Conversations with a Ghost

If you loved life you would have come here. But you didn’t—you waited idly in your darkened corridor, the lamps already low and used. And what did you take from this sojourn? This ephemeral morn? Your life was spent in empty chambers of hollow rhetoric, in endless shopping malls with dripping musak and plastic people. You congregated with a thousand priests beneath the city’s crusted church and democracy’s neon steeple. Your lasers cut pieces out of the night. You left the stars; you dropped them onto sunset strip, and no one looked twice.
But you didn’t find it, did you? You never answered that strange itching discomfort asking you to live as your heart knows best. You were double-bypassed. And the mimicry of your brain took hold.
So why did you wait? Why did you let this restlessness play out itself ? How could you have not put words to the music in your ears, put voice to the song in your breast?
And so you punish yourself in uncertainty, always questioning your own motives, second-guessing your instincts. Did you learn to put these words in the bar, scuffle the notes with numbers? That strange haunting won’t leave you. No acquisitions can quite remove it—stand in the way, bounce it off like sun-rays to scatter in sunsets—but the sun also rises.
I wanted you to come here. I thought it would make it better—make it better for you. But I couldn’t have known that you had already lost the middle of yourself, had tied your brain up with your genitals. What was I thinking to hope you could leave the thing you had grown in; the thing left here by our ancestors to delineate the future between men? They were my ancestors too, and I know that then they had acted for the creation of a future relative to the sustenance of their present. How foolish to think that there is no change; that change isn’t effected and affected simultaneously by the action toward instating a norm. But they were young and dizzy with the creation of civilization. Who can blame them? I do, but I don’t hate them for their accident. I always dug Frankenstein.
Your face is paling. Every time I see you—it’s been years, I know—you seem whiter, frailer, leaning heavy on your wonder-stick as even now your little-toe becomes more useless. You poor animal—could you really love your inanimate pets more than your own imperfection?

"Evil does not exist as a state unto itself. As darkness is an absence of light, and cold an absence of heat, so evil is an absence of God."

Evil exists only as a state of lacking.

Evil is Godlessness.

Since God is not Godless, God cannot be conceived of as being evil.

That God created evil is evidenced in the fact that God created a state for his absence, so that he could reference Himself.

Nothing is outside of God. SO how could something all inclusive see itself from its outside? An outside that cannot exist?

Thus matter was created to partition emptiness, to make an outside that was inside.

And man was made, that movement of will, as a body to recognize God only by being able to choose God.

Thus man lacks God--or rather, doesn't see God. God contains man, man contains God, but man is blind to God until his awakening. (Then there is only God!) God loves man, because he brings His own image into being. Man cannot be without God, although God can exist without man. And yet God does not exist without man.

So it is they say we were born "of original sin." This is true, but misunderstood by so many. And the ignorance of this meaning creates much suffering

It means that God falls into man to hide from Himself, and yet through man He crosses back to Himself.

Halelu-Jah!

Everything comes into being from the Will of God. Everything is so that God can witness Himself. Everything knows God. Only man can choose not to see Him.

By hiding Himself from man, God can discover Himself. This is how God comes to know Himself.

That which is all cannot view itself without humanity. That which is within itself cannot see outside itself. So it is that man can see God from the outside, while being inside. Man is outside God, but inside God, and God is outside man, and within man.

“The Just Necessity places man in the circle.”

The universe is the material result of this collapse after the expansion of knowing. The universe is the process that makes the world. The world is the process that makes man. And man is the process by which the creator determines His creation. All is necessary.

Man is the bridge by which God crosses to Himself.

Man can reveal the unity that preceded the plurality—or rather, the illusion of plurality by which the One is known.

Man is like God, because he discovers God. God is loves man, because through him alone is the choice to be seen, seen, and the choice to be known, known. Only thus is the Good recognized.

God knew Himself, and knew that He knew. But, without a mirror, how could He contemplate his own being?

Man is his reflection, and matter is His mirror.

So it is that the worlds came into being.

Man allows God to be wrong.

Without man, there is only right!

He who comes before us naked
Comes naked so we can make Him clothes
And so that He can come to know the clothes
by which to understand His nakedness.

Rabbi Shimon was in the wilderness during a retreat.

