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Friday, January 18

ERIC BLACKSTEAD

What I think is great about Osho is that he can be counted on
to be right at least 50% of the time, namely because there's
no position that he hasn't endorsed and enhanced at one time
or another. If he hasn't commented directly on a scripture
somewhere in his 75 completed books (or however many there
currently are), It's because he's paraphrased it shamelessly
without attribution, and then used it as an "original"
commentary on someone elses work that he HAS quoted
correctly.

While he was originally a professor of philosophy, it seems
to me that he functioned much more as a romanticist, poet,
plagerist and propagandist, with a weather eye constantly
turned to any breeze that would serve to drive his listeners
closer to his own seductive web. I think he should have
called his ashram in Pune, Circe's Place.

I've read a good number of his books over the years, and
always enjoyed them. He had an enormously retentive mind, and
truly understood the hearts and minds of his young,
idealistic and hedonistic audience -- cultural expats, all.
For all practical purposes he might as well have turned over
the booking and administration of his ashrams to Club Med,
and at least in India when I was there in the mid 70's,
that's what most Indians thought he'd done. And unbelievably
successfully. There was a certain measure of stunned envy in
any Indian evaluation of his "work" with foreign youths, no
matter how critical.

If any of you would like to read a description of his life,
work, and difficulties with the law by a former disciple who
knew him and his chief disciples well, dial up
http://forums.shambala.com/cqi- bin/w3t5/showthread .

You should find it interesting, even if you don't agree with
all of the writer's evaluations.
________________________________________________________________________

GENE POOLE

Parsing

There is a process whereby
any localized self-identified
awareness

May survey the collection
of apparent particles and
conclude

Something based upon how
those particles are arrayed.

And there is a process
whereby any localized self-
identified awareness

May survey the conclusions
of any other localized self-
identified awareness

And conclude something
based upon how those
opinions are arrayed.

Then there is this localized
self-identified awareness
surveying an array

Of conclusions based upon
opinions based upon
surveillance of opinions

Based upon conclusions
based upon surveillance
of apparent particles.

Some say that there are
particles
and others say not

Some say that any
localized self-identified
awareness is

A false particle and that
only a false particle will
see and report particles

And that the one real
particle
is not a particle

And that unless the
localized self-identified
awareness sees

This impossible
juxtaposition
there is no hope

Of seeing that there
are no particles
to see themselves

As particles.

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

Particle Man (Song Lyrics)


Particle man, particle man
Doing the things a particle can
What's he like?
It's not important
Particle man
Is he a dot, or is he a speck?
When he's underwater
does he get wet?
or does the water get him instead?
Nobody knows, Particle man

Triangle man, Triangle man
Triangle man hates particle man
They have a Þght, Triangle wins
Triangle man

Universe man, Universe man
Size of the entire universe man
usually kind to smaller man
Universe man
He's got a watch with a minute hand,
millennium hand and an eon hand
when they meet it's a happy land
Powerful man, universe man

Person man, person man
hit on the head with a frying pan
lives his life in a garbage can
Person man
Is he depressed or is he a mess?
does he feel totally worthless?
who came up with person man?
degraded man, person man

Triangle man, triangle man
Triangle man hates person man
They have a Þght
triangle wins
triangle man

Written by They Might Be Giants.
All lyrics 1990 TMBG Music, admin.
Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp.(BMI).
Lyrics reproduced by permission. All rights reserved.
___________________________________________________________

ED

Would those who see the "impossible juxtaposition" see that
"idea" as *real* ? It seems to me we either see "particles"
or we don't. Also the issue might be settled by referring to
those "*apparent* particles", suggesting that the apparent
particles are not what they seem.

GENE

Hi Ed,

The issue of particles is supremely relevant, if indeed
particles are seen.

Someone said, "Things are not what they seem, nor are they
otherwise".

I dare anyone to 'see the impossible juxtaposition' and to
then be able to speak or write about it, rationally and in
(supposedly) concrete form.

One of my disciplines is to dare to say or write what is
considered impossible to state. I find little use for
constant reiteration, in conventional language, of the same
old formulae for 'attainment' or 'transcendance', especially
as prattled in 'newbie-101', condescension-styled,
error-ridden, yet oh-so-socially-approved,
do-gooder-idealistic style.

