A MUST READ EMAIL:
Below, following my opening paragraphs, is what I call a must read email. Albeit not totally atypical from some emails I receive, it has a certain special ring about it I like and write about it in the next few paragraphs. The email is from a person not necessarily aligned with nor in approval of what I present online, and in no short terms, fairly clear about it. But first, my opening:
Over the years I have worked out a sort of loose knit rule-of-thumb for making incoming and outgoing of emails much more manageable. As emails come in they are divided into one of three groups. First, out-and-out spam, which is totally ignored and quickly dispensed with, and then two other groups: 1) emails thought worthy and 2) those thought unwothhy. The worthy are given the most consideration, those deemed unworthy are set aside and dealt with at a later date as time permits, a kind of second chance as the case may be. One thing for sure, I never jump the gun with a personal response, and especially so if the email writer claims to be someone in position of fame or authority such as a religious figure, author, actor, politician, or scientist. I always need independent confirmation of my own stemming from my own endeavors. Although it may sound a little bourgeois, initially I have someone who sorts through the email, with any of my responses sent from her computer using her IP address, an idea initially put into place because I was often in transit in areas where internet connections were unreliable or nonexistent. As well, as a precaution no links are opened from an unknown party or unsolicited email. Emails that point out broken links on my pages, misspelled words, or some incomprehensible and totally undecipherable paragraph written by me are put into a kind of separate working subgroup. Whether or not someone likes or dosen't like my works, me, or what I write doesn't matter.
People that I know or have dealt with in the past usually get flagged and special recognition. Such is the case recently when a then new email appeared in my inbox, catching my attention because of having received an email from the same person two full years before, dated May 11, 2022. I had used his previous email in conjunction with three other emails on this very same Getting Letters and Email page to make a point, where it remains posted still to ths day. Memorable in the first case, then carried over to the second below because of his screen name, a screen name that brought back memories to me, albeit unrelated to the email writer in any fashion.
MISS CRABTREE
(please click image)
Starting way back in my youth, and for sure not knowing specifically how far back, I've always liked the Little Rascals and Our Gang series of comedy short films, especially so having nothing but fond memories for their schoolteacher Miss Crabtree, played by actress June Marlowe, shown pictured in the role above. There must have been at least 200 Little Rascals and Our Gang comedies made, but out of those 200 or so film shorts, and this is hard to believe, Miss Crabtree only appeared in six. In one of the film shorts Stymie, the kid that aways wore the bowler hat, is being asked a series of mathematical questons, if by Miss Crabtree or not I don't recall, the first question being "what is two n' one" and the second being "what is three n' one." The answer to the first question "what is two n' one" Stymie answered "shoe polish," for the answer to the second, "what is three n' one,' Stymie replied "oil." I know I am paraphrasing big-time here, but for some reason I have always loved that exchange and have used both answers many times myself. Which brings up the punchline. TwoInOne just happens to be the screen name of the person whose email I talk about above and why because of Stymie's answer I recall both. When it was brought to my attention I had an email from someone I referenced previously I remembered his screen name immediately and took a look. Wow, like did that guy's new email scathe me. He tore the living shit out of every inch of my existence and everything else he could think of if not more so from top to bottom. Oh well, at least it gave me incentive to write the Stymie story which I'v never been able to work in and might even be worth something. After all, in a yin-yang sort of way, there might be something to be being known as Miss Crabtree on one hand clapping, yet still presenting herself in a non-crabtree way as she does on the other.
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I now present below TwoInOne's email unedited for your own edification.
From: TwoInOne
To: AWAKENING 101
Fri, May 31, 2024 at 11:48 AM
I've done this a million times before. You are a charlatan. You are what some people call a spiritual materialistic parasite. You have to spout all of this stuff online, get responses to validate you're useless and non adventurous life. I've stepped in your footsteps, in different countries and different places and different times and different people. And I never ever have felt the need to get validation for it.
In fact, the most profound Awakening moments in my life are experiences that are so profound and eternal, they can't be shared through a verbal words or written.
Thank you for wasting all of our lives and time, and thank you for wasting internet bandwidth with your gibberish. Sir? You are nothing but a charlatan.
And I do say this with compassion and love, hopefully it's a slap in the face to wake you up to the truth. The true spiritual path does not depend on who you've met, who you know, and what you feel and think you conceptually and erroneously idealize into logical explanations of what life is or is not.
I'll give you this. You're good with words! And you are a really good manipulator. But you are not someone that brings anyone anywhere close to enlightenment. All you do is cause people to fall down the rabbit hole that you have. Endless knowledge. Useless knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Figured you would have figured that out by now!
So, sir, go tromp the foothills of the Sierras and make tea with an invisible ghost. I'm sure you will have a lot of readers on the edge of their seats!
W RESPONDS:In the opening at the top of my longtime online Peace Corps page I offer the following from Wei Wu Wei, with the second from rhe Razor's Edge as so cited:
"...give any information you have garnered to a fellow traveler along the Way. Why? Because the same information would have helped the person who compiled it if it had been given to him, and that is why he compiled it --- and that is why it should be offered to others along the Way."
An interpretation from the works of:
WEI WU WEI
"Nothing that happens is without effect. If you throw a stone in a pond the universe isn't quite the same as it was before. It may be that if I lead the life I've planned for myself it may affect others; the effect may be no greater than a ripple caused by a stone thrown in a pond, but one ripple causes another, and that one a third; it's just possible that a few people will see that my way of life offers happiness and peace, and the they in turn will teach what they have learnt to others."
Why the use of other people's words rather than my my own? The wind against the sails is what moves the boat. You may be steering it to where you want it to go, but it's the wind from somewhere else that makes it move. There's no use in remaking the Dharma Wheel if it's wisdom serves adequately it's purpose.
And now this, again for your own edification, just what does it mean to be referred to as being Spiritual Materialistic and if so, what does it have to being a parasite? If you go to the link I just cited you will find that in a few paragraphs into the article the author says one is advised to be open to such experiences as Darshan then makes reference to and quotes from William James' 1902 book "The Varieties of Religious Experience." If you go to the second email below on this page you will see a letter from a reader that cites my use of James' book, she writing, "Reading your articles has been a great comfort and they really began to make sense after I read your suggestion someplace to read "Lectures XVI And XVII: Mysticism" by William James in his 1902 book 'The Varieties of Religious Experience.'"
To: the_wanderling
FROM: Soft Hair March 20, 2024 03:07 UTC
Wanderling,
Like you, I am a black hole enthusiast. Somewhere in your works (as you call them) I came across your article on Einstein where you briefly mention an admiration of the works of the astrophysicist Alexandra Amon. Elsewhere I read a quote from you that you attributed to the astrophysicist Janna Levin who was originally an art history major come philosophy major that turned to being an astrophysicist after discovering Einstein. The quote went something like, and I'm paraphrasing, "people have been trying for centuries to figure out what long-dead men meant when they said something. But when Einstein came up with his Theory of Relativity, he shared it with everybody. It was ours, both profound questions and the answers. It was then I discovered the difference between solving problems outright, and solving problems with this sort of polysyllabic obfuscating jungle, that I made the switch (i.e., from philosophy to physics)." I've searched everything and can't find where you quoted her.
Yours in the cosmos
Soft Hair
W RESPONDS:
The original quote stems from an article by Natalie Wolchover in the May 2016 issue of Quanta Magazine. Me quoting the quote showed up online from an email response I had sent to a reader of my works, not realizing it would end up online. I never bookmarked the blog where it appeared and like you, I have been unable to locate it through a search. The whole thing has been paraphrased from me to the blog and the blog to you and from you to me, but the gist remains.
I was drawing an anology between what Levin said and what is found in the book The Razor's Edge by British playwright and author W. Somerset Maugham wherein Isabel Bradley, the fiancee' of the book's main character Larry Darrell, who outside the confines of the book in real life, was my spiritual Mentor, is in conversation with Darrell, questioning him about his intense desire seeking answers to life and the reason of it all. In the 1946 black and white movie Isabel's questions are put into the mouth of the Polish coal miner Kosti, here, below however, I stick with the book:
"But Larry," she smiled. "People have been asking
those questions for thousands of years. If they could be
answered, surely they'd have been answered by now."
Larry chuckled.
"Don't laugh as if I'd said something idiotic," she said sharply.
"On the contrary I think you've said something shrewd.
But on the other hand you might say that if men have
been asking them for thousands of years it proves that they
can't help asking them and have to go on asking them."
While it is true I've given upfront kudos to Amon in my works but haven't given much of a tumble to speak of in regards to Levin or my other favorite theoretical physicists when it comes to Relativity, black holes, et al, Sasha Haco and Tamara Davis, I plan to rectify that. Intrestingly enough, Haco has taken an almost 180 degree turn from the direction the Levin quote seems to imply. Haco says:
"A lot of things in life have a beginning, middle and end. A trip abroad starts and ends, a film has a definite runtime, your job will have a first day and a last day, but researching black holes feels infinite.
"The pursuit of this knowledge is on the one hand inspiring, but over time I realised that I wanted to play a role in solving problems where I could see a tangible impact on the world within my lifetime. I wanted to solve a problem, not make the start on a solution."
Clicking their respective photos will bring up their doctoral dissertations.
In my essay on Nataive American Medicine Wheels I write that in my early 20's I participated under invite in a very special ritual performed by a tribal sprirtiual elder at a medicine wheel on the far eastern edge of South Dakota. The moon was just leaving it's last crescent phase into the new moon phase and doing so at a time central to the last of moon's four cycles known as the cross quarter alignment. Cross quarter alignments occur four times a year, marking the halfway point between the the solstices and equinoxes. Starting from the one between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, which is considered the start of new growth, they move on through the fourth and last, falling halfway between the Autumnal Equinox and Winter Solstice, the time when plants and animals begin shutting down. To numerous tribal cultures the moon when it turns dark and disappears it has gone into or entered the underworld. So, to cut to the quick, the spiritual elder, for his ritual to be successful, required the use of the closest new moon phase that fell nearest the last cross quarter alingment. The tribal elder's ritual was to ensure the moon in it's path through the underworld didn't get stuck and not be able to come out. If it didn't there might not be a spring. Sure enough, right on time, the moon showed itself in a small silvery crescent just as it was supposed to.
The spiritual elder told me that the primary or most important night we were at the medicine wheel was on the second of two new moons in October and that it occurred on October 31st, All Hallow's Eve, Halloween Night. But, although such an occurrence could mean a lot to a lot of people at such a time, it didn't mean anything to his culture or in real life relative to what we were attempting to accomplish. Why? Because, although there are such things as new moons and cross quarter alignments, there are really no Octobers nor All Hallow's Eves. They are manmade conceptual constructs. The cross quarter alignment that occurred would have occurred anyway regardless of any time, day, date, or name given it. Same with the new moon.
In The Artist In Me I write that as a young boy growing up my dream was to be a particle physicist, astrophysicist, or cosmologist, but after memorizing the multiplication table in grade school and began moving up into higher grade levels my interest in figures stumbled when I began learning about 36-22-36. However, even though I never became a particle physicist, astrophysicist, or cosmologist, I never lost intrest in the importance of what they do or did (I had no friends). From a very young age I developed a strong liking for codes and code making, learning Morse code early on and as a little kid hardly ever being seen without a Captain Midnight Code-O-Graph. The accurate use of the Code-O-Graph caused me to learn and use numbers and letters long before my same-age peers. Before I even reached age ten my uncle had introduced me to a book titled "One, Two, Three, Infinity" by George Gamow that discussed the expansion of the universe, critcal he said for me to learn about M-31, the Andromeda Galaxy. Not long into my early post-adolescence one of my favorite books was Music of the Spheres: The Material Universe from Atom to Quasar, Simply Explained by Guy Murchie. I loved the information that the two volume set departed and the hand done drawings that illustrated the text. Later it was an easy jump to the works of Janna Leven, notedly A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines and Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space. The "Turing" in A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines was Alan Turing who broke the German Enigma code in WW II, with Other Songs from Outer Space lining up perfectly with Murchie's book.
As for Sasha Haco, I've read her doctoral dissertation and her work, Black Hole Entropy and Soft Hair, written in collaboration with Stephen W. Hawking, Malcolm J. Perry, and Andrew Strominger. Some things like black holes "are" rather you discover proof of them or name them or not. Other things are conceptual constructs. When I was writing The Maya Ruins and the Spring Equinox, two of their sites were fairly clear in how they marked the equinox, but a third, Tulum, I struggeled how to clarify the Mayan solution for myself and my readers. On the equinox the sun rises due east and sets due west, but is directly straight overhead at noon only if you are on the equator. Tulum is a bit more than 20 degrees north of the equator meaning the sun's path travels across the sky leaning on a southward angle compared to an observer. The Mayan temple that marks the equinox does not face due east. When the sun first breaks the horizon directly due east, it's only after it has risen on it's southward leaning path that the equinox is marked. Being 20 degrees north of the equator I wanted to figure out where and when along the angled sun path degree-wise, distance, etc., when the center of sun's circular surface disc aligned directly with how they marked the equinox and how accurate it was. The Mayans just messed with it physically until they got it to work, but only had two days a year to make it accurate. Getting everything together I thought was needed, latatude, longitude, elevation, sunrise time, path angle and whatever else I could think of, I was stymied. Seeing all the calculations by Haco in the two works I've cited she could have solved the dilemma in a few seconds where I struggled for what seemed forever. Finally, having encountered enough problems with "the day the sun plunged towards the earth" in my experiences with my mentor and Our Lady of Fatima, I just threw in the towel and generalized. Like Haco's stuff nobody, including Haco herself, is going to read it anyway.
As for the medicine wheel, if I were to live to be 100 years old, starting from the very day I was born to the very day I died, the previously cited two new moon month with the second of the new moons falling on Halloween night October 31st would happen only four times during my whole entire lifetime, two of which one is the 1959 occurrence cited above and one in 1978 wherein I had apprenticed under a man of spells called an Obeahman high in the mountains of Jamacia, an apprenticeship that for me ended in a rather unusual outcome. The last of those 100 year two moon Halloween night occurrances would not transpire until October 31st, 2035 AD, three years short of me being 100.
If you have ever found yourself sitting around rubbing yourself wishing you could make some sort of sense out of Einstein's Theory of Relativity, Special Theory of Relativity, speeds faster than light speeds, what E=mc2 means, and/or other similar miscellaneous hangbottom dangling participals, done so from a truly understandable scientific basis and not from some new age lava lamp incense burning Relativity For Dummies Birkenstock thumb ring youtube video, you might try reading the following from the hand and brillant mind of the previously mentioned Tamara Davis:
It is quite clear from the above that Tamara Davis is a big Expansion of the Universe person, and as I take it the other two, Levin and Haco, are as well. I'm a big "Expansion of the Universe" rockin' out dude myself, after having being introduced to the possibility of such a thing as early as me being a 10 year old boy, not very many years after such a theory had even hypothesized, and well before the good Doctors Davis, Levin, and Haco were even born. I will get into it some other time, but now, for those of you who may be so interested you can find out more by clicking HERE. I love this stuff and hope you do too. Thanks.
I received an email the other day dated Satuday, January 20, 2024 1:20 PM from a person identifying herself as "AF." Her mother passed away in September 2023 and as she and her sisters were going through her mother's things in her home near Chicago the daughter came across an email written by her mother addressed to me still on her computer, an email that her mother never got around to hitting the send button for, ghostly sitting there unfinished, unsigned, and unsent.
The daughter told me that even though the letter was dated January 20, 2024 the interesting part was it was written sometime before her mother died in September, 2023. The second interesting part was that January 20th, the date she selected for the email, was her mother's birthday. Her letter follows:
AWAKENING 101 Saturday, January 20, 2024 1:20 PM
From: D.U.M.B.
To: the_wanderling
We were Peace Corps volunteers together in Jamacia. I'm also the same person written about in Critical Concerns With Awakening 101 where it says "He was also seen by a former fellow Peace Corps volunteer at the Lucy exhibit in Houston." We were both on an elevator at the sametime and someone made comment on The Necklace you wore. When it was asked if the necklace was an amulet or not you replied it has been said that there are certain powers vested in it. Up to then I had been casually reading your works, but it was only after someone mentioned your web page Peace Corps Zen did I realize it was you who was the author. I remember other volunteers in Jamaica suggested keeping a distance as there were rumors you were apprenticing under an Obeah, something that wouldn't be officially sanctioned and could possibly rub off the wrong way with higher ups.
When my deployment with the Peace Corps finished after two years I got married and had four daughters. I've never been along the path nor sought to have my mind be ripe. Because of that, a lack of background lets say, I've found your wrtings difficult to read let alone understand, but returned over and over almost like an addict and because we had a connection of sorts. A few years ago I was diagnosed with cancer. After treatment it went into remission and just when I thought everything was okay it came back with a vengeance. Reading your articles has been a great comfort and they really began to make sense after I read your suggestion someplace to read "Lectures XVI And XVII: Mysticism" by William James in his 1902 book "The Varieties of Religious Experience."
The email ends there, the daughter or someone apparently sending it on the 20th just as her mother left it. I've made mention of William James' 1902 book "The Varieties of Religious Experience" and the chapter therein "Lectures XVI And XVII: Mysticism" in a number of places, most notedly on Pulyan's Teacher page, who suggested it to me in the first place and the essay Achieve Enlightenment.
I get mail. The months of September October 2023 were something else. Some I read, some I don't. Some I answer, some I don't. A few I respond to on this page, often lumping several together because of similar content. A person writes telling me how informative my White Light Shields page was and how they had been searching for an article on same by Robert Bruce forever when they came across my site. Reading my page they discovered it had a click through link to Bruce's original PDF version I'd somehow found archived. Another person writes telling me I'm doing a disservice to my readers because White Light Shields are not helpful or good, but evil. When people turn to or depend on them they are instead being seduced by evil, letting evil in. Just a few lines into the page on White Light Shields the following, attributed to Gloria Feman Orenstein in her book The Woman Shaman and Shamanism: In other words, no power, no shield. Depending on the level of the ability of the purveyor to focus the power, it can be either stronger in its presentation; or, in its use at the initiating source there can be a steady power drain or degradation from the level of the actual power through to the actual implementation of the power; or the shielding can be met by a stronger repelling or absorbing force without adverse impact on the receiving end thus rendering the shield ineffective, with any and all outcomes largely dictated through the overall blanket of the natural order of things. I.e., evil has nothing to do with it. In three other October 2023 emails one tells me they have been a reader and follower of my works for over twenty years, and taking a cue from an email writer down the page dated June 4, 2022 asking if there are any new stories, has noticed, like that emailer, since the February 2021 incident that transpired in Myanmar, linked here and mentioned below, that it looks like I really haven't put anything new or substantial online to speak of. A second writes that years ago, after I was discharged from the Army and active military duty, but still in the active reserves, I had been asked to participate in some mission or the other. When I asked what would happen if I refused I was told, "it was River Styx stuff, only the Boatman knew." He wanted to know what that meant, albeit not the first person to have asked the same question. Still in a military vein, a third preson writes they have come across articles by me, most especially so as found in The Dancer and The Saigon Tea Girl, where I have cited a reference titled A CIVILIAN G.I. In 1968 VIETNAM: Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols, the Highlands, and Cambodia, yet unlike other cited references by me they are never click throughable, nor does a like article show up via an internet search. I've lumped all three emails together because I can answer them all at once. As for "nothing new," I have been working on two, that is, two, very, very different widely separated in concept heavy-duty long articles together with several back-up articles all at the same time for quite sometime, but none are ready to be put online. One of the major articles is the aforementioned "Civilian G.I. in 1968 Vietnam" which because of still top secret cross border activities in the air lingering about it, among other things, and a need to be careful in what is said or revealed, has taken longer to complete than I thought. Two examples of among other things, things, is one, the sensitive reason for the mission in the first place, and two, the being brought to my attention of a nearly full screen-size photo available online of me outfitted tip-to-toe in full LRRP military regalia, semi-automatic sidearm and all, related to the mission, but not described as such. The photo was put online unknowningly and innocently enough by the photographer, since deceased, who took it to simply show exploits of himself and own unit while in Vietnam. Things could be compromised if an astute observer were to put the two together like I was able to do. The article does however, answer within it's content the River Styx question. The second article I'm working on was originally intended to be my PhD thesis and still may be, similar to how Carlos Castaneda did with his third book, Journey to Ixtlan which was virtually indistinguishable from his graduate thesis. Mine has gone through several title changes and content revisions, but as of now carries the title "Apparitions, Translocations, and Bilocations In Theology and Reality," mainly because of my experience in The Meeting and how it revolves around the venerated Indian holy man the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. A seemingly unbreachable impasse has occurred within my graduate commitee by two members, albeit previously questioning but open. In their alliance is an unwavering demand that I wrap my thesis with previously established traditional academics surrounding the subject as my main thrust rather than opening academically unproven new venues stemming from my own experiences. The whole thing has given me cause to consider changing institutions rather than continue. I have approached three major universities through contacts in an attempt to learn how far back I would have to go if I were to change institutions mid-stream and/or if they would even be willing to accept me, with costs being a major factor. Ever price a PhD program lately? I mean, Musk please step forward. In addition I have had to create a few supporting side articles for reference and expanded back-up for foototes. One is about Our Lady of Fatima and deals with translocation and bilocation, one is on Native American medicine wheels and their significance as found in the Dakotas and the impact visiting one had on me in my youth then later in the Peace Corps, and one is about the major biblical personage Mary Magdalene and whether she was at The Last Supper or not as some think because of the painting by Leonardo Da Vinci. My Mary Magdalene research, was, not unlike much of what I write about, highly time consuming. In addition to most of the traditional and some not so triditional biblical sources, I read 18 major books on her published between 1979 to 2016 with me comparing the differences that came up about her before and after the impact of feminism and the Da Vnci Code was released. Two of the back-up reference pages are done, but are not online because they link back to the two main pages not yet finished. It seems like every time I write a new paragraph I open up a can of worms. Even though I'm writing here about October 2023 emails I'm doing so just as it just turned into November 2023. So said, one of my very first emails for November popped up. It was from a person who couldn't believe I still used a Yahoo email address, he didn't know they were still in business. He then goes on to complain about my suggestions regarding donations I put on the bottom of most of my pages, saying as far as my donation ideas, both of are horrible charities with bad ratings and piss poor at any actual help for anyone. One thing I must say about the writer, he must read my stuff to know such things. Isn't it odd that nowhere do I request a remittance, sell, market, promote or teach classes, seminars or Satsangs with cash as a incentive. My pages are all free, there are no subscriptions or sign ins. I don't hawk or sell anything. There are no advertisements. No books. No ballcaps, T-shirts, or ballpoint pens. I don't ask for, solicit, or accept donations. My meager Zen dropping are available to all who may be so interested. Yet when I do make a suggestion for those who may be interested in donating, I get chastised. I write about my personal experience with one of my suggestions in the paragraph below. The overall charity ratings for my second suggestion can be found by clicking HERE. Both are however just that, suggestions. My experience with both organizations have been nothing but positive. I was a national level DSHR volunteer for the Red Cross participating boots-on-the-ground in their post hurricane efforts for Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike. I worked staff shelters for the volunteers and went to the various shelters they worked in to help individual with disabiltites. Back at the staff shelter I worked making sure as the volunteers rotated in and out of their shifts they were fed, had shelter themselves, a shower and a bed before their next shift. They would come back with stories of how they spent days installing portable toilets for the hurricane victims but spent just as much time scrubbing shit off the walls of those same toilets smeared there by those disgruntled or ungrateful in some fashion. Then they went out the next shift to start out all over again. For everyone who came forward in need the Red Cross provided food, water, clothing, air conditioning when they could, medical care including pills, meds, and nurses, things for kids to do, everything at no cost and no request for reimbursment. I don't know how many free international phone cards we handed out to enable people in the shelters who needed to do so to call their loved ones in Jamaica and other foreign countries. For more regarding my time with the Red Cross see Margaret Runyan Castaneda as well as the Maya Ruins and the Spring Equinox. As for a Yahoo email address, notice I say above one person had been reading my works for over twenty years. Many of my pages go way back, well before G-mail existed. By keeping the old address in place I can still be contacted. I even have a long held Hotmail address as well as an edu email. As for no advertisements, I still have four free online servers out of several previously for a great many of my early Awakening 101 Buddhism and Zen pages that do or can show up with ads out of my control when accessed. I originally had all the Awakening 101 pages, a free self-paced college level Buddhist and Zen course, on a Blackboard platform. When Blackboard started charging I had to scramble to keep the content available at no cost so spread the pages out over several free websites. That was years ago. A rather lengthly list of some of those pages that still come up can be reached by clicking HERE. Wayback Machine is an internet company created in 1996 that archives websites from all over the world. It was launched for public use in 2001. Although I didn't check all the sites on the list I did check two. Wayback Machine crawled one of the sites February 14, 2001 and another August 5, 2001, meaning they already had to be on the internet in able to have been crawled. Although not on the list, I have one of my pages archived as far back as October 1, 1999, before Wayback Machine's public launch even. It references my long defunct message board which has an email from one of my readers dated June 11,1999. A benevolent benefactor has come forward recently saying she is most willing to pick up the costs for my free sites on a year-to-year basis so they can be called up in a no-ad tier, something I'm considering. Pop-up blockers work pretty well for the most part, but on one of the four platform providers I notice has so many distractions it's hard to read the intended material. So too, the ads are targeted on the readers past search history and not related to page content. I'm only waffling because I don't want to put someone into a position where the sites could be shut down if they so chose. How long those free server sites will continue staying up or being free of cost is questionable because they have since stopped accepting new free level applicants. I have access to a day-to-day count on how many hits they receive and since the overall monthly-yearly number count is fairly high they seem to be willing to leave it as it is for the time being. All of the pages, and there are lots of them, are pretty much all in the Internet Archive, they just can't be accessed for updates or editing. They do however, for the most part, no matter how far back, have my old Hotmail address or my present Yahoo address.
