Knowledge, understanding, and now

Thought is a hiding place only; a voiceless protest against being's enigmaticism; a deathless rigor mortis; the mind freezes in the stasis of 'facts', steadying itself like a piece of rare china before a fall; 'knowledge', per se, is a hardening of what ought to be supple and vibrant; just as a scared animal goes into shock, the fearful mind becomes rigid and helpless in the grasp of thought.

To be sure, mystery cannot be destroyed, but it certainly can be buried alive.

Once we have learned how to function effectively within a lie (i.e. the lie of understanding), we become inextricably caught in the lie- because we think it is true

It should be pointed out though, in speaking of detachment, that one never actually becomes detached from anything but an illusion- i.e. the individual relinquishes the false idea of the ownership of their separate form, and thus is re-united with the whole. This, in fact, is the exact opposite of detachment, for it is actually the greatest of intimacies; by becoming nothing, one attains to union with the all. And, from this observation, we can see that it is only because the conditioned mind prevents the self from dis-solving into the Self, that all illusionary thoughts must be purged in the fire of forgetfulness.

Knowledge is inertia. And inertia, as we know, is a very cowardly way to exist in the world.

The problem with ‘now’, is that you can’t remember it, because memory requires ‘what was’ to be, but ‘now’ is always not what was; ‘now’ always ‘is’, so you can’t remember it.

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These fragments and quotes are taken from the unpublished writings of Jack Haas, selected from the notebooks 1990-2005.