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Dreams Without End

An Interview With Robert Anton Wilson

When you look at history, you find that we’ve become a lot more merciful as individuals. There’s a paradox in that governments are becoming a lot more destructive, but ordinary individuals nowadays are much more compassionate than they were even a century ago. We have developed more delicate, more ethical sensibilities.

Sunbeams

Great mother of big apples it is a pretty world.

Kenneth Patchen

Meeting The Woman Within

Four Dreams And Prayers To Follow

When I wanted a simple cure, I got complicated dreams instead. When I wanted reassurance, I got shards of enlightenment — and what am I supposed to do with that?

The Light From Different Windows

As a Westerner turning Buddhist in 1982, I was concerned about abandoning my “Christian heritage” for a foreign culture. I had never felt completely at home with that heritage: church seemed like a sterile routine, and any form of dogma affected me like one more arrogant know-it-all telling me how I should live.

A Kind Word Turneth Away Wrath

Aikido And The New Warrior

I was overjoyed. “My prayers have been answered,” I thought to myself as I got to my feet. “This . . . this . . . slob is drunk and mean and violent. He’s a threat to the public order, and he’ll hurt somebody if I don’t take him out. The need is real. My ethical light is green.”

Morning Rituals

Wandering the fields, rendezvousing in a cowshed, getting out the paper dolls

My Life In Marketing Research

When I returned from Denver to Manhattan last fall I needed a job. My first idea was to be one of those guys who sit on boxes outside discount stores on Dyckman Street watching that no one steals plastic coat hangers — but all those positions were filled. My next plan was to be Santa Claus.

The Heart Of Compassion

An Interview With Ram Dass

So there’s a part of me that’s perfectly allowing of suffering. And then there’s the human heart that hurts like hell. And it’s that balancing that’s such a beautiful art form. The deepest line I work with, personally and in my lectures, is, “Out of emptiness arises compassion.” That’s the one. Getting to the place where you do what you do. And you’re not milking it for righteousness, and you’re not trying to change the world.

Sunbeams

All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.

Goethe

How Peace Was Discovered

In the fifteen years since the Great Destruction we have come far: not only have weapons been put aside, but governments and institutions have themselves become virtually meaningless, and the assumption of individual responsibility for wholesome, healing function is virtually everyone’s concern and priority.