Beltashazam's Doxologies

Beltashazam's Doxologies

Federated Nations Historical Recollection ProjectDocument 2885-3-01

Preface

The poet Beltashazam lived a long but obscure life. After a short period of being published by others, he published himself, on his own web site until the Cataclysm, and after that by inking his revelations onto rocks. (The primitivism of his later life distilled a tendency found in his earlier works.)

In the old dating system, Beltashazam apparently was born in 1941 and died in 2067. From our viewpoint, that's 94BNE to 32NE. Now, a hundred years after his death, we are in a better position to assess his output - and indeed, to read it, since so much has been lost to us for so long.

Mention must be made of a curious tendency of the poet's. He liked to formulate phrases, names, and other words and word-groups according to a numerological scheme in which the letters added up to the number nine. This practice seems to have developed out of the peculiar fact that in his birth name, Daniel Cooper Clark, all three words add up to nine.

Even before he had discovered that coincidence, he had unwittingly adopted two other aliases with the same numerological characteristic. When a teenager, he thought up the nine-totaling nickname Agent 502 for use when phoning in song requests to a local radio station. (502 was the Doxology's hymn number in his church hymnal.) In his twenties, upon intiation by a guru from India, he was given the name Damodara Das. Another niner. Clearly, the name Beltashazam follows the same scheme. The name is also interesting for other reasons. The Sanskrit Damodara means "rope around the belly," which is a Belt. SHAZAM is an acronym found in Captain Marvel, a 1940s comic book series. It stands for Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury. By pronouncing that "doxology," or mantra, the boy Billy Batson was transformed into the superhero, acquiring the traits of each of the great personalities - wisdom, strength, stamina, power, courage, and speed. Finally, to tie it all together, the prophet Daniel

was given the name Beltashazzar by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.

The poet's religious life obviously centered around the deities Radha and Krishna. But with his heterodox approach, Beltashazam could not have been welcomed into the folds of any orthodox society engaged in their worship. As he wrote elsewhere, his spiritual life was a Private Religion. He preferred individualism to institutionalism when it came to the deepest affairs of the heart.

A doxology is a short poem, song, mantra, word-formula, or statement of a religious nature. Beltashazam's Doxologies collects all the poet's writings that he had not previously brought together under other titles. It is an ongoing project, and will be added to frequently as we gather together more of the lost works.

The Editors, Quintember the 7th, 132

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A "blog" is a reversed diary. My words are a rearranged blog - a glob.

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Thinking is talking.Talking to who?Talking to You.Who are You?You are The Great You,The Other One.All the rest of usare us, andYou are the only You.The one and only You.You are The You.

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My You

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O You You You

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Oh YouTo You

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To YouTo YouTo YouMy You

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To YouMy YouOh YouMy You

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To You To You To You

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To You Oh You My You

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To You Oh You My You My You

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To You Oh YouTo You Oh YouTo You Oh YouMy You - My You -

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To You Oh YouTo You Oh YouMy You My YouMy You My You

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To You Oh You My YouTo You Oh You My YouTo You Oh You To You Oh YouTo You Oh You My You

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Oh You Oh You Oh YouTo You To You To You

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You are You andYou are You andYou are You and

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You are mine.I am yours.You love me.I love You.

YEHY

you are everythinghello to you

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Sending My Thoughts To YouTo Concentrate On YouOn You On You My YouTo You Oh You My YouTo You Oh You My YouTo You Oh You My YouTo You Oh You My YouTo You Oh You My You

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Ah, Your Constant Presence

TG

Talking to God

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I am always with you.You're always with me.But those pronouns will never do.We are always we.We are always with us,through eternity.Plural, never singular,we are always we !

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sprinkle sprinkle little raintickling my face againyou come down from high abovekissing me with drops of lovesprinkle sprinkle little raintickling my face again

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I'm getting the greatest thrill - oh gee -from reading the latest trilogy !Swordplay and wizards, can't you see -no good if it isn't fantasy !

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o Sheand Mein Lovewith He

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I think to youI talk to youKrishna GovindaI think to youI talk to youKrishna Govinda

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O Krishnayou are mysecret loveO - O - OO - O - OO - O - O

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Krishna KrishnaDear Love KrishnaKrishna KrishnaDear Love KrishnaKrishna KrishnaDear Love KrishnaKrishna I LoveYou

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Krishna you are here with me.

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I send my thoughtsI send my thoughtsto you to youdear love Krishnadear love Krishnadear love KrishnaI send my thoughtsto you

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Divine revelation starts as a personal conversation. When in time it turns into an object of meditation, an idol, it should be reverently set aside while we wait in eager anticipation for the next living revelation. Shrila Prabhupad was always

changing, and was always changing the practices of his disciples. When he passed away in 1977, the disciples froze the practices as of that year. Their society became an idol, dependent on reminiscence. No longer alive, it exists as a museum piece, a re-enactment, an ornately framed snapshot of things as they were.

Liberty

The old Mayflower, a sturdy bark,gave birth to the likes of me.From the Rogers clan, to Richmond, to Clark,the ants trailed down the tree.To what purpose, to what avail,this well-papered history?That we might learn, and never fail,the lessons of liberty.When Cromwell was too young to fight,and Anglicans prevailed,our Puritans then took to flight,rather than be jailed.But Pilgrim law, writ on the ship,had rootless feet of clay.Oppression too had made the trip,and hides here to this day.Self-government, our noble cause,is found in all our books,on every leaf, in every clause.But deeper than it looks,the truth is caverned in my self.No pen can circumscribewho chooses peace, or chooses pelf.Our history's inside.Buy liberty with vigilance,said statesman Edmund Burke.Yes, question your own innocence:who knows where tyrants lurk?

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Me and God,we're always together.I am his dog,he's holding my tether.

I never straytoo far from his side.But I did one day,and I nearly died.I wandered alonein a terrible place,so I ran back hometo lick his sweet face.Nothing made me happy faster.So I take him as my master.

The Wisdom of the Wise Guy

Smart Alec went to a Zen monastery to get enlightenment. The Master gave Alec a koan to meditate on. It was: Does a dog have the Buddha nature? Alec sat still by himself in a hut and contemplated the words.

After a month went by, the Master had Alec brought before him. Does a dog have the Buddha nature? asked the Master."No, only in the movies," said Smart Alec.He was sent back to meditate.After another month, the Master asked Alec the same question.Does a dog have the Buddha nature?"If you say so."Back to the hut. This went on for many months.Does a dog have the Buddha nature?"I don't know. Ask the dog."Does a dog have the Buddha nature?"Which dog? Which Buddha?"Does a dog have the Buddha nature?"Does a Buddha have the dog nature?"Does a dog have the Buddha nature?"Naturally!"Does a dog have the Buddha nature?"Maybe it did - in its last life."Does a dog have the Buddha nature?"Do you?"Does a dog have the Buddha nature?"Would you like an after-dinner mint?"Does a dog have the Buddha nature?"Does a bog have the doo-dah nature?"Does a dog have the Buddha nature?

"No! But its fleas do!"Does a dog have the Buddha nature?"How much is it worth to you?"Does a dog have the Buddha nature?"If I tell you, will you get a real job?"Does a dog have the Buddha nature?"Why not? My uncle Max thought he was a chicken!"Does a dog have the Buddha nature?"Do you really believe that stuff?"Does a dog have the Buddha nature?"Is this another shaggy dog story?"Does a dog have the Buddha nature?"Lassie, no. Snoopy, yes."After the eighteenth month, the Master asked again,Does a dog -"I have a question for you," said Alec."What is it?""How many Zen monks does it take to change a light bulb?""I don't know. How many?""None. Because there is no light bulb. And there is no enlightenment!""Ah! Now I can die!" exclaimed the Master. "I have found my successor!"

Who Is It I'm Talking To?

To speak aloud before a crowd,to whisper to my wife,employs the workings of my mouth.I've done it all my life.But life has longer moments whenI'm talking with my mind.Nobody hears or sees a word,as if they're deaf and blind.Who is itI'm talking to?Krishna,it's You.Who is itI'm talking to?Krishna,it is You.My world of thought is deep and dark.It stretches far and near.My inner space is outer space,

a conscious atmosphere.My thoughts walk out into that place,or so it does appear.But will they find a friendly face?Who's there to lend an ear?Who is itI'm talking to?Krishna,it's You.Who is itI'm talking to?Krishna,it is You.The blurry forms attending tomy silent monologdon't quite emerge into the lightfrom the waters of the bog.They shift and swim on their own whimwithin my mental fog,an audience that's always thereand never is dislodged.Who is itI'm talking to?Krishna,it's You.Who is itI'm talking to?Krishna,it is You.Acquaintances from school or worksometimes almost take shape.My family, neighbors and friends,hear and can't escape -thousands of them, but only one,wearing many masks.Only You are listening.You're the one who asks,"Can you offer all your thoughtsto Me devotedly?"And I answer, "Yes, Krishna,I am your devotee."Who is itI'm talking to?Krishna,it's You.Who is it

I'm talking to?Krishna,it is You.

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There is no Saturday.There is no latter day.The days are all the same.There is no Monday.There's only one dayin which to play the game.

Kolkata Politics

Joe chattered hoarsely, "I've had enough, Mimi San'Angelo. I'll teach you whiskey and fear." Nigel noticed. "He sat down, cousin, like a peak of caviar." "You're too kind, Nigel," I said. "Oh, I'm a piece of banana." "No, you're a Chekhov." "Well, I'm going to tell me about Count Wooglyan in Cambodia, and cargo for Pushkin." Mimi turned around. "Amputate America, Joe," she said. "Merry problems, they go, they can giddyup!" It's a job, positively.

Without looking at the picture or the subtitles, I listened to the dialog of an Indian movie about politics in Kolkata. It was in Hindi or Bengali, or both. Some words sounded like English words. I wrote them down in sequence, as an exercise to loosen up my style. After adding a few words to join things together, the result was the above.

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What is the basis of spirituality? Is it faith - in something you can't see yet? Or is it an urge - toward something you feel now? I say it's an urge. Faith comes from what other people tell you. The urge comes from your own experience. Faith takes you to church. The urge takes you to God.

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Oh I feel solonely when Igo away fromYou -Krishna KrishnaKrishna KrishnaKrishna KrishnaYou Krishna

Pahimam Pada Pahimam

Krishna Pada Krishna Pada Krishna Pada ParamamKrishna Pada Krishna Pada Krishna Pada SharanamKrishna Pada Krishna Pada Krishna Pada RakshamamKrishna Pada Krishna Pada Krishna Pada PahimamPahimam Pada PahimamPahimam Pada Pahimam

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Krishna Govinda Shri DayanidhiKrishna Keshava Mukunda Hari

Haiku for Japa

Prabhupad's fingers -touching the beads - Krishna's feet -running through the woods -

All Souls' Eve

October screams.Its days have bled.Now Halloweenbrings out the dead. "Drizzle drizzle,fire will fizzle,flooded flint willmake no spark!"

