The Golden Eternity | A letter from Jack Kerouac, 1957
“It’s all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don’t know it because of our
thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind 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 way soft cloud
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: Self is only an idea, a mortal
idea. That which passes into everything is one thing.”
Jack Kerouac, Letter to his first wife, Edie, 1957
Also:
Letter to Jack Kerouac | Neal Cassady, 1951
Belief & Technique for Modern Prose | Jack Kerouac, 1922-69