Dear Robin, I was for some strange reason expecting an email from you, don't ask me why :-). I'm up and that should explain it.
Well let's skip over Rajneesh since he is not alive and my loving him doesn't result in any comparisons with him since I understand his expression is limited by his personality and not everyone will like him and has to like him. He is one among the many expressions of the divine. I will also have similar problems because the expression will be filtered through my personality, some will love it, some will get disgusted by it and I realize that my audience, considering it somehow manifests, will actually be not too big. I guess you must have clearly deduced the audience and the market I am targeting. My special-ness in my childhood was all my mom's and obviously I neither expected nor cared for it. That she could be so ordinary, so screwed up in her marital life, yet have this stubborn, illogical, irrational notion that her younger son Ravi was somehow special and she somehow had the cooperation of her older children as well. I was too blissed out when I was young. The reason I mentioned always getting the window seat on my batgap interview was that as soon as my enlightenment hit, I felt like the 3 year old sitting on the moving train blissed out as I rode the train to work and all my memories flooded back. Plus prior to my enlightenment I would suffer, questioning myself at my inability to just let go and demanding, challenging myself to simply be, like when I was 3 - which only made it more tougher. You already know my views on creator and creation, that I am the creator enjoying my creation through the filter of the personality known as Ravi, through Robin and through all others. Yet I'm a part of my creation and have to follow the rules that I set into motion. This drama all ends at dissolution somehow, or may be never ends, who cares, just like the dreamer who constructs his dreams and also stars in it including himself. The dreamer may wake up or he may just continue. Now coming to the most important part of the question. Am I only this cosmic showman, as Bob said, mocking irreverently at my own creation somehow challenging others to see what I see myself? The answer is a BIG NO. This side of myself comes out predominantly on FFL and with people I love, in a restrained form with others depending on the energy and the receptivity of the person I'm interacting with. This manic, extroverted side seems to only come out as I interact with others, say personally or on FFL. Personally is much better as the energy is more apparent to others, that was indeed the reason for making those videos since I was on a phone with a dear woman friend of mine and I wondered how interesting it would be if people on FFL could see that my emails are not products of what they judge as anger, being defensive. If you could spend a day with me you would see that I go to bed as an ordinary man, albeit very late, stretching my day as long as possible till my body is tired or the clock indicates 2:30 am. I alternate in dream, deep sleep, ignorant state, as soon as I wake up I immediately recall myself, the mind, intellect starts running yet I witness all of it. I make a mad rush to work so I don't miss the 9:45 am meeting, if I'm late I hope I don't get noticed by the manager :-). I spend my work in anonymity (of my enlightenment by others), others appreciate my experience, my value, I might spend time on my iPhone with all FFL emails, Facebook. I do smile, greet, talk a lot to the greeters downstairs - this being a high profile building. On some days I am very high as soon as I start my day, on other days it slowly builds and surely by afternoon I'm high and then it starts getting harder to work, much more so in the last month say. And then I start getting more extroverted, smile and laugh more. I drive for a couple of hours listening to my music, getting into a deep sorrowful melancholy or a crazy blissful laughing high. You might see me spending my evening talking to friends, my family, my older kid, getting irritated at my ex when she calls rarely :-), cribbing about the amount of money I have to pay every month, complain about my ex or her treatment of kids. Or discuss mundane events or listen to purely mundane stuff. Then I laugh as people think I'm somehow attached to all my drama, the samsaara, the relative, the accidental. As I complain, talk about mundane events I also remind them that I'm utterly relaxed and detached. But lot of them have hard time believing that I'm indeed detached :-), because I'm pretty serious when indulging in the relative, mundane. Last Friday I attended my Guru's event and the next night with one of my friends, who is just 28 and enjoying life, visited a night club and a gentleman's club as well. Though I watched the ladies and I politely declined all of their lap dance offers with small talk and tips. One of the ladies started her usual talk by asking me to relaxed, and when I