=w05sanov Zenith Tapes, Box Walia 05, Footnotes by sa to his Notes to Those Tapes ============================================================== DEEP6 OF NOTES FORM =pvLz05L and from =pvLa05iIS HERE: ================================================================ Caveat Tabbycat="Oh Pious Ones" These are my top-of-the-head notes. I usually don't even proof- read them for typos, let alone edit them. I write them mostly to keep awake and to let off steam so that I don't go outside this pine-panelled pine-finished shipping container and put pictures of happy dogs on the walls of Honest George's Doggie Diner . And so in short they may ruffle the feathers of a Bird of Paradise, and so ye who would be that read no father. Like I say, Sarge used to hang out at Venice Chabad. He would always say, 'Keep Driving'. I think he was in Transport Corps during the D-Day invasion, but maybe it was Artillery. And so in fine, if you ain't got your ass on the driver's seat and a gear-shift stick in your hand, read no further, Werther. But enough of my excessive modesty: "garlic and saphires in the mud" quoth T.S. Eliot Smellycat. Mix a bit of garlic with Estra Virgin Olive Oill -- though I just bought a bottle at the Co-op and it has a bitter aftertaste, so maybe you got to go to the land of Israel to get it. The Zenith sports fans -- they come to pay their money to be entertained -- all mourn the Shoah, and want Israel to give half its land for a Palestinian state. That might mean the destruction of the state of Israel, and the removal of protection from foreign Jewish communities, but heck, it's politically correct. So practically speaking most of the Zenith sports fans are anti- Semitic, ie anti-Jewish, though scarecly a one would think of themselves as such. Well, I've not said and barely thought that for the 15 years I've been hanging out around Zenith. That will include some of the Jewish Zenith crew. This ain't so much a matter of 'Jewish self-hatred' as it is of internalizing the values of the oppressor, or rather, of the culture into which one has accepted exile. They have a rather trivial, sentimentalized notion of the Jewish people, and Jewish religion. Like, I know practically nothing of it, and they less than me, so they must be really ignorant. But enough of sweet-talk, my notes follow. There will be recollections of other things that PVK said, cross- comparison of things he says with teachings in traditional religious Judaism, relevant recollections of things I learned from the American Indians when I lived at New Buffalo commune on land given by the Taos Indians to the Spanish-American settlers, and a whole lot of bullfeathers and bullshit, so if you see someone swinging and 8-tine pitchfork, look out and stand back. It's a hard job -- to be a post-modernist applied philosopher poet -- but somebody's got to do it, and I'd suure as heck rather write it than read it, Schmidt. ----------------------------------------------------------------- (w05n1) [ Mozart stole it from the Pope must have been a Mason Jsaon. ] (w05n2) [Nu, you maybe wanted ApfelStrudel mit VanillaSauce, Klaus. Must a baby know the true nature of his mother to cry for comfort. Or on the other hand, doesn't he. Like I say above, PVK lacks something -- one might say it's faith, or a respect for the rather anthropomorphic daily faith of hoi polloi . The trouble with most of those old sufis was that they never went out bowling. No wonder Al Hallaj got himself in trouble. You want "burning, burning", you get it. Happy now Chou? "Hush little baby don't you cry. Sail away ladies, sail away. You'll be an angel bye 'n bye. Sail away ladies, sail away. "(USA, 1800's I suppose, sung by Joan Baez.) ] (w05n3) [ Haillie said it too -- most of those Zenith teachers hadn't sat at PVK's feet for a week in the past 10 years or more. Aziz said, they start out slicing onions and wind up giving darshan. (Aziz didn't quite phrase it that way, but everyone needs an editor but me.) No wonder some of our Lesser Lights of the S.O.