“Ashes come from burning” These were the lines once told to Gurdieff by his father.
Are ashes only that which remains at the end of being burnt by fire or are ashes the remains of what once was? If latter then that is what becomes of everything eventually – of life, of things, of people, of ideas.
To realize this is to also realize that everything is on ‘fire’, everything is burning, everything is changing. No matter how long a thing may burn, it eventually will and does burn out – only ashes remain – of the stars, of the moons, of the planets, of civilizations, of people.
Ash, however, is not the eventuality. It but marks the beginning of yet another journey – a journey that starts from losing one form and moves towards realizing another. Ash mixes with its environment to become a plant, a fruit, an animal, a person, a rock. Ash re-invents itself, recreates itself. Everything is a cycle, endless and eternal. Nothing remains as we know it and nothing of what we know ever goes away – the world burning to ashes, the ashes morphing back into a world.
In this ever-changing world of things, is there something that is changeless, unchangeable, everlasting and eternal against whose backdrop all else is changing? Behind the movie of this Universe, is there an unchanging screen on which it is being played? Is there a smokeless flame that burns nothing and produces no ash but burns luminous nonetheless?
