Thursday, February 22, 2007

Dumb All Over



Whoever we are
Wherever we’re from
We shoulda noticed by now
Our behavior is dumb
And if our chances
Expect to improve
It’s gonna take a lot more
Than tryin’ to remove
The other race
Or the other whatever
From the face
Of the planet altogether

They call it the earth
Which is a dumb kinda name
But they named it right
’cause we behave the same...
We are dumb all over
Dumb all over,
Yes we are
Dumb all over,
Near ’n far
Dumb all over,
Black ’n white
People, we is not wrapped tight

Nurds on the left
Nurds on the right
Religous fanatics
On the air every night
Sayin’ the bible
Tells the story
Makes the details
Sound real gory
’bout what to do
If the geeks over there
Don’t believe in the book
We got over here

You can’t run a race
Without no feet
’n pretty soon
There won’t be no street
For dummies to jog on
Or doggies to dog on
Religous fanatics
Can make it be all gone
(I mean it won’t blow up
’n disappear
It’ll just look ugly
For a thousand years...)

You can’t run a country
By a book of religion
Not by a heap
Or a lump or a smidgeon
Of foolish rules
Of ancient date
Designed to make
You all feel great
While you fold, spindle
And mutilate
Those unbelievers
From a neighboring state

To arms! to arms!
Hooray! that’s great
Two legs ain’t bad
Unless there’s a crate
They ship the parts
To mama in
For souvenirs: two ears (get down!)
Not his, not hers, (but what the hey? )
The good book says:
(it gotta be that way!)
But their book says:
Revenge the crusades...
With whips ’n chains
’n hand grenades...
Two arms? two arms?
Have another and another
Our God says:
There ain’t no other!
Our God says
It’s all okay!
Our God says
This is the way!

It says in the book:
Burn ’n destroy...
’n repent, ’n redeem
’n revenge, ’n deploy
’n rumble thee forth
To the land of the unbelieving scum on the other side
’cause they don’t go for what’s in the book
’n that makes ’em bad
So verily we must choppeth them up
And stompeth them down
Or rent a nice french bomb
To poof them out of existance
While leaving their real estate just where we need it
To use again
For temples in which to praise our god
(cause he can really take care of business!)

And when his humble tv servant
With humble white hair
And humble glasses
And a nice brown suit
And maybe a blond wife who takes phone calls
Tells us our God says
It’s okay to do this stuff
Then we gotta do it,
’cause if we don’t do it,
We ain’t gwine up to hebbin!
(depending on which book you’re using at the
Time...can’t use theirs... it don’t work
...it’s all lies...gotta use mine...)
Ain’t that right?
That’s what they say
Every night...
Every day...
Hey, we can’t really be dumb
If we’re just following god’s orders
Hey, let’s get serious...
God knows what he’s doin’
He wrote this book here
An’ the book says:
He made us all to be just like him,
So...
If we’re dumb...
Then God is dumb...
(an’ maybe even a little ugly on the side)

...Zappa

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

"I am the whole catastrophe!"...Zorba the Greek



TONY FORKUSH (Actor / Writer) -- BIO

Actor/Playwright/Bloggist TONY FORKUSH is that rare artist who defies conventional modes of expression. A performer since he was five years old, Tony was making waves from the beginning. In his first play, “Alice in Wonderland” performed at the local PTA meeting room, he caused a scandal by refusing to oink as the little baby that turns into a pig. From his first missed lines he was a rebel. Shortly after that he became a hippie. At seven, urged on by his lovely but unavailable music teacher at Pinecrest Elementary School, Tony knew then that to be brilliant was to be unlucky in love. But when Miss Schwartz first played The Beatles “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” on the first grade class’s record player, he knew he was hooked forever.

That summer of 1968 was fortuitous for Tony. After wetting the bed at Christian Commando Sleepaway camp and having a song sung to him called “He Wet the Bed…Tony wet the bed…Hi Ho the Derrio…Tony wet the bed”, the young budding genius decided to take out his frustrations in an artistic way by dropping a ten pound bolder onto the head of a mildly retarded school mate. Several ambulances and fire trucks later, Tony’s grandmother arrived in her beat up old Dodge Dart, the family’s elegant mode of transportation (and a heck of a ride!). Tony was busy wiping the tears from his face and shitting his pants with fear at the potential repercussions of the event. A particularly kindly camp counselor held Tony in his long and waspish arms, cradling Tony while softly singing “Jesus saw Tony…Oh lord Tony…Jesus saw”. Although from a family of observant Jews who saw the Good Shepherd as equivalent to a swastika, Tony decided then “ if you can’t beat ‘em, join’ em.” Since that day, Jesus has seen every single thing Tony has done, and boy, are his feet tired.


