Time is Running Out

When I lived in the Siddha Yoga ashram in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the 1970s the most enjoyable part of the day was the evening program, which involved chanting bhajans and mantras, accompanied by Indian musical instruments. After the chanting there was a short meditation, and then a reading and commentary by the ashram’s director Russell Kruckman, known as Shankar, later renamed Shankarananda.

Sometimes Shankar answered questions from the group of attendees. One night someone asked him if it was true that there were yogis in India who covered themselves with the entrails of dead babies in order to gain psychic powers, known as siddhis. Shankar answered that yes, it is true, that acts of perversion are a way of gaining powers, but that there is a heavy price to pay for such behavior. If I remember right, the price is great pain and misery. Apparently, for some people it is worth the price. More likely is that they believe that the law of karma does not apply to them, that there are no negative consequences for what they do.

I never forgot this teaching, and was almost mesmerized by Shankar’s casual and eloquent wisdom. He of course has had his own fall from grace in recent years, availing himself to the carnal delights gleaned from some of his followers in Australia.

Such is the human predicament. We are fallible and weak. I freely criticize the abuses of power and sexual shenanigans that went on while I was seeking enlightenment on the guru path, but I was never in a position to abuse power or engage in shenanigans. I might have been worse. I like to think I wouldn’t, but I don’t know. I have found it easier to avoid the seeking of power and seduction, and, coincidentally, both have avoided me. A harmony of disinterest.

According to yoga theory, the practices of meditation (dhyana), postures (asana), chanting (japa), study (svadyaya), contemplation (dharana), selfless service (karma yoga), devotion (bhakti), and right behavior (yamas and niyamas) lead the supplicant to enlightenment, known as Samadhi. It is equivalent to Nirvana in Buddhism, or the Beatific Vision in Christianity. Along the way to enlightenment, various energy centers (chakras) are energized, and they have their corresponding functions in human experience, advancing from lower material concerns, procreation, power and love to higher spiritual levels of consciousness, culminating in God-realization, Samadhi.

What I have learned from observation and experience is that the path to enlightenment is neither linear nor unidirectional. Indeed, when the lower chakras relating to money, sex and power are awakened, the danger of misusing these awakened energies is greatly increased. We believed the guru I was following, Swami Müktananda, was a fully enlightened being, but it turned out he was molesting young girls in his various ashrams (residential meditation centers).

These lessons of the perils of meditative practice are not confined to spiritual life. Falling to the temptations of sex, power and money is rampant in mundane life, and the misuse and abuse of these energies is most prevalent in the institutions of business, government, education, entertainment and religion. It is in these realms where the temptations of greed, power and sexual mischief are most manifest.

I don’t live my life with a distinction, or dichotomy, between spiritual and mundane. To me it is all within a grand continuum. Causes have effects, no matter how much we impose arbitrary classifications on them. No one gets away with anything. It may take longer for some, but reaping comes to us all for what we sow.

One of the great mass murderers in human history is the still acclaimed Henry Kissinger, former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations. He has been quoted from time-to-time as bragging that “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” Apparently the exercise of the power to bomb, immolate, mine, poison, torture and assassinate were means of sexual arousal to him. He plied his trade from 1969 to 1977. One could surmise that since his ability to mass murder has been, hmm, retired, that he has had to turn to other forms of arousal, or settle on a life without sex.

We live in surreal times, with the President of the United States bragging about how he is free to grab women in the genital area with impunity because he is a "celebrity." He has also bragged that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue in New York City and not lose any voters. Through further perversion of our electoral system he has technically been “elected” president, though the advantage gained through voter suppression and assistance from the Russian government is being made more clear on a daily basis. If the Mueller investigation is allowed to continue unimpeded, our predatory president will likely be removed from office.

That is, if he doesn’t have a health breakdown before he is removed. As I have stressed for many months, Trump very likely is suffering from dementia, and his obesity, poor health habits, and uncontrolled irascibility make his longevity in office a poor prospect. I don’t expect him to be in office by the end of the year.

More important is the lesson we are getting from a number of fronts. Trump of course is the poster boy for misuse of power, but the sexual crimes of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, “right wing” know-it-all Bill O’Reilly, and now deceased fake news purveyor Roger Ailes have become catalysts for a nationwide soul-searching about how we behave toward one another.

Unless we go deeper, though, the lessons will be lost and nothing will be learned. If we misunderstand how humans develop, how they can go wrong, and what the goals and progress of human life are directed towards, then the opposite trend of societal decline will continue, and indeed will likely prevail.

