I'm drivin' down the street, blasting Bauhaus so loud the rearview mirror is wobbling, and...at a certain point I'm washed all over with the magnificence of the Divine Mother, for one second I see All around me--the traffic lights that sway a little in the hot wind, the vacated lunatic asylum they're about to tear down, the seedy car detailing place, the sweaty guy knocking on the Walk sign button so he can cross the street--I see it All as one Flame of Love, an endless throbbing Kind Heart...
music is miraculous, always...pure Shakti, pure loving Power and endorphins...and I feel Kali's power in the shaking distortion of this music from so long ago, and I feel the truth of the ultimate secret of Al-Anon [stop reading, please]...the ultimate secret of tantra [you are not authorized to read any further--please close this browser window now]...the final secret of the Illuminati...the OTO...of Julian of Norwich, St. John of the Cross, Mirabai: the final Secret: that I have everything I need. That I don't need anyone's love or approval. That all I need is my Kali. And my Angel.
Those of you who are my dear friends: I treasure your love, and I adore you. You bring holy light to my existence. But you, too--you, neither--need anyone, need no one--you need only the God of your understanding...you need only the Holy Guardian Angel of your True Self, your true will--which some of you Do so well, right Now.
Saturday, August 6, 2005
Monday, August 1, 2005
The Curious Incident of the Boy Novelist and the Girl Novelist
In a recent issue of The New Yorker there are two literary review articles. One is about a Boy Novelist. The other is about a Girl Novelist. The articles are placed consecutively in the magazine. Both are accompanied by caricatures of the novelists.
The article about Boy Novelist is written by a male. The article about Girl Novelist is written by a female.
Boy Novelist and Girl Novelist both write violent, disturbing novels about the darker sides of the human psyche. Boy Novelist is a quite well-known Classic and published his first novel in 1965. Girl Novelist seems to be on the way to Classic and published her first novel in 1985.
Boy Novelist "brilliantly ventriloquizes the King James Bible, Shakespearean and Jacobean tragedy, Melville, Conrad, and Faulkner."
"As a child," we are told in the other article, "Girl Novelist was crazy about Shakespeare."
Boy Novelist gets compared to Shakespeare, Conrad, and Melville a lot in the article about him. Girl Novelist gets compared to herself when she was younger and to herself when she is writing fiction and when she is writing memoir.
The article about Boy Novelist is three and one half pages long. It uses the word "myth" or words made out of the word "myth" eleven times.
The article about Girl Novelist says that she had a hysterectomy and that "she is a size 20." The article about Girl Novelist contains twenty paragraphs. Six of those are biographical. The article about Boy Novelist says that he "lives quietly in New Mexico."
The article about Girl Novelist says, "In 2003, Girl Novelist published her memoir, which, for all its useful information, I admire less than her other books, for it alone seems to complain."
This is what it says on the New Yorker web site now: "This week in the magazine, Ken Auletta writes about the battle between Katie Couric and Diane Sawyer for control of the morning television audience."
The article about Boy Novelist is written by a male. The article about Girl Novelist is written by a female.
Boy Novelist and Girl Novelist both write violent, disturbing novels about the darker sides of the human psyche. Boy Novelist is a quite well-known Classic and published his first novel in 1965. Girl Novelist seems to be on the way to Classic and published her first novel in 1985.
Boy Novelist "brilliantly ventriloquizes the King James Bible, Shakespearean and Jacobean tragedy, Melville, Conrad, and Faulkner."
"As a child," we are told in the other article, "Girl Novelist was crazy about Shakespeare."
Boy Novelist gets compared to Shakespeare, Conrad, and Melville a lot in the article about him. Girl Novelist gets compared to herself when she was younger and to herself when she is writing fiction and when she is writing memoir.
The article about Boy Novelist is three and one half pages long. It uses the word "myth" or words made out of the word "myth" eleven times.
The article about Girl Novelist says that she had a hysterectomy and that "she is a size 20." The article about Girl Novelist contains twenty paragraphs. Six of those are biographical. The article about Boy Novelist says that he "lives quietly in New Mexico."
The article about Girl Novelist says, "In 2003, Girl Novelist published her memoir, which, for all its useful information, I admire less than her other books, for it alone seems to complain."
