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As a child on the prairie and creeks of rural Oklahoma he knew the thought-feelings of sky and earth. He especially remembered the lazy dreaming days of the SUN trigram, which symbolizes the gentle, wind, the penetrating. The earth-spirit's thought-feelings are not like those of people; and it does not particularly notice people, any more than it notices ants. Nature's thoughts are objective, slow, long, dry, all-encompassing and indescribable. But one can feel them. The scudding, puffy clouds and undulating, sighing wind murmur eternal, peaceful truths that soothe and excite at the same time. One never grows tired of such thought-feelings. He used to immerse himself in them and dream and drift and expand on a SUN day, which can come anytime of the year in Oklahoma.
There were many nights of KEN, keeping still, the mountain, stillness. Such nights especially appear in the winter, when the air is particularly clear and the myriad fires of the Milky Way sing and glitter overhead. This is our home. In the deep vastness, among the fields of stars, and glowing or inky dust, amid the magnetic storms, the floods of electrons and X-rays and the thump of gravitons, there are space voyagers. Beings like us. We shall go there some day, mastering outer space by mastering inner space.
There were also warm dreamy nights when the penetrating gentle wind carried thoughts of romance and adventure, sensed through a veil, nights of K'AN, the abysmal, water, the moon. Thales used to lie awake on such nights by his bed next to a south window, looking at the full moon, and feeling the gentle wind.
Thales never believed in the judging Father of the Christians. The earth-spirit, the moon-spirit, the sun-spirit, the galactic spirit: they do not pass judgment, and they are not petty like preachers. Nor are they Other. One can sink into them and expand (at least one can do this with the spirit of the wind). One can be petty and inward turning and mechanical like an ant, or one can expand and open up and become part of the universal processes. The Christian are like ants with their rigid faith in a man-made book, while the witches are like trees, rooted in the eternal processes of the moon and the earth. But the followers of empirical religion wish to be like the sky, immersed in the 'long result of time,' the universal processes, the glittering heaven, the Golden Flower of peace with excitement, becoming the space voyager.
The greater spirits are indifferent like nature; they do not care whether you become an ant or a tree. There are no commands, no 'falls,' no 'salvation.' You become what you build. If you become an ant, the greater spirits will see you as an ant. If you evolve into a greater spirit, they will welcome you as an equal. They are part of us, and we are part of them. Their purposes become our purposes as we expand to their frame of reference. The worst thing is to become stagnant, mechanical, mean, constricted, petty. The best thing is the peace of the living, that comes from being part of growth rather than stagnation, part of the universal creative forces, open to all experience, in contact with the roots of our being, knowledgeable of the long cycles, the ecological systems, the harmonies of which we are part.
In Oklahoma in early summer, sometimes the heat and humidity become oppressive and the sky becomes brassy. The birds and insects are still and the heart becomes uneasy. This is the prelude to CHEN, the arousing, shock, wood, thunder. The clouds build up in the west, black on the horizon, towering 40, 50 thousand feet, the lightning seen a long way, but not yet heard. Then it comes, fierce gusts of wind up to a hundred miles and an hour, tearing off dead branches. The rain comes in sheets, sometimes blown horizontally, stirring up the dust, and smelling delightful. Sometimes one can smell the rain before one can see it. The air becomes delightfully cool, fresh and clear, and the sunset peeps out after the storm has passed, producing a rainbow in the darkened east. The next day will be LI, the clinging, fire, light, sun, warmth. The day will be hot, but the low humidity makes it delightful. Thales used to lie in the alfalfa on such days, watching and listening to the symmetrical dances of the flying insects, and smelling the earth and hay.
The shock of CHEN (the King of Swords) is what we need now, for civilization has become oppressive. One feels that tense, oppressive psychic low pressure center all the time in Los Angeles and New York City, and the storm and hail and fierce winds of change are necessary.
Time goes on forever. The universe keeps on expanding, collapsing, exploding, expanding, collapsing. Consciousness likewise goes on forever. The Atman is indestructible. But no one state of consciousness, or matter, or culture lasts forever. There is no ultimate goal to history in the sense of a place or event. In that sense, all roads lead nowhere. The point is that the way have heart.
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