=pvnto136 =============================================================================== "BUT FIRST FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT": An online input of a short PVK article in Emergence 8. I failed to note the date of the issue. Emergence was produced by Arifa Barbara Goodman in Boulder, Colorado, in the late 1970s and maybe early 80s. I reckon the PVK Emergence articles were written by PVK for Emergence. They seem precursor to the KITs. They are exoteric, not esoteric, but have some of the compact aggregation if information that one finds in the KITs. Almost like compressed info. They would need an editor, but only an editor very familiar with PVKs work, not a professional editor. See what he does with the single word 'surreptiously' -- this is the sort of apercu that would be evidence for deeming a novelist great. They contrast with PVKs lectures, which are very easy to listen to , and easily edit down into into an easily readable form. Article is: TRANSFORMATION THROUGH RELIGIOUS RITUAL Byline: Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan 2 pages Retyped (sa) from Emergence 8 Didn't note date, but from a PVK reference, it might have been a Chanuka issue. START PROOF-READ AGAINST TEXT; BUT ONLY A 1-PERSON PROOF-READ. By virtue of their very function, religious institutions are expected to institutionalize religious experience. The ritual is devised to foster a proces of transformation. First the pilgrimage, sometimes featuring a procession, triggers off the sense of leaving whatever is holding one back behind, venturing into unknown horizons with anticipation. Such is faith, trusting oneself to a cosmic operation. There is a sense of awe about crossing the threshold of the Temple, marking the transition from the profane to the sacred. That prospect underscores one's awareness of one's inadequacies, foibles, failings, guilt and resentment. In fact, one's whole personal validity finds itself suddenly thrown into the balance of one's judgement, releasing some trepidation. One's desire for the anticipated bliss of spiritual upliftment exercises an urge to overcome these obstacles in oneself, forcing one's hand, as it were, or rather one's heart, to prowess of high resolve. The quest for one's loftiest call embodied in the rendezvous with G_d now avers itself to be therapeutic. Suddenly situations in the past flash in one's mind where one failed to live up to one's ideal, or let someone down, or proved selfishly ruthless, unkind, even cruel, manipulating, devisive, dishonest. As the degree of pain caused to the other person emerges forcefully, inexorably, one's inability to forgive onself becomes devastating. Only some unknown intervention by the kind of supremacy we ascribe to G_d (in our conceptualizations beyond our understanding) could, we think, redeem us from obsessive guilt. Hence the tremendous impact of the religious experience upon our psyche. Now a cryptic bargain crops up unavowedly in one's unconscious. There is a condition of being forgiven: one must forgive those who have trespassed against one. The impelling need for forgiveness meets formidable resistance. The person's abuse of one's sancticty and his or her betrayal of one's trust has damaged one's psyche and is now eroding one's faith in the divine power for good. If forgiving is perfunctory without engaging one's whole being, including the unconscious, of what avail is it. Yet is would be sacrilegious to sully the holy of holies with one's ill feelings. How can one turn back. [EMERGENCE NUMBER 8, PAGE 6, COLUMN 2 ] Paradoxically it is one's dedication to one's highest call --- embodied in the symbol of the Temple -- that is one's last resort against failing to meet the challenge. Hopefully, it is the prospect of discovering one's higher self in one's encounter with the sublime that heals the humiliation one has suffered in one's self image. The discovery of the cosmic dimension of one's identity has converted one's personal rage -- which is one's defense against being the prey of the offenders -- into the outrage felt by humanity at the assault on the sanctity of the human status. However if indeed one's cosmic dimension has taken over from one's personal dimension, then one tends to discriminate between the action and the person. Mirroring the all-encompassingness that one ascribes to G_d, one discovers enough greatness in oneself to find room in one's soul, if not in one's heart, for those who offend one because "they know not what they do"; which does not mean that one condones their action, nor that one allows one's magnanimity to enable them to victimize one or others further. In face, one decides to prepare oneself by one's spiritual dedication to protect the victims of oppression, greed and violence, unmasking and disarming the offenders rather than wallowing in one's personal grudges. Taking part in the procession advancing from the Temple altar is enacting a psychological process, making a further step in one's thinking and feeling precisely with regard to this critical issue so as to be ready to rededicate oneself by the encounter with one's higher self projected in one's concept of G_d. Now for the great moment so long awaited. Stepping over the threshold of the Temple marks one's recognition of one's need to fulfill the call of one's highest nostalgia. There is a tacit acceptance of the priest's role in helping one to attune to a lofty pitch. Or rather, the priest embodies the transmission of countless beings known or unknown who have pioneered and gradually built up the particular attunement we are now basking in. The love and sacrifice and dedication of all those who have contributed [ END PAGE 6 ] to the beauty of the Temple and the music speaks of itself everyhere one turns one's gaze. Conversely, the inner process consists in discovering onself as the Temple that needs to be cleaned and consecrated and in which the beauty sought outside may be found. Moreover, one is oneself the priest having inherited from the transmission of countless inspirinhg and holy beings who explored and cleared the path for us. Yet there is something further that one is seeking for, another dimension than what can be seen by one's eyes or heard through one's ears in the Temple. And however beautiful or dedicated one is, one still harbours the hunch that there is yet another dimension one needs to contact. Lo and behold, the veil between the higher planes and the familiar physical plane suddenly evaporates like the mist clouding the blue sky, and one's creative imagination provides a picture of the splendour of the heavens which itself transcends all forms. This is the Gloria of the Mass or the moment in the Muslim prayer where, having given vent to one's bewonderment of the marvel transpiring the existential realm (Subhan ALLAH, Raab i Azam ) , one glorifies G_d