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Issue #2786 - Thursday, April 12, 2007 - Editor: Jerry Katz 

One: Essential Writings on Nonduality http://nonduality.com/one.htm

 

The Nondual Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights

 

 


 

 

Kurt Vonnegut died on Wednesday.

 

One good newspaper article is here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/04/12/entertainment/e050234D18.DTL. It's worth reading.

 

In this issue are entries about Vonnegut that have appeared in the Nondual Highlights and Nonduality Salon over the last 8 or 9  years.

 

 


 

 

From Nondual Highlights #758

 

JERRY

 

My observation is that one thing we all have in common is a natural
attentiveness to consciousness itself. One can have a spouse, best friend,
child, or other loved one, that has no interest in consciousness itself.
Because of our common natural attentiveness, we might feel closer to each
other than to family or our children. This inclination isn't the result of
having an interest in consciousness, as such. If we were all naturally
inclined toward an interest in the varieties of dry cleaning, the same
tendency would hold.

 

martinizingly, jerry

 

*martinizing: a form of one-hour dry cleaning that every dry cleaner can
provide, but that no human being has actually ever used. I'm not sure what
the parallel is in spiritual-practice circles.

 

MATTHEW

 

for sure, and this is noted by the profoundly humorous critic of the human
condition, kurt vonnegut as being a Gran Falloon, which is the assumption
we make that since we have something in common with a complete stranger
like being from indiana, or belonging to the elks club, or having the same
alma mater, or in this case being on the same list, that there is an
automatic connection, a bond of sorts. Yes it could even be dry cleaning.

 

after referencing Kurt Vonnegut i piqued my own curiosity and dug up some
fun stuff from various sites:

 

One of the basic concepts of Bokononism, the secretive island religion of
Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, is that of a granfalloon. A granfalloon is a
recognized grouping of people that, underneath it all, has no real meaning.
The prototypical granfaloon in Vonnegut's book is Hoosiers: the main
character of the book finds himself journeying to an island nation in the
company of fellow Indianans, but other than the fact that they hale from
the same state they have no significance in each other's lives.

 

The opposite of a granfalloon, or at least one alternative, is the karass.
These are the people whose lives are entwined in yours in mysterious yet
profound ways. Often they are not part of any of your more obvious
granfalloons, but in the end it is their presence on this earth that has
great influence of the direction of your own life. Recognizing members of
your karass is not an easy thing and some you may never identify, but part
of the spiritual mission of Bokononists is to celebrate their karass.

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

From Nondual Highlights #2601

 

 

Graphic: Kurt Vonnegut, from A Man Without a Country

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

From Nondual Highlights #2472

 

"To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps
of undifferentiated nothingness: Watch out for life. I have caught life. I
have come down with life. I was a wisp of undifferentiated nothingness, and
then a little peephole opened quite suddenly. Light and sound poured in.
Voices began to describe me and my surroundings. Nothing they said could be
appealed. They said I was a boy named Rudolph Waltz, and that was that.
They said the year was 1932, and that was that. They said I was in
Midland
City
, Ohio
, and that was that.

 

They never shut up. Year after year they piled detail upon detail. They do
it still. You know what they say now? They say the year is 1982, and that I
am fifty years old. Blah blah blah..."

 

--Kurt Vonnegut, in "Deadeye Dick"

 

posted by Wayne Ferguson to The Power of Silence

 

 

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From #2059

 

Tomas Diaz de Villegas:

 

I got another one for the nonduality movie list- just saw it this weekend-
"American Beauty" and, it was beautiful. I give it two thumbs up. go out
and see it- have fun!

 

Petros:

 

Yes, it was excellent.

 

I also recommend "Breakfast of Champions," with Bruce Willis. It's based on
the Kurt Vonnegut novel about a car dealer and small-town celebrity who
suffers a crisis of identity (early in the film he asks himself "Who Am
I?") and basically goes wacko until he encounters a science fiction writer
whose novel (in the form of a letter written from God to humanity) explains
the mystery of the universe, viz., "I put you here as a test to see how
much you can take."

 

It is getting lousy reviews, but I enjoyed the concept of the film. I
presume Vonnegut's book is far more complex and I plan to read it.