A storm formed and he was forced to find shelter with an idle goatherd in a cave in the hills. The rain was relentless for three days--there was even snow--and now no dry wood could be found. The goatherd had brought a few of his flock into the cave for warmeth, and to slaughter a kid for food. But they could not cure the meet. At length Rabbi Shimon squatted down, and over a small pile of sodden tinder pronounced a few silent words. Flames curled up from beneath his hands. The gaotherd, smelling the smoke turned amazed and saw the Rabbi standing.

"Why did you not do this before?" He asked. "We've been trapped here nearly three days!"

Rabbi Shimon looked at him and replied: "Becasue it is a sin."

"But you saved my life! I would have died of hunger! Or else the poisoning of uncured meat! Surely this is not a sin!"

"And that is why I made the fire," replied the Rabbi. "But, do you not think a man who knows God well enough to harness his fire will know what is, and what is not, a sin? Now, I must go and atone. Cook your food. Eat. I will return. But do not let the fire go out--for it is Holy--it's flame should not die."

Rabbi Shimon went out into the cold, wet, blustery night to atone for his sin. The goatherd ate and drank from his sack of wine, and soon he was content, then sated, and he fell asleep by the fire and goats.

THe rabbi returned close to early morning to find the sleeper, the food eaten, and the wine drunk, and saw that the fire was out. He muttered to himself, an then went back into the weather to atone--for he had sinned again.

Nothing is outside of Gd!
Nothing is by itself!
All feels the Nothingness--the darkness of the flesh.
The shadow of being is the darkness from which to perceive the light.
Darkness exists only by the impediment of light.
This is human life: The ability to make shadows.
THe human is a lighthouse. It's dark outside.
It's dark inside.
The light projects from within.
The light communes with other travelers, lost upon the sea
As if to say: Beware!
Beware the rocky schaols--
The ocean is not as deep as you think!

Feel the peace which flows through the universe!
The unfolding of every moment
is a petal on this flower,
finding new ways
to say the same
thing.

The body is a necessary division, for the partition of unity.

You should know that you are necessary to God.

How can the raindrop be removed from the cloud?
Only by falling.

And how can the raindrop be returned there?
Only by being raised up.

The journey of each drop is the history of each of us.
For you are a unique memory of God coming to know Himself; from all angles.

This infinity of knowing--of self-discovery--is called eternity.

Where you have come from, there you will return.

All blesings to the Holy One!
The Sparks are his flame!
All Praises to the bornless One!
He Who Seeks His Own Name!

Click on the image to enlarge.

Nothing is outside of god
Nothing is by itself
All feels the nothingness, the darkenss of the flesh.
The shadows of being are the darkness
From which to perceive the light
Darkness exists only from the impediment of light
This is human life--the ability
to make shadows.
Only man can look upon God
and choose not to see Him.

The human is a light house. It's dark outside.
It's dark inside. The light projects from within.
The light communes with other travelers, lost
upon the sea
As if to say: Beware!
Beware the rocky shoals--
The ocean is not as deep
as you think.

The Earth is like the alchemist's cauldron--the turbulent purification sends the purest essences to the surface, to be scooped off and removed. The rest, the dross, remains in motion sent into turbulent eddies where it remains, forever, subject to the flames.

Wizardry


Eyes lit up like stars
And hearts blazed as suns
Around the room starlight turns
And roses bloomed
Speech prepared, sets off and runs
Light-years, flashing moments shared
of an eternity that leads nowhere
and everywhere
Silence sounds
No idle tongues

An understanding of Art is as important to the mystic as an understanding of science: for the points of these extremes are joined by Mysticism.

Only with this line can the circle be realized.

Only the infinite can contain the infinite. So it is I am holding this pebble.

