=pvmto136 ================================================================ 2nd and last part of NOTES to =pvkto136 With appended additional notes from =pveto136.txt Caveat: These are top-of-the-head, rough-draft notes. I have written but not read them, not even for typos, nor to insert phrases that were noted in mind but not on keyboard. There will be some good stuff here, mostly recollections of remarks made by PVK, those can be dug out with a Search for =PVK These notes are maybe 85% shtuyot packed in jive. "Garlic and saphires embedded in the mud" (T.S. Eliot) ================================================================ {ni-18} {And so, following the Jewish principles for reading text to extract clues toward what do do, we learn from this remark that a pupil should try to touch base with his/her teacher at least once every 3 months.} {ni-19} {In the early days, PVK would give a wazifa with initiation -- tho he once made clear, at an Abode Camp, that this was merely the starting wazifa, and that the student should be sure to have it updated in meetings with his/her guide. In later years, by the mid-70s, he was too busy to give a wazifa with initiation, and so that was left to the guide.] {ni-20}={outi1} {As to the name, Abu Hashim Adoni -- Abu is Arabic for father, about siring a son, an Arab becomes known as the father of his first-born son, so this guy is named as 'the Father of Hashim Adoni'. Now in Hebrew, 'Hashem Adonoi' would be -- 'the Ineffable is my LORD'. Both terms are circumlocutions for Deity, though with rather different focuses -- maybe reflecting an assimilation of two pre-monothesitic traditions, which are now almost lost to us. 'Hashem' , literally 'the NAME' , pronounced as 'HaShem' but less distractings written '' is the Tetragammaton , the Yud_(K)ay_Vav_(K)ay that the JW's so annoyingly if well_intentionedly muddle -- I mean, if Sarena Williams is one, who can get mad at them, she's a real innocent -- As I've said, this is the highest manifestation of Deity -- but the highest manifestation only in the Kantian sense -- that is, the highest manifestation which humankind can perceive -- and so the essence of the -- perspective on, or aspect of, or if you must, name of -- Deity (I continue this note after a break, but have the attunement germ of it, tho not the thought of it -- little enough good as that is to most -- at New Buffalo, if I tried to say something to someone, if I was om a bad headspace which would often happen after a bit of psychedelic, when one sees too much into onself -- even though I could still hold on honestly to the idea -- I do have a fairly strong mind or will or whatever it is -- I could not get the point across, for they picked up only on my attunement, not on my concepts -- ) What I want to say is that though Elo(k)im, which is what Shahabudin takes for Deity, may be the highest in the realm of noumena -- like, it is the Tao, or the Universe, or Whatever -- and the Tetraetcetra may be merely one side of the show -- the Chesed side of the sephirotic tree, excluding the Din -- and that's why Christianity is merely half the whole religion of Judaim -- and again, taht's why Aavraham had to send Hagar away, because, princess that she is, she is only half the show, and "she wanted to be Rosh Yeshiva in place of Sarah" -- Sarah, as the wife of Avraham, being the whole show -- in its aspect of action or outreach I suppose -- though then one can't identify Avraham merely with Chesed, even if one follows PVK in redefining Chesed not as grace or mercy, but as Magnanimity -- but to make that prable fit you have to move Avraham up a notch, to the notch above Chesed -- Gvalt, and you wonder why I avoid kabala in favor of HIK and PVK. I mean, in Jewish mysticism you have to shovel away so much anthropormphic parable and lego-block terminology to get to the metaphyics of it, with HIK and then PVK you get it direct. but I mean, screw noumena, you ain't never going there nohow, so forget it -- so as far as you're concerned, phenomenae is all you get, so make the most of it and forget it (this seems to echo one of the schools of Thomistic theology, which held Deity to be Unknowable -- expressed in the Tetrawhateveritis -- gammaton or grammaton or man-made gramaphone of transcendental realism or whatever it was Kant called his guff -- a sort of tragic sense of epistemology, the world inextricably "sicklied o'er with the pale caste of thought" as poor old Hamlet Junior says, Prince Flip-Flop -- I mean, who wouldn't root for Ophelia's bother even if he was a fratrat -- So how can the Tetraetcetra be the Highest, when it's only half the show -- because for you its the highest you can ever know -- And so says I, stop knocking anthropomorphic religion, because if you're an anthro- , all your conceptualized perceptions are necessrily anthropomorphic -- and all your pose of objectivity -- pretending to have gone beyond religion, speaking of 'the Universe' and looking down on all those little folks at Meor Modi'in speaking of '' as HaSHEM almost as if 'HE' were a neighbor -- and praying as if talking to a fellow-BBeing -- shucks man, that's merely scientisim, which is not even an alternative to anthropomorphism, unless of course you were born not a human being but a robotic computer --- in which cse you are entitled to scientism as your religion -- You see, this rabinic intrepretation of the Tetraetc. is Ishk_ALLAH . I is also Christianity, though of course the Christians haven't practiced Christianity for darned near 2 millenia -- except for the Quakers of course, and a few odds and ends here and there -- So everyone knows, despite all the guff about the Judeo-Christian heritage of the USA, Jusaism is closer to Islam than to Christianity, and always has been, and its only a matter of time before the USA Yahoo's (USA talk for Hooray Harry's) get that one through their thick heads -- I mean, the Know-Nothing Party lives -- and put us all down in Guantanumo Bay wwith the other Ragheads - - I mean, it always happens that way, so wwhy should this time be different -- as soon as the poopoo hits the fan, its the Jews who get it -- get blamed and get etcertera'd. {ni-22} { PVK always sat up on the 'throne' at Zenith. Once he apologized and said, this is only so you can see me. } {ni-23} {Once at Zenith someone I scarcely knew said to me, Now I know who you are, you're the dervish. I mu,b”ed back, Only part-time. Aostra said PVK once said of me, Oh, that's the Jewish dervish. I did try at Zenith to make a point of doing kiddish every Friday evening, and announcing it was happening for any who wanted to join. I did that rather as an obligation, in case there was anyone of Jewish descent who needed to participate in a kiddish and oculdn't do it themselves. I mean, once on the banks of the Henley, when I was "living rough" as they say, and doing my best to maintain a kosher diet, particularly during Pesach, from dustbins -- they did have public privies along the banks of the canals, so it was not as if I was uncivilized -- I looked across the river, and there was someone lighting Shabat candles, and I gazed at them with longing. I still miss the old days, when I was 12, and would choose and put on a fresh necktie each morning before going to school. R. Shlomo did not wear a necktie. Ben-Zion said, he once said, They put the gartel in the wrong place. } {ni-24} {Well, one would like to see that tape. I mean, so far I have only a few remarks by Findlay, then at Boston University, J.N. Findlay I think that was, hinting at the esoteric basis of Plato's dialgoues. And some remarks by PVK on the Elusian mysteries. And a booklet of teachings from Rudolph Steiner.]] [N.B.: It is KIT 31 (not KIT 33 as I note earlier in this doc) that is "The Guru Syndrome" and that is inserted by the SO Suresenes as a preface to a booklet of KITs 61--72. That was PVKs first move to state emphatically that his role was not that of a guru.] {ni-25} {And PVK once remarked, Zenith I think, sometimes people come to me for initiation when what they really want is just a blessing.