A Classical and a Contemporary performer

In the late 60’s, Tony took his extraordinary feats of bed wetting to new and stellar heights. His own family hooked him up to an experimental device called “the sonic rehabilitation electrode bed wetting rehabilitator”. It consisted of a series of electrodes hooked up to the genitals of the small Tony. At night, when the little bed wetting fairies danced in his sleeping head, Tony urinated away his fears and terrors. As soon as the moist liquid hit the electrified sheet, a giant noise buzzer, deafening to all within a three block area, sounded its shameful clarion. The lights came on as mom and dad came in to wake Tony and change the bedsheets. A stern talking to ensued as “big boys” don't do this kind of thing. Through hot tears, Tony vowed to never do it again, much to the detriment of his future sexuality and intimacy issues, still a disaster into his forties. The nights when he didn't excrete, a small golden star was placed on a chart above his bed. Tony has compromised himself ever since.


Winning at all costs

When Tony reached High School he was met by a kindly old German man named Lobenstein. “Drew” gave Tony a pep talk about joining the speech and debate team. Tony, having come from low self esteem and narcissistic parents, decided that this was his ticket to ride. What Drew didn't realize was that they unleashed a monster. Tony became a winning machine, gobbling up trophies from here to Timbuktu. The events he didn't win were met with depressions so vast and unrelenting that he redoubled his efforts to dominate all he came into contact with. This led to a series of alienating encounters with other family members, siblings and normal citizens of society. Tony became a sociopath by the time he was 18. By 19, after his enrollment at Moorpark Jr. College, insanity and nervous collapse were just a stone’s throw away.

College

At Moorpark College, Tony continued his dominance of the California speech circuit. During his times out from Woodview Calabassas Mental Hospital, he would search and destroy his competition from Bakersfield to Barstow. He was the two time winner of the Jim Miller award for the outstanding speaker in the state of California. Toast Masters was calling.

It was at Moorpark that his directing talents manifested, when he directed “Krapps Last Tape”, by Samuel Beckett, in the Forum, a multi-purpose room and music appreciation lab led by the truculent yet affable madman Orbie Darrel Ingersoll, whose post-modern music classes featured ax throwing and wrestling students. This would be Tony's only directing foray as the cigarette smoke in the lighting booth damaged his lungs and ability to lead others.

Tony experienced a period of ennui shortly after this time in his life. He had been removed from the play “Equus”, in the part of Allan Strang, by the director for failing to show up to a single rehearsal, a punishment he still considers harsh and unnecessary. What would be next for this wunderkind?

In 1980 Tony was driving along the “5” freeway on the way to his nightmarish job at Magic Mountain where he sold coupons to disgruntled visitors and cleaned the sky cups that flew over the park. He noticed a bunker type building on his right hand side as he drove by the McBean Parkway exit each day. He wondered to himself what place this may be. It turned out that this bunker would be the most significant locale of his entire life.


California Institute of the Arts

On a particularly difficult day off from the funny farm, Tony was given an audition for a very prestigious and hilly theater school on a hill in sunny Valencia, Ca. California Institute of the Arts, the former Chouinard Art School and a music academy rolled into one, had established itself several years before. It consisted of numerous art schools, including a theater school. Tony was unsure what to do with his life, so theater seemed a natural evolution for him. But he still wanted to win.

At Cal Arts, Tony immediately found a home. He was cast in numerous shows. Most notable among them were:

- Sam Shepard's nightmarish “Buried Child”, in the role of the decaying old patriarch, Dodge

- ”Blood Engine” for the Los Angeles Actors Theater, in the role of Wheelie, a boy who turns into a car.

- Lonnie Roy Mcneil in “LoneStar”

He performed many more studio and full length shows. He studied with the puckish Robert Lloyd, who played Puck in Peter Brook's “Midsummer Nights Dream”, the large bear-like genius Robert Benedetti (“Seeming, Being and Becoming”), Libby Appel (Artistic Director Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon), Jules Aaron, Los Angeles' most prolific small theater director, and numerous educators and professionals. Among his contemporaries were actor/star Don Cheadle, director Jim Mangold (“Walk the Line”), Rob Minkoff (director “Lion King” for Walt Disney films) and numerous theater and film actors and educators.