beyond any physical expression (Subhan ALLAH, Raab i Ala ) -- glory to G_d the most Highest (that is transcendent). [ This is EL ELYON I think -- sa -- Genesis 14:20, the blessing of MalcheTzdek upon Avraham. -- sa ] In terms of the personal process regardless of the Temple, this is precisely what happens within that Temple that is our own person, by exulting in glorificaition (that is, projecting one's conception of perfection and beauty in other than oneself. ) Now one is ready for the crux of the religious experience. One wishes for transformation, one needs to progress to uphold one's self-esteem so badly eroded by the wear and tear one is subjected to in one's daily life. One's whole being cries out to honour one's inborn sense of perfection, of beauty, of self-respect, every pore of one's body so to speak, every iota of one's psyche. Surreptitiously, maybe unconsciously, one entertains an idealistic picture of oneself. Why has one not become the way one could be if one would be how one might be. The challenge of one's life provides one with all the justifications for any failure in meeting this basic concern. The sacred attunement of the Temple has brought one in touch with one's deeper self, one's desperate soul searchings. This is the moment to "hit the iron while it is hot." (( "Strike while the iron is hot", as I recall. (sa) )) ** STARTING LAST PARAGRAPH PAGE 7, COLUMN 1 *** Transformation means letting go of one state to cleave to another without looking back. The degree of the readiness to subject oneself to the cosmic process of dissolution gauges the extent of the transformation. This is where resignation plays its part in our personal transformation (paradoxically countering incentive, which is the ultimate key to creativity.) "Those who cleave to themselves will lose themselves, and those who give themselves over will find themselves," said Christ. The most utter gift is nothing less than what is dearest to one: onself, epitomised by the offering at the altar. That is what the Mass is about. The same applies to the sacrifice of the lamb in Judaism or the Hindu rituals; in fact all rituals. In Islam, the total prostration of one's body in prayer fosters the psychological attitude of resignation. Irrespective ot the form of prayer, one may look at the psychological implications of abandoning oneself unreservedly to the very process that life assumes in promoting transformation. This trust in the intentionality of the programming of the universe yields its result almost instantly; one is transformed beyond recognition. Of course, the immolation of something one has so identified with is a death of sorts, and therefore involves suffering, a lot of suffering. Therefore acquiescing to the role of suffering in one's personal transformation sparks the recollection of more and more events in which we felt betrayed, let down, misunderstood, humiliated, abused, crucified. Once more resentment knocks at the door of one's heart, but this time one accepts the trauma as a factor in the process of transformation; the offenders were the sacrificial priests and we the offering earmarked for transmutation. For those who need outer circumstances to affect [ but maybe 'effect -- sa]their attunement, it takes the sacred atmosphere and grandeur of the Temple to trigger off this degree of metamorphosis. For those who have found freedom from the "outside" there is the way of dervish, the recluse or the initiate. Whatever people are projecting in their concept of G_d -- that has led to building a Temple dedicated to what they imagine G_d to be -- lies latent as a potentiality slumbering in their being. The awareness that one may awaken the divinity lying in waiting in one's being has the power to transform one beyond recognition. This is the teaching of Pir o Murshid Inayat Ihan and he calls it 'The Message in our Time'. Now finally one is ready to make a reality of the wish that rose in one's good intentions when, during the Kyrie, one decided to combat unrighteousness. But now it is for real because one first needed to be transformed so as to match the task. This is the stage at which Isaiah said, "Send me". The pledge. The answer in the heavens is immediate: You are santified -- Sanctus, Sanctus. You are consecrated; you are a knight. Go forth in peace in the name of the One you had sought in the Temple. He/She is everyhere being sacrificed and redeemed. Your are His/Her representative. [ END TEXT PAGE 7; ALMOST CERTAINLY END OF ARTICLE ] [PROOF-READ AGAINST PRINTED TEXT ] ================================================================================= This is Part 1 of 2 parts of the notes to =pvkto136.txt , which is working filename =pvjto136 Part 2 of 2 is =pvoto136 Them's oh's, not zero's Caveat Hepcat: These are top-of-the-head notes, I have dashed them off and not re-read them, not even for typos. It's "garlic and saphires embedded in the mud" -- but if you wash it off good enough, a clove of garlic can really enhance a bit of extra-virgin olive oil. Got to do a lot of shoveling, though. I mean, amidst all the shtuyot, I do have some accurae and useful recollections or related remarks made by PVK, as best's I recollect them, but I reckon that's pretty accurate. I mean, memory loss with age is very -- differential. Also, I guess I do make a few good points in these notes, but very sketchily, in much need of rewrite. Oh well. ----------------------------------------------------------------- sa, Campra, 13 March '05 -- 3 Adar Bet -- "Be Happy, It's Adar" The sun is back to Campra, and slowly in the days the snow melts, to refreeze at night. A clear night, with the new moon still up. ================================================================ ----------------------------------------------------------------- (The grey wolf just walked past my window -- he survived those idiot hunters in their Davy Crocket hats with their inlaid wood bows and imitation Indian quivers of arrows with plastic feathers.) {ni-1} So anyhow, there I am bumming a bit of SeaLax, whatever that is -- probably a cross between a giant gefillte fish and the Pan Am Seaplane -- off Shahabudin in of course the Zurich Haptbahnhof, and he says, one come they got to India the day after one yogi had killed another for his cave, and PVK says, So much for the spiritual path. But of course that is just the limiting case of taking spirituality as an end in itself -- which is what most of the German yuppies who come to Zenith are doing -- rather than as a means to bringing the kingdom of heaven into earth ("let the heavens be reflected in the earth, that earth may turn into heaven" "thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" -- that is to say, bringing Meshiach. PVK used to say, "meditation is the greatest luxury this world affords" (that's on one of the Zenith tapes) -- but for the rich, spiritualityx is just one more luxury to aacqire.