} {ni-26} { When I was standing before PVK, about to take initiation, I remarked, I am Jewish. He replied, It is not our intention to interfere with -- I think he said, anyone's religious practice. but maybe he said, the practice of any religion. Well, I've gone through a few breakdowns around that theme, usually when I was trying to get all the logistics togehter to leave Israel for a Sufi Camp. I've also of course invoked that principle, though without ever having to verbalize it, to insist on not working on Shabat at Zenith. Though I do wish that similar consideration was shown to Christians with regard to attending Church on Sunday and on special days. I'd like to say, the SO is eclectic, it expresses the common denominator of all religions, and so accommodates the practice of all religions. And as I've said, in =chana* , I once astounded, davening mincha just after an Abode Camp had ended, at how the form of the Jewish siddur interwove with the kavanah, so to speak, of the SO attunements. But too, its sometimes not that simple. So I would caution anyone committed to something close to orthodox Jewish practice -- for I cannot call myself orthodox, even though my teeth are no longer quite up to eating Sbinz cheese -- the 1.5 lower ones, that is -- though I was getting by quite nicely on about 4, except for lettuce -- and I do try to add a dash of salt before walking down the street eating raw hamburger with my fingers -- for about a decade I didn't eat meat abroad, but I think the Indians would say that one does need a bit from time to time in a below-freezing winter -- with regard to initiation. I would not say -- not that one can of course, I meam religion and spirituality are personal matters, so I could never -- "well, hardly ever"; I too was once young and arrogant, rather than old and arrogant -- have asked a finacee to convert -- don't take initiation, only -- there may be bumps in the road ahead, and spots where you may skid off it -- I suppose that occurs mostly when one is in one's lower consciousness -- well, duh now -- but also, one's friends and neighbors may tend to keep on the a communual rather than a higher consciousness -- I always felt that R. Shlomo was a real Sufi -- that he wore Judaism like a great beautiful tallit -- But then there's that story that I heard at the Abode -- where I also heard, shortly after I first came there, of a guy who got initiated "and now he's in jail accused of murder" -- and this is the downside of "humani sum et in mihi nihil humanorum etrangerum est" -- I am human and I find nothing human alien to myself -- it's stupid, like most of Roman culture -- but when one lets one's consciousness open, one may , if one hasn't got a good defensive system in place -- organized religion will do nicely -- become vulnerable to impressions of a most unsavoury sort -- So anyhow, they said -- Shlomo came to the Abode, and saw a Jewish young woman, and said What are you doing here. And now she's married and living in -- they named some haredi neighborhood in Brooklyn, maybe Crown Heights -- and has six children. No, I think I heard that at Haverat Shalom, maybe from Aliza Artz. "Wary as a man in ambush", as Leary says, in Psychedelic Prayers, of one who follows the Tao. Stay loose, Moose. } {ni-27} {And as I may of remarked -- PVK once said, sometimes people just drop out of the SO without telling me, and that is -- not good, I think he said.} {ni-28} {So ok -- I think one should not take it for granted that traditional religious practice poses no conflicts with the SO path. Like, even if that's the case with conventional religous practice, verging on the pro-forma -- and I reckon maybe at that level there's a conflict of attunements, and of focus -- it would seem likely that conflicts would emerge when you get to the depth of your religion -- as they do at Meor Modi'in -- and I don't even mean formal study of the mysticism of one's religion -- kabala, in Judaism -- even before that one easily reaches depths that match but may be opposed to , things at the level of the SO. So anyhow, this was maybe '96, Shahabudin asks me, should I come lecture in Israel, and I says, So long as you don't come in and out like a Rock Star -- like, spend a week or a month there first, just picking up the attunement of the place -- Like whenever I returned to New Buffalo, like from Santa Barbara grad school, I would try to wait a month or so to reattune to New Mexico before walking into the holy tipi. I'm not kidding -- that clear cold air, and the high altitude, and pinon smoke in the air in winter, and cottonwodd blowing in the air in summer -- and the cicadas -- you got to remember all that before you get back up on a high horse -- So I says to Shababudin, they -- the old ewes and bullshitting bulls -- might fear that you are trying to take the little lambs away from the practice of Judaism -- and he says, I am -- and then he adds something like, but only the inauthentic aspects, not the real essence -- Well, mazaltov, but to what does that apply -- as it is said, "be as careful with a light mitzva as with a heavy one, for you know not the reward reserved for each" (Pirke HaAvot) -- I mean, is the requirement to wash one's hands after using the privy trivial -- or to wash one's hands before eating bread -- I mean, that is most refereshing in the midst of a hot Israel summer, although in March at 3000 meters one then re-enters the dining hall to break bread by unlocking the door with the icicles on one's fingertips. Does make it easier to pick a piece of herring though. But I digress.} {ni-28} {For instance, I would say that the 3rd of the purification breaths, the fire breath, is a kundalini practice, tho PVK makes a point of transmuting the fire of the lower chakras into the several successive light of the higher chakras. Which is the kavana of havdala of course -- "who makes the lights from fire"} {ni-29} {Elaine used to say, often when she she was naked if memory has not turned pander, 'An elephant is faithful -- one hundred percent.' Well, I do think loyalty is important --to one's ex-lovers of course, for if in lost higher moments you pledged eternal troth, how can you withdraw it though you wish the wench in a mud-puddle -- And to one's teachers, even tho they may seem now safely behind the veil -- And to the comrades from the chevre of one's past teachers, As to Elaine, no doubt she has married a frumie who will read this and divorce her and hold onto her social security checks, but she should never have put my workshoe hiking shoes out on the front stoop, subtle gesture though it was -- this was in the days of solid leather shoes, before they made light-weight multi-coloured semi-permeable at best yuppie shoes out of dragonflies wings } {ni-30} My mother once told me, my father once dropped a screw on the floor of his lab, and spent hours looking for it. She always said, he was a perfectionist. Once at the annual grad students party, they gave him a lily, and a can of gold paint, so that he could "guild the lilly". In retrospect, I can see that he had great strength. I do recall a photo of him playing badminton with us -- very strong shoulders, though that hernia, in periodic need of repair, had left him with a rather chastened personality I suppose. As a young faculty member / researcher at MIT he had lifted something awkwardly, he once told me -- in his office was an exposed 220 volt knife swtich -- no longer needed for anything, but neveer removed -- he once touched it, or some other exposed electrical source, and the jolt knocked him to the floor -- Well, he must have had great strength, the youngest in a family of 