We Lost Another One
Faster than you can snap your fingers, faster than you can blink, in the space between the thud of the heart in your chest, he's gone. Just like that.
Sean was always light-hearted, quick to smile, and had a contagious passion for the yoga.
My deepest condolences to his ladyfriend, his family, his friends. Much love and light to you all.
Friday, December 29, 2006
Mike Watt Spiel
If you can thread through the microscopic font size, Mike Watt's tour diaries make for great reading. Watt was the bassist for the Minutemen and firehose, and goddamn if "Jesus and Tequila" off Double Nickels on the Dime didn't change my life. He's since released several solo albums, none of which I've heard, and plays bass with Iggy and the Asheton brothers in the rejuvenated Stooges.
(Apparently Steve Albini has produced their new album, too, all of the above guaranteeing I'll give it a listen. Thank you, Bittorrent.)
Watts hammered out his own San Pedro, California-based punk-rock patois, which is charming and self-effacing. He doesn't have conversations, he spiels; he doesn't play the bass guitar, he "works the thud staff." His home page, hootpage.com, is also filled with daily journal entries from his various tours.
The headache-inducing microdot font size is abetted by the fact that the long entries are all crammed on the page in long, single paragraphs, but there's a realness to be found and treasured in his words. The Minutemen straddled the worlds of punk rock and hardcore, but were neither nihilistic like the former nor as strident as the latter, and after reading Watt's journals, you understand why. He is genuinely excited and interested in the world.
If you can find them, his descriptions of the Stooges live gigs are revelatory, beyond the fact that Iggy Pop still sounds like an absolute madman on stage. With the Stooges, Watt oscillates between two extremes: the first, more common, extreme has him fighting a self-conscious and anxiety-ridden battle to keep time with the band, keep his bass in tune, and stay on top of the sound equipment. The second extreme are those moments when the band locks into a thunderous groove, and Watt falls to his knees and bows his head in worship in front of his bass amp, the better to somatically absorb the thunder pouring forth. He writes of "disappearing" into and "taking off" with the music.
Sarvikalpa samadhi? Call it the yoga of the thud staff.
If you can thread through the microscopic font size, Mike Watt's tour diaries make for great reading. Watt was the bassist for the Minutemen and firehose, and goddamn if "Jesus and Tequila" off Double Nickels on the Dime didn't change my life. He's since released several solo albums, none of which I've heard, and plays bass with Iggy and the Asheton brothers in the rejuvenated Stooges.
(Apparently Steve Albini has produced their new album, too, all of the above guaranteeing I'll give it a listen. Thank you, Bittorrent.)
Watts hammered out his own San Pedro, California-based punk-rock patois, which is charming and self-effacing. He doesn't have conversations, he spiels; he doesn't play the bass guitar, he "works the thud staff." His home page, hootpage.com, is also filled with daily journal entries from his various tours.
The headache-inducing microdot font size is abetted by the fact that the long entries are all crammed on the page in long, single paragraphs, but there's a realness to be found and treasured in his words. The Minutemen straddled the worlds of punk rock and hardcore, but were neither nihilistic like the former nor as strident as the latter, and after reading Watt's journals, you understand why. He is genuinely excited and interested in the world.
If you can find them, his descriptions of the Stooges live gigs are revelatory, beyond the fact that Iggy Pop still sounds like an absolute madman on stage. With the Stooges, Watt oscillates between two extremes: the first, more common, extreme has him fighting a self-conscious and anxiety-ridden battle to keep time with the band, keep his bass in tune, and stay on top of the sound equipment. The second extreme are those moments when the band locks into a thunderous groove, and Watt falls to his knees and bows his head in worship in front of his bass amp, the better to somatically absorb the thunder pouring forth. He writes of "disappearing" into and "taking off" with the music.
Sarvikalpa samadhi? Call it the yoga of the thud staff.
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Yoga at Altitude
“If some people are telling you they had their climax on Mount Everest, they lied,” says Reinhold Messner in the November National Geographic. “It is an awful place.”
Caroline Alexander, the article’s author, asks: why risk everything to go there?
“Without the possibility of death,” says Messner, “adventure is not possible.”
The article, from which the following information and quotes were taken, hails Messner as the world’s greatest mountaineer. In 1975, Messner ascended, with longtime partner Peter Habeler, the 26,470-foot summit of Gasherbrum I, called Hidden Peak; Gasherburm I is one of the giants of the Himalayas. Most remarkable of all, though, was that Messner and Habeler ascended without porters, camps, fixed ropes, or oxygen.
