=kit016.txt

KIT 16 - The Other Side of Life

When one realizes to what extent one has allowed oneself to be
conditioned by the way things look and how one has let oneself be
confined by one's self-image, and when one nurtures a hunch that
there must be dimensions of the universe that one fails to
countenance, one is moved by an impelling need to know something
about the other side of life.

One imagines that perhaps it is in dreams that one might snatch an
ephemerous peep beyond the curtain into other spheres concealed
behind the phantasmagoria of confused impressions in the sorting-
house of the mind.

Curiously enough, the more one tries to do this in one's day
consciousness, the less one achieves even the slightest haul.  At
those moments when one awaits it least, a fleeting landscape of
the soul transpires - just as one may catch a furtive overview of
the land from a plane or a hang-glider in the instant of break in
the clouds.  "It has passed before one has noticed it", says the
Upanishad.

Why is our most cherished nostalgia so difficult to attain?  It is
because, as the Sufi AL HALLAJ said,

"It is our wish of God that stands in the way of the experience of
God?"
(AL HALLAJ)
[ I (sa) guess the concluding question mark is a typo? ]


Perhaps we might understand this better by calling upon a double
metaphor.  Suppose that we converge the physical world like a
whirlpool converges a lake.  It follows that we are coextensive
with it and, by the same token, with the fabric of the higher
spheres and, what is more, with the consciousness and will of the
universe that is, the knowing subject.

The paradox is really that behind the commonplace subject-object
relationship we entertain with the physical aspect of the
universe.  there is a deeper form of cognizance whereby one
realizes that what one experiences is actually one's self.

"That which is experienced is that which experiences", says ST. 
FRANCIS.  In this mode, experience is self-discovery.

The key to grasping this paradox is to realize that it is because
we think of ourselves as a fraction of the universe that we fail
to experience the higher dimensions of the physical universe that
we ourselves are.  If we are indeed the convergence of the
universe at all levels, we are those spheres which we think are
out of our reach.  It is in ourselves that they are to be found. 
This would explain the words of the Sufi ABDULLAH ANSARI, who
said:

"I searched for God and only found myself and then I searched for
myself and found God."
(ABDULLA ANSARI)

This is where the second metaphor comes in.  Supposing the vortex
were three-dimensional.  As we get closer to the apex, the bounty
present in the base would be badly squeezed and impoverished. 
just as the details of a landscape are reduced on a photograph to
fit it all into a small confined space.  This is why, deceptively,
the splendor we ascribe to these panes or spheres gets so badly
limited, distorted, spoliated and desecrated in what we think is
ourselves.  We have 'converged' all that wonder that is behind our
trite beings so that it is most times difficult to detect whatever
splendor has been pressed into it.

The Sufi IBN 'ARABI says,

"Grasp what transpires behind that which appears." 
(IBN 'ARABI)                                                      

[ Footnote (sa) kit016_1 ]


To see what beauty lurks behind a wounded and disenchanted face,
or what modicum of intuition still looms behind a conditioned
mind, one has to have the eyes of Majinun the lover, say the
Sufis.  Consider (as PRENTICE MILFORD has said) "...infinity in
finite act and eternity in a transient act." I would add that
behind the beauty of snow-covered landscapes is hidden a still
greater beauty; the snow crystals.

If one could see the flickering and sparkling of light or hear the
incredible melodies produced in the molecules and cells of even
the hair that we shed at the hair dressers as they reproduce in
mitosis or.  more so, the shrewdness of the enzymes that unlock
the transcription of the DNA by the RNA, one's spirit would be
sparkled with ecstasy.  And what of the light display of the
galaxies and the symphony of the spheres!   It beats even the most
ravishing sunrise.  And what do we know of the splendor of the
heavenly spheres, since whatever transpires in us, even in the
eyes of some children, can only be a dull replica thereof!  "In
comparison with the beauty of God, the beauty of the creature is
'nada,'" says ST.  JOHN OF THE CROSS.  From our limited personal
vantage points, we cannot countenance it.  One would have to
discover and identify with the heavenly counterpart in oneself.

Yet see what richness our civilized life offers us in amenities
and sheer beauty of art and music and architecture and theater and
dance and poetry and technology through the incentives of pleiades
of creative beings since the early stirrings of life on the
planet.  The beauty that comes through the inspired mind aroused
by ecstasy is inestimable, monumental and unending.

Thus, the other side of life avers itself not to be like the
opposite side of a coin, but the all-encompassing reality of that
apex of a cone and which in our ignorance, we confine our notion
of ourselves.   

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[ Footnote (sa) kit016_1 ]
[ Incidentallay, 'Ibn 'Arabi' seems to be an epithet, not a given
name -- like 'Ben Gurion' -- meaning, 'son of the Arabian people'.

The pre_state Zionists, notably Ben Gurion, had much respect for
Arab culture, and hoped to emulate many of its features, and of
course to live in harmony with the Arab peoples.  
That was exemplified in but not confined to the so_called
'Caananite movement within Zionism.

It is an attitude that remains in Israel, especially but not
entirely nor exclusively, on the Israel left.

But it is a weakening attitude, as both idealistic Zionism and
traditional Arab culture are overtaken by the degenerate and
inequitous affluence of the modern age.

The first step in the Peace Process should be to ban autombiles.

Then one could plant tomatoes on all the superhighways -- it's the
right climate for it, unlike the USA -- 

in Taos it was always iffy if there's be a 90_day growing season
between the last spring frost and the first autumn frost -- 

and in New England they sang, "but the LORD got the tomatoes ...
stars were dancing heel_and_toe / quit playing that banjo so"

I heard that song from some CP chick at the Encampment for
Citizenship at Fieldston School (New York Society for Ethical
Culture, which was the secular_humanist precursor, in the cultural
history of the USA, of the Sufi -- movement, or order, or whatever
we're supposed to be --    

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