5 born to impoverished East European Jewish immigrants, to rise directly into a life-long faculty position at MIT -- and from it to produce work that must have held a solid positionin the progress of science -- In personal relations with us he was always quite gentle, though he did firmly wish that I would go into science -- Well, I must have picked up some of his strength in my own way -- even to that ridiculous stunt of sitting on the beach of Rodos for 3 years -- and I always have been drawn to strong women -- } {ni-31} {PVK at Zenith would always stress the relaitvity of one's personal point of view -- opinion -- doxa is Plato's term, tho PVK did not use that -- PVK would remark is astonishment, thinking of politics, people even kill each other for their point of view. Of course Plato's doxa is the Hindu notion of maya -- and PVK would often stress that the world is illusion, not in the sense that it is absolutely illusion, "unreal city -- uncreal" (T.S. Eliot), but rather, that there is something illusory about whatever opinions we see it through -- rather a Kantian notion, that, but so-to-speak relativistic Kantian transcendental idealism (or was it transcendental realism and empirical idealism, I never can remember how he put together those 4 terms), rather than the absolutist transcendental idealism of whatchamacallit of Kant But anyhow, Alev once said to me of her husband, even when we disagree and fight we still have in mind the basis on which we stand, the bond that links us -- I paraphrase a bit, but heck, Alev learned English in Ireland, it that's what they speak there. Even if she did learn Yeats too. } {ni-32} {Well, a few points: As to the breaks, or rather the dissolve et coagule in the process of a love relationship -- where the delights of intimacy must then yield to the need of the other freedom and re-individuation -- a point which few relationships then surpass -- I have found Shakespeare's line useful, or comforting -- "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments -- love is not love that alters when it alteration finds" -- not that in general I much like Shakespeare's Sonnets, and that one ends with a rather distasteful off-colour couplet, a double-entendre -- I mean really, faggots should not be allowed to write about love, and that goes for Auden too. When PVK and Taj Inayat were separating, PVK put a note on the Abode bulletin board, as I recall, saying that their relationship had "matured into a -- [something or other, maybe beautiful, and no doubt noble] -- friendship" Arif Rechtaffen had been named by PVK as Regent of the Abode. I think it was at that time that Arif organized a conference on cancer in Washington D.C., with PVK as one of the featured speakers. Well, maybe it was just ahead of its time, I rather that it lost money, and as a consequence Arif had to sell off Omega Press, which was a setback to the SO. I think it was more than a decade before Omega Press was re-established, and I don't know if has yet quite regained its thrust as an SO publishing house rather than merely a bookseller. Subseuqently Arif resigned from the SO, maybe in shame at that debacle, I have no idea, and took back his name of Stephan. He went on to establsih Omega Institute, a sort of umbrulla organization for wholistic healing. Well, PVK would often speak there, and in short one must say that even if the mureed relationship had been set aside, the collegial relationship and friendship endured.} {ni-33} {PVK is continually implicitly making this point, especially I think in later years -- that we live in a conceptual universe of our opinions, that is to say, of coherent but closed sets of concepts that impose a delimited rationality upon our perception. So that any personal growth, any expansion of our world of conceptualized perception (to be a bit Kantian about it, and Kant really it a Hume-ian, with a resolution of the set of dilemmas that Hume's 'empiricist epistemology' as I call it leads to, as cul-de-sacs at every border of his -- 'Weltanschauung' as Wittgenstein, also concerned like Kant but without Kant's metaphyical architectonic, to resolve the Humian dilemmas -- so anyhow, the first intimations of such a breakthrough, like a chick pecking at the eggshell, appear to one as irrational -- since they are, by definition, outside one's closed universe of conceptualized perception. Higher, or one might say subtler, perceptions are coming into play, and these require new conceptualizations. PVK often tried to borrown new paradigms from leading-edge science, mostly physics. And often too constructed his own conceptualizations out of long strings of everday concepts -- I try to bring that out in the long, jiive-sounding titles I gave to subsections of my verbatim of the -- 1998 I think it was - - verbatims. I don't know if I know have those, it may have been something I did in autumn 99 on Rodos, and I did send that material out , so lets hope someone still has it. So ok, here's another shorter iteration of PVK's point. Joe Sunhawk from Taos pueblo -- Gernonimo's grandson, as I recall -- once remarked at New Buffalo, You are a very stramge people, for you carry your past with you wherever you go. } {ni-34} PVK once remarked, sometimes people are afraid to come to my -- seminars, or whatever -- they fear that I can look into their minds. And then he almost added, of course I can, but --- Well ok, it's not news that as one goes along the spiritual path, one picks up psychic powers. And its not news that one is not supposed to use them. These are called siddhis in Hindu tradition, and noted as a side-trip -- a branchoff on the upper Mezzanie, I would say, when all the rest of Plato's 7-story Department Store lies before you, with a rechargeable credit card -- I mean gvalt, who needs Sacks 5th Avenuue and Mastercharge Platinum -- "I don't" ("Who wants to be a millionaire / I don't" - - from the film High Socity, with Bin Crossby, Satchmo Armstrong, and I think Frank Sinatra, late 1950s) -- Like Secretary of Defense Cordell Hull said, apologizing shortly after Pearl Harbour for having neglected to intercept cables from Tokyo, "Gentlemen don't open each other's mail" -- and World War I was a war of gentlement, except of course in the trenches -- And a midrash says, when the children of Israel camped in the wilderness, they lived in tents, but each tent was pitched so that it could not look into the tent of another family -- and that principle is adhered to a Modi'in, where it is simply not done to gossip about nor even know about what goes on inside anyone else's home -- And that's my line to Shatiya, when she said of some guy who I think was playing at trying to be a half-assed black magician -- he got as far as sitting on one of the dining room tables -- inept and pitiable, but they still should have kicked him out the day he walked in the door, even if we don't have a door -- so she says, "But he sees things" and so I says back to her, "Anyone can see things; the trick is not to." And HIK says, "Do not try to uncover the secret of another." I remember once I was about to break into tears in the meditation tent, -- "these are noble tears" (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar) -- and so I glanced up at PVK for guidance, and he was looking up into some higher plane. And I remember once I passed him as he was on his way to the washroom -- for the Muslim ablutions I would guess, for he was carrying a bowl of water, and if I recall some other stuff that I didn't take note of -- maybe a flower -- and so I glanced at him to say a wordless hello, and he was looking up into some higher plane -- and from all this what we learn is that we may be seen in our eternal being, but not in our personal being -- except of course with a lover or better, with a would-be lover, that's what chicks are for and that's why faggotry is