their mothers for advice
and mothers will turn
to their daughters
for inspiration
when the clock strikes me
something will be different
something will feel completely random
the moment will feel slightly eerie
the unexpected will change places
with the predictable
and life will truly feel like an adventure
when the clock strikes me
no alarm will sound
green streaks of light may mark the night
stray cats may purr
and rub themselves against your ankle
many people will double blink
and pinch themselves
and those who normally don’t
will notice the moon in broad daylight
when the clock strikes me
it will strike you too
and even your cynicism
and concrete analysis
will be brought into question
as the most beautiful stranger
makes herself/himself known to you
when the clock strikes me
your loved ones
will glow with the beauty
of complete strangers
and you will have to
reintroduce yourself to your parents
for they will have never met
the side of you that dances
just because you found an old recipe
when the clock strikes me
you will be sitting someplace
alone or with another
reading this
and we will both
go off unexpectedly
spines will tingle
eyes will water
and this moment
on this plane
in my favourite jeans
with jimi blaring in my ears
will become NOW
and FOREVERMORE
and more eyes will water
for they will know
and they will feel it
and live it
and they will turn
to the stranger beside them
and say “you have to read this”
and this will go down in history
as one of those moments
when you knew
that nothing would ever
be the same
From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
“The whole renaissance is supposed to have resulted from the topsy-turvy feeling caused by Columbus’ discovery of a new world. It just shook people up. The topsy-turviness of that time is recorded everywhere. There was nothing in the flat-earth view of the Old and New Testaments that predicted it. Yet people couldn’t deny it. The only way they could assimilate it was to abandon the entire medieval outlook and enter into a new expansion of reason…I think the present day reason is an analogue of the flat earth of the medieval period. If you go to far beyond it you’re presumed to fall off, into insanity. And people are very much affraid of that. I think this fear of insanity is comparable to the fear people once had of falling off the edge of the world. Or the fear of heretics….But what’s happening is that each year our old flat earth of conventional reason becomes less and less adequate to handle the experiences we have and this is creating widespread feelings of topsy-turviness. As a result, we’re getting more and more people in irrational areas of thought-occultism, mysticism, drug changes and the like-becuase they feel the inadequacy of classical reason to handle what they know are real experiences.”
“A man’s genius, the quality that differences him from every other, the suseptability to one class of influences, the selection of what is fit for him, the rejection of what is unfit, determines for him the character of the universe. A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him, wherever he goes. He takes only his own out of the multiplicity that sweeps and circles round him. He is like one of those booms which are set out from the shore on rivers to catch driftwood, or like the loadstone amongst splinters of steel. Those facts, words, persons, which dwell in his memory without his being able to say why, remain, because they have a relation to him not less real for being as yet unapprehended. They are symbols of value to him, as they can interpret parts of his consciousness which he would vainly seek words for in the conventional images of books and other minds. What attracts my attention shall have it, as I will go to the man who knocks at my door, whilst a thousand persons, as worthy, go by it, to whom I have no regard. It is enough that these particulats speak to me. A few antecdotes, a few traits of character, manners, face, a few incidents, have an emphasis in your memory out of all proportion to their apparent significance, if you measure them by the ordinary standards. They relate to your gift. Let them have their weight, and do not reject them, and cast about for illustration and facts more usual in literature. What your heart thinks great is great. The soul’s emphasis is always right.”
“As the traveler who has lost her way, throws her reins on her horse’s neck, and trusts to the instincts of the animal, so must we do with the divine animal who carries us through this world.”
From Coincidence of Opposites
“In music, though, one doesn’t make the end of a composition. The point of the composition is not to get to the end of the composition. If that were so the best composers would be the ones that got to the end the fastest. And there would be composers who only wrote finales. People would go to the concert just to hear one crashing chord. Cause that’s the end. Same as dancing. You don’t aim at a particular spot in the room where you should arrive. The whole point of dancing is the dance.
But we don’t see that as something brought on by our education in our everyday conduct. We’ve got a system of schooling which gives a completely different impression. It’s all graded. And what we do is we put the child into the corridor of this grade system. And then you start off kindergarten, and that’s a great thing because you get into first grade. And then common, first grade leads into second grade and so on, and then you get out of grade school and you’ve got high school. And its revving up. The thing is coming. Then you’ve got to go to college, and hopefully you go to graduate school. And when you’re through with graduate school you go out to join the world. And then you get into some racket where you’re selling insurance. And they’ve got that quota to make and you’ve gotta make that. And all that time the thing is coming. Its coming, that great thing, that success you’ve been working for. Then one day you wake up about 40 years old and you say, “my god, I’ve arrived! I’m there!” And you don’t feel very different from what you always felt. And there’s a slight let down because you feel it was a hoax. And it was a hoax, a dreadful hoax. They made you miss everything. By expectation there are the people who lived to retire, and put those savings away. And then when they’re sixty five they don’t have any energy left. It feels like we’ve cheated ourselves the whole way down the line. We thought of life by analogy with a journey, with a pilgrimage which had a serious purpose at the end. And the thing was, to get to that end, success, or whatever it is, or maybe heaven after your dead. But we missed the whole point all the way along. It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing…or to dance while the music was being played.”