"Tickle tickle,scythe and sickle,surgeons squintingin the dark!" "Meager meager,groveling griever,getting grayerby the hour!" "Meanest meanest,Hallo-weenest,harpy wailerturning sour!" The drifting deadsuck in our souls,our severed headsdisplayed on poles.

Reality Talks

Reality talks. Subjects don't categorize objects. Subjects converse with subjects. All entities actively relate with all entities. Persons comprise an everything of living persons interacting with living persons.

CorrectPAR

Correct PerceptionCorrect AnalysisCorrect Response

Mirrors

If all our minds weremirrors pointed outwardwe could show each otherhow beautiful we are.

Good Evening

Was yesterday today? Today might be, tomorrow...C'mon out and play! We have no time for sorrow.Little things are big! And big is always changing.

That will keep us busy - adjusting, and arranging.Eat your supper slowly and save some in your pocket.Escherichia coli don't run the race, they walk it.Just around the bend we come to Extra Innings.What we thought were endings, turn out to be beginnings.

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TAKE IN THE WORLDGIVE OUT THE LOVE

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numerologically 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9 = 9

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Dear Krishna, I see your signature in everything here in Materiality. You have written the script. It's all your movie. We think we're doing things, but it's all your doing. All these objects, these images, these sounds, they're all your creations. Just as an author's personality can be perceived in the author's stories, so you have stamped your personality on all your creations. Even the ugly and horrifying things are made by you, in your style, so to speak. We can recognize a painter's work by the style of the painting. "Oh, that's a Matisse, look at those playful lines." We may not know it, but everything here is painted in your unique Krishna style. You're the choreographer of all our activities. We're dancing to your tune. "I recognize that song - that's a Krishna song!" Everything here points to you. That's the way Prabhupad saw it.

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the rattling ofthe palm fronds in the bitingearly winter winds

The Necessity of Evil

The newborn baby knows only the mother's body and doesn't perceive itself as a separate entity. Similarly, the innocent soul in its potential state has no self-awareness and perceives only God. Later on, the youth rebels against the parents. Likewise, the soul falls down and rebels against God. It's the wrong choice, but at least it is a choice. Finally, the mature adult chooses to love the parents. The mature soul, liberated into spirituality, chooses to love God. The purpose of doing the wrong thing, of entering into materialism, is to develop self-realization. Then one's love of God strengthens and can never be broken, because it's a freely determined choice. Evil, doing the wrong thing, is a stage in the growth of the soul. Evil is necessary. We will never banish evil from the world. Evil is the world's purpose, the means by which we achieve supreme goodness. Of course it is also true that we must fight against evil. Not to eliminate it, but to arrive at a stalemate. Fence it in. Regulate it. "Give the Devil his due."

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Everything is always necessarily real.

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Maybe my ideas have run their course. I feel myself returning to simple physical activities from the past 20 years: Big Wave Breathing, Standard Circular Walking, Singdango, The Ritual of the Bodies of Wabasso Beach, Picturing. I am a Picturist.

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you glory to you

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Paramatma in my heartmy Paramatma in my heart

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Everything's alive, everything can talk. There's a soul inside, even in a rock.

KSF

Krishna's Sweet Feet

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Traditional Vaishnava doctrine recognizes two kinds of gurus, Initiators and Instructors. It's assumed that aspirants have one Initiator. Without being initiated, people have no hope of attaining the goal. The act of surrendering to an Initiator opens the door to God. Then, that same guru usually becomes in effect the first Instructor. As students progress, they may be helped along by many other Instructors.

My Initiator (diksha) guru is Shrila Prabhupad. He signed his letters A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami. His complete formal title is Om Vishnupad Paramhansa Parivrajakacharya 108 Shri Shrimad Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. The shorter formal name is customarily given as His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.

Before and after being initiated as his disciple in April of 1967, I've received much assistance in spiritual affairs from many other people. I think of them as Instructor (siksha) gurus. Some of them have been traditional Vaishnavas. Most have not. In fact, Prabhupad would probably call most of them "nonsense rascals." But I do not.

Yes, I do have differences of opinion with my Initiator guru. I love him. He is my connection with Krishna. The student is supposed to strictly follow the instructions of the spiritual master. But I don't agree with many of Prabhupad's statements and policies. Isn't it possible to love someone while not liking everything about them? I think so.

In fact, it's easy to love Prabhupad. His generosity, his brilliance, his kindness, his courage, his irresistable charm, were immediately evident to all of us who spent time with

him. And of course the magnificence of the philosophy and religion he taught us endeared us to him forever.

However, I have been able to truly make peace with myself about him only by making a distinct separation between those aspects of Prabhupad on the one hand, and on the other hand his statements and policies about cultural matters. He is the master of my spiritual and philosophical life. In that respect, he is my Initiator guru. That's what's important anyway. The rest has no bearing on the fate of the soul. The rest is just the result of the material circumstances into which Prabhupad was born.

What is the rest? Prabhupad's views on politics, history, science, race, gender, education, a variety of other social issues, and his attitude toward other groups, religions, spiritual processes, and teachers. I must say I sense the presence of bigotry, misogyny, elitism, monarchism, fundamentalism, sectarianism, and maybe even fascism. I don't feel any responsibility to adopt those views as my own. They have nothing to do with my relationship with God.

Nevertheless, Prabhupad himself as a pure devotee of God has everything to do with my relationship with God. It is his deep and undeviating devotion to Krishna that inspires me. I may not always agree with what he did, but I know that he always did it out of love for God.

A and P

All-Pure All-Pure All-Pure Allure Allure Allure All-Pure All-Pure All-Pure Pleasure Pleasure Pleasure

A and P is a chant, to be spoken or sung, vocally or silently. The words are derived from the Hare Krishna mantra. Allure and Pleasure are literal translations of Krishna and Rama. All-Pure is a free translation of Hare. The word Hare is the vocative case of Hara or Hari, both of which mean "to take away," with the religious implication "to take away sin or evil." Thus Hare is addressed to one who purifies all, All-Pure. The number nine figures prominently in the chant. Numerologically, the letters of the title add up to nine, as do the letters of the chant. The chant is made up of 18 words, a multiple of nine. And the first letters of the words, nine A's and nine P's, add up to nine. The discovery of this chant drove me to a psychiatric fugue wherein all verbal and mathematical structures disassembled, delivering me to the fresh (though at first frightening)

world of present reality without any superimposed knowledge or meaning, accompanied by a dizzy pressure in/on my brain. The experience convinced me to cease all attempts to structure reality. I saw I was building a Tower of Babel, which required constant vigilance and repair. I had been constructing the word-and-number tower as an attempt to reach God. But the base of the tower was "the mental platform," as my guru called it. I had built that platform on top of reality as it is, which is God's world. So the tower was in fact an attempt to get as far away from God as possible, albeit inside my own mind. I cannot control God, or my experience of God. God is in control, not me. My work is simply to remain open to God at all times and in all places."Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.Where there is hatred, let me sow love;Where there is injury, pardon;Where there is doubt, faith;Where there is despair, hope;Where there is darkness, lightAnd where there is sadness, joy.O Divine Master,grant that I may not so much seek to be consoledas to console;to be understood as to understand;to be loved as to love.For it is in giving that we receive;It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life."(a prayer attributed to St. Francis)

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The beautiful demons of Hell know my weaknesses only too well. I listen and hear as they whisper, "My dear, come to us and live under our spell."

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I have secrets and I tell lies. That's what keeps me inside my eyes.

Fear of the Physique

What makes me think I'm any better than Dick Cheney?Or Slobodan Milosevic, or Kim Jong Il?All four of us were born just a few months apart,

all four pursued by ragged wraiths, terrible demons.Oh yes, you say, everyone is, don't you know?I certainly do and I plan to tell you some of mine.I have the impression that Nazis tortured me to death.They performed experiments on my face, disfiguring me.So, in my mother's womb, I thought I revolted her.I felt she didn't want my ugly body inside her body.I pulled myself in away from her, pretending I wasn't there.Then I pretended I didn't know I was getting born."Feet above, head below? Head above, feet below?Is up the same as down? Is there no up or down?"My stupid attempts to deny the bodily process.Born backwards, "Oh let me go back in and try it again.I'll get it right the next time (or maybe just stay)."Excuses, evasions, weird imaginings, fantasies.At birth I held a mirror to my parents' faces, saying,"Look! See how beautiful you are." But, am I beautiful?The mirror, like my eyeglasses, like my camera lens,just separated us and gave me something to hide behind.It's all about this: I shrink away from physical contact.It makes me sweat in a quick cold rush of fear.Why else do I want to live in a warm climate?I want the heat to overwhelm my hatred of my body.I can't accept the imperfections, the solidity.And it's so easy to create idealized mental bodies!It's so easy to pretend that my dreams are real,until I've replaced everybody with a fantasy,and I love only the filmy ghosts of my imagination.Thus I live, avoiding the fact of my body and yours,and avoiding the ecstatic physicality of God.I am brother to the lunatics in a family of fear.

La Monte Young's Tortoise Music

Here's an excerpt from an essay by a writer with a name presumably resembling "hstencil." The four performers mentioned are La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, Tony Conrad, and John Cale. My interest is not only academic. I attended two of performances, one in November and one in December.

The first performance of the so-called Tortoise music was entitled The Tortoise Droning Selected Pitches for the Holy Numbers for the Two Black Tigers, the Green Tiger and the Hermit by Young, and occurred in six performances on the weekends of October 30-November 1, and November 20-22, 1964 at the Pocket Theater on Third Avenue and Thirteenth

http://www.geocities.com/hstencil/tonyconradintro.html

Street. The title alludes to the four performers: Young, Zazeela, Conrad, and Cale. Striking in its imagery, the title reflects Young's rejection of the "minimalist" earlier titles of his works, such as Compositions 1960, although the Tortoise music is considered by many to be his first full-fledged minimalist work. The Theater of Eternal Music also performed at the same venue on December 12-13 The Tortoise Recalling the Drone of the Holy Numbers as they were Revealed in the Dreams of the Whirlwind and the Obsidian Gong and Illuminated by the Sawmill, the Green Sawtooth Ocelot and the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer.

The Oh Yeaah Chorus

Oh Yeaah Oh Yeaah Oh Yeaah Oh Yeaah

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The still, small voice said, "Your relationship with other people is your relationship with me. I appear to you as other people."

Leonard Susskind, The Cosmic Landscape

This book is about an organizing principle..."A Landscape of possibilities populated by a megaverse of actualities."

...Wolfgang Pauli quipped, "Just because something is infinite doesn't mean it's zero."

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There's no difference between the inside and the outside. Between me and the world. Between spirit and matter, consciousness and nature, the soul and the body. The essence is the same. The essence is devotion to God. The world teaches me how to worship God. I follow my body, Mother Nature, all the atoms of matter, in their worship of God.

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Pay Attention. Listen to the World. Be Aware. Embrace the Love.