not allowed -- "how do I know, the Bible tells me so" -- from "You've gotta have Faith, Hope and Charity ", a 1950s pop song -- which reminds me of a waterfront factory-looking building I almost passed on the way from the Haupbahnhof to the Sufi Center -- and they have the chutzpa to call us immoral -- like, throw me a banana -- though prostitution is not as immoral as writing ads for Marlboro cigarettes or running polls for the Committee to Re-elect George Bush -- I mean, properly regulared whorehouses would be a step up from what goes on in the USA and Israel too, sad to admit -- provided of course that there were very strict checks on health and other working conditions, and on ensuring that no woman was in any sense doing so involuntarily -} ------------------------------------------------------------------ EMD =NIB, 2nd part of notes to =pvkto136 ------------------------------------------------------------------ GET A:NIC ================================================================ NOTES TEMPORARILY APPENDED, TO BE DEEP_6'd TO =pvnto136 So OK, what we got us now so far is =nia + =nib , and this here next batch will be filed off as =nic ================================================================ {ni-35} {I dunno. I mean, I just got done saying the SO is supposed to be an in-the- world outfit, not a get-out-of-the-world-quick outfit. And I keep saying, show the real life of R. Shlomo, so we can learn from it how to transcend our own personal problems. And if you don't endorse that, then these remarks seem to be an apologia for censorship, for romanticizing the life of a great man. I got turned off to that watching how for an entire intellectual generation, that is for their lifetimes, Wittgenstein's Literary Executors (and hangers-on, like Alice Ambrose with her ruddy Yellow Book or whatever it was) "measured out ... in coffee spoons" (T.S. Eliot, Prufrock) his Nachlass -- and some of the best remarks being those not published until almost 50 years after his death -- in Culture and Value -- like "Streich Gelt von jeder Fehler" -- And even PVK tells us personal details of Brahms -- transcending his longing for Schumann's wife -- and even of Bach -- broken by an eye operation, but somehow sublimating that brokenness into a depictionof the Crucifixtion that can break your heart -- I mean the first chord of the St. Mathew Passion -- even though you know that to this day in Israel, victims of terror attacks go through worse than that -- I mean saying that Jesus took on the sufferings of mankind is like saying that George Bush Jr. is just plain folks. I mean, did Jesus ever have to work for a stupid boss -- or even have to have sex when he didn't really want to -- everyone in the world goes through that suffering, except me because I never got married and often was dumped -- I mean, how can women take Jesus as their savior, it's like praying to the Beattles -- given them a woman on her cross -- Like, lots of folks would line up to climb up on that Cross if you guaranteed them a 24/7 personal relationship with the Allmighty -- except for that one off-line moment just at the final crisis -- Eli Eli Lama -- as_it_is_said, "You must go and stand your trial / you have to stand it by yourself / oh, nobody else can stand it for you / you have to stand it by yourself." (Negro Spiritual, "Jesus walked this lonesome valley", 1800s I assume. Suffering ain't so hard as long as your imbued with a sense of freedom and heroism. It's suffering under an internalized mockery that's so hard. And this is why one who mocks the suffering of another is lower than a snake's underpants.)} [So ok, this 'grave' was not a Western hole-in-the-ground, but an Eastern tomb -- a small stone room -- ] } {ni-36} {Well, that clarifies somewhat PVK's take on the Akedah -- I never have liked the Akedah -- I say that in my poem, "A Revisionist Akedha" which is in =choiceox -- and I never have liked PVK's apologia for it -- or take on it, one might better say, because PVK don't do apolgiae, he ain't never for hire -- which is, Avraham did not need to sacrifice his son, but he did need to be willing to do so -- I mean, gvalt, ain't no-one heard of kids rights around here -- I mean, Bob Dylan's 'Highway 61' is an honest critical reaction to the Akedah -- 'G_d said to Abraham, kill me a son / Abe said Man, you must be putting me on / G_d saod No, Abe said What -- / G_d said, You can do what you want Abe but / next time you see ME you better run / Abe said where you want this killing done / Only I break with the last line, I think it was foolishness, not cowardice -- and that Sarah saw that but somehow could say nothing -- and also I'm not sure about the 2nd-to--last line, but it is great poetry -- I mean, maybe the test was that Abraham would say, this is bullshit, I'm not doing it -- even though the foundations of the Universe tremble and fall -- for the true G_d would never , could never, command a betrayal of the filial bond -- so maybe this is Wotan doing impersonations or something -- like to be a human is to take responsibility for serving the will of Heaven, and the will of Heaven is necessarily good -- and also this is Jesus line not letting Judas off the hook, or out of the noose -- for surely Judas last words must have been a complaint to Heaven, why did you put me into this situation, and a complaint to Jesus, why didn't you stop me, you're supposed to be 'Er Rachman Er Rachim' buddy -- Like, Jesus was still an arrogant kid, and he did make some mistakes, and pull some rather shoddy shortcuts, if we can believe the Bible -- I mean, that stunt of getting on a white donkey to ride through the Mt. of Olives was really just a bit too Grade-B - - maybe the Prophet said that the Messiachh would arrive on a white donkey, but the Prophet definitely did not say that Meshiach would first have read the prophecy and arranged logistics accordingly -- And anyhow, Prophets ain't prognosticators, they're political columnists during a newsprimt shortage -- nowadays they'd be on the Op-Ed page of the IHT -- I mean, some of the literalistic Christians think, if only we can show the Jews that their own Prophets said it, they'll have to agree that it really happened and was really true -- but the Christians don't even know how we regard the local rabbi, let alone some sruffy old prophets from the back pages of a Book we never did read more than the first hundred pages of -- I mean, if they were real Christians they would have compassion for the Passion of Judas -- everyone has to die, most of us somewhat unpleasantly, but to have to die in self-loathing -- and then to realize that one isn't even worthy of self-loathing, just of a the contempt due a bungler -- that is real torture -- But I digress } {ni-37} {Hold it right there, Charlie. Is this focussing on Elo(k)im rather than on Yud-(K)ay-Vav-(K)ay -- And the check for whether it's not the latter is -- can you say this of Jesus -- who is the epitome of 'Er Rachman, Er Rachim' the absolute of mercy and compassion, to the exclusion of Din -- and that is in Judaism 'ki l'Olam Chesed-o', and also, as I often say, that midrashic prayer of Moses, 'may YOUR Chesed always prevail over YOUR Din'. I mean, like that chick says in 'Behind the Scences at the Museum', which I read many times sitting under the portico of that restaurant at Rodos -- forget this guff about the Lamb judging all the poor souls queued up before the Gate of Heaven, and separating the sheep from the goats and sending the latter down to hell to be guests of honor at the daily barbecue -- that ain't Jesus, He's the Court-Appointed Counsel for the Defemse, or an uptown volunteer on that team -- Like Jesus said, Christianity is wasted on the goyim -- pearls before "little piggies" as John Lennon sort of said -- I mean, there ain't one real Christian in ten, and that's a Quaker or Dorothy