Professional Acting Work


In 1983, Tony and a group of recently graduated Cal Artians were hired as acting interns for the re-launch of the La Jolla Playhouse, in La Jolla California. A theater that for many years hosted the likes of Gregory Peck, Christopher Plummer and other veteran stage performers, was reopening as a hip, New York modern style stage. Canadian director Des MacAnuff was hired to shepherd the new ship. The first season featured three shows directed by notable directors of the day. MacAnuff would direct “Romeo and Juliet” with lauded New York stage actor John Vickery as Romeo, and the ephemeral chimera known as Amanda Plummer. During the first rehearsal, Miss Plummer, who had a long flowing scarf over her head, was overheard wistfully lisping, “What's a sonnet”?, while smiling a smile of mad delight and instability. This was to be Tony Forkush's first professional role. And he was to play...Anthony the cook, who appears in one scene for a total of thirteen seconds. Tony was removed from any fight scenes because of panic anxiety disorder.

Shortly after the La Jolla season ended, Tony moved to New York where he performed below a brothel near the docks around 10th street in a musical called “Survivors”, directed by an Israeli Mosaad agent. Tony had a series of acting classes and bad relationships with violent punk rock singers during his New York stay. CBGB and OMFUG were in full swing in 1983 and Hashish replaced marijuana on the East Coast as the D.O.G. Tony experienced his first higher consciousness trips which affected his art tremendously. That, and seeing Brother Theodore.

In 1984, Andrew Shea of the Shea Family of the New York Mets, opened a regional theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Albuquerque. Andrew had been a friend, and fan, of Tony's back at Cal Arts. They met at the Dojo cafe in NYC over coffee and Dolmades. Andrew offered Tony a full season as an intern in New Mexico acting full-time. The offer was for $100.00 a week, no room and board, no transportation, and no equity contract. Great! It was just the break Tony was looking for and he moved lock, stock and barrel to the southwest, leaving his psychotic girlfriend Kimbo in the lurch for a great deal of money. Sayanara baby! I'm gonna beat the boards with the Bard.

Anthony performed with the rep for 7 long seasons. Among the shows were:

-”A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams, as the young collector (one reviewer wondered why a full-grown man with a beard was playing this role).

-”A Midsummer Nights Dream” by Shakespeare, in the role of Puck (those who saw this considered it one of the most dangerously insane and unstable performances in the history of Albuquerque)

-”Cloud Nine” by Caryl Churchill, in the dual roles of Cathy and Joshua the servant. (During one particularly difficult entrance with a tray, cakes and champagne, Tony ripped through the set causing the remainder of it to collapse, halting the show for ten minutes).

-”The Mystery of Irma Vep” by Charles Ludlum, a quick change show which caused Tony to collapse from exhaustion into a pile of mush around his ten pound dress.

But Tony's really really big break came during the summer of 1990 when a young budding playwright named Howard Korder, who had seen Tony during a reading of his play “Boy's Life”, was to recommend to director David Chambers that Tony would be right for the role of the slimy drug dealer Ron in a new farce called “Search and Destroy” that would be having its premier at South Coast Repertory. The reviews were sensational. Tony was heading to Broadway, or at least another regional theater, like Yale Rep for example.

When Tony arrived at Yale, he was so taken by the beauty and grandeur of the ancient buildings, that when he passed the Skull and Bones complex he fell into a manhole, inverting his ankle into an offensively grotesque position. His foot swelled up like the Hindenburg, actually blowing the tennis shoe open. Tony had been in New Haven for half an hour.

But the show must go on. Tony was given a pair of crutches and no transportation. He was told to get to and from the theater by hobbling about and climbing the three stories to the stage. But once he did, the play was once again a huge hit. It now was set to go to Broadway, and Tony was going to go with it, launching the career that sunk a thousand ships.

Or was he...?

Several months later, Tony received a call from director David Chambers that there were some “delays” in the final casting of the Circle in the Square production of “Search and Destroy”. Actor Griffin Dunne now had control of the project (later he was to make a feature film directed by Robert Longo), and the minutiae of the business was taking its time. Tony had an offer to recreate the roles he played in Irma Vep (now at the Laguna Playhouse) and felt that a bird in the hand...well you know the rest. This was to be a moment of dramatic change for Tony. He turned down the Broadway run of “Search and Destroy”, went to the Laguna Playhouse instead, and collapsed onstage for a second time, thus beginning the downhill tumble that his life still takes to this day.

There's always Hollywood

After a ten year period of alcoholic imbibing and dual diagnosis, Tony returned with full colors to the stages of his own fair city. A four year stint at the modest yet incendiary Theatre of Note gated Tony an LA Weekly Award Nomination for the One-Act play “Ransomed Soul” by Christopher Kelley (He didn't win. Nope). He performed the plays “Futon Dialogues” by Hank Bunker, “Nobody Home” by Tim Hanson, co-produced and acted in a musical version of “The Birds” by Aristophanes, directed by Ken Roht. His most recent performance was in the role of the nasty man Frank in Jaqueline Wright’s dark comedy “Eat Me”. Also, showing his new found age range, he performed as Gremio in “Taming of the Shrew” for Zoo District at the Orpheum Theater.