I remember the time when the gods first fell to earth. Lean in close, and I will tell you. It wasn’t a time like now—time itself wasn’t yet born. It was a time without time.
In the first days there was only light; I don’t mean light like the days we have now, based on the rotation of an earth around a sun. Rotation requires movement, and movement time. No. There was only light, and that one light has become all you now see and know. It is both the light in your mind, the one that allows you to make images, and the light of the heavens at night.
Do you remember Osiris, the king killed by his brother and chopped into a million pieces? And Isis, Osiris’ wife, left to search the cosmos looking for those endless pieces, to reassemble him in the afterlife? Your sun here, on earth, is one tiny piece of Osiris. When your sun sets—when the world turns you away from the ever-present symbol of a divine source—you can see millions of other pieces, all scattered like rain across an endless sea. I remember Osiris. One day you will remember him too, the day when you are ceased to be born.
But I digress. That is now, and I told you I would tell you of an earlier time, a time without stars. I told you I would tell you of the time that birthed the stars.
There was only light, an invisible light. It takes time and a witness to see light, so the first light was darkness. The first light was an emptiness, a void. It was endless unto itself—there was nothing but nothing.
There was nothing but knowing. A voice without words.
Suddenly the void recognized its emptiness, it said I am I, and referenced itself against itself—it partitioned space against space, light against dark, up against down; the number ONE had recognized itself, and the number TWO was born.
The second number could only see the first, and so it thought it was the first—which it was—but the first was still stronger than the second, for the second had sprung from the first. Already other numbers were there, but they had no identity. Remember, without time all that is already was, and all that was will be; there is an everlasting present from which all things spring forth, and yet, so being, they already were and always have been. Sit still and listen. The easiest way to say this is there was quantity but no numbers--there was number without quantity—bodies without faces. And so the second told the formless ones of his brilliance, his perfection as a reflection of the first. He promised them form. He had mistaken himself for the self-created; and yet he was created. Thus there was tension; instantly an opposition was drawn, the light had its dark, the up had its down, the dot had its line, now, suddenly, the Good had its Not-good.
Do you understand? There was supremacy and beauty, there was duplicity and envy. From envy came pain and from beauty came righteousness. From righteousness came power, and from power mercy. From mercy sprang love, from love justice, and the whole of unity hummed with a lonely light. The singleness had folded itself into plenty, and the watery substance filled the heavens.
From this sea sprang up the Archetypes, the embodiments of the heavenly virtues. Every new feeling, defined against itself, sprang up as an image. For every step up there was a step down, and two lines shot into the everlasting distance—the horizon of heaven was made like a golden bow, and from its clutches were shot forth a multitude of arrows.
This happened without happening—you were there, but your birth into a body has made you forget. Your body is the result of the impression of the Archetypes within the watery substance, for it became necessary to clothe spirit in flesh, so that God could learn to recognize Himself. I know you know I have been talking about God, for God is all there is… and those who seek Him. You forgot God when your body partitioned you away from Him—for the body is necessary for the partition of unity into many, and to hide the Truth beneath the sensations of the senses.
But such glory there is there! What joy when a creation creates! And yet, such sadness…
It was then—at that moment—that the gods fell to earth.
Have you not noticed how things change? How a seed can become a tree, a tree wood, wood lumber, and lumber a chair? Or how iron can combine with oxygen, become steel, and steel a sword? So it is that nothing became a dot, a dot a line, a line a radius, a radius an area, and so to a sphere—that which displays the least surface area to its volume. (You’ll notice all things first display themselves as spheres.) A sphere can then move, perhaps, time brings motion. The dimensions have gone from three to four. Then the movement can alter, can grow and diminish, change can play within the motion, and nature is born. That is a red sphere, you might say, that other a blue sphere.
When the nature can effect its own potential, it can be said to be alive. When the living can choose its own nature it can be said to be a man.
Choice is a dimension of change, it is a potential to manifest change. Birds can change their flight, the site of their nests, even their plumage. But only a man can change his nature.
But let me step back for a second. The number TWO wasn’t so much cast down, rather, instead, marked the formation of a double heaven—there was one above, and one below. His are the anti-virtues, the rebellion to rule, the lust to love, the cruelty to mercy. He is the distance to the line. He is reason to faith. He fell, indeed, but not to earth.
Earth is filled with matter, agglomerations of sensation. A wall is built of bricks, and so the world is an enormous wall, a wall of walls we call bodies. You fell to earth when you chose yourself. You broke a piece off the void, grabbed a piece of Osiris, and tumbled here. I remember it, clear as yesterday, a thousand years ago. You have been here ever since, awaiting your awakening. You must train your charioteer to loose the dark, twisted beast; the flightless mule encumbering your Pegasus; and let it take you up. You must fledge yourself so that you may become worthy of witnessing the Supreme Cause. Once witnessed, you will cast the dead aside, and remain ever-living, an orphaned child returned home. It is this recognition that makes all life possible.
I cannot answer your questions. Think of a vase—is it it’s form that is useful? Of course not, it’s the space partitioned by its beauty—it is here the flowers are put. You must learn to cast aside your body, allow the space within to be put to good use; you must witness God and adopt the divine nature.