ALEXANDRA AMON
(please click image)
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JANNA LEVIN-------------------------------------------------------------SASHA HACO
---------TAMARA DAVIS
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The first three graphics above are pictures of Tulum's primary equinox viewing site. Not one of Tulum's major buildings and structures are built on a north-south axis, including as well, the equinox site, meaning they don't have nor does the temple have any due east or due west facing walls. See MAP. The second photo above shows the sun rising due east on the morning of the equinox. Notice how the sunlight pattern crosses the temple grounds straight to the camera. Compare that east-west pattern to the acute angle of the temple and temple platform. To beat the dilemma of marking the equinox, in that the temple was so far off due east, the Mayan came up with a clever mind bending solution. They simply tipped the whole temple building 20 degrees southward from 90 degrees straight up and down compared with the level platform, that way it matched the rising sun's angled path, intersecting the sun's full global but flat appearing disc partway up sometime after sunrise.
JENNINGS MEDICINE WHEEL, SOUTH DAKOTA
(please click image)
ONE, TWO, THREE, INFINITY
THE QUONDOM TIME TRAVELER
LECTURES XVI AND XVII
STREET VENDORS, PARADE, OLD KINGSTON TOWN, JAMAICA
BEFORE THE PEACE CORPS IT WAS SAIGON STREET VENDORS(please click image)
"To think that if you concentrate on manifesting a White Light Shield, that what you get will be beneficent, is so naive as to be sheer folly. You must have enough power to call upon enough White Light to protect you."
OUTER SPACE TO THE RENAISSANCE UFOs
To: the_wanderling Tue, May 23, 2023 at 8:32 AM
From: Carlos
Ramana Maharshi, Zen, Illumination, Aztecs, Mexican Shamans, Samadhi, Buddhism, Jhanas, Castaneda, James Joyce too (?),...too much. Where to start? or where to finish?... From the Wanderer to the Wanderling...
Thank you.
W RESPONDS:
As things are presently constituted, according to all that has come down to me as well as from those who are regarded to know about such things, I was born at a specific time at a specific place, all duly recorded and witnessed by any number of people including my mother, of whence I came, and there at the place where I was born as well, other members of my family along with a variety of officials such as doctors and nurses and a couple of trash truck workers who drove my mother and grandmother to the hospital in their garbage truck just in time for me to be born.
None of it, time, place, or people in attendance, was done with any consultation or approval by me ahead of time or on my part, hence ending up being not much more that a stooge or pawn between pre-existing, to be existing, or already in place existing circumstances. In other words, the block of time I was allotted to live and die in, in that which is, was done somehow other than through my own making --- at least as it has come across thus far through the process of the normal flow of time as experienced on the conventional plain.
To have been born twenty years earlier or twenty years later would have put me into a time frame reference that wouldn't allow most to have happened to have happened. Same with anybody or anything I came in contact with or interacted with. Hence, interceded in my life because of the time I was born and grew up in one finds references to World War II, the Vietnam War, P-40 fighter planes, radio premium and box top offers from my childhood, people like Einstein and Allan Ginsberg who may or may not have been thrown into the mix at the same time I was. The timing of my mother dying and the foster couple being at the right place, time and age as well as for me to be taken to India, for example. Born at any other time I wouldn't have been any part of it. The thing is, it happens to all of us.
"Originally, I was not a man of the east, nor as a young boy was I seeped in things of the east. Although I was taken to India at an early age I was born in America and, even though I was in India long enough to miss many months of school, I was still otherwise, raised in America as an American boy pure and simple, hence my early childhood is tinged with reminisces and things from that background."
Over and over people who read my works seem confused as to the timeline of events as they unfolded during the period I was with my Uncle. They say since so much of what I write about circulates around Zen, Enlightenment, and Buddhism, how does Castaneda, shamanism, UFOs and all the other stuff like Captain Midnight Code-O-Graphs, P-40 Flying Tigers, Buck Rogers Ray Guns and German submarines filled with gold fit in? In a simple clarification of events the following generalized breakdown is a good rule of thumb, however, here on this site, the emphasis is on Stage Three, my uncle and me, with the concentration of the other stages, although with varying degrees of overlap, found elsewhere.
In a more of less the First Stage I was basically a young boy with my family all together and still intact. There is the beach, the war, P-40s and submarines. When the Second Stage shows up I'm still a young boy. During that time I was taken to India, met the Maharshi, and my mother died. When the Third Stage comes around it is dominated by my uncle and Stepmother, the Desert Southwest, Native Americans, ranches, jeeps, and UFOs. Stage Four encompasses my lost years between high school, the draft, the military, with Castaneda showing up. In the last stage, my works and what I write return to or focus more exclusively on the Dharma, Zen, and Enlightenment and how you as a reader can use or tie it all together in some fashion to help you in your own quest, be it knowledge, freedom, or Enlightenment.
The first three paragraphs above, except for the quote, are from my page Return to the Monastery. The last two paragraphs are from The Wanderling and His Uncle.
Apologize for the lengthy silence to all who write me. It seems it has been nothing short of a continuing series of health related faux pas since ending up with a broken rib and punctured then collapsed lung as noted further down the page.(see) What was thought to be no more than a minor case of pneumonia turned out to be not so minor. When the expected response to standard treatment wasn't forthcoming, doctors increased or strengthened the medication dosage, ending with side effects worse than the cure. One of those side effects was the lenses of my eyes becoming so clouded it became difficult for me to see well enough to read or type.
As for the pneumonia I initially blamed the build up of the fluid on a relapse of Dengue fever, but the medical team's infectious disease doctor said even though it is a common for a relapse by the similar tropical disease malaria to occure, which can cause build up of fluid in the lungs, a relapse of Dengue fever is rare if not non existent. Seems an antibiotic resistant superbug was causing the fluid in my lungs to increase faster than it could be reduced or eliminated. As soon as the culprit was isolated a cure was implemented and after that no problem. It's just taken time for my vision to return to normal, or sufficient enough to read and type. After culturing the lung bio-intruder speculation was it being mosquito borne, most likely from my time at the Mahasi Meditation Center in Myanmar or during my one year stint with AmeriCorps on the Navajo Nation in the four corners area.
During the months I had a tough time reading I received a number of great emails. Marsue M wrote me about her uncle John Nobel Cumming who I met, she wanting to share how her uncle and the master Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, who I write about as well, met. I heard from Mike and Beverly L about the Peace Corps volunteer Don Sjostrum who I met while I was in the Army and was killed in Vietnam. Mike was there with him when he died. A person using the name TwoinOne wanting to know why I put in so much effort. Here are a few others in my more traditional format.
First is from Ed Fisher, most notedly known for his extensive and exhaustive nearly, if not more so than 1000 page/10,000 link, MAYA-GAIA website. The two of us have been in contact on-and-off for years mostly via our two websites, especially our back-and-forths on what Sahaha Samadhi and Nirvikalpa Samadhi is or isn't and our interpretations of any distinctions thereof and our works, albeit separately, on Denisovans, the early humans called that were neither Neanderthal nor Homo sapiens and of which first shows up on my page regarding the Cerutti Mastodon Site in San Diego, California.
To: the_wanderling
From: Ed Fisher, Sat, Sep 24, 2022 at 7:33 PM
Ninety-four year old Ed Fisher here - picking up on my last contact with you many years back (and congrats on the nebula-like scale and scope growth of your IT presence). I retired my updating of the Samadhi Chronicles about 5 years ago and concentrated on (etc., etc. et al), but I've retired from updating that web page also.
I've retired like a Sannyasa - nurturing nature via propagating seedlings from a Mother mango tree. I spend my days as appropriate to The Fourth Ashrama, literally - chop wood, carry water to my seedlings, I am content.
Best, Ed
To: the_wanderlingFrom: R, Tues, Aug 16, 2022 at 12:08 AM
Thank you for reading and posting my email to you on the site. I was elated to see it. Though the reason it was highlighted was my own folly. Yet made me happy.
NOTE: With the above sentence R is referring to an email she sent me seven full years ago dated Tuesday, October 27, 2015 at 3:53 PM that I posted on this page and still appears below. Can you imagine, seven years ago and still reading, in contact, and unswerved. You may notice as well the above email from Ed Fisher dated Sep 24, 2022 is five years since I had heard from him. It goes to show how much of a nothing I am.
From my gatherings of your very exhaustive site, my understanding was that you wished to remain anonymous and do not do any direct guidance, hence my question of another living master who does give such guidance in satsang.
In this market of gurus, I have tried many of them claiming to be masters but could feel that its a cult with different purposes than spiritual progress. Please guide me to get one step closer to where I need to be.
Thank you for all you have shared with us. Offer my most sincere apologies and seek your blessings.
Best Regards
R
To: the_wanderlingFrom: Paul, Sat, June 4, 2022 at 2:22 PM
Any new stories?
Paul
And one last one as mentioned previously above, but presented in full below in anyway because I like it:
To: the_wanderling
From: TwoInOne, Wed, May 11, 2022 at 5:25 PM
Why so much effort?
W RESPONSE Can anybody answer that?
"Several months ago, I saw a post by one of your surrogates that you were being held in Myanmar, sustain internal injuries along the way. I have checked in on a regular basis and saw no update until I noticed that the post was now gone which I hope means that you are free and hopefully recovered, or at least on your way to recovery from your injuries."
JOHN C in an email to the Wanderling below
"I have read so much of your writing and followed so many of your footnotes; 'please click image,' 'source' and other links that many times I had to just step outside for air and to release some of the wonderful energy that built up in my head!"
CHRISTINE in an email to the Wanderling below
The above two quotes are from two emails, presented in full below. The first was received after my return from Myanmar and the so posted notice from my surrogates removed, the second prior to my return and the notice removal. The first quote is attributed to the first email, the second to the second email. My response, especially as related to some of the questions raised in the first email show up following the second email --- which, because of it's fabulous well written and well received content, was specifically selected from a ton of emails that had accumulated in my absence.
To: the_wanderling
From: John C Wed, Nov 24, 2021 at 8:49 AM
Hello Wandering,
For several years, off and on, I have perused your website, which I find both fascinating and educational.
Several months ago, I saw a post by one of your surrogates that you were being held in Myanmar, sustain internal injuries along the way. I have checked in on a regular basis and saw no update until I noticed that the post was now gone which I hope means that you are free and hopefully recovered, or at least on your way to recovery from your injuries.
At some level I am curious as to some more specifics of your experience but perhaps such details are not pertinent to the content on your website, which is understandable.
If you are indeed free, welcome back and I look forward to continuing navigating the twists and turns on your website.
John C
W RESPONSE Most of John C's queries are answered in the Response section of the following email:
To: the_wanderling
From Christine Tue, Oct 26, 2021 at 2:46 PM
Hello Kindred Spirit,
As all "wormholes" lead to where I need to be in the moment, I found your writings by returning to Bhagavad's insights within "Who Am I", which led to getting the Kindle book, "The Razor's Edge" to find out more about Larry Darrell. Then within various Google searches I found you! Yay.
I wanted to thank you for sharing all you do with whoever of us wants to listen/read your stories, insights and links!
I love your sense of humor and your wonderful way of writing!
I have read so much of your writing and followed so many of your footnotes; "please click image," "source" and other links that many times I had to just step outside for air and to release some of the wonderful energy that built up in my head! LOL
I am most grateful for the "Thirty Minutes to Enlightenment", written by Harry Balmer?, as I intuitively understood it all (my Mind Being Ripe) and felt the joy shared wisdom brings.
And I was most thankful for the distinction made between Enlightenment and Satori. It (the Tao) answered the question I have been contemplating...
"Zen consists of two parts. They are Enlightenment and "Satori," Enlightenment being the necessary ingredient for the realization of Satori. If there is no Enlightenment, there can be no Satori and consequently no Nirvana."
"The word "Satori," as used, is the consequence of this Enlightenment and is our affirmative commitment to eliminate from the mind, the cause of confusion, conflict and insanity, once known, and the relative time necessary to do so."(see) [Part Two, Zen]
Years ago (1996 or so) I read Kunihiro Yamate's book, The Way of No Thinking "the prophetic visions of the Japanese social seer," and though it blew my mind, I was able to comprehend his insights and agree with them. However, I had no one to talk with about these things --- being on a very solitary spiritual path --- and knowing I had much to experience and learn as I strove to apply all I was learning. But always his ideas were fundamental within all I went through. He talked about the very same things mentioned under "The Cause of Human Suffering and Conflict" and over the years I have never read anything by anyone who could describe it so well and so succinctly.
When I read: "The cause of human suffering and conflict is our commitment to the illusions we call values, morals and ethics. Values, morals and ethics do not exist outside of our cultural- existential minds. They do not exist in reality and are therefore a figment of our culturally and existentially indoctrinated imagination. We believe or think values exist when in fact they do not"...and all the rest in that section, I was filled with such a wonderful sense of synchronicity and serendipity that I wanted to email you and express my appreciation for providing this link.
"When you truly need a teacher, one will appear"!
"The way to being psychologically at one with the Tao can be known and stated. The Tao itself can only be experienced. The way for the mind to be once again at one with the Tao is not difficult. Only our lack of desire for the truth concerning the cause of human suffering and conflict and how to eliminate that cause from the mind, keeps us from it. Those who know the way, point directly to the truth of the matter and do so namelessly."
I've lived many years in this body, and have experienced so many strange and wonderful things (cults; marriages; addictions; careers; life in other countries etc.) knowing since a teenager that all of life is my teacher. This kept me going on my path to knowing myself and being happy (content with what is).
I know the world is heading toward "This is the way and the teaching of Zen, which is the way and the teaching of the Buddhas, and in time the teaching of educational psychologists for the prevention of future schizophrenic insanity" and I am happy to be here, looking on.
I so resonated with the description of "Satori" "If the reason for our commitment is out of compassion for all suffering, of which our own suffering is but a part, and for no personal gains, our Satori is "eliminating the cause of suffering and conflict from the mind" is accomplished the same way we would eliminate any unwanted habitual activity. When the habitual response occurs, we must discipline ourselves to correct that response each time it happens. In time there will be no habit to correct." And isn't this ultimately what Bhagavad pointed to when teaching to always ask "who am I" and "to whom has this thought arisen?"
I joyously continue to practice the above knowing that one day my Satori will be for the good of all.
Thank you for remaining "nameless" but pointing the way for those who are unafraid of the truth. Oh, and also for... "I make no claim to being a teacher, guru, holy man, or sage. I don't sell, market, promote or teach classes, seminars or Satsangs. My pages are all free, there are no subscriptions or sign-ins. I don't hawk or sell anything. There are no advertisements. No books. No ballcaps, T-shirts, or ballpoint pens. I don't ask for, solicit, or accept donations. If someone asks saying they are me they aren't me."
Christine
W RESPONSE With the above two letters I have more-or-less returned to the traditional "letter-response" format which was the original intent of the Getting Letters and Emails page. As you can see, if you compare dates with previous entries below, it has been sometime since I posted anything here in any kind of a fashion.
The second email stands on it's own by truly a very astute person and reader of my works. The first email has a few questions I've attempted to answer for all in my response, re the following:
For those of you who are unfamiliar with what the first letter writer says as found in the top quote regarding that I "was being held in Myanmar, sustain internal injuries along the way and that he had checked in on a regular basis and saw no update until he noticed that the post was now gone." relates to what is found in the quote below that until recently, appeared in a number of my contact pages, written by a surrogate.
The letter writer continues by saying he hopes that I've been freed and hopefully recovered, or at least on my way to recovery from my injuries, adding that at some level he was curious as to some specifics to my experience.
The Wanderling was in Southeast Asia crossing Myanmar with the intent of staying one night for an early flight out. Unannounced, he and unfamiliar others were placed in an alleged Covid-19 related lock down with passports and all electronic devices confiscated. Initially he had access to someone's satellite phone as well as what he called "an old AOL-like dial up in the back of a noodle shop." Then the military Coup occurred with nobody now having any idea who is in charge. He sustained a broken rib and punctured lung. Although he has his own unorthodox ways of dealing with things, he has to my knowledge, and possibly because of potential or adverse consequences to others, not invoked any.
MYANMAR The military coup in Myanmar occurred on the morning of February 1, 2021. Several weeks before, with no knowledge of any sort of a major unrest that would reach to the level of a coup, I had nonchalantly been wending my way through the rural hinterlands of India on into the Myanmar countryside ending in Yangon for a one night stay with a departure scheduled the following day. I had noticed a great deal more military activity in and around the city and streets than I remembered the last time I was in Yangon ten years before, but didn't attribute it to anything other than maybe that was how things were now.
After weeks traveling with a couple of Buddhist mendicants, sleeping in or beside temples, mud huts, or under trees along the road shared with water buffalo and their dung, since I was returning to the west I decided to shed myself of the so-said dung and any lingering after effects and upscale a bit. In an offhand tribute to that aforementioned ten year ago visit, re Phyllis Davis, I selected the same place she had, remembered fondly for their VIP accommodations, luxurious pool, and foo foo drinks with triangle shaped pineapple slices and little pop-up paper umbrellas. No sooner had I reached my room, taken a shower, and laid down for a few minutes when the room phone rang. It was the hotel manager telling me to bring my luggage and come to the front desk. Thinking there may had been a mix-up in room assignments I got on the elevator to go to the lobby. At each floor people got on the elevator with seemingly the same problem, which seemed like an awful lot of mix-ups in room assignments. When the elevator stopped on the second floor I got off going through the exit doors to the service floor just beneath the first floor. When I got off a woman looking all the same as a flight attendant towing a black wheeled bag behind her, without saying a word, got off following me. I started up a narrow ledge like ramp leading toward the outside that clung along the wall bordering one side of the truck ramp used to access the loading dock with the woman right on my tail. We were just about to reach the street when behind us someone yelled for us to halt. Turning I saw two armed soldiers, one with a rifle aimed right at the woman. I tried to explain to them we had been walking along the street only to discover we turned into the wrong place and they stopped us just as we turned back. They would have none of it, taking us to the lobby. As soon as the elevator doors opened the soldiers pushed us out. It was then I saw armed soldiers everywhere.