Sunday School

Way back in Sunday School we little kids sang: "This is my Father's world, And to my list'ning ears, All nature sings, and round me rings The music of the spheres." We sang it every week for years. It sank in - into me, anyway. Decades later it came out of me as Pandevotionalism. Today I woke up thinking: Let my only technology be consciousness. Let my only tool be the human body. Let my only task be the music of the spheres. Idealistic to a fault, maybe. Certainly it's not a description of my present lifestyle. But it does give me a direction to go in. It helps me choose what to do, and what not to do - what will help me get closer to the ideal. Getting closer is one way I can honor it. And keeping it in mind as a model of the best way to live.

What I Said to Gandalf about Returning to the Waking World as I Propped Up a Plant with Stones on the Bridge

It hurts so much Oh it hurts so much Yes it hurts so much But I promised

Oldies Compilation

Stormy Weather - The Leaders Yes Sir That's My Baby - The Sensations At My Front Door - The El Dorados I'll Be Forever Loving You - The El Dorados

I'll Be Home - The Flamingos The Girl in My Dreams - The Cliques Little Girl of Mine - The Cleftones We Go Together - Frankie and Johnny Eddie My Love - The Teen Queens Love Is Strange - Mickey and Sylvia In the Wee Wee Hours - Chuck Berry When You Dance - The Turbans Heartbreak Hotel - Elvis Presley Mardi Gras in New Orleans - Fats Domino

Dance Innovators

1890s

Loie Fuller

1900s

Maud Allan Isadora Duncan Ruth St. Denis

1910s

Ted Shawn Louis Horst Rudolf von Laban

1920s

Martha Graham Doris Humphrey Charles Weidman Mary Wigman Helen Tamiris

1930s

Anna Sokolow Jane Dudley Lester Horton Eleanor King

1940s

Merce Cunningham Erick Hawkins Jose Limon Hanya Holm Katherine Dunham Pearl Primus Sophie Maslow Jean Erdman Bella Lewitsky Talley Beatty Maya Deren Agnes De Mille Lucas Hoving Fayard Nicholas Harold Nicholas

1950s

Paul Taylor Alwin Nikolais Murray Louis Pearl Lang Alvin Ailey Robert Dunn Paul Sansardo Donya Feuer Daniel Nagrin Donald McKayle Bob Fosse

1960s

Yvonne Rainer Trisha Brown Meredith Monk Twyla Tharp Steve Paxton Deborah Hay Lucinda Childs David Gordon Anna Halprin Simone Forti James Waring Jill Johnston James Cunningham

Tatsumi Hijikata (Butoh) Carolee Schneeman

1970s

Pina Bausch Moses Pendleton (Pilobolus) Eiko and Koma Garth Fagan Robert Wilson Kei Takei Laura Dean Karole Armitage

1980s

Bill T. Jones Mark Morris Moses Pendleton (Momix) Elizabeth Streb Jawote Willa Jo Zillar David Dorfman Martha Clarke Ronald K. Brown Maguy Marin Doug Varone Mark Dendy David Parsons Ann Carlson Jane Comfort Toru Simazaki Molissa Fenley Susan Marshall Angelin Preljocal Anne Teresa de Keersmacker

1990s

John Jasperse Pascal Rioult Mourad Merzouki Alexander Pepelyaev Olga Pona Miguel Robles Martinus Miroto Anouk va Dijk

Gideon Obarzanek Break Dancing

2000s

Shen Wei Robert Battle Larry Keigwin Charlotte Griffin Krump Dancing

To Andrew Bard Schmookler

Andrew –

First, thanks for The Parable of the Tribes, for your commentaries on NPR, and for a talk you gave at UNC-Asheville in the 1980s.

Each party has its criminals, its excesses and extremes. But something occurred to me a few days ago. I saw Republicans and Democrats as contrasting personality types more than advocates of opposing political or economic ideologies. It looked like this:

Republicans are "I" people. Democrats are "we" people. Republicans see history as formed by powerful individuals. Democrats see the workings of broad-based social movements. Individualist Republican values appeal to those who want prosperity for themselves. They say that the philanthropy of the rich can aid the poor. Communitarian Democrat values are espoused by those who want prosperity for all the people. They say that "it takes a village to raise a child."

I find it hard to reject either tendency. To me, both are valid. Individuals want to make the best of themselves - to rise and get ahead in life. But we know that the condition of the community in which we live influences our chances of success. Likewise, the citizenry as a whole stands shoulder to shoulder in seeking equality of opportunity. But we know that some will take advantage of that opportunity more than others.

Seeing both sides of the argument as valid gives rise to centrist notions. Some thinkers gravitate there. Mark Satin, with his Radical Middle newsletter and website, comes to mind.

But majoritarian politics ultimately comes down to a choice between A and B - even if B is composed of many groups or candidates. The decision must be made between this or that. Then the electorate splits into two. And I'd say the two sides correspond to the two personality types.

Of the two, I would say that Democrats are more given to govern. They like to view the world as a gathering of groups, and most governing is the art of managing groups. Republican power depends on the symbols and slogans that strike deep in the psyche. But believing in "that government which governs least" keeps them from gaining skill in the techniques of operating the machines of governance.

In the 2000 US national election, Bush's personality warmed many voters' hearts. More or less half of them, it seems. Still, a clear majority agreed with Gore's policy statements. But at that time and in 2004 the electorate didn't want a leader who knew how to govern. They wanted symbols and slogans, and they got them in full measure.

So each side has its excesses and extremes, and its criminals. But each side is necessary. Our reality is dualistic. There will always be conservatives and liberals. Even within each of us there are conservative and liberal tendencies. To understand that last point, and to accept it, is to me the beginning of a healthy politics. With such an understanding, we can step outside party loyalty and perceive clearly when crimes are being commited, by whatever official. And wield the rule of law to correct the situation.

Therefore the moral battle is within ourselves, to understand and accept how "I" and the "Other" are really so much alike. Therein resides love, and forgiveness, and justice for all.

WCS Wabasso Cozmix Stone

Walking along Wabasso Beach, I see flat coquina stones. To me they look like clay tablets bearing messages. I can almost make out vague, shadowy letters. I sense that the

marks lie inside the stones, not on the surface. They resist my attempts to view them.

I feel a great need for them to be fully present, to my eye, to my brain, to my heart. And to everyone's - to benefit the whole world. If I could only trace them onto the surface with a pen or brush, pull them up from their depths! But I'm not allowed to directly copy the secret script. Instead, my duty is to translate it - by condensing it into a single letter, symbol, glyph, or diagram.

I must take care to remain true to the hidden language. I know the arcane words combine into a love poem from Mother Nature to God. I know She wants the world to receive Her message. She sings to me, as She has sung and will sing to many others. I must take up Her song.

So with pen in hand I inscribe something on stone after stone. It is my one contribution, my simple digest of Her poem of praise. First I draw a line tracing around the flat stone's perimeter. Then on one of the flat faces of the stone I draw my sacred diagram. I call it Cozmix, The Twenty-Seventh Letter of the Alphabet. It's made of a vertical line and a 45-degree tilted ellipse. That's all.

That's what I have to give, what I give to the Goddess, and through Her to everyone. She gives Herself to you through the Cozmix. I am Her servant and the Wabasso Cozmix Stone is my service.

MLK My Life for Krishna

RITUAL ACTIVITIES Wave Breathing Singdango

DRONING Deep Rumbling Drone Strings

EARTH SHAPING Keshava's Garden Wabasso Beach

THE LOVED ONES The Lovers of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness

We Are Love

I never wanted from life enough to take it from you. I always offered to life too much to give it to you. I never wanted from love enough to take it from you. But now that you want it from me, I've got more love than I need. I just want to give it you. I'm giving my love to you. I am love, you are love, we are love, love, love, love, love. I am love, you are love, we are love, love, love, love, love.

I hadn't heard from you in years. I'd given up all hope. My phone calls falling on deaf ears. My emails just a joke. And so I went on with my life, striking a jaunty pose. A painted lamp without a light, a vase without a rose. Now suddenly my life has changed. Heaven lights up here below. Inside, outside rearranged. Today you said hello. I am love, you are love, we are love, love, love, love, love. I am love, you are love, we are love, love, love, love, love.

Love is a child who just wants to play at arts and sports and games all day. Throwing a ball, running a race, jumping and falling and kissing your face, singing a song, counting to ten, waking at dawn to play once again.

Love is a simple and personal thing. It fits on your finger like a golden ring.

I thought love was a principle, so big and far apart. But now I know it's intimate. It's living in my heart. Love was way beyond me, an idea that I would serve. But now that you have found me, love's more than just a word. What I thought was big is not that big at all. What I thought was little will never more be small. I am love, you are love, we are love, love, love, love, love. I am love, you are love, we are love, love, love, love, love.

Art or Politics?

Sitting in a borrowed apartment in early 1968, I scribbled out an anthem:

I agree with your analysis, but not with your tactics, my friend, Right now you're a catalyst, but you'll turn into your enemy, in the end.

With that, I'd made a decision. I split with those who wanted me to be a political activist. I solidified my bond with my artist friends. I still wanted to "change the world" for the better. But art would be my means - more satisfying to me because it was also my end, my vision of personal and social happiness.

More than a year earlier, I'd joined the Hare Krishnas. Their singing and dancing with a spiritual center seemed to me a vital cultural movement. But I left the group, alienated by its demand for an institutional obedience that left no room for personal creativity.

Outside the group, the pressure for political engagment was strong. As a film maker, I was moved by Godard's La

Chinoise. Playing bit parts in Peter Schuman's activist Bread and Puppet Theater, I felt I was doing my bit for the cause, while participating in a vital interplay of aesthetics and politics.

Still, I had my misgivings. That's when I wrote the stanza above.

And one day as I was walking along the west side of lower Second Avenue, I looked across the street. In the block opposite me were both of them. On the left corner, the building where the Theater rehearsed. On the right corner, the Krishnas' storefront. I paused. A thought came to me. The Bread and Puppet people took something ugly and made it beautiful. The Krishna people took something beautiful and made it ugly. Which way was mine?

I decided to side with the Krishnas. The Theater could never really go beyond the ugliness of their subjects. But with the Krishnas, there was a chance. Maybe I could help turn things around for them and make it beautiful from beginning to end.

I hadn't learned that you shouldn't marry somebody with the hope of changing them for the better. You have to be able to love them as they are, and accept that they may never change. Well, the Krishnas never changed, despite my efforts. So, several years later, I left.

Interestingly, my first work after leaving was with a political group. Quickly, I realized once again that my convictions lay elsewhere. I didn't believe that meaningful cultural change could come from one group gaining power over another group, no matter how much I agreed with the winner's policies. The issue of power itself was the point - that is to say, "power corrupts."

Of course, as a citizen of a democracy, I can't ignore politics. I keep myself informed. I discuss issues with people. I write my representatives, and I vote. I give financial contributions (modest ones, I assure you). But withal I don't see myself as an engaged activist. My world is an aesthetic one, a spiritual one. I'm glad I've long held to that conclusion.