I find that there is an unfortunate tradition which dogs us
all, which is embedded in our culture, and which exerts a
tragically retarding effect. This is, to never dare to speak
from the point of view of actual experience, but to instead
to duck the possibility of uncomfortable accusations, by
always repeating 'beginners lessons' in lieu of honest and
straightforward conversation among peers. I am sure that
there can be other interpretations of what evidences this
sodden trend, but from my own POV, the lack of straight
peer-to-peer conversation turns the whole scene into an
unfortunate charade.

I think it is true that 'you get what you pay for', in this
and all cases. Not to say that everything comes with a price;
rather, that the sacrifice of convention and supposed safety
of identity, is a price which we are all rich enough to pay,
and have plenty left over for discretionary purchases.

Heading to the flea market...

___________________________________________________________________

GILL EARLEY
from Nondual Quotes list

Alice Walker
"Expect Nothing"

Expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
Become a stranger
To need of pity
Or, if compassion be freely
Given out
Take only enough.
Stop short of urge to plead
Then purge away the need.
Wish for nothing larger
Than your own small heart
Or greater than a star;
Tame wild disappointment
With caress unmoved and cold.
Make of it a parka
For your soul.

Discover the reason why
So tiny human midget
Exists at all
So scared unwise.
But expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.

___________________________________________________________________

JAN SULTAN

We have criticized Osho for contradicting himself. The volume
of work that he produced and his style of 'shooting from the
hip' had to produce many contradictions. Even Ramana and Rumi
devotees have discussed their gurus contradicting themselves
on their respective lists. Of course the devotees have always
found valid explanations for the seeming contradictions! Let
me give one guru's explanation for the seeming
contradictions: [This is from Jack Kornfields "Living
Dharma"]

...... I began to criticize other monks for sloppy practice,
and to doubt the wisdom of Achaan Chaa's teaching. At one
point I went to him and complained, noting that even he was
inconsistent and seemed to be contradicting himself often in
an unenlightened way. He laughed and pointed out how much I
was suffering by trying to judge the others around me. Then
he explained that in fact his teaching was just a balance.
"It is as though I see people walking down a road I know
well," he said. "I look up and see someone about to fall in a
ditch on the right-hand side of the road or get off on a side
track on the right so I call out to him 'Go left, go left'.
Similarly if I see someone about to go off on a sidetrack to
the left, or to fall in the left-hand ditch, I call out 'Go
right, go right'. All of practice is simply developing a
balance of mind, not clinging, unselfishness." .......

________________________________________________________________

SARLO

Getting back to Osho:

[talking about a Jungian analyst named Habib who had left
after Osho relentlessly criticized Jung]

"So if you have a discussion with me, beware, you will go
mad! -- because I am not a consistent man. I am not logical
either, I am absurd.

"And Habib missed the point. If he was a Freudian I would
have attacked Freud, if he was a Marxist I would have
attacked Marx, and if he was a Rajneeshian, I would have
attacked Rajneesh! It is not a question of Jung! Jung comes
nowhere into it. The attack is on Habib's ego! Because the
ego is Jungian, so poor Jung has to be attacked.

"Now tomorrow somebody comes and he is a Freudian, and I will
attack Freud. And I will say, "He is nothing compared to Jung
-- a pygmy!" And then naturally I become inconsistent,
because you miss the whole point! I have nothing to do with
Freud or Jung. Who cares? My effort is to provoke you, to
show you the point. It is not that Habib is feeling offended
because I have criticized Jung; he is feeling offended
because his ego is hurt. If he can see it, then my statements
were useful. If he cannot see it, then the arrow missed the
point. Then I will have to use some other device.

"I have to destroy your ego-structures. Hence, don't ask me
again and again why my statements are not consistent. I have
only one consistency: that is of being inconsistent. I am
consistently inconsistent; that's the only consistency that I
have. And I have infinite freedom; a consistent man cannot
have infinite freedom. I can play, I can joke, I can enjoy
shattering your egos, destroying your structures. I'm not
serious about these things. I dare to play, to try first one
thing, then another. My statements are like the actors on the
stage: let them contradict each other; they are not there to
tell the truth, but to provoke it, to discover it.

"And I would like to tell you too: do not do anything merely
for the sake of consistency. That is the shelter for fools
and philosophers -- which are the same people. Never do
anything just for the sake of consistency. This is
undesirable since it limits experimentation and exploration.
Action so as to be consistent with the past develops into a
programmatic addiction. It freezes you into stasis, halting
the evolutionary march of becoming. You should retain all
power over current behavior. None should be yielded to the
past. Acting consistent with precedent is a form of death,
and destroys all potential to grow into understanding."

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