His television credits include a series regular on “Camp Midnight”, produced by Dick Clark and Warren Bell, “Miracles and other Wonders” for CBS, “Herman’s Head” for Fox, and “CatDog”, in the voice of Cat for MTV and Nickelodeon (pilot). His brief foray into stand-up comedy was met with some success as part of the impressionist duo Forkush and Ward (Jim Ward is now co-host of the Stephanie Miller show on Air America).

As a writer, Mr. Forkush co-wrote “Celia: High Priestess of Shimkin-an aquatic fable” with Liane Schirmer, for the Carpet Company; “Tender” and “When the Peacock Sings” for Al's National Theater Festival of Five Minute Plays; “Godiva 23” for Sharon's Farm; “The Bubo” for Theatre of Note’s Play Selection Committee, and his perverted masterpiece “Lewyus Gonzalish” about a futuristic porn Bar Mitzvah, also given its reading premier at Note.

Tony premiered sections of his blog (Stop This Noise in My Head) for the 12th annual Theatre of Note performance Marathon, a work in progress.

You can read more of Tony's writings on his blog:
www.tonyforkush.blogspot.com (Stop This Noise in my Head: Working class blog devoted to daily ruminations of anti-social psychosis, transcendent liberation theology, Jesus Christ, Baseball, fast guitar playing and demystifying the false (or perhaps true) paradigmatic beliefs I carry about my ability to pleasure myself and others, particularly women who cannot love me.).

Friday, February 09, 2007

Copy of my response to Jerry O' from comments section

I decided to publish a copy of my response to Jerry's comments regarding my last entry. You can read Jerry's comments under the comments section in "They didn't teach us this in school", plus the following response from me. But I felt that it gives some context about where I am right out here, ass first. Or is that face first? Whatever!


My dear brother in multi-dimensionality, I am so profoundly relieved to hear from you. The fellowship of reality shifting in my life feels very narrow. I'm sure it will reveal itself as larger than I think. But at the present moment, I find myself out in the wildnerness with possibly one or two people really getting this deal. Of course you come calling at the appointed hour no doubt aware that my two days in the hospital were caused by my complete rational breakdown after the original bliss. The UFO experience (Angel? Mandala? Photon Torpedo?) that I saw over Simi Valley in '78 with my earthbound jewish friend Steve Glick who, after witnessing the event, said in his transplanted Boston accent "We din't fukin see dat"!, is not a proper comparison to the Baba leap. It's far more quantum. The only thing I can really compare it to is the Richard Chubb, David Clarke and Eileen Mushroom trip of 1980 in Venice Beach where I was vacuumed into the all-possibilities-sound and funhouse ego crushing happy play day. The avatar took the mask of himself that day and said "hi there, welcome to my world, muhfuguh"!

Oh boy, Neo has got nothing on this and the Nebachunezer can't run me away from this fast enough. Nor do I really want to run away. It's just that I was not at all prepared for the 24 hour terror episode in which I had to be held down while being administered Atavan intravenously while trying to explain to a priest from Glendale that God is love is Sai Baba who is on my wall and is one of those guys in the Haunted Mansion who comes out of the painting shooting the gun at the other guy, except he's alot friendlier and more gracious and likes candy and flower and incense and disappears in the photo and then comes back with my face morphing into his with my glasses on. The nice Philipino nurse smiled at me in a rather frightened way and quickly left the room letting the IV does its job. I fell into a 12 hour sleep.

I awoke and was discharged. As I left, with two large cotton balls over the backs of my hands where the IV's were (the stigmatta?). I got in my car and asked Baba where I'm supposed to go now. He directed me to a small alechemical shop in Los Feliz called "The White Lotus". It was the exact place I was supposed to go. A lovely wiccan type bombshell sweetheart at the counter immediately took me into the back and offered me tea. She told me that her teacher had been with Sai Baba and that the owner of the store, who was in a session at the moment, would like to speak with me.

The owner, John, came out and I immediately felt he understood. My first question was the only question asked by a rational man.."why? Why is this happening?". John, who used to be a nuclear scientist before he walked away from it all to open this modest shop, smiled and said "because you invited it into your life". Bam! There it is. No hiding. I jumped into the rabbit hole eyes wide open and without a bungee cord.

And so, I have allowed Baba to do his Baba thing. It gets a little ridiculous when I'm watching TV and he is waving to me like an idiot out of the photograph. His big time afro making it very difficult to not thing of Huggybear. But, believe it or not, I think that's the point. There is a cosmic humor to this stuff that we better find funny or the funny farm will find us.