As I have written before, a useful model of human development is the hierarchy of needs construct of psychologist Abraham Maslow, proposed in the 1950s. It parallels the chakra system of energy centers in Vedanta philosophy of  India. If we don't begin to recognize the sources of human energies, their developmental roles, and the hazards they pose, we will not only continue to fall, but will accelerate the fall. We of course are accelerating the fall anyway with our infinite economic growth and destruction of the ecosphere. Time is running out.
__________________________________________

Here's a song. Here's another. And another. Van Morrison. This Grateful Dead song fits. The Allman Brothers Band. Again, Stevie Wonder doing the Drumpf National Anthem. INXS. Keb Mo. Another Grateful Dead song. The Traveling Wilburys. Brewer and Shipley. Another Brewer and Shipley. The Steve Miller Band. Another from the Steve Miller Band. The Chambers Brothers. Starland Vocal Band. The Amazing Rhythm Aces. Joe Cocker covering the Beatles. Iris Dement. More Iris Dement. Still more Iris Dement. My favorite Grateful Dead song, always a source of inspiration. This Grateful Dead song has unending pertinence. Another Grateful Dead song. And, for the future, this.

The history of Blues and Rock 'n Roll is replete with songs about romancing presumably underage girls, such as this from Sonny Boy Williamson. Here's the Junior Wells version. Muddy Waters. More from Muddy Waters. I always thought of this song from Steve Miller as pretty innocent, but nowadays it doesn't seem so. This Rolling Stones song was never seen as innocent. The same goes for this. Chuck Berry, who spent time in prison for statutory rape, pretty much told the story with this song. Sam the Sham and The Pharaohs. I used to think this Frank Zappa song was pretty funny, but the humor has withered. This is much better. I also used to think this Fugs song was funny, but times have changed. This is probably The Beatles' weirdest and most obnoxious song. There isn't a good copy on YouTube, so this one will have to do. Even the Grateful Dead had a version of Little School Girl, sung by the legendary "Pigpen," Ron McKernan. This Jimi Hendrix song doesn't have the same pizzaz it once did.

This song played at the end of segment six of the PBS series on the Vietnam war, incredibly powerful. The segment covered how the war had gotten more insane, more deadly, more gratuitous, and more purposeless. It was the perfect song to end with, so sad and poignant. The series was grueling to watch. I was in the Army from 1968 to 1971, but was sent to Germany instead of Vietnam. The war was looming in the background the entire time I "served" in the Army, and I could have been sent there any time. I was lucky, but the pain of that time came roaring back when Whiter Shade of Pale played during the credit roll.

R.I.P. Fats Domino. His great song Blueberry Hill was one of the formative influences of my pre-teen years. Here's the Vladimir Putin version. I wonder if Fats ever saw it. We are indeed living in surreal times.
__________________________________________

Here's an update from Bill Moyers.

Something I wrote made it into the pages of Madison's Cap Times.

Here's what I actually wrote:

I suppose Paul Fanlund’s diatribe against the supposed "far left" was meant to appeal to someone, though it’s a bit of a mystery. Maybe to the establishment of the “Democratic” party - they of the stand-for-nothing, triangulating approach to campaigning for office. Maybe to the mythical "center," who, it is imagined, don’t stand for anything either. Who knows? Who cares?

This kind of writing is tiresome. The idea of a “far left” first assumes that there is a "left " – a clearly recognizable cohort of humans who favor a direction on a visible spectrum, whose meaning is embodied in that direction. Lost in the minds of believers in this directionality is that it is just a mental construct, a metaphor, and has meaning only to those who believe it is real. There is no "left" in reality, and therefore there can be no "far left."

An easy counter-example of this silliness is me. I'm not part of a direction. I voted for Bernie Sanders in last year’s primary election. What he advocates are things necessary for the survival and advancement of our civilization. I voted for Hillary Clinton in the general election, with umbrage, but with dread of the alternative. Now we have the alternative, and he will likely hasten the country’s decline and maybe collapse. It could be a great cleansing of our social contract.

Rather than fulminating against "one far-left goofball after another," Paul Fanlund might raise the question of what "mainstream Democrats" believe in. The Republicans have a belief system, phony as it is, called Conservatism. It isn’t much – low taxes, low government spending, and "freedom." What it is in reality is a mix of crony capitalism and inflammatory scapegoating. Still, it is a professed belief system. What do the Democrats believe?

I have volunteered for many Democratic candidates, including in the failed recalls. It was all about getting out the vote, and nothing about believing in something – anything, other than that the various candidates are men and women of the people. They deserved to lose, and lost, repeatedly. Maybe Paul Fanlund has an idea of what Democrats stand for. Please let us know.