Celestial Song

Excerpt from

"The Child Within Us Lives! A Synthesis of Science, Religion and Metaphysics "

by William Samuel

By William Samuel

CHAPTER 12
ILLUMINATION

“Line upon Line, Precept upon Precept...”

WHAT I LEARNED AT THE POND

The Melody of the Woodcutter and the King is the story of the day I first learned about the plasticity of tangibility. That was the day I really saw the dominion I could lay claim to right here in the world. That account is familiar to those who have read it, but not many know the rest of the story unless they have been here asking specifically about illumination.

The “pond experience” was my first conscious insight into “contradistinction,” though I didn't understand that at the time. One doesn't know much about subjectivism until he has perceived the matter of “contradistinction” and gotten it straight. We really have to get it straight before we can get further along.

The pond experience was certainly what the religionist or psychologist would call a “peak experience.” Those experiences are often explained away as psychological quirks—or fleeting dyspepsia. Nonetheless, they happen frequently, awaiting our recognition. That morning, after I bent myself down to drink the cold water, I stood up and saw a new and different world. I saw “a new heaven and a new earth” spread over everything, and while I don't always see the new one now, I have never had the same view of the old.

CONTRADISTINCTION

That morning, those years ago, when I looked around at the new view, everything was dancing with light. In particular, I remember standing transfixed. The pond was blinding. The black man plowing the field beside the little lake glistened with light. So did the mule pulling the plow. And the birds following behind, pecking in the new turned earth, were little darts of feathered light, flashing from place to place. The man's sweat ran down the reigns, a river of pure light that dripped little orbs of fire onto the ground. I looked at the new scene and the wonder of it without any feel of the earth under my feet.

Very slowly, and in ongoing amazement, I continued my journey through the field to the mountain beyond—another half a dozen miles with a hard climb at the end. A strangely effortless event. I seemed to walk without walking. I went slowly and stopped often but can remember very little of events along the way except for a brief conversation. I stopped to talk to an old man who sat on his porch, leaning back in a cane bottomed chair, his feet on the porch rail. He was carving something with a pocket knife. He looked at me strangely, as though he wasn't sure who I was—and I remember thinking he certainly WAS looking at a new person, one he had never seen in all his life. From that country house, the climb up Double Oak Mountain began.

But, hear this, Linda. There is a point here which seems most important to those looking for the experience of “illumination.” While the pond event was happening for me, I saw clearly that such an event hadn't happened sooner only because I had carefully excluded it from my experience. How? By limiting expectation to something spectacular. By yearning for Paul's experience of being blinded on his way to Damascus. Either my studies had been deceiving, or I had allowed myself to read the need for such an experience into them.

As I walked up the mountain that day, I marveled again and again that all this had been available from the very beginning if I had simply acknowledged it when it had happened in the many small ways before. I knew then: I had ignorantly blocked the Flow of Light. This experience was the breaking of the dam. Instinctively, I knew my entire life would have been further along if I had only acknowledged the Light of Life in the many ways it had already appeared!

The absence of my conscious recognition and acknowledgment had deprived me of so much. What I'm trying to write here is that the experience of “illumination” is happening all the time in small ways, to be seen and appreciated. The traumatic events like Paul's may be more a matter of our awful ignorance of God's grace than our achievement or attainment of wisdom.

Well now, my wonderment at the time was enormous. I floated, it seemed, to the top of Double Oak Mountain and began setting up camp. I remember gathering firewood for the evening warmth and preparing a place to sleep. Then, as the sun went down, the unexpected “lesson” began. I was nudged by the “equal and opposite” of the human day's experience.

Elation slowly gave way to a strange, unexpected and growing sense of hopelessness. (Where has It gone!?) I found myself with an inability to DO anything. (What's to DO?) I watched the sunset, arms around my knees, and saw the stars emerge one by one. I didn't move. Finally, I couldn't move. The evening chill descended and I wondered why the hell I didn't light the fire. Try as I might, it seemed senseless to try or even move. I couldn't bring myself to bend down and light the wood that would have warmed the evening. (Dear God, where has the Joy gone?)

By midnight, cold and shaken, I was thinking of the hopelessness of “mortal life” and thought it would be better to hurl myself from the mountain then see the world again as I had seen it before the experience at the pond. By early morning, in complete anguish, I was quoting to myself that the darkest hour is just before the dawn—and noting, for the first time I can consciously recall, that if it weren't for the stygian darkness all around, I wouldn't be conscious of the stars. With that, some relief came, and in a few minutes the dawn was breaking. Never had a morning been more welcome. I was still sitting with my arms around my knees—frozen into place by now—but this time I knew another morning was on its way. I was grateful for even the hope of it. I think this was a time I really understood what the ancient sunrise ceremonies were about—and Easter's rebirthing!

A new world had been revealed in the morning of a spring day. The chimerical nature of the old world was seen in the afternoon. That night, in the cold and dark of a human night, only a meager memory of the Light at the pond remained. In the place of Joy, desolation and depression had descended. My confidence in the old world had been smashed during the day; yet in the dark of night, there was only a fading memory of Something Wonderful to take its place, and, as I looked at the stars, I was aware of my human nothingness and emptiness. Though I didn't know it then, I was coming to discover the nature of learning.

As all this was happening, I knew the reasons for it perfectly well—the reasons that Light must come to each of us “line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little.” My friend Linda, it is important that we acknowledge the smallest blessings and are faithful to those pennies of Truth, first. Remember the verse in the Bible about being faithful to pennies so we can be trusted with dollars?

Our excessive yearning after a grand illuminations is a self defeating exercise that occludes a view of the constant blessings going on around us all the time. Now I know—and tell my others—that we are faithful in the small ways if we are to be trusted with the grand view from the peak of Da Shan, the world. Even then, when we have been tested and proven and carried aloft “on the wings of Love” to that High View, that View's confirmation in the world still comes “line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little.”

Linda, if you can find another who has had the View, ask him if these words are true! Better still, live the pennies and see for yourself!

WHAT DID I LEARN AT THE POND AND ON THE MOUNTAIN THAT NIGHT?

I learned that the ebbing, flowing light of this world is tributary to a greater Light that doesn't move. Perhaps the photon is an IMAGE of True Light, but the True Light, changeless and unmoving, is the “Light of the Father.” The image is just an image of an image of an image.

I learned that the human experience is a holy Lesson going on and one is to learn it, one way or another.

I learned that I live and relive experiences until I see the good in them. When I learn to thank God for the lesson learned, I am taken to yet another View on the mountain.

Thus, I began to learn the principle of contradistinction which suggests that everything but the light of Life itself is an image, positive or negative, of Something Greater. That everything points first to its contrary, thence to the Balance between, thence to the Something Beyond, transcendent and immanent simultaneously.

I began to learn the meaning of emptiness—the old self, the me-sense naughted. Beyond this, there is the new Self to be!

You are very much loved,

Excerpt taken from "The Child Within Us Lives! A Synthesis of Science, Religion and Metaphysics" By William Samuel available from Amazon

If you would like further guidance in understanding any of William Samuel's work based on Self discovery - you are welcome to contact me, Sandy Jones -- samuelandfriends@gmail.com - Ojai, California -