(W.) make dumb mistakes. Even dangerous mistakes. Eg Munir saying that PVK says, do the Chargall practice every day, where in fact PVK repeatedly says, don't do Chargall except on a retreat, because it tends to make one other-worldly. On a retreat, PVK can channel that energy in you, and let it flow out into the ground when need be, and hopefully so can anyone else who guides you, but by yourself --- "Tokay, OK; Muscatel, can't tell, might go to jail. " (Laird Grant, as quoted by Justin Case at New Buffalol) Or worse than jail. In jail at least they leave your mind and soul free, but in the Booby Hatch they don't. When I was in jail, nobody wanted to go instead to the Nuthouse. And you can do your time and get out of jail, but from the Nuthouse nobody walks but the Zombies. The Nuthouse is not a 'mental hospital', it is the most diabolically repressive institution ever invented. ] Well, so these tapes that I'm now transcribing can help Leaders learn what they should have lesrned before. Because they sure as heck ain't apt to get much from ZIK until he grows up into old age. PVK was darned near 60 before he started teaching. The Indians you to say, you ain't an old man under 60. CORRECTION MAYBE: So I meet this dude at Pesach Shaharit in Lugano and we go out for coffee, for which he sticks me with the bill, and I am down to paying in shiessengeld, with is half-franc mini-coins, I like Damon Runyon and he says that at Camp des Aigles, which he says was near Gstaad, he shared a cave with PVK, who he knew by the name Inayat, and tied his shoelaces, and once PVK with tears in his eyes said, "I started too late." (w05n4) (And one year PVK remarked, darned near, You know, there are more psychotherapists here than -- people, I would have said. Eo no hablo psychobablo. Don't pretend to tell me your feelings, I can't even afford a set of my own. I'm from the 60s. Me an George Bush Jr. Not the 70s. Only faggots have feelings. "Real men don't each dquiche." Some years at Zenith it was made repeatedly clear that psychotherpists were available if needed. And from about the mid- 90s 'support groups' were created, that met daily, and also did KP as a group -- KP means Kitchen Patrol, its a USA World War II term. Zenith is quite a brilliant creation, comparable to Little Joe's creation of the Peyote Church, if you would know, Moe. Like Jesus said, avoda zora is in the eye of the beholder. The sages said, study of Torah should be combined with a worldly occupation. Eg, cutting up onions into little bitty pieces a few times during a Zenith week. Because, sometimes anyhow, if you can't discharge all that spiritual energy into physical activity -- sex will do nicely, thank you -- as a matter of fact Sarida Brown tells a famous annecdote where PVK recommended for some dude who was flipping out -- raw beef, and -- something else, I forget what, though he often said, working with the earth in a garden or little natural farm is very good -- "and -- oh yes, sex". -- but if not -- well, you know the story,, "Four entered PaRDeS" - - one died, one went mad, " 't Other uproooted the young shoots" -- sold the yeshiva boys into Roman brothels as castrati I reckon, whatever he did was so unmentionable that no-one mentions it, nor him -- although oddly, the name of Elisha ben Abuya is mentioned in Pirke haAvot with one of his teachings, before he went bad -- must have been Reb Meir who put it in -- Reb Meir must have been someone really special -- heck, he managed to marry Bruria, even if he did play one game too many and blew it all -- reminds me of Jim in Truffaut's "Jules et Jim". Anyhow, R. Zalman once wrote, of those 4, R. Akiva was the one who came back, because "his wife sent him off and welcomed him back with earthly love." Someone -- that would be in the book Dispatches, tho I forget the author -- quotes some damned grunt in Vietnam: "Patrol went out. Only one guy came back, and he died before he could say what happened." Like they say for the motto of 'Apocalypse Now' -- "the horror of it all" (Conrad, Heart of Darkness). T.S. Eliot was a poseur -- quoting, "Mistah Kurz -- he dead". And those clowns from Manhattan have the chutzpah to call their poetry forum MiMeAmakim "he who from the depths" (cries out will be answered by the LORD with the breath of Divine Relief") -- that's from one of the Psalms) -- so I wrote back from Israel, "From the bottomless canyons of endless greed it isn't poetry we need." But I digress. ] (w05n5) Well as I say, Zenith somehow evolved into much more than that -- though that aspect too was preserved as one option -- I do regret that Zenith never lived up to its name as 'Zenith Institute' -- a permanent, year-long facility for those who could grow from it, and contribute to its growth -- "to build and be built " -- or one might better say, "to rebuild and be rebuild" -- that's an old Zionist slogan , used now by a group in Zfat -- (w05n6) [ Thanks a lot. So why not take in the energy of each chakra from its appropriate place and be satisfied with that, rather than trying to make artifical higher chakra energy from lover chakra energy -- no doubt this is alchemy, but like King Midas said, I'd give half of Fort Knox for a Hotdog. I mean, you want 2nd chakra energy, get a chick. You want more heart chakra