Messner and Habeler then scaled Everest without oxygen in May of 1978, a feat that National Geographic says “took climbing to the absolute limit.” Three months later, Messner climbed Nanga Parbat, the ninth highest mountain on Earth, solo. Two years later, he again climbed Mount Everest without oxygen, equipped with a single small rucksack — and alone.
Messner was the first climber to ascend all 14 "eight-thousanders," or peaks over 8,000 meters tall.
The yoga of Messner’s climbing — and make no mistake, it is yoga — involves intense practice and dedication. “If I am well-prepared,” says Messner, “and if I’m living a long time in my visions, in my fantasy, with my challenge, before doing it, I’m living with it, I’m dreaming about it, planning, preparing, training.”
The residue of his practice is a fierce, consuming, and single-pointed state of concentration. “So when I start to climb,” he continues, “especially when I’m on a big wall, whatever the difficulties — I’m so concentrated that there is nothing else existing; there’s only a few meters of wall where I am hanging and climbing; and in this concentration, everything seems quite logical. There is no danger anymore. The danger is gone … But the concentration is absolute.”
As Messner says, without the possibility of death, adventure is not possible. It must be understood, however, that for Messner, the idea of “life” and “adventure” are inextricably intertwined, for it is true, too, that without the possibility of death, life is not possible. That’s the word “life” as opposite to the idea of merely subsisting, which is the ceaseless reaction to external stimuli — avoiding discomfort, seeking its opposite — eternally buffeted by the mind's internal chatter and its cherished anxieties and neuroses.
For Messner, that internal chatter is stilled in the face of absolute danger, a danger for which he has rigorously practiced.
“There are moments in difficult situations, far away, that there is no more doubt,” he says. “There, the questions are gone. And I think these are the important moments. If the question is gone, I have not to answer. Myself living — I am the answer.”
Messner has paid heavy dues to the mountains: frostbite has claimed five toes and three fingers, and during Reinhold's first Himalayan expedition in 1970, Nanga Parbat claimed the life of his younger brother, Gunther.
Is it possible to become Messner’s “myself living,” to become one’s own “answer," without stumbling to the summit of Everest, half-mad with oxygen deprivation, at the edge of starvation and dehydration?
“If some people are telling you they had their climax on Mount Everest, they lied,” says Reinhold Messner in the November National Geographic. “It is an awful place.”
Caroline Alexander, the article’s author, asks: why risk everything to go there?
“Without the possibility of death,” says Messner, “adventure is not possible.”
The article, from which the following information and quotes were taken, hails Messner as the world’s greatest mountaineer. In 1975, Messner ascended, with longtime partner Peter Habeler, the 26,470-foot summit of Gasherbrum I, called Hidden Peak; Gasherburm I is one of the giants of the Himalayas. Most remarkable of all, though, was that Messner and Habeler ascended without porters, camps, fixed ropes, or oxygen.
Messner and Habeler then scaled Everest without oxygen in May of 1978, a feat that National Geographic says “took climbing to the absolute limit.” Three months later, Messner climbed Nanga Parbat, the ninth highest mountain on Earth, solo. Two years later, he again climbed Mount Everest without oxygen, equipped with a single small rucksack — and alone.
Messner was the first climber to ascend all 14 "eight-thousanders," or peaks over 8,000 meters tall.
The yoga of Messner’s climbing — and make no mistake, it is yoga — involves intense practice and dedication. “If I am well-prepared,” says Messner, “and if I’m living a long time in my visions, in my fantasy, with my challenge, before doing it, I’m living with it, I’m dreaming about it, planning, preparing, training.”
The residue of his practice is a fierce, consuming, and single-pointed state of concentration. “So when I start to climb,” he continues, “especially when I’m on a big wall, whatever the difficulties — I’m so concentrated that there is nothing else existing; there’s only a few meters of wall where I am hanging and climbing; and in this concentration, everything seems quite logical. There is no danger anymore. The danger is gone … But the concentration is absolute.”
As Messner says, without the possibility of death, adventure is not possible. It must be understood, however, that for Messner, the idea of “life” and “adventure” are inextricably intertwined, for it is true, too, that without the possibility of death, life is not possible. That’s the word “life” as opposite to the idea of merely subsisting, which is the ceaseless reaction to external stimuli — avoiding discomfort, seeking its opposite — eternally buffeted by the mind's internal chatter and its cherished anxieties and neuroses.
