A Reason to Live

 

A Wonder-full Beginning

 

There I was as a young boy brought for school vacation, and even before, to the country and there 'kidnaped' by the French Canadian farmers and made into one of them. You know how I see it now, how they made me into one of them? Well, they never once told me what to do and never bothered to tell me right from wrong. As a matter of fact they hardly ever talked to me but tolerated me COMPLETELY and let me hang around and watch, and in their own subtle way they in fact ENCOURAGED me to be around. I somehow understood that the only requirement on my part was that I should not get into the way of either farmer, animals or what few machines there were around, and that they didn't really have to tell me because it was fair and obvious.

 

How I loved them and their work and how they always left me with the feeling of being their 'favorite son'. How did they manage all of that so perfectly and with hardly any words? How, I wonder – a smile on their faces, that I remember, and I guess what we would now call love. So, when we were back in the city, say at school, I was there but never quite there, never quite believing or more particularly FEELING that it, that is city life and school, were particularly important or more particularly 'real'. Two months in the country had a hundred times more weight than the other ten months in the city. 

 

THANK you my friends, from the bottom of my remembering heart, I thank you, and I thank you again.

   

 

 

 

'Seek and ye shall find' it had been said a couple of thousand years ago and sure as hell it turned out to be true. I'm back in Jerusalem in the year 1970, this time convinced that should be as good a place as any to make contact with a Sufi school. How, where, who and when were all unanswerable that were dancing around and in me like little elves in a fairytale, as I was somewhat less than consciously also pursuing a multiple of interests and appetites set free by virtue of my recent retirement from the printing and advertising business.

 

The word 'seeker' was not even in my vocabulary, however the subtleties of shifting psychological tendencies and the evidences of essential wisdom had always been extremely attractive to me. In retrospect I could list quite a number of articulated schools of thought that occupied my interest between the ages of nineteen and thirty-five, at which point I set out with a more or less conscious intention to hunt down the most serious of the serious, that by this time I was convinced existed in some full blown purity in the environs of the Middle East. I set out with good and simple intentions, though not without a significant bag of habits and conditioning acquired over the three and a half decades of my, by then, accomplished life ambitions.

 

There are Sufis and there are Sufi schools. A  Sufi, in himself, is also a 'school' in as much as he is always focused on learning /knowledge/understanding, but he is not necessarily teaching in what might be suspected or recognized as a school in the more conventional sense of the term.

 

The whole concept of 'organized' Sufi schools has always been a matter of high curiosity and speculation both for prospective students as well as miscellaneous self-declared guardians of 'public morals'. Any school at any level is meant to influence a change of some kind, and as the aim of a Sufi school can only be fully understood by an accomplished Sufi, there is inevitably a great deal of random speculation, confusion and not an insignificant amount of suspicion directed at even the most legitimate manifestations pursuant of the Truth and its exposure. Inertia supports and even defends the status quo and as a result all courageous endeavors inevitably encounter an infinite variety of mechanically empowered resistance. 'Every action causes an equal and opposite reaction.' For these and other reasons, Sufi schools remain hard to see and even harder to accept. To relate to effectively, again, is harder still for those that are fortunate enough to meet up in life with such an opportunity. The 'find' in 'seek and ye shall find,' is a school. Then one must be able to study and work in accordance with the 'rules' of that school. We will try to lay out a variety of hints and experiences for potentially serious parties. May the Beneficent Powers that Be, find our intentions worthy of their blessing and support.

 

A simple or then again not so simple clarification is in order at this point. The word 'Sufi' is being used here in the widest possible sense of the term and would cover as well that which is seriously suspected to stand behind what is known of the Gnostic tradition as well as the essential thrust of the mutually inclusive esoteric level of all major religions.

 

The Truth that is One in Essence and as if many in manifestation can only be approached in a healthy and sane manner within the range of influence of 'Knowers and Exemplifiers of the Truth', sometimes known under such names as 'The Friends of Allah', 'Tzadikim', etc. We choose the 'Sufi' designation as the most unabashed and un-encumbered tradition aspiring to these noble aims. Their hopes and their efforts are directed at refinement and balance through applied Knowledge, for a connection and understanding of Higher Human Faculties that are in fact the birthright of humankind.

 

Schools exist. Seek and ye shall find.

                  

 

 

In 1959, at the tender age of thirty three, Fidel Castro took control of Cuba after his revolutionary band of mountain fighters finally overthrew the tyrant Batista. I had visited Batista's Cuba, in the early 50's, at the tender age of nineteen in the company of Richard, an ex-Navy pilot who had fought in Korea and was about to be pensioned-off by the U.S. military at the age of thirty-five. We had met on a small beach in Miami when I was down south visiting my parents one winter. Richard was a good looking red haired gentleman, easy going and pleasant to be with. During the short flight from Miami to Havana the conversation was somehow turned to the question of one's sensitivity in the area of the anus. 'When you take a shower', he inquired, 'doesn't it feel good when you stick your finger up your rear-end?' 'Not particularly,' I told him. Conversation closed.

 

We did the rounds of the Mafioso run massive glass domed gambling casinos and the crummy though also massive whore houses. Richard watched, I played. He was good company. I in all innocence suspected nothing; he never made a pass. Richard lived with his mother on Long Island some forty minutes out of Manhattan where I visited him a few times. One day on a tour of Coney Island we met up with a number of his friends who could not resist commenting on the fine asses of any tight-pant's soldier that walked by. Richard could not manage to hush them, to his obvious embarrassment. I began to get the picture. At that time I was into my second year of running a small Letter Shop in Montreal that had been turned over to me by my family.

 

So, Castro was then about twenty-six, Richard was nearing thirty-five and I was nineteen. The world was about to open up with all its challenges and wonders.     

 

Al Firentino was around thirty and at that time advertising manager of Alexander Murray Co. Ltd., a very large building materials manufacturing company with outlets across Canada. I was then president, sales manager, office manager, stamp licker and chief bottle washer of Commercial Letter Service Co. Ltd., and Alexander Murray was one of my customers.

 

Al Firentino was involved in General Semantics and through him I became interested, very interested. What made it such a hot issue is hard to say. We'll look into it now. A Russian by the name of Korzybski had authored a book called 'Science and Sanity' that was considered the definitive text, though too complex or unavailable to my eyes at that time. Wendell Johnson had written a great book on the subject by  the name of  'People in Quandaries'.  Alan Watts had his first published work out under the title of 'The Wisdom of Insecurity' that was a gem and he was then also considered to be in the field of General Semantics.

 

I got involved as they say, 'hook, line and sinker.' Exciting, fascinating, invigorating. It investigated Thought, it investigated Emotion, and dealt with the interaction of these elements as they connected through Words.

            

In the same period, though they did not know each other, we had another customer, a Jewish fellow in his early forties with a wife and a few children and running his father-in-law's rather large and successful manufacturing business. He turned out, to my surprise and delight, to have an enthusiastic involvement with General Semantics. He eventually left his high paying job, went back to University, got a degree in Social Work and went out into that field. His father-in-law could not understand. He had a few more children, his wife went to work, they grew very poor, he looked terrible. I lost touch. As I look back now I think, 'If he had in mind building a Soul, none of all of that could have done him any  harm.'

      

General Semantics energized me for years, possibly to date, even as I found myself stroking my way through other pools, the next of which turned out to be Religion.

 

 

 

 

Nineteen years old and I didn't mind getting my hands dirty, cleaning a printing press, painting the walls, answering the telephone or working my way floor by long floor through large office buildings making cold calls in pursuit of new customers. By the time I reached twenty-one this small business had not exactly taken-off but was making steady and profitable progress. I was in full bloom, learning more and worrying less as each day passed.       

 

Handsome and well built brute that I was, my sense of society nevertheless imposed a humility as my childhood friends were then outdoing each other at university busy becoming doctors and lawyers or preparing themselves to elevate their daddy's already large business or striking out for their own cool million. I was running a seven man show, not terribly impressive, had but a high school leaving certificate, not at all impressive, an ordinary but well liked father, though a very impressive mother who fit most elegantly into Montreal Jewish community's 'crème de la crème'.  Modesty yes, but also a hint of social position.

 

And then they came to call. God help me, I really did not catch what was going on, but I sure as hell got to dislike it. They wanted me as their son-in-law. Can you beat that? The big and powerful, the educated/sophisticated, the ones with the BIG businesses, some of whom had their eye on me through childhood. They had daughters, they had businesses, they had prestige, they liked me, they wanted me. I was alive, I was a self-starter – they  WANTED  ME.

 

That was all right, I liked the girls and was always ready to meet a new one. But I knew what I liked and there wasn't nobody that could sell me something different. Not for all the tea in China as they say. Just a few stories of this nature and then one too many. That gentleman that I had known so long, that I had liked and respected so much; that president of that fine Temple, that nation-wide-business-man, that decorated ex-army officer. That gentleman wanted ME and could not swallow my 'thanks, but no thanks'. He tried everything and ended off not able to say hello when passing me on the street. He was 'hurt'. I was shocked. I had, without much thinking about it, respected him. I thought this cannot be, a man must have more dignity then this. This cannot be all.

 

T'was then just about that I wrote away for a little booklet titled 'Father Jones talks to Mr. Smith', as advertised in the newspaper by the Catholic fraternal organization, Knights of Columbus. Read it thoroughly on a two week winter vacation in Florida. Very interesting. Talked about the meaning of life. The 'Jesus' reference that kept popping up was a little disturbing to my then tenderly conditioned Jewish eyes, but none the less it struck a chord, a meaning larger than the life I had known, and it sounded more than logical.

 

One thing led to another and I found myself hunting down the basic Jewish perspective on this issue of 'meaning'. Conservative Rabbi of high class synagogue that was 'ours' was left with his mouth hanging open in face of my inquiry. Simple question: 'What does Judaism say the meaning of life is, what are we here for?' The Russian born doctor of philosophy from the University of Moscow and a Lubavitcher Hassid met my question with a huge smile. I liked his answers, I liked his family and friends, I liked the Yeshiva with its humid aroma, the serious mood and friendly faces, the intensity of study and the prayer, the solemn, joyful, noncompromised, faithful, loving prayer. They were serious, they were dignified, their meaning was clear. They did not want to buy me! Three glorious years were spent with them until, god knows how, god knows why, I stopped believing in God. It happened in my second year of psychoanalysis.

 

 

 

The thought occurs at this point that a book resulting from this material might be called 'LAYERS'. To go back and back again to each section for a touch from another angle. Much more could be elaborated.

 

My father would confide in me, bit by bit, material from his life that he would not dare to sum-up in his own consciousness. One fine day he dumped on me a mass of gory details pointedly descriptive of his wife's, my mother's, 'sexual deviations'. It struck me as extremely sick, with my suspicion falling almost exclusively on his imagination rather than her suspected indiscretions. Very sick indeed it appeared. Knowing precious little about the field of psychiatry other than the tantalizing reports one reads in the newspapers, I went looking for a psychiatrist for him. I managed to locate and meet with Dr. Campbell the head psychiatrist and psychoanalyst at the world renowned Montreal Allen Memorial Hospital, the same institution incidentally that housed the research facilities of Dr. Wilder Penfield, the Nobel-prize winning neurosurgeon. I have always been satisfied with the best. Dr. Campbell agreed to see my father, my father agreed to see him and returned from their first and only meeting with the following comment: 'That man asked me questions that I would not tell anyone about.' I responded not; the limitations were clear. Then a whole series of personal reflection began to flow through me. What about me, thought I, could psychoanalysis be of benefit to me? In short, I reasoned that in spite of a significant number of obvious advantages such as good looks, good health, good business, good social life and a relatively free and independent nature, I could not really say that I was happy. When I was last 'really happy', I could not establish. I was not overly unhappy, but still. Back to Dr. Campbell I went and asked him whether Analysis was appropriate for yours truly. A few tests in their basement laboratory and the answer was yes. I was pleased, it felt like a revolutionary step, a move into the depths and the mystery of the mind. Dr. Campbell's schedule excluded the possibility of him personally working with me but made arrangements for another analyst. Three times a week, and after three years of 'free association', I declared myself clear and finished with the process and left flying higher than a kite. Thank you gentlemen, Freud was not for nothing.

 

By this time I must be around twenty-seven and bloody Castro must be running Cuba. So much for pride.

 

 

 

As could be expected, the psychoanalysis brought out a whole lot (of shit). The important exposures were in the area of subtle misconceptions around 'what was what and who was who'. It became obvious for example, that people were in the habit of representing issues in a form convenient to their own wants, fears and ambitions. That might seem obvious to most people, especially when they consider it in a written statement – but in living dynamic terms it is amazing how an understanding of this inevitability gets twisted into some other, as if, explanation.

 

My father's main claim to fame was his expertise in the Stock Market. He had everyone sold on it. It was his topic of conversation. Although he lived modestly, most people were convinced that he was super rich. I knew otherwise, however subconsciously accepted his 'genius' in this area. As a conservative and long term investor he rode the waves of a growing and inflationary economy that took-off after the Great Depression of 1929. Good sense, though not exactly genius. To accept one's father as some kind of a genius king has a definite effect on one's own self image and sense of volition. Enough said.

 

My brother-in-law, who by the end of my some five years of solo flight had been foisted on me as a partner, had a personality aspect that could best be described as a 'numbers junkie'. Numbers are most excitingly represented within our society by paper pieces called 'money'. He had a university degree in accounting and a compulsive drive to secure a million or more, and I found myself riding shot-gun on what approximated a Wells Fargo stagecoach.

 

Just for the record, let there be no suggestion of complaint in the above examples. 

 

      

I came out of psychoanalysis, as in the expression of today, with clear emphasis on my own 'agenda'. It took some years of trial and error to understand the weakness and vulnerability inherent within the self-imposed limitations of social and family 'morality', and especially how others psyche-out this aspect in you and adopt it to their own advantage. To avoid a possible serious misunderstanding let me state that 'morality', even with its obvious subjective nature, is not something to reject, but rather something to define and redefine. This issue, if taken to the end, brings one to the most immense issue of issues - the issue of Real Conscience, sometimes referred to as 'God's representative on Earth'.

 

During my orthodox religious period I had taken a keen interest in the new State of Israel. It represented pioneering, God inspired intelligence and righteousness, Holy Land, freedom of expression and activity, and last but not least: 'A Light unto the Nations'. I had lived my childhood under the shadow of Hitler and my teens with the fully exposed details and incomprehensibility of the Holocaust. Something in me demanded that I get to the bottom of the 'Jewish Question', and the Land of Israel drew me in like a cosmic magnet. Six weeks in 1955 at the age of twenty-one was a 'get to know you' visit; six months at the age of twenty-three was a 'get to know you well' visit. After that, every two years I was on a plane to Jerusalem; as a lover returns to his beloved.

 

My 'agenda' was to gain the experience and strength (money in a certain amount appeared a prerequisite at the time) to allow a sustainable entry into that 'wild-west' middle-eastern society. That is what we geared-up to accomplish. It took seventeen years after the decision before we found ourself back in Jerusalem with an open schedule and a heart full of, we assumed, matured ambition.

 

By the age of thirty I was quite feeling myself as a viable social and even economic entity. Our, by then, advertising and printing business was possibly the best in its field in the city of Montreal, making quite outstanding profits which allowed both substantial savings and what would be termed today an elaborate 'Yuppie' life style. However, it then dawned on me that even with an accelerated growth pattern of existing business activities, the potential capital appreciation over the next ten years would not be 'worth the candle'. I might double my capital but that capital invested in equities, yielding an average of five-percent, would not increase my 'retirement income' sufficiently to effect a significant difference. I would also by then, be forty. In other words if I wanted 'more' for more flexibility, I should find a new way to make a bundle. I chose to take a look at the Real Estate field.

 

I was president of a company with cash reserves and a 'triple A' credit rating of long standing. I had personal liquid reserves and extensive experience within the professional business community. That all added up to a significant borrowing capacity. I started to look for land in areas of likely expansion and to familiarize myself with building strategies for accelerated profits. If, already, we were to spend more years in the money making business then at least let's make a profit that would make a real difference, let's say a few million dollars. I wanted 'out', I wanted freedom, I didn't want to have to come back.

 

A year of investigation resulted in me being the proud possessor of five prime acres of land on a small hill smack in the middle of Stowe Vermont, the Ski Capitol of the Eastern United States, and in pursuit of the best creative architects for the design of vacation condominium apartments. One of the Watson brothers of the founding family of IBM had recently retired and purchased a mountain complex in Jacksonville Vermont twenty miles or so from Stowe and was in the process of building a new village. His architects were from the nearby capitol city of Burlington. They drew up the first sketches for my projected project. I didn't like it. Moshe Safdie, the Israeli high flying architect then working out of Montreal, was in the midst of constructing his revolutionary-concepted on-sight pre-fab'd apartments called Habitat as part and parcel of the 1967 Expo World's Fair. He came down to see the Vermont property with me. We discussed various possibilities but did not go any further.

 

In the meantime I rented for the winter an apartment in Sugarbush Vermont, a high class ski resort in the same general area, in order to get the feeling of as many aspects as I could in connection with such a development. 

 

One weekend, a girlfriend who was working in the advertising business in New York City came up to Vermont to spend a short vacation with me and happened along with the recent issue of LOOK magazine that had a four page spread showing pictures of some magnificent housing, designed and built by some recent Yale architectural graduates. Two or three boys who had graduated top of their class in design had forsaken the usual paths and had purchased a mountain near Warren Vermont and were busy constructing buildings of revolutionary design. They lived within twenty miles of the Sugarbush apartment where the LOOK magazine had been placed in my hands and within three hours of viewing the article I had not only reached them by telephone but we were sitting together discussing our mutual interests. The start of a dynamic relationship.

 

First, an additional property with an old farm house was purchased. The land on which the house stood bordered the main street of Stowe on one side and my original five acres on the other side giving a direct access to the town center rather than by the original side road. It was calculated that the old house renovated and split into two apartments would amortize itself as rental units and thereby supply a more advantageous access to the main property without incurring any real cost. We did a magnificent job on that house, details of which we shall not go into here although the work was written up in a number of prominent architectural magazines of the day.

 

We then moved on to our main consideration of designing and building an apartment complex. The first aspect that became obvious was the fact that the high cost of construction as generally practiced appeared twice as high as need be were intelligent modern industrial means employed. We decided that we would conduct a research and development program in advance of anything further to investigate all possible angles in pursuit of a new building system; economically feasible, uniquely designed, factory produced and a giant step forward relative to the archaic methods then in use and unchanged over decades and more, America's most primitive and un-advanced industry. The research project expanded our awareness to encompass the total inadequacy of the housing situation worldwide. The horror of a situation opened up before our eyes. We went to work.

 

One Christmas or one birthday, one of the architects presented me with a copy of the book 'Meetings with Remarkable Men' by G. I. Gurdjieff. I had no idea who the author was but it was more than interesting. The jacket of the book listed other books by the same author and also those of a certain P. D. Ouspensky. I purchased Ouspensky's 'In Search of the Miraculous', all of which seemed quite strange and foreign, and managed to get through not much more than the first hundred pages. Though unrecognized by me at the time new doors within my psyche were beginning to open. More such material was to come my way along with individuals of a similar bend.

 

 

 

 

Commercial Letter and Litho Inc., as it was then known, was beginning to dry-up for me. The employees went into revolt, unable any longer to tolerate the pressure and insensitivity of my partner/ brother-in-law, and started to organize a trade union. A full year of nasty negotiations. I lost any taste for any of the old activities. I could not bear to take another customer 'to dinner'. I could not get myself to sit through another yearly meeting with auditors budgeting for the coming twelve months. I could not again review a customer list of three to four hundred deciding who or who not was to receive this or that as a Christmas gift. The petty or pushy clients I shuffled off to my assistant. In short I had had it. I had been at it for eighteen years. I tried to activate the Buy/Sell agreement that had been drawn up with my brother-in-law some fifteen years before. He no longer liked its terms. We fought for a year with the benevolent assistance of our lawyers. War.

 

At one stage in this cat and mouse game the frustration reached such a level that I announced my departure for a three week vacation. Flew off to my first visit in northern California. 