Liane, my dear friend and algae, has been unbelievably supportive and downright stoked about this stuff. She also claims that I have a new super light coming out of my face, courtesy of Baba or Everready. I'm just going along with the program. Made a shrine, flowers, candies, incenses, candles.

One devotee says that Baba has been known to come into people's lives as cats. How interesting that Inky dies and all heaven breaks loose.

Stay tuned my friend. I have just taken the big E-ticket to the next floor.

With much much love. Call me my brother. You can use the phone too if you feel like it. I'll hear you either way.

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

They didn't teach us about this in school.



I have never hesitated to write about my life on this blog. Perhaps one time only have I questioned the prudence of what I have said publicly in this forum, mostly regarding my feelings about work since my ego fears it needs a job. But what I am about to write here, while acceptable and welcome by me, may irreversibly change the relationships I have with certain people in my life. I recognize this fact but, at least for the moment, I am certainly not in charge of my life.

As many of you know, one week ago last Tuesday I was seated in the library at Hollywood High School when I was overwhelmed with a feeling of love and light. The progenitor of this experience was very clear to identify himself as Sathya Sai Baba, the Indian Avathar and Yogi. Since that time I have written quite extensively about phenomena which I have been experiencing and continue to experience dramatically.

Last Saturday evening I attended an evening ceremony at the Sai Baba Temple of Hollywood, an inauspicious dwelling located off Wilcox. The attendees were mostly of Indian extraction and, surprisingly to me, of Hispanic origin. There were two whites, myself and a young musician named Will. The Bhajans, or songs of devotion, were being led in Spanish, English and Hindi by a Latin man playing Mrdangam (a South Indian drum), and the owner of the home, a diminutive rather pixiesh man named Wilson. Surrounding us were huge photographs of Sai Baba on the walls. One photograph in particular was the central altar photograph which was the focus of the devotions and prayers. At one point the group got up and held aloft a flame in front of the photo illuminating it. Later on in the evening, I stopped and looked at the photograph more closely for several minutes. Baba's eyes were strange. There was something intensely strange about his eyes, and the photo in general. I wasn't quite sure what it was. At that moment, a very nice older Indian woman came up to me and said "it's like he's looking directly at you. He's looking directly into your soul and heart". The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

Before I left, Wilson gave me a beautiful photo of Sai Baba, poster sized, as well as two books to read and a wallet sized photo. I went home and immediately put the photo up on my wall, brought out candles and fruit and his books, and made a modest shrine/altar. It felt quite nice and very relaxed.

This is where things begin to get complicated. Last night I sat in front of the photograph, both with the candles lit and without but with electric lighting. The photo is Sai Baba from the waist up looking out in his orange robe, both hands held aloft towards the observer. I sat in front of the photo and felt a deep calm come over me. I also felt a hypnotic pull from the photo, something deeper than the external image it shows.

What happened next has changed my entire universe.

Within five minutes of focusing on the photo, both of his hands began to move. First the left hand, swaying minutely, then the right hand. Next his fingers began to wiggle, imperceptibly then very obviously. The hem of his garment near the right side of his hip began to flow. His left eyebrow raised. His eyes narrowed and his head moved briefly from side to side. His lips moved twice but did not appear to be saying anything specific. The eyeballs now moved like those mystery films where a person is standing behind the painting. Finally, an emanation of circular blue light emanated from his heart like a firework. It lasted a second and then faded. Writing these words now makes my heart beat faster and my mind spinning with total incredulity. At the time it was happening, I never felt afraid. On the contrary, I felt delighted, amazed. I laughed myself silly, giddy. What is this trickery? Did he get together with an animation company to Disney-fy the photo, like in the Haunted Mansion? Is the candlelight coupled with my twelve hour day causing me to space out here? What the motherfuck is going on people?

I meditated this morning in front of the photo. The movements were much more minute, but still prevalent. I left the house and went to breakfast. I am still processing the implications of this. Whether this is my own mind manifesting a kind of wishful hallucination at the psychic level, or actually Baba himself, I have yet to come to terms with. But obviously many many people, thousands to be exact, have experienced an alteration in their consciousness from this man. I am not alone in my being touched by a seemingly irrational, impossible alteration of time and space. There is absolutely no question in my mind that Baba himself is doing this. And I am directly part of this universal unveiling. The Avathar brings not only love, but a direct shattering of the conventional ideas of reality. The ego must be shattered to its core for the heart to shine through. I hope to God I am ready for this.

Om Shanti Om. Namaste. May all beings dwell in peace. May love guide our planet. May the heart shine through all illusions. Welcome Sathya Sai Baba into my heart.