For Messner, that internal chatter is stilled in the face of absolute danger, a danger for which he has rigorously practiced.
“There are moments in difficult situations, far away, that there is no more doubt,” he says. “There, the questions are gone. And I think these are the important moments. If the question is gone, I have not to answer. Myself living — I am the answer.”
Messner has paid heavy dues to the mountains: frostbite has claimed five toes and three fingers, and during Reinhold's first Himalayan expedition in 1970, Nanga Parbat claimed the life of his younger brother, Gunther.
Is it possible to become Messner’s “myself living,” to become one’s own “answer," without stumbling to the summit of Everest, half-mad with oxygen deprivation, at the edge of starvation and dehydration?
Samadhi at Three Paces
I dipped into a Peet's two Fridays ago for a pre-practice double-banger of espresso. In the three paces between the front door and the counter, nirvikalpa samadhi arose, and I disappeared into that timeless gap between thoughts. The conscious brain, the I-maker, the ahamkara, as it’s called, scrabbled for purchase, dug in its heels, and did what it does best — that is, think — and so, facing the counterperson, I thought, "Wow! I am experiencing a moment of pure timelessness and formlessness!"
Which meant that at that point, of course, I wasn't.
The irony being I then went to practice the yoga.
The yoga will not create or bring about such moments, but in my case, at least, it has refined my ability to recognize such moments when they arise, and further refine the tools, techniques and skills that allow one to pay attention to those moments for longer and longer.
The irony, in this instance, is that there is no “one” paying attention to any “thing.” Words are just too slippery for descriptions.
You will doubtless be pleased to know, too, that it was a strong, hearty espresso, one which did most of the work of the practice for me.
I dipped into a Peet's two Fridays ago for a pre-practice double-banger of espresso. In the three paces between the front door and the counter, nirvikalpa samadhi arose, and I disappeared into that timeless gap between thoughts. The conscious brain, the I-maker, the ahamkara, as it’s called, scrabbled for purchase, dug in its heels, and did what it does best — that is, think — and so, facing the counterperson, I thought, "Wow! I am experiencing a moment of pure timelessness and formlessness!"
Which meant that at that point, of course, I wasn't.
The irony being I then went to practice the yoga.
The yoga will not create or bring about such moments, but in my case, at least, it has refined my ability to recognize such moments when they arise, and further refine the tools, techniques and skills that allow one to pay attention to those moments for longer and longer.
The irony, in this instance, is that there is no “one” paying attention to any “thing.” Words are just too slippery for descriptions.
You will doubtless be pleased to know, too, that it was a strong, hearty espresso, one which did most of the work of the practice for me.
Saturday, December 2, 2006
Questions
Can ashtanga vinyasa yogis cop to looking at pictures of Britney Spears' vagina?
Can ashtanga vinyasa yogis admit to being more intrigued by Britney Spears' C-section scar than her vagina?
What does Britney Spears' vagina have to do with yoga?
Oh, if only we could live in a cave in the jungle, wear a loincloth, grow our hair and beards, practice the asanas, the pranayama, the meditation, chant the Gita and the Sutras, and know nothing of Britney Spears' vagina.
Can ashtanga vinyasa yogis cop to looking at pictures of Britney Spears' vagina?
Can ashtanga vinyasa yogis admit to being more intrigued by Britney Spears' C-section scar than her vagina?
What does Britney Spears' vagina have to do with yoga?
Oh, if only we could live in a cave in the jungle, wear a loincloth, grow our hair and beards, practice the asanas, the pranayama, the meditation, chant the Gita and the Sutras, and know nothing of Britney Spears' vagina.
Frawley Comes Alive!
I just crept out of a talk given by Dr. David Frawley called "Ayurvedic Psychology." Dr. Frawley’s a prolific author, and has published books on yoga philosophy, jyotish, or Hindu astrology, and ayurveda. He’s one of the few Westerners recognized in India as a Vedacharya, or teacher of the ancient wisdom.
In person, he's articulate, intelligent, and soft-spoken. For all you groupies, he’s trimmed his wild-man beard and hair and now bears little resemblance to the renunciate staring out of his dust-jacket photo.