 

The first week was spent with an old friend who was doing post-doctoral work at Berkley University. Though not exactly pot-heads we spent most of the week sitting atop a mountain overlooking San Francisco Bay smoking grass, listening to the crickets and talking about every which thing. Then I found myself at a Japanese run Zen Buddhist monastery at Tassajara Springs, being initiated into Za-Zen meditation and experiencing 'highs' (in fact clarity) far exceeding anything that grass had accomplished in my experiments up to date. This was the end of the famous sixties. I had missed the 'hippy' stage but I did read/study the classics of the day. Timothy Leary's 'The Psychedelic Experience and the Tibetan Book of the Dead', Aldous Huxley's 'Doors of Perception', Alan Watts' 'The Glorious Cosmology' etc. I had until then taken nothing stronger than grass but had had some extraordinary experiences /openings with it the previous winter in Vermont. I began to write profusely for the first time in my life. Zen meditation topped it all.

 

Here at the Zen Monastery, Krishnamurti entered my life. One evening, walking with some new found friends along the stone embankment of the wide gently flowing stream that ran the length of a lush valley/oasis of this Shangri-la on the edge of the California Desert after a moon light skinny-dip, we came across the simple stone huts of the student Zen monks. Entered one's room to find a tall shaven headed quiet Brooklyn boy in his middle twenties reading a book by the light of an oil lantern. 'What is it,' I asked him. 'Best book I ever read in my life,' he said. I took out my pen and wrote down the title: 'Freedom from the Known' by Krishnamurti. Purchased my first copy in Montreal on my return. Within one month I purchased another ten copies and distributed them among friends. Could not believe anyone could read that book and continue to live his or her life in the same manner as before. Found out that I was wrong. They could. They did. Not me, I was never the same again. There I was again only more so than the exit from psychoanalysis, 'off and flying'.

 

From Tassajara Springs I progressed to Esalen Institute in the Big Sur area for an extraordinary week at this, then fine and soon to be famous Growth Center. This was my third and last week in California. Large estate overlooking the Pacific Ocean, accommodating in the vicinity of two hundred participants. Large choice of workshops and lectures. I signed up for two programs. One was a dance workshop directed by one of New York's most famous directresses of a dance company/school. The exercise that I remember most is the one in which she had us lying 'dead' on the floor with instruction not to move until the body demanded it and then only in the manner and to the degree that the body itself indicated. It was very effective in exposing/ demonstrating the intuitive response of what we would now recognize as the 'moving center' brain. This description is but a hint of her method. The 'old lady', most probably in her sixties, had the grace and the firmness of one in their twenties. All in all a subtle experience. I also sat in on lectures by a man called Joseph Campbell, a top academic author/ authority in the field of metaphysics. After one of his lectures he invited me to join him for a visit to a functioning Encounter Group that he had been invited to witness. I went with him. Thirty or more people in a 'horse-shoe', sitting on the floor of a large auditorium. One half hour of some amazing reactions on my part. Example: man at far side of room is 'taking-off' verbally at a woman on the other side. "You're a bitch, I can see it, just LOOK how you responded to THAT. I got your number the moment I saw you – etc. etc. etc!" I listened in amazement. I found myself understanding and agreeing with everything that he said. I'd been in the room for no more than ten minutes. Then the lady took-off on the 'gentleman': "You macho son-of-a-bitch (or something to that effect), you don't know what you are talking about, you should only SEE yourself, etc. etc. etc!" Again I felt that she was right-on, found myself nodding inside. I caught my reactions, my suggestibility came up and hit me square in the face. 

 

Our friend Mr. Campbell also managed to tell me that he was an old friend of Alan Watts, and that Alan Watts had written, my by then most favorite book, 'The Wisdom of Insecurity' in a period of total collapse just after (1) his wife had left him, (2) he had been fired from his job at the university, (3) he was terribly sick, and (4) had absolutely no money. His book had kept me going for in excess of fifteen years. So there you are. 

 

The food there was vegetarian and good, not unlike Tassajara. The Hot Tubs were full of bubbling sulphur water and naked bodies of all ages and sexes in the hot sun of the day or a moonlit night, overlooking, on a cliff, the mighty Pacific. Nude massage by nude masseurs of the opposite sex; fresh, deep and unseductive. 

 

One week at Esalen Institute, my third week in California, the end of the sixties, in the midst of my final days negotiating myself out of the business world, and as it turned out, on my way to the 'rest of the world'. As the Moslems say: 'God is great. '

 

 

 

We interrupt these writings on this the nineteenth of August 1992, for a close look at some intense local happenings. Klil, a New Age (as if) community of some fourteen years, in the Western Galilee.

 

Many here have sought for the 'higher', many for the 'more organic'. Farmers, healers, the 'religious', mostly Jewish with a scattering of other persuasions. The writers and the painters, the smokers and the 'esoterics', the mediators and the yellers – Lovers few.

      

Where is God and Truth now? 

 

Who cares? 

 

The confusion is spread over all the issues, both 'life' and spiritual. All this taken as a 'given'. Each one struggling, on one hand merely attempting to survive, mentally, emotionally or physically, others in one or another extreme delusion of assumed superiority are still attempting to navigate their own cruise ship.

      

Politics concerning the finalizing of the village charter is proving very contentious. Suspicion engulfed in paranoia. Many accusing one or more others of lying. They see cheats and manipulators wherever they look, when they don't see fools.

 

They of course still have no idea of who they are essentially or otherwise and are beginning to feel the terror of this blindness. Why they are where they are or how in the hell they got there or just what were they thinking as they were deciding to go there, is equally unclear.

      

The State means little to them by now. Little that is clear that is. The community is also somewhere where they have but found themselves, a little bit anyway. Their spouses and children are becoming an increasing mystery, resulting in much pain. They are now left with themselves, whatever that is destined to be.

 

The next part of this story must take a new form. Who said what and under what conditions, would start to become clumsy and redundant as the plot thickens.

      

After selling my interests in the Printing and Advertising business, my net worth, including Investments and Real Estate totaled approximately four million ('09 US $). I placed all negotiables in the safe keeping of a Swiss bank, the authority to trade in the hands of a reliable Wall Street Investment firm. I would get a report every three months.

 

I've proved my point, too much detail. The money was there, I didn't have to think about it. Then came Optor Research and Development for modular housing system. Into 'Meaning', out of dollar fixation. Money for USE. What IS useful? Here we go!

 

Here we go

into the wild blue yonder...

 

 

 

Here I go again 

I hear the trumpets blow again 

all aglow again 

taking a chance on love.

 

 

The freedom of course was always there, it was just that I had been carrying so much baggage.

 

 

By the age of thirty-five 

had much money and much pride 

took ten years to get rid of it 

now I think I'll have a fit.                                                                                

 

 

 

 

I became clearly and positively aware of the obvious – other than what I knew well, predominantly my business experience, I knew hardly at all. So many corners of life, such a variety of activities that man was involved in; so many types of people within differing cultures.

 

The Optor building system was researched, designed, detailed, costed and packaged ready for investment/investor consideration. A unique combination of geometrically formed steel tubing as its skeleton, with factory fabricated modular components; all of which could be rapidly erected on-site, with unskilled labor. George Romley, the ex-CEO of American Motors, then in Washington as head of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), had recently initiated 'Operation Breakthrough'. Our program, coincidentally, matched their aims and objectives. After participating in briefing sessions in Washington we submitted our plans as part of an open competition. At the same time I worked the Wall Street financial market /Investment banks in New York City in pursuit of capital in order to build a prototype structure. In Washington, Operation Breakthrough eventually drowned in the bureaucracy and in New York the bottom fell out of the stock market in the major disruption of 1969. Optor never got built, but we did get to witness the inner workings of Government and Industry that would otherwise have remained an area of little more than imagination. We had dined with Romley in Washington, Zeckendorf in New York and eventually Buckminister Fuller in Jerusalem. Learning was going on. Only time would tell to what end.

 

I lived for one year at my recently renovated farm house in Stowe Vermont, and enrolled in an adult degree program at Goddard College some thirty miles away. This was a 'progressive' institution, run according to the principles of John Dewey. Two weeks every six months on campus and the rest of the time doing independent work. I started to write under the eye of some of their language 'professionals'. One term producing poetry and then on to an autobiographical draft of all the material that I could conjure up pertaining to my life until that time. I managed to reach the age of eighteen before the inspiration waned. Started the autobiographical material in Vermont and continued in Jerusalem – one year of writing three or four hours each morning, attempting to put down on paper everything that I knew and could remember.

 

By the end of this period I was convinced that I did not need the college any more, but as the unexpected prospect of receiving a B.A. degree in a relatively short period materialized, I found myself in a dilemma of sorts. I had gone to the college in order to expose myself to their range of information and expertise. I had then seen enough, most grateful, I had gotten what I had come for. Now with the prospect of receiving a 'degree', with only the necessity of spending slightly more than a year working under their auspices, and trying to evaluate the possible advantages in that, I was left with a lot of uncertainty. I went back to resolve the dilemma. What was education for? What were the general aims? What were the results? I enrolled for a six month period to check it out.

 

Bought a stack of recommended books dealing with the question of education, from many sides. Books by educators and sociologists, evaluating the whole process of American Education in terms of its aims, methods and results. Progressive and experimental efforts past and present. Theory and practice. Spent some three months reading, and then went out into the 'field'. Visited and sat in on classes of all kinds in Montreal and New York – Elementary Schools, High Schools, Head Start Programs, Parochial Schools, Ghetto Schools, Open Classroom Schools, Teachers College etc. Got the picture. A mix and a mess for the most part. The 'experts' know it. It seems that there is little to be done. Mankind in the western world is being stuffed with all kinds of information, most of which is forgotten within a very short time, and all adding up to 'no one knows exactly what'. I had seen enough. I would continue in the meantime on my own. Back to Jerusalem.

 

 

 

I landed in Jerusalem as a resident of a mixed community of working class Ladino speaking Jews originating from Spain, a scattering of foreign and local artists, and hash smoking, back-packing, renegade travelers. The community of Yamin Moshe was of stone houses on the terraced slopes of Kidron valley, between east and west Jerusalem, facing the towering walls of the Old City. At a distance of some forty miles east, the corner of the Dead Sea could be seen. Each and every person encountered was a fascinating world in themselves.

      

I was writing every morning and being cultivated and seduced intermittently by a multitude of inquisitive and ambitious 'new age' artistic egoists into everything imaginable. There we experimented with LSD for the first time, experiencing a decade of exposure within a twelve hour period. People write complete books on a day's experience such as that. Jonnie and Jonathan visited from California on the instructions of their teacher Sufi Sam for some shoulder rubbing with local Arab Sufis. Jonathan, on his first trip, spent most of his time in a secret retreat on the Mount of Olives. We were to meet up again on my return from India for a solitary stay in a Bedouin tent in the Judean Desert half way between Jerusalem and Jericho. Through Jonathan and friends of Sufi Sam we encountered and were hosted by a number of the Friends of Allah, both to our pleasure and not infrequent confusion. Krishnamurti's 'Freedom from the Known' was still my bible and I was more or less moving from my best sense of smell.

 

A two month trip to the Greek Islands materialized,  with an English girl that we had just met at Ali's souvenir shop in the Old City and an Australian girlfriend who was our neighbor in Yamin Moshe. The girls did not particularly like each other, but we managed to see a lot despite undercurrents of irritation. 

 

Some months later I put my car on a ferryboat and along with Tzippi, my new and dear love, went for a trip that took us through France and England, to the loveliest of islands, Ireland. From Ireland Tzippi flew back to Israel. I left my car in the care of an automobile dealer and flew to America for a period, and from there directly back to Jerusalem. When it became time to pick up the car from Ireland it was mid-winter and not wishing to cross the Irish Sea, the English Channel and the Mediterranean on the rough waters of winter, I decided to visit East Africa and later pick up the 'goods'.

 

Off we flew to Nairobi Kenya for some weeks and then to the coast city of Mombasa on the Indian Ocean. There we met up with a black American ex-serviceman from Boston just out of the war in Vietnam, a night club singer he was, and his belly-dancer girlfriend who had been born in Jerusalem to a family that had come from North Africa. Such is the mix in the world today. Now it turns out that this lovely couple had met a super wealthy Indian industrialist, in a gambling club in Nairobi, who was about to take them to New Delhi and arrange a super elaborate Indian wedding for them. Offered them, as well, the possibility of running one of his hotels in Nigeria. I flew off to India with my new friends. Had India in mind for some time. This seemed like the time to go, strange circumstances aside.

 

 

 

 

India, and with practically no preconceptions. No conscious preconceptions that is. God knows what exactly was in the head from god-knows where. Say India to anyone in the West and they respond as if they know what and where you are talking about. LOOK magazine, National Geographic, Mother Theresa?

      

Well, my first stay in New Delhi was a 'put-up-job' at a most fancy modern hotel that had been arranged for us and our soon to be married mixed couple by their Indian benefactor. Stayed there for ten days or so, just enough to experience that side of India; the rich with their massive villas and private gardens on the outskirts of the city, their ex-wives and children, their servants and their gardeners. This family owned a major newspaper in Delhi, factories across India and various industrial and other enterprises in East and West Africa. 'Well-to-do', as they say where I came from. I did not wait for the wedding. I had had enough after a fortnight or so at the hotel. Had seen a good bit of old and New Delhi, and managed to read through 'The Auto-biography of a Yogi' by Yogananda. That turned out to be my travelogue.

 

I went down to the lobby one day and requested a driver and car from the in-house travel bureau. A very fine Sikh driver was put at my disposal, and we headed north to the holy cities of Hardwar and Rishikesh. Witnessed rural India on the way; a long and wondrous drive. Ended up north of Rishikesh on the banks of the Ganges and without a word being spoken was taken to the Ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the foothills of the Himalayas. Spiritual India was presented to me.

      

The car had been parked on the west bank of the Ganges when we boarded a ten passenger rowboat along with my valise and crossed over to the east bank in fifteen minutes or so. Walked along the rocky shore mid to late afternoon periodically passing what looked like oldish and well worn wooden temples/ashrams with carved facsimiles of Indian Gods and Goddesses. After an indeterminable time we mounted a path leading into the hills and within half an hour approached the gate of our destination. The unspoken trust between myself and the Sikh driver/guide was such that hardly a word passed between us on the whole trip including this last part of our journey. I had no idea and didn't question for a moment where I was being directed to. We were welcomed at the Ashram by one Mr. Seghal, a fiftyish gentleman with an obviously city-refined background, dressed in a casual white toga and white pants of fresh fine cotton. Offered a room in a long wooden building, doors opening on to a balcony running the full length of the building. Below within ear shot was the always roaring Ganges, rumbling on like a brewing storm.

 

We had been on the road in excess of ten hours since leaving Delhi and I was shocked to hear my guide announce that he was about to drive the return journey immediately. 'There is an extra bed in my room,' I informed him, 'why not stay over and return tomorrow refreshed?' Our 'innkeeper', Mr. Seghal, snapped back at me with a most unexpected reaction. "You'll have to pay for him,” he, as if rudely, advised me. "Of course," I responded without a second thought. What a shock. Only years later did I realize the implications of this challenge. First of all, it was not my place, regardless of my good intentions, to invite this Sikh friend of mine to join me in my room. What did I imagine, that I was in some kind of a hotel? Just because I was paying? In fact I had no conscious evaluation of just where I was and what represented 'the authority'. Secondly, what a good look he got of me with this quick and unexpected challenge. A 'cost consideration' did not cause me to fluster for a moment; there was no resentment, no bargaining inclination on my part. I accepted his word on the spot without inner or outer justification. Small episode, a 'time capsule lesson' and some indication of preparedness on my part. Mr. Seghal, to my surprise, then progressed to direct Mr. Sikh, Mr. Driver, Mr. Guide, Mr. Friend to his very own room down the end of the balcony.

      

When we all reconvened, Mr. Seghal instructed my Sikh guide to take me the very next morning up into the Himalayas for the weekly audience that Tart Wallah Baba gave to the public from the lower villages.

 

Tart Wallah Baba was reputed to be one hundred and fifty years old although he appeared to me like a man firm and healthy in his fifties. A small level stone 'amphitheater' with a capacity of maybe fifty people with twenty or so in attendance. After a walk of some hours up into the mountains, after passing many wandering Sadhus off and on the path, dressed in orange, almost all dressed in orange. They could be going somewhere, they could be living among the trees. The area was lush as a rain forest, fresh water streams could be sensed though I cannot recall seeing any.

 

Tart Wallah Baba emerged from a large cave with what appeared to be two Westerners, one male the other female; they dressed in slightly off white and he with but a single piece of cloth wrapped around his mid-drift. He sat comfortably poised up in front, I, with my guide, at the back. At one point he asked me, through my by then interpreter, whether I had any question for him. "I do not know what to ask," I replied. Of course it was the truth, the whole thing was totally unexpected. Tart Wallah Baba then proceeded to TELL me. (1) "You will find peace here in India," he said, "but you will lose it when you leave" and (2) "Find yourself a teacher from among your own people." This last item struck me clear as a bell. Tart Wallah Baba told me a third thing that to my deep embarrassment I cannot now recall. We returned to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's ashram, and my guide/ friend returned to Delhi the same day.

 

The following day, standing outside on the balcony opposite Mr. Seghal's room, with him with his back to the Ganges and shielding the sun from my face with his head,  he told me the following: "EVERYTHING IS VIBRATIONS." I had no second thoughts at these words. He said "everything" and I knew he meant EVERYTHING. He then placed in my hands two or three books written by Maharishi Mahesh and suggested that I do some reading. I did. Some days later he advised me casually, that: "According to your horoscope, you could become a leader of your people." I had no inclination to ask 'how, who, why.' Like every other possible truth, it could be understood in a number of ways. The meanings may be complimentary, or they may not. There is the doctrine of the multiplicity of 'I's; a most significant esoteric truth/reality. 'To be leader of your people' might have meant 'Master' in control of 'subordinate parts', including the multiplicity of 'I's. This interpretation and possibility should be a grand enough ambition for anyone.

 

After a week or ten days a proposition was placed before  me. Would I like to receive Initiation? That would include the receiving of a Meditation Mantra. Severe dilemma! Krishnamurti had 'convinced' me that the only true meditation was, 'when the mind comes to understand itself, and as a result stops'. He had described the mechanical self-hypnotic dangers in the continual repetition of a Mantra meditation. He had much to say on the issue and it had all made deep sense to me. Now, what was I to do? These were exceptional circumstances, the folks here were impressive and trustworthy. But they were offering me something that I had somehow convinced myself was just about the worst thing in the world that I could do. I spent one week in literally a cold sweat. I thought and I read. The energy in my body was as nothing I had experienced before. I paced the room like a caged animal. Two giant forces inside of me pulling in what seemed opposite directions. I could barely follow;  'it' was a'thinking, I was but surviving. Alone, alone, and faced with what felt like a life and death decision. 

 

A week passed within this torment. Then clarity. Something like this: "Why not? What harm could it do to receive Initiation and a Mantra? Could I get addicted so quickly? No. I will not miss this opportunity – if some aspect proves wrong I can always stop." I accepted the offer. A date of one week hence was set for my Initiation which was to be performed by the Brahmachari in the absence of the Maharishi. I had only seen some pictures of the Maharishi, a massive smiling face, seated amongst a garden of flowers. The Brahmachari, by contrast, had just about the fiercest face that I had ever seen. Sitting crossed legged atop his bed, Mr. Seghal and I paid a courtesy (or whatever) visit some days before the intended initiation. Mr. Seghal kissed his feet on entering. I was a bit shocked, but quickly enough everything seemed normal. There was a cassette recording machine and a few loose tapes on the bed beside him. They had some words, the Brahmachari got a look at me, and we were out of there.

 

There were only a small number of Indians in evidence at the Ashram at that time. I was the only Westerner other than an American serviceman that I bumped into in the latter days of my stay. The week before my Initiation was to be, Mr. Seghal, the Brahmachari and a few other Indians from the Ashram took a trip to New Delhi. I saw them leave as a group. During their absence I went one day down to the river where I met up with two young Westerners, a girl and her boyfriend. They were living in a cave and invited me in to enjoy a smoke with them. The first time I had ingested any such thing since some interesting episodes with grass and mescaline a couple of months before in East Africa. A modest indulgence in a rock cave, off the stony shore of the Ganges, a half an hour's walk from the Ashram.

