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Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Address at First Vancouver Salon
Thank you Mary Anne for opening your home tonight. And I thank each of you for the opportunity to make this brief presentation about my work.
And I thank Larry Martinello, my high school history teacher who permitted philosophical discussions in his classroom back in ‘67. It seems just like yesterday when Larry was teaching us one day that Einstein believed man was defined by his relationships to his fellow human beings, that he was who he was in relationship to others (a brother, a son, a sister, a father, friend or lover). So I am thankful to Larry for hearing me when I ventured to disagree.
I took the position that man is who he is in relationship to God.
And this position set me on a course of contemplation throughout my life which has permitted me to explore in different ways than most people. Not better. Just different.
And one of those ways included my bald self strolling with Prahbupad A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, chanting mantras and listening to him explain that “once Krishna has injected himself into your spiritual bloodstream you may leave him, but he’ll never leave you.”
Shortly after fleeing the L.A. temple later that day, this 17 year old was in the back seat of a beat-up station wagon parked in a driveway in San Diego waiting for my host to return from the biker party to find me a place to crash. I was nodding off by my packsack, when suddenly I felt something had cracked over the crown of my head and I experienced a downpouring of bliss. And during this exquisite sensation, I heard words which I sensed were being spoken from a bygone relative who assured me that I was part of the infinite. I was thankful that night too.
That experience had a profoundly reassuring effect on me … and affirmed my relationship – though vicarious – to what I now call the personality of the infinite.
One more noteworthy experience to mention about my formative years occurred at Big Sur CA where I had found a kelp-covered cave on a secluded beach to overnight in with fellow hitchhikers. The next morning, high on psilocybin, I pretended to be orchestrating the tumbling of the clouds while hallucinating that wise feminine faces were smiling down upon me. After a day of reckless leaping from the rock outcrops onto the beach, I lay prone, unconscious and exposed to the incoming tide. My bluish teenaged body was carried back to the cave. The long-haired strangers left me in a heap by the fireside.
It’s hard to say whether I would have died or not… but for the voice I heard. And it spoke only one word. So beautiful in its timbre and full of loving authority and as though thrust from a great distance and across eons. I tried to emulate it, repeating this word over and over. The other occupants of the cave, my dopesmoking saviours, were annoyed at my repetitiousness - attempting to respeak that word just the way I had heard it - and they shook me to arouse me from my stupor. At that instant I became self conscious and the mystical experience dissipated.
So I was becoming who I was in relationship to that fierce, authoritative, explosive, daunting, seemingly arbitrary, and wickedly ironic personality of the ever-expanding cosmos who has told us all before: “By single-minded and intense devotion that form of mine may be completely known and seen and entered into,” but then added “I am come as time, the waster of the peoples, ready for that now that ripens to their ruin.”
Recently, it has dawned on me that to enjoy a kind of safe harbour, all I need is to reconcile myself to this Infinity.
Through simple observation and contemplation I may be fortified with knowing. By just respectfully walking alongside, as though just within earshot of a master, we may all hear and absorb the affirmations from nature which signal us in ways to come to life.
By permitting godliness in every interaction we may be enshrined in a state of grace; attractive even to Nature; and then to discover saintliness as ordinary.
The first thing a seer sees is that this exalted state may belong to all of us; and is accessible equally to each of us. This divine experience is nothing less than our birthright.
Along our way we hear many ideas and witness innumerable souls beseeching us to follow them. Sirens and lights, soothings and promises… but the prayerful and most quiet among us permitting godliness, will have attuned themselves to the signals from the personality of the infinite who directs us to take refuge in knowing.
And there is something intimately mutual and rewarding being exchanged as the memories of a good man increase the body of God, and so are retrievable. And God focuses through us on all that He has given and takes His greatest pleasure from the enlightened individual who explores with a random exhilaration.
Modern science is on the verge of acknowledging this organic relationship as it examines our biological and cerebral reactions to acts of goodness.
This living individual is constantly sampling from the knowing which is omnipresent and ultimately distinguishes himself to his fellow knowers, each unique in their radiant perfection.
This commingling of entities born into a state of original grace and ultimately sustaining that grace may create an exalted spiritual climate.
Knowing our vital place in continuity, enjoying perfection and speaking the language of Creation - all this is being heralded now as it is this generation which will discover that we have used these edenic faculties before. The vague prompting to “be here now” is infantile in comparison to living as participants with creation.
And as we thrill to know how close we are – despite the harbingers of doom and the apparently overwhelming challenges we face in the crisis of our current spiritual climate and reflected here on the brink of ecological ruin – we will hurry to heal and bring healing as we finally realize: There is no time, There never was. Just your relationship to the truth… and perhaps for you the extreme and intense peace of knowing.
We’re that close. Now all we have to do is continue finding the words which will thrust us forward, shield us and throw light on each of our long-lived souls.
My first book, The Dead Sea Revelation, expounds upon these ideas which tonight I am touching upon. This book represents to some extent a clearing of the road ahead as it deconstructs guilt-drenched theologies and scary dogmas. Hopefully it will simplify for people the way to enjoy a state of holiness in their day to day lives. A private state of quiet thrill and steady but visceral joy.