A Dizzy Spell

Too much knowledge makes me nauseous.Counting pennies turns my stomach.Logical operations and quantitative analysisopen the door to a bottomless pit.Trying too hard to figure things out,structuring categories, organizing facts,assigning numbers in rectangular grids,finally plunges me into the swamp.Trapped and squeezed into aconstriction of my own construction,jammed into the space between theminute hand and the next minute mark,drilling my mind deep into adetail - one number - one word -nailing my nervous system down tothe paralysis of iota and bit,I fall, spiraling into a sickening chasm of grief.What's in front of me becomes a memory of itself.My stomach churns, my toes and fingers tingle.It's so familiar, so inevitable, so depressing.Way in back there's a recollection of my future death,disorienting me so time whirls around me in a blur,a cloudy dark circular cell holding me captive,a slippery chute sending me down into oblivion.Language slides like soapy slimes -liquid words, riddles, rhymes.Memories commit their crimes -past and present trading times.in this place without names, nothing stands securely itselfbut shifts into another thing, infected by a reckless analogizingthat tunnels through my brain, hungry, and heedless of my heart,sights link to sounds, sounds to tastes, tastes made tangible, all mad -I see a faint music.I hear a metallic taste.I smell high blood pressure.I taste the sickness of my cerebellum.Thenan aftermathof sweatand hopelessness.

I want toweep,weep,weep.Oh, I have refused myself the freedom of the open air.I have betrayed my urge for spontaneous serendipity.I have torn myself away from the wholeness of natureand the wild improvizational life of a happy animal.I hold tight to a single dead specific and choke myself.It is my squeezing that turns time into an enemy.I must release my grip and let my mother care for me.I don't know where she'll take me and it feels goodnottoknow.Too much knowledge makes me nauseous.Too much logic leaves me lost.All my life I've been too cautious,self-denying at great cost.People see me as a thinker -how I've fooled them through the years!Poet, artist, sculptor, tinker,lie entombed beneath my fears.Let me loose with line and music,shape and color, rhyme and song!Free my soul, O kindly Muses.Prove me right or prove me wrong.Reasoning cannot computeinspiration's golden root.

The Female Is the Foundation

(excerpt from an article by Deborah Tannen, "Wears Jump Suit. Sensible Shoes. Uses Husband's Last Name.", in the New York Times Magazine , June 20, 1993, p.18)

I have never been inclined toward biological explanations of gender differences in language, but I was intrigued to see Ralph Fasold bring biological phenomena to bear on the question of linguistic marking in his book "The Sociolinguistics of Language." Fasold stresses that language and culture are particularly unfair in treating women as the marked case because biologically it is the male who is marked. While two X chromosomes make a female, two Y chromosomes make nothing. Like the linguistic markers s,

es, or ess, the Y chromosome doesn't "mean" anything unless it is attached to a root form - an X chromosome.

Developing this idea elsewhere, Fasold points out that girls are born with fully female bodies, while boys are born with modified female bodies. He invites men who doubt this to lift up their shirts and contemplate why they have nipples.

In his book, Fasold notes "a wide range of facts which demonstrates that female is the unmarked sex." For example, he observes that there are a few species that produce only females, like the whiptail lizard. Thanks to parthogenesis, they have no trouble having as many daughters as they like. There are no species, however, that produce only males. This is no surprise, since any such species would become extinct in its first generation.

Fasold is also intrigued by species that produce individuals not involved in reproduction, like honeybees and leaf-cutter ants. Reproduction is handled by the queen and a relatively few males; the workers are sterile females. "Since they do not reproduce," Fasold says, "there is no reason for them to be one sex or the other, so they default, so to speak, to female."

Fasold ends his discussion of these matters by pointing out that if language reflected biology, grammar books would direct us to use "she" to include males and females and "he" only for specific male referents. But they don't. They tell us that "he" means "he or she," and that "she" is used only if the referent is specifically female. This use of "he" as the sex-indefinite pronoun is an innovation introduced into English by grammarians in the 18th and 19th centuries, according to Peter Muhlhausler and Rom Harre in "Pronouns and People." From at least about 1500, the correct sex-indefinite pronoun was "they," as it still is in casual spoken English. In other words, the female was declared by grammarians to be the marked case.

Niels Bohr

Quotations, or perhaps paraphrases:

Contradictions are complementary.[To be understood, light must be studied as a combination of both particles and waves, even though the two give contradictory results.]

How wonderful that we have met a paradox !

A great truth is a statement that is as true as its opposite. When it comes to atoms, language can only be used as in poetry.

We are in much greater agreement than you think.

Harvey and Marilyn Diamond

[Excerpts from Fit for Life, Warner Books, 1985]

...fruits and vegetables should predominate in our diets...you have to eat food that's alive...high-water-content food...fruit has the highest water content of any food...fruit requires less energy to be digested than any other food...fruit should never be eaten with or immediately following anything...on an empty stomach...fruit is the most important food that you can possibly eat...from the time you wake up in the morning until at least noon, consume nothing but fresh fruit and fruit juice...

The Innocent and the Liberated

There are two categories of souls who love the Origin: the innocent and the liberated. In each case their love is total. They're always thinking of the Origin, always doing things for the Origin, always feeling devotion for the Origin. But there's one difference. The liberated souls actively choose to love the Origin. The innocent souls are more passive. Their love is chosen for them by the Origin - because they haven't yet developed their sense of self. The principle at work here is that love is not complete or strong unless the lover chooses it. So, the innocent must go to school - to the material world - to develop self-realization. After they go through the educational process, they graduate into the ultimate love. Once liberated, they never return to the material world. (Bhagavad-gita 15.4) It's significant that Krishna prefers to be ordered by his devotees more than to give them orders - his devotees must have a strong sense of self, even as they accept his primacy.

Service Is the Essence of the Self

How can you give yourself to another if you don't know who you are? How can you love another if you don't love yourself? How can you serve another if you don't have anything to give? The goal is service. But the pathway to the goal is paved with self-realization. On the other hand, the essence of the self you're realizing is service. So the only way you can sense your real self is through serving. By practicing service one comes to the realization of the self as service. Still, there are preliminaries. It starts with simple questions like, "What do I like? What's my favorite food? My favorite song? Who's my favorite writer? What sport do I do best at? What do I want to be when I grow up?" These are the preliminary stages of self-realization. Sometimes we spend our whole life asking these questions. Furthermore, the answers may keep changing as time goes by. It can get frustrating. Perhaps we come to understand that the answer to the question "Who am I?" can't be found at that level. We have to go deeper. Then we start concentrating on consciousness, or the soul, or religious themes. We get closer to the ideal of service. Ultimately we get to the kernel, the heart of it. In a vision of the whole we see ourselves as a particle of the whole, dancing in a grand scheme of devotion to God. And we see all others as dancers there too, all in

love with God and in love with each other. The urge we all have is to love and serve each other as we love and serve God. At last we know who we are. At last we can give ourselves completely in service. The specifics of the service might change. But the service mood itself does not. Let's not forget, however, that we have to practice serving all the way along toward the goal. It's only by continuing my little service that my heart opens up to the totality of service.

Rich or Poor

When youre all done with your roaminLike a pigeon youll be hominBut your path had best be lightedThats for sureIf youre ridin home too soonBefore the risin of the moonYoull regret it whether you beRich or poor

Rich or poor rich or poorMakes no difference thats for sureYoull regret it whether you beRich or poor

In the road down by the lakeWhere the fog is thick as cakeThere be ghosts that slip inside youThats for sureIf youre ridin home too soonBefore the risin of the moonYoull regret it whether you beRich or poor


In the rocky desert wasteWhen the sun has slammed its gateYoull be crushed by rollin bouldersThats for sureIf youre ridin home too soonBefore the risin of the moon

Youll regret it whether you beRich or poor

Rich or poor rich or poorMakes no difference thats for sureYoull regret it whether you beRich or poor Where the road goes through a townA lovely lady in a gownAs you sleep will steal your moneyThats for sureIf youre ridin home too soonBefore the risin of the moonYoull regret it whether you beRich or poor


On the snowy mountain passWith a sky as cold as glassYoull be buried until springtimeThats for sureIf youre ridin home too soonBefore the risin of the moonYoull regret it whether you beRich or poor


In the thickets of the woodsThere be brigands in black hoodsWho will leave you for the buzzardsThats for sureIf youre ridin home too soonBefore the risin of the moonYoull regret it whether you beRich or poor

Rich or poor rich or poorMakes no difference thats for sure

Youll regret it whether you beRich or poor

So my advice my friendTo avoid a tragic endLet the heavens light your journeyThats for sureIf youre ridin home too soonBefore the risin of the moonYoull regret it whether you beRich or poor


Breathe In Breathe Out

I wrote this song in 1979.

i want to be a physical culturiststretch my muscles on a yoga mati want to be an acupuncturistchiropractic and all a thati want to be a massage therapistwork out daily in the local gymi want to run ten miles a day at leastkeep my body lean and trimbreathe in breathe outbreathe in breathe outbreathe in breathe outbreathe in breathe outi want to be a vegetariankeep my colon clear of gooi'm gonna eat the bestest way i canvitamins minerals enzymes ooobreathe in breathe outbreathe in breathe outso take my handand we can exercise togetherand if we canwe will make the whole world betteri want to be a spirit body minddreamin of the gods and catchin all the raysim gonna dance until the end a time

praisin mother nature and learnin all her waysbreathe in breathe outbreathe in breathe outbreathe in breathe outbreathe in breathe out

Gut Level (Power Corrupts)

Foul Movement: Climbingthe Social Bladder to theTop of the Dung-Heap!

(The Greed to Succeed -Toil It and Soil It -The Ivory Tower Is aPorcelain Throne.)

Weeding Is Prayer

Down on your knees, your hands touching Mother Earth, creating significant form - that's prayer. Actions speak louder than words. Motion precedes sound.

♥

the kiss before oursilken parachutes opened -free-falling in love !

Emily

I used to live a few blocks from her house,but she wasn't at home at the time.So Emily's poems - joined me as my spouse -in a church that I built in my mind.

Flex

I am not so supple of limb.My lotus is more of a thistle.But how I stretch and flex within!My dance with God - never brittle.