responded that I am always utterly relaxed, she nodded in agreement that I indeed was completely relaxed. :-) So I can only record videos during my extroverted, blissful, manic energy times. My deeply introverted, depressive states happen when I'm listening to music or spontaneously. You have to see that this state doesn't go well with recording myself. So these are absent to you and the world. So someone else has to do the recording because I'm thoroughly absorbed and some times my crying is so bad that I'm glad no one's around because they would most likely call 911 because the intensity of my anguish will unnerve anyone. Yet I'm deeply aware, my intellect is sometimes judging, laughing. But after I'm done I am blissful. I also get moved by music, animals, little children, any kind of sensitive, feeling, sorrowful situation yet there is a sense of detachment. So all these states are highly impersonal yet they do appear utterly personal to the people who I'm communicating with. So I'm quite ordinary as well Robin. On a relative level I'm meeting the ever changing relative, the maaya in its pristine, purity, totally alert, aware, unfazed. Then I have my desires as well, I try hitting on women but then women are smart, they detect the detached playfulness and can clearly see I at some deeper level don't need them. I need money so I can support my mother, my alimony and my kids. My inability to keep my expenses under control, my speeding tickets, my higher insurance, my car needs to be fixed, my dishwasher disposal is stuck..OMG..the relative is a big fucking mess yet it's all so blissful. Hope this answers your questions. Already - it's a too long message as I have gone with a free flowing response. Plus it's too late now and my body is demanding rest. ________________________________ From: maskedzebra <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sun, December 4, 2011 3:08:08 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] A Personal Letter to Ravi Yogi (Dr Ravi Chivukula) Dear Ravi, You are such a positive guy. By this I mean that with all your fooling around and shameless antics, you never show to me that, no matter how extreme you get, how far you go, that something nasty escapes from you and shows itself. That just might make you unique. To be as audacious and unafraid as you are, and yet never to express something dark and unhappy inside of you, that is a feat which needs explaining. You are, in effect, defying human nature as we know it, as history knows it. Now, if what I have said is true: that you are 'being Ravi' in this outrageous and incurable way, and in your lavish spontaneity and unabashed mocking you remain a force of intelligence, energy, and delight—no matter how much you cross the line, and transgress all norms of decency and protocol (what we Westerns assume are the norms anyway)—then the question comes on: *How is this possible*? How can a human being be so crazy, so playful, so insulting, so unusual—seeming to exist and act inside a context which cannot be accessed by any other person on the planet (Met, ever, anyone like you, Ravi? I think not—no Guru either: too bad you can't sense what an idiot your friend Rajneesh is—perhaps less so now that he has sobered up)—and yet still seem flesh, bone, and blood—human? Now if you are the Creator of the universe, this might in some sense make sense—although I would feel the Creator was not showing all that I would wish him to be (you being him); but as it is, I doubt when you did not exist, you created yourself out of that nothingness. You clearly are not the author of your breathing, nor how you developed as a foetus in the womb, and then came out into the world as a special baby—always given the window seat on the train. Your existence precedes your essence. May I say that? So, then, the question for me becomes: what is going on here with this Ravi Yogi fellow? *How does he fit into the universe*? What should I make of him? What should be my response to him? How does the universe feel about Ravi Yogi? These are questions for which I seek answers. And I know you can't help me in this. So I am going to try something out here, Ravi. Did you listen to Sade's "Your Love is King"? [one of the Price videos] Because if you did, the tenderness and poignancy of that song cannot be mocked. Even if you are in the midst of one of your pirouettes of perfect nonsense and delight and rudeness, you have to be stopped by that song—the rendition by Sade on that video. Now if your context of being a yogi will not permit you to suddenly be stilled and made serious by that song—disrupting your creative and unconditioned routine—then I have, have I not, found a limitation? Now it is quite possible that you could maintain to me that you refuse under inspiration to put the breaks on—exteriorly—but this does not mean that interiorly you miss the beauty and sweetness of Sade when she sings this song. Is this the case, then Ravi, that sometimes while acting