This is what it says on the New Yorker web site now: "This week in the magazine, Ken Auletta writes about the battle between Katie Couric and Diane Sawyer for control of the morning television audience."
Friday, July 29, 2005
The 1000 Names of Kali
Selections from the Sri Kali Sahasranama Stotram (1000 Names of Kali), translated by Swami Satyananda Saraswati, published in Kali Puja.
She Who Confronts the Forces of Duality
She Who Illuminates the Whole World Family
She Whose Forehead is Marked with the Vermilion of Love which Brings the Light of Wisdom
She Who Tears Apart Thought
She Who Dwells in All
She Who Creates
She Who Destroys
She Who is the Spirit of Illumination
She Whose Neck has Lines like a Conch Shell
She Who Has Disheveled Hair
She Whose Beauty Radiates the Light of Knowledge
She Who is a Young Girl
She Who is a Middle Aged Woman
She Who is an Old Woman
She Who is Beyond Age
She Whose Heart is Very Soft
She Who is the New Moon
She Who is Beyond
She Who is Hidden
She Who is Everywhere
She Who is the Beloved
She Who is the Intrinsic Nature of the Intoxicating Light of Infinite Love
She Who is the Energy that Pulls Beyond Fear
She Who Holds an Unusually Small Bell
She Who is the Life Force of the Flower Which is Born of Itself
She Who Always Moves with the Flowers of Light
She Who is the Enjoyer of Passion
She Who is the Mother of the Bliss of the Female Seed of Life
She Who is the Expression of All That Can be Expressed
She Who Causes Dissolution of the Subtle Body into the Causal Body [this is Shakta tantric lingo for the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, expressed in the syllable krîm]
You can listen to three characteristically energetic talks by the Swami about the 1000 names here or here.
She Who Confronts the Forces of Duality
She Who Illuminates the Whole World Family
She Whose Forehead is Marked with the Vermilion of Love which Brings the Light of Wisdom
She Who Tears Apart Thought
She Who Dwells in All
She Who Creates
She Who Destroys
She Who is the Spirit of Illumination
She Whose Neck has Lines like a Conch Shell
She Who Has Disheveled Hair
She Whose Beauty Radiates the Light of Knowledge
She Who is a Young Girl
She Who is a Middle Aged Woman
She Who is an Old Woman
She Who is Beyond Age
She Whose Heart is Very Soft
She Who is the New Moon
She Who is Beyond
She Who is Hidden
She Who is Everywhere
She Who is the Beloved
She Who is the Intrinsic Nature of the Intoxicating Light of Infinite Love
She Who is the Energy that Pulls Beyond Fear
She Who Holds an Unusually Small Bell
She Who is the Life Force of the Flower Which is Born of Itself
She Who Always Moves with the Flowers of Light
She Who is the Enjoyer of Passion
She Who is the Mother of the Bliss of the Female Seed of Life
She Who is the Expression of All That Can be Expressed
She Who Causes Dissolution of the Subtle Body into the Causal Body [this is Shakta tantric lingo for the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, expressed in the syllable krîm]
You can listen to three characteristically energetic talks by the Swami about the 1000 names here or here.
Monday, July 25, 2005
A Sunday Stroll
I was talking with Laura yesterday as we walked past a church, and she called me on the instinctive shudder of loathing that this building and its denizens inspired in me.
"You know why you feel this way, don't you?"
From the tone of her voice, I knew a lesson was on its way.
Me [sarcastically]: "No. Why don't you tell me?"
"You've pretty much made your peace with the Christian religion, but you haven't yet forgiven yourself for being drawn into fundamentalism when you were a kid. Why you can't forgive yourself, I can't imagine--you were young, ignorant, had seen nothing of the world, were vulnerable and gullible and looking for easy answers, like everyone else."
Just then a white couple, about my age, walked past us, on their way to the church--very odd, as this church, from all my observations over the past seven or eight years, has seemed exlusively African-American.
Laura continued: "That guy could be you now. And what would be wrong with that? Do you really think a person has only one True Will, decreed from the beginning of time? The universe isn't nearly that euclidean, my dear. And--had you stayed a Christian, let's think about it. You would have tried to emulate Christ, and thus would have tried to surrender your ego to the will of a loving divine parent. As you are doing now.
