Showing posts with label Jacques Lusseyran. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jacques Lusseyran. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

And There was Light by Jacques Lusseyran


   There is no real inner life for a man or a child unless his relation to real things inside and outside himself is a true one. 
   The gym was much more than exercise, it was my marriage with space. 
   I began to look more closely, not at things but at a world  closer to myself, looking from an inner place to one further within, instead of clinging to the movement of sight toward the world outside. Immediately, the substance of the universe drew together.
...radiance was there, or, to put it more precisely, light.
   I could feel light rising, spreading, resting on objects, giving them form, then leaving them. Withdrawing or diminishing is what I mean, for the opposite of light was never present. 
   I saw the whole world in light, existing through it and because of it. 
   How could I have lived all that time without realizing that everything in the world has a voice and speaks? 
   The waves were arranged in steps, and together they made one music, though what they said was different in each voice.
    A sound we don't listen to is a blow to body and spirit, because sound is not something outside us, but a real presence passing through us and lingering unless we have heard it fully.
    ...there are no differences between us except those which come from heart and spirit. 
  I have never had to go more than halfway, and the universe became the accomplice of all my wishes.

   Words from: And There Was Light, the Extraordinary Memoir of a Blind Hero of the French Resistence in World War II by Jacques Lusseyran. I have a feeling this will be my favorite book of 2015, but we shall see.