externally as the divine enlightened clown of Creation—whose purpose nevertheless is quite serious—we'll get to that in a moment—you are able, simultaneously to entertain an internal experience—particularly in the realm of suffering, tragedy, sorrow, affection, beauty—which seemingly is at odds with the ongoing performance—which I assume never ceases? You see, Ravi, I am looking past the actor Ravi, and trying to examine the ingredients that make up who Ravi Yogi is. Those ingredients for the time being in your enlightened state are in the service of the performance you give consistently here at FFL—and from what you tell us, in the rest of your life as well. You never walk off stage, take off the make-up and the mask and return to a non-performing life. Well, I am interested in the proposition as to whether the ingredients that constitute Ravi's being, his personality, his whole person, could be rearranged in such a way that Ravi could, while still retaining his special state of consciousness, discover within himself a whole different mode of self-expression, one which would, while retaining his originality and freshness and brilliance, nevertheless result in a completely different presentation of himself. Now if your experience of Sade was not one which deprived you of the quality of appreciation that I think the rest of us more sober and controlled persons felt, then my point really becomes irrelevant, for this would mean that you already can—concealed from the rest of us—contain whatever truths and experiences that the rest of us enjoy, all the while not inhibiting your intrepid, coherent and genius goofiness. I think what I am saying, Ravi, is something quite simple—and I am asking it only as a spectator not as a critic (which I am sure you can feel in reading what I have said so far):—To what extent does your enlightenment, your awakening pre-determine, or constrain you out of other possibilities of self-expression? Do you feel you are a prisoner of "the beloved", or are you permitted to become what you like, and change your schtick altogether, if you so chose to? That the reason you have adopted this present pure performance mode is because it appears to you to be most effective, and, as it were most purposeful (not to say most fulfilling). I am very interested in the answer to this, wondering as I do whether there is a more conventional and happy and lovely Ravi who could seemingly come down from Hindu heaven (and hell), and exhibit his freedom in an entirely different way. Sort of a divine experiment in the configuration of enlightenment. Do you have such an option, Ravi? Because—I think you see what I am getting at—it just might be possible that all of what you are and what you have become (since your awakening) might not represent the perfect application of how you have been made, and then re-made. Does this make sense to you, Ravi? I assure you I am not seeking change or adaptation because I think your performance is getting stale—nor that it isn't in its own way highly efficient—I think you get quite extraordinary results, subtle, imperceptible as they may be. I am only considering the theoretical possibility that there could be 'another Ravi' in there, a Ravi who just might outstrip your present usefulness—not that in perhaps becoming this different arrangement of the Ravi elements, you would look down upon the present Ravi (who is reading this post), but that you would be permitted to know what it was like to be one of us—and yet retaining the profound difference which is marked out by your remarkable awakening. Now let me emphasize once again: your antics are creative, inspiring, and potent—I think you almost always succeed in what you are doing. I am merely wondering if Ravi could come out in some different costume and character, and in doing so—without sacrificing anything that is inimitably Ravi—acquire another form of integrity, one which might allow us to make more use of your presence on the earth at this time. You wil recollect that I have made two previous analyses of you at FFL, both of which met with your approval. When I wrote those descriptions of you I just focused in on what you were as you are now. What I have attempted in this post is a kind of thought experiment—at the very least; and I have done this, perhaps more to learn about what it is like to be you than as some prescription for change, much less improvement. You are perfect it seems just the way you are, and if you were flawed in some essential way, you would be nakedly exposed here at FFL. But no one can really lay a hand upon you; the basis of any critique cannot acquire the potency equal to the brilliance of what you do. It is just that as I listened to Sade, I had this inspiration: is Ravi taking in as much of reality as there is out there to take in—as Ravi? You see, I suddenly saw you in another light—not as you are; but as you are being another Ravi—and momentarily at least, this seemed an even more extraordinary Ravi.
