2
Immortality is not found in the body,
Nor in the time-bound legacies of history books.
It is ever in the seamless awareness of the indivisible moment.
It is the eternal you that peers out through the senses
Into the dreaming they and mind create.
* * * *
To learn from history is one thing, to allow the past to dominate the present, another.
Every generation must play the hand they are dealt in the time they are allotted.
Your ancestors had their time, you have yours, your progeny will have theirs.
The traditions, the patterns, that worked at one point, may not in another.
To grapple with the present with a mind that is present is the highest order.
4
Our kind seems headed
Toward an unprecedented cataclysm,
And in the grand schema of things, does it really matter?
Each of us answers that eternal question in the way we carry out our daily lives,
But it is synergistically that the dice are cast and futures told.
So down the fated river we bob and weave,
All alone, all together,
Players in the history of mind.
* * * *
Humanity is a species fixated on the past,
On history, tradition, ritual, formula, this concept or that.
How challenging it is to view the streaming moment with fresh, clear eyes.
Our narcissistic vision is veiled by all we think we know,
We are blind to the mystery of Eden.
5
History is about individuals and all their groupings,
The synergies of every blend of cooperation and competition,
All played out on an eternal stage indifferent to existence or extinction.
6
We may baptize the source however we please,
Envisage it any way we are inclined.
The only genuine curiosity
Is our believing it really matters enough
To squander the rest of history battling over the vanity of it all.
24
Humankind has expended a great portion of its recent so-called civilized history
Battling over the electromagnetic spectrum: wavelengths, frequencies, vibrations, light, sound.
Continuously struggling, quarreling, destroying -- over what is but a mere sliver of the indivisible mystery
That our sensory dwellings are capable of perceiving in the patterning of all things manifest.
How baffling that we have not fathomed a greater vision of our place in it all.
31
When the engines of industry cease to run,
When the cloud of technology inevitably evaporates,
When resources can no longer sustain the privilege they have fostered,
Those that are prepared for the worst are more likely to survive.
Hoping for the best only takes any historical epoch so far,
And at some point Old School will ascend again.
Not a question of if, but how and when.
32
So many experiences, so much history, so much knowledge, so much blather.
Nothing more than the filter of imagination given daily reality,
Cloaking the ever-present now from its Self.
40
History is a capricious thing.
It generally only reminisces the survivors,
And in the rise and fall of all things, everyone eventually loses.
So, what does that say about the whirl
And all its ado?
42
There is likely a fair-to-middling amount of history remaining
For humankind to play out its ceaseless passions
And, alas, there is not much money
On it being very pretty.
43
What is human history but a ceaseless struggle
Over whose imagination should reign.
Who was the first to come up with the fanciful notion
That we vain two-leggeds might someday, somehow, all come together
Into one big happily-dancing-Age-of-Aquarius family?
Out-and-out balderdash, to be sure.
44
History, a bottomless grab bag
In the vast immensity of imagination.
Nothing more than whatever comes to mind.
58
Once all memories have dissolved,
Will anything have ever really happened?
All history is but a fleeting game of make-believe.
60
History has never repeated itself.
It merely recycles the same patterns.
61
Once a placid, winding river,
The roar of the falls is now very near,
And sounding nearer each and every moment.
Who will survive the chaotic mayhem
In the harsh rocks below?
Who will journey
The waterway of history
Beyond the coming Great Fall,
And what stories will their destinies tell?
* * * *
Who will be the last historian,
The last chronicler of the human paradigm?
Who will be the last to discern, to set down all that has passed
Since the first recording of humanity’s dream?
62
Who first came up with the idea that god was a separate deity,
And that it must be feared and worshipped and kowtowed to daily?
Who else but someone craving the usual suspects: power, fame, fortune.
And that, along with a few other trifling details, is human history in a nutshell.
68
This fleeting, ever-changing dream of time
Is just another space between the lines
In history books yet to be written.
69
History is full of true believers
Who every day in so many ways
Spin time its mind-bound way.
75
The unspeakable dogmatic vanity
That could arise from this body of work,
Is worth yet another caution to any future readers.
History is replete with an endless array of absurdities and horrors
From many a well-meant and harmless intention,
And to use these many thoughts
In any way dogmatic
Is to miss the point entirely.
84
Today’s heroes, today’s villains,
Will be but food for worms in some tomorrow.
What histories they played out, what memories they inspired,
Are entirely at the whim of those with pen and paper,
And the inexplicable inclination to remember.
