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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781490763095 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Trafford Publishing |
| Publication date: | 10/06/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 332 |
| File size: | 428 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Life Through the Third Eye
By Adel Khozam, Juzer Fakhri
Trafford Publishing
Copyright © 2015 Adel KhozamAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4907-6308-8
CHAPTER 1
Love and War in the Blind's Circus
This happened one summer.
Full of thirst, I reached a village whose inhabitants had died of hunger. I knocked and pounded at the doors and openings but did not receive anything but silence.
I sat down sorrowfully, resting my back against a rock, when the rock suddenly trundled, and a spring of water erupted from beneath it. As I bent down to drink, I saw two people standing above my head as if they had been standing there since ages past.
One was the poet, and the other was the wise man — two men similar in essence but conflicting in appearance.
Said the wise man, "You are thirsty and in search of meaning and shall remain so forever."
Said the poet, "Beauty and nothing else shall quench your thirst."
Upon saying these lines, both of them proceeded to leave without even sipping a single drop of that stream while I stood there in extreme astonishment. Quickly I filled up my flask and followed them, cutting across places and time together. I have not and shall never regret this journey. Toward the end of it, I was able to conceive that man dies due to the starvation for meaning and conception when they are alive and thriving upon ignorance.
Describing the poet and the wise man is beyond my realm, and I can only provide a brief introduction of these eminent personalities, which is as follows:
The poet taps frequently on his paper, attempting to extract deeper meanings hidden away in the whiteness and beauty of the fair virgin. Inadvertently while doing so, he is able to abrade upon a concept lying dormant and dislocated on the bedstead of the past and create a new meaning out of this newfound material despite it being as it is since time immemorial. Line after line, the poet transforms into a surgeon, and as the old meanings bleed when their skins are pulled off, they are replaced by new blood and skin — different from what they were before. And this is the production of new meanings and concepts — like a snake ready to strike and bid welcome to life. It becomes qualified to consume and awaken the hunger of researchers and critics who shall study the newly formed beauty of the words and the splendor of the meanings and concepts. The poet still strikes and taps on his paper until his eyes go white and his ink dries up. The poet transforms them into multiple words that roam about in this existence for eternity.
The wise man has left society asunder and embraced isolation in the endeavor of rediscovering his five senses. Firstly, the eyes shall comprehend the concrete world in abstractness. For example, the door shall become an indication of man's journey of life — wherein he alternates between entering and exiting or merely standing at a threshold — while the focus of this thought shall be the large wooden gate of the concrete world that is present at the entrance of a city. The wise man shall continue to delve deeper into the reality of the concept of the door. Was it created to be or remain open or closed? In his solitude, the wise man shall conceive that what the ears hear is not relevant; rather, it is that which touches and lingers in the conscious that matters. Whatever we touch or taste in our imagination affects our senses to the fullest. While there are countless things that we smell, touch, or taste in our daily lives, they do not affect us at all except superficially and physically.
At a point in the journey between the concept of meaning and the question of reality, the poet and the wise man came face-to-face, looking at each other with frowning and empty expressions while laughing merrily inside their imaginations because they had finally realized that thoughts are constant while materials are in cycles of continual change even if they are rock solid. The senses are in a state of deceit since what they perceive is only the apparent exterior while the reality is lying deep inside — dormant until someone takes the effort to extract it from the depths of meaning and reason and the layers of dead ignorance; this is done to achieve the beautiful treasure of the quintessence of life, which appears to the wise man as an empty, gigantic ball despite it being apparently full! On the other hand, the poet perceives it to be a huge, heavy sphere full of words and letters; if organized and put into a good shape by a courageous man, its motion would be harmonious and rhythmic. But if, for instance, the poet would no longer exist, then this circle of words would snap. Its ink would leak and flow all across the concepts and meanings — blinding them. Then the wise man would be unable to penetrate the exterior appearance and reach the depths of those meanings that the poet has expounded upon. He might misunderstand the truth and remain oblivious to reality. As though he would consider and describe the eyes of a woman as arrows piercing the heart when in reality, they are blind — the properties of a broken heart.
The wise man and the poet diverge at the end of this road with conflicting viewpoints regarding the correct understanding of reality. The former carries his question with turmoil in his mind, while the latter meanders around and carries his piece of paper, which still remains white. Eventually, they meet again on a crossroad, laughing while neither of them is aware if they are meeting or dispersing.
