Scattered in the shadow, the golden orange peels smiled a welcoming smile.
What was this? If one perceives objects unconditionally, from the position of here and now, discarding previously formed patterns of perception — patterns fixed in memory under different circumstances — it's possible to see something new even in familiar things. Yet, doesn't what is seen hold, at the very least, an equally objective significance?
Attention involuntarily focused on this slightly shimmering pattern forming on the wall from the sun's rays, passing through the prism of tree crowns outside the window.
Nevertheless, having observed a similar picture on her wall far from the first time, only today something made her distract herself and pay it heed. The colors or shapes of the pattern were indeed slightly different from what had been observed before, so insignificantly at first glance that it wasn't even clear precisely how.
Sophia fully came to her senses: Buddha before Buddhism, Neo outside the Matrix. The surrounding world surged over and filled everything around, as if for the first time. As if it were a new world. How could one detect a change of any magnitude if it concerned our very consciousness as well? Only, perhaps, by some subtle premonition, a sensation—like the feeling of autumn approaching still in the height of summer, in the alteration of the pattern on the wall from the sun's rays passing, now at a slightly different angle, through the prism of tree crowns.
From the window, from somewhere far away, the sounds of a switched-on radio receiver barely carried like an echo, so that one couldn't always make out fragments of words, while involuntarily familiar — probably to everyone — popular melodies and synthetic dance beats, distorting, sometimes assumed rather grotesque forms.
— If one observes the sun's trajectory throughout the year, one can note that the year resembles a day: winter is night, spring is early morning, and so on. This means that within each day, there is a time when the current position of the annual day can be fixed...
Sophia's attention caught on this radio broadcast, or rather on the sensation when it's hard to tell if what one thinks one heard was actually heard. Something was clearly off here, so Sophia began to listen more closely...
— Time for the news. On the occasion of the Day of National Unity, the Deputy Head of the Security Council gave an address explaining why our cause is just: "We were weak and devastated by the Time of Troubles. But now we have shaken off the sticky sleep and the bleak stupor of the last decades, into which we were plunged by the demise of the former Fatherland... We listen to the words of the Creator in our hearts and obey them. These words give us a sacred purpose! The purpose to stop the supreme ruler of hell, whatever name he uses—Satan, Lucifer, or Iblis!"...
With each word, the feeling of the illusory nature of what was heard only grew. Some kind of surrealism, it seemed; my imagination was freely embellishing the barely discernible words with its own strict meaning. It was even amusing. Just as Sophia approached the wide-open window, the sounds coming from there abruptly fell silent.
Probably someone's amateur recording, or it was just my imagination, fine. But just as Sophia had decided to go about her business, the sounds were heard again, now more distinctly and closer...
When the heart's throb fades to nil, I long to hear the seagulls' shrill!
We interrupted our broadcast due to the demise of the People's Idol, unsurpassed.
Our common landmark, public measure, has met a sinister fate's displeasure.
A nightmare for those who lived by another's will, a regime that fell in an instant — until now, each is their own prophet, their own creed.
And every picture of the world now matches the central feed.
And so, counting chickens when they're hatched, I loudly declare, to make physical bonds less attached —
[ Radio station of voices on the head ]
Broadcasts a living grimoire's creed: all grimoires and spells are but schematic seed,
For focusing attention, to activate specific states in an individual mind's private gate.
— Don't trust, don't fear, but watch, it shows the hour: all gods and demons hold inner power.
For those who still await the news — techniques for taming passion's hues.
No miracles are prophesied, to those who walk alone, this is applied.
Like an incantation, pronounce the resolution, right now we start the revolution!
But saint and villain will agree — no one among all mankind's free.
Both pauper and the wealthy man, until they rot where bones lie in the land,
Each wears their shackles in their way, until their final day.
In man, only thought is free, an arrow shot into the sky, through its own cage of destiny.
But herein lies the fundamental flaw — the thought inside an ape, in awe.
A whimsical monkey's mind, lazy and inclined to base urges of a petty kind.
One point must here be understood — freedom is but a tool, and could,
If aspiration's not from one's own core, be steered by someone else evermore.
Such aspiration is the crowd, or the crowd's direction, parallel and loud.
But now, in hope of overcoming, thought's mechanism starts its running,
To describe and comprehend the scene of gaining pleasure from one's own poison, keen.
A cow, raised for the slaughter, knows not its lot, and if it did — would chewing stop?
Would it trade its stable's peace and kin, for the dark prophecies of the forest within?
As mentioned prior, to be exact — the crowd is driven by a blind instinctive act.
Hence the totalitarian order, a pervasive fact.
