Posting at the other blog….
July 10, 2009
Sunrise on Peavine Mountain
May 16, 2009
“Mission accomplished”, so to speak….
April 17, 2009
I will leave this blog “as is”, having recently decided to finish blogging altogether. Insofar as internet activity goes, I will largely limit myself to posting pictures here:
Asian Classics Institute course series starting in Reno
February 18, 2009
And, you can get the details here:
http://www.nevadadharma.net/renospks.html#aci
This course series was devised by Geshe Michael Roach and will be taught by trained teachers here in Reno. And, it’s free. Starting this Friday night and continuing for the following 20 Friday nights! The contact information is provided at the page linked above and it’s important you rsvp so that the teachers have enough course material on hand.
This wanderer’s forest……
February 17, 2009
PART TWO: the story up to the late 1990s
January 11, 2009
This article is a continuation of a report begun here:
http://atiasrama.wordpress.com/2008/12/14/the-1970s-and-its-spiritual-influences-part-one/
In one or both of those books that I purchased sometime in late 1973 or early 1974 was contact information for the young spiritual community developing around the young Franklin Jones. I sent off a letter and, in rapid succession, was assigned a correspondent contact and mentor: first, Dennis Duff, then Elizabeth Brown, and finally Billy (call him William now) Tskinas. I filled out a detailed questionare and had a complete physical.
At some point, this group moved from Los Angeles up to Lake County, where they had acquired a large spread of property (hot springs and all) on Cobb Mountain at Siegler Springs. The group was named the Dawn Horse Communion and the sanctuary was called Persimmon.
I was still living in Eureka, California. And, still attending Humboldt State University (and working in the mailroom of the local newspaper, the Humboldt Time-Standard). It seemed like every week I was mailing off answers to these questionare’s as well as sending $10/month.
In additon to the Lake County sanctuary, the Dawn Horse Communion had established a center with a bookstore upstairs from a health food restaurant on the corner of California and Polk. I first went there to see a premier screening of a recently filmed movie at the Lake County site called A Difficult Man. Only a handful of people were there, most of whom I went out to lunch with first: Billy Tsiknas, Patricia Morley, Glenn Johannes, and some others whose names I don’t know or remember.
Bubba’s laughter in A Difficult Man was an apparent sign of a very happy guy. The movie was filmed by a Hollywood crew and based on the “shocking” book called Garbage and the Goddess, where tales of wife swapping, drinking, and powerful shakti displays were shared.
By the spring of 1975 I was making frequent trips to San Francisco (from Eureka) and I learned at the Dawn Horse bookstore (on California and Polk) that it was going to be easy to visit “Persimmon”, the ashram community in Lake County (on Cobb Mountain) where Bubba Free John lived with his disciples. So, after an amusing orientation meeting with James Steinberg, a car load of us (driven by a guy from Texas and including a guy from Chicago and another from New York City) made it up to Persimmon on a Friday night in early April 1975. We got a little lost, but made it just before midnight.
We were greeted by Tsiknas and some of the gopis (Bubba’s wives) and were told that Bubba would soon be sitting in the Hall for “Satsang”. He had been awaiting our arrival.
In the hall, we faced a couch at the front. Two guards sat on each side of it. When the door behind us opened, everyone of us put our heads to the floor.
Bubba scanned the room, looking around at everyone. Within seconds, a silver/whitish disc shaped light deep in my head—in the forehead region—began clicking on and off and then I began seeing a raining of drops of light descending in the room! Whoa!
That night (and other two nights) Islept on a mattress in one of the cabins. My roomie was the guy from New York.
We did some service work the next day. The guy from New York vacummed Bubba’s house. I was part of the crew that cleaned up all the broken beer bottles between the Dining Hall and Bubba’s house (which had a white picket fence!). I remember having to extract a piece of a beer bottle from the mouth of the ashram’s dog.
Other memories:
One night, before dinner, the guy from New York and I were sitting on the couch talking with the magazine editor, Saniel Bonder, discussing what we felt were some similiarities in meditation practice in the teachings of Krishnamurti and Bubba Free John. Then, a woman told us to put the books away and come and eat dinner. After dinner, Bonder came up to me with an essay Bubba had just written on Krishnamurti. Bonder said it was written after he shared our conversation with Bubba. He took me to his office to read it. Since I had just seen K in San Francisco the previous month, giving a series of talks at a large Hall on Geary Blvd, I felt that some of his criticisms hit the mark. Then, he took me to the Bathhouse and we sat there for a while talking (with two women joining us…????)