 

The Initiation itself took place in Maharishi Mahesh's private house. A food offering was to be brought. I was asked to contribute some few rupees, and a servant from the Ashram was sent to town to buy some fruits that were presented to me wrapped in a handkerchief that I was to bring along with me to the ceremony. I was also asked to fill out a form on entering, among which questions were (1) 'How much money would I donate?' (I asked what the minimum would be, was told some ten dollars, and I filled in that amount) and (2) 'Had I taken any drugs.' (Oh ho, just a few days before. I thought that I was 'out'). I explained in a few words just what had transpired at the beach as well as my moderate past in connection with experimental ingestion of various substances. There was no fuss, the Initiation commenced. A  Mantra was whispered into my ear, I was asked to repeat it once into the ear of the Brahmachari, to see I guess if I got it right. Then a short talk/description was given (there were three or four young Indians also going through the same process with me), explaining various techniques of handling the Mantra, possible wrong turns, and an invitation to discuss any difficulties that might arise. I was then offered the privilege of meditating alone in Maharishi's personal meditation room just below his house; the vibrations there were especially good, I was told.

       

The meditation proved super. Day by day it deepened.  Day by day my energy lightened and the peace and tranquility of the environment enveloped me in a clear, totally undisturbed and simple state of being. Some weeks passed when I was offered the possibility of remaining in the Ashram for an extended period in order to be trained   in preparation for a second Initiation that would also enable me to give Mantras to others. I declined. I knew   that I had received enough from them for then. I had no doubt. Later I had the sense that I was somehow assisted in that clear decision as well. My deepest thanks and appreciation goes out to all those most sensitive and helpful influences as were manifest at this Ashram. I left shortly after for Delhi. Waited for many hot hours in a stifling sherut taxi that was waiting to fill up in the town of Rishikesh sitting beside a profusely sweating Indian salesman complaining like hell. I felt light as a bird, could have stayed there all day with no complaint. Tart Wallah Baba had proven correct. I had found peace in India, at least for a while. It turned out that we had an immense amount of work to do in order to regain that state. We were given a full taste. Krishnamurti, however, was also proven to be right: 'When the mind comes to know itself. . . .'  Say that again, please.

 

 

 

A man 'finds' God, and then comes to the conclusion, he believes the realization, that he knows the reason major religions say: 'The biggest sin a person can commit, is the one of killing himself.' He concluded,  'if they didn't say  that, everybody would kill themselves.' Then he killed himself.

 

Now, when I said that he 'found God', that was not an idle expression on my part nor a matter of mere imagination on his. No. This man had lived and had seen more than the average hundred men taken together. He knew well the games, the pretense, the lying, the manipulation and the violence. He knew that all these lovely traits in men were manifest both intentionally and unconsciously through well justified habit. He knew that. He could often remove himself close to totally from this entire circus, most effectively with the use of heroin and in a certain period of his life, by prayer. When he was 'removed', he was flooded with an intense soft energy that infused his heart and sensitized other of his component parts where and when he fully sensed and KNEW his organic unity with the vast universe and the infinitely subtle and many faceted vibrations within BEING. He knew, but he could not do. All his habits and mental justifications were in and of the old world. He knew but he could not do. He had been so greedy for God that he did not give a hell for Hell. Mankind suffers immensely in Hell. God is in man and man is in Hell. God is also in Hell and suffering. Our friend the 'suicide' did not care or more likely was still veiled from these facts. He wanted God NOW. He got it, but could not do anything with it. He didn't earn it.

 

There was another young man, only a few years past puberty. He wanted to be free. He more than wanted, he insisted. He would not accept society's suggestion that he may be a bastard by birth. He would not accept his stepfather's moral-religious authority. He went out in the world at sixteen with an assumed identity, hard drinking, hard fucking, hard working and getting cleverer day by day. Freedom he wanted, freedom he took. He, inevitably, ran into people that were sometimes a little and some times a lot more clever than him, and got hit in the head more than once and then more than once too often. Along the way he imbibed some esoteric theory and even some practice, but even with that managed to overdo it in his twenties with drugs and alcohol to the point of deep despondency, and contemplated suicide. The pain subsided, he went on living and trying, a bit more modest by now, at least sometimes. Now the middle years of his forties threaten him. How far can self-centered, self-important cleverness take one? May his heart open to the reality of realities.

 

The egoistic, ambitious and for the most part angry relationship to life, at this point, is no accidental digression.

 

Depression identifies an attitude based on 'hope in life'. That is hope in 'accumulation', be it material or exaggerated self-importance. Accumulation of the 'valuable' and the 'virtuous' is on a horizontal plane (what we call 'Life'), and is always a struggle to 'get' and the compulsion to 'hold'. It is the Mother of greed, the Father of deception and the Child of anxiety. In this category falls the usual 'ambitions of Life'; the high and the low, the so called admirable and the so called contemptible.

 

The so called spiritual approach to existence is predicated on the realization that the above assumptions are essentially hopeless, unproductive. People assume that the 'get' in their 'want' will bring them happiness. It never does. How much experience is required in order to see that accumulation of goods and/or prestige bring along undesirables in their wake, and even when partially satisfying the necessity of maintaining them proves exhausting and finally, impossible. That's it. Who can see it? Who can remember it?

The so called spiritual approach does not stop there. It says in its most intelligent development, 'if not that, then what?' It begins to 'hear' Knowledge. Knowledge says: 'The challenge and the profit is not in getting 'more' of anything, not material and not social – the challenge  and  the  profit  is  getting to  SEE, TOUCH, EXPERIENCE, CONNECT, UNDERSTAND, be AWARE of what YOU ALREADY ARE, and what ALREADY IS. In other words, 'claim your inheritance; it's already there.' To look and move in the right direction one must have seen the total uselessness of the wrong direction. The whole world runs after and justifies the essentially useless because of its un-awareness and inherent forgetfulness. 'The truth is strong medicine'; few are able to swallow it. The rest suffer an 'eternal damnation in hell'. These are the simple facts of the matter. 

 

 

 

 

 

I flew out of India on the way to Ireland in order to pick up my automobile. The plane touched down in Tehran for a short while, then again in Tel Aviv. I broke the flight in Tel Aviv and rushed up to Jerusalem with the express purpose of hunting down a man whom I had met there some months before at a meeting of some folks that were listening to tape recordings of Krishnamurti's recent talks. This man, who was also a guest at the meeting, spent most of his time pacing the floor and making, what appeared to me at the time, a general nuisance of himself. At some point that evening he remarked to me, 'You needn't be so nervous.' Until he mentioned it, I had not noticed. I asked a mutual acquaintance just who this man was. His response was, 'He is my mentor.'

 

I had never before heard that designation attached to anyone that I knew personally. I was struck, more than anything else, by the undefined discomfort that he caused in me. The moment that Tart Wallah Baba had mentioned to me the necessity of 'finding a teacher from among your own people', I knew that this was my man. My man – how or to what else he was connected, or what exactly constituted a Teacher was all beside the point. As Idries Shah has reported: 'A Teacher's only obligation is to have what the student needs,' and a School is, 'A place where you LEARN.' The person that referred to this man as his 'mentor' landed up for a period of time in a mental hospital. It seems he then had a limited tolerance for heat.

 

The most remarkable thing about 'finding a teacher' is that all other serious students, more or less consciously, also become your teachers, then everyone, then the Universe.

      

I couldn't locate my man, he was nowhere to be found in Jerusalem at that moment. I proceeded on to Ireland to pick up my car and met a lovely red-headed Irish girl at the airport with whom I spent a few weeks. She exhibited a restrained curiosity when finding me sitting in meditation on a hotel bed or stopping the car in the middle of nowhere in order to go out on an isolated rock by the edge of the sea for a similar 'communion with the soul'. Some few years later I received a letter from her from Southern Italy where she was on a training program for teachers under the auspices of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's organization.

 

I drove on to Paris for a visit with Evelyn Dumas, a journalist friend from Montreal, who was writing a book there. Sold my fine red Mercedes and bought a white VW jeep, drove on to Marseilles and ferry-boated back to Haifa.

 

Life would never be the same for me again. 'In order to go up you must go down.' My quest, defined or not, had been for more and more freedom; technically speaking, to be subject to fewer Laws. In 'School' one becomes subjected to additional Laws (rules, if you like). One must constantly remember what it was that he came for and the absolute necessity of these 'restrictions'. Few find, fewer recognize and still fewer are able to submit. Thus the gross misunderstandings and in many cases resentments, from both inside and out. Esoteric science 'books no compromise' and its ultimate aims are totally beyond people's normal acquisitive ambitions or conceptions.

      

Let it be noted that I am writing some twenty years after the confluence of circumstances as just reported and almost forty years since my first 'itch' for freedom and understanding. 'There is nothing more powerful in the world than an Idea.' Ideas (true ideas) are as seeds. Planted in good earth, watered, fertilized and shade protected as tender shoots – the seeds can grow and eventually blossom and even, hopefully, bear fruit. Nothing is to be exaggerated and nothing is to be taken 'for-granted'. It is useful to read, it is useful to be aware of the opportunities that have always been available in the world. It is useful to be able to evaluate intelligently. 'The teacher chooses the student, not the opposite, as is generally assumed.'  However, 'response-ability' is obviously a prerequisite.

 

The purposes of Life are not as man generally imagines. Life turns and everything that turns is eventually lost. A 'square look' at death would show this to be eminently true. To aim for 'pleasures' in life is a disastrous misconception/illusion. Life sucks, sickness and death are its irrevocable promise. Esoteric science, the essence of all religions says: 'Grow man, grow; you are more than animal, you contain universal intelligence and consciousness. The animal, though suffering, can help and participate, but your job is to grow.'

 

I've lost most of my teeth and my beard is grey. My general sense and feel of myself in the world is remarkably similar to how I experienced life at the age of seventeen. 'Foot loose and fancy free,' as they would say. How do I manage all that and maintain the facade of a serious person? They both happen to be true. 'God' is as serious as death and as light as a feather. Operations for the removal of eye cataracts are the most joyfully celebrated of any successful medical procedure. That's the Work, that's the pleasure, and that's the seriousness.       

 

Whatever you imagine a Teacher should represent or be, however you imagine 'higher reality', it is not possible for you to be anything but wrong. Real Understanding surfaces in another world; it includes the next level of impressions, beyond the range of current imagining.

      

Then what attracts one to a teacher – from whence the taste of the Higher?

      

Embarrassment. A person who is ready to be a student of the higher/more basic realities must already sense his limitations; the limitations of his whole general approach to and calculations about life. He knows what he knows but has also tested and tasted the inherent limitations of his best efforts. When he meets up with a man of Certainty who appears to be neither a maniac nor a cheat he inevitably experiences the shock of acute embarrassment, if not outright SHAME.

 

For me the sequence was something like this: first awkwardness, then joy and then the shame. The first shock of awkwardness was in being advised of a mood/state that I had not been aware of previously. Then on our second meeting some months later, I experienced the shock of joy at meeting someone who exhibited a deep familiarity and sympathy for the teaching of Krishnamurti. It felt too good to be true. At the Ashram in India when attempting to explain to Mr. Seghal why I was apprehensive of receiving a Mantra, I cited Krishnamurti. Mr. Seghal's response, to my amazement, was: 'He is a Saint.' That's what he said. I thought, 'well, all right, why not.'

 

Now back in Jerusalem, on the cusp of the Mount of Olives, in a dimly lit Arab House – a man is not only saying 'yes' to me in connection with my most serious current guide, Krishnamurti, but raising certain subtleties that had not occurred to me. I said to him, "You have no idea what a joy it is for me to meet-up with a person such as yourself." How strange to realize that I had come to believe that no one else in the world acknowledged the clarity and seriousness of Krishnamurti's words as I had. And here I sit across from a man who talks about Krishnamurti not only with respect but with the voice of certainty. My joy knew no bounds, my soul had met a Friend, a serious man.

 

The frame of reference, the knowledge now, was that of Gurdjieff/Ouspensky/Nicoll et al. At first not much talk but much reading. The livin' was hard and no nonsense was tolerated. A 'put up or shut up, shit or get off the pot' authority was maintained.

 

Life went on but I found myself as could be said, more and more 'behind the scenes'. Generally, outer life is experienced and then reflected upon inwardly so quickly that in most cases the impressions and the reflections are experienced as one. That in a nut shell is illusion.

      

Life went on in the school but with little conformity to anyone's 'normal' expectations, other than one's passion to learn. I tripped over my own feet more than once but was always given the opportunity to right myself. Not unlike Christopher Columbus, these were rough seas heading for an unknown land. Columbus they say was after gold, I would be distracted by nothing less.

 

This person and that person, this house or another one, this aggression or that madness, in peace or war, in sickness or health, in laughter or in agony, in promise or threat – the Work went on.

      

What is there to know in the end? Best to look at just what there is to know at the beginning. And that is, all the cleverness, even that which is backed by good-will, is totally and absolutely subjectively yours, and relying upon it could only result with your remaining in hell. 'Hell' is the level of frustration, a little bit or a lot – no difference.

 

What then to hold on to? Ahh. That is what must be found. That is what one has to identify. That is what you have got to learn how to remain with. That's the Rock of Ages, that's the Truth, that's the beginning of Wisdom. Few are interested, fewer seek, fewer find and still fewer maintain. Few, in fact, become Men. I saw my incapacity so fully that the shock, repeating moment by moment, left no room for any excuse. 

 

On the other hand I did not feel crushed. The Teacher was a teacher that was not a teacher. He maintained the 'social' reality or at least appeared to. The feeling was akin to being on an extremely large totally stable ship bigger by a hundred than any ship imaginable. A world in itself. The sea, still out there, with sometimes calm sometimes explosive energy, but somehow non-lethal. The 'group', the handful of people on this island of a ship, mad as they may seem at times, are stripped so naked that their very exposure represents a new reality, rich in expression and challenging to one's capacity for quick and subtle adjustments. Very alive and strangely safe. A living, opinion-less dynamic.

 

Thus was the school I found myself in. The ship was moving to the edge of the world. It would end off in 'space'. The group offered the opportunity to prepare for survival over the edge. Each person there was so different that there was absolutely no possible illusion of a 'common world'. No one found anyone else's previous conceptions understandable or particularly sane. Much of the 'reality' was held together by each individual's essential greed, now focused on one or another of the teacher's assumed or real attributes. They were HUNGRY for the teacher or what 'he had'. Like a Sufi dance, the Master in the middle of the circle, the dervishes whirling around him.

 

I minded my own business. Every open minute I spent reading. The teacher held open a space in which all manner of things happened in quick luminous cycles and booked no resistance other than that which he himself found necessary to impose.

 

AS IF PEOPLE. Generally we live our lives like 'as if people'. We act 'as if'. When no one accepts your 'as if', that level of reality dissolves and a new space opens up. Many yearn for that kind of space; the kind of space that a mad house /asylum offers, as if. The soul yearns for an open space where there is no demand to act. No squandered energy,    in the energy. Call it manic or magic as you like, but IN  THE  ENERGY.

 

After a spin and a tumble through 'the tunnel of love', the stomach-testing 'scenic-railway', the humiliation of 'laugh-in-the-dark' and not a small 'freak-show', I was flipped out back into life in the eastern Galilee. Now proud owner of a ten room, one hundred year old Turkish military hospital/half-way house in a wooded area, with horses, dogs, cats, kitchen garden and old time fishing boat on the Sea of Galilee. Fate had set me up to receive a sizable dose of rampaging mankind, full face, full force. All kinds, shapes and sizes passed through and were cared for – mankind with his pants down and his tongue hanging out.

 

Not for the first time but certainly with increasing consistency and ultimately constantly I became aware of each and every person that I came into contact with as a soul, on a trajectory. Everyone, as if, flying through space and at a certain point on their line of evolutionary completion, moving through this flash of time that is our short life. Every man a soul representing a high level of evolution by the very fact of his being born human, and moving, straining towards completion, perfection.

 

Every man a world. I could see. That become my cross. His right or wrong actions were not my concern. What I saw and how as a result I related would be the determining factor, the importance of which was not even my business. That most holy responsibility was always present. The knowledge that was proclaimed and demonstrated at school framed certain 'inner knowing' which allowed an increasingly clear perspective and weighing and placing of persons and events relative to their evolutionary trajectory. I became free to become a slave to the needs of our common destiny.

      

So my universe became very dense with life supporting cosmic entities. What I had seen I could not avoid responding to with as much care and concern as I could possibly muster within a framework that excluded nothing in time nor space nor any other dimension. 

      

Now I have a 'following' of hundreds, perhaps thousands. Some know it, most are unaware. This issue of 'leadership' is not a question of choice but an elemental fact of position. People maintain an organic awareness of the most advanced soul that has acknowledged their most essential self. They register this fact consciously or otherwise. They 'look forward' to the source of that awareness, that Light. They cannot but follow. The ultimate hope is in their growing awareness of themselves, and thus their ultimately awaring the source of that awaring, as THAT LIGHT, within themselves, that is themselves.

 

 

’MAY   THY   WILL   BE   DONE   ON   EARTH

AS   IT   IS   IN   HEAVEN.’

 

 

 

 

Two wishes, both centered in Egypt, began to obsess me. One was a growing desire to see the Pyramids and the second was to check out the remains of Karnak, an archeological site on the Upper Nile bearing the intriguing hint of a connection with 'Spaceship Karnak' as mentioned in Gurdjieff's epic 'The All and the Everything'. I envisioned a long quiet look at ancient Pharaonic Egypt. The current state of war between Israel, where I was resident, and the 'enemy' Egypt that I wished to visit had to be seriously considered. The last thing that I wanted was to get mixed up in this violence. If I could manage to secure a visa I should be able to travel simply enough as a Canadian tourist and keep my nose clean.

 

The Egyptian consulate in Montreal agreed to give me a four month visa and a few weeks later I headed for Cairo leaving from Miami International Airport after a short stay down south. I made connections through New York and Zurich and found myself late one evening wandering the streets in a busy, lit-up working-class district of Cairo. My luggage had missed one of the flight connections so I was empty handed and as I had been unable to secure an advance hotel reservation it was not clear just where I might spend the night. Curiously enough, being dropped into this most strange land in the dark of night with an identity that was best kept under-wraps, with no hotel, no bags and no schedule, was not at all disturbing. I felt wonderful.

 

After an hour or more on the streets I passed a doorway that had the suggestion of a hotel and entered to find myself in an African student hostel. The night was spent in a large dimly lit dorm room that already had five or six sleeping students spread out on their cots as I entered. Up early in the morning and back on the streets I eventually ran into a more conventional looking hotel and checked in. Met a local oracle of sorts hanging around the hotel who took me to a restaurant for 'humus', and matter-of-factly informed me that I would not be in Egypt for the four months my visa allowed, but rather for three weeks. The hotel, other than for this meeting, proved uninteresting and claustrophobic and the following day I managed entry into the oldish but simply elegant Simadar Hotel close to the Nile in a central part of town, but only after coughing-up some twenty dollars in 'bakshish'.  At home at last.

 

Next day and for the following few I was up early in the morning and off to Giza on the outskirts of the city for immersion in the environment of the Great Pyramid of Cheops, the lesser Pyramids and the Sphinx. This height of culture physically demonstrated in terms and dimensions totally incomprehensible to our limited modern day perceptions is living testimony to a higher and far subtler range of energy and intelligence. In particular, the inside of the Cheops Pyramid throws one into an immediate higher state of awareness. It's mind boggling. The mind is aware but totally unprepared to fathom the physical facts or consider what the whole being cannot but recognize as some inexplicable meaning and purpose to it all.

 

The Cheops Pyramid is entered not by its original door,  still sealed, but through an artificial opening. One descends slightly bent on a narrow wooden platform some ten  meters down until reaching the opening of a wide and amazing upper-angled passageway that ends close to the top of the interior of this Great Pyramid. The walls of the passageway are constructed of immense stone blocks of incomprehensible dimensions roughly three meters by  five on the surface, that fit so exactly it is said that one cannot even slip a dime between the joining blocks. The passage-way rises at what is sensed to be the same angle as the outside walls of the Pyramid with inside walls some three meters apart, angle in towards the ceiling. The ceiling itself starting extremely high at the beginning of the upward climb, angles down so that at the very top it is not far above one's head. The optical sense at the beginning of the climb and throughout to the top is that of a colossally tall, wide, rising tunnel narrowing from bottom to top and side to side in an exquisite expanse of harmony. Now contemplating the picture of this great structure, a simultaneous awareness of the outside and the inside is registered as if it were my own body and mysteriously giving life to the whole. I the Pyramid, the Pyramid I.

 

Roughly one quarter the way up on the inside of the Pyramid there is on the right what is called The Queen's Chamber. A not overly large, dimly lit room, of what looks like solid stone but probably made of the same immense freight-container-size stones as in the passageway. This room is roughly five meters wide, five and a half meters long and some six meters high. Plain, with nothing at all to be seen inside.