Day or the Bruderhof -- or folks I meet now and again - - But I digress } {ni-38} { I must say that my own experience of receiving an initiation and a blessing from PVK was 'is that all'. It scarcely seemed to ripple the surface of a flat lake. Though after receiving initiation, I sat for an hour or so while things came through me, in a long procession. So from thiw I learn that anyone who receives initiation should immediately go off by himself, in a quiet place. And also I learn that, because initiations are given by PVK at the conclusion of camp, the staff should not be allowed to have a noisy party at the end of camp -- and certainly not in the garage, which is below the high-priced guest rooms. And when did the staff have a party that is not noisy. And that applies also to that sort of Zenith boogie on the meditation tend platform. Well, that can all be finessed if initiations are given during the week of the camp, optimally when everyone is on silence, rather than at the end of it. Or else you need to send the initates right down to the retreat area until the end of the end of the day, or better, the next morning. Once at the Abode the question came up of whether one should hold out for getting initiation direct from PVK -- which could mena waiting half a year or more in the good old days -- or whther one could take it from any authorized leader. The said, it doesn't really matter, but on the other hand, it does. } {ni-39} {As for my rank in the old S.O.W. -- Sufi Order in the West, that is -- I say I'm associated with the Appalachian Chapter, which is centered at the Abode -- the truth is I was attached to Saphira Linden's Boston Center for the Esoteric Frou-frou, but who wants to admit that -- I mean, there's likely not a one of them could split kindling in Jamaica Plain, much less shovel 40 tons of dried manure to put on the turnip field -- so anyhow, may rank is: Dropout from the Enquirer's Class There used to be this great long hierarchy, with Sheik's and Sharif's and BoogieMeister's and what not -- Assistant Poobah and the like -- but then one year , late 70s I think, PVK absolished all ranks. At one point someonr, I think it was PVK, said, advancement in rank just means you have sat thruogh someone reading the set of Gathas or Githas or Pythons or whatever, and moved up to having to sit through someone reading the next set -- and then by the early 80s all those were published in an Omega Press book -- So anyhow, a few months ago I'm sitting at Agnieska's table -- I mean she can make something as simple as a sauerkraut -- good for the liver, they say in Poland -- or a little grain dish, and it's so delicate one is almost tempted -- foolishly, of course -- to give up eating candybars with Gallo Ripple three meals a day -- and anyhow, someone says something about ranks, and I says, I thought those was abandonned decades ago, and the Preacher says, I guess the Germans need them -- Gedalya Persky said, when ranks were abolished, darn, I was just about to make -- SuperPooPoo, or whatever it was. So then Gedalya quits and comes a mashgiach and lives in an apartment in Albany insead of living at the Abode and trucking fresh-baked natural bread over Massachusetts -- and many the time I copped a ride in his bread-truck -- Oy, frumies. Dovid Din was a turkey. He may have had some good things to say, but he was a turkey. That name, for starters. And how can an ex- Green Beret dare stand up and pretend to be a "holy terror" -- as he once termed his son -- He was at the first Ruach Camp at the Abode Campground, and he mentioned the korbonot in passing and said he might speak of them later. I would like to read or hear whatever he said about that. But I digress. } {ni-40} {Incidentally, PVK initiated various VIP's -- R. Zalman, and also Steve Gaskin as I recall -- at the rank of Sheik, if I recall. It was after PVK had made the rule that there was to be no use of drugs in the SO -- unprescribed drugs, I mean, tho much worse stuff is sold in pharmacies -- that chick with bare feet who worked on the farm said, PVK took a look at so-and-so, and saw that psychedelics had "punched holes in the subtle body" -- that's someone else's phrase, Kule maybe, applied to another context -- and so PVK was shocked and ruled out drugs -- tho it seems that he didn't really have marijuna in mind, just psychedelics -- I doubt that PVK knew the distinction -- although as years went on, pot became so strong it was almost psychedelic -- in fact that had occured prior to PVK's ban -- So anyhow, this goody-goody dude comes up to me at an Abode Camp, and says, R. Zalman is still using pot, should I tell PVK -- and I says, don't make problems and maybe start a jihad -- so he goes and tattle-tales anyhow, and he comes back to me, and says, PVK gave him a response to take back to R. Zalman, and it was a very gentle response -- } {ni-41} {At Zenith, most would stand up when PVK entered the meditation tent. Of course that was not so cool, since one should have been deep in the meditation suggested by the prefatory music that PVK had selected -- tho in fact only the in-crowed would arrive in time to hear it, and the customers would keep walking in during it. So anyhow, PVK would say repeatedly, don't stand up, or , you needn't stand up, we're all -- colleagues, I suppos he said, or fellow-pilgrims -- here. And once he said, well, if you are standing up in respect to my grey hairs -- or maybe he sai ----------------------------------------------------------------- GET =NID ---------------------------------- ================================================================ NOTES TEMPORARILY APPENDED, TO BE DEEP_6'd TO =pvnto136 So OK, what we got us now so far is =nia + =nib +=nic, and this here next batch will be filed off as =nid ================================================================ {ni-41} {At Zenith, most would stand up when PVK entered the meditation tent. Of course that was not so cool, since one should have been deep in the meditation suggested by the prefatory music that PVK had selected -- tho in fact only the in-crowed would arrive in time to hear it, and the customers would keep walking in during it. So anyhow, PVK would say repeatedly, don't stand up, or , you needn't stand up, we're all -- colleagues, I suppos he said, or fellow-pilgrims -- here. And once he said, well, if you are standing up in respect to my grey hairs -- or maybe he said, my white hairs -- that's ok. The term 'Pir' merely means, elder. I must say, I find it uncomfortable to be asked to apply that term to someone a generation younger than myself. And to have dropped that term in reference to PVK , as one person briefly did, seems to me inappropriate. Surely to be given the name 'Inayat Khan' is honor enough, until one comes into one's own. And PVK tended to appoint people to positions for which they did not appear qualified, but which they grew into. Like Akbar and Aziza Scott were Blue Mountain hillbillies when they took over Regency of the Abode. Once I told Aziza I could not attend a business meeting on Shabat -- a membership meeting actually, but since I intended to try to hustle my way into the Abode raher than waiting for the will of Heaven to be revealed, it was for me a business meeting -- and she said, surely you can give up a little bit of your Shabat. Oy, goyische kopf. i mean, if the mitzvot weren't obligators, a mater of 'religious law' so to speak, and not merely a matter of 'religious preference' we'd sell them all out for a bowl of lentil soup.