"I have lots of things
to teach you now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was
transmitted to me under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter
moonlit night. It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don't worry. It's
all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don't know it
because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind
is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever.
Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3
seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and
you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense
milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all. It
is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. It is
perfect. We were never really born, we will never really die. It has
nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves,
many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which
passes into everything is one thing. It's a dream already ended. There's
nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about. I know this from
staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression, they
are like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever
crumble away? Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which
is the one universal essence of mind, the vast awakenerhood, empty and
awake, will never crumble away because it was never born."
Jack Kerouac