You Drone

CALLING YOUYOU OOO AHHCOMING TOYOU OH AAH

Should I

oh should isubmit myself to godlet myselfbecome part of godor should iswallow god into myselflet god nourish meand work through meor should isomehow inexplicablydo bothwhich is a contradictionand yet necessary

Drone for Radha-Krishna

Calling to You RadhaComing to You Krishna

9 Syllable Drone

Krishna IsAlways InVrindaban

36 Syllable Drone

Sensing YouHearing YouWanting YouCalling YouChasing YouFinding YouSeeing YouTouching YouPraising YouServing YouKnowing YouLoving You

108 Syllable Drone

Uwwa-OwaaShe He She HeUwwa-OwaaShe He She He Uwwa-OwaaHeyoahaUwwa-OwaaHeyoaha Uwa HeyoahaUwa HeyoahaUwa HeyoahaHeyoaha Uwwa-OwaaShe He She HeUwwa-OwaaShe He She He Uwwa-OwaaHeyoahaUwwa-OwaaHeyoaha

Uwa HeyoahaUwa HeyoahaUwa HeyoahaHeyoaha

She's a Meditator

Suffering all over from aches and painsI thought a yoga class might do what they claimedSitting on the floor I looked to my rightAnd there I saw the most beautiful sight

She's a meditatorShe's out of this worldSooner or laterI'll make her my girl

She looks so cute in her yoga poseFrom her half-shut eyes to her lotus toesHer back is straight, her breathing deepThese are the visions I will keep

While she contemplates the infiniteI really can't get into itThe formless One is just a blurAll I want is to look at her

I'll give up meat, I'll give up fishI'll do anything to get her kissI'll read the Sutras and the Bhagavad GitaBut to get her emails would be even sweeter

She's a meditatorShe's out of this worldSooner or laterI'll make her my girl

I come here to heal my bodyShe wants the trance they call SamadhiWhen I get myself in shapeMay be then I can escapeWith her

She's a meditatorShe's out of this world

Sooner or laterI'll make her my girl

Pain

We don't have to pursue happiness. Happiness is our natural state. It's with us all the time. But in our present situation, suffering is also with us all the time. What we have to do, then, is eliminate suffering. Then pure happiness will be ours. However, here's where we run into a confusion. Because the purpose of being in this world is to experience pain. We come here to suffer. Before, in our innocent state, we had bliss. We were with God. What we lacked was self-knowledge. Our first impulse toward self-knowledge took the form of rebelling against God. We rejected God and the bliss of being with God, and to exercise our own priorities we accepted the burden of pain. It was a bad choice, but it was the first choice we ever made, and probably an inevitable choice. There was no other way to begin to comprehend and develop our possibilities in the making of decisions. Why go through all this? So that we can decide to love God. Before, love was a decision God made for us. But that kind of love isn't complete. Only when we choose God is our love complete. We come here to learn how to choose God. Choosing not-God causes us pain. In that way, we learn. Misery and evil are necessary components of materiality. The Problem of Evil (If God is good, why is there evil?) is solved. How can a good God create evil? Because it's for our own good. Nothing beneficial was ever achieved without suffering. Still, the deeper purpose is to eliminate suffering. A self-realized person works to relieve others' pain. Salvation, or "justification," can't be bought by good deeds. But good deeds are the natural behavior of those who have been saved. Compassion is habitual for the saints. Their peaceful "pursuit" of those who suffer shows they understand the reality of happiness.

Pandevotional Glory Droning

• Ritual Music of the Atoms Drone • Highpitched Sounds of the Neurons Drone • Reverberating Pulse of the Galaxies Drone

The steady B Flat / F / B Flat chord of the universe is a drone of worship. Electronic audio effects evoke a deep meditation experience as you take part in this voice and tambura performance.

The Untutored Epiphanies of an Ultimate Significance Junkie

These experiences came to me without my having been coached about them beforehand. They arrived suddenly, without any precedent. They were images or sounds or words - not always pleasant ones - that possessed me and altered me, opening up a glimpse of The Everything. None of the experiences "proved the existence of God." It was simply the depth of the feeling that convinced me.

1946: The Gum Rubber Eraser Dream. A dream that recurred over many years. I was naked, immobile, floating upright in an amber space, not five years old but a grown man. Also in that endless space were floating countless other men who looked like me. My gaze was fixed on a golden bullet, about two feet in front of me, pointed at my heart. It was almost imperceptibly moving toward me. I could do nothing to stop it. Its speed was slowed down because the amber space (I described it as "penuche" after a fudge my mother made) was being squeezed from outside. It was like being inside a gum rubber eraser being squeezed by somebody. And I knew that I was the one squeezing it, holding back my death. This made my body feel incredibly heavy. It was extremely unpleasant. I woke up. My mother was in the bathroom. I walked in and said to her, "There were thousands of them but there was only one."

1954: The Doo-Wop Chemical Change of My Blood. Over the radio, from WINS in New York City, Allen Freed brought me "Sincerely" by the Moonglows. And so many others. I could feel my blood changing into something strange and wonderful.

1955: Feeling the Blood Run Through My Veins. That's what I told my mother when she asked me what I was doing, sitting in a chair without moving for a long time.

1956: "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" by Lewis Padgett. The story was in a paperback anthology, A Treasury of Science

Fiction, published some years earlier by Berkley Books. Two children learned the technique of arranging simple objects in such a way that the children were propelled into another world. I took this as a metaphor for the purpose of Art.

1958: The Rowe Camp Cosmology Experience. A guest lecturer, a scientist of some sort, showed slides of galaxies and nebulae on a big screen in the barn. I was transported to the ultimate.

1960: New Wave Cinema. I found myself on the screen in the films of Bergman, Truffaut, Godard, Resnais, Antonioni, and others. My path in life was clear.

1961: Lawrence/Wolfe/Kazantzakis/Brakhage. Ecstasy! I could hardly contain myself. D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Wolfe, Nikos Kazantzakis, and Stan Brakhage burst my soul out of its crust of fear.

1962: Bartok's Second String Quartet. In our fraternity house room with black-painted walls, night after night we played it. As I stared out the window, the windowpane dividers disappeared to give me a view of wholeness.

1963: Psychotherapy East and West by Alan Watts. My atheism ended when I read this book.

1964: The Tortoise and His Journeys by La Monte Young. In a tiny theater (The Pocket Theater) on lower Third Avenue, the most significant aesthetic-spiritual experience of my life occurred. Young, Marian Zazeela, Tony Conrad, and John Cale, sat two on each side of a large gong with a black disc painted in the center of it. They droned one note for hours. The enormous amplifier-speaker system provided a high-volume cosmic symphony of overtones. Even now that overwhelming sound determines me.

1965: The Chinese Sliding Doors. After eating hashish I saw, about 18 inches away from me, the front of an intricately colored box. Or it may have been a panel on a wall. Two sliding doors, closed, met in the middle. I reached toward them and pulled them apart. Beyond the doors was an infinite white space in which floated innumerable black spheres. The image has haunted me since then as a depiction of the yin/yang duality, either the white or the black thought of as either yin or yang. The colored designs on the

doors are a product of the interaction of the two. Objects floating in a luminous infinite space - an image similar to The Gum Rubber Eraser Dream, but this time very pleasant. 1966: The Hare Krishna Silver Ramp. My first exposure to the Hare Krishna Mantra took place in Tompkins Square Park in mid-October. As I chanted along with the Swami, his disciples, and the crowd of onlookers, I saw a silver ramp ascending up into the sky. It looked something like a children's playground slide, except that it kept going up and up. (Or, in the words of my Unitarian Sunday School credo, "onward and upward forever.") I knew that if I kept chanting, I would ride that "stairway to heaven," that mystical escalator, all the way to the Spiritual Sky. I got on it, and I'm still on it.

1976: The Kratka Ridge Experience. 7500 feet up in the San Gabriel Mountains, with my daughter Rose enjoying our walk through deep snow, I stopped to look across to another ridge. In the peace and quiet I heard a faint sound like somebody chopping wood far away. In a rush, another kind of sound, more subtle and in a different dimension, came to me. It seemed like language, but I couldn't understand its meaning. After about a half a minute it went away. Then I knew I'd been not only hearing, but also Thinking the Earth's Thoughts. I had become part of the Earth. That convinced me we had to leave our urban life in Los Angeles and move to the woods. Maybe there I could comprehend the message I'd heard. Five years later we moved to the mountains of North Carolina.

1983: The Huckleberry Mountain Experiences. I As I stood on our land on the south side of the mountain, the Earth Goddess sang to me, "Don't you hear me calling to you, Daniel, don't you hear me calling, calling, calling." II As I sat in my car in the Associated Spring parking lot eating my lunch, I looked at our mountain from the north side. It sang to me, "I am the Glory of God, I am the Glory of God." Something in the way she sang it made me feel I should sing it too, and I did. III As I stood in the snow at night up the slope from our trailer, in the middle of a circle of tall oaks, the Earth sang, "And the Glory of God glorifies God. And the Glory of God glorifies God." At last I understood the language of Mother Nature. I began to write about Pandevotionalism.

1987: The Wabasso Beach Experiences. These epiphanies have found their way into all my writing for the last twenty years.

2005: Droning. I am a dronist. My droning brings everything together. I can't stop.

A Dream

I'm in a city at night, looking down at the street entrance of an expensive hotel from a height of about 20 feet. A car arrives from the right and stops. A man gets out the right rear door. Bent over in pain, he stumbles across the walk and falls down at the bottom of the five steps leading up to the hotel door. Another man, a friend, a well-known singer and movie actor, runs out the door and down the steps to him. Kneeling down to help, the entertainer sees that the man is dying - probably from a gunshot wound. "Ray," the man says, recognizing his friend, extending his hand. Ray holds his hand and says, "Just let go. Just let go." From above I say to myself, "He's so wise." The man responds to Ray, "I don't want to be attached 'cause I'm just in love with God." Ray gently releases his hand and respectfully backs away. The man dies.

Birth Heart

My mother passed away on August 16, 2007. This sonnet is about her and about my astrological birth chart.

Helen Elizabeth Cooper,Helen Cooper Clark -she brought me out of a stupor.She delivered me from the dark,Twelfth Night - we had a date.She gave me precious birthwhen she was twenty-eight,a present of great worth.Beneath her tender gaze,her innocence, elegance, and beauty,I was so happy those days,her "golden boy," her duty.She's the Venus in my Fourth.She's the Queen. I'm in her court.

Personness

Like a good theoretical physicist, I want to reduce everything down to a singleness. For me, that singleness is Personness. The essential quality of every entity is its Personness, which derives from the nature of the Infinite Omnipresent Lover.

Drone of the Atom Vibrations

The vocal aspect will include Om and other traditional bija-mantras, with more innovative syllabic formulas and harmonic frequencies. I'll be playing a tambura (standing up, tambura hanging like a bass guitar) with a pickup mike connected to a small guitar amp. Added to this will be the sound of an electronic tambura box. Two mikes on boomstands will send the vocals to a delay box, and thence to two separate guitar amps for other effects.

IFUIUF

I Found U Inside the Unlimited Form.

i found u

i found u inside the unlimitedi found u inside the unlimitedi found u inside the unlimitedform - - unlimitedform - - -form - - unlimitedform - - -

Email to KJ

Yes, although the two songs (All You Need Is Love and Tomorrow Never Knows) are from Beatles albums, they're basically John Lennon songs. When I heard TNK on the Revolver album, I thought, well, the Beatles are now moving

into tribal / primitive / psychedelia - leaving contemporary society behind, off into primordial cosmics. So I was very disappointed when Sgt. Pepper came out, riffing on the daily news - with perhaps the one exception of Harrison's Within You and Without You. Anyway, TNK remains, a jumpoff point that others had to take instead. Actually I had already heard sounds from beyond that point - when in the late fall of 1964 I heard La Monte Young and three others do The Tortoise and His Journeys. Since then, that music has always been a foundation for me. Everything else I've done has been built on it. Even the Hare Krishna adventure, which started about two years later, was at first predicated on my attempt to live permanently in that sound. Today "the drone state of mind," as Young has called it, still motivates me. My presentation at the Yoga Shakti Ashram last week - Drone of the Atom Vibrations - went well. I feel my verbal work has concluded and now it's time to dig deeper into the possibilities of voice - The Growl, Deep Rumbling, The Vocal Chords, Droning, Sonix, Vibradrone, Playtime with the Om of the Electrons, Experiments in Ritual Droning, Pandevotional Glory Droning, Beltashazam at the Tronic Drone Consoul, Pure and Simple Droning - some possible names for it. Like the journey of the tortoise, mine is slow, but if I keep my gaze fixed on Krishna's lotus feet, someday I will get there, by his mercy.

