Friday, August 10, 2007

The Universe

Hippies knew what quantum theorists would discover decades later, that the universe is a singularity, it's all connected. It may be multiple faceted, but that's because it's alive. It's permeated with consciousness.

"To the Native American all things are alive. To the white men, all things are dead already." -Native American wisdom


The universe was our teacher. All you had to do was to attend, in consciousness, to be aware of the fact. Some empiricists might call that magical thinking, but these days we know that the universe is a singularity, is alive, and apparently conscious. Thanks to hippy guy Fritjof Capra for the Tao of Physics, man. If you read such things and aren't hip to how
magical the universe really is, you must be brain dead or something.


Everywhere I went the universe was there to show me something. To prove it's consciousness to me. It was the big Everything, man.

One day after our high school rap session, which was always followed by a wonderful group Om chant, my friend looks at me and says, "I have a mantra for you." Which was wild
because we'd never discussed such things at all, really. But he looked at me and said, "Om kria babji nami Om. It means the absoluteness is the teacher, the teacher is the absoluteness." Heavy, man. Because like, those were my thoughts exactly.

Sometimes the universe seemed to me in consciousness like an ocean. Some people stood on the shore looking at it, others waded in, some even swam. But if you had faith, that was like having a surfboard. Even still, some people would paddle around, you know. But others would make if their life to ride the waves, to remain above it all, and to become a part of the universe instead of being a bonehead that insisted that the universe become a part of their own meager consciousness.

To me it's like, Jesus wouldn't have even needed a surfboard because he *was* faith. He was nondifferent from his faith. That's what happens when your consciousness becomes universal, absolute. Enlightenment. All we need to do is wake up and embrace that greater reality. "Seeing the Buddha walking down the road, a man ran up to him and asked, 'What
*are* you!?' To which the Buddha replied, 'I am awake!' "

And to me the permeation of consciousness in the universe began to manifest all the more in everything because the hippies left the door open on purpose. It manifested itself in our art, in our music, in the clothes that we wore, in our attitudes towards everyone and everything, our attitude towards the universe itself, of which we are undeniably a part. In such a singularity, we never truly escape what we put into it. Negativity will come back to haunt us, just as positive thoughts will come back to reward us. We can't escape the universe, and each and every one of us is part of it's condition. So then the question is who is putting all the negativity into things, and who is making the universe just a little bit more wonderful. Who's being ugly about things, and who's being beautiful.

To me, Universalism is it's own reward. But to be good at it, one has to practice. Just like anything else.


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