PERFECT MOMENTS

Ajeng was 16 years old, she has just finished swimming in the pool of this humble inn called Sania Bungalow, Ubud

By Neil Leiper (in a letter addressed to Yana Arsyadi)

What you call ‘perfect days’ seem to have been brought about by the special or distinctive environments which you were in at the time:  e.g. the individual(s) present as your personal company, the scenery, the weather, the activities and so on.  The experience of ‘perfect days’ gives great pleasure, at the time and, perhaps almost as important, afterwards when these days are remembered and re-savoured.  If a person knew the precise factors that contributed to and caused the distinctive pleasure of a perfect day, they might be able to have more perfect days or, at least, perfect half-days. 

The simple answer is that the causes are the special or distinctive environments. Thus people try and retrieve and re-live the same or similar environments, in search of the same or similar experiences. They go back to the places, the same company.  A lot of tourism is, I believe, based in this type of behaviour.  We learn about the environmental features of some place and they seem ‘attractive’; we feel that if we were to visit the place we would have distinctive pleasure, we would experience perfect days … Bali, Ubud, Tahiti, Sydney Harbour, Paris, and so on.

Perfect Breakfast at Sania Bungalow, Ubud. These
come with the daily charge of only RP. 250.000/day

In practice, almost any sort of trip away from routines can have a similar effect, since a changed and unfamiliar environment stimulates perception. Humans, like all animals, have raised levels of perception when they first encounter somewhere different.

There is, however, another way, a very different way, of approaching the issue, another perspective. It might be more important and closer to the truth. It might be a method enabling us to have more perfect days. In this context, particular environments are not so important. Potentially wonderful experiences can be derived from ordinary environments, from features that are nearby every day in routine existence. Artists and poets know this to be true.  Some persons attempt to capture an artistic or poetic sensibility from the artists or poets by immersing themselves in art, poetry and poetic literature. 

Such attempts can be successful, to some extent.  Examples: after two hours of gazing at beautiful paintings in the Neka Art Museum, or an hour of gazing at beautiful Balinese architecture manifest in a temple, or a half hour looking at rice terraces, or an hour in early morning spent sitting quietly on a hotel terrace reading an appropriate book (e.g. Summer at Baden-Baden, by Tsypkin; or The Book of Tea, by Okakura Kakuzo; or Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, by Jan Morris, etc.) can lead to a perfect day, when everything seems clear, beautiful and meaningful.  Experiments with those three books, and with many others, have found support for that theory.  Similar triggers can be derived from appropriate music, such as many compositions by Mozart, or jazz from Benny Goodman or Stan Getz. 

The process here is that the sensation of a perfect day is based in a higher level of consciousness.  Raised consciousness enables an individual to have sharper perceptions, deeper experiences, especially pleasure.  Immersion in objective art (in various forms: paintings, poetry, novels, music) can raise consciuousness.

Particular features of environments are not so important.  Potentially wonderful experiences can be derived from ordinary environments, from features that are around us every day in routine existence.  Artists and poets know this to be true.  William Blake expressed it well in one of his best-known poems, “Auguries of Innocence”:

           To see a World in a grain of sand,

           And Heaven in a wild flower

           Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

           And Eternity in an hour … Eternity, in an hour …

The line tells us that perfect experiences might be brief according to clock time. 

The essential question is, how to raise levels of consciousness?  How can an individual become like Blake, able to see, to experience, a World in a grain of sand? 

The first steps are the realization that various levels of consciousness are feasible and that much of our ordinary life passes at relatively low levels.  The next step is the acquiring of technique for accomplishing the routines of ordinary life (work, housework, necessary social obligations and so on) in ways that get us through these routines successfully while preparing for higher levels of consciousness.  The next steps are preparing our senses for the elevation. The best technique I know of is calm relaxation, sitting still and merely paying attention to immediate tactile, aural, olfactory and visual environments. This can be interspersed with “the Stop Exercise”: while doing something – anything, suddenly and randomly stop! Freeze! and begin paying attention. (Ideally the call to stop is made by another person but that is not essential.) 

Repeating these steps several times each day leads to longer sustained intervals of awareness, of higher consciousness.  The best book on all this, from my experience, is Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous.

January 2010