Cultures are created and destroyed in ecstasy — and for a moment in between there is nothing that keeps a world live aside from the breath of ecstatics.

People in general sincerely believe they know what life and the past and present are, although they know nothing. The news, the huge archives, the carefully written books are all about nothing. They are not even about the shadows of reality, or about moving chairs on the the decks of a ship that soon could go down. They are absolutely nothing.

There is no such thing as true movement in this world. We can seem to run, push, dance, fly; make our way into space. But the only movement that really exists is the restlessness of our busy minds.

The whole of existence is an elaborate illusion to make everyone believe that something can be done here, even though nothing is ever done. In spite of all the personal dreams, the collective hopes and aspirations, nothing whatsoever is achieved because the real doing all happens somewhere else.

At any given point in time there will only ever be one single way to put a real step forward--which is in a state of ecstasy that takes us out of ourselves. This is how it always has been and will be for each of us; and this is also how it is for the whole.

We have the strange idea in the west that civilizations just happen: that they come into existence as a hit or miss affair and then we bumble along, creating and inventing and making it better.

But this is now how things are done at all.

Civilizations never just happen. They are brought into existence quite consciously, with unbelievable passion and determination, from another world. Then the job of people experienced in ecstasy is to prepare the soil for them; carefully sow and plant them; care for them; watch them grow.

And each culture is just lie a tree whose essence and whole potential are already contained in the seed. Nothing during the course of civilization is ever discovered, or invented, or created, which was not already present inside that seed.

In our unconsciousness we take credit where no credit is due, oblivious to the real source of everything we pretend is ours—the sacred origin not just of religion but also of everything else, of science and technology, education and law, of medicine, logic, architecture, ordinary daily life, the cry of longing, the excruciating ache of the awakening love for wisdom.

And then there are those who quietly go about doing whatever is needed: the ones who wait in a state of ecstasy to help bring new civilizations into being the ones without whom nothing is possible.

But not only are these people needed to bring new worlds into existence. They even are needed to bring them to an end so as to help make way for the new.

The simple truth is that every single civilization, including this western world, was brought into being from a sacred place to serve a sacred purpose. And when that purpose is forgotten, when its original alignment gets lost, when the fundamental balance and harmony of its existence become disrupted beyond a certain point, then nature has her way.

This is the mystery of birth and death not only for humans, but for cultures too. And for thousand of years it has been understood that, just as civilizations have to come to and end, there can even be times of global extinctions. But always there are people who know how to gather the essence of life and hold it safely, protect it and nurture it until the next seeding.

They are the ones who are entrusted to turn the pages of life, to open the book of a culture and close it. They are the ones who are given permission to sound the notes that will bring a new world into being and then sing the song that will bring it nearer to its close. They are the watchers who know the real meaning of responsibility and compassion—who are needed to witness the beginnings and endings because without the simple power of their attention nothing can be done.

And all we do is sometimes catch a glimpse of what they do without having the slightest clue about the process as a whole.

There are really only two kinds of people in existence. There is everyone who has been trained to live either for today or for tomorrow, stuck in all the cycles of endless preparations and expectations, dutifully digging holes and then falling into them, always busy trying to plant something fresh in the well-worn patterns of the old.

This is called waiting for the new moon.

And then there are those who know how to work in perfect stillness, imperceptibly bringing the future into being.

That is called waiting for the new sun.