} (ni-2) As I've said before. I think it is not that PVK did not like nor that he did not respect children, but rather, that he wanted to shield tham from the sturm und drang -- Rinatya Nachman pointed out that out to me -- she advised me not to open up my consciousness at a retreat with Germans, because they bring som much sturm und drang into it, and give PVK rathe a rough time. And the first time t hat I heard PVK for the 2nd time, he said that wherever he goes, he usually brings a storm with him. So I thought ok, maybe I should look for another teacher -- I had come from New Buffalo above Taos, where I used to sit down and look up to Little Joe Gomez -- . But I didn't. And another time or two I heard PVK say that he had a long-running -- ant-agon-ism or "something like that" -- with Woden. R. Shlomo Carlebach would never send away childrne. Even if he was leading davening, if a child was crying, he would stop whatever he was doing (unless it was the section that cannot be interrupted) and ask what the problem was, until somoene told him, one of the mothers, It's OK, Shlomo. ] {ni-3} {R. Zalman Schachter's first major work, or so I would say, was titled 'The Next Step' and published in Lama Foundation's Sufi__Hasidic package, as I recall, ca. 1970, as I recall. It was quite demanding. A much simpler version later appeared under that same title in the first (the red) Whole Jewish Catalogue.} {ni-4} {I distinguish between transcendent and transcendental spirituality. My terminology is not quite the same as PVK's. Transcendent is renunciate, rising above this "vale of tears". Buddhism and Christianity (as ideals, not in practice, especially not for Christianity.) Transcendental is in-the-world. Judaism, the American Indian way, the Sufi_Order_in_the_West (S.O.W.). PVK would often say -- "apr.: [ '"apr." means 'this is an approximate quote, either because memory serves imperfectly, or because I put in a dash of paraphrase' -- I use it because I can't find the wavy_gravy__equal_sign on this keyboard ] you may suppose that -- oh, if only thus_and_such were not the cash -- having to care for a child, or a difficult husband, or who knows what -- I could truly make spiritual progress. But it may be that that ["test", to take a term from the siddur] is just what you most needed to make spiritual progress. I want to underline this point, because I think it is key to understanding what PVK is doing. We think of him as an old man sitting up on that meditation_throne (though in fact he was not even 60 when he started teaching -- I first heard him in 1970 at Lama -- and later married and taught his children sky-diving -- so it is very good that ZR has produced a DVD as a young man, though one must be concerned that only an edit of 1.5 hours is being released from 19-plus hours of tape. They like to make R. Shlomo into a loveable teddy-bear. But he was nobody's fool. He saw a lot, but said little. Shatiya -- Julia Klein, who was one of the original builders of Zenith, a very strong woman, I worry that she should be ok, wherever she is -- once said of some unpretty clown, "he sees things". I said back to her, "anyone can see things, the trick is not to." His ex-wife, who never accepted that divorce, fears that we will reveal things that discredit him. But I say, do not fear to show the weaknesses of a sage, for you will only then see his true greatness, and only then find its applicability to your own life, in seeing how he transcended those weaknesses. My mother says I once said to something -- "Stop it X. Stop it, said." I chose philosophy over psychology because a philosopher needs to say things only once. And as I've said: my mother said that Bosh Bendedict -- Ruth Boshowitz Benedict, zl'b -- once said, "It is a physician's duty to heal, and the patient's duty to get [or maybe it was 'to be'] healed. Q.E.D. Chatterje. The Talmud says, R. Meir had hundreds of fox stories, but only 3 survive. Shahabudin -- who shows much influence from Judaism, even if he did once want to grow up and be a lawyer in the USA -- tells parrot stories. He said, Zurich March 5 '05 -- A common man fell in love with a princess. So he went to a dervish and said, I will do anything to be with the princess. So the dervish cut off his head and put the body aside on a pile of picked bananna plants (plants, not peels) maybe says I, and the common man turned into a most uncommon parrot, and the dervish took it to the shuk, and the princess's maid found it and brought it to the princess, who loved it and put it in a beautiful cage and all that. And the common man who was turned into a parrot was very happy. But after a week he was not so happy, because after all, birdseed is birdseed, and a luxury only compared to the table d'hote at Georgio's New Campra Restorante. So the parrot begged the princess to release him, and since she was a real princess, and exemplified compassion among other womanly virtues ('womanly virtues' is me, I grew up in the good old days "when men were men and women were girls"), she did so. So the parrot flew back to the dervish and said, excuse me dervish, but about that conversion, I'd like to undo it -- which shows this was not a Jewish conversion, because conversion to Judaism is a one-way street, because like I say, a Jew who has just been baptized is deemed to be a Jew with wet hair -- and that is R. Shlomo's joke about the Pope who is born Jewish calling up Reb Moshe Feinstein and saying, Reb Moshe, do I really have to bentsh nagelwasser when I wake up -- this is to wash your hands upon arising, to cleanse them of evil spirits that accrue in the night -- and Reb Moshe says, why you call me in lower Manhattan so late in the night, bentsch nagelwasser. "But Reb Moshe, I'm the Pope." (said plaintively). "Nu, nu, bentsch nagelwasser." Meaning, once a Jew always a Jew, and even the -- semmingly -- most trivial mitzvot remain incumbent upon you, regardless of whatever other religious path you have gone down, however far. If Shahabudin would acknowlege his Jewish identity, he would maybe remember that it is our job to but off the head of Amalek -- that is Shmuel haNavi doing the job when King Saul, that manic- depressive, got himself incapacitated with compassionate depression -- that is l'havdil, at the end of shabat, and it is also the sekvi bracha first thing in the morning -- and the other side of that, with which I task the Soupy Sufi Camp Staff, is "he who is kind to the cruel will in the end be cruel to the kind" -- and that is also this politically fashionable sentimentalization of the PLO , that all my international liberal friends espouse -- I mean, you don't play games with heresy nor with heretics, you cut them off -- if "off with their heads" is too much trouble, especially if the chicks just mopped the floor, as