Monday, February 05, 2007

miracles of time and space



Since I was contacted last Tuesday by Sai Baba telephathically, I have experienced numerous "miraculous" events. After I attended Bhajans on Saturday night, I realized that this was no ordinary saint. Here are some of the things I have witnessed in slightly less than a weeks time:

-Telephathic contact by intuitive presence,
-a series of synchronicities regarding running into people in a significant way,
-a feeling of extraordinary peace and clairty,
-finding the Home of the Hollywood Temple,
-experiencing his photographs as living and undulating presences,
-seeing Vibhuti (sacred ash) growing independently on photos, including my own,
-seeing a photograph of Baba with his eyes closed when the original photo shows his eyes open(no manipulation of any kind),
-smells of perfume in the air in my home (reported consistently by devotees when in Baba's presence or in spiritual communion with him),
-a large cloud off my balcony which formed into the shape of an "OM",
- direct contact with Baba and recognition of him knowing me personally.
-psychic manipulation of electronic equipment in my home, such as an answering machine turning itself on and off to my thoughts.
-other subtle forms of paranormal activity and elasticity of time and space.

When I read the literature I become aware that these are signature experiences related to Sai Baba that others, who have a relationship with him, have had happen to them. I do not doubt their authenticity, nor find a causal rational link to their ocurrences. They are permeations of time and space that the Avatar is expressing. I am deeply grateful for the insight to be able to see and be touched by them. In relationship with Sai Baba, one needs to suspend any context of rationality and allow the playfullness of true light and love to pass the veil of the mind. These are the reflections of the self.This is natural to the Avatar. If one stays in the rational mind and attempts to impart them to those who are not aware of him, ones sanity can be called into question. But I assure you, these are quite real events happening.

Thank you, oh my guru, for your presence in my heart. Thank you for allowing me to hear and see. Thank you for your ever present and eternal love for me personally and for the world. I hear you. We have met and continue to meet. I cherish the thought of being with you and bringing you into the world I enter. Already people have seen and felt your blossoming light emanating from me. Those who are ready to receive it, know it. This is what I have been looking for all of my life. Guide me, my joy, from the unreal to the real.

May peace and light follow you always and bathe us in your love.

Friday, February 02, 2007

higher resolution Inky photo



My dear friend Kathlyn Powell has been enhancing my old photo of Inky. Here is the higher resolution. Thank you Kathlyn, from the bottom of my heart.

Her Great Guruness, Liane Schirmer.



The avatar of light through the prism of the ruling class dictatorial orb of conciousness. Our lady of guada-lupe Velez. Her radiant smile shines bright through hypoglycemic laws of attraction meant to render ones heart full of protein. The let's-do-lunch love supreme mother of super concious avatar jr., Christopher. Together they transmit the rainbow spectrum of compassion through the latin themed revelation of fun. A saint!

Jesus Christ, the ascended master



The metaphysical christ that speaks to me of the heart. The christ who is resurrected and celestial, removed from the indignity of the cross. The risen master whose perfect circle of light guides and protects me. His aura is the music of the spheres made bliss by the eternal floating orb of being.

hear my heart oh master, lead my heart.



Oh my master. Thank you for revealing yourself to me when I was not seeking you. Thank you Christ for answering my prayers and revealing your love through your ordained minister of the heart. Thank you Sai Baba for your eternal smile, for entering my closed heart and bringing unconditional love. Thank you for taking the time to come to me personally. I am full of gratitude for your revelation and am indebted to you for your personal investment in my happiness and heart. My beingness is your ministry and entering my heart has been what I have always been waiting for. Praise God Sai Baba, praise the glory of the heart. May all beings be free.

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Ramana Maharshi Higher Power photo



When I construct my Higher Power, he is definitely one of the "faces" for me. One God, many many faces.

A Conversation with Sri Sathya Sai Baba

The following conversation between a devotee and Sai Baba took place in Prasanthi Nilayam many years ago and was first published in an early issue of the Sanathana Sarathi, the official ashram magazine.

Devotee: Swami! The world is very cruel to me.

Sai Baba: That is its nature. The purpose of the world is frustration; it has to engender need. When the need is strong enough, the individual seeks fulfilment.

Devotee: And fails!

Sai Baba: Only when he seeks fulfilment without! Within him, he can get it. The within is accessible always; it is ever responsible. There is pain only so long as attachment for outer forms remains. Ultimate relief from pain can come only with the loss of ego, the neutralisation of that which reacts to something as pain and something else as pleasure, whose memory, whose conditioning, helps to recognise the dualities of joy and grief.

Devotee: But the world, Swami?