86
Have you ever really existed as more than a figment of imagination?
Are you really anything more than a fleeting ghost of history past?
And what is history but a rolodex of memories quickly forgotten.
87
History is chock-full of potholes and pitfalls,
Into which those who follow in time
Only occasionally sidestep
For the very briefest of whiles.
93
In the theater of time,
The present has always been
At the mercy of its historical context.
97
It has always been a modern world.
All history is the make-believe
Of minds bound in time.
108
Death makes all history absurdly irrelevant.
All tradition is the delusion of imagination.
110
Knowledge is such endlessly piecemeal thing.
History has many faces, many flavors, many truths.
It is an arbitrary leviathan from the first story to the last,
Only as accurate as the filters that shape it into words.
132
History has never once repeated itself.
It is patterns that play out over and over again
Across every time, every geography.
143
History is replete with the ideals of truth, justice, and equity for all
Being blown asunder by the mortal tempest of me, myself and I,
From every crook and cranny of this swirling play of stardust.
154
History is the play
Of graven images of every sort.
Forget everything.
Be.
165
Who will be the last historian to chronicle the human epic?
Who will be the last witness to the rise and fall of our kind?
* * * *
To hold out hope that humanity
Will achieve some sort of utopian ideal
Only shows how little is understood of the history,
Make-believe that it well is, into which we have all been cast.
174
The greatest view of the history of all manifestation
Would be the fusion of every universe born of conscious design.
It would include a seamless wander through the matrix, through every nook and cranny
To which the mystery of imagination is witness in every way possible.
All within the infinite, indivisible, timeless stillness
Of that source prior to all naming,
That source prior, even,
To that which many call god.
184
What a burden any history, any memory, is
To unfurling freely in the unfolding moment.
194
Once you discern all history, not just some of it, is imagined,
What is there to do but wander through it,
Wondering all the while
At all the much ado about nothing.
200
A child has no history, no future,
Only the immediacy of the unfolding present
To which s/he gives full attention.
Let go your universe,
And rediscover your innocence.
220
Death will merely be the finale to your unique translation of history.
* * * *
Dogma is the kool-aid of history.
222
A splinter of history in every mind.
237
To carry history in your head, or not to carry history in your head,
Is the conscious choice between the stagnation of memory,
Or the eternal life of moment-to-moment awareness.
243
At some point, so much history becomes so much gibberish.
Now is the time, and those who abide in the present
Are at the forefront, the tip of the spear,
In the epoch of human evolution.
Learn what you are able
From all that history has to offer,
But do not let it weigh upon the decisions
That will be required to survive civilization’s unraveling.
244
If you cannot examine the universe in your mind,
Then your destiny is just one conditioned journey or another,
Dictated by the history, the make-believe, in which you have been steeped.
245
This time, too, will one day likely be called ancient,
Assuming anyone is still around and about
Pondering such things historical.
247
All histories are really nothing more than selected snapshots of perception
Permeated by the unknowable awareness of the seamless indivisibility.
250
What a mockery of accuracy
Hollywoods, Bollywoods, Broadways,
And other entertainments so often make of history.
But then again, how accurate has any history ever really been?
255
Whatever is left of this passion play
Is really just the scratchy record of history
Singing the same predictable song over and over.
Many would happily re-shape the garden into a kinder place,
But, alas, the biological imperative will out.
Ignorance is the cancer.
256
Into every account, every chronicle, every memoir, every history,
The motive, the agenda, the intention of the writer
Should be very carefully gauged.
266
No bird has ever written down even one chirp.
Nor a dog a bark, nor a cat a meow, nor a bear a growl.
This dreamtime would be without even one history
Had humankind not conspired otherwise.
268
It is history that whittles away innocence.
272
The tides of history are daily swirling stronger.
275
History is a stream of anonymity.
283
History is replete with the same old regurgitation.
285
Of history, what can be said but that it is a theater of the absurd.
300
The chronicles of time are nothing more than vapor.
All history begins corroding long before it is written.
311
As seen from perhaps the darkest before-the-storm points in human history,
Given the nature of our kind, is it even at all possible, that an enlightened paradigm
Might, like the fabled phoenix of mythical origin, rise up from the debris?
Away from the busy din, idealistic notions are so easily spun.
318
Why be bound by any historical notion?
Why be crimped by any mythology or tradition?
Why not be entirely free in the sovereignty of awareness?