The Songs of the Desert
We walked in the vastness of the desert for half a day, and neither of them spoke a word throughout. I was amazed by the ability of the wise man to walk briskly even on the snug, soft sand while he sought the support of his walking stick, and the poet, even though he was much younger and powerful, struggled and stumbled whenever we climbed a dune or descended from one. Before sunset, we took refuge below a half-dead tree and stationed ourselves below it, tired.
The wise man said the following:
O Desert, the soft and gentle skin of the earth.
The winds blow to wipe away the footsteps of those who traversed upon your back to unknown places and bury their secrets within the folds of your sand, writing the biographies of cessations with their erasers and not caring about the concepts of time and place. Those who live in the desert and swim through its vast oceans know that each inscription, be it engraved by hot iron or fire, shall undoubtedly be erased. They also know that any attempt to stand one's ground in a moving and blowing sea of sand shall not result in anything but drowning. For this reason, the Bedouins invented the eternal travel songs of the desert, which flow like waves upon the water and stand up courageously to the haughtiness and adamancy of the winds. They sing along while following the path of the moon when it rises in the bow of the sky and sheds its silver all over the sand dunes. Those who live the nomadic life know well that the destination of those who wait in the holes of time is nothing but death. They are the ones whose legs have shifted from beneath them despite them being in place, whose eyes were accustomed to tall and fancy buildings, whose skins were never touched by anything other than fine and luxurious linens, and who lived behind closed and locked doors of glass that prevented humans from entering them.
O Desert, your face is one that is inundated with wrinkles when the first wind blows in the morning. It becomes smooth again at noon, overlaid with the shine of mirages and empty of the freckles of sand that had been left behind by the nightly storytellers chatting around fires during your pure and clean nights. They, the storytellers, drum along the melodies of songs that fizzle away into the night without echoes and without anyone knowing where the stories of the gathered men and their tales of love travel to. But those who reside and extract their souls from the sands have discovered that all directions are the same at the time of the sun reaching the middle of the sky. There is no difference between the comer and goer. The earth remains a big point of embarkation making no distinction between those who ascended the dunes of yesterday and those who climb upon them today. All ways lead up to the desolate maze of unanswered questions that traps its victim till his death — from which he had absconded for long.
O Desert, you smile in the face of the sun while it rises haughtily, throwing its rays around and unloading its baggage upon your waves while its rays extend to the unexplored swaths of desert land. The wildflowers follow the sun, taking in their share of light before they face withering and decay on account of drought. While you, O Desert, take pride in your share of gold that can be seen till the horizon and upon the goods and their carriers to the astonishment of the eyes that have made their bearers thirsty. They keep on searching for the literal meaning of the word raml [sand] in the dictionaries but cannot find any except naqaa [purity]. They turn the pages of the sands only to find concealed indications in the exhibits of vicissitude. Whenever a shadow elongates and then contracts or whenever a new object appears in place of an old one, it bears testimony that nothing is permanent in the desert except its essence, which envelops the secret of this existence.
O Desert, the light, feather-like cloud moves slowly across until it lets its drops loose on your smooth cheeks, but the drops are quickly scattered away by the uncompromising wind. Then comes a bigger, heavier cloud above your bosom to empty its load over you and quench the thirst built up over the years due to the dry spells that are the bases on whose foundations lie the conclusions of those who research upon the philosophy of the gushing source of water. The water appeared in the heart of the desert like a gigantic eye — an eye that would close its lid in the time of drought only to open in full glory whenever the arm of rain slid over its eyelid. Amazingly, the desert is scraped by water while its meanings and conceptualizations are drenched by the crowd of clouds far off in the horizon that is joined by the setting of the sun and the absence of its fiery rays.
The poet then recited the following:
I love the tree, the indication of life.
I love the desert, the indication of life's tribulations.
And I love the water to the extent of drowning in its sweetness and perishing.
The Eye of the Poet
We took a nap of approximately two or three hours.
I opened my eyes only to see thousands of stars evident, as though embedded, in the desert sky. The poet and the wise man were already up and engaged in a conversation incomprehensible to me. A silence intruded their talk, which then resumed and delved completely into the sky.
