Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch Read Online Free PDF Page A

community—the ones who really support the show—who
     are not writers, painters or artists of any sort, except in spirit. “Too late,” he probably
     murmurs to himself, as he takes a last wistful glance about.
    How illustrative, this attitude, of the woeful resignation men and women
     succumb to! Surely every one realizes, at some point along the way, that he is capable of
     living a far better life than the one he has chosen. What stays him, usually, is the fear of
     the sacrifices involved. (Even to relinquish his chains seems like a sacrifice.) Yet everyone
     knows that nothing is accomplished without sacrifice.
    The longing for paradise, whether here on earth or in the beyond, has almost
     ceased to be. Instead of an
idée-force
it has become an
idée fixe
. From a
     potent myth it has degenerated into a taboo. Men will sacrifice their lives to bring about a
     better world—whatever that may mean—but they will not budge an inch to attain paradise. Nor
     will they struggle to create a bit of paradise in the hell they find themselves. It is so much
     easier, and gorier, to make revolution, which means, to put it simply, establishing another, a
     different, status quo. If paradise were realizable—this is the classic retort!—it would no
     longer be paradise.
    What is one to say to a man who insists on making his own prison?
    There is a type of individual who, after finding what he considersa paradise, proceeds to pick flaws in it. Eventually this man’s paradise
     becomes even worse than the hell from which he had escaped.
    Certainly paradise, whatever, wherever it be, contains flaws. (Paradisiacal
     flaws, if you like.) If it did not, it would be incapable of drawing the hearts of men
or
angels.
    The windows of the soul are infinite, we are told. And it is through the eyes
     of the soul that paradise is visioned. If there are flaws in your paradise, open more windows!
     Vision is entirely a creative faculty: it uses the body and the mind as the navigator uses his
     instruments. Open and alert, it matters little whether one finds a supposed short cut to the
     Indies—or discovers a new world. Everything is begging to be discovered, not accidentally, but
     intuitively. Seeking intuitively, one’s destination is never in a beyond of time or space but
     always here and now. If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are
     eternally anchored. One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at
     things. Which is to say that there are no limits to vision. Similarly, there are no limits to
     paradise. Any paradise worth the name can sustain all the flaws in creation and remain
     undiminished, untarnished.
    If I have entered upon a vein which I must confess is one not frequently
     discussed here, I am nevertheless certain that it is one which secretly engages the minds of
     many members of the community.
    Everyone who has come here in search of a new way of life has made a complete
     change-about in his daily routine. Nearly every one has come from afar, usually from a big
     city. It meant abandoning a job and a mode of life which was detestable and insufferable. To
     what degree each one has found “new life” can be estimated only by the efforts he or she put
     forth. Some, I suspect, would have found “it” even had they remained where they were.
    The most important thing I have witnessed, since coming here,is the transformation people have wrought in their own being. Nowhere have I seen
     individuals work so earnestly and assiduously on themselves. Nor so successfully. Yet nothing
     is taught or preached here, at least overtly. Some have made the effort and failed. Happily
     for the rest of us, I should say. But even these who failed gained something. For one thing,
     their outlook on life was altered, enlarged if not “improved.” And what could be better than
     for the teacher to become his own pupil, or the preacher his own convert?
    In a paradise you don’t