Subj:   IVy: World without end
Date:  15 Jan 1999 02:10 EDT
From:  PJSpickler@aol.com


**   ivy-subscribers relaying.  **

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The following first appeared in the private email list IVy-subscribers,
which was available to all those who subscribed to the
printed magazine, International Viewpoints.
Home Page: http://www.ivymag.org/ - with extensive links to FZ!
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        The following does not reflect the views of anyone in particular, nor
should it constitute any sense of endorsement by the issuing authority.

      A strangled greeting to any and all who have picked up this feeble
message at the low end of their single-sideband sets -- must have taken one
hell of a bounce off the ionosphere.  (Please ignore --just the ramblings of a
former radio-telephone operator, license long expired.)  But let's get down to
business.
     
        First off, having unexpectedly surfaced through the many green-black
layers of the tarn whose bottom constitutes my winter home, what to my dim
eyes should appear but a vast ray of brilliant light, none other than Frank
Gordon himself, and at his very, very best. What Frank had to say about things
in general, including some marvelous commentary regarding the single
submission to the Unpopular Contest,  completely summed up and rendered
succinctly, in one simple question, "Are you aberrated enough to have a full
and rich life?", the very essence of everything I have ever hoped to say about
anything.  24 hours later my poor body is still being wracked with waves of
laughter, in fact it has reached the point where each of the billions of
individual cells in the body are laughing as if they were each an individual
consciousness (talk about a composite!).  This humor has reached the point
where I fear it could unbalance the ratio of misery to happiness that is so
necessary for life here on our marvelous little dirtball.  Anyhow, thank you,
Frank --- thank you very much!  things will never be the same, thank goodness.
If the contest hadn't been cancelled, Frank surely would have won two prizes:
first, the most unpopular, and second, expanding the contest into two parts,
the most popular -- and to think that he did it with so few words.  Ah well,
as someone once said, real wisdom is simple.

       And now, on to a few other ramblings and rumblings, between belly-
cracking bouts of laughter.  This should be entitled "Dead men tell no tales,
or, Nature abhors a Clear."

     For about the last 2500 years, ever since someone is reputed to have
seen the morning star, after which and sometime later others referred to this
chap as "Buddha," (this last will probably cause my dear buddy, Max Sandor, to
take me to task, but since he knows it's all in fun, he may only slice me up
gently) -- anyway, as the centuries have gone by, it has been noticed over and
over again that something seems to be possible for human beings that, when it
occurs, they no longer seem to be human beings.  Oh yes, there's still a body
and stuff like that, but they don't really look like or sound like or talk
like or act like regular human beings, and this state may last anywheres from
a few moments to -- well, I don't know for sure just what the record is, but
it could be quite awhile, maybe even as long as the remaining life of the body
-- I just don't know.  Anyhow, mention of this state has been found in all
kinds of past and present practices; some people even seem to run into it when
they're not practicing, say just walking down the road or playing bridge or
hearing a symphony or seeing an incredible sunset, or scratching one's navel.

       My own perceptions and experiences regarding this state, which goes by
many different names, depending on just where in the world you are and what
particular vehicle you may be using to get there, are that said state has a
profound effect upon what a person has been calling "I" just before this thing
happens.  At the time this thing happens, that "I," for all intents and
purposes, ceases to exist.  In fact, if you want to get a bit rustic in your
speech, you could say it's dead, or it died, and something else that perhaps
has been dead is reborn.  And as the song goes, the glow of its being
outshines every star.

      Now here's the rub: if you wish to continue this state, you will be
outside the game of Life and all its survival concerns, which will have most
of the people that knew you before this rebirth, as well as other dynamics
that you're connected to, feeling as though they have lost you and all the
agreements and plans and purposes you've been sharing in.  Some of them, in
fact, might get really bent out of shape and feel betrayed, as people often
feel when the folks they've been counting on suddenly die.  On the other hand,
if you make the mistake of thinking that you can go back into the game with
all the survival necessities and the time track and at the same time maintain
the state of perfect clarity, you will sooner or later find out that being
Clear and aberrated at the same time are mutually exclusive.  And if you
haven't listened to the earlier admonishments of older wisdom schools, you'll
probably wake up one day and decide that something's terribly wrong, and that
you had better get to the nearest repair center as soon as possible in an
effort to rehabilitate or recover this wonderful state.  

      Just what is the admonishment of the earlier and wiser heads concerning
states with names like "satori," "samadhi," "Clear," "grace," "illumination,"
etc. etc. etc.?  Let's take a note from Zen, just for example: "Very, very
good!  Now get out there and hoe those beans!"  Or "If you see the Buddha,
kill him."  In other words, if you reach one of these states without having
been pre-programmed by some individual or organization to believe that you're
always supposed to be that way from now on, no effort is made to become
attached to that or any other state of mind, and therefore one really is free
and is not always running around looking into the mirror to see if they're
Clear or OT or something each day, and then if they don't meet somebody's
standard for the way they're supposed to be, they go out the bottom and become
victims of the further marketing of the repair stations.

     So tear up those OT certificates and throw your Clear bracelet away and
extrovert out of that nonsense and remain unattached and unattracted to any of
it.  You'll probably find all kinds of marvelous highs along the way which can
be thoroughly enjoyed, but never possessed.  Now we're talking about real
freedom -- no name, no title.  

       As those last words slipped from my rotting brain and poured out
through my diseased mouth and polluted the airwaves, my body once again
executed an imperfect three-and-a-half off the 10-meter platform, with an
entry vertical enough to take me once again to the bottom of the tarn and my
deep, dark sleep. -- The Stillness

**
Home Page: http://www.ivymag.org/ - with extensive links to FZ!
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