Tuesday 1 September 2009

If there is magic

LOREN EISELEY (1907-1977) naturalist, philosopher, poet was the man who showed us, how to love nature, not as a bystander or the observer but as a part of it, as one that is observed. How to love, even the small and insignificant, the big and the mighty, all as friends, nobody in this natural park was an enemy , as all were contributing towards a single and most sacred path, the path of Life, and protecting its uninterrupted glorious cycle.

LOREN EISELEY wrote several books, THE IMMENSE JOURNEY, THE FIREMAMENT OF TIME, THE NIGHT COUNTRY and THE LOST NOTE BOOKS are my most cherished treasure. I would like to share a passage from THE IMMENSE JOURNEY, Chapter, Flow of the River:

If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. Its least stir even, as now in a rain pond on a flat roof opposite my office, is enough to bring me searching to the window. A wind ripple may be translating itself into life. I have a constant feeling that some time I may witness that momentous miracle on a city roof, see life vertiably and suddenly boiling out of a heap of rusted pipes and old telivision aerials. I marvel at how a sudden water beetle has come and is submarining there in a spatter of green algae. Thin vapors, rust, wet tar and sun are alembic remarkably like the mind; they throw off odorous shadows that threaten to take real shape when no one is looking.



Onec in a lifetime, perhaps, one escapes the actual confines of the flesh. Once in a lifetime, if one is lucky, one so merges with sunlight and air and running water that whole enos, the enos that mountains and deserts know, might pass in a single afternoon without discomfort. The mind has sunk away into its beginings among old roots and the obscure tricklings and moving that stir inanimate things.



No utilitarian philosophy explains a snow crystal, no doctrine of use or disuse. Water has merely leapt out of vapor and thin nothingness in the night sky to array itself in form. There is no logical reason for existence of a snowflake any more than there is for evolution. it is an apparition from that mysterious shadow world beyond nature, that final world which contains-if anything contains-the explanation of men and catsish and green leaves.

5 comments:

  1. This passage is magic of the best kind....YOU Akhtar Sahib have a magic heart and magic eyes to notice this particular treasure and give it to us. Thanx for the balance you bring into my life and into the lives of others.

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  2. After re-reading I looked up some of the quotes of Loren Eiseley, shared with friend and then we both read Mary Oliver poetry. The one I just posted on ONE HEART...therefore was inspired by your blogsite & Eiseley who evidently was often exploring the mystery of life...somewhat on the darkside yet not in a closed universe as far as nothing "on the other side"...so we remembered all the light in Oliver's poetry albiet without ignoring the darkness at all...

    http://oneheartforpeace.blogspot.com/2009/08/theology-for-life-death-and-peace-by.html

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  3. Akhtar Sahib,

    Would you consider soon posting your favorite poem which approaches your perspective on God and Oneness in just URDU and or URDU and English so that someone here might be able to help me understand your remarkable vision of the ULTIMATE TRUTH and POWER?

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  4. Thanks Connie, the dark side is to be illuminated by us, but this argument of light and darkness is again relative. At the other end of dark night is the day, and at the other end of light is the night.

    I will soon post my favourite Urdu poem on WAHADAT AL WAJOOD (unity of being)

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