Not marketers or governments created the this age, though they profited from the stage and through it magnify their page.
But warrior and monk will attest — comfort is like dust upon the eyes.
And each among them gets their own austere reward, a rigorous test. Such overcoming is the first of three transformations, at its core.
For understanding, to be brief — we are our own desire and grief.
The question one must comprehend — can man his own desires command?
And here the "how?" is suddenly resolved by the "for what?" involved —
Public opinion is the absorption sphere, which shapes the minds and makes its mission clear,
In service to fear and hedonism — sources of weakness for spirit and organism,
Or, in other words, to primal drives, a crowd's no different from baboons' lives.
There's a biological motive, in baboons' structure also noted — a fine chance for tyrants old and newly promoted,
Who are themselves a mere effect, subjects of public ill, and likewise on an alien current wrecked.
This striving is not man-made art, but bred from generation's heart,
Long before any motion's contemplation, in conditions of survival's tribulation,
With aim of unburdened-by-doubt-positioned continuation.
So how to govern one's desire? — Desire or law? The crowd's mind cannot see its fence,
Just as a cretin painted on a canvas lacks the scene's immense sense.
The very rejection of cultural and spiritual absorption from without,
Becomes the tool and medium for new cultural-spiritual phenomena's sprout.
In trying to defend and fortify your freedom of thought's supply —
Produce whatever you can, but only that you can produce, and try!
Thus, that very "retreat to the woods" is first a psychic state that broods.
So why retreat into the wood? To reorganize the heavens' good,
To count the rings of trees, decrypt the cipher in the pattern, center the callus's point, no matter.
More precious than knowledge — skill to filter information foisted by another's vice.
Stronger than knowledge — skill of reception, to return back home from home, a precise intuition.
Intuition is listening to oneself beyond social decoration's stealth.
Acceptance is like wagging a tail that isn't there, law under unconditional being's care.
— The technique of the self-catapulting cuttlefish, or "the path of the creating one,"
As Zarathustra used to say when all was said and done...
So why is the crowd conditionally called an evil, then? —
The crowd is led by herd nature's pen, "Your world is not your own" — its password, and again
The mountain of the crowd, akin to an anthill's reign, raises a frantic cry of pain:
"Dictate is tradition! Long live abstraction and fiction!" —
Jamming these stations is the condition for gaining intuition's acquisition.
When the world abandons you, the world becomes your own. Freedom is walled by walls of stone.
And this path is no sweet delight, implies a personal hell, a daunting fight,
And an obscure reward — overcoming one's own hell, scarred.
To such a hero, somehow, there's no room for weakness, love, gloom, or pity's breath.
But only the solitary is allowed the proofs, that life belongs to him, not to external truths.
We return again to words we said — when the world abandons you, you become the world instead.
And what's the essence of the whole event, besides a dancing star from chaos sent,
Perhaps, the state of acceptance, to which we're meant.
And further: [ The Process of Goal Construction ]
— It's based on separation, "retreat to the woods," to raise inside a sacred edifice, understood
Also as creation of new, personal values' magnitude.
When not even desire holds its sway, for gaining plasticity along prophecy's way,
Freedom foretells solitude — thus priesthood's principles are renewed:
All praise to heavens and to fiends!
White curtains on the windows, and "Zarathustra from the forest gleans,"
Even if surrounded by four walls, the free vacancy still calls —
"all gods and demons inside," stepping beyond even lust's tide,
The product of thinking in its aspiration now is characterized by expansion's thrust!
Thus, having left the social notion, with proper mental motion,
The product of thought enters a state of global commotion. And then:
[ The Age of Delusion ]
Again no miracles are prophesied, what comes true is not what was wished, but what inside,
Unconsciously, you've already allowed to abide.
Consciousness won't guess the unconscious plan. How could it grasp a change, however grand,
If that change concerned consciousness itself, you understand?
The moment of perceiving change always comes retroactively,
Freedom under unconditional nature, like a whiskered beast, moves softly.
Acceptance without fear or fight, has a direction one with fate's own flight.
Or, in other words, as if reading a book, we suddenly see we ourselves wrote the whole story we took...
With each word, Sophia became more convinced of the realism of what she had heard. The last phrase was her words. Looking out the window, she realized that it was a dream, with this realization the dream became lucid and the radio from afar turned into her inner voice. But who and where am I in reality, she thought and woke up.
The realization of oneself in a dream provokes an attempt to remember who you are in reality, that thought which pushes you out of the dream into awakening.
In reality, however, everything is the opposite: the realization of the illusoriness of consciousness, as merely one of its countless refractions in relation to the world, gives the ability to control and modify even the laws of control, but the changes are imperceptible to consciousness.
