MZ, I'm walking on sunshine. I'm so pleased that like us other oldies on the blog you're back in action after a goods nights rest. I intentionally avoid the word sleep as I'm hoping you didn't give up all the perks when you DE-enlightened.
I'm posting to assure you that there will be no repeats in our upcoming "Great Master-less Tour". As tempting as it would be to repeat the previous chopper event we're going LARGE which calls for large ideas. That's why FFL is the place to work out the kinks, think of it as an out of towner before we open on Broadway. So for our chopper event I'm thinking some hybrid of Captain Duvall in Apocalypse Now and Abbie Hoffman at the NYSE. Of course the music won't work, I see you more Bach than "Ride of the Valkyries". And course for Abbie's part of throwing US dollars on the exchange floor won't work either. These days, to get any ones attention we'd have to throw so many dollars out we might hurt someone. I'm thinking more Kuwati Dinars or something. We did invade that place didn't we? There must be a few bags stored somewhere. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V92OBNsQgxU Unfortunately I have some bad news although no way a deal breaker. I spoke to our backers. I won't confirm if the Kaplan's are involved. No way on the trailer Bigger than Will Smith's. My God, that was longer than a Manhattan block! They want to assure you though its not the cost (count your fingers) its that so many things could go wrong with the press. If it became an item we'd have follow Will' lead and they just can't see you out there glad handing the great unwashed. I think they may have a point. So we're wondering if the top floor of the Plaza would work? Of course with the assurance that you won't bump into Charlie Sheen is in the hallway brawling with some hookers. MZ, we're going to make mince meat of his tweeter record. http://www.businessinsider.com/will-smith-trailer-2011-5 I loved your insights on money. Have you read "Money And The Meaning of Life" by Jacob Needleman. Highly recommend. I don't think he's been baptized, but I think he has a firm grip on the old testament. . http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/09/meaning.html ________________________________ From: maskedzebra <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tue, June 28, 2011 12:00:33 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: another question for MZ, and maybe William of Occam --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Sal Sunshine <salsunshine@...> wrote: > > On Jun 27, 2011, at 3:09 PM, maskedzebra wrote: > > > I am, however, going to ask you to slow down on the tour preparations. > > That's >a pretty big move for this willed introvert (once exuberant performer). > > Never mind the tour, mz~~could you just do another > helicopter drop? That was one of the coolest sights > I've ever seen on the MUM campus. That was real, > man. It's definitely high time for a repeat. RESPONSE: Yeah, it was inspired (came out of UC, remember). Only trouble was that, as I remember, the letters were dropped not exactly when everyone was emerging from the Domes, but a little before then. This meant the event was not timed perfectly, and even that much of what was dropped was scooped up before (a clarion call from the enlightened man) could be read—and the TM reformation put into motion. But Beatle music was blasting loudly, and it was one moment that seemed to be breaking into the mind-locked set in the TMO. I was not up there in the helicopter, however—I left that to two of my top disciples (by the way, even though I was, I suppose, a cult leader, everyone had total mental freedom to THINK WHATEVER THEY WISHED AND ACT HOWEVER THEY SAW FIT [see how defensive an ex-UC guy can get? Take it easy, MZ]. But upon hearing about the event, there was a kind of burst of happy energy that was still resonating—let me, try it, Sal:—through the universe! But as for a much wished-for repeat, just on principle I would never (and did not when enlightened) repeat anything I did. We'd have to come up with something else. And besides, the sense of silent defeatedness inside the TMO—unrecognized, denied as it is—is in a pretty advanced state these days—even as I notice that scientific studies touting TM for reducing tension continue to be published. Defeatedness here means: no chance of enlightenment, no chance of inner permanent happiness, no hovering, no reduction in the inward neurotic existential tension of being a human being, no visible 'Support of Nature' (although that certainly WAS once there), no sense of spiritual romance; no expectation of a wonderful breakthrough in one's spiritual progress, no innocent enthusiasm for TM, growing embarrassment about the personal reputation of Maharishi; faith as a substitute for experience—I am sure you are as familiar with all this as I am, Sal. There's not the same uptight, repressed, trance-like context to arouse and provoke as there was back there in 1983. I had expected the helicopter (and the Beatle music) to create a space for a different kind of initiation. Making Things Personal. But I must get a grip here, Sal—or I