 

Further up and on the left is a grating that exposes a well-like depression that ends in some unknown dark depth. At the very top and on the right of this thrilling passageway one enters through a low door into what had been christened The King's Chamber. The King's Chamber is strikingly large and impressive, again of these super oversized stone blocks that fit so tight that the walls appear solid and unbroken with only a hint of one or two thin rays of light entering at the top of one wall from some unseen opening at the height of some six meters. The room itself is some five and a half meters wide and ten meters long with only a coffin like hollowed-out stone sarcophagus at the far end. The room is barely lit, appears black and gives the impression of some unknown but without doubt serious intention. Perfectly practical for its own purposes, whatever they may be.

 

Intermingled with the magnificent past was the immediacy of the turbulent present. Egypt claiming victory in the Yom Kippur/October War, having crossed the Suez Canal, over-running Israeli fortifications and re-occupying part of the Sinai, was advertising organized tours to the once thought of impregnable Bar-Lev-Line. Strange looking Russian built army vehicles of all types were shockingly visible on Cairo streets and the occasional formation of Mig fighters in the air triggered inner emotions similar to finding myself at a Stalin-inspired military parade in Moscow with a hint of Nazi Germany intentions. Leaving the Simadar Hotel for an evening stroll and crossing over one of the Nile bridges by foot, I was more than a little aware of the soldiers quite seriously patrolling this vital link with eyes open for saboteurs. Mine was a most neutral presence but the last thing that I wanted was to be picked-up and questioned. It was war time.

 

All those Passover Seders that I had attended. The slavery and abuse of the Jews under the cruel hands of the Pharaohs. Like old films these images sporadically ran through my brain. How long it would take before I would be free of this media-made past and could enter the current reality? One element was becoming unquestionably clear. Had the Jews in fact been slaves in Egypt, there was for sure no forced labor in the construction of the Pyramids. The Pyramids were a sheer work of love. There could be no doubt. This could be understood in one's blood and bones by anyone with sufficient sensitivity. From a purely physical point of view it is acknowledged by today's engineers that there is no machine in existence let alone any combination of men that could raise stones of such immense size. The art of levitation is highly suspected and in fact there is hardly any other possible explanation. 

 

One morning I was informed by the desk clerk that my bags had arrived at the airport and that my presence there would be required to clear them through customs. I went downstairs to face a long line of taxis at the hotel entrance and was immediately aware of a large man with a broad smile circling from behind the cars and gesturing for my attention. His taxi was the last in line and I was ushered into it with no complaint from any of the other drivers. We drove to the airport and picked up my belongings with no difficulty. I was subsequently offered a city tour by this most gregarious taxi-man with surprisingly fluent English. Not only my politics but also my facial features are quite neutral but at one point the driver inquired whether in fact I was of Greek descent. No, I advised him, and offered nothing further to satisfy his curiosity. 

 

First he took me to what I believe is the oldest mosque in Cairo, perched on a hill overlooking a large part of the city. I was advised that one of the original Moslem caliphs had built this edifice with marble stripped from the surface of the Pyramids at Giza. What a crime. Who could imagine what additional power the Great Pyramid of Cheops would have projected covered in this magnificent bright marble. I sat around the grounds of the mosque for some time experiencing little inspiration and was duly taken to the Old City, an area of some interesting buildings, I was told. After parking the car I was asked whether I would like to see the old Jewish neighborhood or alternatively a Coptic church in the area. I was beginning to suspect, that he suspected me. I chose the Coptic Church. It turned out to be interesting. The building itself made no particular impression but on entering we found ourselves seated among a group of English-speaking Africans who were being addressed by a most impressive Coptic priest. The Africans were serious enough young people but for the most part their questions were superficial. The priest was ruthless. A bearded, full-bodied specimen, his performance and presence were powerful. The theological content of his answers was not particularly what struck me but rather his penetrating energy and razor sharp replies on the question of man's relationship to God. The Coptic's claim to be the original Christians. This man gave every indication of coming from its most original and real spirit. He spoke in terms clearly serious and pragmatic. 

 

From there I was ushered, without further questions, to the old Jewish quarter a few blocks away and into a synagogue that the Egyptians had opened as a kind of museum. At this point in time, I was told, there was but a handful of old  Jews still living in the area. My driver left me alone as I drifted around looking into various rooms of this one storey building with various placards, photos and ceremonial items left pretty much as one would find them in a functioning synagogue. At one point, while standing by the central alter, my driver placed a Hebrew prayer book in my hands, upside-down. I looked it over nonchalantly without turning it right side-up and handed it back to him without comment. He was just checking, curious, it did not seem unreasonable. 

 

Did I want to see some night life, he inquired, as we drove back to the hotel just before nightfall. No, not at all interested in tourist titillation, I told him. No no, said he, there is a great place where the locals go. I agreed.

 

Early that evening we were off to a large club at Suez City located on a small oasis in the Sahara not many miles from Giza. On the way he stopped at a liquor store and picked-up a bottle of booze, overriding my objection. The club held maybe a few hundred people under a large Bedouin tent and had an exciting show featuring some truly beautiful erotic and highly professional belly dancers. Egyptians, businessmen types, in the aisles, clapping their hearts away and having one and all a jolly good time. My friend the driver kept coaxing me on to drink, something that I was doing precious little of in those days. I ignored him.

 

Next day he had me on the go again. Around and about Cairo with a most interesting stop at the Cairo Museum. A collection of so many ancient finds, grossly out of place removed from their original settings. The mummy room was shocking. The semi-wrapped corpses emanating screaming vibrations of agony and rage from their disgusting open glass display cases.

 

Was there anything else that I wanted to see or to do in Cairo, I was asked. I had not thought much about it but it occurred to me that I might be able to find an Arab saddle here in the city. I had at the time three Arab horses in the Galilee, a couple of fine western saddles and one English. Arab saddles had an intriguing reputation. Arab saddle, I told him, I'd like to buy one. Our Mr. driver was a little nonplused. Earlier he had asked me 'what I do'. Horse-shoeing, I told him. In this country he informed me, that is the lowest of any work. My feelings were not damaged.

 

We drove and drove and low and behold found ourselves again in the Giza district not far from the Pyramids, in front of riding stables. All movements seemed just one step ahead of my intentions but not totally out of place. Riding stables are not usually in the business of selling saddles. Before I knew it, I had been introduced to the management who got busy parading some incredibly beautiful Arabian horses in a demonstration usually reserved for horse buyers. There was a dynamic involving the driver, the manager, a kindly, confident man who was probably the owner, and myself, evolving quite without any initiative on my part. At some point I told my host that it was most unlikely that I would be interested in purchasing a horse, and he gently advised me that everything was cool. He also showed me a long auxiliary building by the side, with a room he advised that I could stay in at any time if I wished. He then went on to inquire whether I would like to take a ride. With my acceptance of the offer he sent one of his men along with me for a few hours ride over the sands of the Sahara to the same oasis of Suez City that I had come to know the night before.

 

The riding partner was quite a surprise. He was the spit'n image of Zulu, the man who with his family was occupying my Galilee house at the time. They looked exactly alike, had the same high pitched voice, were both horse lovers and had both worked as cowboys in the American West. What a strange 'coincidence'. I enjoyed the ride immensely, long enough to get the feel of this unique Sahara desert.

 

Before leaving on the ride I offered to pay and disengage the taxi driver. He wanted to wait for me. I told him that after my ride I wished to visit the Pyramids which were within walking distance and that I preferred to be there alone. He reluctantly backed off, accepted U.S. Dollars in contra-diction to the strict local laws, but then insisted on hanging around until I had mounted. Wanted to see me on the horse he explained in face of my growing impatience with him.

 

On our arrival back at the stables and when paying some reasonable amount for the ride, the owner slipped me the following advice. As if referring to the foreign currency payment that I offered earlier to the driver, he said that I should be somewhat cautious as not infrequently policemen drove taxi-cabs undercover. My head went into a spin. All the questioning and checking that I had been subjected to in the previous few days was obviously not merely the curiosity of a taxi driver. This was police and there was suspicion. The bubble of all my past concerns, rooted more deeply in fear than I had realized, burst inside of me. I did not stop to evaluate the situation. No way to calculate the danger (or what I might be subjected to) should I be brought in for questioning. An animal survival instinct took charge of me. I had told the driver/cop that I would be going to the Pyramids. Would he be waiting for me now outside the stables or at the Pyramids themselves? I bolted, taking a wide circle around and away from the Pyramids over the sand dunes behind the Sphinx into a built up area and from there, instinctively, in the direction of a commercially active area until I ran into a line-up of taxis. I was moving quick as a cat pursued by a phantom. My picture of Egyptian police interrogation was not at all pleasant. I was fleeing as if for my life in at best semi-familiar terrain. I yelled for an English speaking driver, found one, got in and demanded to be taken directly to the Canadian Embassy. Someone should at least know that I'm in this country. I did not relish the thought of vanishing of the streets of Cairo.

 

I arrived at the doorstep of the Canadian Embassy only to find it closed due to some holiday. I refused to budge until the security officer on duty reached a consular official who arrived within an hour to duly record my presence in their files. The consular fellow exhibited more than a little irritation at being dragged away from his rest day and mumbled something to the effect that, 'you people think that this country is run by a bunch of barbarians.' Of course he was right, it was exaggerated, but I'm not sure he had any idea of what I had been stuffed with, or then again, maybe he did. I went back to the hotel half expecting a knock at the door. None came. 

 

Enough for now of Cairo. Next day I left for Luxor and Karnak on the Upper Nile. I boarded a southbound train up the Nile Valley having secured a sleeper for the overnight trip to Luxor. A second berth was occupied by a large, confident, middle-aged gentleman who introduced himself as an engineer in the employ of the Aswan Dam. He was on his way home to Aswan. The Russians had built the Aswan Dam that had unfortunately turned into an ecological disaster. The huge artificial Lake Nassar that was created just south of the Dam in addition to displacing local inhabitants shed such moisture into the surrounding atmosphere that the weather in a previously idyllic resort town at Aswan was seriously affected. In addition, the natural irrigation of the Nile Valley from seasonal flooding was disturbed, fish died, farmers cried and god knows to what 'essential' use the additional electric power was used for. These were the days when Russia was for the most part a closed mystery, cloistered behind the Iron Curtain. 'What are the Russian engineers like?' I asked my Egyptian roommate. 'They are less than nothing, they don't even believe in God,' he reported with obvious contempt. Clear cut.

 

There was only one modern hotel in Luxor, a small village appearing to have no more than a few thousand inhabitants. I was told they were full and my unsuccessful attempt at 'greasing the palm' seemed to confirm the truth of the matter. What choice did I have, I inquired. Lucky me, the desk clerk just happened to know of an empty room in a house of a friend. I was directed through the darkness in this strange frontier town to a plain room in a simple dwelling. I awoke in the morning covered head to toe with large, red and incredibly itchy bedbug bites. I returned to the hotel and to the clerk who had 'helped' me with an irritation that only a person who has suffered an attack by these invisible man eaters could understand. He appeared genuinely embarrassed and immediately found me a ground floor room in the hotel. That became headquarters for the few days I spent in Luxor.

 

Who built what, when and to what purpose in ancient Egypt, were issues that had never occupied me. Names of gods, archeological finds and explanations were as remote to me as Chinese literature. Mine was to see, to feel, to experience. Here in the Nile Valley, the past roared and the present whimpered. The site of Karnak, on the outskirts of Luxor, occupied an immense area already excavated to the extent of possibly ten to fifteen acres. The University of Chicago was supervising the reconstruction. At the time of my visit the most striking feature was a forest of enormous pillars of some two meters in diameter and higher than anyone in his right mind would care to calculate. It reduced the sense of one's body from less than a midget to more like a toy doll. Instant and total humility in face of not only the amazing engineering but of an unknown though strikingly obvious immensity of intention. The sight of Karnak, even in a most elementary stage of reconstruction, blared-out in undeniable terms the reality of supernatural power and intelligence. Nature, God and man in loving relationship. Man, so tiny in himself, so magnificent when connected. Man with mind and muscle, with vision and conscious connection to cosmic laws. Karnak passed this truth of greatness and glory directly to the soul. Most fortunately I had no technical information to block this immense reminder. I wandered around the grounds quite disregarding the 'off limit' signs on roped-off areas still under preliminary investigation. Egyptian workers would yell at me from the distance, 'no visitors, no no, not here.' I would yell back, 'Chi'ca'go  Chi'ca'go.' I was left alone.

 

Across the Nile from Luxor is what they call the Valley of the Kings. I crossed over by boat without the assistance of either guide nor guidebook. Roaming was my style. I hitched a ride on the back of a pick up truck transporting early morning laborers and disembarked at one of the many Pharaonic period buildings in this vast desolate expanse of stone and rock desert. Immense temple, immense stone statue, underground ornamented tombs of long dead and hidden Pharaohs buried with their riches in unimaginable splendor. The raw, vast remoteness of the area with tombs and temples often separated by miles deep in a flat desert, well removed from the sight or sense of the Nile.

 

I worked my way back towards Luxor by foot and not far from the river found myself in a small village of no more than twenty or thirty buildings. A large, round, jolly-looking man engaged me in conversation on the main street. Would I like to see his farm, he inquired? I would indeed, said I. A five minute walk to the side of town brought us to an unremarkable four or five dunam spread with a few animals and a large stone residence. I was ushered in, seated in a comfortable downstairs hallway and had the  unexpected pleasure of being read the poetry of my new-found friend for an intense two hours, in Arabic. The energy was good, the reading was powerful. Later, tea was served by two not over-friendly ladies, family or servants it was not clear. I was then invited to see the rest of the house. In an upstairs bedroom that had the faint, sweet smell of perfume, the situation turned awkward. The man began to exhibit a distinct and strong animal sensuality. Much too familiar. Without a word, I turned on my heels and was out of the house in a flash. He followed me down the staircase and through town, pleading and protesting while attempting to re-engage my attention. My head never turned back and he somehow disappeared as I was about to board the boat that was to transport me back to the Luxor side of the Nile. A day of the living as well as the dead, in the Valley of the Kings.

 

That was enough of Luxor for me, for then. Next day I arranged passage on a hotel-type river boat for the journey further south on the Nile in the direction of Aswan. Each site, each temple visited as the boat made periodic stops along the way, each encounter with the amazingly well-preserved past, each was more shocking than the one before. There were temples so beautiful, so massive, so delicate, with lines and angles, spaces and heights that made the finest of contemporary architecture look less than a kindergarten effort. Here; man, angel, God and three dimensional nature united in ecstasy.

 

We docked in Aswan. I was, it is now clear, emotionally exhausted. I contacted the Egyptian engineer with whom I had shared the sleeper on the Cairo-Luxor train. He picked me up at the boat and showed me around Aswan, a very remarkable resort town with hotels sprinkled on islands and inlets as the Nile widens and bends through high density vegetation. Though a fine place for a rest, I, for the time being, had had my fill of Egypt. So much had been seen that my eyes could no longer focus. I cannot even recall how I exited from Aswan or for that matter Egypt.  However, exit I did.

 

I had been in Egypt exactly three weeks.

 

 

 

 

I had not been back to America for years. In the interim I had been thoroughly and absolutely brainwashed: de-programmed and re-programmed. This was in no sense negative, neither forced nor subversive. I had actively sought this cleansing which could only have taken place with my full agreement and cooperation. 

 

From the time that I had left business in Montreal I had sought knowledge, consciously and actively. Each step and each activity proved to be a stair on an ascending ladder, each of which opened a new world with the inevitable fading out of the previous one. Each stair involved a new view, a new focus, a new perspective, encompassing a new understanding. The old progressively dropped away; a natural and inevitable process. Thus, de-programming and re-programming. There was always active assistance from above and an uncompromising effort on my part to reach and grasp what was being offered from that superior level. To gain the new demanded a continual letting-go of the old. Such movement could never be forced, it always required a full-hearted and trusting cooperation that could only be forthcoming in a situation that was perfectly right and timely. As each person is 'programmed' both organically and through conditioning in a most unique and individual way, the details of anyone's path are not applicable or necessarily explicable to another person.

 

One thing led to the next in sometimes obvious and other times not so obvious sequence. In my early thirties the accumulation of money, that appeared to be a prerequisite to freedom, was going too slow. This led me into activities around Real Estate and Building. People dealing with projects involving hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. If nothing else a big mental jump from the type of business I had been in previously. We were forced to see a completely new structure/world of Investment Bankers, Builders and Architects working at that level. The old, service oriented mind of the Printing and Advertising business had to be completely superceded by a larger and completely new perspective. De-programmed and re-programmed, if you like.

 

Within a short time my interests and inclinations focused on the creative and most needful area of affordable and practical housing construction. This led me into the Research and Development program of the Optor Building System.

 

The intellectual scope and perspectives of the architects led to studies at Goddard College and my subsequent writing of poetry and an autobiographical review of my life up to that point.

 

In the same period, much reading and some ex-perimentation with psychedelics opened unexpected areas of my mind, which led to Zen meditation, body awareness techniques and then a reflective look at the mind and thinking processes through insights gained by reading Krishnamurti. Each move opened a new horizon with the inevitable dropping of the old. De-programming, re-programming.

 

The speed increased, and the old world was left behind. India and the Ashram, meetings and 'struggles' with Masters of various specialties and personal application. De-programmed of the past and re-programmed with 'techniques' that only Real Knowledge and application could give.

 

All so fast. All so intense. And then back in America in the year 1976 looking for, of all things, a course in horse shoeing. A new lesson, a new 'trade', a new necessity to take care of what I had and loved – horses. Just previously back in the Galilee we had been busy with many people, locals and foreigners as well as with building renovations, fishing on the Kinneret, some agriculture, some metal work, a lot of physical work on bodies and a lot of writing. There had been a great deal of open inner space.

 

How strange it was now to be back in America. All so familiar yet as distant as the moon. Friends and family doing pretty much the same things, but what exactly was it? What kept them moving in those well worn ruts? I was on the receiving end of a lot of love and hospitality but unquestionably 'odd-man-out' with little if any connection or relevance to any of their activities or concerns. Thirty-five years I had lived with these people and I might just as well have been a new immigrant from Russia. Poor, rich, worrying souls with concerns limited to interest rates and the Dow Jones and in some exceptional cases the latest novel. Not exactly a new revelation for me, however painfully crystal clear seen as an outsider rather than an insider. They found my English strange. I think it had something to do with the subject matter. I was quite on my own. Uncle Sam or Mr. Trudeau were as vague and uninteresting to me as Mr. Theodore Herzl. I rented a bicycle and roamed the various districts of Montreal, spent a couple of weeks alone at a friend's cottage in an isolated wooded area of the Laurentian Mountains and had the most interesting experience of being a guest in 'my own' home with some vague acquaintances who had rented the Stowe Vermont house that I had renovated and had sold when I purchased the property in the Galilee. Who was it that organized such an elaborate renovation of this old farm house? That man was dead, I was like his twin brother trying to comprehend his head.

 

I wrote thirteen poems while in Montreal, the Laurentians and Vermont and at one point sat down with a tape recorder and sang them out to a melody that simply rose-up from each word and sentence. That had never happened before, I was amazed and pleased. I then flew out to Oklahoma for a two week course with the cowboys, learning how to make horse shoes from raw steel, shoeing horses and other elements of general horse care. I loved it. Back I flew to Israel.

 

One bright morning after but a few weeks in the Galilee I picked myself up and went to Tel Aviv in search of musicians. I was more than anxious to see whether I could get my songs arranged and recorded. There was a lot of meat in them that I thought would be useful to share. I also like to sing. A new means of communication? Maybe. Cutting a long story short, at least for now, I found my musicians, worked with them for two months as we became one close family and recorded the thirteen songs in a Tel Aviv studio. Then onto London to re-record and upgrade some of the songs. As I review all of this now I have the suspicion that sometime in the past some unknown entity shoved a hot rod up my rear end.

 

 

 

 

 

Prepare  Yourself  In  The  Cloakroom

 

Magic flows through our lips and through our fingers, whether we like it or know it or not.

 

'What happened to you?', asked uncle Jack B. a few years ago when I was on one of my infrequent visits to Montreal, 'you used to be so, so reasonable.'

 

What he did not get a chance to say, but nonetheless   meant, was that I also used to be kind, honest, helpful and reliable, in terms that he could easily recognize. Now what happened? How could anyone change so much?

 

 

God blessed me in his way. I always trusted life, trusted the truth and could always recognize a lie when I heard it. As I look back over my life and so many others' that I have known, it is hard to conceive of a more beneficial blessing. What could be prized more than a clear head? However much or little is in the head, however subtle and far-seeing or not, there is no doubt that honesty dissipates confusion and even stands up beautifully to violence.