"You would have eventually realized that in God there is neither male nor female, and thus you would have come to some kind of gnostic/advaitic understanding of the divine. As in your heart of hearts you have now. You would have eventually understood sensuality as a gift from God, as a lot of these evangelicals are finally doing, and you would have striven to attain oneness with God in lovemaking and in all other experience. As you are doing now. You would have kept on reading T.S. Eliot and would have eventually come to understand that scriptural truths are best understood as deep psychological truths, not as scientific or historical truths. As you have done. So--what would be the difference?"
Apparently angels have trouble with the finer points. And my Angel, at least, has an annoying tendency to be right.
"You know why you feel this way, don't you?"
From the tone of her voice, I knew a lesson was on its way.
Me [sarcastically]: "No. Why don't you tell me?"
"You've pretty much made your peace with the Christian religion, but you haven't yet forgiven yourself for being drawn into fundamentalism when you were a kid. Why you can't forgive yourself, I can't imagine--you were young, ignorant, had seen nothing of the world, were vulnerable and gullible and looking for easy answers, like everyone else."
Just then a white couple, about my age, walked past us, on their way to the church--very odd, as this church, from all my observations over the past seven or eight years, has seemed exlusively African-American.
Laura continued: "That guy could be you now. And what would be wrong with that? Do you really think a person has only one True Will, decreed from the beginning of time? The universe isn't nearly that euclidean, my dear. And--had you stayed a Christian, let's think about it. You would have tried to emulate Christ, and thus would have tried to surrender your ego to the will of a loving divine parent. As you are doing now.
"You would have eventually realized that in God there is neither male nor female, and thus you would have come to some kind of gnostic/advaitic understanding of the divine. As in your heart of hearts you have now. You would have eventually understood sensuality as a gift from God, as a lot of these evangelicals are finally doing, and you would have striven to attain oneness with God in lovemaking and in all other experience. As you are doing now. You would have kept on reading T.S. Eliot and would have eventually come to understand that scriptural truths are best understood as deep psychological truths, not as scientific or historical truths. As you have done. So--what would be the difference?"
Apparently angels have trouble with the finer points. And my Angel, at least, has an annoying tendency to be right.
Zim Zum
[Excerpts from The Exegesis of Mogen David ben Chatterjee, the Mad Jew of Calcutta, appear in italics.]Art transforms us because it shatters, or at least rearranges, our symbol systems. Religion should do this, too, but we all know how that goes. Why did Kali--or was it Laura?--or Ammachi?--or blind chance?--lead me to that Kiefer painting, hanging beside a sculpture by the same artist called Angel of History? (OK, it's a B-52 bomber, but I still appreciate the seraphic synchronicity...after all, by my own admission, I'd come to DC seeking answers about "the light and dark sides of my Mother Kali--pleasure and pain, love and violence, beauty and horror.")
On the painting's name/meaning: usually transliterated "tzimtzum"...get this, from Daniel Matt's The Essential Kabbalah (the one book everyone should read on this subject)--page 93, no less:
In the words of Shabbetai Sheftel Horowitz, 17th-century wise guy, "Before the creation of the world, Ein Sof withdrew itself into its essence, from itself to itself within itself. It left an empty space within its essence, in which it could emanate and create."
This space is the tzimtzum. Some of its earthly analogues are the Ark of the Covenant, the Grail, the heart chakra, the Mandelbrot Set...there's at least one more...
In our Divine Mother's original act of self-love, when pure consciousness noticed Itself and swoon'd in delight--a space opened in which everything could happen. And is happening--wave on wave of happening on the face of the waters. What did Amma say? Something to the effect that no true separateness exists--Kali is an infinite ocean on which we and all we know are wavelets and waves. This is the form in which Ramakrishna perceived Her after begging and begging for a vision; it's a lot like what I saw when Amma hugged me the first time.
Kabbalah's "shattered vessels" become, in Shaktism, Mother Kali's divine play (lîlâ)...play forms a part of Her essential nature, which I suppose is why Kali, in traditional Shakta iconography, is a sexy young woman who also happens to carry a sword. In Judeo- Christianity, what we call good, evil, creation, destruction, etc. reflect a lost unity that will one day be restored. In Shaktism, these appear as manifestations of Kali's play...is that a picture of a stagnant, forboding pool, or of a sweet beginning of beginnings?
