MZ, Sorry for my tardiness. The wife threatened me with lawyers if I didn't get off of FFL for a day and take her to her favourite SPA in Napa. Yes, her idea of a Monday long weekend starts the previous Wednesday. She still does TM straight up and loves Maharishi so what can I do. I've kept her abreast of your return performance. Yesterday we drove past a photocopy service that had two large images of Zebras in the window. The one on the left was standard black and white but the one of the right was multi-coloured and fantastic. She asked me which one I thought resembled my friend the MZ the most. I said, duhhhhhh, of course the one on the right! She suggested that a number of us on FFL consider customizing a 12 step program for FFL posting recovery, its obviously addicting. She's a cheeky sod although I love her to bits. Sounds a bit like Sunday football envy, or couch quarter backing to me. I have noticed that I'm not the only poster that has been speaking with his partner about you. I think this is all good.
I'm in total agreement that from this point forward (except for my heart felt thanks to the poster with the great ideas for the "cards from the chopper" part of the program) TASTELESS MANAGEMENT Inc. negotiations for the upcoming "Call No Man Master (particularly if there is no money in it)" Tour" is offline and if it comes up in any post it's strictly symbolic or metaphoric, although I plan to dust off my Jung, Joseph Campbell and "Finnegan's Wake" to keep up wit you. I haven't understood those folks since my last psychedelic 40+ years ago (more on that in my upcoming Ayahuasca post). I've given it plenty of thought and I think you're right that AuthFriend was right that smoked salmon might be tasty on Sunday but Monday through Friday it starts to smell fishy and heaven forbid a bit stale. Frankly, the wife thinks AuthFriend is the only Normie on FFL and said if it wasn't for AuthFriends presence on FFL she would insist I start on my first step ASAP. I guess something like "I'm powerless over FFL and it makes my life unmanageable"! So from here forward MX its straight shooting for me. As a demonstration of my sincerity please see my responses below. RESPONSE: Sleep has never been the same since I first 'transcended. And it got a lot more complicated and problematic after Arosa. Sleep was always threatening to invade me once I really got into TM. Like a kind of death fatigue in my brain. A close friend of mine came up with the idea that when a person transcends through TM, what is really going on is that the mantra (a Vedic god of some sort) is actually possessing the sleep function in the brain, the most INNOCENT experiential context we have. What he meant by this was that the mechanism which permits us to fall asleep, that mechanism is at the very essence of the TM experience. In other words, the mantra (conceived—sure, go for the metophorical—as a living being) is able to leverage off of this wonderful sleep mechanism, to convince the body (and the person) that they are having a mystical experience. For me, it fits, because to repeat myself, the most innocent experience I know of is how I fall asleep. That quality of experience bears an uncanny resemblance to the experience of transcending. I believe, therefore, there is merit in this thesis (that the two experiences: transcendence and sleep are mingled together ever after that). TM entails the perfect annexation of the innocent sleep function in the brain. And this would explain how permanently screwed up my sleep function has become since I went whole hog with the MMY thing (TM and everything that was added). Don't get me wrong: I love sleep, but before TM, when I was awake (having had a good night's sleep) I NEVER HAD TO THINK ABOUT SLEEP. For the last forty plus years, even while awake THE TM CONTEXT IS THERE, which is to say, sleepiness, or potential sleepiness, in a mystical from co-exists with my waking state. Any of this, at least conceptually, make sense to you? MZ, this makes total sense to me. When I started transcending 41+ years ago I thought it was the sweetest thing since mescaline. My first thought was "how the hell can I package and sell this", I was 18 at the time. Then I opened my eyes and remembered the $20 smackers I had paid (the inflation on TM fees reminds me of the Wiemar) and realized some crafty bugger had got there before me. This began a very profitable 6 year relationship with his Holiness. But as I think you're saying, over the years, it has changed and frankly what happens now is still sweet but seems more like that delicious feeling i get went dropping of to sleep. In fact, it's so much like dropping off to sleep that many times I come to because the wife (we meditate together) pokes me in the ribs and tells me I'm snoring. My wife's initiator (a mother divine, would't accept anything less) told my wife that I'd been meditating so long that she (my wife) was probably getting a darshanic boost just meditating with me in the same room. My wife rolled her eyes and said "you're kidding right". My wife has not been meditating very long and has very dramatic transcending experiences (thank God, no oneness yet or she'd be a bear to live with) and frankly if I didn't know better I say she is a bit of a heavy un-stresser! Obviously, she's getting some darshanic lift from me, hell I figure just the fact I know someone in UC, past or present, must give her some lift. Any way back to the point. I think you're on to something wih this sleep thing. I'm wondering if I could be in the 4th state and snore? I know some smart ass is going to ask if I witness my snoring. So to get that out of the way, I can't remember and I don't think that nessasaryily precludes anything the 4th state. According to the Sasha Shulgin rating scale a 4th level experience doesn't have to be remembered. * PLUS FOUR (++++) A rare and precious transcendental state, which has been called a 'peak experience', a 'religious experience,' 'divine transformation,' a 'state of Samādhi' and many other names in other cultures. It is not connected to the +1, +2, and +3 of the measuring of a drug's intensity. It is a state of bliss, a participation