I have memories (during the service day) of Bubba touring the grounds slowly, visiting with different people.
Also, we spent time in the Bathhouse with Bubba. Someone put a flotation device in the pool and I held it as Bubba got on. Then pushed him around. Again, I saw a rain of energy.
Here I did a big no no. Feeling faint, I left the bath house after an hour or so. First! Bubba Free John followed me out. I went directly to one of the shower stalls and saw Bubba looking at me, perhaps amazed and amused. He had that look. Everyone else was coming out of the hot water pool also and Billy Tsiknas told everyone to hold off on showering and wait for Bubba to finish. (Oh oh. I was already dressed by then.)
Another Satsang occassion with Bubba was held in the meditation or Satsang Hall. At that time, I felt a current of energy partially rise of my spine, stopping at my chest. I felt a melting sensation and suddenly saw the room blasted by blue/green colors! Oh my.
Late one morning, after Bubba engaged in a raucous snowball fight outside, he joined us all inside the Dining Hall. First, we could hear him chatting and laughing in the kitchen. This man and I chatted about the oddity of the snow in April and I joked that perhaps President Ford’s recent visit to the nearby Geysers on Mt. Geyser had an impact on the area. Then Bubba came in and sat by us. The man asked him if he had anything to do with the snow. Bubba glanced at me and then turned to answer the man: “no, perhaps President Ford’s recent visit had something to do with it.” (Again, oh oh.)
Bubba then started talking about raging war on the Forces of the Chocolate Auric Demons and extolled the virtues of the pure white Big Hunk candy bar. Then, an African-American woman named Michelle came in the room. Prompting Bubba to ask if anyone knew of any “good nigger jokes”. She came over to him and they kissed on the lips.
Then, we joined him on the porch. (There are pictures of this in the archives that include me standing right in front of him, as he holds a new born child.) Someone asked “Generalissimo” Bubba what he was going to do with his POWs (in his war against the chocolate covered auric forces) and he said: “kill them”.
The final day included the reading of the essay on Krishnamurti before breakfast or lunch. While everyone cheered, I booed (just to counter the unanimous consent). This stern looking guy had a little chat with me after that. (I’ve always been the goofball, clearly.)
Those are just the highlights that I remember. We returned to San Francisco. It would be 1986 before I was to visit that sanctuary again (where I saw this guru sit before a large number of people in this big tent).
I never became a formal member after that, but I did frequently visit some of those disciples I had gotten to know in ashram households in The City. I had settled in San Francisco, initially working in the kitchen at the White Horse Tavern/Hotel Beresford on Sutter Street. Then, I moved to Forest Hill (on San Marcos Ave), living in a basement apartment of this mansion owned by Olive Cowell (Henry Cowell’s stepmother) and where a college chum and his wife also lived (on the second floor). My years in San Francisco were coming to an end by the end of 1979, when I became a licensed psychiatric nurse and moved to Napa, California (where I would live and work—at Napa State Hospital—for twenty years). Not too much in the way of spiritual practice really occurred during my years in Napa. UNTIL my encounters with Ammachi and Shree Maa (and involvement at the old Ken Wilber Forum). Those stories in part three. I retired at the very end of the 199os.
(This report deliberately has a “rough” draft look to it. Easier to post my memories in an unvarnished way.)
to be continued…..
A Great New Religion is Born on Twitter!
January 9, 2009
http://twitter.com/IDKReligion
IDKReligion
You follow IDKReligion
IDKReligion’s updates appear in your timeline.
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Next time someone tells you their religious or spiritual belief system, tell them, “You know, that’s a really good guess.”
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We’re not healing the sick here, but we’re for sure doing something about the lame.
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Turn to page http://tinyurl.com/6pg8tv in your IDK bible.
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@jonritt welcome to I Don’t Know.
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When Blink 182 go “Na na na na na na na na na na…” That’s not them not knowing the lyrics, that’s just IDK.
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The Gaza Strip could use some IDK.
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@Hirp not the answer, Hirp, the question.
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@Hirp there are things you know and things you don’t. Kobe is a thing you know.
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@atiasrama divine ignorance, looking it up. Tx
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@jimmyfallon did you know Chuck Wein died a little while ago? He and my mom were really close, always around the house talking hippie stuff
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Darwin was agnostic.
