Where it all comes from
by Bob on May 7, 2007
Where does it all come from ? Part of this there might be an answer to, but the other part defies a final answer, like the proverbial chicken and the egg problem.
When one composes a song, finds a guitar riff, writes a poem, or even thinks of anything, it comes from somewhere. And if we think it's coming from our minds, well, that's convenient, but maybe not simply the case.
It's more complicated.
The ancients wrote that the dead and spirits and the other living are all around us, we just cannot perceive them with our mortal senses, or most people can't. Some can make that connection, like shamans are supposed to.
Many times, when we think of a phrase or something "out of the blue" it just mightn't be just quite simply out of the blue.
Dr. C.G. Jung believed we drew from the collective unconscious. And, in theory, that can't exclude the spirits of the dead. We would tend to support that position by realising that the definition of a person's being dead is a quote legal one rather than a clearly scientific or metaphysical one. The heart stops. No contraction or expansion of the pupils in the eyes. No breathing. Hmm. It's convenient but not that simplistic. Edgar Allen Poe knew that. One need only read his "Premature Burial" for just skimming the surface of his investigations.
When we think of something, it's a bit of a contradiction. We are putting ourselves in the pilot house, following the example of Descartes, and thinking we are thinking the thought.
Many great poets have said that their poems wrote them rather than their having been the author. So it came from somewhere in the aether. We turn to the Muses and realise this kind of inspiration is in the air. It just happens that we have latched onto a thread of soul from elsewhere. That begs the question if one can invent anything new. That's a complicated question for we have to define "new". Sacred scriptures tell us there is nothing new under the sun. That's can't be a trite expression.
Again, if we even entertain ourselves enough to follow Nietzsche's doctrine of the Eternal Return, or Eternal Recurrence, we realise that in that theory nothing is new under the sun, nor can it ever be. We are in fact left with the first cause, the primum materium, the source -- as a quandary. Apart from that, it all follows.
One oneself sometimes wonders how something floated into one's head. Like a guitar riff, or idea for a poem, etc. One doesn't know. One wasn't working on it so it can't be a process that was a sequitur to anything, seemingly. One thinks it comes from a collective consciousness of spirits and souls. Or even the influence of a hummingbird or the seeming clairvoyance of a dolphin.
What we think is ours alone in our head is but an illusion. It belongs to everyone and every being. And to the Divine.
I once had a yoga teacher in New York's Soho neighborhood. This was not a fashionable yoga class. It was very spiritual and devoted. Many of us found that the "dead man's float" made us loose all sensations that were were in a material body. We were simple at one with the cosmos. Whatever that really means. But my teacher did tell us that her teacher in the Far East told her that the fundamental energy and life force, prana, is related to air that comes to us from all over the world. That the air we are breathing today may have been in the Himalayas a couple of days ago. And that special energy and context came with it.
So we should thank whoever our muse or muses are when something comes into our head. We have received a gift. And it's better than mechanical music or moving pictures.
One remembers the brilliant 1960s band, Steppenwolf, and their 1968 hit song "Magic Carpet Ride". The words are quite compelling as is the music:
Last night I held Aladdin's lamp
And so I wished that I could stay
Before the thing could answer me
Well, someone came and took the lamp away
I looked around, a lousy candle's all I found
And I guess all that is how I came to write this. So it goes. One hopes to keep one's muse or muses, whoever they might be, including me, whoever I am.