Guests of the hotel such as myself filled the lobby and military types were bringing in many more from outside. Soldiers were checking passports and papers letting some people go, or as it looked, others such as myself after going over the paperwork, were being directed to what turned out to be a huge nearly basketball floor size room devoid of chairs and tables except for two tables and four chairs just inside the room not far from the entrance. By then all electronic devices such as cellphones, laptops, Apple watches, and fitbits, had been confiscated and as well as I was to learn later, all the rooms of guests searched, and all done without explanation. Those who did request or demand an explanation were strongly rebuked, sometimes with a harsh physical response. The flight attendant-type towing the black wheeled bag behind her that got off the elevator the same time I did was now instead, and miraculously so it would seem, working one of the tables.
After a one-on-one interrogation and our luggage gone through we were assigned four to a room on the upper floors and told we were under house arrest and not to leave the room under any circumstances unless told to do so. A couple of nights later a fight of some sort ensued from the floor above flowing out onto my floor via the exit door. When we opened our door to see what was going on the man just in front of me got bashed in the forehead with the butt of a rifle then I was hit with a folded in an open position bayonet of a AK type rifle in my mid right rib cage breaking a rib and puncturing a lung, falling back in intense pain. A medical type came by assessing the wounded. He told me the diagnoses, said the nature of the wound was slight, wrapped me tight around the chest telling me to move as little as possible and that he would be back. To my knowledge no one was allowed to go or be taken to a hospital. I don't know even to this day if the medical type was a doctor. I do know the guy hit in the head was in pretty bad shape and eventually they took him away. Relative to me and my situation the doctor-guy never came back.
From this point on everything becomes even a little more cryptic because people so involved are still doing whatever they do living in Myanmar. Those of you who have read any of my works may know that in my mid 20's age-wise I had taken refuge in the Mahasi Meditation Center with a covert side assist by the infamous Burmese drug kingpin and warlord Khun Sa, since deceased. Some forty years plus later, somewhat over ten years prior to this writing I went back to the Center and restarted from the beginning to completion the full 12 week meditation session. Even though I was under guard at the hotel I was still able to make contact with someone who was willing and able to get a message through to residual parties.
In the early morning hours a few nights later and still in intense pain albeit with no signs of bleeding, two armed soldiers dragged me out of the room forcing the other room mates back and away from the door. I was taken to the freight elevator and put into a large wooden box on a wheeled cart, after which a top was nailed on. Next thing I knew the box I was in was in a vehicle bouncing along some road. Eventually after a few turns the vehicle stopped and after backing up, the box unloaded and the lid removed. I got out of the box now located just off a loading dock inside some storage facility. The military truck that brought me drove away. Needless to say the two soldiers that took me from my room weren't soldiers. They escorted me upstairs to a makeshift hidden room that couldn't be seen as a room from the ground floor made from stacked boxes located above what looked like an office. There was a bed for me to lay down on. A man came in handing me my passport and shoulder bag saying they were hoping to get a doctor they could trust to check me out. The man told me that the people who were holding me didn't have a clue who they had or didn't have and with my passport gone there was no real record except possible though electronic devices. I had the SIM card to my phone and my laptop was password protected which was a minor sigh of relief. Why all the secrecy? Well, it wasn't just for me. The people helping could be in for a rough time if caught. Nobody knew who they dealing with except that it was military backed with a long reach and if a connection was made retribution could be grave, literally.
The next day a man, purportedly a doctor, came by to check me out. Asked me what happened, listened to my lungs and told all of us involved that at the very minimum he needed an X-ray or two in order to make a half way viable diagnoses, which at the moment put everybody in a quandary. In the meantime he suggested pain killers and oxygen.
As odd as it may seem, Oxygen was not a problem, sort of. As at the hotel, for the short term, I would simply enter into a very high degree non-meditative meditative state known in Sanskrit as Nirodha. When in such a state heartbeat and metabolism drops or slows, practically ceasing, sometimes continuing below the threshold of perception. Previously stored body energy that would typically be consumed in a couple of hours if not replenished can last days with very little need for renewal. The sort of side of it is that healing of a wound or injury is also slowed to the same level of the rest of the metabolism basically just stalling everything. There is no time sequence whether a couple hours pass or many, many days, as the immediate moment preceding and immediately following seem as though in rapid succession, start and finish compressed wafer thin. The problem resides in the fact that is no interaction or activity with the world, so anything that is done has to be short term.
In Travels in the Yucatan I write that I had a couple of small packets of some really powerful herbal medicine from Southeast Asia or India stashed away in my shoulder bag that was intended for emergencies only that when taken together could pull the skin off an elephant. After the doctor left I asked if there was a real people's level root doctor or a herbalist we could contact. When they agreed it could be done I drew what the two plants I wanted looked like plus the names I knew them by, but to bring anything in addition typically used to reduce or eliminate pain and increase vitality. A couple hours went by when a man was brought in that put two rows of ten, of a variety of herbs, leaves, stems and such on the table. Right away I saw the two I was looking for. Through an interpreter I told him I would like to make some tea using both ingredients. He asked to see the pot and cups we would be using. Using one of he cups he put five cups worth of water into the pot and asked for the water to be brought to a boil. When he got the pot back he but in the amount of both he felt right with me asking for a pinch more of each. He let the herbs brew for a certain amount of time stirring it once or twice, then poured me and himself a cup offering some to the others, which was refused. Less than ten minutes I began to feel the pain abate as well as feeling more alert and things clearer. I told him I had no money but would like a quantity of each of the herbs. A few hours after he left two small jute or burlap like bags tied at the top were delivered, one bag containing one herb the other the other herb.
The doctor was able to get oxygen and the X-ray. He said I had a broken rib and punctured lung, both showing positive signs of healing. The problem was fluid in back of the right side lung and the lung sac that was pushing against the lung causing it to collapse. The fluid had to be drained to restore normal lung function and reduce the pain. To do so would require an insertion in side of my ribs. He said waiting for it to get better could take months or it could get worse. I was in unsanitary conditions in a room above some office in a storage warehouse on the outskirts of Yangon with nobody knowing who I was or where I was, being treated by a possible quack or worse wanting to shove a tube between my ribs into my lung. However, to be truthful, because of those who had assisted me thus far throughout my ordeal, there was no reason to question their or his credibility. As it was, everything everywhere was borderline shutdown, power intermittent, soldiers all over. After several days of drainage we all agreed it was time for me to be moved. With the help of the herbs we did just that.
I ended up hundreds of miles south in the strikingly less militarized and less coup-like town of Ye, in favorable health considering. In Ye I was to take the southbound train to Dawei when the train came in from Yangon, which is as far south as it goes. A near body double dressed like me except for a hat and a khaki vest with a lot of pockets got off the train, put the hat on my head, handed me the vest to put on and gave me papers to continue south in his stead, then disappeared in the departing and exchanging train crowd. I boarded the Dawei bound train arriving around six or seven in the evening. There I was met by a man who said he would take me to the Thai border the next morning. Since I had crossed legitimately into Mayanmar and my papers refelected that I encountered no problems crossing the border. Once across another driver took me to Bangkok.
They said they helped me because I do good things.
In the response section of the above two emails I mention and provide a link to a person by the name of Phyllis Davis. The below email presents in the letter writer's own view a take on her and my writings or her that I quite frankly hadn't entertained:
To: the_wanderling
From Paul T Mon, Nov 22, 2021 at 10:57 AM
Thank you for the piece you wrote on Phyllis Davis.
I recently lost my Dad which was at the end of a series of emotional traumas over the past ten or so years. For comfort and to take my mind off things, I watch some of my favorite shows as a kid and of course I watched "Vegas," which of course featured Ms. Davis. I had forgotten not only how beautiful she was but also how she seemed to have a genuine warmth and sweetness about her. I always like to look people up in shows I watch and was saddened to hear she passed of cancer in 2013. I also saw pictures the modest headstone in the modest cemetery where she currently rests.
Apparently she never married, and I was saddened to think she possibly passed alone.
Then I came across your piece. It comforts me to think that in you, she found someone to help guide her on a spiritual journey. It sounds like you helped her to find her own strength to follow her own journey. She had found a friend in you to help her, someone who really cared about her.
Unfortunately I never got to meet her. She seems to have been a lovely person. I'm glad she found you and I thank you for sharing her incredible story.
All the best,
Paul T
W RESPONSE What follows appears down the page in relation to my Response to an email dated Friday, July 27, 2018 3:50 a.m. EDT. As opposed to Paul T's novel approach to Davis in his email above, not all readers appreciate what I've written and/or any participation, interaction, vis-a-vis the two of us, and usually done by discounting the how's and why's.
Regarding Phyllis Davis. Somebody wrote me sometime back saying they had emailed me several times over the years asking if I might be a teacher or guru for them and I never replied. Then they told me they read the following below in Critical Concerns With Awakening 101 and wondered what Davis had that they didn't. After going to her website they say now they know:
"As for a guru, wannabe or otherwise, perhaps one could make such a case, but you would probably have more luck nailing mercury to a wall with a hammer made of nose mucus than pinning down the Wanderling to become anybody's personal guru --- and let me tell you a lot of famous and some not so famous people have tried. The closest any one came that I've ever heard of is one Phyllis Davis that squeaked in through the backdoor somehow hoping to gain knowledge about how to go about becoming masterful in Sila, Samadhi, Jhana, and Prajna and be frequenter to lonely places --- with the two of them eventually ending up in Thailand and the jungles of Asia together."
As for the current letter writer Paul T, he has expressed his concern about the potential possibility of Davis dying alone writing, "Apparently she never married, and I was saddened to think she possibly passed alone." I am not totally versed in all the ins-and-outs surrounding her friends, close circle or otherwise. The same is true about immediate family. Dean Martin's daughter in her book Memories Are Made Of This Dean Martin Through His. Daughters Eyes speaks very highly of Davis, almost as though family, Dean and Phyllis having lived together at least a year. However, as to immediate family, I did write the following in my Phyllis Davis page based on general conversations we had over time:
"She knew that for Hurricane Rita with the Red Cross I had been deployed to and helped reopen a previously evacuated Katrina shelter in Deweyville, Texas and from there had gone down to her birth-town, the then completely evacuated city of Port Arthur and nearby Nederland where she grew up searching for stragglers and fuel. If I interacted with any of her family members or friends is not known, but she always liked the way I had gone down into the Port Arthur, Nederland area to lend help in such a devastated area."
Back up the page I make mention of emails specifically selected from a ton of emails that had accumulated in my absence. In one of those accumulated emails a reader of my works opened by identifying himself as, like me, a former Redondo Union High School student, having graduated in and around the same time I did,
Most of what he wrote was fairly mundane until he reached a point where he began writing about the high school buddy I traveled throughout Mexico with shortly after graduation, and of which who, as a person I had left unnamed and anonymous. The writer connected my travel in Mexico buddy with two other Redondo High alumni that just happened to be attending Redondo High at the exact same time my buddy and I were. The writer revealed a little known fact, or at least that I've never seen mentioned before, that I knew about peripherally. That is that my travel in Mexico buddy was the first person to give the famed Smothers Brothers comedy team, both of who were Redondo Union High graduates and still at the time both Redondo students, their very first opportunity to perform their act in front of a live audience of an auditorium size. Anybody who would have been there that day for the performance would have remembered the "Hearts of Stone" number and the email writer did.
Although I was aware of who the Smothers Brothers were, and even though both graduated on either side of me during my stint at Redondo High, I was never afforded the opportunity or privilege to meet or know either of them on a personal level. Interestingly enough however, both of them and my really good travel in Mexico buddy were friends, even at a family level ever since they and their mother first moved to Redondo. How all of that came about, continued, or ended, if it ended, is something I never learned.
In general conversation, just as the letter writer was winding up his email, out of the blue in a speculation sort of a way he offered a name to my travel in Mexico buddy who I had always kept anonymous, He nailed him spot on. As for me and my buddy'
and our travels in Mexico please see the following and related links:
"I had ended up in Nogales because a few years out of high school and tired of working as a technical illustrator --- all the while being faced by the draft in the next few years or so --- I decided to take a leave of absence and head into Mexico with a buddy of mine.
"He and I had shopped around and bought a used six-cylinder 1951 Chevy panel truck that was in pretty good shape. Over a period of a few months we outfitted it like a camper with fold down bunks, table, sink, stove, and portable toilet. Early one Saturday morning we crossed into Mexico at the Tijuana border with no idea how long we were going to be gone."
100 MPH SPORTS CAR TRANSPORTER ACROSS COUNTRY OR ONLY 40 MPH? THURSDAY APRIL 16, 2020 at 1:27 am
On the above date and time I received an email, one of several over the years actually, from the long grown adult grandson of Joe Landaker {1911-1995), the top Ferrari and Maserati mechanic in the country back in the mid-50s through the mid-60s, whose top driver was Carroll Shelby, late now of Ford verses Ferrari fame.
I had been planning on updating and refurbishing the Landaker page for sometime, but really never got around to it until just the nudge I needed from the grandson. I have gone back through and updated some controversy about my 100 MPH ride across country with Landaker in the transporter, pictured above courtesy of Edgar Motorsport Archive and taken by Lester Nehamkin.
The update circulates around my trip with Landaker when we rode together to the 1958 Speed Weeks in Nassau the Bahamas and how it compares to another person's much different and much more dull 40 MPH trip to the Sebring 12 hour race in 1963. Landaker seldom dropped under 100 MPH when I was with him, the transporter powered by a 550 horsepower Pontiac auminum racing engine. There is also a whole new Footnote [1] worth looking into about Joe's former employer, millionaire car owner Tony Parravano and all the sports race cars he whisked out of the country with the IRS and the FBI hot on his tail. They eventually got most of the cars back, but they never got him. Please see:
March 31, 2020
It wasn't too long ago I received an email regarding the fact that I had, in my youth, been a Junior Air Raid Warden. It was during World War II while I was still a young boy, actually before I even started kindergarten. On the block that I lived and for several blocks around, my dad was the official air raid warden, a position he not only relished, but from all that I recall, a good one at that. My older brother didn't care about it one way or the other, but I saw it as a window of opportunity to upgrade my status in my father's eyes. If my solution worked or not relative to my dad is nothing I have any real recollection of, however I liked it. On my own initiative and a little help from my mother, I became a Junior Air Raid Warden by responding to and ordering a Junior Air Raid Warden Kit from an ad that began showing up on a regular basis in a number of comic books a few months after the war started.
The emailer mentioned that the comic book advertisements I cited had within the text something that read like "Just What Every American Boy Needs" along with other boy's only type references. Thus then, by inference and/or in actuality as the case may be, and how he or she saw it, excluding girls.
Maybe now as adults in our era looking back such would seem to be the case. However, the young boy that I was at the time, I just wasn't thinking that way. One of the reasons, at least for me, was the fact that a girl down the street already had a Junior Air Raid Warden Set well before I ever got mine. After seeing hers and how cool it was, and with my dad being an air raid warden and all, I had to have one of my own. At the time it never dawned on me a girl couldn't be an air raid warden or anything else she wanted. The kit she owned was another brand as pictured below on the right with mine on the left, hers being the first one I had ever seen. I do know most of the comic books in my era were aimed at boys or servicemen, so there could have been a supposition on the part of the advertisers to aim their ads in that direction. Interestingly enough, the Junior Air Raid Warden kit the girl had was NOT mail order like mine. How or why she ever got it I never found out. February 20, 2020
There is a whole new ruckus about a video and Alfred Pulyan's teacher of which my comments on were not well received by those that think otherwise. The third of the series of opening quotes above shows up three or four letters down on this page as part of my response. After reading the paragraph a few times I find the contents of the above quote are actually applicable to a much wider scope generally of my works than simply my Pulyan response, which is, although new as of the above date, is a work in progress. Anyway, as of now I've moved the quote to the top of the page. Jump to so said ruckus by clicking HERE.
W To: the_wanderling
FROM: Anita March 24, 2019 at 10:17 AM
Dear Wandering,
Namaste
Thank you for sharing your experience, thoughts, and links. Keen to know if you are aware of the link between Sri Sri Kalipada Guharoy, Alan Ginsberg (Wichita Vortex sutra) , Sri Ramana Maharishi and Sri Aurobindo ...
Kind regards
Anita
W RESPONDS: Am aware of Ginsberg's Wichita Vortex Sutra. Although there are certain strengths between some of the Indian holy men and Ginsberg so mentioned, any relating back to Sri Ramana and Ginsberg are either very, very, weak in the connection or totally non existent re the following:
By the time the 1960s rolled around and vast numbers of westerners were assaulting India for Spiritual prowess, etc., the absolute top dog in all the Maharshi stuff, the For any insights between Ginsberg and myself please see:
The three-photo strip above was taken in 1972 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The first photo shows Alan Ginsberg. The center photo has Bhagavan Das and Ram Dass shown together. The third photo shows him with Ram Dass and Ginsberg. Ram Dass, again, IS Dr. Richard Alpert, the author of Be Here Now, the 1971 book that shot Bhagavan Das to fame as well as Alpert's and Bhagavan Das' guru Neem Karoli Baba.
The last time I saw Ginsberg was in 1994, three years before his death in 1997. The three previous times was starting with my first in 1955-56, then while I was in college in 1968 with the other time being in 1972. The 1994 one he did a fabulous poetry reading and audience interaction at a bookstore in La Jolla, California called D.G. Wills Books owned by a man by the name of Dennis Wills. Over a period of time, although totally unrelated to Ginsberg, Wills and I have had a certain level of contact through our individual research and a mutual exchange of information regarding a man by the name of Guy Hague a onetime follower and disciple of the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. Hague had stayed at the Ramana ashram in 1938 around the same time and period as Mercedes De Acosta and the British playwright and author William Somerset Maugham. Although there has been some fairly high level speculation that Maugham might have used Hague as the role model for his main character Larry Darrel in his book The Razor's Edge it has proved to be not so mostly through the work of myself, Wills --- a major expert on Hague --- and the writer David Godman, another fairly adept expert on Hague, primarily through his extensive authorship of things Ramana.
To: the_wanderling
FROM: Xavier Mar 18, 2019 8:29 PM
The connections you draw illustrate the tide i had been drawn into and they are comforting to my soul in an intangible way your works and their narrative structure have been improving my life
Xavier
AWAKENING 101 Friday, July 27, 2018 3:50 a.m. EDT To: the_wanderling
From: KMT
In Drew Hempel and the Wanderling Hempel makes reference to you, the Wanderling, being in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and the possibility of your association or interactions with drug lords there. You counterattack with sufficient explanation saying that any perceived connections are actually not much more than connecting highly separated dots by innuendo and by you, the Wanderling, being placed in the wrong place at the wrong time via the efforts of higher ups keeping their hands clean.
In writing about the movie and TV actress Phyllis Davis you make reference to a wretched city you visited along the Chinese Myanmar border called Mong La, comparing it to the wretched Star Wars city of Mos Eisley. You do so by including a section titled MONG LA: Mos Eisley Spaceport or Mayberry, R.F.D.?. That same section also shows up on your Khun Sa page. Although you don't give a specific date when the events in the section so outlined occurred, you imply quite clearly that they happened after Hurricane Ike, i.e., September 1, 2008 - September 15, 2008, but before Ms Davis' death September 27, 2013, in Las Vegas, Nevada, many years after the mid-60s cited earlier. In it you write:
"Obi-Wan Kenobi warned Luke Skywalker that he'd never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy in the whole galaxy than Mos Eisley spaceport."
Then you write you guess neither of them ever heard of Mong La. Later, after leaving Mong La you go on to say:
"Not long after that we were in Panghsang with me introducing myself to Wei Hsueh-kang. He asked if I had the 'item.' I opened my phone and handed him the SIM card. He praised me for a job well done, saying everything he heard about me was true. Then he asked how it was I knew Khun Sa. I quickly explained to him the whole story saying I felt he was instrumental in saving my life."
Wei Hsueh-kang is probably the most notorious Southeast Asian warlord and drug kingpin around, with a $2M dollar FBI bounty on his head. Yet you sit on a veranda along the Chinese-Burma border sipping drinks with him. Next thing I know you are at the 140-million-baht Casino Club operating under the flagship of the Myawaddy Riverside Resort Complex on the Thai-Burma border meeting with Khun Sa's son. Which is it?
Yours - KMT
W RESPONDS: While what KMT writes is accurate, so much is lifted out of context, albeit accurately, I can't fill in the gaps to tie it all together nor fully address all that is implied. Readers so interested should really go the section MONG LA: Mos Eisley Spaceport or Mayberry, R.F.D.? as found on the Phyllis Davis and Khun Sa pages and fill in the blanks themselves. See also Ghost P-40.
THE SAME OR DIFFERENT?
(please click image)
PHYLLIS DAVIS CIRCA 1980
(please click image)
THE NOGALES BUS STATION MEETING
(please click image)
OF COBRAS, SCARABS, MASERATIS, AND ZEN
Wouter Melissen
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(please click image)
ALLEN GINSBERG: WICHITA VORTEX SUTRA
(please click image)
GINSBERG'S APPEARANCE AT D.G. WILLS BOOKSTORE, 1994
PHYLLIS DAVIS CIRCA 1980
Regarding Phyllis Davis. Somebody wrote me sometime back saying they had emailed me several times over the years asking if I might be a teacher or guru for them and I never replied. Then they told me they read the following below in Critical Concerns With Awakening 101 and wondered what Davis had that they didn't. After going to her website they say now they know:
"As for a guru, wannabe or otherwise, perhaps one could make such a case, but you would probably have more luck nailing mercury to a wall with a hammer made of nose mucus than pinning down the Wanderling to become anybody's personal guru --- and let me tell you a lot of famous and some not so famous people have tried. The closest any one came that I've ever heard of is one
Phyllis Davis that squeaked in through the backdoor somehow hoping to gain knowledge about how to go about becoming masterful in Sila, Samadhi, Jhana, and Prajna and be frequenter to lonely places --- with the two of them eventually ending up in Thailand and the jungles of Asia together."
