The Wise Silence

The progress of the sciences toward theories of fundamental unity, cosmic symmetry (as in the unified field theory) — how do such theories differ, in the end, from that unity which Plato called unspeakable and indiscribable, the holistic knowledge shared by so many peoples of the earth, Christians included, before the advent of the industrial revolution made new barbarians of the peoples of the West? In the United States, before spiritualist foolishness at the end of the last century confused mysticism with the occult and tarnished both, William James wrote a master work of metaphysics; Emerson spoke of the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal One . . .; Melville referred to that profound silence, that only voice of God; Walt Whitman celebrated the most ancient secret, that no God could be found more divine than yourself. And then, almost everywhere, a clear and subtle illumination that lent magnificence to life and peace to death was overwhelmed in the hard glare of technology. Yet that light is always present, like the stars of noon. Man must perceive it if he is to transcend his fear of meaninglessness, for no amount of progress can take its place. We have outsmarted ourselves,
like greedy monkeys, and now we are full of dread.

In another life — this isn’t what I know, but how I feel — these mountains were my home; there is a rising of forgotten knowledge, like a spring from hidden aquifers under the earth. To glimpse one’s own true nature is a kind of homegoing, to a place East of the Sun, West of the Moon — the homegoing that needs no home, like a waterfall that turns to mist before touching the earth and rises once again into the sky.

--Peter Matthiesson
The Snow Leopard

John Lennon: Instant Karma (We All Shine On)

TOWER OF SET

SHIVA TEMPLE

ISIS TEMPLE

CHEOPS PYRAMID
WITH PILGRIM