energy, marry her. You want more green energy, write a book about it. You want more blue energy, go out for a newspaper, and keep on going until you get to the seashore. You want more violet energy, think of what you left behind. You want more crown energy, get off the boat on the Hudson river, walk over to the Abode, go up the hill and sit down at whatever's going on in the meditation tent. Simple. ] (w05n7) [ Well, that might explain why the US electorate keeps going for self-assured idiots like Ronald Reagan and George Junior. ] (w05n8) [ Sounds nice, but a bit monotonous -- don't dervishes ever take an afternoon out to go to an art gallery -- or stop by a cafe and have a nice relaxed lunch -- I mean really, anyone with even a moderate income should be able to find more interesting things to do than be a dervish -- nice enough for a weekend or two now and again, no doubt -- especially when the snow is melting on the pistes. I mean, its bad enough that the hawks always win in politics (and R. Zalman once said, the rule is, you can always kick the man to your left ) -- do we have to let the hawks dominate spirituality too -- some clown says "I want burning, burning" and all the yupppies say, Oh goody, me too. ] (w05n9) [ I mean, if Plato didn't have to go to the shuk -- shucks, I mean agora -- to buy a bit of dried camel dung to put in his pipe, but might instead of taken the IRT downtown -- for how could PlaTO have lived onywhere but the Upper West Side, even if he would have wanted to be on midtown Park Ave. -- to Macy's to buy a Home Surround Stereo Burro, he would not have confused everyone with all that jive about the 7 Spheres and 7 Seas and Seventh Heaven and Seven-Elevns would he now; you bet not. ] (w05n10) [ and of course that is a theme in pop psychology -- yuppie pop psychology that is, the plebes can't afford feelings, it just gives them high blood pressure -- "the rich get laid and the poor get laid off" -- I don't know if Cole Porter really wrote that, but he should have -- So anyhow, especially pop psychology for chicks with careers -- assertiveness, and "When I say no I feel guilty" and all that stuff -- "How you gonna keep them down on the farm" -- or "barefoot in winter, pregnant in summer" -- after they've seen Paree. ] (w05n11) [ I once heard an Indian say, So we all just stand around like dumb Indians -- waiting for the honkie to make his move. ] (w05n12) (Well, there was Wavy Gravy, Famous Hog-Farmer Saw him once down by the Abode Pond, and before that I think at New Buffalo We were politely gazing on a woman bathing nude. She said, it's only a body -- only the vehicle with which I go through life. ) (w05n13) [-- for me, the English-only camps at the Abode -- lectures for any new theoretic detail -- which happens to be my main, and maybe real, interest, and surely my main motivation in doing this work - - like, I never did get past not having gootten my Ph.d -- too bad if not precisely pity nor shame that I didn't take a cow-college Ph.d from UNM, instead of walkig off in a huff to the Santa Barbara bikini beaches, where I met Susie -- though she was not precisely a teenie tiny bikini babe, but they all just chew bubble gum and ride on sidewalks on those one-foot motor-scooters or whatever you call them. (w05n14) * In Lugano I met a chap yclept Patrick Gerald Woods, aka Arieh ben Joshua, bulododo@hotmail.com , no other namepad given, who advised me to take out hiss with shareware that is easily downloaded. But I hear no hiss on this. Though there is, as on many PVK tapes, some annoying sssibilantss -- ** He told me that he had shared a cave with PVK, whom he knew then as Inayat, without the honorific Pir, nor the name Vilayat, at Camp des Aigles, which he told me was near Gstadd -- I had thought it was in France. He said he used to tie PVK's shoes. He said PVK once remarked to him, with tears in his eyes, "I started too late." Well, this is rather am important remark, if it is truely and accurate recalled, this which I can't evaluate. He was a student of Sri Chinmoy. I told him, as I have elsewhere noted: in the mid-70s, Sri Chinmoy came with his group to Lebanon Springs, or thereabouts, to give a concert in honor of the SO. His choir sang a song set to words of HIK, and as I recalled he played 'cello. Then at the end he and PVK did an improvised duet. I'm almost certain that Michael Horowitz, who lived at the Abode and creted Scared Spirit Music, taped the whole concert. At the end of their duet, PVK said, clearly moved, "Let the heavens rejoice, for we have made great music together -- Sri Chinmoy and me." (w05n15) // SAVE AS A NEW AUTONOTE [ Once, when I was