REGARDING ONLINE VIDEO AND PULYAN'S TEACHER: TO: the_wanderling
FROM: Doug McC Jun 18, 2018 2:20 PM
Dear Wanderling,
I've found this curious video online (regarding Alfred Pulyan's teacher). Is this truly Pulyan's teacher as claimed in the video's description?
Doug
February 20, 2020
For those of you who may have visited this site before or visiting it for the first time, you may recall a section right about now wherein I discussed my views regarding an online video that featured a woman having been identified as being Pulyan's teacher. I am in recent receipt of what I consider rather convincing and valid information from a reader of my works regarding that person as well as my comments and misinterpretation of facts on my part, enough so on my part that what I had written and presented previously would have to rewritten to such a point that minor editing here and there wouldn't do it. I have no dog in the fight. For those who may be so interested my only intent of is to present the best most truthful information as possible as I recall it regarding Pulyan and his teacher that I can. I am much appreciative of the reader's comments and insights, both historical and personal, and fully intend to address the issues as time permits.
The reader of my works mentioned above has by the way, posted in length about my works regarding Pulyan and Pulyan's Teacher. It is highly recommended that you read what he has to say as linked below. A few things in his post I would point out for your own edification, for example " take the information provided at The Wanderling with a grain of salt," and "All of this suggests to me that he is simply weaving stories from information freely available on the internet." Re the following, speaking of me, the Wanderling, from so said poster:
"I would take the information provided at The Wanderling with a grain of salt. It surprises me that he does not remember her name. Perhaps age has taken it's toll which is understandable - but the title of this video should jog his memory. Her name was 'Ruthie' It does not appear on his website whatsoever.
"I also find his claims that Ramana Maharshi appeared to Ruthie to be dubious. Alfred talks about Ramana very little in his writings - perhaps not at all. (Feel free to read all 400 pages over at Wheaton College, I have). Of course this doesn't account for Ruthie, but I find it unlikely this information did not get passed along to him. Additionally, Ruthie Lennon was much more interested in J. Krishnamuriti.
"The Wanderling also makes little mention of Ruthie's husband - whose name he never mentions. His name was Bernard. As for Feb 2020 neither of those names appear on his website. All of this suggests to me that he is simply weaving stories from information freely available on the internet."
I can see why one might take Shikantaza or my page on Jhanas titled Jhana Factors: Traditional Factors of the Eight Jhana States, or The Ten Fetters of Buddhism with a Grain of salt. Or even my page Dzibilchaltun; Seven Mayan Dolls and the Equinox as a suspect.
But my page Klondike Big Inch Land Company, wherein I describe how I came about having still in my possession a deed in my name to one whole square inch of land in Canada's Yukon Territory making me landed gentry while the rest of the underling landless indentured servants are trapped in a forever ongoing endless quagmire of squalor as falling into a taking it with a grain of salt category I find to be questionable at best.
Not mentioning the teacher's name? The quote below and ones of a similar nature written by me and found scattered throughout the net on a variety of pages are often viewed with a certain amount of skepticism as well, primarily because of the anonymous nature of, for example, both the boat and it's owner. Being unnamed begs the question if either of them are actually real. If such was the case, that is, that they are not, then of course anything written thereafter on the same topic would be also of a suspect nature.
"Me being a regular at the marina came about because of the woodie wagon I spent so much time re-doing. The wood on the wagon was in such an immaculate state of restoration, having arrived at such a state only after hours and hours my own personal painstaking endeavors, that it attracted attention whenever I drove it. One of the persons it attracted was the skipper of a yacht come marlin boat moored in the Marina Del Rey harbor owned by the grown son and heir of a major multimillionaire oil man. The skipper was so taken by my talents working the wood he hired me to do the brightwork on the boat he skippered." Like everything I write I have my reasons. Sometimes the knowledge of same just isn't relevant to what is being presented. Other times too much information opens up access to paths that are not in need of investigation, at least relative to what is being presented. Usually enough information is provided to make what is being said credible as well as enough for the serious researcher to confirm what is being presented is factual. However, in the case of the yacht owner, because of facts leading up to the unusual nature of the relationship between the two of us, I have widened the flow from the anonymous to the more openly known as found in the source link above.
For the record, as to neither of their names appearing on his website there is a sentence that is found in the main text of my Pulyans's Teacher page that I wrote that some may find relevant that reads:
"In so saying, even though she seemed to know my circumstances and by inference I have extrapolated that she knew I had study practiced under my mentor, anything else I may have learned or happened across, like with my mentor, I continue to respect her anonymity."
Of course it's for readers to decide, not everybody that reads or follows my works would necessarily agree to either or both of his premises, neither of which as I view it carrying any more water than Chiyono's bucket after the fact. The following quote is also found within his text, speaking of me: "Perhaps age has taken it's toll which is understandable." I did however go back through freely available internet archives and found that at least as far back as July 2005 my original Pulyan page was on the net. That was 15 years ago. I think I may have made my way through puberty by then so I may have been loosing my faculties, I just don't remember.
As for what I have written about Pulyan by simply weaving stories from information freely available on the internet, the question for those who say it and think it I would ask, what would be the point? Nobody knows who I am because I'm not anybody. I make no claim to being a teacher, guru, holy man, or sage. I don't sell, market, promote or teach classes, seminars or Satsangs. My pages are all free, there are no subscriptions or sign ins. I don't hawk or sell anything. There are no advertisements. No books. No ballcaps, T-shirts, or ballpoint pens. I don't ask for, solicit, or accept donations. My meager Zen dropping are available to all who may be so interested. As for Pulyan in the first place, he shows up in my works because not only did I spend nearly three months living and staying on his compound during the summer after being discharged from the Army, but so too, one of his most ardent followers and advocates, Richard Rose, was connected directly back to me through both my Mentor and my Merchant Marine Friend. The brother of Rose was killed in World War II when the ship he was on as a merchant marine, the S.S. Delisle, was sunk by a U-boat. Two days later the ship my Merchant Marine Friend was on, the S.S. Halsey and in the same convoy as Roses' brother, was attacked and sunk. Re the following as found of the merchant marine page:
" On Monday afternoon May 4, 1942, around five o'clock Atlantic War Time the Delisle was hit by one torpedo from U-564 about 15 miles north of Jupiter Inlet, Florida and two crew members, of which Rose was one, were killed. Two days later, near midnight Wednesday, May 6, 1942 the Halsey was hit by two torpedoes from U-333 somewhat less than four miles east of Jupiter Inlet."
The thing is, a good portion of those very same "stories from information freely available on the internet" about Pulyan that exist now have been derived directly from my well over 15 year old, albeit updated on occasion, Pulyan site. Search Alfred Pulyan on Google and see what comes up and where my page is ranked and why people often start there for information that they put on the internet. It is almost like being caught up in a Bootstrap Paradox:
"The action in the future only happened because the action in the past happened, If you have a hard time believing what I have to say, a mere online Zen hack, about people using what I have written on my Pulyan page instead of the other way around and that it carries no amount of credibility I suggest you go to Amazon.com and search down a book titled "LETTERS OF TRANSMISSION: The Enlightenment Method of Zen Master Alfred Pulyan" with an initial copyright date of 2019. Go to the introduction Amazon allows in their Look Inside feature and read through the Introduction. If you compare the author/editor's Introduction with my over 15 years online version of Alfred Pulyan you will see good parts of the Introduction are pulled practically verbatim from what I've written. You can easily substantiate the length of time my page has been online and what I've written by going to Archive.org and search how far back my page goes.
One more thing, I really didn't want to get into all of this right now, however in a number of places on my pages I write that in the annals of ashram lore an English woman by the name of M.A. Piggott is invariably cited as, or given credit for, being the first woman devotee or disciple from the west to have visited Sri Ramana Maharshi at the ashram. I bring it up to contest to the fact citing Pluyan's teacher as being the first woman devotee, albeit stretching the meaning "devotee" a bit in her case. The reader of my works on his site writes that he finds my claims that Ramana Maharshi appeared to her to be dubious, that is, a lie. The quote below is found in the opening paragraphs of my page The Code Maker, The Zen Maker a page that touches on the supernormal perceptual states known in Sanskrit as Siddhis, of which Pulyan's teacher experienced relative to Ramana. falling then into being dubious. From my side of things the quote is how I view it:
"Even though Buddhism and Zen are found to be deeply seeped in both concepts, i.e., the mysterious hermitage beyond time and Siddhis, most people along the path, especially those with a strong western background, who encounter one or the other or both, although they may like the idea, are usually uncomfortable with a formal acceptance of any possibility of reality for either, and quickly relegate or disregard such ideas into areas of forced silence."
He goes on to say Pulyan talks about Ramana very little in his writings - perhaps not at all. Feel free to read all 400 pages over at Wheaton College, I have, he says, which is neither here nor there because it is actually his teacher that is being discussed. He then says she was much more interested in J. Krishnamuriti.
The following quote, written by me, is speaking of and about Pulyan's teacher, and shows up as a footnote on my long time online page on Piggott so cited:
"Because of her outlook and the spiritual lean of her disposition toward the Awakening process her visit never took traction on an official level. Even after Ramana's own personal invite, she never truly embraced the Ramana type non-dualistic school of Hindu philosophy, Advaita Vedanta, at least at a very high level. She chose instead, Zen and the precepts of I'm personally not able to attest to Pulyan's teacher leaning toward or having a specific interest in J. Krishnamuriti in any fashion one way or the other. I don't recall her speaking of him per se.' If she did, I should as I have a personal interest of sorts in J. Krishnamuriti (1895 - 1986), as well as having a page on him, albeit not currently online. The two of us actually met at his compound in Ojai, California many years ago because of some mutual rather interesting connections.
Those connections stemmed from his formal start in things spiritual that circulated around his early association with a religious group called Theosophists along with his association with a high level member of that organization named Annie Besant. He stumbled on to the Theosophists at a very early age ending up at their world headquarters in Adyar, India, in the process actually being all but adopted by Besant. Those of you familiar with my works know that as a very young boy I was taken by a couple to the ashram of the venerated Indian holy man the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi that ended in some startling results. The reason the couple went to the ashram in the first place was because they were in India to attend the 67th International Theosophists Convention held December 26 to 31, 1943 at the same Adyar world headquarters. When the convention was over they went to Ramana's ashram taking me with them.
It is my belief the childless couple I was fostered to, being surrounded by or immersed in as atmosphere created by the then deceased Annie Besant and continued by American birth control activist Margaret Sanger is what forged the couple's attitude toward having or not having children and how I fit into the picture. While in America and during our early travels together, at least as the couple viewed it, everything must have worked out favorably, with nary a ripple. But, whatever happened to me under the auspices of the Maharshi in India I think scared or adversely impacted the woman of the couple profusely.
It apparently came to her that neither she nor her husband, both fully indoctrinated active participants in The Theosophical Society, were going to match or reach the level of Attainment advocated by the Society --- that is purity in their physical vestures --- and, IF following those dictates as set forth by the Society, rightly or wrongly, could never have children of their own. Rather than me helping the situation arriving at the level of Experience that came about by me sitting before the Bhagavan in Darshan, and with nothing remotely close for them, she was sick with the idea of no child of her own with me in reality being a non-birthed by her child originally passed off as hers --- a constant reminder or hindrance to her or their plight. Even though J. Krishnamuriti had long disavowed Theosophist philosophy, it was because of his early years with them that I sought him out.
It should be noted, as far as Pulyan's teacher is concerned, J. Krishnamuriti and Sri Ramana were diametrically opposed as to how they believed the route to the ultimate result should be. Ramana was a big scriptures guy. J. Krishnamuriti saw little or no need for them. If you read what I've written above about Pulyan's teacher's approach was I can see where she could be drawn towards him. It aligns somewhat with my outside the scriptures lean a la Hui Neng, Bodhidhrama, and Te Shan who simply up and burnt all his books and commentaries on Zen.
The reader did send me the Talking About Her Father link by the way. I had left it off my site on purpose, you know Google and all, ranking sites if they show up more often. My pages get lots of hits. If I put a link on my site it can contribute to that other site's rank. Plus the person leaves my page if they use the link. If there is no reason to make a valid point why link to it? To reach the reader's page in question go to any search engine and cut and paste or type in "RUTHIE LENNON: TALKING ABOUT HER FATHER." However, if you really want to read something good I would suggest you go to the following:
Some of the material I write and present on the internet receive thanks, gratitude, and accolades, others bring hate, disgust and downright nastiness. Some responses, as opposite and irreconcilable as they may be, are often like, as found in Two Contrasting Letters further down, about the same page, subject matter, and/or written material.
There is however, through it all, ONE certain single sentence out of all the things I have written about that brings out a myriad of responses, both pro and con, with some people going on-and-on into what would be like multiple pages, others simply going no further than one or two words like, "Huh?," "Bullshit!," or the more elaborate, "Total bullshit!" The sentence reads:
"There had to be in existence two of me at the same time, albeit occupying separate spaces. One of me quite possibly knowing my mother died, the other still having a mother alive."
That one sentence is found at the end of The Spiritual Elder and the Santa Fe Chief. Not only do I find some of the responses amazing, it's amazing anybody even gets that far to read the sentence in the first place. The seed of what the sentence says and what it means was put into motion primarily because of the following:
"(U)nknown to me, my mother was no longer at home, having become totally unable to care for herself, so much so my dad placed her into a full care sanatorium-like hospital in Santa Barbara, California on an around the clock basis. Before my dad had a chance to respond to the couple, the couple, knowing full well that my mother was in a sanatorium, without my father's grace, took me to India, simply sending him a note saying that in the end I had changed my mind about going. While I was gone my mother died. I missed the funeral and by the time I got back my family had disintegrated, my two brothers and myself all going separate ways, my dad disappearing into the countryside heavy into alcohol."
Traveling with the foster couple during the declining health of my mother but before her death put me as a young boy arriving at the ashram of the venerated Indian holy man the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi in Tiruvannamalai south India sometime in early January 1944 and staying to sometime after April of 1944. By all indications, as brought forth in the Raft Drift story as found in the sinking of the British motor vessel M.V. Tulagi I was most likely back in the states by June of 1944.
The M.V. Tulagi was attacked and sunk in the Indian Ocean by the German submarine U-532 March 27, 1944. Survivors, after 58 days adrift in the open sea, ended with only seven of the 15 crewmembers left alive that were able to make it into two lifeboats out of the original 54 crewmembers, landing on Bijoutier, a tiny island of the Alphonse Group belonging to the Outer Islands of the Seychelles. Well after the sinking, but still well within the time period of the drift, I was returning to the U.S. onboard a ship in the Indian Ocean when some onboard passengers reported seeing a lifeboat sometime toward the end of May, 1944. If it was one of the rafts from the Tulagi, and I am almost sure it would have to have been because of it's description, it would put me back in the states sometime in June, 1944.(see)
The June, 1944 date is fairly solid assumption anyway in that I was on my way to California from Pennsylvania via Chicago as a passenger on the all first class Santa Fe Chief being pulled by a powerful Baldwin built 4-8-4 Northern bearing the Santa Fe ID #3774. Outside Williams, Arizona, on the night of July 3, 1944, the train derailed in a high speed crash, killing the fireman and three passengers, while injuring 113 passengers and 13 train employees.
The wreck left whoever I was traveling with being either too hospitalized or too injured to oversee me. Because of same my uncle, who lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the closest relative to my location was contacted. While waiting for him to show up, which took a day or two longer than expected, he called a close-by tribal spiritual elder he knew to fill in for him until he was able to get to Williams. It is fair to say the spiritual elder sitting around inside of a train station all day long between the occasional train wasn't exactly what I would call his particular forte'. At the end of the second day, the spiritual elder seemed to have had enough and decided he needed more open space around him. Just after sundown of the second full day basically after just hanging around inside a stuffy train station or sitting on shipping boxes and crates in the shade along the wall of the loading dock, without any real discussion between us, we started walking eastward along the railroad tracks for some distance before turning south into the desert, the two of us ending up camping overnight along the Rio Felix in New Mexico.
The opening quote at the top of this section is from the source so cited. Although the paragraph is taken out of context having been extrapolated from a much longer text, it cuts to the quick quite clearly about my mother, the foster couple, me going to India, etc. It also brings to light the fact that while I was gone my mother died and I missed the funeral. It happened that way because of me having left for India late in the year 1943 and not returning to the states until June of 1944, meaning by inference according to the quote, that it was during that six month time frame that my mother died. Taken to the extreme then, by inference it would also mean that my mother was alive at least right up to my departure and possibly sometime shortly after. So too, most likely right up to my departure I was in the U.S. on U.S. soil because as I have stated elsewhere I went to Santa Barbara with both of my real parents sometime in 1943. The question is, if I was with my parents or even the foster couple how is it during the same 1943 period I was able to hole up for the night along the Rio Felix in New Mexico with the spiritual elder waiting for my uncle to show up? There had to be in existence two of me at the same time, albeit occupying separate spaces. One of me quite possibly knowing my mother died, the other still having a mother alive. Truth be told however, when I was traveling with the spiritual elder I had no clue it was not, not 1944. It was only years later that I discovered the incident along the Rio Felix involving the German POWs was 1943. Again:
"There had to be in existence two of me at the same time, albeit occupying separate spaces. One of me quite possibly knowing my mother died, the other still having a mother alive."(see)
WOW! Pardon me for living. I didn't mean to be breathing the same air you are breathing. You would have thought the comments on the above so mentioned sentence of concern would have been enough. Instead they bypass it completely, complaining more stringently about the following instead, hating it and me even more:
The other thing that throws everybody for a loop is:
Take notice of the circular design, look, and similarities between the Code-O-Graph and the precession of the equinox image. There just happens to be 26 one-thousand year increments on the precession image while the Code-O-Graph has 26 increments, one each for each of the 26 letters of the alphabet. Both the precession of the equinox AND Code-O-Graphs figured predominantly in the goings on of events as they unfolded in The Curandero and the Magic of the Mojave Desert Creosote Ring page and The Code Maker, The Zen Maker.
Notice too, in the above graphic, the pole star for our era, Polaris, is placed at the very top center of the precession orbit while curiously enough, of all the stars that could be, straight down and directly below, Vega just happens to be at the very bottom center, one half way away in the 26,000 year precession cycle.
Vega was the northern pole star around 12,000 BC and will be so again around the year 13,727. The creosote ring is dated as being over 11,700 years old, which for all practical purposes is 12,000 years, making it's very inception on earth beginning during the exact same period of time Vega was the north star. During my meditation periods on the monastery grounds outside and in front of the doors prior to any passing through into the monastery, the nighttime sky north star was Polaris, indicating a present day time frame reference. After passing through the monastery doors and exiting outside and around to the front, the nighttime north star was Vega, indicating a time frame reference around 12,000 BC, just at the end of the ice age ... OR in the future as stated above 13,727 AD, making for the creosote ring (and just as important) one full 26,000 year circumnavigation of the precession of the equinox. See:
For those who may be so interested, there is some rather interesting email related back-and-forth going-ons on a page of mine tied into Robert Adams regarding a disciple, adherent, or follower of his named Edward Muzika. Robert Adams being of course, in most circles, genuinely acknowledged as a highly regarded person of deep spiritual attainment with Muzika typically categorized as a longtime close acquaintance of his.
My online version of the Muzika page, extrapolated from a page written by Muzika, has, except for a few links and such, been pretty much left unaltered as I've presented it. At onetime Muzika's original was readily available online in a variety of locations and may well still be, having been online almost as far back as any of the pages that have been presented by me, although mine during that period of time drawing little or no comment to speak of one way or the other, not even from Muzika himself (maybe once ten years ago).
However, the past 18 months or so, without really taking notice until recently, there have been a number of comments filtering through to me by those who take issue with what Muzika has to say, most specifically so what is found in his blog offerings. A cabal or a coincidence? Who knows? See the following site, especially Footnote [1] and additional links:
There are several Roswell UFO sites under my auspices mainly because on the night of the alleged crash my uncle and I just happened to be sleeping overnight on the desert floor not far from Roswell on our way to visit the grave site of Billy the Kid in Ft. Sumner. However, big time coincidence or not, my uncle and I were in the the general region in the first place for other reasons.
The Roswell UFO crash, both historically and traditionally, is always said to have happened on the Fourth of July weekend in 1947. It just so happens exactly three years before that critical 1947 date, around midnight of July 3, 1944, between Flagstaff, Arizona and Williams, I was a passenger on the all first class Santa Fe Chief being pulled by a powerful Baldwin built 4-8-4 Northern bearing the Santa Fe ID #3774 that derailed and crashed, the locomotive sliding on it's side for over the two lengths of a football field, killing the fireman and three passengers outright. 113 passengers along with 13 train employees injured, among them the severely injured engineer. I escaped unharmed. In July 1947, on the first available time following the accident to come up, my uncle had taken me to the train's crash site for me to pay reverence to the dead and injured and my survival. During the trip what is known as The Long Walk involving the Navajos and Apaches came up and my uncle decided to take me to see where and how it happened. Billy the Kid's grave was close by so my uncle included that in our itinerary. It is because of the intertwining of events between my uncle and my trip related to The Long Walk and Billy the Kid's grave site on the same weekend as the Roswell incident that five years later, in 1953, he contacted me about the Kingman UFO crash and because of that contact, et al, I have a page on the net about Kingman.
There is a site on the internet called Desert X Files of which one of his segments is about the Kingman UFO, in of which he makes reference to my Kingman site. Of course that draws some uncertainty towards what he has to say, re the following from Drew:
July 24, 2016 at 5:38 pm
"Wanderling story must be meant as entertainment, as the story-line claims details, actions, events and locations that 'are not' factually correct. (c) 2016 Harry J. Drew"
The owner of the site, citing himself as the administrator responded with:
"Wanderling story is quite true although some information has been changed to protect people and places."