the Germans always do -- I mean, I walked into the Refugio in October and fully intended to mop the floor in March, because before that it would turn into an ice-skating rink -- then push them off to the sidelines and see that they stay there. We bury suicides only on the edge of the cemetary. PVK once remarked, at an Abode Camp mid 70s, in answer to a question, well he supposed suicide would be ok if one postively had mothing left to do on earth -- Everyone knows that we allow suicide if it is the only way to escape from idolatry. And nobody knows that idolatry is. What it ain't is praying before a little statuette, of Jesus on the cross, or of some naked dancing chick with 8 arms -- I mean everyone knows that Aaron got to be High Priest even though he made that Golden Calf, because a few thousand years later the sages said, the Golden Calf was just a window through which hoi polloi could contemplate the One -- that is, if you insist upon anthropomorphic imagery -- which is no worse than any other imagery, eg metaphysical imagery, just lest chic it is -- the One Deity -- Monotheism is Us -- So I say unto you, to be "racked to this world" (King Lear) in some intensive-care dormitory -- I mean, these factory hospitals don't even let you die in privacy -- suffering continual and interminalble pain and the platitudes of the bedside manner servants -- gvalt, if that ain't idolatry, what is -- But I digress. My compliments to the Co-op Coffe, it should only some day get some taste besides bitter -- } We are talking about Zenith, and how for 15 years I have wanted to see a week of Jewish-Muslim dialogue -- eg, me and Sekvi playing catch with a softball, for he's a gentleman -- and Shahabudin says, I leave that to ZR, it's his thing -- I says to Shahabudin, I worry about some of the things you say, you seem to be skating too close to the thin ice at the edge of Walden Pond, how beautiful the ice is in the middle -- and how pure the taste of the water when one swims across Walden Pond in the summer and stops for a pause in the middle -- and he says, well as long as you worry about it I don't have to -- and I says back, that ain't so -- I mean, "get up and bar the door". Again -- Judaism is very much gvurah -- and this is R. Shlomo's take on the story of Hagar -- Hagar was not some Filapina GuestWorker, she was a princess (the Talmud says that, or maybe its Midrash, but either way its gone into our canon, though midrash goes in only with a grain of salt) -- so why did Sarah say, send her away, "for her son will not inherit with my son" -- and why , when Abraham, most reasonably and compassionately, ohjected, did '' say to Abraham, harken unto Sarah -- I mean gvalt, when he sent her away it was into the desert with only one jug of water -- and that she had to carry on he shoulder, this is the richest man in the world, a donkey caravamer who goes from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean, and he can't even give her a few donkeys with enough water and food to get back to Egypt -- "Tell your Mama -- tell your Pa -- I'm gonna send you back to Arkansas" -- that's Ray Charles, but Avraham could surely have bought her a Business Class back to Heliopolis or wherever -- I mean, if that ain't murder, what is -- So R. Shlomo says, it's because Hagar was all Chesed, and Judaism has to be gvurah sh'b' chesed, compassion -- or better, following PVK, magnanimity -- circumscribed by a recognition of limitations -- (I don't recall , but I'm sure it must be gvurah sh'b' CHESED, not chesed sh'b' GVURAH -- even tho that's where the goyim think, at best, that we're at -- but in Judaism, as in Christianity, Chesed, compassion, is predominate, as_it_is_said, (as I often note) "ki l'olam chesed_o" and as the Midrash says, Moses says, may YOUR compassion always prevail over YOUR Justice (Din, the actualization of Gvurah) Oy, that parrot is still sitting there, waiting to be put to bed. So the dervish says ok, and cuts off the parrot's head, and zap_zip the head and body on the pile of bananna plants come back together again, and the common_man gets up and blinks a few times and throws off and spits out some bananna peels, and says oy, I dreamed I was in heaven but it wasn't really my thing, just now anyhow, and he goes off and be's a common man, and of couse he never sees the princess again, because this is not really a fairy tale, and Shahabudin concludes, "and the dervish lived happily ever after." And Shahabudin says, whether its heaven or earth you want, that world or this world, you have to lose your head -- "turn off your mind relax and float downstream -- this is not dying " (Beattles, Revolver maybe). But I say -- goyishe kopf -- in Judaism we don't cut off anything, least of all the mind. And I say, Vipassna, man -- you don't say know to a squalling child -- you don't say no to the "monkey mind" , you just wait quietly for it to be done with all its tantrums, and quiet down -- but nor to you sympathetically abet it in its foolishness -- "And this is sufficient for those who know+, as R. Hayim Heikel of Amdur would conclude each teaching (in his one book, Chayim v'Hesed, which I think is in print, though only in Hebrew, in Israel. } ----------------- {ni-5} {Shahabudin said, I make mistakes. Well, that's my line. I was getting ready to hitch-hike out from Oberlin to see Ann Berens in Colorado. this is the time I am hitch-hiking through western Kansas, on old U.S. Route 40 I suppose, that being before the Interstate system, when highways still had some humanity and accessibility to human beings, wearing a grey flannel woolen suit in 90 degree sun, so that I would like unremarkable, and a state trooper stops me, and we get to talking, and he calls my parents, and then he asks, "what's with this beard bit" -- a very hip bit of jargon, for a state trooper -- if I recall, I already realized that not shaving one's beard was an aspect of Jewish identity -- the haredim, and the modern orthodox, who are really legalists not fundementalists, shave with a rotary rayor and claim that this is not cutting the beard -- ok, mazaltov -- and so I answered, "oh -- a school play" -- I mean, why not, Steve as Abraham Lincoln -- and Vicky Woskoff would say, "when you are in love, the whole world is Jewish" Colorado was the reason, she was the excuse, already it seemed we would be breaking up -- she would say, I go home with everything in bits and pieces, including me. She said, in the mountain club, if someone would ask, What happens if the leader slips -- for it is the leader who belays the climber below him, and so is responsible for the belaying of the entire group -- the answer was, "the leader doesn't slip." I went with the group on a climb up Mt. Harvard, about 13,000 feet. Above snow-line I could only walk about a dozen steps at a time withouth having to pause to catch my breath. After