By Wynn Wolfe
[Presented (with slides and commentary) at the Theosophical Library Center, Altadena, California, December 17, 1999. The poem's extensive picture/text glossary may be seen at www.wynnwolfe.com.]
For me, theosophy ("divine wisdom") is a universal index of "good ideas." Theosophy is the rhyme and reason of all analogies, because it is the synthesis of science, religion, philosophy, literature, and the arts. One of my favorite analogies is "As above, so below." Inversely, it has been suggested that rather than looking at ourselves as human beings on a spiritual path, we can just as easily imagine ourselves as spiritual or cosmic beings on a human path.
Now, because the word "spiritual" could be interpreted as "extraterrestrial" (which means "out of this world"), then the significance of "As above, so below" should give us pause to look up and around within the cosmic vault of ourselves, to see and catch the central gleaming idea that we, as human beings, are truly the extraterrestrial intelligence that, in our scientific age, we are so anxiously searching for.
This poem is somewhat like a jazz composition -- a philosophical jazz composition. Jazz comes out of culture; altruistic philosophy comes out of culture, too. This composition is gleaned from the whole gamut of universal culture, and through it wends a golden-threaded anthology of altruistic human expressions.
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"The Measurement" by Lee Mullican (1952), "Coney Island (Luna Park)" by Louis Lozowick (1925), "Atomic Physiques" by Wynn Wolfe (1990).
Om --
Sublime central suns, anisotropic lunapark workshops,
and coruscating, holographic, quasi-quantum mechanical
intrinsic-scaled universes teeming with Whatnot entities --
from kosmic monadic eddies of "great attractors,"
to the coexistent and infinitely immediate quark-clusters of quantii,
a gargantuan gyroscopic evoluting crystalline menagerie,
a virtual refractive zodiac
entertainingly held in view by the local universe cross-hairs
of the galactic and supergalactic lens-planes,
displaying the evident iridescent by-product of interactive divinities
of semi-concreted light,
from manifest chela-pawns to entheast Kings
(us once and future Kings),
an implicate/explicate order of gatewaying we "gentle quantum events,"
now simply-complexed on a superconducting nonlocal chessboard
from Alice's wonder-land:
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that's all." -- Lewis Carroll, Through The Looking-Glass
re-cognizing through the powers of Zen
their each inimitable cat's cradle of alternating current
(their kosmic-electrified theodidactic life-cycle switchback paths),
with a knight-errant/Laestrygone collection plate in hand
and a sincere smile in face,
some intuitively seeing there is the Day-Glow
of alchemist's gold right within their own skull-helmeted,
cortical-blanketed,
twinhill anthropopathic Whatnot brains
that conceal an imposing organic array
of electrically-navigated/action-potential nerve cell's axon arms,
which end in synaptic button-hands that include vesicles
filled with unsuspected "coarse-grained" tandem angelic ions
of multifarious plasmic fruitseeds,
that in turn transmit "step-down" manasaputric condensate elixir,
which process is analogous to the
contemporaneous and classically called "ion propulsion system"
of the Deep Space 1 spacecraft,
and sub-subquantumly called
"theo-neural synapses of protyle gestalt ideation"
(it's just like a Hermetic Chain),
that monsoons into synaptic spaces
divine planar-calculated Calibanic to Ariadnic epiphanies
that are the tried and trued pre-exoteric cartograms
of unequivocal Universal Nature --
do with this as you will --
and at last -- in sporadic "sum-over-histories" --
virtuous wave-impulses (linear and spherical solitons)
imaginatively figure into this cosmogonical scheme,
and mysteriously ignite invisible to visible-light auras
around some few Self-selected Whatnots
(all of which eternally spin on their embedded minaret axes),
that are now the "light echoes" of an original bija-impelled
"change of condition,"
the "In the Beginnings . . ."
that are relative "big bangs" of newly-ballooned bluerush light-globes
(neo-nucleosynthetic anthropomorphic and stellar nightlights),
for all precedent Paramitas and Tathagatas
(now masterful horoscopers),
to spot and celebrate as they empathetically
and law-abidingly acknowledge all new blink-ons,
as they compassionately and coaxingly reiterate
from their orbital threshold of kosmic consciousness:
"Good morning to thee(s)!" for the x-teenth time
on this your firstly "Great Day of Be-with-us."
(From Sunrise magazine, February/March 2000; copyright © 2000 Theosophical University Press)