June 2017

I’ve been working on Song of the Torah, a book of scripture selections with a bit of commentary. In the course of my studies I noticed that when one of the patriarchs dies, the Torah often says “and he was “gathered to his people.”

There’s a nice fellow in town here, whom I only know slightly. When I learned that his wife had just died, I wrote him a sympathy card and noted that his wife is now being joyfully “gathered to her people.”

I woke this morning from the sweetest dream. I was in the mountains with a few friends, helping them get settled before I was leaving to be with family when, lo - a sweet old car from the ’40s drove up and there was my dad driving and smiling at me warmly. Then he pointed across the mountains, and there in the distance was Mom waving hi.

I was talking by phone with my son now in Baghdad. I asked if he felt safe there. He said, yes, pretty safe, but if anything were to happen, we should know that he loves us.

 Same here, I said. I’m a bit older than you and I’ll probably return home before you. Just know I love you and we’ll be “gathered to our people.”

                                              

Dear Mr. Trump

 You are quite a warrior, accomplished and successful. You’ve attained a great prize and honor. I can’t say I like the way you’ve done it, but your skill and perseverance are remarkable.

   The next level and calling for a successful warrior is noble leadership. As you may know, that means defending the innocent, showering kindness and prosperity on all your people, being open and loving to all and dedicating the fruits of your service to the benefit of everyone.

   May you be as successful in your leadership role as you have been as a warrior.

Yoga and Finance

Sunday afternoon, sitting in the shade beside the Ashcroft neighborhood pool about 6 PM, still plenty of sun. June 26 is near the summer solstice. This is the period with plenty of light. Reminds me a bit of the summer in the Arctic, the sun never went all the way down; it turned up in the afternoon.

And now a few notes and quotes on Yoga and Finance from Gurudev

-- Sri Swami Satchidananda

A.   Have fun with finance (fun-ance). Being comfortable is no worry about how to pay the bills. Don't spend so much and find it hard to pay the bills. Then you're comfortable.

B.    Respect everyone and everything, also money which is a form of God. See all and everything as manifestations of that cosmic consciousness; this is Yoga.

C.   You can apply Yoga to all that you do. You can be a good business person and a good Yogi.

    D.  Re borrowing money – if it’s for a good purpose, okay. Not for luxuries, but       

         for a good reason -- and know you'll pay it back.

        Don't depend on the loan alone, or you feel lonesome.

    E. Budget your life, budget money, budget everything. Know how much you     

    can get, and how much you can have; how much to save (maybe 20% as

    Joseph taught). And know how much to spend -- within certain limits

Thanks Gurudev

Love from Praha Om Shanti

God, Bob Kennedy and LSD

A friend wrote saying she had “so many questions,” and mentioned a few:

 

Why do I believe so profoundly in God? 

To be real straight about it, I have to say that I don’t really “believe” in God. It’s not a belief. It’s just something that’s present, like a tree or a house or a basketball. You might see a basketball sailing through the air toward the basket. But you wouldn’t say you “believe” in basketballs. They’re just there at the gym or out on the playground. Nothing to “believe.”

 

When I was 28 I was on Senator Bob Kennedy’s campaign team and staff as one of his writers. I thought we had a good chance of winning the Presidency and really stopping the Viet Nam War and healing the nation’s race tensions, and lots more good stuff. I liked the man and admired what he was up to. When he was assassinated, I was hurt and stunned about the way things go.

 

Instead of riding on the funeral train to Arlington Cemetery with the rest of the campaign team, I took some LSD and had a friend read to me from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, a spiritual manual for passing through the bardos (astral realms, worlds) after physical death, but here rewritten for trippers in contemporary language by Lama Govinda and Richard Alpert (who in a few years would become Baba Ram Das). As a Time Magazine Correspondent during the previous years, I’d been covering these investigations with psychedelics and the cultural transformation simultaneously occurring. In fact I had experimented somewhat myself, as a reporter.

 

During that LSD trip in June, 1968, while listening to the teachings of Buddhist sages about focusing on the white light beyond the bardos, I entered a state of diamond consciousness and remained in that awareness for some time. I saw that the universe is made of love, an ecstatic, beatific orgasm of love on going and on going. And all this stuff of our daily lives with its swirls and melodramas is but a mixing of colors on the surface of the waves of this effulgence.

 

After I came down to normal day-to-day consciousness, I knew I had come upon something rich and amazing that I must investigate somewhere somehow. And the puzzle that immediately obsessed me, I see now looking back, was the piercing conundrum of a world made entirely of love and my boss getting killed right in front of me when we were just about to save the whole planet.

