Book Review - "Flying Without Wings"

"Arnold Beisser would never have described himself as enlightened or even more advanced than others. But when a man who suddenly finds himself a quadraplegic in an iron lung can come to say, "My life is enough", who can fail to listen? Flying Without Wings emblazons the heart with one liberating truth: Nothing in this world, nothing in another's behaviour, or even in one's own physical make-up or functioning can poison one's life. Only the mind can blot out the peace of heart and infect a life with darkness, and only the mind an release the heart to grandeur."

Those words come from the foreword to Flying Without Wings by Arnold R. Beisser. I picked this book up in the Dandenong Library a few days ago and have been mesmerised by it since. It describes Arnold's search to make a new life and find new meaning for himself, without at fiirst knowing how or where to begin. As he takes us on his journey, he provides a useful guide for anyone faced with loss, pain, disability and the imminence of death. He shows us peace, humour and joy can appear at any moment. Here are a few of my favourite passages:

When I lose my sense of myself and am fully involved with something I value or someone I love, my body seems to become irrelevant, and my boundaries seem to include the other thing or person. There seems no distinction between us. It is as though, at those moments, my boundaries include everything�the whole universe.There is a magical quality to those moments. Time and space are fused and my body seems to disappear.
Zen students often laugh at the moment of enlightenment. It expresses the experience of relief at sudden contact with reality. If a student reaches satori - that continuous state of enlightenment - he will maintain the feeling state that approximates a burst of laughter, a state of open-mindedness and wonder. It is what a child must feel when he is suddenly surrounded by playthings, unenecumbered and free.
Since I can see elements of truth in all religions � and no one seems sufficient in itself � I am not continuously guided by some relatively simple frame of reference. The future that I move toward has only sketchy details for me. It is a future which I cannot fully comprehend, but which faith tells me exists, and which is worthwhile. My inner world revolves around some mysterious something which I call "me". The whole universe revolves around something even more mysterious and awesome. But there are times, increasingly more frequent and of longer duration, when I and that larger something are in synchrony. Those are the times when boundaries disappear, when time disappears and space is without meaning. At these moments, all conventional terms pale in their attempts to describe what there is, for it is beyond peace, beyond joy, beyond tragedy, beyond comedy, and well beyond health and disability.

I could have selected many more excerpts but you'll just have to read the book if you want more of a taste. It is well worth the effort, in fact I found it a quite effortless read.

Should transcribe more of the book & foreword - If i remember ...

The two people who wrote that foreword are:

Hugh Prather - 1 2 3

& Gerald Jampolsky - 1 2 3 4

C J '

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