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Humans thinking about death is like cats thinking about math.
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When people who act like they have all the answers start to look retarded, that’s God kicking you under the table.
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Not knowing is not the same as not caring.
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The nice thing about IDK is that you can deny my name three times and I’m totally fine with that.
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In the end, Buddha said, “Forget all my teachings.” We’ve totally one-upped him by having no teachings at all.
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If you have no fucking clue, you are not alone.
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Alan Watts on “The Trickster Guru”…..
January 8, 2009
Note: In an earlier article here, describing my own personal history, I described receiving back in the early 70s The Alan Watts Journal (which would arrive once a month in the mail). This am I found a reposting of this old essay at a forum thread from http://lightgate.net/forum (and the person reposting it there identifies where they found it):
Alan Watts: The Trickster Guru
(courtesy of The Deoxyribonucleic Hyperdimension (Deoxy.org))
“The Trickster Guru”
Alan Watts
I have often thought of writing a novel, similar to Thomas Mann’s “Confessions of Felix Krull,” which would be the life story of a charlatan making out as a master guru – either initiated in Tibet or appearing as the reincarnation of Nagar-juna, Padmasambhava, or some other great historical sage of the Orient. It would be a romantic and glamorous tale, flavored with the scent of pines in Himalayan valleys, with garden courtyards in obscure parts of Alexandria, with mountain temples in Japan, and with secretive meetings and initiations in country houses adjoining Paris, New York, and Los Angeles. It would also raise some rather unexpected philosophical questions as to the relations between genuine mysticism and stage magic. But I have neither the patience nor the skill to be a novelist, and thus can do no more than sketch the idea for some more gifted author.
The attractions of being a trickster guru are many. There is power and there is wealth, and still more the satisfactions of being an actor without need for a stage, who turns “real life” into a drama. It is not, furthermore, an illegal undertaking such as selling shares in non-existent corporations, impersonating a doctor, or falsifying checks. There are no recognized and official qualifications for being a guru, though now that some universities are offering courses in meditation and Kundalini Yoga it may soon be necessary to be a member of the U.S. Fraternity of Gurus. But a really fine trickster would get around all that by the one-upmanship of inventing an entirely new discipline outside and beyond all known forms of esoteric teaching.
It must be understood from the start that the trickster guru fills a real need and performs a genuine public service. Millions of people are searching desperately for a true father-Magician, especially at a time when the clergy and the psychiatrists are making rather a poor show, and do not seem to have the courage of their convictions or of their fantasies. Perhaps they have lost nerve through too high a valuation of the virtue of honesty – as if a painter felt bound to give his landscapes the fidelity of photographs. To fulfil his compassionate vocation, the trickster guru must above all have nerve. He must also be quite well-read in mystical and occult literature, both that which is historically authentic and sound in scholarship, and that which is somewhat questionable – such as the writings of H.P. Blavatsky, P.D. Ouspensky, and Aleister Crowley. It doesn’t do to be caught out on details now known to a wide public.
After such preparatory studies, the first step is to frequent those circles where gurus are especially sought, such as the various cult groups which pursue oriental religions or peculiar forms of psychotherapy, or simply the intellectual and artistic milieux of any great city. Be somewhat quiet and solitary. Never ask questions, but occasionally add a point – quite briefly – to what some speaker has said. Volunteer no information about your personal life, but occasionally indulge in a little absent-minded name-dropping to suggest that you have travelled widely and spent time in Turkestan. Evade close questioning by giving the impression that mere travel is a small matter hardly worth discussing, and that your real interests lie on much deeper levels.
Such behavior will soon provoke people into asking your advice. Don’t come right out with it, but suggest that the question is rather deep and ought to be discussed at length in some quiet place. Make an appointment at a congenial restaurant or cafe – not at your home, unless you have an impressive library and no evidence of being tied down with a family. At first, answer nothing, but without direct questioning, draw the person out to enlarge on his problem and listen with your eyes closed – not as if sleeping, but as if attending to the deep inner vibrations of his thoughts. Conclude the interview with a slightly veiled command to perform some rather odd exercise, such as humming a sound and then suddenly stopping. Carefully instruct the person to be aware of the slightest decision to stop before actually stopping, and indicate that the point is to be able to stop without any prior decision. Make a further appointment for a report on progress.