W RESPONDS First, it should be noted that the administrator of the Desert X Files is 100% correct. Secondly it should be noted that Harry J. Drew, who wrote the first comment is no slouch when it comes to his research regarding the Kingman UFO. He truly has an excellent page on Kingman, albeit not totally bulging at the seams with entertainment like others that could be mentioned. Even so, I would suggest, and I mean this, anybody with an interest in the Kingman UFO should visit his site. My Kingman site may be accused of being for entertainment by some, but it is usually done so by those who never go to the footnotes or my sources. One thing, unlike mine, so many UFO sites and others as well, are simply designed to rope a person in enough in order to push advertisements and hawk books, not to fulfill the desire of the reader for the information sought. So said, when it comes to me and what I have presented regarding the Kingman UFO, what my uncle and I experienced and what he related and told me IS what I experienced and what he related and told me and nobody can take that away.
The same is true when it comes to the often overlooked if not fully ignored and much maligned major player in the Kingman incident Judith Anne Woolcott and the person fully described at the Woolcott site my uncle calls Chukka Bob. If one or the other or both are left out of the equation a whole lot of the Kingman UFO history as well as what substantiates it is missing.
Take Roswell. The whole Roswell writing elite that control what went on at Roswell and done in their image do not like it when some outsider comes along with different information that they had no control over. Such is the case with a U.S. Army Lt. Colonel named Philip J. Corso who wrote a book called A Day After Roswell (1997). The elite tore him to shreds because they didn't like being caught with their pants down or being left out of the loop. Corso was an outsider and not one of them. The same is true of Kingman investigators. Some may have caught on to Woolcott early on but all dismissed her just as quick, leaving now a huge hole of unanswered questions, all because it wasn't them who ferreted out the truth. Boo hoo. It reminds me of the World War II icon Kilroy. Seemed like the graffiti as though the Kilroy drawing was everywhere G.I's had been or were. There's a Kilroy graffiti that relates directly to my view of the Roswell and Kingman UFO in crowd with some G.I. writing:
"Clap your hands and jump for joy I was here before Kilroy"
Another G.I. came along and underneath the first G.I.'s remark wrote:
"Sorry to spoil your little joke, I was here but my pencil broke."
For the record, as far as events and locations being not factually correct as so stated in the posted comments as found in Desert X Files above. If you read my Kingman UFO page I cite and offer links to both pro and con views regarding the Kingman incident, any of which may agree or contradict what I myself have written. However, none of them changed my viewpoint nor did they change my experiences regarding the event as it applied to me personally. Below is a direct quote from my Kingman UFO page:
"According to my uncle, he and a couple of Native American trackers along with a young between jobs 20 year-old and soon-to-be New Mexico A&M college student he referred to as Chukka Bob, who they didn't know but just joined them along the way, had been observing over a period of several days from a distance what he called 'a military recovery operation of some kind' in or around the canyons of Kingman in May of 1953."
Charles Alan Roberts was a Ranger trained Tactical Intel Staff Officer with the rank of Captain in 1965, having arrived in Vietnam in February of that year. Eleven months later, on December 14th, 1965, Roberts received multiple fragmentation wounds and died from those wounds 12 days later in a military hospital at Clark Air Force Base, the Philippines, on the day after Christmas 1965.
Charles Alan Roberts was the same person my uncle called Chukka Bob, coming up with the name Chukka Bob by combining Roberts three names. Charles became Chuck, Alan became the A forming Chukka. The Bob in Chukka Bob was his last name, Roberts, being changed into Bob. Hence, Charles Alan Roberts became to my uncle, Chukka Bob.(see)
So, my uncle and a few others had been observing over a period of several days from a distance what he called "a military recovery operation of some kind" --- "in or around the canyons of Kingman in May of 1953." How is it that my story-line, claims, details, actions, events, and locations 'are not' factually correct, unless there was in fact no military operation in and around the canyons of Kingman in 1953, which isn't what Drew claims in his works.
I make it quite clear in the beginning that it was the year 1970, seventeen years after the fact that any of it, for me in the flesh, occurred in the first place. Nowhere do I state that I went to, visited, or saw the alleged UFO or UFO crash site --- although I do relate quite clearly what my uncle experienced, saw, and did in 1953 within days if not hours after the crash. His being there firsthand then relating to me what he saw is probably much closer to the event and more valid than some third party's third party report.
I am really in the dark how floating an object ACROSS the Colorado River has become floating an object DOWN the Colorado River or what it means relative to simply crossing the river. If that is any reference to me or anything I have written then it's wrong. My uncle told me the military convoy they followed offloaded what ever they were transporting onto what he called a barge, with my uncle stating, with pure conjecture on his part, to be met on the other side. However, there is nothing to say what he described as a "barge" was instead a powered craft of some sort. If you remember it was night and he and his group had to maintain a distance so as not to be detected. I did however, take the steel rod along the side of the river as being used for a tethered rope or cable that a barge might use. Chicken Springs Road? According to my uncle the box and by inference the contents of the box was what was related to the Kingman UFO, not Chicken Springs Road, although it is located "in and around the canyons of Kingman." If the "floating down the Colorado" refers to locations that are factually incorrect specifically I make reference in the main text of the Kingman UFO article of one of the few locations I did in fact access in of which I describe as "mountains ending up on a miles long north south downslope outwash plain about five miles wide from the mountains that edged up close to river level." I refer you to the following graphic so presented in Footnote [2] of the Kingman page. In the graphic you can clearly see the miles long north south downslope outwash plain that pretty much parallels the whole river Lake Mohave area, areas I have been all over on-and-off over a number of years from childhood to adult, some of the reasons related to the Kingman incident some of them not.
In my Kingman paper I write that several years later while visiting my uncle in Santa Fe he asked me if I remembered that little jog we took along the Colorado River in 1970, meaning of course the events as he related to me and experienced during that "jog" and how it related to the Kingman UFO. That meeting, where my uncle clarified any number of things regarding Kingman happened during my visit to see him as reported in The Roswell Raygun. That meeting occurred on his deathbed and after careful research and interviews with people such as Judith Anne Woolcott I have absolutely no reason to refute what he had to say or what he told me. Re the following:
"I was sitting in a chair beside my pretty much bed ridden uncle as he was inching towards the end of his days discussing any number of subjects and topics ranging from the beautiful, more than enigmatic and mysterious If you click HERE you will be taken to a map that in a dash-line format shows what I believe to be the road my uncle used to go the river from Highway 93 when I was with him in 1970. That road, indicated as being named Cottonwood on the map, can clearly be seen to end along the shoreline of the east side of Lake Mohave. Directly opposite on the other side of the lake another road is indicated, albeit unnamed, that picks up or ends if you will, on the west side of the lake. What I take from it is my uncle seemed to think it was the same road he followed the convoy to the river that night in 1953, with the use of the road on the other side as the docking site once the barge crossed the river.
AND NOW THIS: Frank Scully, in the first chapter of his best selling book Behind the Flying Saucers, speaking of Charles Alan Roberts' home town of Farmington, New Mexico, in the first person writes:
I kept my own counsel for months. But when others less well informed began sounding off in all directions about flying saucers, I thought it was about time that I told the world if nothing more than proof that I knew more than I had read in the papers. In fact the night the Denver Post was exposing Scientist X and the Farmington citizens were exposing Operation Hush Hush, I was dining in Hollywood with the man all Denver was hunting for. He had just talked to George Koehler in Denver by long distance. Koehler had worked for him and had married his nurse. The Farmington report had set Denver uproar, Koehler told him. "Do you remember my telling you that the first flying saucer was found on a ranch twelve miles from Aztec?" I remembered when he reminded me "Yes," I said, "I remember now." "Well," he said, "Farmington is only twenty-eight miles from that ranch. In fact they flew over the exact place where one of their number had fallen a year ago."
Farmington is a small New Mexico community in the northwest corner of the state. Most of it's existence it was a quiet rural-western town. Then in 1950 it was suddenly thrust on to the national scene by Scully's nation-wide best seller "Behind the Flying Saucers." That same year, 1950, was Charles Alan Roberts senior year in high school and unlike what came a few years later, Roberts and his high school buddies didn't have a continuous stream of drive in theater SciFi and horror movies like This Island Earth, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and Man From Planet X every weekend, yet here they were, right in the middle of the Flying Saucer craze. True, Scully's book "Behind the Flying Saucers" was pretty much debunked by 1952, but that was two years later. In the meantime, as a teenager, he was actually living up to his ears in Flying Saucers in his own back yard.
It was those highly exuberant years Charles Alan Roberts was harkening back to when he was swept up in regarding the Kingman UFO.
I received a doozy of an email dated Sunday, January 3, 2016 4:23 PM regarding my rather extensive page I've written that follows the exploits of a World War II German submarine turned rogue, the U-196, the page of which is titled The Strange Odyssey of the German U-boat U-196. In the above opening paragraph I write that I answer emails --- that is to say, IF I answer them --- I usually do so in one of three ways: a footnote on an already existing webpage; elaborate on it in the main text of a relevant page; or if it warrants it, create a whole new page specifically on the subject and simply direct any queries there.
Well, although it wasn't terribly lengthy, the email I received, as offered through the author's opinion, pretty much went about shredding everything I wrote on the U-196. After a Google search of the author of the email --- which I often do on letters I cite --- I found out it was written by what I would call a nothing less than a nationally known way-up-there self-proclaimed know all about submarines guy. Because my U-196 page has several footnotes already as it is, I decided, like I wrote above, to create a whole new page specifically on the subject and simply direct any queries there. And that is what I did. If you would like to read the email by the nationally known way-up-there self-proclaimed know all about submarines guy and his shredding of my page, followed by my line-by-line response pointing out where he is wrong, me being a not nationally known way-up-there self-proclaimed know all about submarines guy, please go to:
Don't get me wrong, I love constructive criticism on anything and everything I write and have often gone into pages and corrected or rewritten sections if I felt they were wrong or misleading. However, I feel my U-196 page is quite up to par and my response, as found by going to the above link, was really written in case any of you, as readers of my works, harbor similar or like feelings as the letter writer. I have a personal commitment in my endeavors to get things right. You will learn one of the reasons why if you click the periscope graphic below. By doing so you will be taken to a page that brings to how I myself, as a young boy during World War II traveling across the Indian Ocean by ship with a foster couple, I came into the crosshairs of more than one enemy periscope --- probably more so than most reading this.
W Over and over I get emails that read:
AWAKENING 101 Tuesday, October 27, 2015 3:53 PM To: the_wanderling
From: R
Thanks for your interesting website. You mention a living, realized master and disciple of sri Ramana Maharishi. Is this person still alive and is it possible to meet with him?
Kind regards, - R
W RESPONDS: It never ceases to amaze me why, over and over so many people who read my works, especially so The Last American Darshan specifically, and then, after reading it and going to all the footnotes and links, still ask, "Is this person still alive?", apparently somehow being totally unable to fathom, put together, or figure out that the person who had Darshan in front of the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi as a young boy and the grown man results of that same boy thereof is ME. For those who may be so interested and for those to whom it is not clear, to tie the package together please see also:
In the year I was born a very well received novel that would ultimately receive a Pulitzer Prize titled The Yearling, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, was published.
In the website The Battle of Los Angeles: 1942 UFO, wherein an incident about a giant object of unknown origin that overflew the city of Los Angeles is described, in a section subtitled A QUICK PERSONAL NOTE, the following is found:
Right around that six years later time when my uncle and I crossed paths again a movie version of The Yearling was released. Years before, when my uncle first saw me as a walk-around toddler, my mother was reading The Yearling as it was just published. At that time he called me a "Yearling." When we met again the movie just came out, and he was reminded of what he called me as a toddler. By then, of course, my mother was long gone, my father had married my Stepmother and I was no longer remotely close to being anything that resembled a Yearling. Knowing I had been to India and returned in a somewhat can't quite put your finger on it altered state where I seemed to "wander" in and out, my uncle, in an interesting twist of fate, began calling me "the Wanderling" --- a sort of play on the words of the term "the Yearling."
In later years the person that would become my spiritual Mentor in things Zen and who had studied under Sri Ramana, came across me and heard that my uncle had called me a "wanderling," he immediately took to it --- primarily because of a very important aspect regarding the historical background of Ramana's life as presented in the following quote from Ramana's biography:
LETTER ONE: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 12:44 AM
From: "CJ"
To: the_wanderling
then is who? who's your mentor? personally i feel like you have wasted a great amount of my time, i just wanted a quick answer to who this may be, not to read another book...you think you are enlightened? really--you need to rethink that as someone who is enlightened would be more wise then to waste people's time ---i am not clicking through this eternity of pages you posted-you sound like someone who is mental-ocd for sure as well as inferiority complex, but i digress---i did think this person could be real but after your litany of ramblings it is clear the character is based on good writing, research and perhaps even the author himself travelling to india and meeting these people for research, he was after all a doctor and from a family of lawyers so that proves he was quite intelligent and able to learn quickly-you have to do plenty of research to make it through med school, so this would not have been difficult for him to do himself and being an acclaimed author would have given him access to anyone anywhere to get the facts in line with a good book -after all he wanted people to think it was based on a real character so he had to give out facts that could be checked-if he didn't people wouldn't be wondering-he did, they do, he was a gifted author, you are speculating and trying to make yourself seem important...'you mentor' my ass. now go enlighten yourself off-jerk
LETTER TWO: Sunday, August 11, 2013 4:23 AM
From: "Jill"
To: the_wanderling
I found your pages, quite by accident, by following links. I don't even remember what I was searching for, but would guess it had something to do with enlightenment or shamanism.
That was at about 10:30-11:00 am yesterday. It is now almost 4:00 am and so I had to make myself stop reading as I need to sleep.
Initially, I just wanted to write and say thank you. Thank you for sharing.
But your writing leaves a desire to know more. The best I can make out is your Uncle must have been born about 1903 with your birth to follow in 1938 or 1939 more likely.
I have to ask, WHY the anonymity regarding yourself, your uncle and your mentor?
I have failed to experience any kind of "enlightenment"; who knows, maybe the next cycle, maybe not. I have failed to experience any siddhis, all I have ever experienced was strong intuition which has never failed me.
I was mesmermized by your pages; many of which reminded me of memories of my grandfather. Also a white man, he too was accepted, welcomed and respected by many of the native americans.
He used to circle the country every summer, visiting the reservations and friends, as his lifelong hobby was collecting native american beadwork. He was a geologist by profession, I don't know where the passion for his hobby came from. I do remember as a child, hearing stories of how he hand built our cabin (7' elevation, about 2 miles before Bear Valley). I remember him taking me on walks, pointing out the different plants and flowers, seems like he knew them all intimately. Large granite slabs behind our cabin where women would gather to ground their acorns, only the worn out bowls in the granite remaining.
He would share stories of the people. How when the women's eyesight started failing them, he would get them glasses so they continue doing beadwork. Stories of good friends like Frank Fools Crow and Two Guns White Calf. Funny stories like taking roads so washed out and rutted, that he didn't think he'd make it there; only to have them ask him why he didn't take the new road? They too, would share secrets regarding Sweet Grass and where to find it, too many to recollect.
Some of his stories he shared in a catalog of his collection. Where each piece was from and how he came to acquire it. We still have footage of the Sun Dance that he and my older brother attended, the only white people allowed at the time. And stories of an old Chief living on a reservation, well up in years who every now and then announced that school was closed and they were "moving camp". Out of respect, they all did just that.
Anyway, thank you for sharing. I hope oneday, somehow, you will break from the anonymity and share your names: yourself, your uncle and your mentor. Part of me realizes that might lend to the duality of the world and the importance placed on one's identity, specifically their name. But as an unenlightened individual, I am left with a desire to know more....
~~Jill
W RESPONDS: Primarily in response to Letter One, I kind of like something what the venerated spiritual teacher Lee Lozowick (1943-2010) once said in his interview with What is Enlightenment? Magazine that goes something like:
"I was criticizing every other teacher, like I was the only teacher on the face of the planet who was real. That's such a ridiculous posture. As time has gone on, I've become much more willing to just relax and acknowledge other people's strengths."
A close reflection of what most of my meager Zen droppings scattered throughout the internet is all about. See also my response to the email from "patricia" dated July 8, 2012 lower on the page.
So too, 'CJ' writes and I quote, "i feel like you have wasted a great amount of my time, i just wanted a quick answer to who this may be, not to read another book..." The following is an opening paragraph to one of my most difficult pages to understand, but pretty much sums up almost any of my pages:
"For the most part the Buddha, as part of his teaching method, presented his deeply held spiritual and philosophical concepts to those so interested through the use of comparisons, allegories, similes, and metaphors. The following is presented in the same comparison, allegory, simile, and metaphor fashion for the same reasons." If any of you have ever looked into the scriptures related to Buddhism you most likely have found out they go on and on Sutra after Sutra --- not everybody thinks it is worth it. See Te Shan and attending footnotes. See as well:
March 15, 2013 Because of a continuing stream of like questions, the following has been added to the main text of an already existing page: La Palma Secret Base, and presented here for your own edification:
WANDERLING, WHY THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ADDICTION WITH SUBMARINES? Over and over people want to know why this almost borderline psychological addiction with all this submarine stuff? After all, they ask, are you not a known Zen man of some accomplishment --- why page after page of submarines, why not more on Enlightenment or help for those seeking along the path? Even though the submarine pages are each stand alone pages unto themselves, they are still interwoven into the fabric of my own journey along the path, thus inturn it is hoped, casting light however meager, for guidence along your own. So said, I basically have two reasons, both personal, however still relating back to you the reader and what I just wrote about interwoven fabric, et al:
REASON ONE: In 1943, not less that a year after World War II started, my uncle, who was so predominant it my early childhood and upbringing, but before I was on the scene, inadvertently stumbled across some rather alarming Axis-induced fifth column like activities in the desert southwest, more specifically that German U-boats were in the Sea of Cortez, and was shot point blank by foreign operatives and left to die because of it. In 1970 he repeated to me how the events unfolded:
My uncle, who I cite often in my works, was not only a fairly well established artist he was also as well, what I call a biosearcher. Prior to his death in 1989, as a biosearcher, he had more than a half dozen plant species named after him following years of trekking, searching, and discovering previously unknown and unnamed plants all over mostly remote and hidden areas and sections of the desert southwest. In 1943 he was biosearching alone in the then largely uninhabited mountainous and desert-like terrain in the central section of New Mexico between the New Mexico and Arizona border on the west and the north-to-south flowing Rio Grande on the east.
In the process of his biosearching he came across two men, and unusually so, both Asian. One of men was flat on his back all but unconscious and visibly quite ill after apparently having been bitten by a rattlesnake with the bite being left untreated. My uncle, after using the healing properties of indigenous plants he gathered up, soon found the man up and around. One of the men who had a rudimentary use of English told my uncle they were Japanese, were testing soil samples for radioactivity, and had been left off in Mexico by a submarine. By then my uncle was wanting to beat a hasty retreat but before he could one of the men shot him. They took his truck and although they left him to bleed out he survived. In 1985 a book titled The Japanese Secret War authored by Robert K. Wilcox was published. In the book, completely independent of anything my uncle told me, Wilcox, in his own research, writes about the two Japanese spies doing soil testing in Arizona and New Mexico and the U-boat they arrived in, of which I in turn write about as found in the source so cited:
"Wilcox's book that, for the first time brought to the public's attention Japanese agents having been in the desert southwest during World War II specifically tasked with testing soil samples for radiation, was published in 1985. It was in 1970, fifteen years before Wilcox's book was published that my uncle told me about his 1943 encounter with Japanese spies soil testing deep into state of New Mexico and the fact that according to their own testimony, they had initially been brought to Mexico via German U-boat from Europe." REASON TWO: The second reason starts within a few months of the first, more specifically on the morning of Friday March 10, 1944. On that date I was a young boy traveling in India under the auspices of a foster couple and staying at the ashram of the venerated Indian holy man the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. Totally unrelated and unbeknownst to me or anybody involved with me or the parties I was with, on that same date as well, the British motor merchant MV Tulagi, loaded with a cargo of flour and 380 bags of mail sailed from Australia for Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) under control and orders of the British Admiralty. Proceeding down the New South Wales Coast, and, via the Bass Strait she rounded Cape Leuwin and on into the Indian Ocean. Seventeen days later, on March 27, 1944, with a full complement of 54 on board she was torpedoed by the German Submarine U-532 of the First Monsun Group operating out of Penang, Malaysia. She sank in 20 seconds. Of the 54 crew members only 15 survived, taking to two lifeboats. Following the torpedo attack and after 58 days adrift the seven members of ONE of the rafts finally came across a group of small islands. Just before midnight they landed on Bijoutier, a tiny island of the Alphonse Group belonging to the Outer Islands of the Seychelles. The eight members of the second raft, separated halfway into their drift from the first, basically disappeared and have never been officially accounted for. Some time after the sinking of the MV Tulgai found me in the Indian Ocean as a passenger on a lone, unescorted ship in those very same submarine infested waters on a return trip bound for England and then the U.S. During the months I was gone the woman of the couple I was with had written three letters to my father which years later eventually fell into my hands, of which the following quote refers to her comments found in her last letter:
"The The letter so mentioned in the quote was written by the woman of a couple that took me, as a young boy, to India. In the letter she indicated that a liferaft was encountered in some fashion by the ship we were on during our return trip to England. How she worded it wasn't totally clear and could be deciphered, at least in how I read it, in a number of ways. It was clear in what she said that there was a liferaft, but IF the liferaft was encountered before or after Cape Town or IF there were or were not survivors was muddled. She didn't elaborate one way or the other or attempt to clarify the event because anything regarding the liferaft had nothing at all to do to do with the point she was trying to get across in the letter. I do not remember anything about a voyage home or anything to do with any liferafts. However, backtracking through all the events, in all my research, taking into consideration time, place, ships attacked and sunk, survivors and non survivors, etc., only one ship fits the bill, the aforementioned British motor merchant MV Tulagi. Now, I have no idea how many times the ship I was on came into the periscope crosshairs of German U-boats, if any. However, the whole route of travel from India, around Africa and into the Atlantic on to England was crawling with submarines, every one seeking an easy, vulnerable target. Looking back it must have been pure luck, fate or karma, but in any case throughout the years I have come to appreciate the results and established in me a strong interest in how the actions and selected non-interaction of submarines and their operations, Japanese or German thereof, have impacted the outcome of my life. For more on submarines and any impact thereof see:
October 20, 2012
It is with great remorse and heavy heart that I recently received the sad news that Bob Nickel, an untiring long-time spiritual foot-soldier in the line of the Bhagavan Sri Ramana passed away late in the afternoon on Friday, August 17, 2012.