still in high school or barely starting college, I met a chap at the Port Authority Bus Terminal and lent him some money, maybe 20 dollars -- in those days of the late 50's that was real money -- because he said he had left his attache case in his car. I knew he was a respectable gentleman because he used the word 'attache case'. For some weeks, maybe a month or more, I awaited the return by mail of that loan. At that point I told the story to my father, who quite gently explained that there are various types of people in this world. My father was a good honest worker in his field, and respected anyone who was likewise, regardless of their field -- there was a master glass-blower at MIT of whom he thought highly. And certain auto mechanics. His relationship with them would be warm and open, with no condecension of class. He was also a good auto mechanic I think, my mother used to say that he was the only person -- in the world, I suppose -- who could get the gasoline artesian well pump in Maine working each year. He early taught me the existence of the virtue of intellectual honesty. He did not like the idea of my going into philosophy, I think he felt that in that field -- and indeed, that is very much the case -- that there would be few standards of intellectual honesty. Even in his area of the sciences, he implied that there were some who were not entirely intellectually honest. He said that to do philosophy of science, one would first have to have a thorough grounding in science. I begin to glimpse now that his openness with all good people was a great virtue, a very great one. The youngest in his family, his parents Jewish immigrants from the Pale ( most likely Grodno, but I don't know) he clearly had enough chutzpah to go from working in his father's woolen goods wholesale clothing business to a very early Ph.d -- he got it at quite a young age -- and to a faculty position at MIT, marrying my mother, who was then at Radcliffe and from New York German-Jewish background, from a once-wealthy family -- And withal, my mother once remarked, if I recall, that he could never really believe that he was as good as people seemed to think he was -- on the basement worktable he had an ashtray with a picture by Steig -- they both used to smoke , and if I recall I sometimes would buy them a carton of cigarettes for Christmas -- this is in the 1940's -- and the cartoon was "If you are good- natured, people step all over you" When they went to CPUSA meetings, that would be in the late 30s in Cambridge, he would apologize for not being a worker, and my mother remarked to me, that she thought that was uncalled for, that as an experimental physical chemist and university instructor, he was also a worker. ] END AUTNOTE \\ (w05n16) * Although I think Sufi Sam Lewis does not merit the honorific Murshid -- the patron saint of the California potheads, posthumously annointed in reaction to PVK's no-drugs rule -- which maybe ZIK has or will revoke, and that is his perogative -- PVK was always uncomfortable at having introduced a rule to the SO, since he put pre-eminent value on individual freedom and responsibility -- Ag tells me that the Californians have now rejoined the flock, mazaltov -- unity is a lovely thing, mazaltov -- but what I'm roundabout getting at -- mmy compliments to Jakob's Coffee -- is that I think we have underestimated the contribution of Sufi Sam Lewis. Azimat Schreiber studied from him in the good old days in California -- I first met her at a massage weekend, but for whatever reason, no lack of lechery I hope, did not ask her to massage her -- we were young once, or so I recall -- so she used to lead Sufi Sam's walks at classes she gave at Philips Brooks House in Harvard Yard -- maybe she had gone to Harvard -- and Taj Inayat Khan was first married to Mansur Jonson -- he had been the personal Secretary to Sufi Sam Lewis -- I first heard of him at New Buffalo, Justin Case said, you must go up to Lama Foundation, there is some -- I forget what he said, Sufi maybe -- some guy there named Mansur. And I thought, poor Justin, he doesn't even know how to pronounce Monsieur. I once saw Mansur Jonson lead Sufi walks at the Abode Meditation Hall. Much more delicate and precise than the sort of Sufi Dancing Singles at Zenith -- PVK seemed to have some reservations about that -- the notion of mixed dancing in part -- so anyhow, PVK took TIK from Mansur Jonson, or she took herself -- women do have minds and wills of their own, I gather -- so TIK must have seen much in Mansur Jonson, as the principle transmitter, I think, of Sufi Sam's teachings -- My point, which comes up in the next noted PVK