Harrah Harree Harray HarrahHarreeHarray

Chakra Mantras

The Perineum Chakra Mantra is MINE.The Genital Chakra Mantra is ME.The Navel Chakra Mantra is ME MORE THAN YOU .The Chest Chakra Mantra is YOU.The Throat Chakra Mantra is IT MORE THAN YOU.The Brow Chakra Mantra is IT.The Anterior Fontanel Chakra Mantra is NOTHING.

Relation's Hip

Nothing exists in itself or by itself, but always in relationship. The overall pattern or network - ever shifting in its form - is the independent variable. We are all dependent, or interdependent, flickering facets of that mysterious gem.

The Next New Morality

Okey and Dokey went out for a ridein their brand new automobile.It didn't use gas so they rode with prideand stopped for a vegan meal.Okey had tofu and Dokey had dulse.(That's seaweed for you who don't know.)When a Hummer went by,"You sinner!" they cried,and went home with their hearts all aglow.

Bursting

Hear the planet's wild orgy,as the sap rushes upward and out,into blossoms trembling with dew,into fruits bursting with seed.

The Fur of the Monkey

KJ –

Quite apart from opinions or beliefs, I would call my statements "feelings." I have no quarrel with anyone who considers the masculine Godhead to be the source of the feminine. In the end, when we're at that level of discourse, it becomes divine play, not heated debate. The true purpose of discussing such theological niceties is the constant glorification of Goddess and God by saying their names as often as possible.

Countless beams of light cast countless images of the ultimate reality outward in countless directions. Each beam has its unique image. Each of us peers along a single beam

and views the truth in our own way. God is one but has many names.

I prefer poetry to metaphysics.

Tolle can put it poetically. "The energy that is withdrawn from the mind turns into presence." Very tasty.

In 1995 Ma said, "When you let go of all things, then you will know the fur of the monkey."

My fantasy-career interest these days centers on Tone Reverberations of Long Duration as produced by my Infinitely Long Backgrounding Vocals. I thought of those terms out of dissatisfaction with the word "drone," which implies boredom. Although La Monte Young has praised boredom as a state ripe for an awakening. When the senses have nothing to grasp, we can withdraw them "as a tortoise withdraws its limbs" and experience the presence of Hanumanji.

Thank you.

- D Gita 5.1, Laulya and Lolupa

KJ –

Two Sanskrit words - laulya and lolupa - have been favorites of mine. First, I love the way they sound. Second, they both mean "ardent longing," which means so much to bhaktas. Interestingly, laulya also means "inconstant," and lolupa has the additional meaning of "destructive." Well, the bhaktas don't dwell on those aspects. But it might be true that in a material context, ardent longing can be inconstant and/or destructive.

In the context of spiritual devotion, though, ardent longing is the core of it all. For instance, here's verse 14 from the Padyavali:

krsna-bhakti-rasa-bhavita matihkriyatam yadi kuto 'pi labhyatetatra laulyam api mulyam ekalamjanma-koti-sukrtair na labhyate

My wording:

"Deep immersion in the mood of love of Krishna - if you're smart, you'll buy it wherever it's available. And what is the price? Ardent longing, and nothing else. It can't be bought by thousands of lifetimes of good works."

This corresponds to the conservative Christian doctrine of justification by faith and not by good works. The "pearl of great price" can be bought only by faith, not by helping your fellow humans, or all sentient beings. Kind- heartedness is found in those who truly love God, but practicing kindness alone is not sufficient for achieving love of God.

The conservatism or exclusivism of this path can be a problem for the liberal-minded. But my contact with my guru's behavior showed me that it's possible to have both in the same person. Just as in Gita 5.1, Arjuna brings up Krishna's advocacy of the two apparently contradictory principles of action and inaction.

- D

Voice of the World

Harmonic Wave Drone Song Ritual for the

Infinite Inconceivable Love Form

I vocalize tones not as a musical entertainment but as a meditative environment

to support our mutual enlightenment.

Beltashazam, singer

theinfiniteform

The Self Is a Cell

The self is a cell. The cell wall is the "I," the interface between the inner world of the cell and the outer world. The nucleus is the self's rational portion - let's say, the thoughts. The mitochondria in the cytoplasm constitute the intuitive portion, the emotions. The mitochondria are the various "faces" of the personality. Any one of them is predominant at any one time, with the mitochondrial emotional personae taking turns at predominance over time.

The "I" can't change harmful emotions directly. It can do so by changing its thoughts. Emotions feed thoughts but thoughts can control emotions. Byron Katie explains this phenomenon with great effectiveness.

By "self" I mean what is often called the soul. It is a permanent entity, and not a product of temporary material interactions. Viewing the self as a cell is helpful. It shows that the soul is a complex affair, not simply a unitary spark of light, or even a "light body" composed of an undifferentiated

spiritual substance, as some would portray it. Even in the liberated spiritual state, the soul's mitochondrial personae can trade places in predominance. In the spiritual world, people are no less complicated than here, and probably more so - though always blissfuly so.

Three Kinds of Sex

• Selfless Sex. In the infinite potentiality, there's no sense of self. The self is merged and dispersed. This is innocent sex. • Selfish Sex. In materiality, the self knows itself and wants pleasure for itself. This is guilty sex. • Superself Sex. In spirituality, the self has self-knowledge, knows it is part of the Goddess, and wants to give pleasure to God. This is liberated sex.

Confusion

Why shouldn't I miss her?Why shouldn't I want her?We were lovers not so long ago.Why can't I kiss her?My heart grows fonder -that's what absence does to you, you know.I cried when we broke up.I drowned in self pity,even though I wanted it to end.And now I get choked up -oh, she's so pretty!How can I ever just be her friend?(Sounds like I'm confused.Yes, confusion is my middle name.And I don't mean Confucius.Confucius was wise,and I'm just a fool in love.)She's moving to Dallas,and I'll go on livingwith a memory of pleasure and of pain.Our love was too carelessand too unforgiving.The sunshine couldn't stop the rain.Why can't I forget her?It's just an illusionto think that we'll love again some day.

I can do so much better.But I'm lost in confusion,and I don't know if I'll always be this way.

Unique!

At a party, a co-worker said I was "unique." Everybody heard her. I wasn't sure she was being complementary. I was flustered. Oh no! I want to be just like everyone else, right? Or do I? Or am I? No, I'm not. Aaargh, what a burden, to be unique! I had to come to terms with it. The end result is this song, or poem.

I ride my bicycle to work.And that is not my only quirk.I wear suspenders. Not a belt -I never liked the way it felt.I like quinoa and I love spinach.I voted for Dennis Kucinich.Oh yes, I am a vegan freak.And that, alone, makes me unique.

Unique! Unique!Do not make me feel forlorn.Unique! Unique!It's just the way that I got born.

There's no lawn grass in my yard 'n'that's because it's one big garden.I take all knowledge as my province.I read James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence.Ask a question, I will answer it.I can translate from the Sanskrit.I chant mantras, yes I do -some I make up, some Hindu.


Worst of all - I write songs!It's clear I don't know right from wrong.


OIC: Opening the Interior Consciousness

"O! I seeee!"

Freedom Reigns

There's no denying, there's no more dying,there's no more sleeping on the bed of Death.Our quiet prayer made us awareof the secret we're keeping until our last breath.Oh, when the body is buried and rotting,we're dancing circles with no thought of time -eternal gladness, ecstatic madness,passion is purple, love is divine!There's no use thinking what we are drinking,the Supreme Being's liquor is sweet.We're drunk, and serving with love unswerving,our hearts are leaping in a quickening beat!When love expands and breaks the chainsat God's command, then freedom reigns.

IHEIE

(Introducing Another Formula Adding Up To Nine)

The Innate Holiness of Everything Is Everywhere

Things

I think of this as a tiny digest of the Bhagavad-gita.

Thingsare neveras bad as they may seem.It allworks outin the end.You

are onlyhaving a bad dream.Wake upand find outI'm your friend.

Sadhana Sonnet

I say these traditional prayers every morning, noon, and night.

namah om vishnupadaya krishna presthaya bhutaleshrimate bhaktivedanta swamin iti naminenamaste saraswate deve gauravani pracharinenirvishesha shunyavadi paschatya deshatarineshri krishna chaitanya prabhu nityanandashri adwaita gadadhar shrivas adigaura bhakta vrinda gaura bhakta vrindagaura bhakta vrinda gaura bhakta vrindahare krishna hare krishna krishna krishna hare harehare rama hare rama rama rama hare harehare krishna hare krishna krishna krishna hare harehare rama hare rama rama rama hare harenarada muni bhajya vinaradhika ramana namine

Rear-Ended

Oh I got bit on the butt by a bee -And I'll show you if you want to see -Oh well it ain't no fun with a stinger in your bun -And you'd just better not make fun of me!

The Proper Use of Intellect

I've attended our bestuniversitiesto study the languagecalled Squirrelese.They've conferred upon metheir highest degrees.And now I shall practicemy art in the trees!

Misplaced

I am not a techie.I am not a geek.My knowledge is too sketchy,my aptitude too weak.I am just an artist,a poet - or a jerk.But the funny part is,computers are my work!

The Graduates

I don't agree with all of this, but it came to me, so...

The students at great universitieshave studied so many perversitiesthat their brains have turned to rot.They can't see what is and what's not.Indulging the ludicrous fantasiesoozing out from their scholarly brain disease,they crown the mind their king,and think most anything!Then after at last they graduate,to officiate in affairs of state,they just make matters worse.Each remedy is a curse.To postpone the public's starvation date,they increase the public's taxation rate.To oversee at large,they put the crooks in charge.With cleverness ruling us nationwide,everyone's lost sight of time and tide.The graduates must go.Give 'em the old heave-ho!Banish them out to the countryside,with shovels and axes, and donkeys to ride!Dirt in their fingernailsis more decent than top hats and tails.

