Waking Life Page #4

sovereignty, our liberty, our destiny.

We have got to realize that we're

being conditioned on a mass scale.

Start challenging this

corporate slave state!

The 21 st Century is

gonna be a new century,

not the century of slavery, not the century

of lies and issues of no significance...

and classism and statism and all

the rest of the modes of control!

It's gonna be

the age of humankind...

standing up for something

pure and something right!

What a bunch of garbage... liberal

Democrat, conservative Republican.

It's all there to control you.

Two sides of the same coin.

Two management teams

bidding for control!

The C.E.O. job of

Slavery, Incorporated!

The truth is out there in front of you,

but they lay out this buffet of lies!

I'm sick of it, and I'm not gonna take

a bite out of it! Do you got me?

Resistance is not futile.

We're gonna win this thing.

Humankind is too good!

We're not a bunch of underachievers!

We're gonna stand up

and we're gonna be human beings!

We're gonna get fired up about the

real things, the things that matter:

creativity and the dynamic human

spirit that refuses to submit!

Well, that's it! That's all I got

to say! It's in your court.

The quest is

to be liberated from the negative,

which is really

our own will to nothingness.

And once having

said yes to the instant,

the affirmation

is contagious.

It bursts into a chain of affirmations

that knows no limit.

To say yes to one instant...

is to say yes

to all of existence.

The main character is

what you might call "the mind. "

It's mastery,

it's capacity to represent.

Throughout history,

attempts have been made...

to contain those experiences which

happen at the edge of the limit...

where the mind

is vulnerable.

But I think we are in

a very significant moment in history.

Those moments, those what

you might call liminal,

limit, frontier,

edge zone experiences...

are actually now

becoming the norm.

These multiplicities

and distinctions and differences...

that have given great

difficulty to the old mind...

are actually through entering

into their very essence,

tasting and feeling

their uniqueness.

One might make a breakthrough

to that common something...

that holds them together.

And so the main character is,

to this new mind,

greater, greater mind.

A mind that yet is to be.

And when we are obviously

entered into that mode,

you can see

a radical subjectivity,

radical attunement to individuality,

uniqueness to that which the mind is,

opens itself

to a vast objectivity.

So the story is

the story of the cosmos now.

The moment is not just a passing,

empty nothing yet.

And this is in the way

in which these secret passages happen.

Yes, it's empty

with such fullness...

that the great moment,

the great life of the universe...

is pulsating in it.

And each one, each object,

each place, each act...

leaves a mark.

And that story is singular.

But, in fact,

it's story after story.

Time just dissolves into quick-moving

particles that are swirling away.

Either I'm moving fast or time is.

Never both simultaneously.

It's such a strange paradox.

I mean, while, technically,

I'm closer to the end of my life

than I've ever been,

I actually feel more than ever

that I have all the time in the world.

When I was younger, there was

a desperation, a desire for certainty,

like there was an end to the path,

and I had to get there.

I know what you mean

because I can remember thinking,

"Oh, someday, like in

my mid-thirties maybe,

everything's going to just

somehow jell and settle, just end. "

It was like there was this plateau,

and it was waiting for me,

and I was climbing up it,

and when I got to the top,

all growth and change

would stop.

Even exhilaration. But that hasn't

happened like that, thank goodness.

I think that what we don't take into account

when we're young is our endless curiosity.

That's what's so great

about being human.

- You know that thing Benedict

Anderson says about identity? - No.

Well, he's talking about

like, say, a baby picture.

So you pick up this picture, this two

dimensional image, and you say, "That's me".

Well, to connect this baby

in this weird little image...

with yourself living and

breathing in the present,

you have to make up a story like,

"This was me when I was a year old,

"and later I had long hair,

and then we moved to Riverdale,

and now here I am. "

So it takes a story

that's actually a fiction...

to make you and the baby in the picture

identical to create your identity.

And the funny thing is, our cells are

completely regenerating every seven years.

We've already become completely

different people several times over,

and yet we always remain

quintessentially ourselves.

Hmm.

Our critique began

as all critiques begin:

with doubt.

Doubt became our narrative.

Ours was a quest

for a new story, our own.

And we grasp toward this new history

driven by the suspicion...

that ordinary language

couldn't tell it.

Our past appeared frozen

in the distance,

and our every gesture

and accent...

signified the negation of the old world

and the reach for a new one.

The way we lived

created a new situation,

one of exuberance

and friendship,

that of a subversive

microsociety...

in the heart of a society

which ignored it.

Art was not the goal

but the occasion and the method...

for locating

our specific rhythm...

and buried possibilities

of our time.

The discovery of a true communication

was what it was about,

or at least the quest

for such a communication.

The adventure of finding it

and losing it.

We the unappeased, the unaccepting

continued looking,

filling in the silences with our

own wishes, fears and fantasies.

Driven forward by the fact that no

matter how empty the world seemed,

no matter how degraded and used up

the world appeared to us,

we knew that anything

was still possible.

And, given

the right circumstances,

a new world was just

as likely as an old one.

There are two kinds

of sufferers in this world:

those who suffer

from a lack of life...

and those who suffer from

an overabundance of life.

I've always found myself

in the second category.

When you come to think of it,

almost all human

behavior and activity...

is not essentially any

different from animal behavior.

The most advanced technologies

and craftsmanship...

bring us, at best, up to

the super-chimpanzee level.

Actually, the gap between,

say, Plato or Nietzsche

and the average human...

is greater than the gap between

that chimpanzee and the average human.

The realm

of the real spirit,

the true artist, the saint,

the philosopher,

is rarely achieved.

Why so few?

Why is world history and evolution

not stories of progress...

but rather this endless and

futile addition of zeroes?

No greater values

have developed.

Hell, the Greeks 3,000 years ago

were just as advanced as we are.

So what are these barriers

that keep people...

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