The Logic oF the Magic is That The                                                                             Real Magic is U

Written by Jonathan Lloyd

When I was 10-years-old I wanted to be a magician.

I had read Harry Houdini’s biography and seen the movie “Houdini” starring the late Tony Curtis. I knew everything about the life of that great magician and escape artist who had performed worldwide in the early 1900s.

In our town’s library I got some books on children’s magic tricks and, with my dad’s help, I ordered some by mail from a magic shop in New York City.

Boy, those tricks were great: the guillotine chop-off-the-forefinger trick, the deck of cards made of nothing but jacks, the wobbling pencil... just to name a few. Of course, I had a small black white-tipped magic wand.

Practicing the tricks diligently, I collared my parents — “Pick a card, any card” — and bored my two older brothers, who’d humor me for a few minutes before heading out on their summer adventures over the hot and humid Jersey Shore.

I called myself The Great Houvoserous. I took the “Hou” from Houdini, and I think that I thought that “voserous” sounded deep and important and serious, like a real magician’s name.

I carried my magic tricks and wand in an old small black suitcase that I had dug out of the attic — it probably had been my grandmother’s at one time — and on each side I painted in white three-inch-high-by-one-inch-wide letters: The Great Houvoserous.

For my magic shows, performed on the small cement front porch of our three-bedroom ranch house, I’d lasso any of the 6-, 7-, and 8-year-old kids I could find and then persuade them to watch my show in the hot, sticky summer afternoon. I’d charge them a nickel each.

With my tricks laid out on an aluminum TV-dinner table covered with a black cloth, my wand at my ready, I’d launch into my act.

“I will put my finger into this guillotine,” I’d tell my audience of little skeptics, “and chop it off. But if I say the magic word, Alakazan, my finger will not be chopped off! Watch!”

Throwing down the guillotine — “Alakazan!” — my finger stayed intact.

“Do it again!” they’d scream.

Hesitatingly, I would proceed to chop off my finger one more time, well aware of the magician’s adage: don’t do the same trick twice in the same show because someone might discover the secret.

“Alakazan!” I’d cry while throwing down the little guillotine blade.

“We see it!” they’d say, pointing to the little mechanism inside the guillotine that lifted the blade so you would not cut off your finger.

They weren’t impressed, either, by the wobbly pencil, and my card tricks needed polishing.

My young audience demanded their nickels back.

I coughed up the 30 cents feeling a little disappointed, disillusioned. My career as a magician wasn’t taking off like I had dreamed it would. I held a few more shows, but soon stopped.

Over the years I've kept my interest in magicians, especially those adept at card tricks done by sleight of hand. To this day, 50 years later, I’ll pick up a deck of cards and practice a few of those tricks.

The real magic, I was lucky to learn, is with us at all times, giving us life. It’s exciting and it’s fresh: every moment. Fresh now, and now, and now.

In his kindness, Prem Rawat pointed out this magic of life to me — giving me an incredible sense of wonder.

“Do you like to see magic?” he asks. “Because if you do, there is an incredible magician. And the magic show that this magician puts on — every day — is simply spectacular.”

“The magic is you. You. Out of dirt, dust, nothing, life has been breathed into you. A breath comes, life comes. You are alive. This is the magician’s magic. Very fascinating magic,” he says, “the magic of this breath coming in and out, in and out, in and out… every day that you are alive, every day that you breathe, every day that you exist.”

“I want you to know the magic,” he concludes. “Believing is okay. Knowing is best. This is why I am here, to tell you how important it is for you to live this life consciously, so you can be who you are. So then you can have the eyes to admire the magic of this magician.”

Illustration by Sara Shaffer.\

Source : www.wopg.org