...or--for now, anyway, this is the "strong and delicious word which...the sea whisper'd me."
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
But Wait--It Gets Weirder...
Or maybe not...this is the post where I try to tie it all together, a patently artificial act but one seemingly demanded by--the blog form? The basic rules of spiritual narratives? The entropic direction of the universe?
I forgot to mention the pyramid-sales people; they were hangin' out in the hotel, too, with their name tags and the white ring binders with the klunky, desktop-published logo on the front. So you had your get-rich-quick dreamers, your make-schools-safe hopefuls, your Win the War on Terror fantasists, and your god-wishers, all in one suburban enclave. A little cross-section of the USA--the capitalist, bureaucratic, patrio-militarist, and theo-bamboozle parts, anyway--all sipping their lattés and checking their voice mail. This is how I would have seen it, were I not so invested in one of those groups, were the stories I tell myself about myself not so laden with metaphors from one of those lexicons.
Art used to be my Big Story, even back when I was trying and failing (yes, quite miserably) to be a Christian, and especially later when I'd given up and started building my heaven drug by drug and pose by pose. Were I still a member of the church of art, I would have fancied myself at the very tabernacle one day in DC, as I stood in one little room in the National Gallery and gazed on four or five works that changed everything for me when I was a teen art geek, most importantly The Human Condition by Réné Magritte. It struck me that this painting "said" exactly what Amma had been saying in her talks: we inherit a story about the world, call it "the world," and slumber contentedly away.
Knocking over the easel is the hard part. Once that's done you have to either open the window or--it's best not to think about it. On looking at the Magritte painting I felt surrounded by Kali's caring and felt my past perceptions fall away--never had this painting looked so cartoonish, yet never so eloquent. I felt led by Her as I meandered into a gallery radiating so much shakti it felt as though I were back at Amma's feet. On one wall shimmered and echoed Something so magnificent--terrible and beautiful, and mesmerizing and repellent--a portrait of my Divine Mother, yet so imprisoned was I by my knowledge of the painter's work that I first assumed it was a commentary on World War II (!).
Next: Absolutely the Last Amma Post
I forgot to mention the pyramid-sales people; they were hangin' out in the hotel, too, with their name tags and the white ring binders with the klunky, desktop-published logo on the front. So you had your get-rich-quick dreamers, your make-schools-safe hopefuls, your Win the War on Terror fantasists, and your god-wishers, all in one suburban enclave. A little cross-section of the USA--the capitalist, bureaucratic, patrio-militarist, and theo-bamboozle parts, anyway--all sipping their lattés and checking their voice mail. This is how I would have seen it, were I not so invested in one of those groups, were the stories I tell myself about myself not so laden with metaphors from one of those lexicons.
Art used to be my Big Story, even back when I was trying and failing (yes, quite miserably) to be a Christian, and especially later when I'd given up and started building my heaven drug by drug and pose by pose. Were I still a member of the church of art, I would have fancied myself at the very tabernacle one day in DC, as I stood in one little room in the National Gallery and gazed on four or five works that changed everything for me when I was a teen art geek, most importantly The Human Condition by Réné Magritte. It struck me that this painting "said" exactly what Amma had been saying in her talks: we inherit a story about the world, call it "the world," and slumber contentedly away.
Knocking over the easel is the hard part. Once that's done you have to either open the window or--it's best not to think about it. On looking at the Magritte painting I felt surrounded by Kali's caring and felt my past perceptions fall away--never had this painting looked so cartoonish, yet never so eloquent. I felt led by Her as I meandered into a gallery radiating so much shakti it felt as though I were back at Amma's feet. On one wall shimmered and echoed Something so magnificent--terrible and beautiful, and mesmerizing and repellent--a portrait of my Divine Mother, yet so imprisoned was I by my knowledge of the painter's work that I first assumed it was a commentary on World War II (!).
Next: Absolutely the Last Amma Post
Magick at Princeton
Minds influencing machines (maybe); there are quite valid criticisms of this stuff. Page 2 is particularly interesting.
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
It's Been Storming Here All Day...
...and one of my cats sniffed glue. Is there a support group for that?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