remark, is that as Sufism is (in my terminology, which differs from PVK's) transcendental (in Kant's sense, and Emerson's too, the transcendentalists, necessarily in-the-world -- eg Judaism, and American Indians ways -- 'Awakening in Life') -- not 'transcendent' (in the sense of medieval theology, I think -- and of eschatalogic Christianity and Buddhism -- above the world -- samadhi -- 'Awakening Beyond Life') -- and since this is more precisely expressed in moving meditations rather than in sitting motionless meditation -- then, apart from the continuity of the zikr, Sufi Sam Lewis is the first since Rumi's planetary walks and whirlings -- and of course the Helveti whirling dervish Sufis of Koina Turkey -- to have re-introduced moving meditations to contemporary Sufism -- and that is a very important contribution, and one which we should more fully and accurately acknowlege ] (w05n17xx) // SAVE AS AUTONOTE -- DROP FROM FINAL DRAFT [XXsubsubnote; Caveat Tabbycat & all that : After our introductory boff, in the fleeting dawn of candor appropriate to such initiations, Claudia remarked to me, I thought I would never get to know you, for you never come to Sufi Dancing -- previously we had hiked up to upper Aduula cabin together -- she left me next day on another trail down, after I did not want to play ping-pong with her -- that is not a double-entendre, 2400 m. up the mountain and there's a ping_pong table -- so of course I followed her all the way down the mountain, on past Biasca to Bellinzona, and then to Hamburg -- I mean really, does the desert walk away from the first rain in years -- I had lately become more halachically observant, and saw her as an attractive breeding mare with good sturdy legs and nicely dyed hair, in that rich off-red that only the Germans can manage -- true, she was not Jewish, but a Sufi is broad-minded, and more to the point, as the Taos medicine man Sunhawk, grandson of Geronimo, once remarked to me, "You take what you can get." And it is quite below my dignity to go out and look for it, much less ask -- I mean, a gentleman does not discuss such things, he simply discreetly progressively gropes until rebuffed -- as I say, on Shabat evenings, rather than joining me for kiddish, she would often go out to play with her unacknowleged paramour -- tambour I assume -- it was the unacknowlegement that I think later drove me crazy, and so I took myself onto a boat for Harwich after almost literally banging my head against a wall -- I had seen James Garner do that on a TV movie, and he seemed none the worse for it, but TV, I have slowly learned, does not show you everything -- eg the cleanup phase of a Main Street shootout -- anyhow, in retrospect I reckon she saw me as her first archeologic discovery -- though she was I guess embarassed at my wearing baggy pants, carrying things around in a plastic bag -- the new Germans all have little backpacks, except for the bagmen bums -- and she did attempt to get me to henna my hair -- well, I tried, but it came off in some vegetable goo -- my "Last Tango in Paris", at age 50, as it turned out -- and all the truly good women whom I never tried to marry, thinking I should wait until I got my Ph.d -- decade after decade -- I still feel no more than 17 -- I used to feel 7 but then I had a breakdown and when I came back I had grown up one notch -- well, and this is what I started to say and put far down in a toenote to a footnote so as not to offend the "gentles all" -- she was, except maybe for a few forgotten brief encounters of the closest kind in my college dropout days, the only limited-access toit I had ever come across -- as I say, nice girls don't do that -- OK, back to breakfast -- and the daily comics of the IHT ] END AUTONOTE \\ (w05n18) That does not necessarily imply that PVK's presentation was less than optimally clear -- if truth must be told -- and I remarked yesterday that as a rule of thumb, although not without exceptions, it is often best to begin by telling the truth, or at least nothing but, if not necessarily the whole, truth -- so if truth be told, I was having a non-orthodox Pesach supper at the time -- vollkorn flatbrod rather than kosher cardboard whiteflour matza -- with a dash of the local wine, because the requirement that wine to be kosher must be made by Jews was merely a protective tariff -- I saw amporas, from Cyprus or maybe Greece, in the Degana musem -- (on the Tiberias side of Lake Kineret, the "Sea of Galillee")though I asuppose it might more likely have been the Romans who brought them -- You assume that anything you have to say about yourself is intrinsically interesting -- and to everyone if