} {ni-42} {Kids, don't try this one at home. I mean, there I was sitting under a bush on the shore of the Kineret, in 40 degree heat, dreaming so longlingly of being in Zenith , and without the willpower to walk up a half-kilometer and take the boat over to Tiverya and take a bus to Haifa and get on the ferry to Greece. And so I dreamed that I had become a cherag. But what I mean is, at a distance you are just perceiving the higher being of the person. Whereas in person both his higher and lower beings must be ready enough to walk up and request initiation. And too, one can advance the higher being by denigrating the lower being, but that ain't the Sufi way, leave for those Christian idiots sitting on pillars in the middle of the desert. } {ni-43} {I think it was PVK who pointed out the Jesus, who they were trying to entrap by asking him if they shoiuld pay taxes, would have held up a coin with the image on Caesar on it, and said, "render unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar" etc. -- one really can't improve on the caedences of the King James translation -- meaning, as you are created b'tsalem, in the image of the Divine, give your soul unto the Divine. Of course a bit of fudging when the tax collector comes by ain'tno crime if your being ruled by an amoral imperalisti tyranny, and stupid too, like Caesar and the Bushie's. } {ni-44} …Cf. a song sung by Whitney Houston, in her movie: No matter what they take from me, they an't take back my dignity" -- well the Afro_American people is a great people -- œ {ni-45} {Cf. Popeye the Sailor Man: Borrowing a line from the Bible of course, which PVK takes as illustrated in Ezekiel's vision of the throne-chariot -- "I yam what I yam."} Or as PVK puts it, following and/or prallelling the rabinic commentators: what I will become.} {ni-46} {R. Shlomo would often speak of those who try to "knock you off" - - as in, knock you off your perch, or yourr high horse -- in his case, he surely did merit the place on which he stood, and many continually tried to knock him off it, and did not prevail, as they were proceeding from ignoble motives} ----------------------------------------------------------------- ADD NOTES FROM PASS 2 GET =ni17g ADDITIONAL NOTES FROM PASS 2: {ni-10a} {I recall, this is maybe late 80s or early 90s, at kabalat shabat, at the Kotel , a rosh yeshiva or some such of one of the square yeshivas -- Eish haTora maybe -- is leading the pupils down through kotel plaza to the kotel, in a single line. The teacher is taking very small steps. As if to say -- those randy kids, they'll learn to slow down. I mean gvalt, talk of breaking spirit. Goody two-shoes.} {ni-x1} {One of the first lines I recall hearing PVK say -- this was Abode Camp early mid-70s -- was "pull out one's beard and pluck out one's eyes" -- and he added something to the effect of, but I suppose one should not let them -- Well, in those days he would say rather shocking things that he would not say in later, at the general camps anyhow, for that's the only context in which I ever heard his teachings. And maybe that remark was directed to me personally, or made in reaction to me personally -- I think he would do that from time to time. Once, as I recall, just after I had thought, maybe I'm a white knight, he remark, this at an Abode Camp maybe late 70s, you're not a white knight, you're a grey knight -- in the process of becoming a white knight. Well, no doubt that was true, and may yet be, but might it not have been better to let me fantasize that I was a white knight -- and maybe tend to grow into that fantasy, as it tended to mature from fantasy to ideal -- Well, that remark of PVK's is related to HIK's prayer, Dowla if I recall, "Save me from the children of the earth ... who might break me as children break their toys" } {ni-23a} {ZR once said to me, more or less, why do you keep transcribing PVK's Zenith talks, he says the same thing every time. And so I mumbled back, or intended so to muble, that in each Zenith set of lectures by PVK there will be a fee new things -- refinement of conceptualization of a certain point, or a few new points, or some new cross-references -- and any of those in valuable, worth a month's work to bring out 2 minutes of new points by PVK. Bu then ZR said, and this is my piont here: though at each set of lectures, each camp, PVK has a different asttunement. Well, I must say I'm pretty much tone-deaf to attunements. If I were to say that PVK had a vibe, and I don't think I could say that of hardly anyone, I would have to say, it seemed to me the same vibe at every camp. } {ni-24b} {' a fantastic computer' -- well, Ptolomy ascribed fantastic orbitgs to the planets, until Copernicus showed that if one assumed a heliocentric rather than terracentric perspective, the orbits were quite simple ellipses. So if we take an organic rather than a mechanistic -- that is, computer-like -- perspective on the human condition, it all seems like a simple matter of affinities attracting -- like gentlemen will be inexplicably attracted to a lady in heat, without realizing that it is the pheronemes or whatever they are which they are subconsciously perceiving -- and a lady will be attracted to gentlemen of healthy virility, Aramani suits and expensive scents notwithstanding -- "he doesn't look like much of a lover / but 'don't judge a book by its cover'" -- and was it Richard Farnia who wroe "hard-lovin' loser" Well, this is the point that Shahabudin brought out in his Zurich March '05 lectures, though in a context of which I disapprove -- as explanation of the influences that accrue to a soul as it descends toward incarnation -- well, Mamas don't smoke nor booze it up nor converse with turkeys -- at the Abode they said PVK said, I think it was of pregnancy, and also of the firs -- months, I think it was -- of infancy -- mothers-to-be and/or new mothers should be very careful of who they let near them, for fear of adverse influences -- of course this was the old traditional pracice, especially in the mystic east, that a pregnant woman goes into seclusion, and remains secluded, especially from men, until some time after the child is born. ] lost phrase: and I have taken it from there.} {ni-33a} {Elsewhere, I think on one of the tapes that I've put on DVD as audio this winter '04--'05 in Campra, PVK says that a Sufi is not something one ever is, but a goal toward which one aspires -- those aren't his words, which I don't recall, but it is the sense of it. And I think that also another time I heard him say something like that. Cf. HIK, that the purpose of one's life is like the horizon -- as you approach it, it recedes, and higher and higher goals, or purposes, reveal themselves. And PVK says something similar about knowing what one is supposed to do in life -- one's life's purpose -- that they don'tt reveal it to you until you start approaching it -- on your own, I would say. Though also I would say, sometimes it seems to have been revealed immediately after you fail a test, and are shown what you lost. Or so it seemed to me on the beach on Rodos. But maybe that is heresy. Even the Me Generation should not tolerate heresy, even though it's not the done thing to burn them at the stake nowadays. } {ni-36a} {As I have often remarked: Puran Bair once said, A Sufi loves to be shattered, and I have continually since regretted that I did not reply, A Hobbit HATES it. In one of the last Zenith seminars I attended, 1998 I think, and that I've transcribed it, PVK finally got to the point of saying that it was a great art to know how much to let oneself break down, before rebuilding. But prior to that, the SO(W) attitude seemed to be, as PVK says here, that every advancement in maqam would be accompanied by a personal crisis. One must lose one's job, and/or lover, or whatnot. I've mentioned that horrible example which I bumped into when I first came to the Abode as a sort of visitor/volunteer -- they spoke of some guy who had gotten initiated and then almost immediately thereafter found himself in jail, if I recall, and on trial for murder. As if initiation had released subconscious forces that compelled himself to manouver himself into a position where he was