It is only fear that bids you acquiesce to any artificial limitation.
323
There is no formula in rearing children.
Everyone has their own approach to parenting,
Some for good, some for ill.
And from it all,
Human history unfolds.
330
History is the arbitrary highlighting of selected snapshots
From eternity’s indivisible, ever-graceful streaming,
The crisscrossing of the endless array of ripples
Which bring notable events to realization.
And from those streaming moments,
New ripples ever make their way
In dreamtime’s quantum play.
334
What point being a footnote
Or even a lengthy chapter in a history book.
Or, perhaps the most terrifying possibility of all things narcissistic,
The front cover on a check-stand magazine rack.
335
The history of humankind is an incalculable archive of every conceivable narrative.
There is really no greater or lesser story, all are equally steeped in imagination.
350
Those few who manage to stream along in the pure awareness
Prior to time, prior to space, prior to consciousness,
Are unburdened by any history, whatsoever.
351
Best not to judge other points of history merely through the reflection of your own.
378
History is written by winners, losers, survivors, abiders,
Or whoever makes the effort to set down one version or another.
But sooner or later, all eyes grow dim, and all ears, deaf,
And all chronicles are lost to the winds of illusion.
392
To gaze across all history with neither need nor want,
Is a freedom even the many gods of old would envy.
404
As fascinating and absorbing as history
And all things intellectual are,
They are all imagined,
And therefore, ultimately, unreal.
412
What good is knowledge, what good is history,
If you have not learned the many lessons offered?
416
The notion of history is sculpted in countless ways
Through the never-ceasing, indivisibly eternal now.
422
Another wave of human history,
Of world history, of universal history,
In which you must play your itsy-bitsy part.
426
Once you are dead and gone, just how important is it, really,
How possible is it, even, that anyone remembers anything about you?
How can a few lines in some history book mean anything at all,
Once the dust has settled behind those unseeing eyes?
428
New day, same old story.
Without fresh eyes, who can discern
The newness under every moment’s starry sky?
Without fresh eyes, what are there but regurgitating puppets,
Dancing to the whims of the strings of history.
437
What point will there be to being a footnote in the history books,
When worms are the only things moving about your cranium?
443
History is opinion laden with many views.
444
More nonsense for the dustbin of history.
446
Why would you really need to believe the mythology,
The folklore, the legends, the customs, the traditions, the history,
All the many perceptions, of any given culture, ultimately real and important,
Including that dreamy sliver of time which you call your own?
448
Do not believe even for a moment
That anything you have ever spoken or written
Will significantly modify or change the human paradigm.
Toying with history is an amusing diversion,
But more than likely futile fare.
* * * *
The nuances of any given history are seemingly unfathomable.
Every witness perceives the same things as no one else ever will.
We are all wandering about the same theater in different universes.
450
Traditions, folklore, myths, legends, parables,
What enticingly brief notions, brief distractions.
Mortality proves the insignificance of all histories.
452
The mind is the immeasurable playground of quantum imagination.
All history, all science, all art, all vocation, all trivia, all anything,
Is but a perpetual dance in a matrix too vast to fathom any edge.
454
Is history that does not eventually point you to your ultimate Self, history worth knowing?
457
There are those who create history, those who regurgitate it, and those who ignore it.
458
The true scientist, the true historian, the true anything,
Never gives up questing as accurate a rendering
As their swirl of consciousness can muster.
459
Why would anyone ever need or want to duplicate,
To imitate another’s life in any way, any shape, any form?
Live your own existence, free of any history, free of any burden.
468
What are you but
A historical collage,
An economic statistic,
An anthropological result,
A psychological adaptation,
A sociological paradigm,
A scientific curiosity.
473
History tends to raise winners to pedestals,
And spin losers to denigrated, even vilified obscurities.
The true histories, well, how many, if not all,
Are long lost in the sands of time?
475
Who can out-Wittgenstein Wittgenstein?
Who can out-Schopenhauer Schopenhauer?
Who can out-Aristotle Aristotle?
Who can out-Lao Tzu Lao Tzu?
Who can out-Heraclitus Heraclitus?
Who can out-Kafka Kafka?
Who can out-Buddha Buddha?
Who can out-Plato Plato?
Who can out-Yogananda Yogananda?
Who can out-Aristotle Aristotle?
Who can out-James James?
Who can out-Ram Dass Ram Dass?
Who can out-Ashtavakra Ashtavakra?