A question I might have asked him, had I not snuck out before the group mantra meditation in order to make the Encinitas Christmas parade: Are we, in fact, a chronically overstimulated culture, country and civilization? Are we heaping on more and more undigested and undigestable sense-impressions, and therefore bloating on the ensuing karma?
But how to untangle that idea — illustrated by Frawley's example of the escalating number of car-crashes in movies — from a thinly veiled romantic yearning for a prelapsarian Eden, an unmediated “pure” state of existence, which, we all know, never existed?
I'd have liked to discuss the other thread woven throughout his talk: existence as a perpetual sickness, disease, or imbalance, forever in need of an eternal healing, an idea also prevalent in much New Age thinking.
(You say you aren’t “imbalanced”? That’s a sign of a vata imbalance.)
My attendance at this talk comes hard on the heels of my completion of Daniel Pinchbeck’s latest opus, 2012. Pinchbeck has eagerly picked up where Terence McKenna left off, as regards to psychedelic shamanism, alien abductions, and the machine elves who live on the other side of a DMT-generated boom tube.
Interestingly, in 2012, Pinchbeck glosses right over the work of Ken Wilber, and in fact dismisses it as a complicated series of “charts and graphs,” when in fact much of Wilber’s work addresses most of Pinchbeck’s central questions, chief among them the ways the different wisdom traditions turn the insights gained during certain peak (and psychedelic drug-induced) states into permanent, everyday qualities and characteristics. In other words, how to stabilize the insights Pinchbeck received while chugging ayuhuasca at Burning Man and therefore experience transformative growth.
(Although undoubtedly Wilber would be unable to save Pinchbeck from his own shrieking harridan writing style. Daniel Pinchbeck never met an alliteration or assonance he didn’t like. 2012 is awash in their pulpy corpses.)
The other, more obscure author who might most help Pinchbeck, in addition to Wilber, would be Patanjali, author of the Yoga Sutras, from which Pinchbeck might heed Patanjali’s suggestions to find one single practice, one truth, and then stick to it, without interruption, for an extended period of time, with faith and vigor.
But the cross-pollination of Frawley’s talk tonight and with what Pinchbeck addresses in 2012 — chiefly, the quantum-jump into a new human consciousness set to take place in the year 2012, said date coinciding with the termination of the third (fourth?) Mayan age — was the idea that yes, perhaps our era is marked by an exponential acceleration, of communication, of thought, of sense-impressions. All of which are characteristics of an increasing heat. Pinchbeck maintains that this heat is cooking us, a la Rumi’s chickpea in the pot.
Maybe this acceleration is part of a great quickening of consciousness, and the sensory overload is only signaling the onset of a massive shift, a quantum jump, in human evolution? Perhaps this friction and its heat is first driving us out of our minds — and then, through practice, through ayurveda, through yoga, through meditation, through tapas, forcing us back, back into our minds. Only when we get there, we’ll find everything new and different, yet older and more familiar than our own faces.
I just crept out of a talk given by Dr. David Frawley called "Ayurvedic Psychology." Dr. Frawley’s a prolific author, and has published books on yoga philosophy, jyotish, or Hindu astrology, and ayurveda. He’s one of the few Westerners recognized in India as a Vedacharya, or teacher of the ancient wisdom.
In person, he's articulate, intelligent, and soft-spoken. For all you groupies, he’s trimmed his wild-man beard and hair and now bears little resemblance to the renunciate staring out of his dust-jacket photo.
A question I might have asked him, had I not snuck out before the group mantra meditation in order to make the Encinitas Christmas parade: Are we, in fact, a chronically overstimulated culture, country and civilization? Are we heaping on more and more undigested and undigestable sense-impressions, and therefore bloating on the ensuing karma?
But how to untangle that idea — illustrated by Frawley's example of the escalating number of car-crashes in movies — from a thinly veiled romantic yearning for a prelapsarian Eden, an unmediated “pure” state of existence, which, we all know, never existed?
I'd have liked to discuss the other thread woven throughout his talk: existence as a perpetual sickness, disease, or imbalance, forever in need of an eternal healing, an idea also prevalent in much New Age thinking.
(You say you aren’t “imbalanced”? That’s a sign of a vata imbalance.)
My attendance at this talk comes hard on the heels of my completion of Daniel Pinchbeck’s latest opus, 2012. Pinchbeck has eagerly picked up where Terence McKenna left off, as regards to psychedelic shamanism, alien abductions, and the machine elves who live on the other side of a DMT-generated boom tube.
