Do you remember Tibbit's Hill? October had settled on the hill with all the softness of that season. It kept telling our story to all —the story of life— while our steps were leading us to the place of celebration: the sky, the earth, the air, the waters, the light!

The sky had descended closer to our heads. Grace! But the earth was never leaving us one moment. How good was its perfume! The presence! The air, soft and an accomplice in our delight, was making rounder the sound of our walk and was bringing us the mixed scents of the forest. The offering! Further down, Brome Lake was still, in a watchful lull. The slack suspense of the waters seemed to channel the silent echo of some infinitely secret voice. The welcome! The light, delicate and subtle in that season, had settled in the forest. The forms, the colors and the shadows: it was making them all rise with the greatest ease, just by its presence. The celebration!

The path had become the occasion. We were strolling forward, gathered but light, in the midst of the rising forms, in the wake of the living. Our carefree words were sometimes adding perspective to the intimate and cosy silence that was setting the tone. We were fused together in a delighted expectation and a respectful listening. That could not be said, it could not be explained. It was.

The Marvel seemed to amuse itself in the glint of our eyes, still concealed but hardly, as if ready to explode in thousands of blessings. Maybe it was dancing like that because we had not yet frightened it by trying to capture it? Maybe it felt secure in the pause of our gathering? But in any case, it had not retired, despite our surging forms. It had not fled, though it had felt our foot steps. Would I dare to give it a name today? Is it possible anyway? A ridiculous try, considering what it is; an ultimately frustrated try when one hangs on to it, but nevertheless repeated again and again and so precious for a living thinking process.

Strange procession in the rustle of the Being, we were thus going without a goal, without a reason, but nevertheless on our way to… The less we were thinking of it, the more the Marvel was filling the field of our consciousness: there is Being. Maybe the Marvel discloses itself better in the growing sobriety of that season than in the dazzle of the spring. The disappearance of all coming forth probably lets us alone with That which, as Itself, never happen. How easy it is in May to scream loudly the existence of all creatures if life! But such a scream meets its defeat in December for sure. The creatures wear in their very unfoldment, and their appearing already announces their disappearing. But the Marvel never gets consumed; the seasons don't even scratch It. Time doesn't erode It. The things of summer were; they are no more. But at the core of their appearance as much as in the midst of their abolition, there is Being.

Forms are. Marvel. Forms are no more. Marvel. The thinker thinks. Something or someone produces these forms and calls them back: Being. What thus bestows existence gets engulfed in its bestowing impulse, because we then perceive only how it is. The Being gets eclipsed by being something or someone. It withdraws as Being every time it manifests as a form. The marvel is that the form is. What is human is to know how it is, where it is, when it is, how many it is, but to rarely know what it is. The Being is now in sight. But as soon as it is in sight, it is and therefore it becomes and vanishes in a subtle form. To think Being is to make a new form of it. Maybe a supreme form, but still a form. That is religion. When one is tired of thinking to the forms, one starts to reflect Being, one thinks toward Being. But when thought toward Being reaches maturity —that is when it ceases but we still persist in remaining with the Marvel, which is the essence of meditation— then one sees the thought from Being come to oneself. Hanging on to the thought toward Being is the arrogance of thought. To abandon oneself to the thought from Being is its humility. Behind the arrogance of thought are hiding and simmering space and time, that is smallness and suffering. In the humility of thought there the Spread and the Joy. Being abolishes itself by bestowing the form; through a just return of things, thought moving toward Being abolishes itself in its favor.

The play of Being sows the forms into space and throws them into time. One day, thought, tired of its crazy race in the circus of forms, thinks to the fact that forms exist. But the fact that form exists is still not Being itself. It cannot be perceived by an observer who would not melt in it altogether, better, who not be it. “No one can see God and live”, according to the old saying. Clear vision, free from an observer that has become useless and even detrimental, is an experience altogether different than what we are accustomed to; so accustomed as to not be able to think that there could be another way of being conscious. When the insistence of attention lets the essence of any object and any phenomenon shine, then what is known is what knows. At the end of that meditative persistence, there is nothing to know. Only Pure Consciousness shines, regardless of any modification or any form.

The thought from Being is self supporting, self effulgent. It is no more thought, it is Being. Such a thought from Being cannot be compelled to manifest, it doesn't come as a reward for efforts, it doesn't crown any process. Is it transcendence? No doubt, but it is also, simply and totally, everything we see, hear, feel, think and dream. Being is the Incomparable, but it is also the Same. It is the Being-which-is-the-being-of-the-form-which-is-the-form. What we take from It is still It. What we add to It is still It. What is not part of It is still It. But mostly, It is us, it is us!

The marvel had joined us on Tibbit's Hill. We had just been welcomed and ennobled in the clarifying rest of the One who is not. What was left to do? What more to do? Nothing more. Human things, simply. Because the incomparable is human in humans. We were strolling, a luminous and silent torrent was flooding the hearts, glints were rushing to our eyes, the simple joy of existing was quivering on the tips of our fingers. Over there, children were doing their children things: they were having fun and were diving in dead leaves. The adults were doing their adult things: working, building plans, having serious discussions and secretly being jealous of children. The soft light of October was gliding silently over everything and everyone; it was slipping everywhere, bringing the forms of Beings into appearance.

And we? We were ourselves, in a splendid refusal to be anything else than ourselves. The unspoken between us and around us was making insignificant everything spoken on earth. Are we not the Incomparable?