Inside the Celestial Library

1

Instructions on getting to the star-strewn
repository of supreme knowledge:

Stow love in the furnace of the self and
ardently light with devotion.
Move out beyond the parameters of ignorance,
those ivy-coated walls of conditional existence,
by grabbing the wings of ecstasy.
It has been said that the chamber of the primal
heart can open the celestial book with fingers of
flying fire.
Blazing, loving, and devouring the false paths with
the insatiable hunger of love’s true-teeth is ultimately
noble.
Keep the fire pure.
Keep it centered.

2

Outside the library:

“You’re here,” the disembodied says in an exultant tone.
“I am?”
“Quite so.”
“What is here?”
“Everywhere, nowhere.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Here you can make quantum leaps
in understanding by letting go of the word
that creates the gulf between the word ‘I’
and the word ‘understanding’.”
“Don’t?”
“Yes.”
“How so?”
“Because you just can.”
“Do I ask too many questions?”
“Questions are okay.
Doubt isn’t.
Doubt will make you sink.”
“But I want to swim.”
“And you will.
Just keep the totality of your being shining.”

3

The disembodied voice presents an endless
book bereft of images and content to the many-fingered
flying fire.
“Ensoul it,” the voice implores.
“How?”
“By giving soul to something that is dangling
here in the vacuum.”
“I am not sure how to act.”
“Act without limits.”
“I will try.”
The many-fingered flying fire starts juggling
the endless book for no discernible reason.
Soul starts growing in the pages like plants
on an island of perfect possibility.
“Gorgeous,” intones the voice.
“You’re ensouling it.”
“I am?”
“You’re ensouling because you’re acting
without the need to act. This is an example
of freedom in action.”

4

“Holy orchids as sumptuous sentences,
words of endearment, passages of epic prose,
nouns of the numinous, verbs of light…
this is good soul,” remarks the mysterious voice
that haunts the vacuum, everywhere, nowhere.
“I don’t know how this is possible.
Is this the book of my soul?”
The barely existent voice mulls it over.
Silence extends for meta-miles.
“This is the book of all souls,” the
voice finally mutters.
“What you see is just your interpretation of
the reality at flaming-hand.
But it is not a meaningless, inferior interpretation.
The interpretation is igneous magic.”

5

For a long time the voices remain silent
right next to the endless book of space, soul,
and fire.
In the meantime, civilizations rise, civilizations die.
Big bangs and big fizzles happen.
Black holes breathe in, breathe in, breathe in too much.
Finally, after galactic centuries pass, the disembodied
voice says, “Would you like to be admitted into
the library at the end of time?”
“Where is that?”
“Everywhere, nowhere.”
“Well, where is the door knob?”
“In midsentence.”
“The middle of what sentence?”
“Any sentence.”
“In this book?”
“Yes. In any sentence in this book
your burning fingers can access the
library door.”

6

Our many-fingered flying fire
finds the opalescent knob in the
midsentence space floating in the misty void.
“Feels like knowledge,” he says.
“Feels like an energy that educates.”
The disembodied voice ponders the
significance of the knob.
“Ah yes,” the voice says positively.
“Every knob is quite exquisite and educated.
Polished too.
Look at the shine.”
The shine is an ethereal glow of magnificence
and magic.
Light seems to drip from it and collect in limpid
pools by the margins of the ensouled book.

7

“Turn the knob many times and you will open the gateless
gate to the library at the end of time.”
“Wouldn’t I turn it just once?”
“The place I speak of is not open to visitors who just
turn the knob once.”
“And why not?”
“Because in order to reach the end of time, we must
turn and turn and turn until we go down the sinkhole
of the knob.”
“How absurd. There is no sinkhole here.”
“Originally there was no soul in the book either.
Originally there was no knob in the midsentence mist.
You must remember that all of the best spaces are occulted
by minds that intractably think impossibilities actually exist.”

8

Inside the celestial library:

Our many-fingered flying fire turns
and turns and turns until he is invariably
sucked into a drain that leads to a library made
of columns and stairs and books.
Time is dead.
Chronos is ash.
But the end of time is the beginning of
something much vaster in scope, so there is nothing
to worry about.
“What do you think?” asks the disembodied voice.
“This place is incredible.”
“Yes.”
“I can feel encyclopedias of fresh and juicy information
covering me with the soul of some greater ideal.”
“This ideal is love.”
“Yes. Love.”
“Love is the architect of this place. We owe everything to
Him, Her, everywhere, nowhere.”

9

Knowledge is love’s outpouring.
The best knowledge transpires beyond the margins,
the binding, the font, in a book made of infinite narratives
and sublime words.
It plants wings in the heart, it plants seed-fables
in the commodious fields of unalloyed truths.
Knowledge is love’s first kiss on the cheek of innocence.
Beyond measure, it fills the celestial library with brilliance
and genius and happiness and texts of liberation.
The hermetic epistles shine.
The scripts of the Sufis shine.
The cuneiform tablets float.
The hieroglyphs contemplate things of vast import.
Oh, the grandeur of the Word is infinitely delicious.

10

The birds of fire act as bibles of fancy flight
just as the disembodied voice says, “All things
and forms are beautiful when they’re not subject to
the vicissitudes of time.”
The many-fingered flying fire agrees in silence, in self-reflection.
Then the disembodied voice intones, “But you must return to
a realm where time persists.
No one can live in a library.
Only fluttering and immutable ideas can live here.”
The flying fire agrees.
“I’ve seen so much knowledge here,
and I am so grateful for your lessons.
Will I be able to return?”
The disembodied voice of vacuum-consciousness pats the
palm of fire with winged words.
“Of course you can.”

11

Like a diamond meteor of mystery,
The many-fingered flying fire returns to his body
and touches base with the terra firma, the wise earth,
the orb of life.
Love is in his heart.
Knowledge is in every breath.