To carry this through, you must work out a whole series of unusual exercises, both psychological and physical. Some must be rather difficult tricks which can actually be accomplished, to give your student the sense of real progress.
Others must be virtually impossible – such as to think of the words yes and no at the same instant, repeatedly for five minutes, or with a pencil in each hand, to try to hit the opposite hand – which is equally trying to defend itself and hit the other. Don’t give all your students the same exercises but, because people love to be types, sort them into groups according to their astrological sun signs or according to your own private classifications, which must be given such odd names as grubers, jongers, milers, and trovers.
A judidous use of hypnosis – avoiding all the common tricks of hand-raising, staring at lights, or saying “Relax. Relax, while I count up to ten” will produce pleasant changes of feeling and the impression of attaining higher states of consciousness.
First, describe such a stage quite vividly – say, the sense of walking on air – and then have your students walk around barefooted trying not to make the slightest sound and yet giving their whole weight to the floor. Imply that the floor will soon feel like a cushion, then like water, and finally like air. Indicate a little later that there is reason to believe that something of this kind is the initial stage of levitation.
Next, be sure to have about thirty or forty different stages of progress worked out, giving them numbers, and suggest that there are still some extremely high stages beyond those numbered which can only be understood by those who have reached twenty-eight – so no point in discussing them now. After the walking-on-air gambit, try for instance having them push out hard with their arms as if some overwhelming force were pulling them. Reverse the procedure. This leads quickly to the feeling that one is not doing what one is doing and doing what one is not doing. Tell them to stay in this state while going about everyday business.
After a while let it be known that you have a rather special and peculiar background – as when some student asks, “Where did you get all this?” Well, you just picked up a thing or two in Turkestan, or “I’m quite a bit older than I look,” or say that “Reincarnation is entirely unlike what people suppose it to be.” Later, let on that you are in some way connected with an extremely select in-group. Don’t brashly claim anything. Your students will soon do that for you, and, when one hits on the fantasy that pleases you most, say, “I see you are just touching stage eighteen.”
There are two schools of thought about asking for money for your services. One is to have fees just like a doctor, because people are embarrassed if they do not know just what is expected of them. The other, used by the real high-powered tricksters, is to do everything free with, however, the understanding that each student has been personally selected for his or her innate capacity for the work (call it that), and thus be careful not to admit anyone without first putting them through some sort of hazing. Monetary contributions will soon be offered. Otherwise, charge rather heavily, making it dear that the work is worth infinitely more to oneself and to others than, say, expensive surgery or a new home. Imply that you give most of it away to mysterious beneficiaries.
As soon as you can afford to wangle it, get hold of a country house as an ashram or spiritual retreat, and put students to work on all the menial tasks. Insist on some special diet, but do not follow it yourself. Indeed, you should cultivate small vices, such as smoking, mild boozing, or, if you are very careful, sleeping with the ladies, to suggest that your stage of evolution is so high that such things do not affect you, or that only by such means can you remain in contact with ordinary mundane consciousness.
On the one hand, you yourself must be utterly free from any form of religious or parapsychological superstition, lest some other trickster should outplay you. On the other hand, you must eventually come to believe in your own hoax, because this will give you ten times more nerve. This can be done through religionizing total skepticism to the point of basic incredulity about everything – even science. After all, this is in line with the Hindu-Buddhist position that the whole universe is an illusion, and you need not worry about whether the Absolute is real or unreal, eternal or non-eternal, because every idea of it that you could form would, in comparison with living it up in the present, be horribly boring. Furthermore, you should convince yourself that the Absolute is precisely the same as illusion, and thus not be in the least ashamed of being greedy or anxious or depressed. Make it dear that we are ultimately God, but that you know it. If you are challenged to perform wonders, point out that everything is already a fabulous wonder, and to do something bizarre would be to go against your own most perfect scheme of things. On the other hand, when funny coincidences turn up, look knowing and show no surprise, especially when any student has good fortune or recovers from sickness. It will promptly be attributed to your powers, and you may be astonished to find that your very touch becomes healing, because people really believe in you. When it doesn’t work, you should sigh gently about lack of faith, or explain that this particular sickness is a very important working out of Karma which will have to be reckoned with some day, so why not now.