 

Having pursued this zen puzzle for many years and under the guidance of wise people, I have come to see that it’s in the paradox that transcendence occurs. And that “God” is a word we use to allude to a state of consciousness with an air of sacredness. As our eyes continue to open, as we continue to awaken -- we can see and feel that sacredness more and more of the time, even in the midst of our day-to-day lives.

 

She also asks, Who made the connection between the Kabbalah teachings and the Yoga philosophy?

 

I, for one. Others too, I’m sure. Anyone with a strong mystical bent, who is deep into Yoga and enjoys scripture study of the Old or New Testament, could easily make the connection; that is, see the same wisdom offered in only slightly different metaphors.

 

She asks me to elaborate on the sefirot, the ten infinite depths.

 

It’s an image and language that can be used to begin to understand and become ever more acquainted with what you might call “the world out there of profound magnitude.” It’s really symbol language. A good symbol is like a good piece of music or a good painting. It has many levels, many faces -- but all related with one another and together offering a delicious marble cake of wisdom and revelation.

 

Among the ten sefirot are the six directions: east, south, north, west, downwards and upwards. These are each endless, of course. There’s no end to east. Associated with the east is dawn, and the entrance to the sacred temple. Each depth is a cluster of symbols. By becoming familiar with the images and connotations of each sefirah, one begins to see them more and more often in one’s daily life.

 

Familiarity with the scripture is useful here. In the Book of Exodus when the children of Israel are enslaved in Egypt, but are in the process of being freed to cross the Reed Sea and set out for “a promised land,” we learn that an east wind carries in locusts that cover the land. This is one of the ten plagues that move Pharaoh to free the people. At the shore of the sea God uses a “strong east wind” that parts the sea into high walls of water on our right and on our left as we pass over the sea on dry ground, traveling from bondage to freedom.

 

See, it’s a symbol language and image game, very free-flowing. Ten plagues. Ten infinite depths, coincidence? As the late George Carlin used to say: Twenty-four hours in a day. Twenty-four beers in a case, coincidence?

 

Does this help to keep you going on this investigation? I’ll be glad to show you the way, much as I know. I’m not that far along myself. I’m just a beginner.

 

Don’t make any of this SIGNIFICANT. It’s just a game, but it’s a holy game.

 

What fun for us! Go deep. Fly high.

McNamara and Me

                                                            

Thumbing through a local magazine, I saw the review, Fog of War: 11 Lessons on the Life of Robert S. McNamara.  That brought back a lot of memories-- including some grief and anger I thought I was over. 

In my late 20s, I was a Time correspondent in the Washington bureau. I reported on the country splitting in half over Viet Nam: black against white, young against old, hippies against the establishment. The young people, the peace movement, and the disenfranchised convinced Bobby Kennedy to take up the torch of his fallen brother-- and run on a peace ticket against Lyndon Johnson, a sitting president in his own party. 

I'd covered Senator Kennedy both in Washington and San Francisco, and I liked him. He hired me to be on his speechwriting team. I thought we might be able to stop the war and save lots of lives, ours and theirs. Once elected, we would work on saving the cities, healing the race schism, and inspire young people again, like in JFK's day. Meanwhile, Robert McNamara, our Secretary of Defense, just kept on fueling the war, and the President kept listening to him. 

Soon after I came on staff, I sent a memo to the Senator suggesting he distance himself from McNamara because history, I said boldly, was going to show that he is to blame for killing an awful lot of people-- because of his paranoid domino theory. If one Southeast Asia country becomes commie, they all will. Like Joseph in Egypt, I imagined myself an advisor to presidents. 

Adam Walinsky, the senator's senior staff writer, came in and told me to back off, that Kennedy and McNamara were friends and stop sending unsolicited advice. I thought about it. I was hired to help with the Senator's speeches. No one had asked my advice on Bob McNamara. 

A few months later, Bob Kennedy was assassinated. I left the country and traveled around Europe, the Middle East, Mexico, and India. I became an American Yogi and a peaceful guy, I thought.

Until I read about McNamara's confessions. I wished he'd kept them to himself. If he ever hopes to redeem his soul, I think he ought to become a Trappist monk, serve in the slums of Calcutta like Mother Theresa did, and keep his mouth shut. 

Now that I've vented some, I see it's not really my business how Bob McNamara deals with his past. Better I get straight about my own past, talk less and listen more.