Page 32 - The Irony Board
P. 32
Into the Mind
Still your body,
Still your mind;
Then what’s moving,
You will find,
Is still yourself.
Mysticism and meditation try to mix, but fail. Logic insists that we
cannot escape from our spacetime matrix, that we cannot transmute
matter into void, that consciousness itself cannot extend beyond the
boundaries of the brain: but we try, anyway, spurred by the promise
of enlightenment and transformation. Gluckman is promoting the
idea that “spiritual” practices may well be, in themselves, harmless
(or even healthful); the only new knowledge they yield, however, is
of their limitations.
The motion in the poem is of two types: the first, which can be
more or less stilled, is neurological and muscular; the second, which
cannot be stopped, is relativistic. Physics teaches us that every point
in reality is at the intersection of possible “worldlines” drawn
through four dimensions. Neither absolute motion nor absolute
immobility are possible (see “Kineticide” below). The final “still” is
a pun encapsulating the irony: “to be still” means to continue being
as well as to cease moving.
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