The reputation for supernormal powers is self-reinforcing, and as it builds up you can get more daring, such that you will have the whole power of mass self-deception working for you. But always remember that a good guru plays it cool and maintains a certain aloofness, especially from those sharpies of the press and TV whose game is to expose just about everyone as a fraud. Always insist, like the finest restaurants, that your clientele is exclusive. The very highest “society” does not deign to be listed in the Social Register.
As time goes on, allow it more and more to be understood that you are in constant touch with other centers of work. Disappear from time to time by taking trips abroad, and come back looking more mysterious than ever. You can easily find someone in India or Syria to do duty as your colleague, and take a small and select group of students on a journey which includes a brief interview with this Personage. He can talk any kind of nonsense, while you do the “translating.” When travelling with students, avoid any obvious assistance from regular agencies, and let it appear that your secret fraternity has arranged everything in advance.
Now a trickster guru is certainly an illusionist, but one might ask “What else is art?” If the universe is nothing but a vast Rorschach blot upon which we project our collective measures and interpretations, and if past and future has no real existence, an illusionist is simply a creative artist who changes the collective interpretation of life, and even improves on it. Reality is mostly what a people or a culture conceives it to be. Money, worthless in itself, depends entirely on collective faith for its value. The past is held against you only because others believe in it, and the future seems important only because we have conned ourselves into the notion that surviving for a long time, with painstaking care, is preferable to surviving for a short time with no responsibility and lots of thrills. It is really a matter of changing fashion.
Perhaps, then, a trickster may be one who actually liberates people from their more masochistic participations in the collective illusion, on the homeopathic principle of “The hair of the dog that bit you. ” Even genuine gurus set their disciples impossible psychological exercises to demonstrate the unreality of the ego, and it could be argued that they too, are unwitting tricksters, raised as they have been in cultures without disillusioning benefits of “scientific knowledge,” which, as ecologists note, isn’t working out too well. Perhaps it all boils down to the ancient belief that God himself is a trickster, eternally fooling himself by the power of maya into the sensation that he is a human being, a cat, or an insect, since no art can be accomplished which does not set itself certain rules and limitations. A fully infinite and boundless God would have no limitations, and thus no way of manifesting power or love. Omnipotence must therefore include the power of self-restriction – to the point of forgetting that it is restricting itself and thus making limitations seem real. It could be that genuine students and gurus are on the side of being fooled, whereas the phony gurus are the foolers – and one must make one’s choice.
I am proposing this problem as a kind of Zen koan, like “Beyond positive and negative, what is reality?” How will you avoid being either a fool or a fooler? How will you get rid of the ego-illusion without either trying or not trying? If you need God’s grace to be saved, how will you get the grace to get grace? Who will answer these questions if yourself is itself an illusion? Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.
The cock crows in the evening;
At midnight, the brilliant sun.
And there have also been such effective mother-magicians as Mary Baker Eddy, Helena Blavatsky, Aimee Semple McPherson, Annie Besant, and Alice Bailey.
© Alan Watts (1915 – 1973) The Essential Alan Watts, Celestial Arts (1974).
Conrad Goehausen (“Broken Yogi”): stand bare to the non-dual sky
December 18, 2008
The amazing conversation—and debate—continues in the comments thread at http://nonduality.org at this posted article:
http://nonduality.org/2008/11/28/adi-da-is-dead/
(There are 372 posted comments there!) Currently, Conradg’s post is the “last word”. I feel his last paragraph reinforces a point I’m starting to make in my reports on my own history:
Now I agree that we don’t need to talk much about the past, I just have no taboos about it. Getting the real non-dual lesson is hard, especially if we already think we know what that lesson is going to be. Which is why we have to throw away not just our past, but all these conceptual dharmas. I was always inspired by Da’s way of talking back in the 70’s, when he talked about throwing away all dharmas, and simply standing bare to the universe, with no supports. Well, I still believe in that attitude. I just didn’t see Adi Da staying true to that. Instead, he built up monumental edifices to the mind, huge dharmic castles which his devotees seemed to want to worship rather than tear down. But as with Marpa and Milarepa, the real wisdom comes not from building temples, but from tearing them apart. And that is what I felt at last I had to do with Da, tear down that temple, and stand bare to the non-dual sky.
The scarring of a favorite wandering site
November 30, 2008
Oxbow Nature Study Park, Reno
A fire swept through 18 of the 22 acres of a Reno park that is rich in wildlife and also is a quiet, contemplative wandering site. I took the above photo this November (seven months after the fire).
