Quotes

Words! … words! … words! They have shackled and chained you, O children of the mists and the mountains; they have imprisoned you, and walled you up in the dungeon of a lightless reason.

Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all. [And after they have reigned they will rest.]

Beware the autumn people.
For some, autumn comes early, stays late, through life, where October follows September and November touches October and then instead of December and Christ’s birth there is no Bethlehem Star, no rejoicing, but September comes again and old October and so on down the years, with no winter, spring or revivifying summer.
For these beings, fall is the only normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond.
Where do they come from? The dust.
Where do they go? The grave.
Does blood stir their veins? No, the night wind.
What ticks in their head? The worm.
What speaks through their mouth? The toad.
What sees from their eye? The snake.
What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars.
They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth. In gusts they beetle-scurry, creep, thread, filter, motion, make all moons sullen, and surely cloud all clear-run waters. The spider-web hears them, trembles—breaks.
Such are the autumn people.

I remind you again, the only difference between the sage and yourself is you see the world and you identify with it. You think it’s real. A sage sees the world and he knows it’s a superimposition upon Consciousness. So he identifies with Consciousness.

You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely as small as what you allow to annoy you.

For there, though a god, he used to tend curly-fleeced sheep in the service of a mortal man, because there fell on him and waxed strong melting desire to wed the rich-tressed daughter of Dryops, and there be brought about the merry marriage. And in the house she bare Hermes a dear son who from his birth was marvellous to look upon, with goat’s feet and two horns – a noisy, merry-laughing child. But when the nurse saw his uncouth face and full beard, she was afraid and sprang up and fled and left the child. Then luck-bringing Hermes received him and took him in his arms: very glad in his heart was the god. And he went quickly to the abodes of the deathless gods, carrying the son wrapped in warm skins of mountain hares, and set him down beside Zeus and showed him to the rest of the gods. Then all the immortals were glad in heart and Bakkheios Dionysus in especial; and they called the boy Pan because he delighted all their hearts.

I’m sure I must have sounded like a fool and a borderline psychotic most of that year, when I talked to people who thought they knew who and where they were at the time … but looking back, I see that if I wasn’t right, at least I wasn’t wrong, and in that context I was forced to learn from my confusion … which took awhile, and there’s still no proof that what I finally learned was right, but there’s not a hell of a lot of evidence to show that I’m wrong either.

Towering about us are banks and other financial institutions that profit from war. War, for some, is a business. And across this country lies a labyrinth of military industries that produce nothing but instruments of death. And some of us once served these forces. It is death we defy, not our own death, but the vast enterprise of death. The dark, primeval lusts for power and personal wealth, the hypermasculine language of war and patriotism, are used to justify the slaughter of the weak and the innocent and mock justice. … And we will not use these words of war.

We cannot flee from evil. Some of us have tried through drink and drugs and self-destructiveness. Evil is always with us. It is because we know evil, our own evil, that we do not let go, do not surrender. It is because we know evil that we resist. It is because we know violence that we are nonviolent. And we know that it is not about us; war taught us that. It is about the other, lying by the side of the road. It is about reaching down in defiance of creeds and oaths, in defiance of religion and nationality, and lifting our enemy up. All acts of healing and love—and the defiance of war is an affirmation of love—allow us to shout out to the vast powers of the universe that, however broken we are, we are not yet helpless, however much we despair we are not yet without hope, however weak we may feel, we will always, always, always resist. And it is in this act of resistance that we find our salvation.

Again, it’s interesting about the short term memory loss, on the (bullshit) mountain we discussed earlier. 2001, 2002, all we heard about was “America must spread democracy in the Middle East. We must, even if it means invading a country to get them to have elections.” All we had to do was spread democracy, because democracy was going to keep us safe.

And now we have democracy breaking out in Egypt, in Libya, in Tunisia, but because we didn’t cause it, and we didn’t invade those countries and they’re voting for themselves, now we have a problem with who they selected. Unfortunately with democracy, the whole idea of it is, we don’t get to install the leader of that country. That country gets to install the leader.

Now, you may believe that that leader is not good for America, but that’s not your choice anymore, and a policy eight years ago of spreading democracy throughout the Middle East has suddenly become “as long as they choose the people we find acceptable.”

We accepted the basic anti- Christian, Hindu notion that the aim of this life is continual self- development, self- mastery, self- sufficiency. One could become a “perfect master, ” not of others, but of one’s own body and brain.