 

Now, how does all that blessing land me in Cairo with their top echelon of secret police and army intelligence in wild speculation and dark suspicion concerning my activities?

 

Let's try to look at it this way. God wishes to save this world and clearly sees the line of destruction that it is on. What is equally clear is that mankind is the cause of the impending disaster and that only mankind is able to save the situation. What is required is a total reversal/revolution.

 

Mankind is made up of individual men. Individual men are needed, indeed obliged, if the capacity is there, to affect a complete reversal, a total personal revolution; an ultimate shift of perspective and motivation. Not all men, but for those capable it is a must, both for the sake of their eternal soul and for the sake of the creation itself.

 

Now why did the Egyptian secret police block my way to Sadat? They couldn't otherwise but believe that they were witnessing the most sophisticated CIA/Mossad operation ever instigated in their midst. Honesty, they  were not used to.

 

Ordinary school teachers are forced to make demands of a whole class of young students that can be fulfilled by only  a few. The balance are forced to lie.

 

'Did you do your homework?'

'Yes!'

'Why not?'

'I had a headache, I lost my book, my mother sent me on an errand, my brother took my pencils. Yes.'

 

To survive the pressure and the punishment the child must lie. The teacher knows that what he asks is not possible for all. The teacher knows that to maintain control he must maintain the pressure. The child knows that in order to survive he must lie.

 

And there we are off and running with the results of the disastrous society monster that we have our minds and souls locked into. Yes, mothers and fathers learned the same tricks from the same places and the habit is spread throughout society. Welcome to the mess.

 

'What happened to you, Alan?' asked Uncle Jack.

 

What happened is that it didn't work on me. That is, lying never became a habit. I didn't like it. I did it as little as possible. I eventually stopped completely. Clean head. Nice. Comfortable. Sure it costs, but the return is more than good, it's great.

 

Now you go tell that to the Egyptian secret services. You tell it to the judge.

 

But there is only one Judge. The judgment is everyday every moment, if you were to care to check. Misery pervades. Manipulative hopes never catch up to the rampaging monster that man has set in motion; his lie accepting and lie expecting society.

 

 

'Sadat is a great man,' I exploded in the face of the startled Egyptian army intelligence Colonel. 'You people have no understanding of him.'

 

I let him have it for a timeless eternity, maybe five minutes, maybe ten. I was livid. It was clear that they had been running me around, masquerading as officials of the cultural ministry. Bullshit. The Colonel was in my suite at the top of the Cairo Sheraton. The bastard. Wined and dined we were, for two weeks. Now he hears that I'm returning to London and he's up here actually interrogating me. Not nice, not nice at all. 

 

Sadat had stood up. Dared to be true. Dared to be intelligent. Who could understand him? He knew God. He loved mankind.

 

 

I shat in my pants on one of the first few days in kinder-garten. Tried to clean myself in the cloakroom. Wiped my hands indiscriminately over some of the children's coats. Confused. Shocked. Cornered. Total humiliation. Found-out. Somehow cleaned-up, somehow returned home and somehow returned to kindergarten after a few days. All 'forgotten', never to be mentioned again.

 

Bye bye fear – nothing worse could ever happen to me in my life.

 

At about age twenty-one I asked a Hasidic Rabbi what the religion said the purpose of life was.

 

'Life', he explained, 'was like a cloakroom at the entrance of a house. Prepare yourself in the cloakroom in order to enter the house.'

 

BONUS MORAL: 'Shit' is the undigested parts of food. Our experiences are psychological food. What we don't understand, which is most everything, is undigested food. Don't spread your shit around in the cloakroom; it stinks. 

 

 

In a very contemporary form of speaking, Man is part animal, part lunatic and part God. If the word 'God' has    not thrown you into some state of confusion or disgust then let's take a modest look at it. 'God', if the word represents anything, must be the word that represents everything. So to say 'part this or part that' and make God some kind of 'part' is a bit deceiving. But let's try to take a look at it in this way:

 

Man – part animal, part lunatic and part God. The animal part is pretty clear to see. Pretty clear to see by whom, or by what? Pretty clear to see by consciousness. Consciousness is in the human animal. Man is more than just conscious; he is conscious that he is conscious. He is also conscious that his consciousness has different levels and intensity – in sleep, in love and certainly at death. Nonetheless, man is an animal, has an animal part, for sure.

 

Now, man as a lunatic. Luna – moon. Moon – reflected light. Reflected light – images. Images – imagination. Man's imagination circulates so many things, flooded with such a variety of impressions. Forced to pretend that he under-stands their connections. Forced to pretend that he knows who he is, what he wants and what he is doing – forced to lie. Makes him crazy. Whether he knows it or not, whether he shows it or not. Man, as we know him, is a lunatic, part lunatic. Yes. He is also, more or less, conscious of it.

 

Third part – man as God. God is the 'IS', the IS of every-thing, all together. Man IS; he is therefore part of God, 'all that is'. If God is everything everything is God. As Man is 'something' he is also part of everything and therefore man is also God. And he knows it.

 

So, part animal, part lunatic and part God. What else does the God part of man, the conscious God part, know? He knows that he is alive and will inevitably die. Can God die? Obviously not. The animal part of man dies; dust to dust. The God part, the consciousness, 'returns to God'.

 

So, you be ready.

 

 

 

 

We had just finished two songs at Wembley Studios on the outskirts of London. The final 'mix' was being worked on as I happened upon a security guard watching television near the front door. Great excitement. President Sadat of Egypt was exiting from his plane that had just landed at Ben Gurion Airport. Not to be believed. Thousands of years since the Pharaohs and the Exodus across the Red Sea. Then all the recent wars. First 1948, then the Sinai Campaign, the Six-Day War, the long and bloody War of Attrition, the October/Yom Kipur War. Blood, blood and more blood. And here, from London, we see Sadat landing in Israel. Greeted with joy, greeted in amazement, greeted in love, greeted like a king.

 

'No more war, no more bloodshed' the leaders of the former enemies proclaimed. Had the Messianic Age arrived? It sure had that feeling. The world jumped from joy. It was beyond imagination. It was true. It was on television.

 

We moved into a suite at the London Hilton the next day with intentions to produce the biggest and best show the world had ever witnessed. New York, London, Cairo and Jerusalem. The top music from the Arab, Western and Israeli worlds. We would support this magnificent happening, the world would celebrate.

 

'Really?' said the Egyptian secret services, 'cultural department', 'let's see if we can help.' 'Oh, for God's sake,' we said two months later, 'they never believed us for a second.' They never understood Sadat, they only understood 'man the animal'. They were trained to believe nothing, or at least to believe the worst. When they found nothing subversive it drove them crazy. What a tremendous waste of time for their top echelon of spooks. Was this a red-herring operation? What was their attention being diverted from? They didn't understand. They hate what they don't understand. They let me live. Thank you very much.

 

Who killed Sadat in the end? They shot Sadat, didn't they? HE  STOOD  UP.

 

 

Now it's March 1992, and we sit overlooking a rough and angry sea, Hayarkon Street, downtown Tel Aviv, third  floor apartment, one hundred meters off the Mediterranean coast.

 

Just over a year ago Scud war heads were falling here. Hundreds of thousands of inhabitants fled to Jerusalem and the North as American Bombers were knocking the hell out of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces in Kuwait. Tens of thousands of Iraqi dead.

 

Last month Israeli helicopters blasted the leader of the Moslem Fundamentalists, Party of God, Holy War Sheik off the highway and into kingdom come from the roads of southern Lebanon. Last week a car bomb blew the Israeli Embassy in Argentina sky high.

 

The madness has multiplied. Where are the balancing forces? Now even the trained killers see no future in the mess. The masses high and low have been trained to kill; in the political arena, in the marketplace, on the street and on the battlefield.

 

'Man the animal' seems to be in first place. 'Man the neurotic/lunatic' is watching TV. 'Man the God' is holding his ground and talking the truth.

 

Sadat stood up.

One  Thousand  must  STAND  UP.

The time is late  but not too late.

 

Brothers.

 

 

Ahmed Fouad Hassan was reputed to have the best music group in the Arab world. The Zubin Mehta or the Andre Previn of Egypt, or so it appeared. Through our contacts in London he had agreed to participate. Our first job in Cairo was to secure the arrangements. We expected that it would be delicate. We knew that one of the top female singers in Egypt had inadvertently given an interview to an Israeli reporter not long before and was consequently blacklisted throughout the Arab world. Sadat had just been to Israel but the two countries were still technically at war. How it would all add up we were not at all sure. In fact we were sure of nothing and would have rated our chances of success for the whole project as extremely slim. We would give it everything we had.

 

Friends and family in Montreal who got wind of what was going on thought I had lost my mind. My reputation is likely never to recover. Tens of thousands of dollars were being expended each week. Two to five rooms at the London Hilton buzzing day and night. Seeking out Egyptian contacts, meetings, flights in and out, movie crews and equipment assembled for simultaneous filming in Jerusalem and Cairo, the moment we signed Ahmed Fouad Hassan.

 

One month organizing in London. All is set. I'm settled in a top floor suite in the Cairo Sheraton. Enters Ahmed Fouad Hassan along with business manager. Nervous like hell.    I'd been told that it would be best not to mention the participation of Israeli musicians just yet. I don't. Ahmed is at pains to inform me tout-de-suit that he and his female vocalist must fly first class, the other musicians, regular. What a taste to Sadat's peace initiative. Oh well, we would see.

 

 

My mother used to say, 'the world is crazy.' More than once she said that. I thought I understood her. It didn't say much to me. She should only know. My mother was no fool in life matters. Now the poor thing is confined to the Montreal Hospital of Hope, ninety two years of experiencing the madness, sitting in a wheel-chair, paralyzed. And what comfort can I be to her? I've done nothing in the past twenty years that she could come close to understanding. Of all the craziness in the world I turn out to be the most incomprehensible. I disappear, I explain nothing, not even a good-bye. But the love remains, the love actually becomes clearer. Life has put trust to its ultimate test; it does not waver. May God have mercy on our souls.

 

Mother sits, for the most part alone in a giant impersonal institution in Montreal. I sit in a sunny but crummy apartment in Tel Aviv overlooking the sea, surrounded by an equally crummy city and a few dozen pained but hopeful young people in their teens to their forties. The Middle East, still more war torn than not. Montreal, more of a fools' paradise than not. Mother 'neglected'. I, writing, for the benefit of god knows who.

 

FOOLS  OF  THE  WORLD  UNITE – the tidal wave of craziness and neglect has reached the precipice. I work for those who still have a chance not to get washed over. Others helped me. I do what I can. FORGIVE  ME  MOTHER.

 

 

Are all races and all religions at the same level? Each claims the highest but mainly on the basis of their originators. Christ was THE Son of God; Mohammed was the LAST of the Prophets; Moses was given THE Law; EVERYTHING is in the Vedas. And so it goes. But in living terms, is there a race or religious grouping that is actually living at a higher level than the others? In all nations there are the more and less spiritually advanced, that's obvious, but the general level of a group?

 

Should check out the Arabs in particular and the other Moslems to round out the picture. Their literature is the clearest and the simplest and in many ways the most subtle and direct in exposing the reality of human potential, and responsibility, in an evolutionary/God sense. Be a man, be clear, be responsible, is the constant and unmistakable demand of Islam. No pussy-footing around, you are a creature of God, be a worthy one, be a MAN. It's in their psychic blood, we've seen it. It's also a fact that the modern educated successful Western man is a million miles from an active sense of his responsibilities to God/The Creator. A million miles. Does the difference make a difference? What makes a difference, anything? Are there real enemies in the world? Is one right and the other evil by comparison, or did that distinction end with World War Two? Are there good guys and bad guys and if so are we sure which side we are on? Does it make a difference? Who goes to take a look?

 

 

Magdi Fahmi wrote the Art and Entertainment page for five or six Arab language newspapers across Europe and was working out of a London news office. After weeks of trying to locate an appropriate Egyptian contact we spied him out and he proved to be a gem. Ex-editor of Cairo's only art magazine and he knew everybody. Magdi had the bearing of your favorite uncle; kind, portly, dignified, respectful, helpful. We liked him. He was sent from heaven. Things started to move.

 

Musician Ahmed Fouad Hassan was contacted in Cairo and agreed in principle to participate. Magdi's friend Sami, the manager of the Cairo Sheraton, was contacted and reserved a suite for us at his hotel. Magdi's friend Kamal El-Mallakh, editor of the Egyptology and Art section of Egypt's main newspaper Al-Ahram and with connections to the Sadat circles, was preparing for our arrival in Cairo. Things were moving. Two camera crews were assembled and on stand-by, equipment readied for shipment to Jerusalem and Cairo. Madison Square Garden in New York City reserved for appropriate concert date. First feelers out through friends of Ringo Star for the participation of the regrouped Beatles. We were in hot pursuit.

 

We made flight reservation to Cairo, Magdi Fahmi was coming along with me. Of the musicians that we had just completed our London recording with, Avi, close to hysterical with excitement flew back to Israel and prepared to oversee the impending details there. Yossi, Yehuda, Genya and Vivi holding out at the London Hilton; holding the reins on all the people ready to move the moment they would get the word from me in Cairo.

 

Israeli Intelligence was obviously aware of what we were up to. I doubt if they could have cared less. When we all checked into the London Hilton, the clerk that registered us was a super affable, bright young Israeli trainee. Yossi told me later that he was sure the guy was 'Intelligence’, knows the type, he says. The clerk insisted on accompanying us up to our suite – a few curiosity questions – just doing his job. London Hilton had a small bomb in its lobby not so long before. Also, Yehuda, who did the job of locating Magdi Fahmi for us, had advised the Israeli Embassy in London of the connection; a legal requirement for his contact with the, still officially, 'enemy' national. No objection.

 

These intelligence guys have been having serious life and death relationships with each other for some long bloody years. I never gave them a thought. The Egyptian side, at least, gave us very serious thought. A very intricate net, subtle as subtle can be, was thrown over us from the moment we hit Cairo.

 

 

 

 

Cairo, Cairo, Cairo – Ancient City of the past. Vast, masses of people, hordes of people. In the shadow of the Pyramids. Blazing sun, blue sky. On the fringe of the Sahara. Coptic offspring of the Pharaonic Egyptians, proud, dignified, massive. Eternal Egypt – still throbbing, throbbing on.

 

If Israel were a laser beam, Egypt would be the hydrogen bomb; massive and invulnerable. If Jerusalem is an eternal city, Egypt is the eternal land. Long live eternity. Praise be to God. May the Single Source, the Fatherhood, be recognized by mankind. May men be MEN. For the compassion of Abraham, for the love of Christ, for the modesty of Mohammed –  a blessing be on their memory.

 

The Cairo Sheraton is the Mafioso headquarters of the Arab world. You don't see tourists lounging around in the lobby. People there on business; it vibrates with life and death business. I'm on the top floor in one of the four suites, that everyone takes for granted is bugged. Magdi Fahmi, as others, prefers to talk by an open window rather than in the comfortable lounge area of the rooms.

 

'Why,' I asked him, 'there is nothing that we have to hide.'

 

He says: 'You never know how they will interpret it.'

 

I didn't argue, didn't think about it. This place was hot and heavy, but so was I. Peace takes more than one step, and the direction is up, and there is not necessarily a toehold every-where you would like to find it.

 

 

It's now one o'clock in the afternoon, Saturday, March 28th, 1992. Same Tel Aviv apartment overlooking the sea, and I just awoke. Went to rest at nine in the morning after writing between six a.m. and then. Was awakened previously at four a.m. as Nitza and Yakob entered the apartment to collect two rather delicate Indian string-instruments. They wanted to play with our two jazz infected, blues loving, saxophone playing neighbors in the adjoining apartment. At four a.m. in the morning you say? Well they never got to it, we started to talk and went on until six.

 

Nitza's family came from Libya. One of ten brothers and sisters she was. Of the four that I met, the desert was still in their blood and reflected in their eyes deep and wind-swept, airy. Yakob's family came from Persia. He looks Persian and moves like a Puerto-Rican street fighter. Both have big eastern hearts. Both single and in their early thirties. We talked till six a.m. about how our sense and attitude towards other peoples is almost totally media inspired. What do we really know of them?

 

When I say the word Tehran, even quietly in my head I get this curiously delightful feeling. I only saw it once, mostly from the air and a few short hours on the ground as our plane stopped to refuel on a flight from India to England some twenty years ago. Beautiful snow capped mountain range to what seemed to be the north-east, with Tehran, quiet though electric, spread-out in the flatlands. Desert like, sun-baked and peaceful. A quick snapshot. That's what I remember; not the ugly pictures of Khomeini that were spread throughout the Western media during the past years. The truth is in a million pieces somewhere in between I suppose. It is one of the few places in the world that still attracts me at the moment. Who are they, anyway?

 

You know I've never met an Arab that I didn't like. I know that sounds a bit romantic; no doubt they've got their stinkers too, but that's a fact. It seems that they are still capable of looking you straight in the eye. That is some-thing. On the other hand, I never met an Egyptian that liked the sound of the word 'Palestinian'. It seems that they are allergic. Just what do they know that I don't? The Palestinians; the 'Jews of the Arab world' they are sometimes referred to. Who can know who at that level? And so the world turns and everyone knows who is the worst, and even why.

 

I'd like to go back. In the West I know that I'm in the midst of blindness, in the East I'm still not sure. Life is so short, maybe somebody would like to write me a letter. It's such a short trip here on Earth, can't blame me for being curious, no? And my love, I must remember to apologize for that, yes? Oh shit.

 

Now, I was born a JEW – how about that! You got some-thing to say? Makes one real curious about how opinions are formed.

 

It's been said that the Egyptians never believe a word that they read in the media; in fact nothing that filters through from the mouths of the establishment. We are very close  to that head in the Western world these days. Every mouth-piece has an angle and vested interest to promote. They talk and amplify in order to influence. To inform, they know, would be impossible. There are so many contradictory laws on the books that almost anything could be turned against them. Truth is not only not valued, it has become impossible. Egypt is an ancient culture; they learned not to believe, long long ago, anything.

 

How else can one explain the attitudes we encountered in Cairo? What could they have possibly thought we were up to other than what we said?

 

I know, how do you deal with sixty-odd million inhabitants and a million changing problems? Millions with no work, millions with no houses, millions with barely one meal a day. Army officers at every level plus the clergy plus left wing radicals, itching, planning and arming for revolution and power. Sadat in Jerusalem, you say? 'No more war, no more bloodshed.’ – lovely thought. And now Peace Concerts in New York and in London and Cairo and Jerusalem – well now.

 

But what are they up to? God knows, maybe they have plans to blow-up the Cairo Sheraton. No, that's ridiculous , but WHAT?

 

You're all mad and used to the total confusion. All you want to do is fuck the ladies, drink and have a swift jet to get you to your Swiss bank account. You've got nothing better to do other than scheme and fight. 'Peace,' you say, 'could result in nothing more than boredom.' All right, now we understand, all right.

 

 

Well, we'll lay out the plan as it was envisioned those last few days in London. Euphoria may be too strong a word but all the pieces were falling into place rapidly and precisely. We felt strongly that the Saudi Arabians favored Sadat's intentions. They said nothing but also voiced no objections. Sadat had visited Jerusalem, prayed at the mosque on the Temple Mount surrounded by Israeli security personnel. Strange, to say the least. But on the other hand, why not. 'The family that prays together stays together.' Abraham would have rejoiced. We are God's children, no? We are Abraham's children, no? Then, really, why so strange?

 

Yeah, but armed Israeli plain-clothes men surrounding    the President of Egypt, in prayer, on the site of the ancient Temple of Solomon, in one of Islam's holiest mosques,       in Israeli occupied East Jerusalem – and Saudi Arabia, guardians of the Kaaba in Mecca, 'protectors of Islam' and super wealthy financial supporters of all like-minded Arab brethren – says nothing? Says a lot. Says they're on our side, they're with us, they're for peace now , it serves their interest. And we need money, a very large amount of money, from them, to put on the biggest show, the biggest show of support that the world has ever seen. They were on our agenda.

 

First we had to get to Sadat in Cairo and before that get Maestro Ahmed Fouad Hassan's signature on the dotted line. Strange, but he looked like the biggest hurdle to overcome – he had the most to lose – his reputation, his livelihood, his life maybe.