Nickel lived as he practiced, in the non-dual Advaita tradition of Sri Ramana. Seemingly spiritually spawned under the umbrella of a line of bigtime movers that hog the spotlight mostly for themselves, Nickel went about his teaching in his own way at his own pace. Although he had a book and sold a few DVDs here-and-there he never big-tented his operation pushing ball caps, tee shirts and fountain pens --- nor did he find the need to gather up or surround himself with ever continuing legions of fawning awe-inspired scyophants in jewel encrusted Taj Mahal style ashrams or the devotee-labored rolling hills of a tax exempt vineyard infested retreat.
The truth shows up on Nickel's website:
"Persons who wished to schedule private meetings with Bob usually gave him from $50 to $200. However, again, if a person was in a hard place regarding money, "Heck, just buy me lunch while we talk, or a cup of coffee."
True, Nickel was not right up there in the same vein as Lakshmana Swamy in how he presented his endeavors --- mostly because Lakshmana very seldom presents his endevors(see) --- however, how Nickel did things was right up my alley in how things should be done. Most people who follow MY stuff on the internet invariably run across the following quote by
Julian P. Johnson from his book The Path of the Masters (1939):
Almost any promoter or advocate of their own pocketbook belief could search out some reason to circumnavigate the above reasoning. However, even the most ardent skeptic would be hard pressed to dismiss the Buddha's own words on the subject as recorded in the
Anguttara Nikaya V.159, Udayi Sutra:
Even though I say above that how Nickel did things was right up my alley and, even though I personally had face-to-face darshan under the grace and light of the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi as a young boy in the mid-1940s at his ashram in the southern Indian temple city of Tiruvannamalai AND my own Mentor Awakened to the Absolute under his grace as well (circa 1930), I am no fan of satstangs or intensives or anything else for that matter.
Like someone snidely put it, a few years Doing Hard Time in a Zen Monastery put a cold steel nail in my heart. Perhaps, although I don't see it clear as all that. A real character of a Zen-person, Ken Fry, who, it has been claimed (by others), attained a state of immortality at the Mount Baldy Zen Center --- and a person who seldom shows up now days --- and I went around-and-around online about intensives and satstangs years ago. I don't advocate for or against satstangs or intensives one way or the other, what I do advocate is for the mind being ripe. So, in a sense, if a person requires or needs satstang or intensives at whatever stage in their life or spiritual advancement is concerned, like I tried to make clear to Ken Fry, so be it.
The following quote by Tiruvannamalai-based Kevinandaji, whose stuff I absolutely love but whose blog is a major bane and thorn in the side of a good portion of the hawk Enlightenment crowd, will put into perspective what I present for those who may be so interested because, as Kevinandaji presents it, so closely parallels my perfume on the subject that if I were to write it myself there might be copyright infringements:
"Traditional and Gaudapadian Advaita have failed to address the arguments of Madhyamaka Buddhism. This too is the legacy of Gaudapada's political formulation of Advaita. We know that Gaudapada borrowed from the Madhymakans and reinterpreted their thesis of non-origination without crediting them. Unlike the Sarvastivadin and Yogacarin positions, the Madhyamaka teaching of non-origination was not nihilist. Its main teachers Nagarjuna and Candrakirti - now classified as Prasangika Madhyamaka - rejected outright both nihilism and eternalism. They advocated instead a new interpretation of the Buddha's Middle Way which says (as modern theoretical physics confirms) that absolutes are impossible. There cannot truly be any enlightenment, Self or Brahman to attain - nor can there truly be any jiva, "I" or method to attain it. This position does not say "no I" or "no method". It says all things including the person exist as empty, co-dependent arisings which are neither totally existent nor totally non-existent. Methods may happen, methods may not - what happens simply happens - and whether someone practises a method or not is completely irrelevant ..."
In an interview with James Swartz, aka Ram, conducted by John Howells in January 2003, at Tiruvannamalai, South India, Howells asks about the idea that Ramana taught in silence, that all you had to do was to sit in his presence and the silence would Enlighten you. Ram responds with:
"I suppose that if you were completely qualified, absolutely ready to pop, you could just sit in the presence of someone like Ramana and maybe figure out that you are whole and complete limitless awareness. But this is highly unlikely. People spend years around such people sitting in silence, enjoying the energy but don't become enlightened. Usually people who are highly qualified only have one or two very subtle doubts separating themselves from jnanam, Self knowledge. And usually they already know the answer they just don't have one hundred percent confidence in it. Experientially they have everything they need and all that is missing is the knowledge of who they actually are. So when they offer their ignorance to a sage like Ramana, who is an authority and for whom they have respect and devotion, he can, with a few very well chosen words, remove their ignorance. Sometimes the person puts the question and gives the answer and the teacher just nods and that is it. Or sometimes the teacher just asks a question in response to the student's statement and the student understands without giving a verbal answer."
Swartz's comment "absolutely ready to pop" parallels the "mind being ripe" comment I use over and over in my works. They mean the same thing. It does not matter how much you have studied, how much you know or do not know, or how old or young you are, if your mind is not ripe or ready to pop then it is NOT going to happen. How you do or don't get there is no concern of mine.
I do know that in the past when I received emails from concerned individuals that felt satstang would be right for them in their spiritual search, and I have received hundreds of them over the years, Bob Nickel, was one of two people I always suggested. He will be missed.
For those who may be so interested, the quoted paragraph a little ways back by the aforementioned Kevinandaji and what it delves into is expanded on by him --- with some rather interesting shell breaking comments regarding James Swartz and others of similar ilk --- can be found by going to the following link, and of which I strongly recommend doing so:
At the bottom of this entry there is a link to a page I wrote that relates to a person by the name of Drew Hempel, a man proficient in a wide sprectrum of intellectual pursuits including math and music and an eastern spiritual renaissance master as well. Hempel has responded with a certain amount of depth and insight into what I wrote about him, et al, with a page of his own. The page by Hempel opens with:
Friday, August 3, 2012
Revisiting the Wanderling after he writes on me: Has he really "smashed the black lacquer barrel"?
So thewanderling responds to my previous comments after perusing his webpage
So this inspired me to take a closer look at thewanderling. Yes I admit his website is confusing and so frustrating. So I just googled thewanderling to find commentary on him and find out he was 69 in 2007...or so -- 75 years old now? Anyway he's obviously proficient at making a website updated from his former geocities page or some such. Thewanderling is an excellent writer and expert in the minutiae of samadhi philosophy....speaking from his own meditation experiences...
Regarding the page I wrote titled DREW HEMPEL AND THE WANDERLING that Hempel's response circulates around, I have gone in a added a number of new comments since reading his response. So, in conjunction, you might visit that site also:
AWAKENING 101 Sunday, July 8, 2012 9:45 AM From: "patricia" To: the_wanderling In writing to you I must firstly state that an experience at the ashram of Ramana Maharshi some 20 years ago led me to peruse your website or similar in the hope of finding more informations, stories, if you like.
Of Ramana sadly, all I discovered is numerous reference to fantasy, mostly characters in novels, etc., and, altho widely read, have little place in my search and is not my barometer on a historic person, saintly and sacred as he is.
This may not reach you and brevity may be a shock, but wordy philanderings, taking personages along with your stream is hardly levity on a subject so close to my heart.
FAREWELL FRIEND, YOU MISSED OUT.
Patricia-
W RESPONDS: If all who venture into my meager Zen droppings come away with the same as the email writer suggests, then truly as she also suggests, I have missed out.
Some living enities are destined to ingest nothing but bamboo shoots. Others do not find them all that nourishing and seek ways of satisfying themselves through other sources --- yet somehow both have the same ending. Who is to judge which is better.
However, if both partake their need for drink from different pools and the upstream water source for one in some way becomes poisoned and it impacts adversely that enitiy then truly it is best to avoid that source at all costs.
If such is the case with me (i.e., poisoning the water), the question that comes to me most strongly is why would the venerated Indian holy man Sri Ramana, as outlined in THE MEETING: An Untold Story of Sri Ramana, even in the smallest of sense, turn to his seldom used powers of Siddhis or anything else to pull me from the darkness into the light? To poison the well or clear the waters?
Patricia misses the boat when she confuses any character of a novel as the main focus of my works surrounding things-Ramana or anything else. The main focus is on the actual real life person the character in the novel was written around. Besides, except for the use of the story line of the novel paralleling what happened in real life in order to build a strong foundation, most of the need of the person was post novel --- i.e., after the novel ended. The novel, although not mentioned by name in the email, but, because of the Ramana connection is thought most likely to be The Razor's Edge, written by British playwright and author W. Somerset Maugham and published in 1944. My Mentor, the actual person Maugham crafted his lead character around and who in real life did in fact study under the grace and light of Sri Ramana (and in the novel --- with somewhat startling results for both) does not show up in my life until September 1, 1946, two years AFTER the novel was published, then initially, only briefly.
For any of you who have come across my works and harbor similar misgivings as our aforementioned emailer, that is, all that was discovered is numerous reference to fantasy, mostly characters in novels, etc., be advised, that as far as Sri Ramana is concerned, I do have two straight up pages that surely must circumnavigate any such misgivings, real or imagined, of which both are updated versions from highly reliable sources and both credited: A third page that may be of interest as well, albeit possibly for some, skirting way, way to close to the edges if not stepping directly into Patricia's concerns is Guy Hague. See also: The general consensus I get from many readers of my works, if you discount what some see initially as rambling, is threefold, whether they are seeking out Ramana or otherwise. First, before my pages found their way onto the internet generally, a great deal of them (but not all) were originally under my free online college level course for those who may have been so interested in exploring the Dharma or Enlightenment in the Zen tradition, called AWAKENING 101, which, although I keep promising to bring back, is no longer available online. In so saying, before --- prior to putting AWAKENING 101 on the back burner --- the pages readers encountered were in a more-or-less semi-structured order, one leading to the next, starting with an introduction and explanation in earlier pages. Such is not the case nowdays unless one starts with, for example, ZEN ENLIGHTENMENT, or a similar page and continue in order or in sequence one page after the other. In FOLDER ONE: The First Step Along The Path of my now on hiatus AWAKENING 101 the following paragraph, in explanation, appeared --- of which current readers along the path are no longer privy too:
"Right about now, however, you will be thinking to yourself 'What is this all about?' because up to this point and especially after you start reading what is presented in ZEN ENLIGHTENMENT, that everything has to do with me, me, me...that is, the Wanderling...and nothing to do with YOU or YOUR Enlightenment. Not true. It has EVERYTHING to do with YOU, YOUR Enlightenment and YOUR spiritual quest along the path. The thing is this medium, the electronic cyber world, does not allow for an intimate face-to-face encounter like otherwise might transpire at a Sangha or Zen center. Enlightenment is a serious thing. Your future and your quest as you seek insights into Enlightenment ARE serious. Anybody or anyone can come along and tell you anything and you don't have that personal face-to face connection to make the same decision you might in 'real life.' That is WHY I am laying so much ground work...so you come to KNOW who I am and inturn feel comfortable in considering what is offered as valid. You will find I fade into the background as you progress forward. The first two sections are tough because initially I am presenting who I am THEN I present offerings that tear apart Zen...but with that you should start out fairly well stripped of preconceived notions and be ready to seriously continue along the path toward Full Awakening."
Secondly, and closely related to the above, many readers have stated that what I present in my works is a nightmare to navigate which is closely related to my previously discount rambling statement, discounted along with nightmare to navigate because it is explained away by the quote below. One Upaka the Ascetic, speaking of AWAKENING 101, wrote the following in Critical Concerns With Awakening 101 responding to someone who found what was presented "a nightmare to navigate through the morass of links":
"Even Sarlo who refused to 'recognize' the Wanderling for years, says, albeit with somewhat more reverence and tongue in cheek, the same thing about him. However, not everyone, primarily because of drawing conceptual construct inferences while being firmly implanted in the Samsaric side of any equation, are willing to do so (i.e. as the poster calls it, navigate). Once the seeker realizes what is going on, things change. The problem is is that the Wanderling is not time-lineal. It is like throwing a rock into a still pond. The concentric rings radiate outward one after the other. The outer ring was once the inner ring and the inner ring will become the outer ring. For the Wanderling there is no difference, ring, rock, pond, first or last. All well and good for him, but what about us. It is like a joke. If you get it it doesn't need to be explained. If it needs to be explained something is lost."
Sarlo, who writes, runs, maintains, and edits the absolute BEST of any and all of the online guru rating sites, Sarlo's Guru Rating Service, writes, in what I feel is a delightfully indepth insight --- in his own inscrutable way of course, that only he can do --- the following about ME and my various offerings:
"One more tidbit is the domain structure. The Wanderling has undertaken to create his project in free website places, assembling a myriad of apparently different sites, but all interwoven. As the free website places fold and merge and change their rules, he shifts accordingly, thus a migration happens on this level as well." ABOUT FACEBOOK AND THE WANDERLING: Please be advised that I do not, that is DO NOT have any Facebook pages directly attributable back to me in any way. Facebook pages implying they are ME or MINE in some manner are done so by others on their own accord. Any Facebook poster thereof thinking I will read or respond to posts by anyone are mistaken. I don't go to the pages, I don't read the posts nor do I have any access to respond. Any responses to any posts have not been done by me.
The FACEBOOK page that most often comes up in relation to me, although not done by me is however, it must be said, a commendable almost work of art done by a major supporter of my works, one Alberto by name who put together and maintains the page in his own way, on his own, unsolicited and through his own efforts. If you go to the "About" found on the homepage using the above Facebook link you will find the following:
"This page is not managed by the Wanderling himself, although the material here contained is all written or presented by him, and no opinions are given whatsoever. Its sole scope is to assist whoever may be interested in these drops of knowledge to reach the open sea."
It has been brought to my attention that someone also opened a REDDIT page.
Monday, June 4, 2012
WHY NO EMAILS AND LETTERS POSTED FOR A YEAR? The reason no letters or emails have been posted here for over a year is because I have been taking and responding to letters and emails through my blog. However, proportionately it sort of got out of hand --- in my estimation deteriorating into an overwrought series snide remarks and nastiness --- none of which contributes to the Dharma. Remarks posted embedded with such themes require a lot of rebuttle and correction of facts taking more time than I am willing to invest. A person believes what they believe. Far be it for my meager Zen droppings to dam up, interfere, block or divert the downstream flow of the flotsam and jetsam. Some makes it to the open sea, some doesn't.
W
AWAKENING 101
Saturday, March 26, 2011 9:38 AM
From: Scott
Hello wanderling,
I find myself glued to your dispersed pages on the internet. I had briefly glanced at your sites in the past, but now for some reason they have taken a whole new significance to me along my spiritual journey. Even funnier to me is the fact that I have recently moved to SOCal from Boston and was living in Hermosa Beach where alot of your story takes place. I am glad to see that now that I have re-found your websites, it says on your blog that you have returned from a hiatus. How this all plays out I do not know, but I feel a strong pull towards your work and your path towards enlightenment. I look forward to any updates in the future and will be reading the Razor's Edge shortly.
With Warmth
Scott
p.s. is Awakening 101 coming back?
W RESPONDS: Nearly all the pages used in AWAKENING 101 have been edited, rewritten, or updated along with almost all of the links. The links giving trouble are mostly third party links usually related in some fashion to confirmations of my sources. Pages just disappear, change URLs, and some authors, tired of being bothered by people contacting them after running into their pages linked on AWAKENING 101 ask me to stop linking --- inturn requiring me to find alternative sources --- sometimes difficult if a specific quote or a specific author's idea is used in my pages to back-up some thesis or the other I am presenting.
However, so said, my intention is to have AWAKENING 101 finished by the end of summer and up and running by the start of the Fall Semester 2011.
OOPS! Didn't make it. Sorry folks. Will try to get it up and running soon.
01/28/2011 4:12 AM
As found on Sustained Reaction> Castaneda's Legacy> The Wanderling:
Can we please talk about the Wanderling? Does anyone have any information about this mysterious Angelfire guru and his marvelous tales? The only person to claim to see Castaneda at the Nogales bus station and at the same time say his uncle was the man who taught Castaneda about datura. Somebody must have some insight!
I LOVE the Wanderling!
The next day Talking Brujo Dog responded with:
01/29/2011 9:06 AM
To me, there's little one can say about 'the Wanderling', except that this person offered up a lot of opinions that can't be corroborated.
W RESPONDS: The people listed at the end of this paragraph are all known major movers in the life of Carlos Castaneda, and at one time or the other I met and talked with them all, which is more than most people who write about Castaneda has ever done. And I only did so on and off over time primarily to clarify questions about Castaneda that I had read that just did not make sense. Most people who question what I have presented about Castaneda simply gather their information from the standard already in existence party line. Some of the people I've talked to in reference to Castaneda who, following some rather extended discussions, clarified a lot for me --- after Castaneda himself of course, others are people like C. Scott Littleton, Alex Apostolides, Barbara G. Myerhoff, Edward H. Spicer, Clement Meighan, who Castaneda dedicated his first book to, and Castaneda's ex-wife Margaret Runyan, and of whom, Margaret Runyan, that is, I personally interviewed.
Suggest to those who may be so interested to refer to Castaneda's 1960s Paper on Datura and accompanying footnotes.
As for "there's little one can say about 'the Wanderling'" of some interest may be what Sarlo of Sarlo's Guru Rating Service has to say along with the comments found at Windswept, Zen-swept, Mind Dunes and the December 12, 2009 comments by Arjuna Ranatunga found by scrolling down this page. If you want to express your own two-cents email me.
Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2010 2:50 pm
Post subject: the Wanderling
Ableton Forum
Anybody ever heard of this? http://the-wanderling.com
There is something a bit Forrest Gump about the whole thing, the guy seems to have done everything, while meeting everyone, and ended up Enlightened to boot. Yet his website has taken up about 6 hours of my evening.
The Carlos Castaneda stuff is gold
http://wanderling.tripod.com/bus_station.html
Because it continued to grow bigger and bigger, ALL of the information that appeared in this page previously regarding Alex Apostolides, plus much more and updated, has been moved to it's own stand-alone page. Please see:
A reader of my works, using the feature that allows you to post anonymously on my Blog wrote:
"Pretty clever using those Mayan glyphs all over the top of your page on Alex Apostolides. Took me awhile to figure out it wasn't some gimmick, but that they actully 'said' something."
August 20, 2010
Toward the end of Windswept, Zen-swept, Mind Dunes the anonymous author, making reference to me, writes:
W RESPONDS: For the most part, on the surface, I can understand where Anonymous might extrapolate such a view. At onetime all of my pages, if they did not belong to it specifically, they fed into or were peripheral to, in some manner or fashion, my onetime online free self-paced college level Dharma course, AWAKENING 101. The course opened with a few introductory pages followed then by ten folders in numerical order --- the contents of which were put into place to focus and expand one's thoughts on nothing but the Dharma in an effort to ensure one's "mind was ripe," thus then increasing the potential possibility of a "breakthrough." Although AWAKENING 101 has set idle for months and months --- possibly even years --- and a good number of the links are no longer valid or updated, I still have most of it stored away. In the opening paragraphs of Folder One, is the following, and of which approaches the concerns of Anonymous. From the mind, writing, and thoughts of Dogen Zenji:
The above quote is the lead in paragraph as found in The "I" In Thus I Have Heard from Nagarjuna's Exegesis on The Great Perfection of Wisdom.
02/15/2010
Althought not an email or letter in the classical sense, following this brief introduction are two paragraphs from a link to a webpage sent to me the other day via email by a reader of my works. How anything ever shows up in search engines related to me or anything else so someone can find it --- and then actually read it to such a point that they act on it --- is a mystery to me. To wit:
For years my page on the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi used to show up in the top five of a Google search. When I discovered the page went down awhile back and switched the page to a new server and URL, even though it was still the EXACT same page --- it has never moved higher up in a Google search than some three pages back.(see) People who previously copied my Sri Ramana page verbatum and then put it on the net, which, continue to contain outdated links to this day, gleen higher up in search than my original. A Ramana related blog that has not been active since March of 2006 even shows up ahead of my Ramana site.
One of the most important Ramana pages on the net, SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI: The Last American Darshan, documents down to the final nth the last American alive that actually had darshan under the Maharshi --- and attained Awakening at that --- and that page doesn't even show up in a search for Ramana no matter how many pages deep you search unless you specifically type in the title or the word "darshan" or "Wanderling" or both along with Sri Ramana. No casual search for Ramana will call it up.
In any case, "the reader of my works" sent me the following two paragraphs that show up on WIKISOCION The Free Encyclopedia of Socionics which offers of sorts, an interesting if not fairly accurate comparison between myself and Ramana adherent Ed Muzika:
USER: Thehotelambush/Religion
TOPIC: Some religious teachers
The Wanderling teaches the Dharma indirectly, presenting his varied personal
experiences, and tends to avoid talking about the inner psychological aspects of practice; for example the description of his actual Enlightenment-event is brief and undetailed, whereas e.g. Muzika describes his realizations in detail, in the order they occurred. The Wanderling's style of teaching is to expose the seeker to a wide variety of texts and views, leaving one to interpret them and glean the aspects that one finds most pertinent. He also includes comments on the various texts, but does not pass judgement on their accuracy at any length if at all. The Wanderling, on his online course in the Dharma, Awakening 101: This course starts from a very simple double-premise, and that is that the phenomenon known as Enlightenment in the Zen tradition IS, and in so being...can be realized outside the doctrine, that is, beyond the scriptures and any ritualized formulas or patterns layed down therein.