Sai Baba: The world is pain. Expect nothing from the world but that. I willed the totality of your conditioned existence to be pain, in order to draw you to me.

Devotee: Which I can, at best, only hope to attain.

Sai Baba: God asks for neither hope nor despair. They are subject to relativity. Universal Being is beyond both hope and despair, both certainty and doubt. It knows no lingering in its conclusions. It is ever flowing, in all directions, and in none of them.

Devotee: What then shall be my direction?

Sai Baba: Take what works today for today. What works tomorrow for tomorrow. One day at a time, each day for itself, each moment for itself, without a past, without memory, without conclusions.

Devotee: Conclusions?

Sai Baba: Yes. Conclusions bind; they press on the mind. The newborn baby is not confined to conclusions. All conclusions enslave. Most men are slaves to the conclusions into which they have fallen.

Devotee: Does that mean I have to give up my practice of concentration?

Sai Baba: The question that bothers you is one of fixity. You tried to fix your thought and attention on a word and later on a form, but you discovered that nothing lasts, that everything has to change. But I tell you; awareness can remain, even when form subsides, even when the word melts away.

Devotee: I find it difficult to hold my attention on form or word.

Sai Baba: Because when you try to meditate, the very trial invites the success-failure conflict onto the scene. You say to yourself, it is good to meditate on this and not that, or to meditate on that is wrong or foolish. Practise choicelessness; no objective, no intention. Be yourself. Choose no particular form, for all are equally His. Choose no particular word or sound, for all are His.

Devotee: I am often tossed between contradictory beliefs.

Sai Baba: Contradictions are inevitable. It is the very nature of this world and of the mind. But you can choose, either to be buffeted endlessly by the apparent contradictions or to remain in the calm centre of the cyclone. This is the problem of all problems, the problem of peripheral or central being.

Devotee: The circumference or the centre, the rim or the hub of the wheel?

Sai Baba: Yes. The hub is calm, steady, unmoved. But the mind will be drawn along the spokes, the objective desires, to revolve over mud and stone, sand and thorns. It will not believe that it can get bliss from the centre, rather than from the circumference, without undergoing a rough journey over turbulent terrain.

Devotee: Ultimately, it means the conquest of the mind?

Sai Baba: Learn to let all the conflicts spawned by the mind play themselves out, and cancel each other out. Be the witness to the holocaust. The ultimate solution to the conflict is not decision or even choice, but passive being. Dare to remain inconclusive. See the endless quandaries of the mind as a divine leela, God's sport, as the natural function of the bundle of desires called mind. Do not believe in mind; do not rally to its assertions and appetites. Watch the mind from a distance; do not get involved in its tumblings and turnings. Then everything becomes insignificant. When everything recedes into meaninglessness, you are in the hub, in equanimity.

Devotee: Swami, you are the hub, the spokes and the rim.

Sai Baba: Do not be concerned with who I am! Concern yourself with who you are and how you can be ever aware of that truth. Do not be a willing captive of the endless stratagems of the mind. Abstain from all that draws you into its web. I will lead you, if you rely on me. The alternatives of the world will not bring you happiness, for the mind, which revels in alternatives, is but a will-of-the-wisp, flitting before your vision. I do not judge you for what is never yours, really. Your imperfection is no obstacle for me.

Devotee: I confess that I have not always observed the rules of conduct of the Sathya Sai Organisation.

Sai Baba: Your mind keeps asking for rules. But when you get the rules, you find you cannot keep them. Rules engender rigidity, they force. They do not bloom out of love or spread love. There is always a way of doing a thing without the strain of a rule. See how unperturbed I am with your restlessness! I live thus, so that I may afford a lesson for you to learn.

Devotee: I am restless, Swami, because I yearn for rest and do not get it.

Sai Baba: It is your reaction to restlessness that is bad, not the restlessness itself. Restlessness is only the rise and fall of a wave on the ocean that you are. Nothing matters, so long as the depths are secure. Success is not important: failure does not matter. The river of eternity is flowing ever into the ocean of the Supreme Will.

Devotee: How long am I to be torn apart from that Supreme Will?

Sai Baba: You are a fraction of that Supreme Will. That is why you are afflicted with the hunger to seek It and to merge in It and to find fulfilment and bliss thereby. Turning to the world for solace and sustenance to appease that hunger has been tried by countless generations, including your own, but the hunger is gnawing still.

Devotee: What then is the proper reaction to the attractions of the world?

Sai Baba: Let go. Don't cling. Be still. Establish yourself in the homelessness of the mind; physical homelessness will not earn the victory. There are many spiritual aspirants still caught in the coils of greed, envy, pride and power seeking. They have not escaped from their homes. They have built prisons around themselves. I describe homelessness of the mind as mind abiding nowhere.