Who can out-Watts Watts?
Who can out-Marx Marx?
Who can out-Descartes Descartes?
Who can out-Patanjali Patanjali?
Who can out-Arendt Arendt?
Who can out-Nietzsche Nietzsche?
Who can out-Sartre Sartre?
Who can out-Locke Locke?
Who can out-Thoreau Thoreau?
Who can out-Emerson Emerson?
Who can out-Bacon Bacon?
Who can out-Descartes Descartes?
Who can out-Vonnegut Vonnegut?
Who can out-Krishna Krishna?
Who can out-Hume Hume?
Who can out-Machiavelli Machiavelli?
Who can out-Comte Comte?
Who can out-Whitman Whitman?
Who can out-Rousseau Rousseau?
Who can out-Russell Russell?
Who can out-Hobbes Hobbes?
Who can out-Foucault Foucault?
Who can out-Kierkegaard Kierkegaard?
Who can out-Mill Mill?
Who can out-Confucius Confucius?
Who can out-Osho Osho?
Who can out-de Beauvoir de Beauvoir?
Who can out-Aquinas Aquinas?
Who can out-Carneades Carneades?
Who can out-Hess Hess?
Who can out-Diogenes Diogenes?
Who can out-Smith Smith?
Who can out-Parmenides Parmenides?
Who can out-Pascal Pascal?
Who can out-Chomsky Chomsky?
Who can out-Thales Thales?
Who can out-Wollstonecraft Wollstonecraft?
Who can out-Muhammad Muhammad?
Who can out-Shankara Shankara?
Who can out-Sina Sina?
Who can out-Derrida Derrida?
Who can out-Epicurus Epicurus?
Who can out-Kant Kant?
Who can out-Aurelius Aurelius?
Who can out-Socrates Socrates?
Who can out-Dewey Dewey?
Who can out-Aristotle Aristotle?
Who can out-Voltaire Voltaire?
Who can out-Hegel Hegel?
Who can out-Holshouser Holshouser?
Who can out-Plate Plato?
Who can out-Socrates Socrates?
Who can out-Heidegger Heidegger?
Who can out-Arendt Arendt?
Who can out-Zoroaster Zoroaster?
Who can out-Jesus Jesus?
Who can out-Camus Camus?
Who can out-Spinoza Spinoza?
Who can out-Krishnamurti Krishnamurti?
Who can out-philosophize the weight of history?
Hemmed in by the sages of the ages, we are, we are.
478
Pardon me for inquiring, but why do some humans …
Seem to loathe nature and her many creations?
Become so determined to control others?
Go to such extremes to feel happy?
Believe gold so important?
Seem to delight in hurting others?
Partake in so many preposterous notions?
Corrupt the world with so many unproven creations?
Despise so many others simply because they abide by different values?
Become so vain about their bodies that they cloak them with every imaginable fashion?
Focus on so many differences when there is so much more in common?
Acquire so much more than they could ever need or use?
Bear children in whom they have little interest?
Create a world so indigent and forlorn?
Learn so little from history,
And are so blind to its reckoning?
479
What would it have been like to only know a tiny slice of this garden world?
To have lived among a small group in a desert, an island, a forest, a valley, a prairie, a mountain.
Communicating orally using a unique language spawned by the given geography.
Scratching out an arduous existence with nascent tools and weapons.
Wearing simple attire, living in caves or modest shelters.
Hunting, fishing, gathering, harvesting;
Consuming whatever the world about you offered.
Gazing up at the boundless unknown in wonder, perhaps in dread.
Weaving stories; establishing traditions, rituals, customs; creating myths, legends, gods.
The prehistoric etchings of what we vainly call the modern, civilized world,
All in the same eternal moment it has always been, will ever be.
* * * *
How did we evolve into playing it out in such discordant fashion?
What is this monkey-mind need to believe in anything?
What is this insatiable craving for power, for fame, for fortune?
Here we are somewhere near or past the summit of our brief history of time,
And where can it possibly go but into some dystopian nightmare on a sure road to extinction?
480
No set of writings, no persona, no group,
Should ever be accepted thoughtlessly as some authority.
Everything should be approached vigilantly, rationally, with a critical eye.
You are captain of the given mind-body to which you are witness.
Take control of your helm, navigate your own course.
History has its place, but you are here now.
499
What is any history but what some storyteller’s imaginary frame of reference,
Coupled with the translation of your frame of reference.
Very dubious from the get-go.