It’s winter, 1968. A cold rainy Saturday night in Perth, Western Australia. I’m on my way home from ice-skating where I’d been hoping (again in vain) to impress some pretty girl with my Travolta-like moves on the ice. With just seconds to spare, I leap onto Bus 72 as it pulls out of the Bus Station.
My favourite seat is right up the back, of course. Isn’t it every kid’s favourite? But tonight it’s already taken by some mean looking guys, so I slip quietly into a side seat. I’m only 15 years old, but I’m old enough to know that with guys like these it’s best to stay invisible.
The bus rattles into the night along old Mounts Bay Road. Through the rain-spattered window, I can faintly make out the black choppy waters of the Swan River. I press my forehead against the window, enjoying the soothing vibrations you get in these old diesels.
Then all of a sudden, I’m in love. Just like that! It comes like a bolt out of the blue. In an instant I’m deeply, ecstatically in love. Not with some pretty girl, but with everything. I’m in love with absolutely everything. Yet with nothing. Time stands still and somehow I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that all is well, that I am perfectly safe, and that everything that exists is beautifully inter-connected and united. My heart is on fire, blazing like a glorious morning sun. It’s as if there’s a golden ball burning in my chest. It all takes me totally by surprise, yet I feel totally at home in this exquisite experience.
Years later, I learn that in Eastern religious traditions there’s a word for this: Satori. It means sudden awakening.
Who would ever have thought a knobbly-kneed kid like me would be out there on a bus experiencing such a thing? One cannot really speak of it. After all, what words can ever come close to capturing the consuming, rapturous experience of falling in love with everything that exists, yet with nothing at all?
And what words can convey the wonder of disappearing completely, yet being so totally present that you feel the very life of the universe pulsating in your own arms and legs?
This little account is the best I can do, a crude sketch of that momentary taste of a timeless, transcendent vastness right here in the midst of my teenage ordinariness. The taste lingers still. I suspect it always will.
What on earth did this all mean? I don’t honestly know or care, and I don’t plan to find out. Some people spend their lives delving into these things. That’s not for me. Some go to impressive lengths to achieve or induce ongoing experiences of transcendence. I’m not one of them.
For me, it’s enough to live in the glow of that eternal moment, enough that a heavenly light was shining that night on Bus 72.