Among the Pictures

Everything we seeexists eternally.Unbounded, without limit,

eternity's infinite.Everything fits therewith lots of room to spare.Each particle of timeis listed line by line.Each inch of cosmic spacenever leaves its place.Each miniscule eventis parked without a dent.Each show on NBCwas there in 10 B.C.Your fleeting vague emotionhas a cubicle it goes in.The smallest distant twitchoccupies a niche.The pizza you just orderedcomes to you prerecorded.The facts a genius knowswere there, in columns and rows.Within eternity,days wait for you and me.The sacred and profaneare equal on that plane.Scenes of hell and heavenare adjacent in that setting.Eternity is filledwith photographic stillsscattered in a chaos.Are actors there, to play us?Eternity and timeare dead. They're not sublime.That is not enough.It's only lifeless stuff,until consciousness is addedand reaches in to grab it.Continuum and flowmake the movie go.Consciousness continues.It animates the statues.How does life arise?Now for a surprise.Pry open logic's locks.Let loose the paradox.Infinity's unbounded,it cannot be surrounded,but this I truly pledge:

the endless has an edge.The formless has a form.It is not forlorn.Incomprehensible,to us not sensible,the boundless databasehas arms and legs, a faceof supreme divine beauty,a heart whose only dutyis to worship, love, and give -in short, to fully live.This vast perimetermight be known as Her,or She, the Feminine,where all life begins.She's both egg and chicken.Oh, how the plot does thicken!She's not a thin life line,a skinny film on time -no, a sliver of sideways eightis infinitely great.(Eternal mathematicstakes mental acrobatics.)Her consciousness pervadesthe region of the shades.Eternity - yes - honest -is the body of the Goddess!So then, who are we?Fish within her sea,made of conscious stuff,her substance - that's enoughto give us permanancein her eternal dance.So, what forms are ours?Are we beasts or gods or flowers?We choose among the pictureswhatever image fits us,according to our mood,violent or subdued.Be it good or bad,a lifetime's to be had -possibilitiesacross infinity.Here's the hitch, my friend.Most come to an end.As we lived that one,

so the next's begun.But there are some others,hidden under cover,worth an ardent quest,for they are the best.Attracted by those pictures,first obey some strictures,then spontaneitytakes over and you're freefrom death and from perdition,from pain and repetition.These are the lives of service,serving the highest purpose,completely free from fear,inside the spirit sphere.Here Goddess and her Boydispense out sweetest joyin constant springtime season -eternity's best reason.Do you accept this mission?It is your decision.

The Ritual of the Anus Worship Religion Cult

O Anus, world-bottom,exposer of the unconscious,expeller of the detritus,fertilizer of the earthwith deep dark soil whereroots reach down in sleep,black root chakra ofkundalini's origin,source of the cosmic drone,round radiating mandalaon which we meditate,pure noncognitive existence,pure life, pure death,pure good, pure evil,pure fact without apology,secret entranceway tothe secret path of love,essence of matter whoreveals matter's purposeas glorifier of divinity,essence of matter who

affords a view of spirit,O Anus, world-bottom,relax and open up for us,allow us please to seeup through your hole,up through the energychannel of the living body,as we take all your worldalong with us and learnit is one with spirit as wetravel upwards to the crown,to the light and to thedarkness in light, the blackessence of the luminous one,O Anus, world-bottom,you liberate us from fear andembarassment and shame aboutwho we are as particlesof reality, of God, of theall-embracing Goddess,who now we can worshipwithout false piety, inunfettered self-awareness,in the naked ecstasy ofthe spiritual bodyin its totality,in your totality,O Anus!

That Iron String

I am not a saint.I am a citizen.I am not a stud.I am a student.I am not an angel.I am an artist.I am not a dominator.I am Damodar Das, Daniel,servant of God,judged by God, not by you.I am Beltashazam.

The Lone and Weary Traveler

I am the lone and weary travelerwho's left his home to ne'er return.I am the scarred, much-wounded battlerwho always hopes and ever yearns.

His boat leaves the coast.He sees her in tears.He'll love her the mostthe rest of his years.

Come by my side and give me nourishment.O feed my soul with your embrace.Your gentle smile gives me encouragement,though I must soon go from this place.


The winds are singing songs of destinythat I'd neglect at great expense.The tide recedes. It is expecting me.I must set sail and leave your tent.


The demons of deceit and ignorancesharpen their knives in lust for war.I'll take my stand to ban the pestilence.It is your life I'm fighting for.


dlk

the divine lord krishna

PEF

Peace - Ecstasy - Fulfillment

desires

you may want thisyou may want thatyou may feel blissyou may fall flatyou always getwhat you have comingso your best betis wanting nothing

in this worldin this worldbut the other worldis made of desirein that worldin that worldthere's no limitto what you may aspire

you want to serveyou want to lovehave you heardwhat i'm thinking ofwhat i'm sayingthe saints have taught usmake your homewith god and goddess

your desiresyour desiresfree you when you'reone with someone elsedivine desiresdivine desiresare fulfilled bythe sovereign supreme self

Up and Down

Go up from the rootand down from the crownto the chakra in the centerand circle around.Go up from the bodyand down from the mindto the heart and the soulof a love so fine.

As If Emily

I saw and hearda hummingbird -vibrating through the leaves -In dappled lightits zig-zag flightgeometrized - with ease -

Skating

You're skating alongon a dull black sheet of smoked glass -and, if you were to stop and turn aroundand peek down through your skate scratches,you'd see another layer belowof smoked glass with you skating on it -and down through those skate scratchesto another layer, another layer -all of them with you, skating -down and down they go,round and round they go,in a spin, in a spiral spin -and up, if you care to look -there you are! Up there!Skating along without knowing!

Hello! Hello!He can't hear me!He keeps skating -skating up, up to the next layers,where I already am,millions of me's -

illusions of me's -lost in time -forgetting everything but the layer I'm on now.

Just keep skating, boy!Keep your eyes on what's right in front of you!If you were to know at this momentevery moment of your past and future,you'd go mad!It's too much for your brain.Leave it up to God.Just keep skating.That's the plan.

In the Schoolhouse

KJ –

I'm not a person who has any realization on these matters, but I can answer your questions based on what others have taught me. (Gita 4.34)

There are different opinions about the original status of the soul "before" entering into illusion. Some say the soul is never in illusion, and indeed is God - that would mean the illusion itself is illusory. Some say it's an illusion to think that there is a soul. Some say the soul is originally merged into a formless spiritual radiance, descends into illusion for some reason (various reasons are given), then merges back into the radiance. Some say the soul is eternally in a loving relation with God, and the entry into illusion, which seems so long to us, is in reality less than a mere instant.

Prabhupad was inclined to present the last of those explanations. Thus, our job is to go "back to Godhead," to return to a state we've never really left at all. I agree with him. But I also must agree with Krishna, who says in the Gita that once having returned to him, we never again enter into the material world. So there must be some difference between being with Krishna "before" and "after" being in illusion. My resolution of this quandary is to posit an initial state of the soul whereby it is in relation with God in love, but without self-realization. The soul has not chosen to love God, but is in love with God by dint of having been created that way by God. For love to be complete, it must be chosen.

So the entry into illusion has a purpose - to develop self-knowledge. Having done so, the soul "returns" to God and never again enters into illusion.

The cycles of time in the material world do not affect the spiritual world. The creation, maintenance, and destruction of the universes is managed by God (or, by Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva) for the benefit of the souls in illusion, that they may finally develop self- knowledge, leave the temporary schoolhouse, and graduate into the spiritual world.

I do make a distinction between being with God before matriculating into the schoolhouse, and being with God after graduation. The spiritual world is where we go after graduation. As preschoolers, we are in a place I call the Potentiality, which is infinite and eternal. Everything is there, God is there, we are there, but in what might be called a disassociated state. It is not formless. It contains all forms, and even though it's infinite, it paradoxically has a form of its own. It contains all forms and all possibilities. Our work is to make the possible into the actual. The spiritual world is an actual place. We go there when we decide that we actually love God. The potential and the actual are different. We achieve success when we progress from the potential to the actual and actually live in the spiritual world with God.

Both the material world and the spiritual world are in Actuality, not Potentiality. As such, they are not infinite. They are finite. But they are always increasing. Prabhupad said, "Krishna is always expanding." The astrophysicists tell us the universe is expanding. Actuality is always getting bigger, in both its material and spiritual aspects. I take this to mean, among other things, that Obama is right - we have good reason to hope. As Alexander Pope put it - Hope springs eternal in the human breast; Man never Is, but always To be blest: The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

- D

Building the Self

KJ –

I agree with your statement that our spiritual reality is "something which is already within us right now." For decades I've said the same thing. Yet, lately, I've also felt that we're "traveling to a place, a destination." A metaphor occurred to me. It's like we have the lumber, the saw, the hammer, the nails, but we don't have the house yet. We still have something to learn - how to put it all together. In this view, it's not like we're covered over with something dirty or alien to us, and our work is to cast it off to reveal a completely formed self underneath. The self is not completely formed. All our tendencies - even the evil ones - are the building materials for the complete self. We just have to learn how to use them properly. No doubt, our illusions will change their character as we put them to proper use. For instance, our greediness will turn toward God. We will want to possess nothing but God's love. So, we have to learn how to put it all together. The new development, the new house plan that controls the integration of the parts, is self-realization. That was missing before. We have always been spiritual, we have always been with God. But we haven't had the self- knowledge necessary to complete the construction. We are indeed on a journey to a new place, a better place. In one sense, our lives in material consciousness are a mistake, an error. But this material life, with its miseries, is a necessary fire within which is forged a durable self that goes on to the final goal.

- D

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

A review of "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" by Ilan Pappe, 2006.

Benny Morris' book "1948" is an eye-opener. Pappe's book is a soul-searcher.

Morris quotes the theme of the first Zionist armed group Bar-Giora (1907-09): "In fire and blood did Judea fall, in blood and fire Judea shall rise." He quotes the anthem of a later armed group, Lehi (1940-48): "With the tears of bereaved mothers / and the blood of pure babies / like mortar shall we

put together the cadaver building blocks / the edifice of the homeland shall rise."

But even at that Morris doesn't go far enough in exposing the horrifying violence at the heart of the Zionist enterprise. Pappe does, with exhaustive documentation.

I must take great care to assure you that whatever I say here pertains only to Zionism and Zionists, not Judaism or Jews - although the two are obviously intimately intertwined. I have always considered the Jewish people to be special - especially intelligent, creative, and sensitive. My recent reading, however, has shown they can also be racist bigots capable of sadistic horrors. To me that means they are no longer as special as they used to be for me. They must be held to the same standard as everyone else - no more special favors because of their past sufferings. For instance, if the US cannot have a state religion, then its chief beneficiary, Israel, cannot have a state religion either. To put it bluntly, the "Jewish State" must be dissolved. The evicted Palestinians must claim their right to return to their confiscated lands.

That is what Pappe espouses - a single-state resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

As an Israeli Jew himself, Pappe is not unaware of the difficulties this involves. But neither is he unaware of the poisonous deceptions that lie underneath the current concept of the nation of Israel.

An abused child grows up to become an abusive parent. So has it been with the Zionists. After centuries of being tormented, they have have at last found someone to torment - the Palestinians. They have instituted their own pogroms and kristallnachts and concentration camps, continuing to the present day. Pappe writes:

"...what the Palestinians are demanding...is that they be recognized as the victims of an ongoing evil, consciously perpetrated against them by Israel. For Israeli Jews to accept this would naturally mean undermining their own status of victimhood...Israeli Jews would have to recognize they they have become the mirror image of their own worst nightmare."