all, they were Coloradans, and I had been only at sea-level, except for a few walks in the White Mountains. Later, when I would go back to New Buffalo north of Taos, about 7000 feet, it would take my body only about a week or so to remember the acclimitization. So anyhow, they left me on the trail and went on, so that they could get up to the summit and back before the afternoon lightning storm. On the descent, we went down the snowfield doing a glissande, or as I term it, a rumpage. Great fun. "dancing on lillypads" -- a fine line that -- lost it on the way to the bank, and then it comes back to me 18 hours later, in the privy -- well, I did have to walk a hundred yards in pitch-black to it -- pre--daybreak, no moon, cloudy -- and R. Shlomo tells the story of a guy who finds a gold coin in the privy, and says, LORD, if you want to give it to me, ok, but please don't give it to me here -- well, RSC was speaking of the peace process -- peace is a fine thing, but at the cost of the land of Israel -- please don't give it to me here -- so anyhow, waterlilies, like on the Concord River where I would go canoeing, are the USA version of lotus -- So anyhow, Shahabudin is feeding the three of us a lesser Leviathan, ie, a plate of Sea-Lax -- and once I put on the coffee in the morining at New Buffalo, because I am the firt one in the kitchen, but I only fill the pot up half-way, I guess to make it boil quicker or maybe because I wasn't sure if I shouild do it or not so I did it but only half-way, and Justin Case comes in and pours some coffee and then sees that there is not enough for everyone -- I mean, we also used to stand at the end of the lunch- line and dare those in front not to leave enough for everyone -- at Zenith the Germans seem to have the attitude -- if I wait in line, then when I get there I can take all I want -- and so Justin says, with that scorn of his, Aw man, you were going to do a good deed today -- I forget his phrase, it meant mitzva but wasn't that -- So anyhow, Shahabudin says, what should I do for the last session of this retreat -- I call it a seminar, but it is closser than a retreat -- and the reason you shoiuld keep silent on a retreat, and not try to deal with the real world, even your friends and especially not lovers -- I learned that after peyote meetings at New Buffalo, when Susie would stay in the room, and I would come out so high in the morning, and maybe see all that I had done wrong with our relationship -- but how can you say this to someone who is just waking up in what to her is an ordinary morning -- -- because, as PVK would put it, what seemms clear and easy when you are in your higher consciousness may not be so simple or easy when you are back down in your ordinary consciousness -- So I says to Shahabudin, says I, give them something to walk out on, some of us have to go back to work in the morning. Dancing on lillypads is not so easy for some of us, says I, thinking of shiva -- a naked chick Shiva only with extra armms, llke that picture in the Frankfurt meditation office or whatever it was -- Like, PVK in the Abode Camp 70s used to always end his seminar/retreats with Divinie Attributes, which is the easy stuff -- having done the dissolve, one must now rebuild a structure for them to walk away with -- But in the late 90s Zenith he would more free-wheel, and sometimes even the last day, "just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water", he could sometimes hit with some sort of dissolve - - maybe zikr, maybe samadhi -- I mean gvallt, no doubt he saw it was necessary for some, but also some have to drive out on the Autobahn -- like, like I have said, the SO has alway rather slighted re-entry. I mean, like, from Airolo it is pretty steep going up the Gotthard, but the trail down, to Hospenthal, seems from the map to be more gradual. } {ni-6} {PVK once remarked -- all my recollections of PVK remarks will bef from Abode Camp seminar/retreats, tho maybe a few from when I heard PVK in Boston or Cambridge, or a few times in NYC -- all tis is when I attended his lectures, in the USA, from the mid-70s to 1984. Now some of my recollections may be from Zenith Camps, which I attended 1988, 1990, 1992--1996, 1998, 1999. I have transcribed all PVK lectures at the Zenith Camps I attended, except for 1999, which I have input as audio, thanks to the Vanzetti's, who saved that set of tapes for me during the 5 years I was off-line and out of order. (Well, 2004, when I convalesced at Moshav Meor Modi'in, for whose understated but very practical compassion I am most greatful -- so many nowadays overstate and underactivate their compassion -- was reasonably productive.) -- So anyhow, PVK once remarked, his is maybe early 80s, that sometimes people would drop out from the SO without telling him -- a courtesy, but I think more than that -- I mean, if you change your flight-plan in mid-air, you ought to notify your Air Controller -- otherwise you might follow the wrong directions and wind up in Hoboken New Jersey. So I says to Shahabudin, says I, it ain't enough just to try to say only what's true, you gotta take care that nothing you say might lead someone in the class astray. And this is, Pirke haAvot, "Sages be careful of your words, lest your students drink of them and go to a place of bad waters -- So he says back to me, I try to efface myself before the Great Ones -- best's I recollect that's what he says back to me -- so I says back to him, in a Woody Allen repartee -- that means, by the time I think it out clear enough to articulate, we're not in like spatio_temporal__co_location but anyhow here it is now Dear_Reader -- like, if the rain came down and the wiind dropped off, my brother might say, "A good day for sailing, but not a great day for sailing" -- so anyhow, says I, there's Great Ones and then there's only good_'uns , and like 'channelling' is by me suspect - - seems that's one of the things the Good Book says don't do -- talking out of your armpit, I think they called it -- I mean, unless your are really clean and pure, can you be sure its just good stuff coming through -- Zelazny deals with that in one of his short stories, this is about the guy who makes a private world with theree moons, Mopsus, Flopsus, and Cottontopsus -- a real man, Zelazny, Hemmingway should only be so true, but no great stylist, unlike that other dude I often speak of -- Jewish chap, like everyone is -- if memory serves, and you how bad the servant problem is becoming nowadays -- ah yes, Avram Davidson -- took the little gremlin overnight and a cup of filter-drip espresso measured out by the palmfull to bring that one back -- a few days before he died old Jim Beattie was having trouble with his memory and said, 'I'm not good for anything anymore -- ' -- my mother told me that -- In junior high school, writing of old Jim Beattie, who