am likely to go off. When I came up with the helicopter drop-off idea, I was still in love with Maharishi, and convinced that the Movement only had to become the beneficiary of my enlightenment. Then we really could go ahead and change the world. (Because of the integration of West and East.) Me and the people who were with me (mostly initiators loyal to MMY) had created out own spiritual context inside the universe, and we were familiar with that universe. It was just the TM universe with a difference: The personal side of reality fused with the impersonal side. Of course in the end in the most profound sense, even this was BS. As I had to discover the hard way. By the way, Maharishi held off—for 6 years—putting any kind of obstacle in my way, as I continued to do my Western enlightenment thing. Then under the imperative of the law, he was forced to show his hand—and, I believe against his will, he refused to endorse my enlightenment. Have I gone on too long here, Sal? Gotta watch that unconscious narcissism. For me, there at MUM, THERE'S NOTHING TO STRIKE AT ANYMORE. It's not as if the universe is threatened to be taken over by Bevan—but at one time, in my experience at least, it seemed that MMY and TM and the TMO WAS going to take over the universe. And that helicopter drop-off with the Beatle music blaring was my attempt to infuse soul into this cosmic take-over—before it was too late. I guess, from what you say here, you were THERE? I was pretty goddamn provocative and fearless in those days. But yes, this was one of the better ideas I had—but I was, believe it or not, still in love with Maharishi and certain he, secretly, approved of my carrying out this act of celebratory confrontation of his moribund Movement. > > > But if you can guarantee the cash up front, I might consider it. > > Now you're talking like a true TMer! Forget mantras, > we *know* what's important, right? RESPONSE: Look, Sal, the money is going to have to be VERY GOOD indeed to yank me out of my forced seclusion. But yes, the matter of how much money is offered up front and guaranteed, this will be the determinative in whether I give the green light to Bob or not. Money is a kind of poetry as one American writer said. But then Lady Gaga says: "I hate money!"—and I like Gaga better than that poet. Maharishi, well, he had a metaphysical obsession with money, as if something that could almost provide personal immortality. Maharishi, at some level, I believe was ONLY about money. Money understood in the most recondite and esoteric way. The sublimated presence of God. > > > But in the meantime let me do a Novena on it, and then pay for a Yagya to > > be >done by the sages in India. I'll put in a fast and some silence while I'm at >it. >And, I promise you, DO MY PROGRAM. > > Aren't you forgetting the tarot cards and salt over > the shoulder? RESPONSE: Sounds like you mocking my ritualisms to get the gods on my side. I would never consider tarot cards—that's going over the line, Sal. Spiritualism and all that: even Maharishi disapproved of this—and said so in his Science of Being. Stick with the Novena and the Yagya I think. Knock off the rest. Oh, by the way, Sal, could you contribute to the fund to get those Hindu guys to do that MZ Tour yagya? Don't bother letting me know; you can just tell my manager: Bob. (And I haven't even met him!—Ah, the lure of fame.) > > I've getting a little nervous that well before the week is out, I will find >myself approaching twelve o'clock (50 posts), and therefore will leave many of >my dear readers frustrated—and imperilled by their ignorance. > > mz, that is thoughtful of you to consider your many > devoted readers here~~but, as the song says, if > you post out early, well...WE WILL SURVIVE. RESPONSE: That threat, it is designed to force people into realizing just what it would be like for me to, as you say, "post out early". The loss, I mean. Seriously, Sal, it has been quite an amazing experience posting on this blog. I haven't (I've already said this somewhere else here) been hooked on a context like I am here since I was certain Maharishi and TM were better than the Second Coming.—I mean it doesn't really approach that; but it seems to be a little like it—I mean in the sense of intimacy and familiarity with persons who, somehow (now more unconsciously I must suppose), have been part of the same dream and then disillusionment. But inside the dream still carries with it some unresolved, unarticulated meaning—and posting here gets to remind me of that dream, and its lasting effect on all of us. Have I suddenly become too credulous and sentimental here, Sal? I hope not. No, SOMETHING REAL IS HERE ON THIS BLOG. I am grateful to Rick for inviting me to post—obviously much more so than when I first received his invitation. > > > > (Yes, you are right: this means I WILL continue to post. > > Whew. RESPONSE: Please tell me that "Whew" was non-ironic, Sal. Or if it WAS ironic, it was ironic to conceal how seriously traumatized you were at the thought of the precipitate exit of MZ. > > > Reason? It's that CurtisDeltaBlues fella—if he weren't on this blog I never >even would have