Muzika's former website Freedom started right off with a list of truths about reality, numbered Wittgenstein-style. Similar as Christopher Langan, Muzika gives it to the reader as straight as possible. He sometimes offers harsh criticism of others' methods and calls people out on their delusive ideas or incorrect practices. Although he acknowledges the inherently paradoxical nature of the stuff, he expounds fairly strong views about what constitutes correct or incorrect practice (or exposition). A funny contrast between the Wanderling and Muzika occurs: Muzika explicitly says to avoid comparing teachings by different people - "It will only make you nuts." On the other hand, the Wanderling's site is full of articles by various different authors, and his course Awakening 101 is just a long sequence of such articles, which continue until the reader has been so thoroughly bombarded with words that he realizes their ultimate futility. Both methods are acceptable in my opinion.
December 12, 2009
The following question was asked on YAHOO: Answers:
Are there any online Buddhist teachers?
Not long after the question was posted on the Yahoo site, one Arjuna Ranatunga replied. Arjuna, who goes by the screen name Goodfella, and who holds an earned Master's Degree in Buddhist Studies with Merit from the University of Sunderland, North-east England (2011) as well as a YAHOO: Answers respondent for over 15 years offered the following:
The most famous site with perhaps the most integrity is "Awakening 101", authored by "the Wanderling". I met an Enlightened person who'd used it in His approach / initial studies / on His journey.
It has facilities to ask questions of the Wanderling, too.
Best Wishes in your Quest, Friend,
Please note the second of the two links above has been sub-planted from the original post with two additional albeit equivalent links. The site initially W RESPONDS: See also A CHILD OF THE CYBER-SANGHA: Enlightenment From the Internet?
In the realm of things, Arjuna Ranatunga is no small-potatoes guy. Click the above link with his name and see what comes up.
10/20/2009
Hi Wanderling,
I have been a seeker since 1966. (I) have always enjoyed reading your sites and wanted to study the Awakening 101 course you had on the web. Now I see that it has been removed. Why was it removed? Is there anything I can do to receive the information contained in the Awakening 101 course for a price. I have learned a lot from you and appreciate everything you have done for everyone. I know you are very busy but I joined myspace just to contact you. I would appreciate it very much if you would reply. If you request a financial donation, I will be glad to donate to you, your organization, or your favorite charity as long as the amount is reasonable.
Peace and Love, W RESPONDS: The above email was received, as the date will attest, in October. It is now into December and during that time I have received countless numbers of emails expressing similar or like concerns. At first I was just going to let it go, Awakening 101, that is. Little did I fully realize that any of it meant anything to anybody.
For those who don't know, AWAKENING 101 is/was a FREE, self-paced online Dharma course arranged in such a way as to assist in easing the Dharma Gate for spiritual explorers, seekers along the path, wanderlings, the simply curious, and others who may be so interested.
AWAKENING 101 was orginally thought up, assembled, put together, invented and maintained on a variety of websites by me, the Wanderling. Because of a number of mitigating circumstances I made it no longer available. HOWEVER, because of similar and like concerns as the above and similar emails, the the main aspects of the course are currently being revamped and updated with new pages being composed, links being reconnected, and lost pages being restored. It will just take awhile as there are hundreds of links and pages to sort through.
For those who may be interested in continuing along the path with assist from Awakening 101, and how Enlightenment may or may not come about, it is suggested you go to Google and type in any Buddhist name, word or term or Zen name, word, or term you can think of in any area of concern and type it in along with the word 'wanderling.' By doing so, as the new pages by me related to Awakening 101 are revamped, put under new URLs, or recaptured, you should be able to get the most recent or lost pages. You can also reach some of the new pages, and via them, reach additional new pages and links by going to:
As to the subject of donations, for those of you who may be interested in doing so as it applies to the greatfulness of my works, I invariably suggest any funds be directed toward THE WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT and/or THE AMERICAN RED CROSS.
Bowing in deference, the Wanderling.
AWAKENING 101 To: the Wanderling
What has become of the master-work of yours, Awakening 101?
All I seem to find are pages now stating, "AWAKENING 101 IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE".
Do you need assistance in maintaining, hosting the web presence?
Is there anything that could help restore this to the World?
As found on IndiaDevine.org
06-21-2009, 01:50 PM Sent by Barry
Alan, Here is another weird and wonderful, albeit rambling account of a child who met Ramana, (near to the time Robert Adams was there). See the link below.
Barry
http://the-wanderling.com/darshan.html This from Joseph Marcello, Seeker and Practioner:
Jun 8, 2009 3:24 PM
It would do you - even as advanced as you may privately deem yourself to be - and your readers much mercy if you would run all of your writings through a Clarifier, then a Truth-Teller, and finally a Simplifier so that, at the end of the their convoluted journey, they achieve that divinely rare fruit: Awakening.
Otherwise, those who have truly done their homework and pierced the tissue of their inherited and fabricated illusions, and seen the overwhelming simple truth that they've spent their lives avoiding -- will be tempted to consider the sometimes lofty, but too often self-fouled, writings of "the Wanderling" as the mere ravings of a spiritually hooked eccentric with too much learning under his septagenarian belt.
W RESPONDS: -- For those who may be so interested, although not the end all to end all, there is a Clarifier and Simplifier of sorts on the net that can be found half-way down a page called THE WANDERLING AND WIKIPEDIA. The content of that page addresses some of the issues and other issues so mentioned in the above email. On that page, again about half-way down, is a quasi cut-to-the-quick breakdown, of which is included the SIX MAIN PAGES everything points to one way or the other.
As to the comment by Marcello: "even as advanced as you may privately deem yourself to be," never mind, I suppose Inka Shomei, the Seal of Approval, at the Fourth Level, or ken-chu-shi as they may or may not apply to the Wanderling as deemed by others.
Sri Ramana Maharshi's opinion on the matter may count for something as found in The Last American Darshan as well as:
May 31, 2009 5:26 PM
It has taken me at least a month to get through to folder three: I would love to know your real name, but that's not so important except that you set up the "my mentor" and "yourself" as a sort of treasure hunt --- like a carrot dangling, implicating that at the end of the story all will be revealed --- which I don't think it will, yet it still catches one's interest like a hook. Thankfully I have moved on from being interested in your life, though I guess you must have used opium and or heroin for more than a couple of days to get a physical habit.[1] So, from Doing Hard Time In A Zen Monastery to writing with all the spider web links, it in itself reminds me how our mind works --- and at the end you have the Koan of the monk chopping off his arm and asking Bodhidharma to pacify his mind: the exact same Koan I am presently on: so maybe master I beg you to pacify my mind. Thanks for your endeavours and the space to write. Gassho Tetto,
Karen
[1] W RESPONDS: It is not known the actual length of time that transpired between the time initially being abducted by the warlord's men and finding myself coming out of a near Nirodha state sitting in front of the monastery. It could have been merely days to being weeks or possibly months. It is my guesstimate any major use or subjectation under the auspices of the warlord's men was frontloaded toward the beginning, perhaps at the most the first half or so of any elasped time, eventually fading to zero (forever) somewhere past, near, or before the mid-point.
THROUGH TWITTER Geocities shutting down. What will happen to the most brilliant web project ever? Awakening 101 http://bit.ly/1w9wxi
AWAKENING 101 To: the Wanderling
I have been reading through your course, Awakening 101, for the past few weeks and, having some pleasing results, thought I should drop you a line to say thanks.
A bit about me, I have been a spiritual seeker for about 17 years, begining meditation within Zen about a year into that, and having my first Kensho three or so months into that practice.
I then became interested in Western Ceremonial magic and came to adopt that as my primary path, but I continued my interest in the mystical side of the coin too.
About three years after my Kensho, I performed a daily invocation of a god over about 6 weeks (Pan), the culmination of which was the basic dualities of the universe resolving themselves in me, then perceiving the fundamental emtpiness of everything, and then this sense of dissolution, dissolved itself. So there was notning, no me, no universe to work in and no path. The equivilant state as Satori.
I continued with my magical practice and a few years later I returned again to mediation, as part of that, mediating everyday for about a year within the Yoga tradition, until reaching Atmadarshana, and then Shivadarshana. My state of being improved greatly, after the basic duality state that follows Satori (between the emptiness you and everything is, and 'conditioned existance), but I knew this was not the ultimate state. These states are divorced from the normal flow of thought. I wanted to experience my awakening in every moment.
After 15 years of work I completed my magical path recently, as represented by the Qabalistic Tree of Life, but still felt a last piece missing.
I started to feel drawn towards Zen again, as at the begining of my path, and soon found your web-site. I began to meditate using Zazen, while reading your site, pursuing the ultimate state of Nirvikalpa Samadhi.
Well about 10 or so days ago I entered this state and it has been settling in me ever since. It is a joy to at last have that ultimate state of spirituality I have been working for for so long where everything is perfect and just works all by itself. The Nothing and the All are the same thing at last. (Interestingly, on reading the Susan Segal page, I worked out how long it had been since my Satori and it was 12 years and five months!, so the twleve year rule was the case with me also.)
So once again thanks for your site. It really cut to the core of the issue and I will tell anyone I meet in the future who is genuinely intersted in Awakening to check out your site.
Yours in thanks,
Andrew
the Wanderling Subject: I want to thank you.
Over the last 4 years I have been directed and visited your page over and over again. It guided me on my journey of awakening since the first satori experience I had in the summer of 2004.
It helped deepened my understanding of Buddhism and particularly Zen Buddhism, even though I come from Vietnam and was aquainted with Mahayana Buddhism at an early age.
I visit your site now and then, and everytime I visit your site, I learn something new and gain a deeper understanding. Thank you!
Namaste
During the time period she is talking about being in the Peace Corps in Jamaica, age-wise, she was somewhere in her mid to late twenties. The answer to her question, "When were you there?," i.e., the time period I was in Jamaica, can be found by going to page three of ZEN ENLIGHTENMENT: The Path Unfolds.
REGARDING BAMBOO LODGE: Further down the page from the answer I write about drinking a warm tea-like broth offered me by the Jamaican man of spells called an Obeah and in the process mention Bamboo Lodge that Rozga refers to:
As I remember it, the back-and-forth between the Obeah and myself during the immediate moments just prior to the flight unfolded something like:
"(T)he Obeah squated down without changing eye contact, peering at me with an astounding set of eyes that seemed to shine deeply from within with a mysterious, intense light of their own, and said, in his heavy Jamaican patois, "You have felt the breath of the Dark One." "Yes, once," I said, "many years ago," refering to an incident in the military when I literally felt the Shadow of Death brush across my soul. "Why didn't he take you with him," the Obeah asked? "I don't know," I responded, shrugging my shoulders."
The Obeahman then took a vessel of water and tossed it onto the flames. A huge cloud of steam burst forth followed by a thick cloud of smoke. I jumped back and turned away, stumbling to the ground while covering my face and eyes. Then it got cold, very cold. The breeze began to blow harder and I could no longer feel the ground underneath me. It felt as though I was moving very fast, yet as far as I knew I was still on the ground by the fire. I moved my arm away from my face just barely squinting my eyes open. For an instant I was still in the billowing white smoke, then suddenly I broke through to clean, fresh air. The smoke was no longer smoke, but clouds high in the night sky. I wasn't on the ground, but hundreds of feet in the air, soaring through the night, arms along my side, wind in my face, stars over my head.
The above pagagraph appears pretty much verbatim on page three of ZEN ENLIGHTENMENT: The Path Unfolds. What I didn't get into is what happened after the flight and why and how Bamboo Lodge is mentioned so prominently in what I have written. Rozga and others have construed from my mentioning of Bamboo Lodge that it was possibly my place of residence, when actually, the real importance of Bamboo Lodge in what I write circulates around the existence of the large and at the time empty and long unused swimming pool on the Bamboo Lodge property --- a big light-blue nearly white identifying marker that was easily seen on my low pass over the trees and rooftops, even in the dark of night.
The reason I remember the conversation with the Obeah so well is because before I left for Jamaica people concerned with my overall well being insisted on a few precautions. Having spent time living and traveling in the tropics and knowing how paper doesn't have a very long survival life under tropical conditions they, knowing my propensity of often getting into situations that are not always easy to get out of, wanted me to carry my metal military dog tags with me --- just in case of some unforeseen happenstance. I had my dog tags with me the night of the event with the Obeah. When I told him of the incident in the military I took off my dog tags to show him and I still had them in my hands when he threw the water on the fire. When I swooped over Bamboo Lodge I purposely dropped the dog tags into the empty pool, so at least if I never showed up again, my dog tags would AND could easily be found someday by someone. A couple of days later I went back and retrieved them out of the few inches of water sitting in the bottom of the pool myself, if nothing else proving the flight itself did occur in reality.(see)
Bamboo Lodge must be like Grand Central Station. Back in the days I lived in Jamaica I always thought of it as a sort of a remote and secluded spot high up in the Blue Mountains, but instead all kinds of people are coming out of the woodwork right and left as having been in the Peace Corps and stayed there. Who knew? The latest is the unnamed person in the photo below that someone says they knew as a PCV who stayed there:
BELOW IS A COPY OF AN EMAIL WRITTEN BY A CONCERNED ADEPT THAT WAS SENT TO AN ASSOCIATE OF MINE WHO THEN FORWARDED IT TO ME. IN THE EMAIL, THE ADEPT VOICES CONCERN THAT SOMEWHERE IN MY WRITINGS I "TRASHED" ENLIGHTENMENT INTENSIVES, A METHOD TOWARD THE AWAKENING EXPERIENCE HE FINDS FAVOR WITH:
I found this site and your's was the ony name associated with an email
address. Perhaps you can put me in touch with the fellow that
pontificates and hides behind cutsey nature pictures. Old metaphors. You can do
better. If I'm wrong, perhaps you can rectify that.
You trash Enlightenment Intensives with absolutely no discussion,
clarification, explanation, nothing. Just a blot. Do you even know what
you're slandering? I don't think so.
Alan Watts knew about them. He called it A True Western Zen when I
discussed it with him personally, on his houseboat in Sausalito, a few
decades ago. Afterward we went to the Trident and ate boullibaise and
drank white wine.(see)
It's clear to me you've never taken an intensive or talked to anyone
who runs them, or even a participant.
Sure, they charge a few bucks and oversell their product - so what?
These are everyday folks working straight jobs and renting a venue that
can handle 20 to 50 people. They take time off from work, buy groceries,
recruit a staff, pay their transportation, marketing and so forth and
so on. There is no guru, no organization, no doctrine, no cult, nobody
boffing the devotees. There's no glory, (Well, maybe a little adoration
of the master at the end of an intensive - people are pretty
emotional). Nothing, except the uncountable rewards of helping people find their
true nature. It's just far too much heartfelt, spill-your-guts, let it
all hang out work, solid work. And nobody leaves the same as when they
came in.
And its been going on for nearly 40 years, and people keep coming. What
fools!
Certainly, nobody walks out of there as Ramana Maharshi. Are you?(see) Are
you that enlightened?(see) Or are you a little attached to an ego(see) that says
if somebody pays for their food and lodging and a few bucks to the
staff that works their butts off, it can't possibly be true. If you don't
sweat your cojones off in sessin, it can't be so? Zen, and sessin are
developments in technology, the technology of getting people more
consciousness. Why can't there be a further development in technology.
What if you had a sessin but instead of holding silence and only rarely
speaking to the master, you worked with a partner who stood in proxy of
the master and heard what happened whenever you held your question?
What if it turned out that the silence in the sessin was a mistake? What
if the practise of communicating with a peer, a democratization of the
imperial model of development, worked?
I only know two people who studied under Joshu Sasaki Roshi at the Mt. Baldy
Zen center. They attained Kensho. They say the experiences they have on
intensives are wider, deeper, more profound and a lot faster.
Maybe you ought to find out what the truth is before you set yourself
up to trash a useful practise.
I think you have done harm to the effort to get people more conscious,
and thus your karma. You've maligned an honest effort, an effective
practise. Get your karma clean.
If you can tell me something substantive, something real as to why this
is not a beneficial practise, do so. If not, change your tune, clean up
your act, and get off your ego.
Ken
I am not sure what specific reference to Enlightenment Intensives the above writer is refering to. In that many of my pages have come and gone over the years it may or may not still be available somewhere on the net and I may or may not written whatever his concerns are. However, I do recall that on one of the pages of AWAKENING 101, my onetime free online Dharma course that had been on the net for eight or ten years and is currently unavailable, there was a reference to Enlighten Intensives on a page within the course titled "Enlightenment Knows No Master." On that page the following, written by me, was found:
For the author of the above email to take it personally is to miss the crux of my meager Zen droppings. It is not Enlightenment Intensives per se' but all forms of formalized endeavors: rituals, satsang, study-practice, meditation, that the end expectation is supposed to be Enlightenment. Except for one's "mind being ripe" none of it is really necessary.
"The Buddha said that neither the repetition of holy scriptures, nor self-torture, nor sleeping on the ground, nor the repetition of prayers, penances, hymns, charms, mantras, incantations and invocations can bring us the real happiness of Nirvana. Instead the Buddha emphasized the importance of making individual effort in order to achieve our spiritual goals. He likened it to a man wanting to cross a river; sitting down and praying will not suffice, but he must make the effort to build a raft or a bridge." As John Wren-Lewis, an Enlightened person in his own right following a Near Death Experience, says pretty much same in relation to the above:
"Against this background, the main positive advice I would give to spiritual seekers is to experiment with any practice or idea that seems interesting - which is what the Buddha urged a long time ago, though not too many of his followers have ever taken that part of his teaching seriously. Ancient traditions and modern movements alike may be very valuable as databases for new adventures, but to treat them as authorities to be obeyed is not only 'unscientific' - it seems to go against the grain of the divine lila itself, since novelty is apparently the name of the time game."
Following up on the same theme, Wren-Lewis is quoted in LOTUS-FEET OF CLAY: A Reluctant Mystic Looks At Spiritual Movements and of which, because of my own experience, I am in agreement with and most likely would not be able to improve on in my own words:
"Indeed, as my research progressed I became irritated and concerned by the way most systems protect themselves in advance against any expectation of a substantial success-rate by representing Enlightenment as a very high, difficult achievement requiring years or perhaps lifetimes of intense effort; the most articulate modern cartographer of the spiritual life, Ken Wilber, actually makes the comparison with becoming a master musician, scientist or athlete. Such a model is totally at odds with the key feature of God-consciousness as I know it in my own firsthand experience, namely its quintessential ordinariness and obviousness --- a feature actually emphasized by many mystics from whom Wilber himself quotes. While I wouldn't go as far as Krishnamurti by totally denying that mediation and other disciplines could ever help towards realizing God as "just the way things are," I know absolutely from my own case that such intensive training isn't necessary, and I see no evidence either from history or from modern movements that it's any kind of sure road to awakening."
Refering to Karma and cleaning up one's act, in Enlightenment and Karma the following is presented: Cause and effect, just like birth and death, lose their significance at the Enlightened level because at the level of basic nature there is no one to receive the effect of Karma, whether it is good or bad. Therefore, at the extreme, when one is Enlightened, the law of Karma is not applicable. All that the Enlightened one does, says, or thinks is through free will, a manifestation of basic nature, and not the effect of past Karma. Also found in The Truth of Karma, the Buddha taught the following principles:
It should be brought to the attention of the readers that the editor of Self & Other, linked below with an article by the same Ken that sent the above email, says within the contents of his publication, that Ken, at a Mount Baldy intensive, attained a state of immortality.
The definition for Kensho or Satori should, within the perimeter of their definitions, if not encompass totally, should most certainly do so peripherally, the meaning behind, as used in context, the above quote: "attained a state of immortality." However, one's personal being, encompassing either state (Kensho, Satori), does not say anything at all about the ability of
the experiencer to teach others or in any way be of assistance to the
spiritual needs of others. Which brings us to those who provide instruction to participants seeking Awakening in intensives or similar or like enterprises. A clear distinction must be made
between a person who has an Enlightenment-experience and an Enlightened
Person. The latter category should be confined to those individuals who
have the wisdom and moral character to rightfully influence others plus
the charismatic abilities to do so in an entirely non-exploitive manner.
This would define an Enlightened Sage or holy person. Such a person may
have had a Enlightenment-experience, sudden or gradual, OR may have a
natural spiritual maturity which excludes the need for a Satoric-experience; although if we depend on historical records, a natural sage without an Awakening experience operating at or near the level of an Enlightened Sage is
far, far rarer than one having a similar or like natural spiritual maturity AND Enlightenment experience. (source)
Many have Awakened to the Absolute out of nowhere with little or no formal religious background, and definitely without a personal guru or extensive or expensive intensives --- so, as stated previously, in the end none of it may really be necessary. Two high profile examples being the venerated Indian holy man the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, mentioned in the email above, and the Sixth Patriarch of Zen, Hui Neng. A much lower example of such an Awakening basically out of nowhere --- with no more that just an HOUR within sitting range of Ramana's presence AND with none other than possibly the clean spiritual plate of a young innocent and the mind being ripe --- and for sure with NO previous religious training, meditation, or studies or knowledge of the scriptures, can be found in the following:
CRITICAL CONCERNS WITH AWAKENING 101 ZEN ENLIGHTENMENT IN A NUTSHELL HOW TO RECOGNIZE ENLIGHTENMENT
THE BIG FAKE OUT DEATH HAD A FACE It is often said that when you truly need a teacher, one will appear. This may due to some inexplicable serendipity. It may be due to the fact that the seeker has searched deeply within himself or herself and determined what sort of instruction seems to be required. It could be swept over him or her like the First Death Experience of the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, or the Bhagavan's little known Second Death Experience, or a spiritual desperation on the part of the seeker, or maybe no more than a successful sales pitch by a teacher (sincere or not). It may be a combination of the previous factors, or some intuitive awareness beyond expression. For whatever the reason, the saying often applies and the coming together of the results of inner and outside forces, some within one's control, some without, can be found most eloquently as they all come together in the following:
It should be noted that Adam Osborne, who, as a young boy grew up at the Ramana ashram and the son of one of the foremost Ramana biographers Arthur Osborne, played a prominent role in the Last American Darshan as linked above.