Devotee: And wandering everywhere?

Sai Baba: Do not exclude anything. Be the witness of everything. The exclusive cannot endure. God is all. Your restlessness came from exclusion, the pressure exerted by the excluded into the area from which it was excluded. All is God; how can you push God out of His Domain? Your mind concludes that the cause for the restlessness is whatever concerns it at the time. The actual cause is not that. You limit God by your assumptions, hence the restlessness. For you too are divine, and your reality protests against that limitation.

Devotee: Swami! Sometimes I feel so sad that I am so strange, so different in habits from the rest of those that come to you for succour.

Sai Baba: If your path contrasts entirely with those around you, believe that it is my will for you. Every way is my way and ways seemingly indirect may be the most direct for some spiritual seekers. For me there are no impossible cases, no incorrigible cases. Practise choicelessness as hitherto prescribed. Choicelessness is constant contentment.

Questioner: Swami, I am addicted to tea drinking, which hurts me. How can I stop this practice?

Sai Baba: Heaven is not refused to those who drink tea! A rajasic person is rendered hyperactive by tea, but to an invalid it is a welcome lift. But do not adore tea as the only reality. Now with regard to these habits that have gripped you, there are two methods by which you can discard them. The first is deprivation, denial. This can yield only temporary success. When one's determination relaxes, the habit reasserts itself and it becomes difficult to resist. The second method is to become so absorbed in something far more pleasing that the habit falls off by itself. Remember, what is transient is not important. What is important is eternal. My prescriptions are varied; they differ from person to person, from stage to stage, even in the case of the same person. All prescriptions work. Let people come to me through Bhajan, through Japa, through Meditation, through Mantras, through Tantra or Seva ­ as I ordain. Every one will come to me; everyone has to come to me. There are no exceptions.

Devotee: We rely on your grace Swami, we yearn for it. Make us aware of it.

Sai Baba: I never asked you to earn me. I want only that you should need me. Your path is not one of merit. Bring the recurring desires of your mind to me, every time they emerge. They cannot shock me, for I willed them! Bring me your confusion, your fear, your craving, your anxiety, your inability to love the world, your hesitation to serve, your jealousy, all the deficiencies that defy your spiritual disciplines.

Devotee: How are we to do seva if we feel the urge to do so? What if the urge is absent?

Sai Baba: There are many ways to serve the world. You can serve, if not actively, at least by your serenity. Everyone need not do all things. Your Western heritage reveres active work. But if your being tends towards serenity and solitude, take it as the best. Do not be sorry for it. Only a small minority can delight in serenity and remain still. God has willed it so, otherwise, how could the world function? If stillness is your destiny, dare to be so. If you are a recluse, be a recluse, but a recluse with me. You may not be a saint, but you can peacefully be nothing. Let each be as he is, remembering, however, his source and his reality. None is as he is but for me.

Devotee: I have yet much to learn.

Sai Baba: You wish to learn from me. Well, if you are preoccupied by the body's needs, by the arrangements for its travelling, its accommodation and the food it demands, time will fly. That student learns best and fastest who does not spend his time constantly shifting from one classroom to the next. You will learn everything worth knowing in my classroom. I will expose you to all states of being, so that you may learn to rest in me in all of them. There are no insurmountable obstacles to me; there are no pre-requisites for me. I am unconditional.

Devotee: But you are absent so often and away for so long at your headquarters.

Sai Baba: Always, at every time, at every place, I am where you need me. All things without are subject to the limitation of time and space, to the material laws of Nature. My outer form is no exception! If you would perceive my physical form, it must come within the range of your gaze, so position yourself so that you can see it. And even then, it may not gaze at you. But, I am omnipresent! The limitations of the body and the outer senses do not hold for the inner vision. Therein, you can see me at any time and any place and receive darshan. The outer vision is purposely insufficient, instantaneous, transitory, casual, so that you may crave for and accomplish the inner darshan. If I have separated you from my physical image off and on, it was only to bring you to me and to establish my presence within you. That alone will replenish you and refresh you, I know. None of my absences was a rejection or rebuke. So far as you are concerned, I intended them all. And, always, I willed that you return to me.

I know him in my heart



His image came to me this morning, golden smile and love supreme. He is the mask of the beyond. His is the Christ concsciousness made manifest in joy and light. His presence has healed my heart today. Compassion and mercy called him to me and offers the freedom of surrender. Thank you, my loving master. Blessings to all beings!

Sai Baba administering Vibhuti



The venerable Sai Baba producing Vibhuti from his hands. One can receive Vibhuti by googling it online. It is known to have miraculous healing powers.