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

From #710

 

JOHN METZGER

 

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. "Breakfast of Champions"

 

Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two
pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they
ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited
intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making
champagne.

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

 from Nonduality Salon:

 

:) oh yes... i consider philip k. and kurt vonnegut jr among the sanest
writers in 20th century, along douglas adams and stanislaw lem...

 

yosy

 

ps. :) on my last birthday i received a whole collection of philip k dick
in... polish!

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

 from Nonduality Salon:

 

--- In NondualitySalon@yahoogroups.com, "lucreziag_2000" <lucreziag@a...>
wrote: This is one of my favorite book excerpts. Eye really like it:

 

"There was a message written in pencil on the tiles by the roller towel.
This was it:

 

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF LIFE?

 

Trout plundered his pockets for a pen or pencil. He had an answer to the
question. But he had nothing to write with, not even a burnt match. So he
left the question unanswered, but here is what he would have written, if he
had found anything to write with:

 

To be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you
fool."

 

From _Breakfast of Champions_ by Kurt Vonnegut

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

 

calsfbob contributed to Nonduality Salon:

 

From Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut ____"Now It Can Be Told."
Kilgore Trout_____

 

The premise of the book was this: Life was an experiment by the Creator of
the Universe, Who wanted to test a new sort of creature He was thinking of
introducing into the Universe. It was a creature with the ability to make
up its own mind. All the other creatures were fully-programmed robots.

 

The book was in the form of a long letter from The Creator of the Universe
to the experimental creature. The Creator congratulated the creature and
apologized for all the discomfort he had endured. The Creator invited him
to a banquet in his honor in the Empire Room of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel
in New York City, where a black robot named Sammy Davis, Jr., would sing
and dance.

 

And the experimental creature wasn't killed after the banquet. He was
transferred to a virgin planet instead. Living cells were sliced from the
palms of his hands, while he was unconscious. The operation didn't hurt at
all.

 

And then the cells were stirred into a soupy sea on the virgin planet. They
would evolve into ever more complicated life forms as the eons went by.
Whatever shapes they assumed, they would have free will.

 

Trout didn't give the experimental creature a proper name. He simply called
him The Man.

 

On the virgin planet, the Man was Adam and the sea was Eve.

 

The Man often sauntered by the sea. Sometimes he waded in his Eve.
Sometimes he swam in her, but she was too soupy for an invigorating swim.
She made her Adam feel sleepy and sticky afterwards, so he would dive into
an icy stream that had just jumped off a mountain.

 

He screamed when he dived into the icy water, screamed again when he came
up for air. He bloodied his shins and laughed about it when he scrambled up
rocks to get out of the water.

 

He panted and laughed some more and he thought of something amazing to
yell. The Creator never knew what he was going to yell, since The Creator
had no control over him. The Man himself got to decide what he was going to
do next - and why. After a dip one day, for instance, The Man yelled this:
"Cheese!"

 

Another time he yelled, "Wouldn't you really rather drive a Buick?"

 

The only other big animal on the virgin planet was an angel who visited The
Man occasionally. He was a messenger and an investigator for the Creator of
the Universe. He took the form of an eight hundred pound male cinnamon
bear. He was a robot, too, and so was The Creator, according to Kilgore
Trout.

 

The bear was attempting to get a line on why The Man did what he did. He
would ask, for instance, "Why did you yell, 'Cheese'?"

 

And The Man would tell him mockingly, "Because I felt like it, you stupid
machine."

 

Here is what The Man's tombstone on the virgin planet looked like at the
end of the book by Kilgore Trout:

 

NOT EVEN THE CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE KNEW WHAT THE MAN WAS GOING TO SAY
NEXT. PERHAPS THE MAN WAS A BETTER UNIVERSE IN ITS INFANCY.

 

 

-------------------------------------------

 

 

A few quotes I found on the internet:

 

Life happens too fast for you to ever think about it. If you could just
persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.

 

Kurt Vonnegut

 

Thinking doesn't seem to help very much. The human brain is too
high-powered to have many practical uses in this particular universe.

 

Kurt Vonnegut

 

"The Universe is a big place -- perhaps the biggest." -- Kurt Vonnegut Jr.


 

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