 

Magdi Fahmi flew-off to Cairo on the agreed date but my work in London was not yet complete. Days passed, a week or more passed. Alternate contracts envisioning varying arrangements with the musicians were drawn up with the help of a London law office. Deposits had to be sent to insure the stand-by readiness of world class mobile camera-men and other professionals. Contracted arrangements with international movie equipment supply and transport company. Immediately on the signing of the Arab musicians we wanted camera crews in Egypt and Israel to start filming all relevant events for the simultaneous production of a major studio, state of the art, full length movie.

 

Magdi started to call from Cairo.

 

'Where are you?' He seemed genuinely disturbed, 'every-one's waiting for you.'

 

Everyone? I was too busy to consider just who they might be.

 

'Soon, I'll be there soon,' I told him, 'everything must be in order.'

 

None of us in London ever mentioned the possibility of anything but success. From one angle the chances of pulling this off were close to nil. On the other hand, if everyone did their job with equally clear and clean motivation, it just might work.

 

It was go for broke. Only the best talent, no bargaining on fees, everything necessary and more for speedy execution. A project that would normally take in excess of a year had to be done now, immediately. We had to catch the action. Ten million dollars minimum, one hundred million hopefully. Not for nothing had we been meeting Arabs for the past twenty years. Not for nothing getting to taste Bedouin custom and hospitality. King Fahed of Saudi Arabia, we were prepared to talk to. Yes, we knew how to keep a confidence. Yes, we expected he would be able to recognize this and other relevancies.

 

'He who is not for me is against me,' a fellow co-religionist once intoned. Even the King of Saudi Arabia cannot ride two camels, going in opposite directions, at the same time.

 

The passage of time means everything and the passage of time means nothing. Yes and no. Every speculation in time is a dream with its element of hope and the inevitable fear that the hope will not materialize. Life as we generally know it is an interaction of the dreams of  'concerned' people.

 

So, people's dreams keep everything in action and are thus everything and, as all dreams dissolve in time, longer or shorter – time is nothing. Back to zero, back to Essence.

 

Spiritually advanced people see all of this as clearly as the fingers on their hands. The fanatics grab their weapons, semi-automatic or philosophical, and insist on killing; for the sake of their God. Oh my God.

 

 

A 1942 Mercedes with cast-iron wood/coal burning stove and back seats that open up into a bed. Weathered the seasons with no rust. I want it. Yossi L. wants to sell it. Others say: 'Hey, wait a minute.' They sure made things good in the old days. World War Two Nazi Germany – seems we can live with that now.

 

Their God can be recorded in scriptures or recorded in their bank account or in their marriage contract. But 'moral' they must be, and committed to their dream.

 

Who cares about Egypt, who cares about the Temple Mount, who cares about peace?

 

WHO is THERE to CARE?

 

To stand up is to stand up for the Truth. 

It's to stand up IN the Truth. 

It's  to  KNOW  THAT  YOU  DO  NOT  KNOW. 

It's to stop shooting.

 

Sadat  STOOD  UP.

They shot him. He's dead. He's nothing now.

A blessing on his memory.

Once again – the 'first fruits'.

 

 

 

Spring time in the Green Mountains of Vermont is sheer joy for the soul. The snow is melting slowly but surely, the water is flowing in the streams. Pasture land greening, the rich black earth spreads its deep aroma on the waves of gentle breezes. Spring is coming soon in Vermont.

 

Here, on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean the sea is still pretending to be vicious but losing its power day by  day. The sun will soon be blistering, the humidity over-whelming. 'Hamsin', or hot dry air, could blow in from the Sahara or Sinai deserts in the south or the Judean desert to the east. Makes for massive irritation. Men sit in cafes drinking Turkish coffee or in air conditioned bunkers cleaning their guns and blaming their enemies for the discomfort. Very little spring here, very hot summers. Very hot blood.

 

I choose to be in the Middle East. Mad, you might say. I say, it's no different; just heated up and speeded up. The facts of Man's madness become so clear that sanity lights up as clear as a bright star on top of a blinking Christmas tree. No mistaking one from the other.

 

What for, all of this? The reality of consciousness packaged in an eternal soul. That's what for. To be freed from the temporal/imaginary. For the freed energy to infuse the lines of connection between the soul and all other soul realities. Planet soul, vegetable soul, animal soul, human soul, cosmic soul. The living whole. A 'death' in this life, a birth in the 'world to come'. Alive at last.

 

Last day of March 1992 and Spring is just around the corner.

 

Brothers! 

 

 

Let's go back to Cairo in the winter of 1977. December, Christmas time in Cairo. Sadat, a month or so from his historic Jerusalem visit and a few days after Prime Minister Begin's first visit to Egypt; a quick flight over Cairo and a tète-a-tète with Sadat in Ismailia by the Suez Canal. Disagreement there, ruffled feelings.

 

I'm back in the offices of the Al-Ahram Newspaper for my second meeting with Kamal El-Mallakh, this most impressive Pharaonic featured Coptic specialist in Egyptology and the Arts. Up stands Kamal from behind his massive desk and out of the blue starts to blast away at me concerning the pettiness and ingratitude of Mr. Prime Minister, Mister Jew, Begin.

 

'Why does he argue, why does he doubt, why does he not accept, why is he so stubborn,' Mr. Kamal El-Mallakh is asking me! 'Doesn't Begin realize that if Sadat says peace he means it, that he will take care of them!'

 

That was the gist of his evident outrage. He went on with a bombastic though somewhat fatherly lecture for twenty minutes or more. I was amazed. Why me? Who the hell did he think I was? Testing, he was testing; I never believed such a professional act was possible. I didn't blink. I had no reason to. Best show I had ever seen. I didn't even say I was sorry.

 

I sensed this amazing scenario. Begin, in Egypt, on the edge of the Sinai, bristling with pride and responsibility and the full fury of Moses as his back-up support. Sadat, king of Egypt, son of the gods, master of millions, heir to the Pharaohs, custodian of the Pyramids and ancient temples of the Nile, with his hand benevolently on the shoulder of – The Jew.

 

‘Little Israel – we intend to take care of you – now please, TRUST.'

 

Little Israel says: 'Hey, wait a damn minute – we got the BOMB – don't do us no favors.'

 

That's the picture I got from Mr. Head of Egyptian Intelligence, in an Al-Ahram office. He was a big man even under-cover. He didn't know who I was, but damn it, he was going to find out. 

 

 

What interests me most at the moment is what seems like the world's preoccupation with marriage and children. 'Be fruitful and multiply' was the biblical injunction. As if you had to talk people into doing that. The Universe pre-programmed that impulse into man, effectively. Pro-creation goes on at a frantic pace with precious little need for any holy encouragement. So just what is that all about?

 

Christ is reputed to have said 'I am the first fruits'. The implication? In fulfilling the spirit of the Law, Jesus had attained to its aim; had brought the process to FRUIT-ION. The man 'died', the 'tzadik' had 'arisen, the COMPLETED MAN, the 'Christos'. Be fruitful and multiply, indeed.

 

Theology? God-speculation? Do-good-ism? Mankind has always garbled and twisted the truth. Now the world, like never before, needs the straight truth. You 'bite your lip' before uttering the slightest lie. God is nothing other than the WHOLE TRUTH. All lies cloud the issue. You are the issue. That's REVOLUTION. All the rest is children's games. Now, you go tell that to Kamal El-Mallakh, in the heat of the night.

 

 

That was one of the best songs that came out of England when I was a kid. That is if we don't consider that wonder-fully hopeful World War Two favorite:

 

 

Oh Yes!

 

 

Military helicopters of all shapes and sizes are flying up and down the coast of this country day and night. We sit here reporting. They pass our window. We are soothed by waves collapsing on the beach below. Helicopters, missile patrol boats, observation ships for some hundreds of miles. From Southern Lebanon in the north, past Nahariya, Akko, Haifa, Natanya, Tel Aviv, Ashdod, the Gaza Strip, down to the Egyptian edge of the Sinai desert. The eastern border of the country as it now stands runs alongside the Jordan River. There, a double security fence is patrolled by soldiers and army vehicles and backed-up with sophisticated electronic devices. Other borders, north and south are appropriately secured, and the middle of the country serves as the largest army camp/aircraft carrier that the world has ever seen. How much trouble men go to keep their un-happy bodies in one piece.

 

 

I just had a reflection of something that took place in my more 'gun-hoe', see all the excitement, days. Its value at the moment seems pathetically questionable. We'll take a look anyhow.

 

Back in the early seventies I was living in the Yamin Moshe Artist Colony in Jerusalem. Not quite an artist yet, only some two years out of the business world, but enough of one to be befriended by Anat, a rather zany batik artist who grew up on a Kibbutz by the Sea of Galilee. Anat, during her army service had been secretary to the Chief of the Air Force and had all kinds of friends throughout the armed forces. Her brother Udi had been killed as Israeli forces took the Old City of Jerusalem in the Six Day War. A deep source of pain for her.

 

Anat's ex-boyfriend had been a super-duper mechanical engineer and an officer in the Armored Corps. He eventually set sail to the Far East as a ship's engineer, met up with some spiritual teacher, was totally reformed, and returned to Israel talking as little as possible and refusing to do anything other than manual labor in agriculture. Anat also knew the who's who in the Armored Corps.

 

'Do you want to see the army in action in the Sinai?' she asked one day.

 

'Why not,' I said.

 

Down to Tel Aviv and a small military airport. Two engine, prop, military plane. Off we went with a cargo of rugged looking soldier fellows. Landed in the middle of the Sinai desert at one of the largest ex-Egyptian air bases that had been taken by the Israelis in the Six Day War. Officer and jeep waiting. Taken to Anat's friend who was head of the Armored Corps for the whole of Sinai. All I had said was, 'yes.'  

 

Zim-zam-boom – I was put, quick as a flash, into the back of another jeep. In the front was a driver and beside him was friend/guide Mr. Armored Corps Commander with radio controls, as we all chased a group of five or more tanks as they speeded through all kinds of fancy maneuvers. Shoot'n they were doing, turrets swinging, up and down sand dunes, we chasing like mad men in what seemed like a very vulnerable jeep. Everyone yelling at everyone else over their radios. Training exercise it was. I was being shown. Oh man.

 

Have not seen Anat in maybe twenty years. Why this story now? I guess it's just that peace seems so far away. That's life, that's death. So what! I write. You read. Russia falls apart. The Chabad Hasidim await the Rebbe to declare himself the Messiah. 

 

 

SEE  YOU  ALL  IN  THE  NEXT  WORLD. 

 

God willing. 

 

 

 

The first meeting with Ahmed Fouad Hassan had resulted in very little. He and the famous female singer were to receive first class comforts, all the way. Clear! Next? It was the week preceding Christmas, a few concerts were coming up – we would meet again after that. That's all? Well, Christmas is Christmas, and anyway we would have the opportunity to see the orchestra in action, one of their upcoming performances was to take place right here at the Cairo Sheraton. That's it? That was it for then.

 

In steps Mr. Army Intelligence Col. H. along with Mr. Very Very Big-Shot, Al-Ahram based, Most Holy, Head of Egyptian Intelligence, Kamal El-Mallakh. Wined and dined, as they say, and a little seduced. I enjoyed every minute of it. They were fine and gracious hosts and company. I say this with full appreciation. True, they were doing their job. True, I was doing my job. True, at face value, our jobs seemed inconsistent. But wait a moment. Were they not also working for peace? Maybe peace for their country, maybe peace for whichever power group they were close to. Peace for themselves? They wanted to know what was going on, they wanted to feel comfortable. Sadat was after a very big peace. So big, he put his life on the line for it. Smaller men  –  smaller peace. I liked them all.

 

We were taken to dinner one evening at a rather high class private club on an island, plunk in the middle of the Nile River. A bit of Hollywood in the middle of truly magnificent though poverty stricken Cairo.

 

Mr. El-Mallakh, Col. H., his wife, her girlfriend, Magdi Fahmi and yours truly seated in the large but friendly club dining room. Atmosphere of businessmen in action. A little too much smoke in the air, a touch of alcohol fumes in the nostrils. Each table gently buzzing. Everyone minding his own business. The whole atmosphere said: 'Do your business, it's nobody else's business, do be relaxed; you're well protected.' Good. Somehow I got Magdi Fahmi to sit beside me and the girlfriend got shuffled-over to the other end of the table. Later, Magdi pointed out to me that the girl was slipped-out before the end of the evening.

 

'Didn't do her job!' he said, 'didn't you notice?' he asked.

 

‘No.' I missed the point. Clock and dagger business was not my business. Cairo was comfortable. People were very nice. I was patient.

 

Col. H. proudly showed me a snap-shot of his five year old son. Lovely looking boy. Then, an awkward situation. A thin middle aged man mustached and kindly face, stumbled over to our company. Obviously more than a little drunk. He was introduced to me as the ex-mayor of Cairo presently in the public relations business. He voiced a few pleasantries, gave me his business card and was off to the obvious relief of my hosts. We ate. We left. One night in Cairo.

 

 

Now, everyone is getting impatient. So what the hell happened in the end? Did the concerts come off? What about Sadat? Did you get the money from the Saudis? Anyone get killed? Action, you want action!

 

That kind of action is just what keeps the whole bloody mess going. Up to your ears in it. If you are not drowning in the shit then you are reading about it, talking about it or watching it on TV, live and fabricated. It's all fabricated. Hooked on the art-ificial. Bad art, cruel art. 

 

Then the energy runs out, you get sick, you die. You see a damn lot of the show but you miss life. Miss your destiny. Miss the purpose.

 

Humanity has turned into a cosmic shame. It's on the edge of being a criminal disaster. You are needed. That is why we write. That is why you should read. May the darkness dissipate, may the light dawn.

 

All right then, some more excitement. The Cairo Sheraton, day and night, in the lobby, people moving. Few single people around, mainly groups of people. Many fancy dudes, sheiks and other notably serious types from the surrounding Arab countries stride in through the front door surrounded by five or six equally no nonsense compatriots. Body-guards? Probably. They disappear so fast that you are not sure if you really saw them. Going where? Who knows! To the bar, to the rooms, to a meeting. To get in, to do their business, and to get out. No one seems terribly comfortable out in the open.

 

I was called down to the desk one day after paying, by American Express credit card, my first week expenses. Standing close by was a pilot of the Saudi Arabian Airlines, obviously an American. With a slightly flushed face and red hair, he almost jumped out of his skin when I approached him. Wanted to know, I did, whether he had any idea about Saudi visa requirements. Simple question. He knows or he doesn't know, right? Well, he almost dropped dead. Did not want to speak to me – nothing, no way. Why? You guess. Two days later I read in the English language newspaper that was left at the door of my suite each morning, that:

 

‘PILOT OF SAUDI ARABIAN AIRLINES IS FOUND DEAD AT THE BOTTOM OF THE EMERGENCY STAIR-WELL AT THE CAIRO SHERATON HOTEL. IT WAS ASSUMED THAT HE SLIPPED FROM THE TOP LANDING AFTER HAVING TOO MUCH TO DRINK.’ 

 

Well now, I swear that I had nothing to do with it. I just wanted to know.... They play tough around here, no doubt. You better be clear about what you are doing. That's generally a good policy, wouldn't you say? What the hell could he have been up to? Somebody sure didn't like it.

 

Now, the guy behind the window tells me that they lost the American Express charge slip that I had signed the day before. Would I mind signing another? Now, wait a bloody minute. Lost? Say, that's like cash;  you lose, you lose, right? But this is Cairo, that may be two months' salary for the poor guy that lost it, maybe. No, no I thought, Cairo or no Cairo, I don't like this.

 

'Give me a letter' I told him, 'put down the details, the amount, if the charge does not come through, I'll send a cheque.' No argument, case closed. Now, what was that all about? Testing, testing. If it was my own money, I did exactly right. If it were Company money, the wrong 'Company'  – well, then.

 

Another item in the newspapers. Front page of the London Daily Mail and the Herald Tribune out of Paris. Something to this effect: 

 

‘REPORTER FROM MAJOR LONDON NEWSPAPER WHO WAS ON ASSIGNMENT IN BEIRUT TOOK A FLIGHT TO CAIRO THE MOMENT HE LEARNED OF THE IMPENDING SADAT-BEGIN MEETINGS THAT WERE TO BE HELD IN ISMAILIA. HIS DEAD BODY WAS FOUND BY THE ROADSIDE A FEW KILOMETERS FROM THE AIRPORT YESTERDAY.’

 

A reporter? Just a reporter? Tough neighborhood. All this going on not only under my nose but swirling around me like a hula-hoop. I was clean. I kept focused on Sadat's vibration, on Sadat's motivation. Clear. The rest was merely lower level activity, not my business.

 

So you want some blood. So you got it. 

 

 

Right now my blood is boiling, my hands are a shade shaky, my teeth hurt and I've got a slight headache. It is all that action that we just touched. Connects one with that reality. True it all happened about fifteen years ago from this writing, but something of the sort is always going on. Something of the sort is going on now. So, in getting into these details, into that head, we connect with all that level, past and present. Not so pleasant.

 

The first time I was in Jerusalem was 1955, thirty-seven years ago. I fell in love. The Holy City for three major religions. Most people take that as some quaint historical fact. It's more than that. Jerusalem was and Jerusalem IS. It's powerful. Like the Pyramids in their way, most powerful. You don't get to feel that, you don't get to know that by rushing in and out. That's what modern man is doing most of his life no matter where he visits, rushing in and rushing out. Not unlike the sheiks in the Cairo Sheraton.

 

No one who loves Jerusalem can really explain it to anyone very clearly. It gets into your bones, it gets into your heart. You may leave for a while but you've got to go back. There's nothing like it. It's very strong from many angles. It's for people who have already developed patience, who already have staying power. No accident that throughout history no army has been capable of scaring its inhabitants out. The city has been destroyed but the inhabitants don't run; they'd rather die in the ruins. They have. There is no way that they can leave their love. Strange but true. True till today.

 

A friend called from Jerusalem a few days ago and told me  of a report he had seen on television. Seems that some  fancy instrument in space just recorded: A HIGHER LEVEL OF LIGHT EMANATING FROM THE PLANET IN THE AREA OF – yes, you guessed it – JERUSALEM.

 

Well, we know that there are some machines that are more sensitive than some men. Certain esoterists talk about 'power spots' on the planet. They also claim that the planet is in fact a Being. But who cares. 'My father can beat up your father' and 'my religion is better than your religion'. Well, you name it, but no doubt Jerusalem is powerful.

 

Just for the record; I'm feeling much better now, thank you.

 

By the way, we really are ALL-ONE.

 

Tel Aviv is another story again. Tel Aviv is hooked into all the nonsense of the world. The committed Jerusalemite finds it most distasteful. Anyone with any taste finds it distasteful. Nothing attractive, all imitation. Army headquarters – says a lot. Tough and stubborn, rough and ready. Roll a'boll a'ball a penny at pitch. Sufficient variety here to drive any psychologist mad. You hear a lot of Russian spoken on the streets these days. Over two hundred thousand from the recent immigration joined the local population. For the most part quite modest and civilized. Also, more than a little dis-orientated. The pot is bound to boil, the spices are bound to blend. The Jews have survived a long and rough history and are more than likely to make it to the end of this civilization. Great feat this holding on till the end. What for? Don't ask.

 

We need some heroes here. Not merely for local survival. World heroes, human heroes, life on the line heroes. Heroes for sanity. Heroes for Truth. The country needs it, the world needs it. Yes, 'a light unto the nations’ – why the hell not.

 

Begin and Sadat agreed to agree, 'no more war, no more bloodshed'. Now the rest of us must agree:

 

NO  MORE  LIES,  NO  MORE  CHEATING. 

 

You got that? You want to do business? Let's try and sell that to the rest of the world. Either enough buy or there won't be a world left. Be a good conscienced sucker. There ain't nothing to lose. 

 

Humanity must CLEAN-UP or choke. NOW. 

 

 

There are a number of episodes that took place in Cairo that I would like to review at some point in this report. But we have a slight dilemma. We very much want to get to the bottom of things, such as: what exactly was the expectation? What is the expectation now? I want to move in the direction of answering those questions.

 

The miscellaneous episodes are roughly the following:

 

   1)  Magdi Fahmi, in the suite and on the streets, with a   

          Camera.

   2)  The secret of Adam X., head of Saudi Intelligence.   

   3)   Police asking questions at Magdi's apartment  house.       

   4)   Kamal El-Mallakh's request for the black cloth.

   5)   The nightclub and the warm dance. 

   6)   Car chase to the airport. 

   7)   Avi's Tel Aviv-Cairo telephone call.

   8)   The night at Col. H.'s apartment and the  underwater   

           flashlight.