must have been younger then than I am now not that I expected nor even intended things to fall out this way, but what can do when you get there -- so anyhow writing of TV Westerns I said, 'An old man likes the shootout scences "to see them bounce" , and when he saw it he harmuphed and said, 'He's older than me -- with all his airs' -- And the same goes for psychic communication -- if you ain't entirely pure, some dirt or static or whatever may muddle up the transmission -- Amd the same applies to psychic perception -- I mean, you may see real clear that that I am inclined to rape murder and molest, and I don't doubt that such is my true nature -- and this is the Islamic story of the guy who is sent by the king to paint a portrait of Moses, and he comes back with a picture of this really mean grasping chraracter -- I mean practically a Jew, if you know what I mean -- (and that is Dick Gregory, I think it was -- "I didn't create the nigger -- you did -- and now I'm throwing him back on you" ('throwing him back on you' sa, Gregory was maybe 'giving him back to you' -- heck, Rewrite is my middle name -- Moe "Rewrite" Juste -- just plain Moe -- but do-si-do the rococco -- ) so anyhow, the king is about to chop off the painter's head -- the Islamic peoples often do that as a sort of rhetorical device -- but the painter sends for Moses, and Moses says, yes, that really is my true nature, but I have worked very hard to overcome it -- -- but like I have eaten some free meals ffrom Chabad -- as_it_is_said, there is no such thing as a free lunch -- and this is the Jewish tradition that you should pay for whatever you use on Shabat, for fear that otherwise your host may get a psychic hold on you -- as I supsect Chabad of trying to do -- now I ain't speaking of the folks at Meor Modi'in, where I have never had to buy my own Shabat food -- tho nowadays I always do set a Shabat table, heven having restored to me the strength to do so, al hum d'lilla , which means equivalently, baruch '' -- meaning, Heaven and/oor heavens be praised -- you see, this is my story of when I am down at Ein Gedi and I make kiddish over a bottle of wine, and drink a glass and go on to my meal, and there are a few hundred self-styled 'secular' types in the cheder ohel, each with more yiddishkeit than I could learn in a hundred years, and one of them says to me, you are very cruel, because you did not share the kiddish wine with the others -- and each of them can spend more money in a day than I can in a week -- and also I am thinking, I am not a Rebbe or a Catholic priest who can put a transferralbe blessing onto a little cup of what Gal-Or regards as sacramental cough-syrup -- I once offer him a cup on a weekday, and he says to me, this is real wine ain' it, and I says, you bet, I just added a few packs of sugar -- oh, and this just hot off the press -- I have decided that you can make kiddish -- or havdalah, if you were a day or so late making kiddish -- over Gluhwein, because everyone knows that the wine of the gentiles is not kosher because they might have consecrated it to their pagan deities (and like I says, therefore David Zeller does not sprinkle on his salad the vinegar from the Zenith Camp kitchen, since it might have been consecrated to an especially ill-tempered deity -- Hera just after Zeus comes home and takes off his bull-costume after kissing Europa good morning, or maybe this is the time a swan flies in the window of the master bedroom and a voice calls down I'll be down for cocktails in just a few minutes dear, sorry I'm late -- You know, I really don't want to work, much less face Honest George in exchange for a cup of cappucino on the cuff -- like, this is a 6 and a half-foot infant with a checking account the build and good humour of a bull who feeds on dry sour grass, and packed full of neuroses without the intelligence of a brain- damaged New York cabbie, so he can't even enjoy his neuroses, just puts them off onto others -- -- but so anyhow, to wrap this up and stufff all the loose ends inside the paper, everyone knows that the wine of the gentiles can be made kosher by boiling it, and Gluhwein is heated to the point just short of boiling, and I'm not orthododox so I can cheat a bit -- but like I say, I have learned from eating the Chabad challah that one may with the mind over-ride the emotions -- more than a bit Spinozistic that -- and this is also R. Zalman's story of the Chabad train-driver going down from Jerusalem to Kfar Chabad in the days of '48, and the Arabs attack the train with maybe firebombs and the brake handle is getting red hot, or nearly so, and he is holding onto it to keep the train on the track on that descent, and afterwards they ask him how could you do it, and he is a chabadnik and he says, our Rebbe always taught us that the mind can -- can reign supreme, canover-rule the body and emotions when it must -- So like I say, what you perceive of me with psychic intution is maybe true enough, but does not notice that I also have a mind, and maybe the strength of chracter to use that mind to summon the will to over-rule my corrupted nature -- oy, that sounds Christian, but every highway has some place to eat and pee, even though they maybe don't serve your particular cup of tea -- My guess is that we call by the black-box term 'psychic perception' is in fact merely an awareness of the subtler emanations of emotion -- by sympathetic resonance, i guess -- and so intellectuall capacities will not register on psychic perception -- and also, I always say, don't try to do psychic communication unless the telepone's broke -- because unless you're real pure and clean, you maybe won't be able to distinguish psychic perception of an external reality, from your intenal fantasies -- stories, as someone alled them. But I digres. Gvalt, barely 8 o'clock, sun just came out -- this is 8 March in Campra, with snow hard-packed on the ground, and Nico says the trails will last until the end of the month -- and already I've knocked off 4 kilos of notes and a few ounces of transcription --} {ni-7} {And I once heard PVK say -- a teacher should never criticize another teacher. This was at one of the Zenith lectures, Maybe 2nd half of the 90s. Jewish orthodox tradition is very much against speaking ill of another -- back-biting, the Christians call it, if I catch the meaning of that prhase -- the Chofetz Chaim brought this out strongly, and nowadays it is a very strong stricture among many or most orthodox -- at Modi'in so much so that is often quite roundabout at best to find out the truth of a matter -- Jake got fired, and I wrote to the Vaad, this was maybe a personality conflict, and Avraham-Aryeh writes back, "there are no personality conflicts at Meor Modi'in. I tell that to Alifa and she sort of snorts in genteel mid-western derision. They raise pigs out in the mid-West, which