Light on the Page

A Pointed Hat

Flashing lights, smoke, the speed of the hand: God himself can be made to appear in a box and then to vanish again. Such is the ambition of the brain, the powers of which are really limitless. The time will come when the human brain will have the power to create a universe – and then find that it has nothing or no one to live in it. The physical world itself is a kind of magic – it can be manipulated to perform all kinds of tricks to satisfy our curiosity or ambition. And all the time the human soul – the real human being – looks on and wonders at the emptiness: the flash, the thunder, the lights, the smoke. We live in a world which is a great magic box and the master magician is the one who can use the brain to its greatest capacity.

In contrast there is life – life which conceals its mystery and its true name, which disdains to perform tricks. Life which has no answers in a crystal ball or a spread of cards, which does not ask you to bow to the authority of a pointed hat. And whereas the tool for magic is the brain, the instrument for an understanding of life is the inner being, the hidden self, which creates an atmosphere of calm and stillness around itself, capable of becoming a true reflecting surface – a surface on which the mysteries of existence can be revealed.

The dilemma is, we need solutions. We need an answer to the problems of population, resources, ecology. So do we produce those answers out of the magician’s box? The temptation is always there: GM foods, stem cells, nuclear power – because we can do it, and because the logic of the world demands it, we will do it. But will the human soul be satisfied? No, because it sees a shrinking world, a mechanized universe created in the image of the magician’s brain, and it sees no place there for itself. This is why systems deriving only from the brain are always guarded by structures of power and protected by authorities – their products will not serve life. Life itself, by contrast, which hides its authority and its true name, waits only for the inner self to waken in the human being, to divulge its secrets and offer a world in which the soul can be at home. Create a universe yet be a slave, unless the Being who first created you, gives you the grace which to the world he gave, before its magic danced the morning through.

Magic

The world’s magic dances in my hands

and yet I can’t perform a single trick -

the world itself constricts me in its bands

though magic be as smooth as it is slick.

Create a universe yet be a slave,

unless the Being who first created you

gives you the grace which to the world he gave,

before its magic danced the morning through.

 

 

Vacuum

 

In all of life one thing is most sincere,

the light within which knows itself divine

and keeps its flame forever bright and clear

when other lamps have lost the power to shine.

Congregations jump, whole peoples rise

when tricksters come with genie’s magic light

to steal their breath and glaze their shining eyes

then leave them in the vacuum of the night.

 

 

Reveal

 

Does truth reside within a crystal ball?

Can flashing hands detect your inner mind?

And if the world should let its magic fall

will you be with the sighted or the blind?

But everything we see is just a mask

for what conceals its magic in a name -

so if you gaze within and learn to ask,

it will reveal itself and feel no shame.

 

 

Best wishes, today,

Landar

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