   9)   Hash purchase.

10)  The suspicious radio.

11)   Magdi in the elevator and the Palestinian.

12)   Last meeting with musicians – Israeli  connection.

13)   Col. H. exposes himself.

14)   The circus at the London Hilton – before Cairo.

15)   Reverberations in America.

16)   And more. 

 

A spy thriller is not what we had in mind, but possibly the above items could throw some light on the WHY of all of this and not merely the 'wherefore'.

 

As the blind man said: 'We shall see.' 

 

 

 

Countries are simply not peaceful entities. They are all controlled one way or another by a ruling clique that obviously cannot take care of everybody. So, they take care of themselves. Individuals right up to parliamentarians and kings are quite schooled in the art of taking care of Number One. Themselves. Internal security controls 'hooligans' and other dissenters, the armed forces guard the borders, and extend them if possible. Simple. The super powers have a tendency to spread themselves very wide. 'Britannia ruled the waves’, America rules the brain-waves. Pepsi-Cola sells briskly in Shanghai and Saddam Hussein watches CNN. The disease spreads.

 

The fact that most everyone knows this in our information age does little to change anything. Car bombs and airline hijacking are not at all pleasant to contemplate, but bullet proof glass and metal detectors moderate the anxiety. Miniature tear-gas canisters and Valium also help. Psychiatrists come in handy. Blue movies sure take your mind off things. Electrified fences and Dobermans make one feel almost safe. And, 'Hail America, America rules the brain-waves'. In a general sense the choice today is not overly exciting. It's come down to a 'choice' between Greater America or Barbarism. God save us from Irving Layton's last 'ism’ – Cannibalism.

 

So what the hell are we doing in Cairo? We're sucking the poison out of the wound. These Secret Service fellows are some of the smartest guys around. Subtle. Most practiced of social psychologists. In a special way, they are the most awake within the general population. Every man's wet dream is a fabrication; and they know it. They're also the eyes and the ears of those Power Possessing People. No accident that we ran into each other in the hot-and-heavy, rough-and-ready Middle East. They were a stone wall. Could we find a door in the wall? Palace guards are strange fellows.

 

It's probably not possible to go over their heads. The top guys inevitably need a screening process. The secret guys serve that purpose. They must screen-out the announced and the unannounced, the invited and the uninvited.

 

We had in fact invited ourselves for a meeting with Sadat. State security had no right to take things at face value, they had no mandate to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. An honest face is less than half a ticket in this game. Nothing to complain about.

 

The camouflaged door in the stone wall was not opened for me. Later, a few less well intentioned persons went over the wall.

 

THEY  KILLED  SADAT – DIDN'T  THEY.

 

Now I am more than just curious. Now the issues appear far more serious. Now I must evaluate my possible role, my responsibility.

 

Each man is but a cell in the body of humanity. Humanity has brought the world to the brink of disaster. Each human is responsible. The man called Sadat made a big move. They killed him. What now?

 

At some point, either in London or Cairo, Magdi Fahmi slipped some gentle though serious and thought provoking words into my ears. It sounded so neutral, almost casual, that the weight of the suggestion seemed to float above the scales. He said something like: 'You know how the world keeps speculating on the danger of terrorists getting hold of atomic weapons?’

 

Maybe that is all he actually said. But whatever the surroundings, whatever the undercurrents of his meaning, the words hit me like a laser beam. He was suggesting Israel! Israel had the Bomb, that was accepted knowledge. Israel as a terrorist state? Well now. Are those kinds of things merely a question of opinion, merely a point of view? What does it mean, what does it imply?

 

Who in fact are the good guys and who in fact are the bad guys? And, in this mass mess world that humanity has concocted who has the capacity, the objectivity, the good will, the strength and the position even to evaluate the reality – let alone affect something?

 

Now many in the world juggle nuclear weapons in a state of crippled drunk confusion. Is it too late? 'My Country, right or wrong' is an idiotic notion. It's the world with its head on the block. It's do or die for all of us. Humanity must be brought to see its oneness, or self-destruct.

 

So, we know that there is the 'good’ – intelligent/awake /healthy and the 'bad’ – ignorant/asleep/sick in each person and in each nation. The essential question is always, which aspect will rule, which will lead? We must communicate with the best in a person and the best in the nations. We need not be shy. The light is infinitely stronger than the darkness. It's not a question of numbers – the issue is quality. The lowest within humanity did it, the highest can undo it.

 

The best are spread throughout society, in all walks of life. You need not be president of Egypt to contribute. Each has a serious job to do in his own position, the place that he and he alone occupies. The first rule, NO MORE LIES NO MORE CHEATING. The mind must be clean, the mind must be open, the mind must be fearless. Now or never. To save oneself, to save one's soul, to save the world, has become synonymous. 

 

The best must prevail in each individual. The best must prevail in each nation, and we must communicate.

 

We'll move back to Cairo; witness the waste of energy that takes place when suspicion infects the intelligence. When men lie with the same straight face that they tell the truth they lose the ability to distinguish between lies and truth outside themselves. They must check and check and check, never reaching clarity. A lie has a completely different vibration than the truth. A lying man has a completely different vibration than a truthful one. Only a truthful man can be sure. All the rest are, 'Trees to be cut down and burned in the Fire.' 

 

I left the Al-Ahram offices one day and started to walk in the direction of the hotel. That night we had been invited to visit Mr. Undercover, Mr. Col. H. and his wife at their apartment. I remembered the fine face of their young son that was flashed in front of my fine face a few nights before at the private club. 

 

'A gift,' I thought, 'I shall find something to bring the boy.' 

 

Block after long block I walked, and nary a store did I spy. Grey building after grey building and absolutely no commerce visible. Then suddenly we spot an indistinguish-able store front a short way down a side street. We enter to find ourselves in a hardware store, of sorts. A gift for a boy? There should be something. Nothing, nothing, nothing, and then we spot it. A foot and a half long, fully encased in rubber, totally water-proof, a child's dream – flashlight. 

 

'Perfect' I thought, 'could not have done better in Macy's toy department.' I bought it and I brought it. 

 

That night we entered a modest size, modestly furnished apartment, neatly decorated for the Christmas season. The company included Col. H., his wife, her girlfriend, Kamal El-Mallakh and the young son, not yet to be seen. I offered to let them listen to a tape of the songs that we had just recorded in London. They accepted. A few curious questions on the subject of the music – duly impressed. I then produced the monster flashlight, wrapped rather un-Christmas like in brown paper. Stunned silence. 

 

'For your son,' I said, 'hope he likes it.'

 

Col. H. went white, his eyes went dark. He was shocked, he was confused. I didn't understand. 

 

'What is it for?' he asked, 'what could he do with it?' I was truly amazed. What was all the fuss about? A flashlight; kids love flashlights. What's the problem? These thoughts I kept to myself. 

 

'I don't know' said I, 'maybe in the bathtub, maybe any-where, it's water-proof, light under the water, fun.' 

 

They didn't think it fun, it seemed. They didn't think it funny either. What was I trying to say? Was it a sign? Did I guess what they were up to? No, I didn't, not then anyways. 'Underwater flashlight, huh!' Oh my god. There is no end to suspicion. Issue dropped. Another night in Cairo. 

 

Now to The Case of The Black Cloth. Were they getting back at me? Another test? A threat, maybe? Check the lines of communication – probably. 

 

'Kamal El-Mallakh wants three yards' I think it was, 'wants a piece of Black English Cloth, for a suit'. Magdi Fahmi advises me one day.

 

Now it's my turn to be shocked, surprised.

 

'What in god's name for?' I asked Magdi. 

 

'I don't know,' says Magdi, 'just says he wants it.' 

 

I had no idea how to take it. Was it a request for 'bakshish'? No, too small for such a well placed man. Maybe suit material was hard or even impossible to secure in Cairo. Maybe he needed to be dressed up for our meeting with Sadat, maybe. Reflections in retrospect, maybe a threat. They bury men in black suits in some cultures. Which culture were we dealing with? Anyone's guess. If it was a message, I missed it. If I missed it, that could have been a 'good sign'. They did let me live. It could not have represented a big problem to 'arrange something'. I remember the pilot and the reporter. All's well that ends well. But we have not seen the end, yet. I sent a telex off to London to the International Movie Equipment Co. that was standing-by. THREE YARDS OF BLACK SUIT  MATERIAL STOP PRONTO STOP. Did not want such a small detail to get in the way.

 

The more we get back to the story of happenings in Cairo the less interesting it becomes for me. The inevitability of suspicion and the obvious necessity to have me checked out is quite clear at this point. The fact that I should have expected a more enlightened reception indicates a naive evaluation of the possible functioning of man within society. I don't believe I overestimated Sadat. I also believe that he left behind some people that not only understood where he was coming from but that such understanding affects Egypt and all that Egypt touches, to this day. His work continues. My review of the security folk brought a lot into focus and has completely drained me. That is heavy stuff to turn over in one's psychological digestive system.

 

Individual men may begin to open their eyes. The big question is whether it can affect any ultimate difference in humanity's chances for physical or psychological survival.

 

We have been calling on men to stand up. We have been insisting on the necessity, on the obligation, to do so. At the moment my whole system says, 'hopeless'. A tired part of me says, 'forget it.' A part of me says, 'the quicker out of this world for me the better.' Sadness dominates the system. My Being thanks God, my heart drained empty sad. How the children suffer.

 

To continue the story or not. We shall see.

 

Within all the 'whatever was going on' and all the 'whatever was being suspected' we were caught up in Cairo within a structure of current and historical political composition. Their checking methods were not random and totally improvised. There were assumptions of possibilities and probabilities gleamed from past experiences. Also, the spy business has a history going back as far in time as man's political ambitions. All kinds of tricks, all kinds of methods for digging them out. The organization that surrounded me in Cairo inevitably had at its disposal forensic experts, electronic snooping devices, means of checking the origins and possible codes of communications, analysis of person-alities, assumed possible political motivation, etc.. In other words, if our stated objectives were a subterfuge, anything could be possible and everything would have to be checked out. By what means? How do you get people, sophisticated people they had to assume, to trip up, to show their hand?

 

Here was another evening that we were taken out on the town. Magdi Fahmi came up to the suite to fetch me. We left the rooms at around eight p.m. in a very busy pre-Christmas Cairo Sheraton hotel. Descend in an elevator that had absorbed half a dozen persons in the first few floors below us. At some middle level the elevator stopped. Doors open. A man stands facing us on the landing. A large man, maybe six feet four, broad and well fed, neatly dressed in a business suit. He stands straight, he looks handsome, serious and straight forward and a strictly no nonsense type. Nobody moves in or out of the elevator. The elevator doors remain open a shade longer than usual. In one graceful movement with a deep somewhat friendly but clearly businesslike voice the man says... 'Hello Magdi.' And with as large a hand as I have ever seen reaches into the middle of the elevator, shakes Magdi's hand and gently but most firmly draws him OUT OF THE ELEVATOR. A moment suspended in space. Dead silence, only two words spoken, 'Hello Magdi', then Magdi zipped out into a large open space. That floor did not have the smell of a hotel; more like a large floor of a busy office. No time for good-byes. Magdi gone in a flash. Elevator doors close. We are on the way to the lobby. I land, alone.

 

Kamal El-Mallakh, Col. H. and his wife stand between the elevators and the bar area. Many people, many colors, much excited talk as people swirl around. Women with high-pitched laughs, slightly nervous laughs, a little hysterical laughs, very controlled laughs. A movement that seemed to flow mainly in the direction of the bar area. No one dares to make a mistake here. No one is given a chance to make a second mistake here. The very walls warn you. I had stood for a few moments outside the elevator doors before spotting the others. 'Magdi.' I thought, 'what the hell happened?' I had this sinking feeling in my stomach. The feeling said:  'You'll never see him again.' No time to think. I found myself moving in the direction of my hosts for the evening. We all stood in small talk for fifteen or twenty minutes as if waiting for someone but with absolutely no mention of Magdi. Magdi forgotten, maybe gone forever, who could know? 

 

As I review this scene, sitting in Tel Aviv some fifteen years after the fact, a five letter word keeps popping into my head in large capital letters: MOVIE- MOVIE -MOVIE. Is this the way movie scripts get written? Can people dream these things up from nothing? Am I dreaming? The facts are the facts. The reporting is accurate. But what about the assumptions. I was making none then. And now? Should I make this report public? Would it, could it, expose things that are in fact none of my business?  'Curiosity killed the cat' is another one of, I think, my mother 's sayings. Should I listen to my mother?

 

Low and behold, Magdi materialized in the lobby. For me, like returning from the dead. 

 

I spot him by the elevator. I go to him.

 

'What happened?' I ask, 'what was that all about? Who was that?'

 

Maybe the first time I questioned him, but what the hell. Magdi was either a very truthful person or he could sure think quick on his feet.

 

'A Palestinian friend,' he said, 'I bought this watch in Beirut and it stopped working in London. This friend of mine who I saw in London was going to Beirut and offered to take the watch back there to get fixed. Now he wanted to return it to me.'

 

I was so happy to have Magdi back that the last thing I had in mind was to question his explanation. But gee-whiz, sure never in my life could have pictured a watch having such an exotic history, being so well traveled. You figure it out.

 

Before you could say hoop-tee-doo we were all out the front door of the hotel into a taxi and on our way to dinner. All, that is, except Magdi who had been left behind without me even noticing nor caring. The next day Magdi brought it up: 'Didn't you notice how they shuffled me aside?' He asked me.

 

No, I had not particularly noticed. They were my hosts, I didn't assume that they had to bring anyone else along. What difference did it make? We were waiting for our next meeting with musician Ahmed Fouad Hassan and Sadat was still busy entertaining Begin. I was doing nothing else but treading water in a champagne and shark filled pool.

 

Off we went to a nightclub, on an island or not I am not sure. This was the night after the private club engagement. Our new dining spot was as unexpected and perfect as all the other outings that they had accommodated me with. Dimly lit, not overly large nightclub. Table on the near edge of an elevated floor section that ran along the side of the room. Soft music from a five piece band and a handful of gentle folk doing the 'fox-trot'. Oh yes.

 

Col. H. sits to my left, his wife opposite him and with Kamal El-Mallakh to his left at the short end of the table. Opposite me and shortly to be filled near the end of our meal, was an empty chair. Small talk concerning the food and god knows what else kept us busy throughout dinner and the eventual arrival of The Lady, who I found positioned, face to face, in the previously empty chair opposite me. 'How do you do, who do you do!' – it was all very simple.

 

It's nice having no responsibility. A guest; sit back and read the menu, no need to instigate conversation, no need to plan ahead, no need to consider any 'why' or 'where'. A lone rider on a guided tour – a Guest.

 

After dinner and to my pure surprise, Col. H. leaves the table with his wife, and with my eyes carefully following we find him of all places on the dance floor. Well, why not? It's a nightclub, isn't it? It's his wife, isn't it? Sadat's in Ismailia, isn't he? So why not? I don't know I was surprised. A little. The lady across the table had not attracted my attention other than as a pleasant curiosity up to that moment. Then I began to sense her a bit more. Nice lady, good looking, simple and mature face, forty or so, with a soft and slightly mischievous smile. 'Well, alright then,' thought I, 'haven't danced in many a year, and I like to. The music is fine and my host, one of my hosts, is dancing – why the hell not?' Up we two go after the Col. has finished his first dance and is standing ready for the next. The Col.'s second dance was our first, then he left the dance floor. I hardly noticed. I was in heaven. This Lady, this WOMAN, was like having god in your arms. Warm and sweet smelling, soft and graceful. I could have danced till dawn. One more dance and then one more. Never imagined that making peace could ever be so pleasant. 

 

We arrived back at our table to some rather stern looking faces. Had we been away too long? Come-on now who's counting, and anyways you started it. Five minutes pass quietly and the Lady slips away, hardly noticed. Kamal informs me that she had just dropped in to say 'hello' before being picked up by her husband as they were both in the same area. Her HUSBAND? How the hell was I to know? Would she tell him that I had given her my hotel room number? How the hell was I to know? Nightclubs do funny things to your head.

 

Now, just what could they have gained from that evening. They were not the types to be practicing up on Bedouin hospitality. I think I was looking much too normal and a little too blaze for their taste, and for their precious time. There was a nation to protect.

 

For my part I was certainly not out for a 'good time'. I had not even thought of visiting the Pyramids; a most favorite spot of mine. The last time I was in Egypt was some three or four years before. Most everyday in Cairo a visit to the Pyramids was my priority, my joy, my soul need. This time, not once. I was here with a serious and delicate piece of work to do. I also knew how to catch my breath in-between.

 

But these guys were really skipping me around the dance floor; the bright side of Cairo. One way or another I was in their hands, there was no question about that. My mind simply was not tuned to suspicion and two weeks in Political Egypt is not a long time in order to get your bearings.

 

We'll know better next time.

 

BROTHERS!

 

 

 

Up to now I've related the story as if I was the only one involved in its essential thrust. Not true. Many others were swinging for over a month in London before we ran into The Wall in Cairo. I was not important, they were not important. IT was important. The Sufi Sa'adi once wrote that 'our individual names have no more significance than the dots on domino pieces – they are there simply for the purpose of counting.' There was a common sense of necessity. The necessity of actively supporting the Sadat initiative. There was a shared feeling of the rightness of the concerts and the potential effectiveness of having the whole process, musical and political, recorded on film for a full blown major movie. There was a pool of highly motivated and accomplished people with a variety of talents. Everyone ready to give it their all. Do or die – everything on the line.

 

A month or more at the London Hilton and a book could be and may be written on it. Maybe it's possible now, maybe not. We want to advance the cause. The game is far from over. As far as I know everyone involved in London is still alive and working for the best. The Source is up, or in, the cause is clear and unwavering. We write to clear the air, to advance the cause. We wish to touch what will help. We wish to touch for no other reason. London and Cairo were acts of pure faith. It did not turn out in any way we could have imagined, but such is the nature of imagination. Yet it moved so much, it went so far in so many directions, it demonstrated such love and seriousness that each one involved can only say: 'Thank God, thank God that we did not do any less.' Let the chips fall where they may. May the effort go on. Insha'allah. 

 

 

Is it useful to look at the political map of today? Our sense of the situation comes from the gut. Best to take a look, a close look, at what things appear to be rather than to let it turn and fester at an unconscious level.

 

Communism as we have known it is dead. The new threat, the new 'enemy' is obviously Islamic Fundamentalism from the eyes of the West vs. Industrial Capitalism in the eyes of the East. The Western powers are scared-stiff. They hate emotionalism, especially fanatic religious emotionalism. When it's backed up by hundreds of millions of like minded strange cultured foreigners it causes ulcers and cold sweat nightmares. The Mediterranean sea is the West's eastern border. Israel must appear as a long 'trip wire'. Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, are now ruled by cliques either co-operating with the West or being held down by economic and/or military threat. But the ground there is most shaky. Masses in the streets and revolution could materialize as quickly as happened in Iran. Then what? A new gender of the 'yellow peril' rearing its head? How to defend if they come, in waves, literally. Can you nuke them all, can you gas them all?

 

The Soviet Union is gone, but the arms factories of the  West still have elaborate production lines in action and highly financed research and development scientists practicing their black magic. Against whom is all this needed? Well now!

 

Western capitalism is by its very nature selfish, profit motivated. It always wants 'more' and it wants it for 'ME'. And so it goes – more in the hands of the fewer. It cannot work otherwise. Men work for more – no 'more', no work. That's how 'we' beat Russia. 'Might makes right' and 'You cannot argue with success'. This is the wisdom that rules the world. That's the 'New World Order' that America has announced, finally enunciated. Pollution, starvation, deforestation, media mania, mass educational debilitation, are for the most part unavoidable by-products. More is better, it's the only way we know. More of anything. For ME. It seems nothing else 'works'. It's true that we are choking on the garbage, on our left-overs, but what's the choice? Now, don't be a bloody bleeding heart, will ya!

 

Well, that's about the extent of the flow. Good or bad, like it or not, 'that's how the cookie crumbles.' And how it crumbles.

 

What is missing is balance. The balance between man's head and his heart – and his body, that thing pushing all those buttons. Man as we know him today is completely out of balance. He holds himself together with Valium and anti-acid pills. His brain is connected to a television tube and his emotions are moved, however seldom, by Super Graphics. His hope is in engineered vegetable, animal and human genes. He is totally and absolutely love starved. Man as we know him today, Western man, is completely out of balance. It's a fact. And they prepare to fight to keep what they've got. They have forgotten their roots and now glorify their sickness. Not a nice nor a hopeful reality.