accused for murder. And believe me, anyone who has dropped LSD is likely to have seen that as a risk -- we do have a self-destructive force, though one doesn't have to take Freud's Manichean view of it -- I mean, that's not to say that thanatos is as real or powerful as eros -- but it sure can seem so to some sometimes -- remember, Plato's prisoners ran back into the cave. Oy. So this is my main quarrel with the old SO(W) -- that is, the Sufi Order in the West, especially as I knew it, in passing, in the mid-late 70s and early 80s. ("Just kidding, folks," as Shalom Schwartz would say.) Ok, we're stuck in a rut in the mud, so back off a bit and try a somewhat different approach: As I'm sure I remark in my =sidur*.txt on my Website www.geocities.com/sa73122a , an introductory prayer to Shaharit asks "may we not be tested -- and not be brought to shame" -- yet the SO(W) seems continually to be pushing its intiates to seek to be tested -- although HIK merely says, not that you should seek to be tested -- I don't recall his saying that anywhere -- but merely that -- if you try to attain a level above your present maqam, you will be tested -- which is simple enough -- like I saw sitting on the beach on Rodos -- if you keep blowing up a balloon, it will be stressed and maybe break at its weakest point -- and PVK once said, one is always tested in that on which one leasts wants to be tested -- and as I've often noted, this is a point made by Orwell in 1984, tho in a context of repression not liberation. Oy. So I mean, do you seriously expect people to pay good money and give up their summer vacation to get into a situation where their whole life will fall apart -- for all that PVK would continually speak of "a breakdown that avers itself to be a breakthrough" -- because the Siddur at least strongly implies that the chances of passing the test are darned small. And too, PVK, in his narration for the Cosmic Celebration, produced by Saphira Linden in the Boston Armoury in about 1973, speaks of ascending into the higher spheres -- after death maybe, and confronting a threshold, and asking "do I dare" -- and then PVK answers that by saying, "how can fail to -- realize, or achieve, or some such -- my highest -- ideal, or goal" -- Saphira should still have that script. Well, and then there's poor old Lucifer, who seems to have over- reached a bit -- and then made things much worse for himself and everyone in his neighborhood by being a sore loser -- remember, lucifer means, light to fire -- the opposite of havdalah, incidentally, which is 'who makes the lights from fire'. Not to mention poor old Icarus "'Ad astra per astra' my ass", sighs Icarus / this astral o'er- reaching is devlish precarious" (My mother once wrote, when I was too young to read, "This be our motto, laced with gin, 'Ad astera' with asperin." The had a monogrammed martini shaker in those days. There was much class in the Age of Rationality, that is the USA 30s and 40s, imbued with the pzazz of the firework fizzleout of the 20s. I have always thought it most unfair that we never get to know our parents when they are our own age. That is one of the things I intend to have a word about with whoever organizes such matters, when the time comes. I mean, if they haven't heard of Consumers' Rights in Heaven, it's about time, so to speak, that they did. Oy. So ok, let us have no more crises, just smooth sailing into deeper and deeper waters. Crises went out with the hippies. Shanti. Chantilly. Shishkabob. ----------------------------------------------------------------- GET =iens , Additional Notes from Flying Edit =pveto136 ----------------------------- ================================================================ ADDITIONAL NOTES FROM FLYING EDIT TEMPORARILY APPENDED To be added to =pvoto136 if room, otherwise put as pvpto136 ============================================================== {nie-0} {Of course it is the responsiblity of the Editor to ensure that the pupils are not embarassed by the way the teacher expresses himself. For that you can hire a Profewssional Editor, and a Professional Reader too (as PVK once hinted, remarking - "'Toward the One' -- someone wrote a book by that name -- I haven't read it (Zenith ca. 1988). R. Shlomo Carlebach once said, they told me, 'Don't let Yael [MeSinai] over-edit my teachings. Well, she produced a very successful book, "Shlomo's Stories" (Aronson). R. Yankele Shames, who sits now in Bet Meir and is I reckon the best for translating Sufi terminology into Jewish terminology, spoke well of the book. Me, I think there's a sliding scale from significant to cute. But I digrss.} {nie-1} [assuming you're climbing barefoot and have prehensile toes of course, otherwise its your boot wedged in a crack --sa] {nie-2} {What I find wonderful is not a shared consciousness -- I'm not much of a sports fan -- but the sense of fellowship in a shared purpose, however vaguely envisioned. Being able to work with people when everyone can be assumed to be doing their best, so that there is no need go give orders. Which is why I find all the Mickey Mouse of Soupy Workcamp intolerable supefluousness. In '99 they said the workcamp was the most harmonious. But I prefer the coherence of polyphony. I liked to sleep as long as I want to, get up around daybreak, drink some coffee, take one lap around the outhouse, say an instant subvocal morning prayer, and walk up to the worksite and putter around or throw small boards downhill up until everyone else drives up a few hours later. "Instead of integrating with the Group." But now Nirtan sings Monteverdi -- such precision of articulation and integration -- so I work on trancriptions etc. instead, and try to stay out of trouble. "And we all sit around like dumb Indians." My grandmother, while she lived, would rather be thought a fool than say anything negative. So she was thought a bit of a fool, and others, given an opening, minded her affairs, and packed her off to a high-class Home, though she had once said of her Upper West Side rent-controlled apartment, so solidly built, though she used to say, The only way they will get me out of here is feet first. Cave Dave once said to me, pointedly, I don't go looking for trouble. That was back at New Buffalo. Justin Case once said, If you see someone pick up one end of a board, don't even look to see if someone else is coming, pick up the other end. Blond Larry McIntire used to say, The only rule is, there are no rules, and to live here costs all you've got. That's synergy. It works like magic as long as everyone shares an unspoken ideal, but is easily undermined by those who want a free ride, not to mention those who like Chinese vases for dropping on the floor (Amalek lives, but you shouldn't let him live by you, as_it_is_said, They who are kind to cruel will in the end have been cruel to the kind. That maybe helped put me out on the beach for 3 years. I reckon that's why the Bible says, if a witch stops by for supper, stone him. But I digress. My compliments to the coffee bean. Might be daybreak soon, pale blue and pale green. "And the darkest hour is just before the dawn" as the Mamas and the Papas sang. "Everywhere I go I hear it said / in the good and the bad books that I have read" (Beattles). In Andermatt the staionary store sells Devil Mints, in honor of the DevilsBridge no doubt -- which connected north Switzerland to south Switzerland, for better and/or worse, and could only be built with the help of the devil - - so the devil said, for pay he would get the first being who crossed the bridge, so they send a dog -- which shows the devil had never read the Bible, because that's the story of Japeth in reverse -- and the devil was so mad he was going to throw down a rock and destroy the bridge, but then an old woman came and made the sign of the cross at him, and he was defeated, so I commenened, never underestimate the power of an old woman -- but speaking of Devilmints, thew are excellent dropped in one's coffe cup. So you see, there is some useful information in my footnotes.