“Life is like a current passing from germ to germ through the medium of a developed organism.“—Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution

“The essential thing is the continual progress indefinitely pursued, an invisible progress, on which each visible organism rides during the short interval of time given it to live.”—Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution

So I’m reviewing a number of things, playing with the notion of developing slide shows and taking the Omphalos Cafe on the road—quotes, images, video clips and all, and I pick up a book I haven’t glanced at in twenty-five years but in its own way has been central to what goes on here at the Cafe.

A couple things strike me immediately.

One is how good the quotes are and how much they echo, in a highly Western Way, Eastern mysticism. They are Zen through and through.

Next is how in tune Bergson is with a number of other stellar Western spirits. How amazing was the thought and vision of so many men in the first decades of the 1900’s!

And lastly, and this to the detriment of humankind in general—which of course the Omphalos Cafe has set as its mission to redress—how obscure, forgotten, ignored, or utterly misunderstood these Giants have been.

Who has even heard of Elie Faure, never mind Henri Bergson or Oswald Spengler? Better to stay safe and continue to rehash the accepted Canon. That nothing as taught by the high priests of learning today, when you really get down to it, holds together in an integral cohesive living whole is something easily glossed over or more often white-washed with a barrage of cliches and shibboleths.

We are hurtling down dark labyrinthine corridors of our own devising towards a dead end and we’ve discarded the lamp of inner wisdom for a store-bought flashlight with dying battery.

No matter. This Life right here and now is a gift.

“Harmony, therefore, does not exist in fact; it exists rather in principle; I mean that the original impetus is a common impetus, and the higher we ascend the stream of life the more do diverse tendencies appear complementary to each other.”—Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution

… Diverse tendencies as complementary, very Zen. The “stream of life”? Bergson’s term for what I like to refer to as “The Great Passing Through.”

It is all one…

Because LIFE is ALL there is!