Interestingly, in 2012, Pinchbeck glosses right over the work of Ken Wilber, and in fact dismisses it as a complicated series of “charts and graphs,” when in fact much of Wilber’s work addresses most of Pinchbeck’s central questions, chief among them the ways the different wisdom traditions turn the insights gained during certain peak (and psychedelic drug-induced) states into permanent, everyday qualities and characteristics. In other words, how to stabilize the insights Pinchbeck received while chugging ayuhuasca at Burning Man and therefore experience transformative growth.
(Although undoubtedly Wilber would be unable to save Pinchbeck from his own shrieking harridan writing style. Daniel Pinchbeck never met an alliteration or assonance he didn’t like. 2012 is awash in their pulpy corpses.)
The other, more obscure author who might most help Pinchbeck, in addition to Wilber, would be Patanjali, author of the Yoga Sutras, from which Pinchbeck might heed Patanjali’s suggestions to find one single practice, one truth, and then stick to it, without interruption, for an extended period of time, with faith and vigor.
But the cross-pollination of Frawley’s talk tonight and with what Pinchbeck addresses in 2012 — chiefly, the quantum-jump into a new human consciousness set to take place in the year 2012, said date coinciding with the termination of the third (fourth?) Mayan age — was the idea that yes, perhaps our era is marked by an exponential acceleration, of communication, of thought, of sense-impressions. All of which are characteristics of an increasing heat. Pinchbeck maintains that this heat is cooking us, a la Rumi’s chickpea in the pot.
Maybe this acceleration is part of a great quickening of consciousness, and the sensory overload is only signaling the onset of a massive shift, a quantum jump, in human evolution? Perhaps this friction and its heat is first driving us out of our minds — and then, through practice, through ayurveda, through yoga, through meditation, through tapas, forcing us back, back into our minds. Only when we get there, we’ll find everything new and different, yet older and more familiar than our own faces.
Frawley Comes Alive!
I just crept out of a talk given by Dr. David Frawley called "Ayurvedic Psychology." Dr. Frawley’s a prolific author, and has published books on yoga philosophy, jyotish, or Hindu astrology, and ayurveda. He’s one of the few Westerners recognized in India as a Vedacharya, or teacher of the ancient wisdom.
In person, he's articulate, intelligent, and soft-spoken. For all you groupies, he’s trimmed his wild-man beard and hair and now bears little resemblance to the renunciate staring out of his dust-jacket photo.
A question I might have asked him, had I not snuck out before the group mantra meditation in order to make the Encinitas Christmas parade: Are we, in fact, a chronically overstimulated culture, country and civilization? Are we heaping on more and more undigested and undigestable sense-impressions, and therefore bloating on the ensuing karma?
But how to untangle that idea — illustrated by Frawley's example of the escalating number of car-crashes in movies — from a thinly veiled romantic yearning for a prelapsarian Eden, an unmediated “pure” state of existence, which, we all know, never existed?
I'd have liked to discuss the other thread woven throughout his talk: existence as a perpetual sickness, disease, or imbalance, forever in need of an eternal healing, an idea also prevalent in much New Age thinking.
(You say you aren’t “imbalanced”? That’s a sign of a vata imbalance.)
My attendance at this talk comes hard on the heels of my completion of Daniel Pinchbeck’s latest opus, 2012. Pinchbeck has eagerly picked up where Terence McKenna left off, as regards to psychedelic shamanism, alien abductions, and the machine elves who live on the other side of a DMT-generated boom tube.
Interestingly, in 2012, Pinchbeck glosses right over the work of Ken Wilber, and in fact dismisses it as a complicated series of “charts and graphs,” when in fact much of Wilber’s work addresses most of Pinchbeck’s central questions, chief among them the ways the different wisdom traditions turn the insights gained during certain peak (and psychedelic drug-induced) states into permanent, everyday qualities and characteristics. In other words, how to stabilize the insights Pinchbeck received while chugging ayuhuasca at Burning Man and therefore experience transformative growth.
(Although undoubtedly Wilber would be unable to save Pinchbeck from his own shrieking harridan writing style. Daniel Pinchbeck never met an alliteration or assonance he didn’t like. 2012 is awash in their pulpy corpses.)
The other, more obscure author who might most help Pinchbeck, in addition to Wilber, would be Patanjali, author of the Yoga Sutras, from which Pinchbeck might heed Patanjali’s suggestions to find one single practice, one truth, and then stick to it, without interruption, for an extended period of time, with faith and vigor.