Long before there was an internet there was a man of great spiritual Attainment by the name of Alfred Pulyan. In lieu of the internet Pulyan had in those days what would be called a mail order following. People that came to hear about him and his level of Attinment would write hoping for insight into what one could do to Awaken to the Absolute, and Pulyan would respond, asking for no more than a stamped self-addressed envelope. Pulyan presented through his teaching what he called Transmission, somewhat extrapolated from a working mixture of his own experience combined with it is thought, the weight behind the meaning of the four lines of the stanza attributed to the First Patriarch of C'han Buddhism, Bodhidharma that starts with A special transmission outside the scriptures. Pulyan claimed to have a 70% success rate, more than ten times higher than the ancient Zen masters.
It was largely because of the purported success rate of Pulyan's mail order efforts that in the age of computers that the idea of the free online Dharma course exploring the Enlightening experience, AWAKENING 101 came about.
As for the present day and internet numbers of attemptees, there are no doubt countless numbers and successful results are, I am sure, quite low. The one major example of claimed Attainment fully through such an approach is A Child of the Cyber-Sangha.
A second very strong example, albeit sort of hybrid in nature, which is typical because the individual started out initially using various aspects of Awakening 101, which inturn led him to going to and doing study practice in an established Zen center. The results of his endeavors ended wherein, I have been so told, he attained a state of immortality.(see) Over the years I have received numerous letters and emails from a variety of individuals telling me how much Awakening 101 contributed toward their Awakening, albeit, like the above, almost always hybrid in nature --- that is, most of them have been pursing Enlightenment in one fashion or the other most of their lives and in the process of that pursuit, after coming across Awakening 101, something just clicked.
By the way, don't let the above letters sway you --- not everybody considers AWAKENING 101 as a valid vehicle. I mean, you ought to see the scathing attack presented in IN THE WAY OF ENLIGHTENMENT: The Ten Fetters of Buddhism. You would think the Wanderling was one of the Fetters! So too with what is found in THE WANDERLING AND WIKIPEDIA. Oh well, what can I say, in the end it's your call. Fundamentally, our experience as experienced is not different from the Zen master's. Where The author of the email writes:
"Alan Watts knew about them. He called it A True Western Zen when I discussed it with him personally, on his houseboat in Sausalito, a few decades ago. Afterward we went to the So who hasn't? Long before the email was sent to me, my page, ZEN ENLIGHTENMENT: The Path Unfolds, was made available, as mentioned in The Letter, on the net. Page two has a longtime appearing paragraph that, without mentioning Alan Watts DOES mention Sausalito and Emmanuel (Alfred) Sorensen, known as Shunyata, who, if one knows their history, was invited to stay on the Watts houseboat in Sausalito --- in the "marina," spoken of below, where I picked him up. The reason Watts wasn't mention regarding picking up Sorensen is because Watts had died the year before, in November 1973, but I had been to the houseboat --- actually a former 1870s stern-wheel ferryboat named SS Vallejo once moored in the mudflats off gate 5 road --- several times previously over the years with my mentor, just not in connection with Shunyata:
"In 1974 another of the few occurrences where the man next door mentioned someone specific transpired, only this time, unlike above, how I downplay the extent of my meeting with "The old friend turned out to be Emmanuel (Alfred) Sorensen, known as Shunyata, a man of great spiritual renown, although much to my chagrin, that I was not totally familiar with at the time. He was European, at the very least in his eighties, spoke with an accent, dressed somewhat like an east Indian, and, as it turned out, truly one of the most remarkable individuals I have ever met. Sorensen, it has been said, was BORN Awake. My Mentor and Sorensen had known each other from the early years when both inadvertently met while travelling in India and had, unlike It should be noted the visit by Sorensen in 1974 was his first or initial visit. In 1978, at age 88 he moved to California on a permanent basis, under the auspices of the Watts' leftovers. In July, 1984 he moved into a house in Fairfax several miles north of Sausalito. After living almost his whole life in India and with only a few short years in California, in 1984, at age 93, he was hit by a car while crossing the street in Fairfax and died in hospital soon afterwards. In 1978, when Sorensen moved to California to stay, I was living in Jamaica. During that period my mentor died. When I returned to the states I wasn't even aware Sorensen had moved to California until sometime later when the circumstances surrounding his death filtered down to me.
It was during that same trip north to take my mentor to meet Shunyata that, while visiting a friend in San Jose' that I met a young Steve Jobs, the eventual founder of Apple Computer, who was at the time contemplating a trip to India. Within weeks, or maybe even days, of our meeting Jobs made his decision and left for India. See:
To my knowledge Sri Lakshmana Swamy is the last known non-western direct lineage face-to-face disciple of Ramana still alive. Born December 25, 1925, he is easily approaching his 90s. On October 1, 1949, at the age of 24, less than a year before Ramana's death Laskshmana fully realized the Self in the presence of Sri Ramana Maharshi, one of the last persons known to have done so.
Although he lives within shouting distance of the Ramana Ashram he seldom takes visitors and, except on his birthday once a year, does he do darshan --- and even that is sporadic lately. He will not even entertain seeing anyone who already has a guru or is an itinerant guru hopper, so forget it.
His adopted daughter, Mathru Sri Sarada, a woman of now age 50 or so, lives at the same compound near the Ramana ashram. She realized the Self permanently under the grace and light of Laskshmana on December 18, 1978. She pretty much abides by the same rules as Laskshmana as to the coming and going of visitors, etc.
The source and origin for the quote this footnote is cited to can be found by clicking HERE. However, it should be noted not all religions, cultures and spiritual beliefs buy into, back, or practice such a concept as found in the quote, in whole or in part --- not even some that fall within the boundries of Buddhism itself. Although the start or end point along the edges of mainstream Buddhism may not be clearly delineated like an escarpment rising up out of a sea of non-believers, adherents that fall under the established spectrum of Buddhism run the gamut from the Parivrajaka to the fully entrenched ritual and robe laden, with monasteries, hierarchy, and little hats. To wit:
"One of the problems faced by organized religions, or cultures that hold deep traditional beliefs that fall into the realm of things spiritual, is that they have to give the people something. People raised in that something or new people transitioning into that something, expect from that something some sort of positive spiritual results. Usually those spiritual results are motivated by some sort of trappings. If they do get positive results, at least as perceived in the mind of the devotee, parishioner, or follower, then, for them it's working. If it doesn't work then the devotee is pointed to others that it did work for. If that doesn't solve the dilemma they are encouraged to work harder."
The above quote from:
THE BEST OF THE MAUGHAM BIOGRAPHIES:
SPIRITUAL GUIDES, GURUS, AND TEACHERS INFLUENTIAL IN THE RAZOR'S EDGE: In Doing Hard Time In A Zen Monastery I write about how I was brought before the presence of a very old and ancient man of Zen who had come down out of the even more rarified atmosphere of the high Himalaya mountains and asked to see the monk who was said to be under the protection of the Lord Buddha.
Because of respect paid him by all, plus the serenity he seemed to abide in, it was clear the old man was Enlightened. After meeting him, there was something about him that would just not let go and it continued to gnaw at me for the longest time. Months went by. Finally, when the weather turned such that I could, I sought out the old man, visiting him at what was not much more than a stone-pile hut along the edge of a stream.
In Zen Monastery, other than saying that I went to see the old man I do not elaborate on any travails I may have encountered getting to his hut or on my return. In Hope Savage I relate to the readers basically the same story except that I interject more ordeal-like aspects encountered during my journey. To wit:
"Going to and from his abode was a very arduous several day trek, much of it through rugged and steep very high altitude territory. A good portion of the trail followed along side a series of streams that may or may not have been the same one, that was sometimes rushing and other times placid depending on the steepness or flatness of the terrain."
Even though the Zen-man and I were not able to communicate verbally in the standard way because neither of us had command of each other's languages, he as a man of Zen as were my leanings, for all practical purposes the two of us were quite comfortable in how we had established a working relationship of understanding between us. However, not operating at his level, for me there remained many more unanswered questions than answered ones.
In the mountains generally it was out-and-out cold, but in the rarefied higher elevation where we were it was even more so. Even so, considering the usual outside nighttime temperature drop, with the tiny almost candle-like fire in his stone hut, it was typically bearable.
The day before I was to leave we spent a good part of the daylight hours scrounging around for burnable material. To me the amount we gathered seemed much more than would otherwise be necessary, but what I found even more odd was that we left nearly half or more of what we collected neatly stacked at the long abandoned stone hut he had shown me a few days before.
After returning to his hut and leaving the rest of the material we gathered, we put a little food, a few utensils and tea in a shoulder bag then went back to the abandoned hut before sundown for reasons to me unclear. After arrival we ate, then in the declining if not all but gone sunlight he searched around and found what at one time appeared to have been a fire pit. Following his lead the two of us put together a fairly good sized, considering what his fires were usually like, almost pyre-like pile of combustibles. With the sunlight gone and total darkness having fully encroached on us by the time we finished the Zen-man lit the fire.
We sat in meditation facing each other across the fire on an east-west axis with me facing east toward what would eventually be the location of the rising sun. At some point into our meditation, and non-Siddhi related, there was somehow a coalescing of our mind processes forming a single mental entity where we both able to understand each other's thoughts. In the thoughts he was willing to share he revealed he had spent many, many years as a young man on the other side of time in Gyanganj, but one day he passed through the monastery portals to the outside world and when he did, he became an old man.
For the record, in an other example of a similar or like-type thought exchange, Ram Dass, in an article in Yoga Journal, November 1976 (pp 6-11), related that once he found himself in a very close similar situation between himself and his spiritual mentor, the venerated Indian holy man Neem Karoli Baba:
"He laughed and spoke to me. It's interesting --- he had always spoke to me in Hindi, and my Hindi was very bad. In India there was always somebody translating. But on these other levels the transmission is in thought form, and then it comes out in whatever language you think in"
Before the full abilities of the thought exchange phenomenon faded into oblivion I brought up, considering his age, about the arduous trip back and forth through the mountains to and from the monastery for example, and how, even for me in my somewhat comparable youth and the physical condition that accompanies it, how difficult it was. What I garnered as a response was that I travel my way and he travels his way.
The next morning the Zen-man was gone. So too, neither was he to be found when I returned to his hut, although I did find a rolled up piece of cloth tied to the strap of my shoulder bag. Marked on the cloth, most likely done so from the burnt end of a wooden stick, were four Chinese cuneiform characters, one in each corner and, filling most of the center, the outline of some sort of a shape I didn't recognize.
The first part was answered right after leaving the airport to the train station. Almost immediately I saw a giant map of Jamaica and instantly I recognized the shape of the island as being the exact same shape the Zen-man drew on the cloth some 15 years before, an island or place he probably never saw or heard of in his life. Secondly, on my train ride through the cities and hinterland I saw all over, again and again the dominant colors of red, yellow, green and black in the graffiti adopted from the country of Africa and used by the Rastafarians in the graffiti that was plastered all over on almost every available open space. Those two eye-openers along with my experience high in the mountains with a Jamaican man of spells called an Obeah led to the meaning behind how the Zen-man traveled those so many years earlier as found in the following:
AWAKENING 101 sites, when hit with huge costs to continue, were moved by me to free internet sites from their original Blackboard platform years ago to ensure the information would still be available to all along the path who may have been so interested. They have been impacted adversely recently a second time by a variety of new rules. Major search engines, where they never had before, are now somehow overlooking, blocking, ignoring to death, making unreachable, or just made plain invisible by being basically reduced to persona non grata status. Pages that used to get a high number of hits a day now receive only a few if lucky, some times even zero. To me that means a lot of people are missing out on all of the "Words of the Dharma" that were once available free and in one place on Awakening 101. If you don't know where to look you aren't going to find it, yet the links below and the links within their texts still call up if you click them. The freely accessible pages related to meditation, Enlightenment, and things Zen covered the meaning behind the words such as the three S's: As well as words and meanings behind such as: And a variety of "number" concepts such as
but the action in the past was explicitly caused by the action in the future."
ASTEROIDS, SHAMANS, AND THE HIDDEN MAGIC OF MAYA TEMPLES
PULYAN'S TEACHER
(please click image)
THE SPIRITUAL ELDER AND THE SANTA FE CHIEF
THE MOBIUS STRIP
THE ZEN MASTER MISSES HIS MARK
PRECESSION OF THE EQUINOX AND THE CODE-O-GRAPHS
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RESTITCHING THE HOLE IN THE FABRIC OF SPACE-TIME
FROM THE BIG BANG TO THE PHOTO-MATIC CODE-O-GRAPH
EDWARD MUZIKA
CORRESPONDENCE REGARDING THE 1953 KINGMAN UFO, JULY 2016
LOOKING NORTH FROM THE TOP OF SPIRIT MOUNTAIN TOWARD COLORADO RIVER AND LAKE MOHAVE
WHERE COTTONWOOD ISLAND IS SUBMERGED. KINGMAN, AZ, TO THE RIGHT, IS ABOUT 40 MILES EAST
(please click image)
FRANK SCULLY
KINGMAN UFO 1953
THE LOST KINGMAN UFO LETTERS
(please click)
U-196 EMAIL: ONE MAN'S OPINION OR CHRONIC GRUMBLING?
(please click image)
(please click)
THE MEETING: AN UNTOLD STORY OF SRI RAMANA
SHANGRI-LA, SHAMBHALA, GYANGANJ, BUDDHISM AND ZEN
"My uncle (i.e., the Wanderling's uncle in the original text) told me the first time he ever saw me I was basically not much more than a walk-around one or two year old toddler. According to how he remembered it he came by the house one day to see my mother and father while on a trip through Southern California. After that, nearly six years went by before we were to cross paths again."
"There was a curse on Venkataraman's family - in truth, it was a blessing - that one out of every generation should turn out to be a mendicant. This curse was administered by a wanderling, an ascetic who, it is said, begged alms at the house of one of Venkataraman's forbears, and was refused. A paternal uncle of Sundaram Aiyar's became a sannyasin; so did Sundaram Aiyar's elder brother. Now, it was the turn of Venkataraman, although no one could have foreseen that the curse would work out in this manner." (source)
THE WANDERLING
(please click)
TWO CONTRASTING LETTERS
I LOVE THIS STUFF!
SRI RAMANA'S WESTERN DISCIPLES
LARRY DARRELL:- HIS LIFE AFTER THE NOVEL
ADAM OSBORNE
THE WANDERLING
(please click)
THE JAPANESE SECRET WAR
THE BRITISH MOTOR MERCHANT TULAGI
WORLD WAR II COMES TO REDONDO
MY MERCHANT MARINE FRIEND
AN ODE TO BOB NICKEL
"All Bob Nickel Satsangs and Intensives were on a Donation basis. Bob always said, "If you wish to donate, please do. If you are in a pinch, please don't.
nor in any sort of material
benefits for their instructions. This is a universal
law among
Masters, and yet amazingly, it is a fact that
thousands of eager seekers in America and
elsewhere, go
on paying large amounts of money for "spiritual instruction." Masters are
always self-sustaining and are never supported by their students or by public charity."
"The Dharma should be taught with the thought, 'I will speak not for the purpose of material reward.'"
The Buddha said that neither the repetition of holy scriptures, nor self-torture, nor sleeping on the ground, nor the repetition of prayers, penances, hymns, charms, mantras, incantations and invocations can bring us the real happiness of Nirvana. Instead the Buddha emphasized the importance of making individual effort in order to achieve our spiritual goals. He likened it to a man wanting to cross a river; sitting down and praying will not suffice, but he must make the effort to build a raft or a bridge. (see)
THE STRANGE DEMISE OF ADVAITA
DREW HEMPEL AND THE WANDERLING
CRITICAL REVIEW OF MAUGHAM'S NOVEL
LARRY DARRELL:- HIS LIFE AFTER THE NOVEL
"It's organic and sprawling, but intricately interlinked, linking also to outside sites. One of the most fascinating aspects of this interconnectedness is that his collection is not very systematic in the usual sense. Forget site map, there is nothing for it when visiting but to wander from one page to another without much sense of where you're going, and usually without completing the page you're on, which you may return to only after a long garden path. In reading, you become a wanderer.
REGARDING ALEX APOSTOLIDES:
ALEX APOSTOLIDES
"I can say one thing about the Wanderling though: It seems to me that he writes quite a lot about himself and his own history and that seems to be at odds with the Truth as it is related in eastern religions."
"If the speaker brings no personal, egotistic delusions into this expression, the occasion speaks for itself, the total situation alone determines what is said or done. Thus, in the case of the Zen master, what-is-said is simply what-is. In the case of the deluded person, however, the "what-is" includes his excess conceptual baggage with its affective components, the deluded ideas about the nature of "self," "thing," "time," and so on that constitute the person's own particular distortion of what actually is."
so cited by Arjuna had not been kept current within it's own links.by the site originator, although a recent check has shown otherwise, hence it's return.
CRITICAL CONCERNS WITH AWAKENING 101
MORE CRITICAL CONCERNS WITH AWAKENING 101
Tom
ZEN BUDDHISM, ZEN ENLIGHTENMENT
Friday, October 9, 2009 1:12 PM
From: Richard B
THE LAST AMERICAN DARSHAN
(please click)
Thursday, April 23, 2009 12:33 AM
From: simontzu
Tuesday, July 8, 2008 7:37 AM
From: "Andrew B"
Aug 9, 2008 2:58 AM
From: One Nothingness
"With absolutely no effort I was able to swoop down the darkened mountain gullies and high into the air, eventually passing above Bamboo Lodge recognizable along the mountain road even in the dark because of a large empty swimming pool. Then, just barely above the treetops I picked up speed and headed toward the lighted streets and tall buildings of New Kingston. Soon I was even higher in the air over Port Royal, Lime Cay, and the Caribbean. Then somehow the exhilaration began to fade. I turned back toward the mountains as a creeping apprehension seeped into my thoughts. Then nothing."(see)
PREMONITION TO THE PEACE CORPS
PEACE CORPS ZEN
Jamaica
W's RESPONSE:
What I am getting at, in the end it doesn't matter: Enlightenment is Enlightenment is Enlightenment. If it comes from overhearing a stanza, hearing a pebble being swept striking bamboo, the offerings provided here, or someone offering something like The Sedona Method, CoreLight, or Enlightenment Intensives then so be it. For me, however, there is a bottom-line punchline that all the bells and whistles never quite reach. It is hoped what is offered here in AWAKENING 101 will carry for you the right escort in your endeavors, that the veil of Samsara dissipates, and that Sunyata be realized and remain your abode forever.
RECOUNTING A YOUNG BOY'S NEARLY INSTANT TRANSFORMATION INTO THE ABSOLUTE DURING HIS ONLY DARSHAN WITH THE MAHARSHI
PLEASE SEE:
As is easily seen from the above not everybody considers AWAKENING 101, my various presentations or pontifications as so aptly put in the above email by Ken, as a valid vehicle. Others, as in the Critical Concerns link, have expressed similar viewpoints. I mean, you ought to see the scathing attack presented in IN THE WAY OF ENLIGHTENMENT: THE TEN FETTERS OF BUDDHISM. You would think the Wanderling was one of the Fetters! Oh well, what can I say, in the end it's your call.
Both AWAKENING 101 and ZEN ENLIGHTENMENT IN A NUTSHELL are FREE. Both offerings, the same as with the ancient and classical masters, are instilled with opening the Dharama Gate along the path for those who may be so interested not unlike like conceptually available to the female Zen adept Chiyono for the "mind being ripe" when the bottom of the pail breaks through.
Please note the article "The Big Fake Out" is by the same Ken as the Ken in the above email. Currently there is no return email address available to contact Ken regarding the content of his above email or the linked article
Compare the Death Had A Face link with the contents of the previoulsy cited Big Fake Out link.
AND NOW THIS:
RECOUNTING A YOUNG BOY'S NEARLY INSTANT TRANSFORMATION INTO THE ABSOLUTE DURING HIS ONLY DARSHAN WITH THE MAHARSHI
we differ is that we place a fog, a particular kind of conceptual overlay onto that experience
and then make an emotional investment in that overlay, taking it to be "real" in and of itself.
(PLEASE CLICK)
(PLEASE CLICK)
HERE FOR
ENLIGHTENMENT
ON THE RAZOR'S
EDGE
SEE ALSO:
REACHING THE WANDERLING:
As most of you know, if an email address can be readily scaned by search engines the next thing you know you can't even find the legitimate mail in your box. Below are two suggestions on how to reach me through e-mail --- either through the Wanderling link directly below and follow the steps OR the MySpace link below that. Be advised your message could be lost in the shuffle or forgotten to death using the first method as there are a number of SPAM FILTERS IN PLACE that block just about everything --- BUT, and this is the secret, if you type AWAKENING 101 --- in capital letters with a space between AWAKENING and 101 --- in the subject line of your email it has a much better chance of being sorted out of the tons of unsolicited material and actually be read rather than being blocked or deleted:
THE WANDERLING
(please click)
OF COBRAS, SCARABS, MASERATIS, AND ZEN
A SHAMANIC JOURNEY OUTSIDE THE TRADITION
Good biography. Lots of Maugham graphics, from early childhood to late adult.
Everybody knows Hemingway drove an ambulance during WWI, nobody knows Maugham did.
Includes a section on the missing years of the Razor's Edge
PREMONITION TO THE PEACE CORPS
When the four Chinese characters were deciphered they turned out to mean nothing more than colors: red, yellow, green and black. The outlined shape in the center remained a mystery and meant nothing to anybody who saw it. The mystery however, was solved on its own some 15 years later, a period of time that found me living in the Caribbean island country of Jamaica, and was solved almost on the first day I arrived for what turned out to be a two year stay. So too was answered, before I left the island, my comment regarding how arduous the trip back and forth through the mountains was and his response that I travel my way and he travels his way.
MOLLIFYING THE NAYSAYERS
SHANGRI-LA, SHAMBHALA, GYANGANJ, BUDDHISM AND ZEN
(please click)
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THE WANDERLING: TAKING HIM WITH A GRAIN OF SALT
THE EL REY CLUB: RESORT, CASINO, BROTHEL
FIFIE MALOUF: ENTREPRENEUR, SOCIALITE, MADAME
BRENDA ALLEN: MADAME, PROSTITUTE PAR EXCELLENCE
THE NORMANDIE CLUB
SAIGON TEA GIRL
THE HOSTESSES
AWAKENING 101