} {nŒe-4} {These analogies do not work so well, because a weekend goofer does not know the mountain that the guide has lived on, and a child may not yet know his surroundings well enough to adventure on his own. Although children are competent long before their parents realize it. } {nie-5} { Someone, I think it was one of the subsequent Zenith cooks, one of the large ladies, came up to PVK at an Abode Camp, and he said, I'm sure we've spoken before, I never forget a soul.} {nie-6} {In Zenith camps PVK would repeatedly say that he would talk only of things that he had experienced personally. As an example of things he would not speak of -- though I think I was told that he had in the past -- was the question of whether burial or cremation -- which he termed 'incineration' -- was bbetter after death. (As I recall it was Charisma, Robin Giber aka 'Alita and , cows defend us true believers, ChristaAlita -- she got tired of the mame Charisma, so PVK gave her the name Christa -- merely a move from ma to ta, from down to up, it seems to me -- who said that PVK said that cremation would be felt as rather a shock by the Dearly Departed -- As a matter of fact I don't recall anyone writing of what what done with PVK's body. It doesn't seem to me any of my business; one should resist the temptation to enquire into the personal affairs of others. For that matter, I still don't know what religion PVK practiced, if any. I recall being told that HIK practiced Islam, but I don't recall ever having seen that in print. Now of course at the time PVK had not experienced cremation, assuming that, as Little Joe once said in response to a question abour reincarnation, from George Robinson I think for it was from him I heard this, "You only get one." But PVK would often speak of Buddha recollecting life on earth before mankind evolved to trash the place with fires and the like. Well, if Buddha could have true knowlege of things he had not experienced, why not PVK. I mean, an Enlightened being, or Illuminated Soul, or whatever is that. For instance -- and this is one of I reckon very many throwaway remarks by PVK that could save governments millions or billions of dollars -- ***PVK ONCE REMARKED THAT HE SUPPOSED THERE WOULD BE INTELLIGENT LIFE ELSEWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE -- if, despite the Bushie's, we coumt life on earth as intelligent -- BUT -- this is the important point -- HE WAS NOT SURE ABOUT THIS GALAXY.*** That's one reason I think it's important to input all of PVK's talks, and hopefully to get it all into text so it's searchable by topic. Ok, I think PVK had a cure for cancer, tho I'm not sure how much good it will do. He seemed to say that when one is passing to a higher maqam, this will manifest as a great surge of energy -- that is the sort of 'test' that he keeps speaking about in this lecture. No hopefully, one will past the test and move on up to the next, higher, maqam. But if one resists and represses that energy, then, PVK has said, that will manifest either on the physical level as cancer, or on the mental/emotional level as derangement. This is, incidentally, the Jewish prayer: may our afflictions be resolved by THY infinite Grace, and not by lasting disease. This is also the story of the 4 who entered the PaRDes -- one died, one went insane, t'Other "uprooted the young shoots" -- turned to unspeakable evil, that is -- for in such crises one always has the option of saving both body and mind, if one will but turn to evil -- this is selling one's soul to the devil, I reckon -- sounds to me that Acher sent the young Jewish yeshiva bochers to Rome as eunuchs -- I mean yuck, Rome could give the red-light districts of Germany a bad name -- But I digress. And of course this also takes us back to Willhelm Reich, in particular his Pscopathology of Facism, which of course, like most works to which I allude, I've never read. R. Zalman once wrote, Akiva surivied that psychedelic trip into PaRDeS because "his wife saw him off and welcomed him back with earthly love." Leary once said that the one ground for divorce was if your wife has sex under LSD with someone else.} {nie-7} [Maybe a mis-ordering, for the Sufi Order in the West is a subset of the Chisti Order, as I recall reading. ] {nie-8} {Well, PVK has sometimes remarked that what we now term "Sufi dance" started with Jallal-ad-Din Rumi standing in the center of the floor as the sun, while his students revolved and whirled about him as the planets.} {nie-9} [If I understand, PVK meams by the 'Sufi Order' -- the 'Sufi Order in the West' that is, a new sub-sub-order within the Chisti branch of the Sufi Order, and considered to start with Hazrat Inayat Khan as Murshid (and so properly the term 'Murshid' would be reserved to HIK) -- the estoreric schoo. {nie-10} {So anyhow, in Zenith '86 I undertook to list all the tapes in PVK's Caravan. I had hoped it would reveal a list of the what he regarded as the world's best music. And to some extent it did -- there were some rare Indian and Persian recordings there, some with the original publication information. But most of the tapes were music he found useful for teaching purposes, to illustrate one or another stage of meditation. Anyhow, I concluded that project and had it as a box-by-box listing, and he said -- one had very little opportunity to have more than a few words with him, of course -- please alphabetize it. Well, I was about to go back to Rodos to be there in time for the High Holidays, and it did occur to me that maybe I should change plans -- which is not something we of yekke descent do easily -- and stay on in Switzerland, which is what I would have preferred to do had not duty called, and do that alphebetization at leisure. But then I thought, this is silly, PVK obviously has not kept up with office procedures, to manually alphabetize, as I would have had to do with no computer, would be a very long procedure -- though I could do it, I had done that when I compiled an index to Wittgenstein's Zettel in 1969 at New Buffalo, putting and shuffling file cards on top of my trunk while I sat on the dirt floor -- that Index was then published in International Philosophical Quarterly. But I thought, this is silly, I can do it much better and much more easily in spreadsheat format. Which I did on Rodos, using MicroSoft Excel in an Internet Cafe. And it is amongst my files, saved by the Vanzett's, in /oldsteve and on =DVD2. But later I wondered, was this maybe PVK's way of trying to get me to say on for the autumn in Campra. For as things fell out, I had a breakdwon next summer and did not make it back to Zenith until 1988. But if that was his intent, why could he not have factored in the fact that I, like most people, would use my intelligence and make what I thought was the most rational decision under the circumstances. I mean, one can be too cute about this all. All I can think, is that he had sensed but not seen the future, and did not know all the details of office procedure, so he was giving a suggestion that was intuitively true but expressed in outdated specifics. But I will say, teachaers, don't be cute about it. If you can make a direct suggestion, don't instead make an indirect one. Well, there will be exceptions to this too, but. } ================================================================ù END NOTES TO =PVKTO136. ZOWIE FOR HOWIE. sa Campra 13 Mar '05, 3 Adar Bet "Be Happy, It's Adar" The new moon clear in the sky this evening. END ADDITIONAL NOTES {nie-*} FROM =PVETO136 sa, Campra, 15 March '05 , 4 Adar B -- Clear cold light on the mountains, first rosy light on peaks =================================================================