Such peace and blessedness is the triumph of humanity.
And I thank Larry Martinello, my high school history teacher who permitted philosophical discussions in his classroom back in ‘67. It seems just like yesterday when Larry was teaching us one day that Einstein believed man was defined by his relationships to his fellow human beings, that he was who he was in relationship to others (a brother, a son, a sister, a father, friend or lover). So I am thankful to Larry for hearing me when I ventured to disagree.
I took the position that man is who he is in relationship to God.
And this position set me on a course of contemplation throughout my life which has permitted me to explore in different ways than most people. Not better. Just different.
And one of those ways included my bald self strolling with Prahbupad A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, chanting mantras and listening to him explain that “once Krishna has injected himself into your spiritual bloodstream you may leave him, but he’ll never leave you.”
Shortly after fleeing the L.A. temple later that day, this 17 year old was in the back seat of a beat-up station wagon parked in a driveway in San Diego waiting for my host to return from the biker party to find me a place to crash. I was nodding off by my packsack, when suddenly I felt something had cracked over the crown of my head and I experienced a downpouring of bliss. And during this exquisite sensation, I heard words which I sensed were being spoken from a bygone relative who assured me that I was part of the infinite. I was thankful that night too.
That experience had a profoundly reassuring effect on me … and affirmed my relationship – though vicarious – to what I now call the personality of the infinite.
One more noteworthy experience to mention about my formative years occurred at Big Sur CA where I had found a kelp-covered cave on a secluded beach to overnight in with fellow hitchhikers. The next morning, high on psilocybin, I pretended to be orchestrating the tumbling of the clouds while hallucinating that wise feminine faces were smiling down upon me. After a day of reckless leaping from the rock outcrops onto the beach, I lay prone, unconscious and exposed to the incoming tide. My bluish teenaged body was carried back to the cave. The long-haired strangers left me in a heap by the fireside.
It’s hard to say whether I would have died or not… but for the voice I heard. And it spoke only one word. So beautiful in its timbre and full of loving authority and as though thrust from a great distance and across eons. I tried to emulate it, repeating this word over and over. The other occupants of the cave, my dopesmoking saviours, were annoyed at my repetitiousness - attempting to respeak that word just the way I had heard it - and they shook me to arouse me from my stupor. At that instant I became self conscious and the mystical experience dissipated.
So I was becoming who I was in relationship to that fierce, authoritative, explosive, daunting, seemingly arbitrary, and wickedly ironic personality of the ever-expanding cosmos who has told us all before: “By single-minded and intense devotion that form of mine may be completely known and seen and entered into,” but then added “I am come as time, the waster of the peoples, ready for that now that ripens to their ruin.”
Recently, it has dawned on me that to enjoy a kind of safe harbour, all I need is to reconcile myself to this Infinity.
Through simple observation and contemplation I may be fortified with knowing. By just respectfully walking alongside, as though just within earshot of a master, we may all hear and absorb the affirmations from nature which signal us in ways to come to life.
By permitting godliness in every interaction we may be enshrined in a state of grace; attractive even to Nature; and then to discover saintliness as ordinary.
The first thing a seer sees is that this exalted state may belong to all of us; and is accessible equally to each of us. This divine experience is nothing less than our birthright.
Along our way we hear many ideas and witness innumerable souls beseeching us to follow them. Sirens and lights, soothings and promises… but the prayerful and most quiet among us permitting godliness, will have attuned themselves to the signals from the personality of the infinite who directs us to take refuge in knowing.
And there is something intimately mutual and rewarding being exchanged as the memories of a good man increase the body of God, and so are retrievable. And God focuses through us on all that He has given and takes His greatest pleasure from the enlightened individual who explores with a random exhilaration.
Modern science is on the verge of acknowledging this organic relationship as it examines our biological and cerebral reactions to acts of goodness.
This living individual is constantly sampling from the knowing which is omnipresent and ultimately distinguishes himself to his fellow knowers, each unique in their radiant perfection.
This commingling of entities born into a state of original grace and ultimately sustaining that grace may create an exalted spiritual climate.
Knowing our vital place in continuity, enjoying perfection and speaking the language of Creation - all this is being heralded now as it is this generation which will discover that we have used these edenic faculties before. The vague prompting to “be here now” is infantile in comparison to living as participants with creation.
And as we thrill to know how close we are – despite the harbingers of doom and the apparently overwhelming challenges we face in the crisis of our current spiritual climate and reflected here on the brink of ecological ruin – we will hurry to heal and bring healing as we finally realize: There is no time, There never was. Just your relationship to the truth… and perhaps for you the extreme and intense peace of knowing.
We’re that close. Now all we have to do is continue finding the words which will thrust us forward, shield us and throw light on each of our long-lived souls.
My first book, The Dead Sea Revelation, expounds upon these ideas which tonight I am touching upon. This book represents to some extent a clearing of the road ahead as it deconstructs guilt-drenched theologies and scary dogmas. Hopefully it will simplify for people the way to enjoy a state of holiness in their day to day lives. A private state of quiet thrill and steady but visceral joy.
Such peace and blessedness is the triumph of humanity.
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