begun to post—let alone be persuaded to stay with it for a >while >longer. I like that guy, even though I only know him from his posts—and his >music via video.) > > Curtis is the real deal. RESPONSE: Being a Canadian, I have had (except inside the Movement) limited contact with Americans (although there were quite a number who joined up after I first hit Fairfield in the summer of 1982). But there is SOMETHING about Curtis that seems solid, honest, strong, and true—not to say wonderfully intelligent and funny and wise. Now if HE told me he went into Unity Consciousness (I mean sometime in the immediate future) I think I would have to reconsider—and maybe give it another try—under his tutelage. > > > But, who knows why? you have decided to put the welcome mat out for me, and >believe me, I appreciate it. I can keep my stiletto in my pocket (only used >for >defensive purposes of course) when writing to you. No tricky stick-handling—or >hard body-checks. > > > > Yeah, that Maharishi guy, he was SOMETHING ELSE. No one yet has defined him >in terms of how he appears in eternity (you know, at the level of the actual: >where things get DONE in creation)—like what kind of greeting he got when he >went through his dying. No doubt about it, the shrewdest, most hardball, >brilliant (in more than an intellectual sense), slyly egotistical, beautiful, >seductive human being for two thousand years. > > Yes, MMY and Jesus~~sooner or later their > names will almost certainly become interchangeable. RESPONSE: Well, all kidding aside, Sal; I think you right. Only in the case of MMY, he is the anti-Jesus. A beguiling beyond all reckoning IMITATION of the real thing (Jesus). But that guy Jesus WhereTF IS he? Not to be found (by any of my metaphysical rummaging around the universe, anyway). Thus (since I was born anyhow) only MMY. Now that he's dead (and gradually acquiring the odour of disgrace) looks as if we are entirely here in the universe ON OUR OWN. There ain't no guideposts—spiritually: I think that's the word. It was (I speak for myself) either Maharishi or it was nothing. And for now I am left with the nothing—except I can imagine and project what it must have been like when Francis and Teresa walked the earth. The Church was real then—that is, God, made it ontologically possible to know that He had an organ of revelation and teaching: it was the Church. Blah blah blah. His Church, well he has abandoned it, hasn't it? Private belief inserted there; would never try to ARGUE for the truth of this assertion. It's just fake nostalgia I guess. Because in reading Catholic philosophers—like Aquinas—I find myself intuiting the cosmos as they experienced it—I sort of read this off of their writing. It's not the universe you and I were born into. Which makes Gaga more relevant somehow than any would-be Catholic saint nowadays (I don't think there are any. God doesn't make saints anymore. He makes Maharishis.). Oh dear, Sal; you must forgive me. I wish I had the helicopter faith still inside me. But here I am riding my favourite little hobbyhorse (posthumous Catholicism). I must stop. > > > > And more stage presence than anyone other than Jesus. But for all this, not > > a >good man, I think. Not, then, loved by God (wherever he is, whatever he's >doing). But so far, it seems, my life has pretty much been all about him—and >then getting the hate on for him. The best proof of God it seems to me (in >this >era at least: since we were born) is the very fact of the existence of someone >like Maharishi, for, like no one else could—or ever did since Christ—he made >you >feel: "This is It!"—he gave me (and you I must believe)—at least in the >beginning—the best version of what could be the TRUTH—measured by >EXPERIENCE—that was possible. Once he went down (sort of disgracing himself at >the end: becoming slightly mad and touched) then there was no one. All of us >former initiators are living in the negative or ambivalent (or for some, >positive) legacy of Maharishi. We can't help it. It sets us apart from the >rest >of humanity. A different form I guess of the mark of the beast. To try on >another metaphor. > > > > About that Turq guy, i am sure he'll put me on my guard soon enough, but >given your tacit warning, I think he must be doing a rope-a-dope, because but >so >far at least, I don't get the feeling he is about to surprise me with a fast >uppercut. No blows landed so far. But, based upon your implicit estimation of >him, I'll be watching for the knock-out punch. > > Turq is the real deal too~~he always saves his best > for when you're not looking for it. RESPONSE: You are about the third person who has warned me about the formidable and dangerous (if he should challenge you) Turq, whereas I, in sizing him up from his posts in response to me, have found him unthreatening. But obviously I have formed false judgment of his powers and his integrity. I will be on my guard so that I do not—after this (and after Bob's Cassandra-like concern—after reading that overwrought post of yesterday to Ravi) underestimate my foe. > > Sal RESPONSE: Thanks, Sal! Something about writing into you got me going. It was good. >
