YouTube Timewarp

I'm often astonished by the wonders of modern technology. In February of 1986 -- nearly a quarter of a century ago -- I found myself in Kathmandu, Nepal. I was a disciple of the radical Indian mystic Osho (then known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh). I had been wandering around India, when the opportunity came to travel to Nepal and attend Osho's daily talks that he was giving out of the Soaltee Oberoi Hotel. This was unexpected, because Osho at that time was in a kind of seclusion, having just escaped the craziness that surrounded the meltdown of the commune in Oregon. I'd gone to India in December of '85 not foreseeing that the opportunity to sit in his talks would arise, but it did.

Once in Kathmandu I settled into a routine of attending Osho's 'walk-by' (a type of 'moving darshan') that he did on the grounds of the hotel daily, followed by his lecture in a large conference room in the evenings. At the end of February '86, he and his small entourage departed for Greece, in what was to be the beginning of his bizarre 'world tour', in which he was kicked out of, or refused entry to, a number of countries; I detail all this in my book The Three Dangerous Magi, which is being released in the U.K. now (November 2010) and in North America and elsewhere (next month).

One day while there, I wandered the streets of Kathmandu, and ended up at an outdoor market of some sort. There, in the middle of everything, was a table and on it was a pile of photos. One of the photos immediately caught my eye; it featured Osho in white robe in the foreground, and in the background three other people, including myself. Someone had taken a snap shot just as he walked past where I was standing. The effect was one of me standing in his 'aura', if you will. It was an extraordinary shot. I of course bought the photo at the market and had it blown up and framed when I got back to Canada.

Over the years the picture usually hung on a wall somewhere in my home, but about two years ago I moved and never got around to taking the picture out of storage. So it had faded from my mind. Just recently however I was looking at an Osho video on YouTube, when another video caught my eye. It was titled 'Osho in Kathmandu'. The thought crossed my mind that I might show up in that video, given that it was almost ten minutes long. Miniscule odds, but I was naturally curious.

Sure enough, I found myself in the video, standing with a group of friends as Osho walked by. Not only that, but the image appearing in the footage -- although of grainy quality (it is 25 years old) -- is of the exact same time when the photo of me was snapped. The exact same people are standing around me, the same gestures, etc. Given that I was there for about thirty days, the fact that the video was shot the same day the photo was snapped (although from a completely different angle) is very strange, to put it mildly, if only because photos and videos were being shot every day.

Anyway. The basis of recording technology, of the visual sort, is of course light. Images can be recorded because light can be recorded, or more exactly, the effects of light. Attention, or consciousness, is commonly symbolized by light, and for good reason, because it works in a similar fashion. There is something in consciousness that has the capacity to transcend time, to not be limited by time, much how a photo or some video footage can transport us back in time.

But is that really what's happening? Or is it rather that nothing truly ever leaves the present moment?

All these images that fascinate us, the world of form, captured by eye and camera and video, are full of light, but that light, when penetrated, is essentially nothingness -- shadows and dust. Nostalgia is our attempt to grasp onto nothingness and make it into something. Always we have to let go, and let go some more.   

We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust. -- Rumi 

White Noise and Coffee Shop Dharma

'White noise'. Now there's an odd term. Technically it's defined as a sound that is an amalgam of all audible frequencies, at the same level of intensity. More commonly, we use the term 'white noise' to refer to a generalized, relatively quiet noise that is a sort of fusion or combination of everything we can hear going on in the background.

A typical urban coffee shop is a good place to experience white noise, especially if the shop is crowded. The sounds of all activity combined with human voices creates a kind of dull drone that (provided the shop is free of screaming babies or giggling teenagers) is more or less muted -- or perhaps more accurately, an animated muted, as everyone there is caffeinated.

I spend a lot of time in coffee shops, and I also write a lot. That means that I write in coffee shops a lot (a dazzling display of logic). I currently have two computers: a 2007 Acer Aspire desktop, and a 2008 Compaq laptop. (Well, make that three: I also have a 2007 Blackberry Curve, which is essentially a mini-computer). A computer that is two or three years old is already becoming dated, but I'm content with my machines and hope to get another two or three years out of them.

I write more on the laptop because that's what I take to the coffee shops. This city (Vancouver) has many of them (Starbucks, birthed in Seattle, first expanded to Vancouver). Now we also have Blenz, Waves, JJ Bean, Bean Around the World, The Grind, Saltspring, Cedar Cottage, Solly's, and many more (those listed are the ones I go to; I daily pass by others that I don't).

I write in coffee shops because, paradoxically, there is less distraction there. Gurdjieff wrote most of his 1,000 page long Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson in the Cafe de la Paix, in Paris, during the late 1920s. This I can easily understand (although I find it harder to understand how he did it with just pencil and cheap notebooks). I can understand it because the white noise of a coffee shop is in some ways perfect for writing, being loud enough to prevent the mind from wandering, but not so loud that concentration is impaired.

White noise is an interesting metaphor for the activity of the mind. The mind is always generating thoughts, the amalgam of which can be imagined as a sort of white noise. In order to be aware of such white noise, however, requires a witness that is distinct. There is the noise of the coffee shop, and the one who is aware of it. There is the movement of the mind, and the one who is aware of that.

Awareness arises in contrast and context, but is itself indivisible. (How do you truly divide awareness? I can make the effort to be simultaneously aware of both self and what I am perceiving, but that is only a mental trick, really. Awareness itself is not a 'thing' and therefore cannot be treated as a thing that can be divided, multiplied, combined, etc.).

The silent mind is considered a virtue in some spiritual teachings, but in fact a 'silent mind' is something of an impossibility. Silence exists, but mind is energy, activity, movement -- 'white noise'. What, then, is silence? And what is awareness?

These are the essential questions, the ones to be keyed in on in self-inquiry. We look into these questions not with the intention of explaining them -- although this can be attempted -- but more with the intention of entering into them. To gaze upon awareness itself, upon silence itself, is to begin to see into the nature of pure presence, and into the pristine clarity of awareness. The deeper we look, all activity that arises in the mind -- thought, awareness, silence, energy -- is ultimately seen and understood to be the same. Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form. Thoughts arise from the void, from emptiness, from silence. And within a thought, is found both energy and silence.