mystique, a connectedness with both the interior and exterior universes, which has come about after the ingestion of a psychedelic drug, but which is not necessarily repeatable with a subsequent ingestion of that same drug. If a drug (or technique or process) were ever to be discovered which would consistently produce a plus four experience in all human beings, it is conceivable that it would signal the ultimate evolution, and perhaps the end, of the human experiment. – Alexander Shulgin, PiHKAL, 1991 So I'm thinking the wife is getting lift even if I'm snoring. Curious what you think? Of course, when I was younger I had none of these issues. I used transcend and back clearly with the best of them. Now someone like Nabby is going to suggest I get my meditation checked. Unfortunately I don't think this would work because Saraswati and I parted company some time ago. I don't mean metaphorically as in transcending or something. Don't get me wrong I still use the TM technique but I've gone a little Thai Buddhist in that I use the effortless beauty of the TM technique but I have replaced Saraswati with my breath. Works like a hot dam! Don't get me wrong, I'm still enough of a de-certified initiator that when Saraswati comes, which she does inevitably when I drop off to sleep, I make her welcome, effortlessly and soon she moves on to greener pastures. Most of the time when I realize I'm thinking, usually about sex or money, I gently bring my attention back to my breathing and vavoom I drop off to sleep (I mean I transcend). I've found TM works with just about everything. For a while, you'll like this MZ, I used YAHWEH, and again it worked great. Only thing with Yahweh is that I started to feel all old testament and frankly it was a bit too dramatic for me. Actually, I think it may of resulted in one of my divorces when I caught one of the ex's flirting around with our hispanic gardener. And god that was expensive. So no more old testament for me. Have you tried any thing like this MZ? As all the teachers know Maharishi's teaching was a bit of a Glen Gould (for the un-enlightened, not for you RC, he wasn't a zombie) on BrahmanandaSaraswati and the Holy Tradition method. The traditional method is more interactive where the pupil is asked who their fav deity is and the mantra is given accordingly. So I'm wondering MZ if you have considered picking an old testament mantra (i assume your marriage is stable)- I pick the old testament as you mentioned you like Mel's work- and this could help you get some sleep? It worked wonders with me. God, talk about long winded. You see what happens with me when I go straight. Let us proceed, then. BP: 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 RESPONSE: Wagner—especially Ride of the Valkyries [this version you sent me: perfect]—is out. All that magnificent, disturbing, Teutonic romanticism—too much reminds me of Arosa. But Bach? That might be a little pretentious of me. Lady Gaga, Bob: the only way to go. Although have no idea how I/we would meld her selfless music with my egotisicalpreachin'. Duvall, by the way, he's always so damn good, isn't he? The idea of playing R of the V in Apocalypse Now with those helicopter gunships roaring overhead: brilliant. Wagner will always be more or less associated with this for me. [The ironic truth of the Vietnam War—at least as expressed by Ford Coppola:—its incongruity, its hopelessness, its heroic and corrupted confusion—gets said viscerally through Wagner.] I have no listening experience with the Lady Gaga other than exposure through my 13 year old. But from what I've read here on FFL I'm going to change that. In may be the ticket to get my 13 year old to stop laughing at me for listening to Hanna Montana, which was just an attempt to understand my daughter, better. This Lady Gaga may be the source of the "you're so lame and yesterday" taunts thrown at my by my daughter. I thought she was talking about MACCA's problems with Yoko or something. Does Yoko listen to Lady Gaga, someone told me yes. No, I will dive deep within this afternoon—get to the 'source of thought'—ingratiate myself with Guru Dev—and get back to you. Please keep me posted on this. I have some questions for Guru Dev and his feelings about the Gould variations as well. The Tour is off. (Wait 'till my De-enlightenment produces a "simple, natural, mechanical technique"—For what? For getting deprogrammed from Transcendental Meditation and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi—without any bitterness left over. No, better than this: discovering a mental and SCIENTIFIC procedure that can transform one's EVOLUTION under MMY and TM into the experience of living off of a sense of knowingness that there IS no reality out there to know, other than the reality of knowing this.) I hear you! The main thing is that I can now say I'm your manager, metaphorically speaking! How's that for a close? And PERHAPS a future revelation of what the Death Experience is going to be like—for each person personally. Now that would be something. Maharishi, as I have said elsewhere here, I think he got more than he bargained for when he faced the music. He did not "get off the wheel of death and rebirth". But I haven't even begun to figure that guy out. But that he still exists as an individual? I am sure of it. And it ain't pretty. Something like that, Bob. Meanwhile the "walking on the sunshine" has just the right effect on me. And I thank you for your felicitous posts. I have to go, we can pick this up in another post. The wife is up and she's a bear till she meditates. She needs me to meditate with her. I'm sure my snoring is helping her transcend and just won't admit it. One last thing MZ. As I think you figured out, I'm a globalist and I love everything eastern and everything western although not equally and definitely not unconditionally, my Jack Russell is the only one that gets that treatment. So in my next post I want to pick up on this "Elvis has left the building" thinking of yours. If I thought for a minute that Elvis had left the building I would be thinking more about a rope for myself rather than my next spa treatment. So until then LOL. _