doubtless influences the prevalent cultural mores, like.] {ni-8} {I read, or used to read, that yellow is a 'power colour'. Sometimes I see some dude, almost always an American, wearing a yellow shirt. I don't like it, I have to look away. So I guess that's its power. Because I sure can imagine feeling more powerful if I wore a yellow shirt, especially if I sat alone in my room. As for wearing it in public -- well -- "John Hardy was a desperate little man / he carried a razor every day [a razor in the 1800's was a straight razor, with which you could more easily slit a man's throat than trim your beard ] / he killed a man in CharlesTown / You ought seen John Hardy run away, poor boy / You oughta seen John Hardy run away. So the capacity to intimidate others does not necessarily give on an inner sense of power. Though I must say that having 5 or 6 nice blue SwissFranc bills in my pocket does enhance my inward sense of self-esteem. I don't even have to tell the time by pulling my gold watch out in the sunlight -- "enough gold to make an earring for a small mosquito"} {ni-9} {Samuel Gessler has suggested that something similar tends or tended to apply to Swiss villages, at least in Graubunden which were founded by persons sharing the same religion. Catholic Romantsch speakers in the valleys, and the later-arriving German Protestants in the only land that was left, up on the mountainside. } {PVK often used to say, you get the teacher that you deserve.} {Kurt Vonnegut, l'havdil, speaks of a 'karass' , which is analogous to PVK's term 'spirituasl family'}. {ni-10} {In football -- I mean real USA football, in which feet are rarely used except as motor-scooters -- eleven gentlemen proceed in one direction, against the objections of another eleven gentlemen, any one of whom is encouraged to tackle the apparent protagonist of the former, who is identifiable as the only person at the moment carrying, albeit sometimes somewhat surreptiously, the so-called 'foot-ball', an object so lacking in intrinsic merit that it was originally made from a pig's pisspot, for reasons now entirely obscurred. } {ni-11} {I want now to raise the question -- to what extent was PVK a guru. Or rather -- to what extent was he perceived as a guru, and how does that affect the response of his students to his teach. I could ask the same question of the role of R. Shlomo Carlebach. R. Shlomo did not reject the title of Rebbe, which has much in common with the role of guru -- the Chabadniks would go wherever the Lubavitcher Rebbe sent them, and would turn to him for answers to what they should do -- which we do not do in the SO. But there has been too much idolization and romanticization of R. Shlomo since his death -- and hence simplification of what he was trying to teach. One sees that, not amongst his best and closest students, like Ben-Zion Solomon, Leah Golumb, Emunah Witt, but in the postings to the LIST at reb-shlomo@shamash.org Of course, starting with KIT 33 (if I recall the number correctly) PVK was very emphatic that he was not a guru. And the SO, especially ZR, gave prominence to circulating that KIT. But note that in this lecture he does not use the term guru prejoratively, but uses it to include his own role. That is not to say that in this lecture he considered himself a guru, but merely that he found it convenient to include himself in the term -- as his own role as a -- guide, one mighht say -- had much in common with the role of a guru. I recall a Zenith lecture, late 90s, maybe 1999, where he said something like, I wish you could learn to do this stuff yourselves, "and then I could die in peace". That line brough a small laugh, as it was supposed to. PVK was not inclined to, and did not indulge in, self-pity. But it may well be that he was tired of schlepping his body here and there -- a being who as a young man climbed mountains, and whose soul was unquestionably still in the mountains. Because of couse it is PVK who brought us to the Alps, and for that matter to the low rolling Berkshire hills of the Abode. At least until the last years, there was something of the trappings of a guru in the style of presentation. One did not lie down in the meditation tent, except during certain music breaks, and one never put ones feet out toward the teacher, as that is simply not done in India, where it is deemed an insult. This was explicit in the 70s Abode Camps. PVK had a standard story about the dervish who put his feet out toward the king -- "since I stopped putting my hands out". I have two stories about him reproving people for lying down with their feet toward him. Haillie came into the meditation tent and did so. PVK said, Sit up Haillie, this is not Tibet. Klaus came into the meditation tent for the first time, and did so. PVK directed his attention toward him for a moment and said, Sit up. Klaus sat up, promptly. And then he went on to marry Tajali Rotter. A lot of people now seem under the illusion that PVK is dead. Well, Jesus died before his time, but the Christians seem to have made the best of a bad deal. PVK would say of the Crucifixtion -- a tragedy -- or maybe he even used the term catastrophe, or one might almost say, debacle -- "that averred itself to be the greatest victory the world has ever known". I see too much tendency now to set PVK, and worse, his teachings, aside, in some sort of almost romanticized sentimentalized package, and to "move on", as the fashionable phrase is nowadays. At Zenith they always began with PVK's lectures. After sitting in them, I could not sit and listen to other teachers, not even for early morning meditations -- "but I like to sleep late in the morning / don't like to wear no shoes / make love to the women while I'm livin' / get drunk on a bottle of booze" -- well, to sleep until breakfast time anyhow -- how I hated that early- morning bell, and pitched my tent as far from it as possible -- the Talmud says, "he who steals sleep is like unto a thief" -- the best sleep resolves itself in the final, REM, I think, phase, with a peaceful resolution of all one's loose ends of thought and worries and errors -- that should not be cut off by the banging of a metal hammer on a sawed-off metal compressed-gas cannister. I told them time and againn, use a whole cannister, it will give you mellow overtones, and still penetrate. And use a rubber mallet, not a metal hammer, for the same. Oy, Germans. But I digress. Shahabudin said, I don't try to give ZR advice, Zenith is his project. Well, "go with the flow" Daddy-o -- but that is an abdication of responsibility. Shababudin mistakes Elo(k)im , which is the totality -- what PVK would term, 'the Universe' -- with Yud-(K)ay-Vav-(K)ay , which is the supreme manifestation of Deity -- as far as humankind is concerned. For in the latter, Chesed is predominant -- as is echoed in the invocation of Islam, where "er Rachman, er Rachchim" is primary -- the error of self-styled fundamentalist Islam, the terrorists' teddy-bear, is to give prominence to "Akbar" rather than to "Er Rachman, Er Rachchim". } I mean, gvalt, how can atheists or agnostics or whatever they are talk of Deity. As the Christians would say, unless you have a personal relationship with Deity, forget it. Talk about butterflies or something, because if you try to do theology you'll get it all wrong.