the silence inside the illusion

Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don’t know it because of our thinking-minds.
 But in our true blissful essence of mind it is known that everything is alright 
forever and forever and forever. Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop,
 stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world,
 and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense 
milky ways of cloudy innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all.
 It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. It is perfect.
 We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do
 with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere,
 or one universal self. Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes
 through everything, is one thing. It’s a dream already ended. There’s nothing
 to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about. I know this from staring at mountains
 months on end. They never show any expression, they are like empty space. 
Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away? 
Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal
 essence of mind, the one vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, 
will never crumble away because it was never born.

~ Jack Kerouac