Pappe shows clearly how the Zionist ethnic cleaning in Palestine is no different from the Serb's ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and should be considered just as much of a crime against humanity. He concentrates on 1948. But he also reveals its origin in the beginnings of Zionism. Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, wrote in his diary in 1895, "We shall endeavor to expel the poor population across the border unnoticed, procuring employment for it in the transit countries, but denying it any employment in our own country."

By 1948 the leading role in the establishment of the Jewish State was taken by David Ben-Gurion, who said that year, "the cleansing of Palestine remained the main objective." He used the Hebrew word "bi'ur," which refers to the cleansing of the leaven from the oven before the Sabbath. Every command of the High Command to the ground units in early 1948 used another word for cleansing, "tihur."

Ben-Gurion spurred on the troops by equating the Palestinians with the Nazis. Palestinian resistance to the Zionists, he said, was "a second holocaust." The Zionist soldiers then vented their rage against the Nazis upon the Palestinians, mowing them down in shocking atrocities. Pappe gives dozens of well-documented accounts of "the unlimited brutality of the troops."

But who were these people living there before the Zionists invaded? "As most Israelis see it - and as mainstream and popular Israeli historiography keeps telling them...early Zionism had succeeded in 'settling an empty land' and 'making the desert bloom.' " These are lies. The fact is, the land was populated and was blooming. The people maintained vigorous olive and citrus groves. Every village had its gardens. What the Zionists did (and are still doing) was to bulldoze down the groves and the houses, murder or evict the villagers, and let the gardens wither and die. Then atop the blood and the rubble, they planted their own version of what the country should look like, with several European style pine forests.

My impression is that this theocratic theme park called Israel has as its goal to destroy the Palestinians as a people to justify the Zionist claim for the land. Slaughter is one tactic. Pushing them out to other countries is another - they become Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese. Then there are no

more Palestinians, and no more Palestine, just Israel. More than that, redefine the topographical features remaining from the pre-Zionist period. Call them "ancient" landforms from Biblical times. Rewrite history. In peace conferences, refuse to discuss 1948.

Moreover - Pappe only hints at this - the Zionist project depends on Palestinians being violent so the Zionists are justified in eliminating them. Suicide bombs and rockets exploding inside Israel further the Zionist cause. The Israeli government provokes the Palestinians into violent vengeance, to instill fear and anger in the Jewish population. As I write this in February 2009, the strategy has just reaped a reward in the election results. The far-right party Yisrael Beitenu has won 15 seats out the Knesset's 120. Rightist Likud and "centrist" Kadima came within one seat of each other - 27 and 28. Liberal Labor, once the leader, now is in fourth place with 13 seats. The public alignment has shifted markedly to the right. Palestinians living inside Israel, the so-called "Israeli Arabs," are under increasing threat of removal. A majority of the public feels that Israel must become an ethnically pure nation - only Jewish stock - a chilling resemblance to Germany in the 1930s.

Even so, Pappe holds out hope that his country can go beyond its racism and build on the personal affections that still exist between many Jewish and Muslim and Christian and non-religious citizens of Israel. He doesn't predict what specific methods might effect the bringing together of so many former antagonists. But he knows that only greater sorrow will ensue if it doesn't happen.

Amazing Place

Amazing place, how sweet the ground -Whose angel blesses me -I touch the moss when I bow me down -I climb a flowering tree!

Toilet Training

The retention of stoolsis a social behaviorimposed on a sensual body.

Don't look like a fool!Don't lose Father's favor!Hold them in 'til you sit on the potty!

The Inexhaustible Topic KJ –

Significant comment by Srila Prabhupad - how is it that someone so specific can also be all-pervasive? The absolute encompasses all particulars - that's understandable. But how can the absolute also be one particular entity? Of course, if God is all-powerful, then God can do or be whatever God wants to do or be. That's one angle on the situation - looking at it from the position of the almighty. Another view, more interesting to me, starts from the position of the cowherd boy in Vrindaban. That specific person, with all his specific characteristics and activities, is the ultimate truth. The similarity between Krishna's being and what the existentialists call contingency, or between Krishna's being and what Buddhists call suchness, encourages me to see the underlying divinity of all conditional states. Krishna enters into the conditional universe and blesses it, sanctifies it, by his presence. Moreover, as Arjuna says in chapter 11, Krishna enters into every atom and into all the space between the atoms. In the final estimation, the universe is Krishna, and all the particles and combinations of particles are Krishna. Krishna is everything and everything is Krishna. Still, as Prabhupad once said when asked if we are all God, "Yes, we are little Gods and Krishna is the big God." We are particles and Krishna is the whole substance - playing the part of a particle. The last step is to realize that even in the absolute state, Krishna is a specific, particular person, which of course is, as Prabhupad says, "very difficult for the ordinary person to understand."

- D

KJ –

No harm in taking Prabhupad literally. He literally means that Krishna exists in that familiar form we all know and love as the source of all the other God-forms. It's not a lot of forms coming out of a bright light. That would imply the bright light

is spiritual and the forms are material, as you had thought. Nope. For Prabhupad and the Vaishnavas, the bright light is the atmosphere of the spiritual world - emanating from Krishna's body.

ete camsa-kalah pumsah krsnas tu bhagavan svayam indrari-vyakulam lokam mrdayanti yuge yuge

"All the lists of the incarnations of Godhead submitted herewith are either plenary expansions or parts of the plenary expansions of the Supreme Godhead, but Krsna is the Supreme Personality of Godhead Himself." (Bhagavata Purana .3.28)

That person, that form, is the first hypostasis. No other reality precedes that person.

So the avatar forms in the material world are not material forms. They are descents (avatara) of the spiritual forms. When Krishna himself descends, he brings his spiritual abode & associates with him too. Thus the town of Vrindaban has its secret spiritual identity, visible only to the purest devotees.

I know it's difficult to make the switch. Instead of the formless giving birth to form, we have form manifesting the formless. Perhaps it depends on a shift in our understanding of love. For the Voidist, love is an impersonal state without a specific object. For the Vaishnava, love is a personal state with a specific object.

For my drone music, I start with something concrete - a name, an instrument - and employ it in such a way as to generate a formless vibration. Form gives rise to the formless. Traditionally, the drone is a formless background over which a form, a melodic pattern, is laid. The form is the focus. For me, the form creates the formless drone, which is the focus. My music emphasizes the formless, because I want it to convey a feeling of peace. Nonetheless, that formlessness is worked up out of a form. Of course, the drone is not really formless. It has a vibratory pattern of its own, otherwise it would have no appeal for the ear. So even the formless has form - just a different kind of form.

- D

KJ –

When I first started attending events at 26 Second Avenue, and listening to Prabhupad's talks, I was a dedicated Voidist. Voidism appealed to me for many reasons. I considered Prabhupad's personalist devotion to be OK for simple-minded village folk, but not for a highly educated snoot like me! Still, I liked the kirtans, so I stuck around. So, my karmic package, as you put it, that is, what I felt comfortable with as an expression of my body-mind, included Voidism (i.e., Zen, Taoism, advaita, etc.) as its spiritual-philosophical element.

But things changed. The kirtans had an effect on me. Prabhupad had an effect on me. His personality did, and his words did. I was experiencing something deeper inside me than I'd felt before. It drove down deeper than the body-mind, straight to the soul. It was like drinking a cup of nectar that had been waiting there almost forever for me. It opened up a world I'd never known about, no matter how much I'd read, or ever could read. It was much more substantial than any psychedelic drug experience. It was a real place, my actual place of habitation, which I could see better and better as the fog of illusion was gradually blown away by the winds of sadhana.

Of course as time has gone by, I've learned that I must take account of my body-mind - I must engage that "karmic package" in devotional service, not just attempt to toss it away. That was part of Prabhupad's teaching too. So here I have a body-mind that tends toward a rather abstract impersonalism, and a soul that exults in a juicy personalism! What's going on now is the soul using a (slightly) retooled body-mind as a vehicle to travel to Krishna's lotus feet. So, to respond directly to your suggestion that Prabhupad's brand of spirituality just happens to resonate with my karmic package - well, it didn't at all at first, and even now there are some dissonances. For instance, I feel more at home with East Asian culture than South Asian culture. The Chinese and Japanese feel cleaner and neater to me, and India feels greasy and messy. (I make no claim for the "objective truth" of that impression.) And even more, I feel a kinship with the native cultures of the Western Hemisphere.

Still, despite my karmic package's tendencies, the soul package has no doubts.

- D

KJ –

Yes, one must perform one's svadharma, even in the process of self-realization. Still, the Yoga Sutras 1.23 to 1.29 do imply that surrender to God (isvara pranidhanad ) by intoning OM (tasya vacakah pranavah - taj japas tad artha bhavanam) will remove all obstacles (antaraya) - that is, the vritti, the controlling or stilling of which is the purpose of yoga, according to Patanjali. That surrender is presented by Patanjali after he breezes through some processes suited for different kinds of people. Surrender to God has nothing to do with our body-mind type, our svadharma, our karmic package. Even though it's true that only those who desire to go beyond their "karma-dharma" will enter fully into the process of surrender, nevertheless, the intonation of OM "while understanding its purpose (artha)" is the quickest way to gain that desire. Of course, as a Chaitanyaite, I would expand Patanjali by also advocating the intonation of names of God such as the Hare Krishna mantra.

- D

KJ –

I feel that reality is a mystery that can be seen differently from different angles of view. Each of us has a unique view of it. I don't like to compare people's "levels of attainment." There is not only one single system of measurement, except if it's God's system. But that is a mystery to us. Everyone is a child of God and is related to God. Sub specie aeternitas all is well.

- D

KJ –

That's wonderful news - your new job! Sounds excellent.

True, it seems contradictory to say that both She and He can be the source, the foundation, the supporter, infinite, without

beginning or end. But Prabhupad often said that there's no difference between Radha and Krishna. The Vaishnava texts on the subject almost always assert that Krishna is the source of Radha - though in language that introduces ambiguity. For instance, if Radha is the "internal potency" of Krishna, his "pleasure potency," and if Krishna is ruled by her love and indeed is ruled by the love of all pure devotees, and if Radha is the "emblem of devotion," then who's controlling who? I have concluded that Love is the first hypostasis, and Love is She, is the Goddess, is Radha, is Durga, is Kali, is Mother Earth. Just as the soul, which is "inside" me, is the real me, so the Pleasure Potency, which is "inside" Krishna, is the real Ultimate, and her name is Radha. Jai Radhe! Ah, but then what does She want us to do? She wants us to join her in her worship of Krishna, join her in her devotion to God. "This is my Father's world, and to my listening ears, all Nature sings, and round me rings, the music of the spheres." (Unitarian Sunday School song) That's her music. As I put it in a Pandevotional way, Let us join Mother Nature in her worship of God. She wants us to do that, and She's the boss.

- D

The above entry is the most recently discovered text from the corpus of short writings we are presenting here as Beltashazam's Doxologies.

© 2009 Daniel Clark

Beltashazam's Doxologies

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Transcript of Beltashazam's Doxologies