I then heard the poet say the following:
When the darkness intensifies, the star of good fortune sends out signals at a time when the sky is shining bright with the presences of stars. The world then smiles upon a fortunate soul who sees everything around him in abundant radiance due to the manifestation of love inside him. In similar fashion is the poet, who leaps in utter merriment upon seeing the star of poetry indicating to him a call that he answers by following the light of that star that has imprinted its reflection on his soul. He follows the magical illuminations of letters that lure him into the world of meanings and conceptions, trailing behind their wanderings as though they are the mirrors of existence. He feels as though the words and phrases carry the image of this universe on a small piece of paper. As though this small piece of paper has extended to envelop in itself all that existence has to offer with just a single sentence as its reductase! In that magical moment when the poet begins to inscribe those earlier words, a new life springs into presence — a life full of new meanings. The words and letters of it flutter back to life, opening a new path in our conscious awareness of life.
So when good fortune becomes a shining star and the star then smiles with its beautiful face in the worldly sky, the poet does not remain a silent bystander. Rather, he cruises within the world of thoughts, spreading his gold in every nook and corner of thoughts long neglected and making them gleam in such manners that others perceive them to be melodies created to be sung with the sweet voices of women. Only if man was to be privileged enough to perceive life through the eyes of the poet, the world would be much more beautiful and merciful than what it is today. Firstly, the word of war would transform into the word of love [H R B (war) would transform into H B (love) just by eliminating the letter R from the former]. And then the moon would appear as a nightly chime of love for the world. Indeed, the hearts would now melt with compassion when before they were hardened by fear and blinded by ignorance. The oceans would see ships of yearning and desire anchoring in their final port of destination. With poetry and poetry alone can adamancy be alleviated, and thorns can bloom into flowers, and the train of remorse becomes redundant and never reaches its intended stations.
The wise man now responded the following:
The poet is haunted by fear while his eyes are open and interpreting all that they see.
Retorted the poet,
Yes, man enters life through the gates of fear. Deceived by the mysteries of existence, he flounders helplessly in the sands of obscurity. The mysteries force him to dig into the vacuum of existence in search of those mirrors that would reflect in them the realities of what they see. Alas! One who does not perceive this world through the eyes of a poet shall be left with reflections that shall demonstrate nothing but masks of confusion — one laden upon another. He shall remain with a superficially limited awareness of his own reality. Mankind, in fact, struggles to find and discover its inner reality. It strives to unearth the form that inhabits its inner self and pervades like a wave inside its body. The form then banks itself in the vast expanse of the mind and becomes a voice — an inner calling — that is heard as the day passes. Yes, we hear that voice but are unaware of its origin.
This voice is formless and abstract. Its being is of the purest quintessence contained in its depths — an embodiment without form, but we are able to see it. And for us to view it in its perfect form, it is necessary for us to cleanse our intellect from husks that have accumulated in it. Upon cleaning it, we shall see and realize that all existence has been contained and is reflected in it. This plane of reflection — this mirror — is just like the white page in the hands of the poet that is subsequently filled with newly created meanings and concepts that transcend into and accept the forms that we can see through the eyes of our intellect. This is how we reach the origin of meanings. Only through the realization of the meanings hidden in the existence that surrounds us can we say that we truly enjoy our existence. The essence of this existence cannot be understood in its entirety by any but the poet. It is he who plays the music of silence — the tunes of which pervade through concrete objects and turn afresh after they wither. He is the one who, if the world becomes miserly, creates palaces in its spaces of such magnificence that miracles can be seen peeking from their balconies.
Do both of you know how was the poet born in this world?
He was jogging through his tracks and through herds of cattle and habitats of the wild predators. Unperturbed, he glanced toward the sky and fixated his eyes on a star and named it the Tryst of Dawn. When his eyes were filled by the full moon, he realized that whatever light that exists is in fact a reflection of a heart — if the heart is pure. For this reason, he scribbled a name on the walls that the people could not decipher. He wrote words and phrases on the forehead of existence that turned into stars that shine bright when darkness intensifies and enlightens the hearts and intellects of the passersby.
The night had set in. The wise man carefully put away his walking stick, and the poet folded his paper while I made a pillow of my flask, which was now filled with words of wisdom; and we slept.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Life Through the Third Eye by Adel Khozam, Juzer Fakhri. Copyright © 2015 Adel Khozam. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments, ix,Chapter 1 Love and War in the Blind's Circus, 1,
Chapter 2 The Big Loss in the Land of Freedom, 119,
Chapter 3 Hunting Time in the River of Ink, 180,
Chapter 4 End of Words and the Beginning of Mirrors, 251,