But the cross-pollination of Frawley’s talk tonight and with what Pinchbeck addresses in 2012 — chiefly, the quantum-jump into a new human consciousness set to take place in the year 2012, said date coinciding with the termination of the third (fourth?) Mayan age — was the idea that yes, perhaps our era is marked by an exponential acceleration, of communication, of thought, of sense-impressions. All of which are characteristics of an increasing heat. Pinchbeck maintains that this heat is cooking us, a la Rumi’s chickpea in the pot.
Maybe this acceleration is part of a great quickening of consciousness, and the sensory overload is only signaling the onset of a massive shift, a quantum jump, in human evolution? Perhaps this friction and its heat is first driving us out of our minds — and then, through practice, through ayurveda, through yoga, through meditation, through tapas, forcing us back, back into our minds. Only when we get there, we’ll find everything new and different, yet older and more familiar than our own faces.
I just crept out of a talk given by Dr. David Frawley called "Ayurvedic Psychology." Dr. Frawley’s a prolific author, and has published books on yoga philosophy, jyotish, or Hindu astrology, and ayurveda. He’s one of the few Westerners recognized in India as a Vedacharya, or teacher of the ancient wisdom.
In person, he's articulate, intelligent, and soft-spoken. For all you groupies, he’s trimmed his wild-man beard and hair and now bears little resemblance to the renunciate staring out of his dust-jacket photo.
A question I might have asked him, had I not snuck out before the group mantra meditation in order to make the Encinitas Christmas parade: Are we, in fact, a chronically overstimulated culture, country and civilization? Are we heaping on more and more undigested and undigestable sense-impressions, and therefore bloating on the ensuing karma?
But how to untangle that idea — illustrated by Frawley's example of the escalating number of car-crashes in movies — from a thinly veiled romantic yearning for a prelapsarian Eden, an unmediated “pure” state of existence, which, we all know, never existed?
I'd have liked to discuss the other thread woven throughout his talk: existence as a perpetual sickness, disease, or imbalance, forever in need of an eternal healing, an idea also prevalent in much New Age thinking.
(You say you aren’t “imbalanced”? That’s a sign of a vata imbalance.)
My attendance at this talk comes hard on the heels of my completion of Daniel Pinchbeck’s latest opus, 2012. Pinchbeck has eagerly picked up where Terence McKenna left off, as regards to psychedelic shamanism, alien abductions, and the machine elves who live on the other side of a DMT-generated boom tube.
Interestingly, in 2012, Pinchbeck glosses right over the work of Ken Wilber, and in fact dismisses it as a complicated series of “charts and graphs,” when in fact much of Wilber’s work addresses most of Pinchbeck’s central questions, chief among them the ways the different wisdom traditions turn the insights gained during certain peak (and psychedelic drug-induced) states into permanent, everyday qualities and characteristics. In other words, how to stabilize the insights Pinchbeck received while chugging ayuhuasca at Burning Man and therefore experience transformative growth.
(Although undoubtedly Wilber would be unable to save Pinchbeck from his own shrieking harridan writing style. Daniel Pinchbeck never met an alliteration or assonance he didn’t like. 2012 is awash in their pulpy corpses.)
The other, more obscure author who might most help Pinchbeck, in addition to Wilber, would be Patanjali, author of the Yoga Sutras, from which Pinchbeck might heed Patanjali’s suggestions to find one single practice, one truth, and then stick to it, without interruption, for an extended period of time, with faith and vigor.
But the cross-pollination of Frawley’s talk tonight and with what Pinchbeck addresses in 2012 — chiefly, the quantum-jump into a new human consciousness set to take place in the year 2012, said date coinciding with the termination of the third (fourth?) Mayan age — was the idea that yes, perhaps our era is marked by an exponential acceleration, of communication, of thought, of sense-impressions. All of which are characteristics of an increasing heat. Pinchbeck maintains that this heat is cooking us, a la Rumi’s chickpea in the pot.
Maybe this acceleration is part of a great quickening of consciousness, and the sensory overload is only signaling the onset of a massive shift, a quantum jump, in human evolution? Perhaps this friction and its heat is first driving us out of our minds — and then, through practice, through ayurveda, through yoga, through meditation, through tapas, forcing us back, back into our minds. Only when we get there, we’ll find everything new and different, yet older and more familiar than our own faces.
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