anyone who might otherwise be inclined to read what you set out to say -- This sure beats hearing voices -- and a bit more socially acceptable and inconspicuous too -- and anyone can do it, all you need is to have learned to touch- type, presumably in your teens, or better yet as a child prodigy - - I mean, if you can teach them to play Moozart at age 7, or 3, or whenever Mozart learned, then you can certainly teach them something useful -- I mean really, one Mozart was quite enough -- though another Bach would be nice -- and then all you need is a minimum of 20 years practice, most easily typing drivel in classist sexist offices that make widgits at best and toxic waste as worst -- for all I know, it was sniffing a few samples that one guy brought in that drove me crazy in 1984, when I was breaking up with Ciel -- I think it was maybe the pesticide Rounndup that made me crazy at HaOn -- and then any good computer keyboard -- I rather doubt that a laptop will do, they're not really fast enough for about 80 wpm , which is about the speed of thought -- the speed where you don't know what you're saying until you type it -- slower than that and you have to hold back your thoughts in order to write them down -- ] (w05n19) I must say, again, that it was foolish and a substantial loss to exclude the music from the tapes, for fear of being sued for copyright infringement -- as PVK often remarks, the music is an integral part of the meditations, it sets the attunement which is prerequisite for comprehending the intent, the kavanah, of the meditation. For without it one has only, to use the term that I routinely mis-use, a lecture. "Words words words" as Hamlet put it. (w05n20) Oy, I could with a few years work start to become the Gershon Sholem of PVK's kabala -- Winkler, I think it was, says they called Gershon Shlolem "the Accountant" because he knew all the details of hasidic kabala, and had the benefit of none of it -- My hands are maybe getting stiff -- like, what kind of a career is it where one sprained finger, from a badly-caught baseball, can put you ought of business -- Again -- so I says to Eliahu, you got a lot to say, so learn to type and jot it down -- he says, I don't want to risk carpal tendon syndrome. I says back, so use your toes. (w05n21) So what I'm saying is that this lecture in light is a perfectly adequate basic standalone, and especially valueable because it's tri-lingual. So in one shot we've given the essential Zenith commmunity PVK's teaching on light. Not that the Polish people don't deserve one too, but PVK lectured in only these three lnaugages. So I guess the Polish people will have to have transription and then translation of that transcription. I guess that Poland will emerge as a major and strong SO center. And maybe then it will bring in some of the other slavic states, or maybe Russia. (w05n22) (I suppose that otherwise one must be doing siddhi's -- using paychic power in the service of the go -- projecting a dark or anyhow dirty light rather than good clear light -- and incidentally, initiates in the SO are strictly enjoined from anything partaking of black magic -- and traditionally, the penalties for witchcraft are very severe -- I mean black witches, the ones you see on Hallowe'en eating candy corn -- I'm not speaking of the wikka, the white witches, the healers and old ladies of the forest -- and who again is that English chick who wrote so many books, including that wonderful one, The White Witch -- Elzabeth Ashley was it -- Considering the ways England used to kill people, it's no wonder they lost their Empire -- and I bet the USA is next -- will probably start with the complete collapse of the dollar, and happen very fast after that -- maybe with a nuke or two if we don't get the Bushie's out before that -- (w05n23e) Again, most of the customer copies of most tapes probably lose about 2 minutes of text at the end of each side of each tape, because most customer copies were made on El Cheapo tapes. If an El Cheapo is sold as a 45 minute tape, you get 45 minutes at most., where a namebrand, and the namebarnd Masters Type II that were used, give you at least 47 minutes. If lectures are again recorded on tape -- and there is no reason I can see that they should not be recorded on a laptop DVD-RW, and then the whole week sold as a unit on one DVD-R or DVD-RW -- well, if they are again recorded on tape one must be sure not to use El Cheapo's for the copy, and be sure to instruct the Sound Desk to flip or change tapes before 45 minutes. (w05n24) ( Mazaltov. Is that dangerous? -- I mean, I'm holding back a lot of self-destructive horses ) (w05n25) (darn -- and