} {ni-12} {The discussion turned to proper attitudes for sitting up all night in the tipi. Justin Case said, well, why not lend someone your mind for the evening. That was at New Buffalo, of course.} {ni-13} {Well, when I came to UC Santa Barbara in '68, dropping out of New Buffalo to go on with grad school in philosophy, Guru Maharaj-ji was the big thing -- he was the one who would give all intiates a mantra, the Beattles were drawn to him for a little while. But PVK seems to speak favorably of him. And he seemed pretty harmless, not much more than stress-reduction. Then there was that guy up on the Northwest Coast whose disciples kept giving him Mercedes-Benz's or some such -- as for PVK, the present his followers gave him for his 80th birthday was that he should no longer have to support the SO from his lecture fees -- I always say, if you go into the SO, you ain't likely to become rich -- most folks haven't yet anyhow, starting with the leaders -- and there was that guy whose followerss all wore yellow and were into kundalini and maybe the occasional orgy and most of them worked as psychologiets -- they wore the little mala with his picture around their neck -- and briefly there was this 14-year-old kid, or maybe even he was 8 years old -- after one flipout I came back home to Belmont, having left the Indians again, this wold be '74 I think, maybe because Susie had just left Peter-Peter the Pot Dealer, and I should have tried to recover her -- so anyhow first thing I find out when I get back to Belmont is that this kid is giving initiations down at MIT, so I drive down in my mother's car, and am parking it across from the main entrance, but I never did learn to parallel park -- I passed my 11th-grade Driver's Ed test because the instructor pitied me I reckon -- never did learn to parallel park, maybe because one of my eyes, the left one if I recall -- like I say, senility is what you make of it -- is weak, in fact so weak that I reckon I have almost no depth perception, which is no doubt why I never was much good at baseball -- can't catch fly balls, and usually strike out -- so anyhow, there I am parallel parking to go in and get initiated and I bang a fender or something, and am shook up and drive guilty back home to my mother instead of going in and getting initiated, and she says, oh, it's no big deal, and anyhow, here I am now The End } {ni-14} {At the close of Zenith 1999 PVK remarked that he had decided to initiate ZIK as a Pir, and then made a remark which I do not now recall, and said, "you'll have to put with him." Maya remarked to me in '05 that she reckons he will become a great teacher, tho not for a while. Someone said to me, Alev I suppose, that PVK once said to ZIK, don't try to be like me, be yourself. I haven't looked closely, but it's my impression that he is taking a very conservative, hold-the-fort stance. Tho it is my impression that he's presently using PVK's terminology as if it were dogma, without seeing through it, and so he's getting it rather wrong. But I haven't had the patience even to read through any of his articles, much less study them. Ph.D envy, no doubt. } {ni-15} {It just now occurred to me that the oyster is of course the source of the Jewish expression, Oy. You read it here first.} {ni-16} {But when PVK would marry people, he used to say, will you take your spouse -- or maybe he said your wife -- as your chiefest trust. My father was quite dedicated to his work as an experimental physical chemist, and systematically build up a solid body of work on molecular interactions at very close distances. He started with Hydrogen--Hydrogen -- that is, he shot hydrogen atoms at hdrogen atoms, and used the measure of deflection as a measure of the repulsive force between them -- and then he systematically worked up the atomic table thruogh the inert gases. He was early elected to the American Academy of Science, and much later to the National Academy of Science, tho it's my impression that at that time, in the 1950s, it was somewhat anti-Semitic. As I've noted, Peter Steiner once remarked that he received, six if I recall, nominations for the Nobel Prize. He once said to me that he had realized as young man that the most important thing was to marry and have a family. Leonard Cohen writes, in an early song: "Now Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the waters, and he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower, and before he knew for certain only drowning men could hear him, and he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone. Well, I would rather not sink out of sight like a stone, I'm trying to leave some record somewhere of where I've been. In World War I the soldiers, so many of them foredoomed by the stupidity of their generals and politicians, wold write on walls, 'Kilroy was here.'} {ni-17} {And PVK once said, this is at Zenith: If you can no longer live for yourself -- live for others. And I have found sometimes trying to live for others restores a measure of joy to one's life. It may be a bit of a wet sheepskin to lay on the other's shoulders, but what the heck, she's young yet. I mean, we are commanded to show respect for our elders, so let her put up with me. You know, much of what I say is buffered by layers of irony, so often you hae to read between the lines as well as reading the lines. And even read between the lines which you read between the lines. Roehrs has a nice sense of irony, far better than mine, but he's no intellectual -- grew up lower-class I suppose, he was running a restaurant when any normal person would be in grad school -- so his sense of irony makes him merely a great administrator -- I mean, he has kept Zenith running for 15 years, when in general his predecessors could barely manage a few years in any location before they got kicked out. Of course it didn't maybe help that PVK would bring his eagle to camp, and set it to hunting. I suppose some folks find the possibility of a return to the Middle Ages a bit threatening, at least if one has in mind the period of Moslem conquest. That's because they don't look at exhibits of Turkish and even Persian miniatures, with all those delicately coloured noble falconers.} ================================================================ù END =NIA NOTES TO =PVKTO136 CONTINUE AS =NIB = =pvmto136 =================================================================