 

Any point in putting this generally known picture together? Need it be questioned? Is it really sane to imagine that computer intelligence can extract us from the mess? 'Elitists of the world survive!' Can man possibly be wise and prosper without balance? Mind without heart. Godless, whatever that might be, it is for sure. Western man thinks he is the highest therefore Western man thinks that he is God. As a complete man he might be, but as only a 'mind'? The horror of the ignorance.

 

What about you and me?

 

Stop shooting. Start helping. Do your simple best.         Leave the results to God. Simple common sense,     certainly not less. Keep the Faith. Don't fear humiliation; it's the basis of humility which is the basis of true intelligence. IN  GOD  WE  TRUST – take it off the dollar and put it back in your heart and your brains. Life gives you only minutes here on Earth. Don't be an idiot.

 

And meanwhile, back in Cairo. One fine day, Magdi is up    in the suite and voila, a small camera is withdrawn from his jacket pocket.

 

'Mind if I take your picture?' he inquires.

 

'No,' I respond, 'don't mind.'

 

The light was not good in the rooms so we took a walk outside. He 'shot' me, I got permission to 'shoot' him. Ah, wait a minute, maybe it was I who had the camera. I now remember that Magdi offered to get the finished film processed. He would not have needed to mention that had it been his camera. Now how did I 'see' him taking a camera from his pocket? It seems that memory can effect some clever adjustments to make up for a missing piece. I was 'sure' that I was not carrying a camera with me. Now I'm not so sure.

 

Never saw the finished photos, never heard about them again. Means what? Means I'm on record. Gentlemen, kindly add this to my file:

 

THE  TRUTH,  THE  WHOLE  TRUTH, 

AND  NOTHING  BUT  THE  TRUTH, 

SO  HELP  ME  GOD.

 

And what about the AIWA cassette/radio that I lugged along with me from London? Had I brought it along with me the night at the apartment of Col. H.? We had listened to some of my recent songs. That's why I took it to Cairo. Did I bring it that night? No matter. No matter? I don't recall whether Magdi eventually asked me for the machine or whether I offered it to him but it did end up with ’the two sons of his sister’, a gift from me. We dropped it off at their house. I never actually saw the house – waited in the car. Would have liked to meet Magdi's sister but it was not a priority. Magdi told me later that he had advised the boys that the machine was his but that they could use it in his absence. Magdi said that it should stop them fighting over it. That seemed sensible to me, right on. A 'family affair'. I wonder how long the machine stayed in one piece. I really don't wonder so much. 

 

After a week or so in Cairo Magdi mentioned to me that the police had been asking questions to the doorman at his apartment building, concerning him. About what, why? I didn't even ask. Had Magdi decided that I should know everything? Should we be careful? Of what? Why?

 

I paid little attention to these side affairs. Like Magdi telling me not to mention the name of Adam X., or whatever his actual name, the chief of Saudi intelligence, OUT LOUD, in the suite. Not to!

 

'Best write it on a piece of paper,' he said.

 

Another suggestion concerning our 'walls with ears'. I already knew it, I already forgot. My business had no secrets. Thanks for the suggestion. Our Mr. Saudi Arabian Name Not To Be Mentioned, had been talked about in London as a possible avenue through which to reach the Saudi hierarchy. Unnecessary, it turned out. I loved Magdi, he was with me like a true brother, informative and protective. Good to have a friend in a strange city.

 

Behind the cluttered mind is a place, a space, of perfect calm, of perfect peace. It's the place some call heaven. It's the place some call communion. It's a place, it's a reality, it's a prerequisite for sanity. Without locating and establishing oneself in that place, all thought and imagination eventually turn to confusion and/or hysteria and/or violence and/or depression and/or introverted or extroverted madness and/or senility.

 

Truthfulness in word, thought and deed would clear up the whole personal mess that keeps us in hell rather than heaven. The way is strengthening though painful. The payment is sacrificing false pride and vanity. There's a lot more to it and a lot more fun. As the Chinese proverb goes: 'The longest journey starts under your own feet.'

 

Must we hold ourselves aside from the mass of society?  Yes, we must. But not with social position or money, not with fame or power. They simply do not work. They are part of the problem.

 

Only Heaven tells you how. Clean-up or go back to the shit and sink. That's about the choice. 

 

 

Sadat was a simple man. He located himself in the Truth during the period of his imprisonment in Egypt. It's clearly set-out in his autobiography. It's worth reading; a unique testimony of an awakening.

 

What is his relevance today? Imprisoned, Army Officer, Vice President under Nasser, President of Egypt, 'Victor' of the October War. Then his historic visit to Jerusalem. A rather full life wouldn't you say? What's the significance, what's the relevance today? Is it really just 'water under the bridge'? Is life nothing more than colorful bubbles blowing in the wind? Yes and no.

 

This is a quiet Saturday morning by the sea-shore in Tel Aviv. April 1992. The patrol boats and helicopters are not to be seen. They may be out there beyond the horizon. Many sailboats from the local marina lazily move up and down the coast. Tug and fishing boats more determined but also moving slowly. Paddle board played in between the sun bathers. Fewer than usual walking the stone boardwalk. A day of rest. But a very dull period, very lackluster, very foggy, very uninspired. As close to nothing as Sadat's visit was close to 'everything'. A complete swing of the pendulum. So extreme, that it must be looked at in detail.

 

What was so magnificent, so out of this world, so totally unreal, in Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem? The whole world jumped, the Middle East tingled. The manifestation was in this world, the inspiration came from another level. Let's look at it.

 

The manifestation, the Visit, was important, it was super important. It was super demonstrative. Within the act was a message to mankind. That message was: 

 

Act from your highest intelligence. 

Act from what you know best. 

Act with understanding and compassion. 

Act Fearlessly. 

 

Those kinds of acts, coming from Above, coming from the highest in you, change this world instantly. It's MAGIC. That's the magic that the world now needs in order to survive. Magic is the higher, manifesting in the lower. Men have both the higher and the lower within themselves. Magic ignites the higher in man. The flame must burn in many, the fire of intelligent love must not go out. Sadat found himself in a great position. He did not forget. He did his work. He stood up.

 

We wish not to be romantic; we wish to be practical. How  to picture a reality now passed? The Sadat demonstration must not be lost. It said things of great importance. What kind of a word picture can come close to holding it? We'll try.

 

It revolves around the image of the swing of the pendulum. Sadat swung the pendulum to its extreme position on the right. Before the pendulum descends again there is a moment of 'stop'. Then the pendulum swings to the same extent in the other direction. Saddam Hussein and the Gulf War was the manifestation of the resulting swing to the left. And there it stops before the reverse action.

 

We are now in that stop. The Sadat stop was one of euphoria. The Saddam Hussein stop is one of deathliness. That is where we are today: an atmosphere of nothingness, of deathliness. Now what?

 

Sadat said: 'I don't agree with you but I do understand you. You are human like me. We shall not kill each other any more. We shall talk. The world is big enough for all of us. We are in fact One. We are in fact all part of God. That's it.'

 

Saddam Hussein said: 'Up yours – let the Earth burn!' 

 

The 'Christ', then the 'anti-Christ'. Extreme swing of the pendulum, indeed. Who and what will fill-in the middle? What  NOW?  YOU and  ME,  ALIVE.

 

We must make MAGIC. We must let magic manifest. Magic can only manifest through fearlessness.  Fearlessness  is  love. Got  it?

 

By  God,  there  is  joy in it.

By  God,  there  is  health in it. 

By  God,  there  is  God in it. 

By  God,  there  is  consciousness in it. 

By  God   there  is  Conscience. 

By  God,  there  IS.

 

On this world and cosmic stage that we find ourselves, should you be looking for a stand-in 'Christ' or 'anti-Christ', you might want to look at President Carter and President Bush. Even though a stand-in is always an imitation.

 

American inspired free market, capitalism, 'democracy', is nothing but normal mechanical momentum. There is absolutely no meaning in it. No magic, only crude excitement. It is media mad, mechanical masturbation. The real act-ion has always been here in the Middle East. The symbols change but heaven will always be heaven and hell will always be hell.

 

And man is still man, wherever he may be found in time or place.

 

Brothers!

 

 

Shall we try to touch something that it seems nobody wants to touch with a ten foot pole?

 

It's the Nazi issue. That Fascist word. The experience of World War Two was not just a passing episode. No indeed. It represents a very definite frame of mind. Germany went for it whole-hog. Some Frenchmen, some Ukrainians, many Austrians, Spaniards, Italians and even pockets in England and America, liked the idea.

 

Just what was the idea – the Ideal? That view is not dead, it's not merely academic, it's not incidental. It's their answer to all the confusion, it's their answer to the mess. They call the 'others' pigs, and it sure as hell does all stink.

 

They work from what is called 'cold logic'. They gave the world quite a lesson in cold logic. They  FOLLOW  ORDERS. That's the key to the POWER that they manage to harness. Now, look at it, they sure did harness an immense amount of power. It is easy to say that they failed. Today, of course, we are not at all sure. They have a powerful tale to tell, and the last chapter has not yet been written.

 

The very words Nazi and Fascist strike terror in the hearts of some men, rippling electric glee in the hearts of others. Dead issue it is not.

 

Let's examine the key – ORDERS.

 

One of the captors of the Nazi Adolph Eichmann reported that the prisoner in the first days of his captivity, would not eat, not go to the toilet, would not do anything. He finally ordered Eichmann to eat, ordered him to the toilet. Eichmann did whatever he was ordered to do.

 

What does it say? Authority it says. Follow the orders of the authority. What constitutes the authority? He who has the POWER. There is no 'which' or 'why’ – only WHO. Makes things very simple. He who has the power, the control, 'must' be right. 'Might makes right.' But those are just a few thin words. Must go deeper to understand.

 

Who is a Nazi or was a Nazi? Who co-operated with the Nazis and who did not. Who fought the Nazis and who collaborated, and why? What did the Nazis do? These are the questions that arise and get discussed. But what is their view, what is their hope, what is their explanation? We must look at that; it will not just go away. There is power there. Power comes from POSITION. What is 'our' Position? The Nazis see themselves surrounded with shit. We see ourselves surrounded with shit. They have a program; it was activated on a wide scale not long ago. What is our program? From whence our power? Is there really so much power in 'consumer consumption'?

 

Beware  little  man. 

 

 

 

The Egyptians are, for the most part, gentle people. Big history, big country, big view. They have enough, more than enough, to take care of in their own vast land. They do not have the kind of temperament that aspires to run anyone else's life.

 

Christmas Eve we sat alone at a table in the stunning crystal chandeliered, most elegant roof top dining room of the Sheraton hotel. Ahmed Fouad Hassan and his musicians entertained. The music was fine although the atmosphere was a shade stiff. Egypt's upper middle class were in attendance; finely attired and slightly too pleased with themselves. It could have been anywhere except for the restrained jolly-ness typical of Middle Easterners at any festive occasion. Lots of gold in evidence. Rumor has it that Arabs have a particular fondness for the shine of gold. Status, I assume, has more than a little to do with it. Semitic trait, I dare say some would say. I like silver myself, gold is a shade too heavy for my taste. Modesty has nothing to do with it. I listened to the music while mentally eliminating the superfluous thoughts. They were professional, they were famous, they would do. Madison Square Garden? They would adjust.

 

Within the next few days the roof fell in. Ahmed Fouad Hassan, again with his manager/bodyguard/ friend, was back in my suite to continue our discussion. A very short discussion it turned out to be. I laid out the plan for him. I got as far as noting the musical groups that we hoped would participate. I bypassed Magdi's advice and included the fact of Israeli participation. A bombshell.

 

'Israelis, Israelis will be taking part?' blurted out Ahmed Fouad Hassan.

 

'Yes, yes' I said, 'Peace Concerts.'

 

'No, no, no, no, no', I could hear Ahmed mumbling as he made a bee line for the door. He ran scared, he ran shocked. Didn't want any part of it. No, no, no – no way. It was crystal clear to me, no way – the game was over. Fear dominated. Absolutely nothing to do about it.

 

Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem was obviously lost on Mr. Maestro Ahmed Fouad Hassan. It was also obvious that he had been ill-informed by his/my friends. Obvious that he had been recruited to play a part that he did not at all relish. He did not know what was going on. He felt set-up. No, no, no, no, no – he went almost screaming out of the rooms. 'What kind of a musician would that have been anyway,' I thought, 'for a Peace Concert?' Good riddance. I was yet to suspect a wider plot. I was yet to suspect that it was I that was set-up. Peace plans and suspicion simply did not mix. 'No', however, was 'no', that was clear. I picked up the phone and called the airlines. Ticketed the day after next for London. We were finished.

 

Called Magdi in the morning to inform him. I had made reservations for two. No comment but he was obviously coming along. 'I'll pick you up a few hours before flight time,' he told me. Fine. The situation was what it was. No need to think. What to think about, anyway? Time to go.

 

That night I got a call on the house phone. Col. H. calling from the lobby. 'Can I come up?' he asked. 'Sure,' I said.

 

Col. H. had avoided the suite for the whole period that we were in the hotel. We had always met in the lobby. This was the man representing the cultural ministry. This is the man whose calling card read: 'Director of the Cairo Festival' or something to that effect. This is the man that only later did I identify as Col. H. of army intelligence. My friend with the nice 'wife', my friend with the fine 'son'. The son with the fine flashlight. My friend, my host.

 

Col. H. enters the suite. Nervous. The first time I've seen him nervous. 'You are leaving?' he asks. 'Yes,' I tell him, 'about the musicians, you see, Israelis; they refuse to have anything to do with them. It's all over, no use.'

 

Col. H. seems to get more and more agitated, more and more questions. I don't know what he is getting at, I don't like his tone. It's not a show this time; he's really angry. I'm getting more than a little angry myself.

 

'Do you speak Hebrew?' he half asks, half demands to know.

 

'A little,' I tell him.

 

'Me too,' he informs me, 'I learned it in military college.'

 

'Oh shit,' I think, 'so that's who you are!' That's as far as my reflections went. At that very moment on the TV which was on without any sound in the corner of the sitting area, the full face of President Sadat appears. He is making a speech. There he is, eyes shining, full of vigor, slow and deliberate as was his style. 

 

The contrast was glaring. I turned on our friend Mr. Col. H. with a controlled but honest fury: 'You people have no idea who this man is,' I exploded. 

 

I went on to tell him, god knows what, about HIS President. The man of Peace. The man of Courage. It was real, it was vivid. I outdid the bombastic lecture that had been given to me in the Al-Ahram offices of Kamal El-Mallakh. It was no show, it was the truth and it was from the heart. A bit from a broken heart.

 

Col. H., as it was now clear that he was, flustered, panicked. Totally speechless and more than a little white, he rose somewhat shakily and became the second party in two days to make a beeline for the door. It was clear that he could not tolerate this reprimand being recorded by any unknown ears. What could he have answered? There was no way that he could disagree. He ran, he disappeared. So, there were no winners, so, there were no losers – so what.

 

I pack, I pay my bill, I'm in a car with Magdi as if on the way to the airport. Magdi's 'brother in law' is at the wheel. We two sitting in the back seat. Twenty minutes go by, forty minutes go by; I start to get the feeling that we are going around in circles. We are still in the city, we pass the ancient cemetery of Cairo where thousands of the poor have taken up residence in the old burial tombs. We pass all sorts of places that I had never seen before, but obviously still within Cairo city limits. Magdi glances back over his shoulder every once in a while, we're moving fast. Magdi does not talk, the 'brother in law' does not talk. What the hell is going on?

 

We finally pull up to the curb in a residential area. 'Sister lives near by,' I am informed. Radio/cassette machine is about to be dropped off. Well, a little sanity at last. Magdi is back in the car within ten or fifteen minutes. We're off to the airport again.

 

Large glassed-in waiting room at ground level. We are waiting for the call of our British Airways flight. Magdi quiet with a cold sweaty nervousness somehow indicated, half registered by me. It's hard for him to sit still, eyes glancing here and there. No more than half a dozen people in this monstrously large waiting room.

 

We sit for around an hour, our call comes, we are on the plane, the plane is off the ground. Magdi gives out with a deep sigh, his body slumps, relaxed. 'I never thought that they would let me out of the country,' he says. I don't ask why. 'I never felt in any danger,' I tell him. 'No need to when you are clean,' he tells me. What about you Mr. Magdi, were you not clean? Clean is clean is clean, isn't it Mr. Magdi?

 

Magdi Fahmi told me at one point in Cairo that Kamal El-Mallakh had asked him 'if I had money.' Magdi's answer? 'I don't know,' he said to Kamal, 'he's not asking to marry my sister.' Well put, but all quite beside the point. I had as much of a chance as a virgin in an army camp. But I had managed to keep my legs crossed, to everyone's amazement. Two months of my life and one hundred thousand dollars. Lessons do not come cheap. All to the good. Thank you all, friends, absolutely no hard feelings. I would love to know just how it looked from your eyes. 

 

HOW  DOES  IT  LOOK  NOW? Salam  Aleikum!

 

 

It's early April 1992 at the moment. Sadat was shot in 1981. We came across a five inch long obituary for Kamal El-Mallakh in the New York Times while in New York a few years back. Begin died of natural causes just about a month ago. Of the Sadat inner circle, one continues as the President of Egypt, one has just become Secretary General of the United Nations and another heads the Arab League. I just recorded twenty new songs. Spring time is lovely.

 

 

 

 

I arrived back in London from Cairo more or less financially broke, but other than for some extreme exhaustion that paralyzed me in bed in a cold sweat for a full week I was in quite good spirits. No sense of failure. No way to resent such a wealth of exposure. Just as soon as the strength returned and my body responded to my will I checked out of the Hilton and moved in with Kim, the young man who had just a few months before functioned as producer on the two songs that we had re-recorded at the Wembly studios. Kim lived with his Israeli born wife in a predominantly Cypriot populated area of north London and kindly hosted me until I managed to rent an apartment in a reconverted house in Tuffnell Park. I stayed in London for close to a year with moves to Muswell Hill, Hampstead and the Baker St. area. 

 

London became more familiar to me than my home city of Montreal. I found myself checking out my British roots, these being the result of my education within the Protestant School Board of Montreal that was staffed almost exclusively by teachers no more than one or two generations removed from the British Isles. Earlier, during the recording period, I had purchased a super-duper British manufactured four wheel drive Range Rover and used it to advantage scouting out London from all directions until I felt I knew it like the back of my hand. A long and most pleasant adventure. At times it took me hours to reach a place only ten minutes away. I would stop and ask some of what is probably the world's most friendly and helpful pedestrians for directions and get so caught up in their particular manner of speaking, whether Welsh or Scottish or Irish, Oxford or Cockney or whatever, most of which took me months before I could comprehend that I could never really concentrate on their specific instructions. Couldn't have cared less, each encounter was a pleasure and the one thing we had plenty of, was time. Intermittently I made excursions to Scotland, Holland and Spain before selling the monster vehicle and returning to Israel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was 1979 and I was back living in Jerusalem after an absence of some six years. Now with Dina who had become my most dear companion in London, at her apartment in the German Colony district of Jerusalem.

 

This period entailed one of the most people intensive times of my life. Like the proverbial ants in the woodwork they came from all directions to my most receptive pot of honey. I welcomed one and all, still curious and concerned as I was to advance on the road of pragmatic understanding with whomever showed prospects of compatible potential.

 

Occasionally when I felt in danger of overdosing on so much love and attention and usually in a state of quite real fatigue, I would check into the Tel Aviv Hilton Hotel overlooking the sea, totally cut off from the world, and absorb a week or so of total rest supported by some of the finest room service and a cool ocean breeze. That usually put me firmly back on my feet for another go at mankind, still, as ever, hopeful.

 

Mankind, seemingly more than a little enamored with the habitual, tends to corner a person in any number of their routine attitudes, should one remain stationary for too long. Two months can sometimes do it. Enervating, to say the least.

 

Once, it seems, I was far more drained than I realized. This time I checked into the new Hilton on the extreme western edge of Jerusalem; a towering building offering a quite unique panoramic, though hardly exquisite view of all of the city, both western and eastern sections. After three days or so, some twenty floors above the city, I stepped out onto the small balcony of my room still with a great deal of fatigue in my bones, and surveyed the surroundings.

 

A personal history going back twenty-four years arose from the detailed and, as if, living view below and in front of my eyes. There was Beit Hakerem and the Teachers' Seminary where I had stayed in 1955 on my first visit; there, Abraham Lincoln St. and there, the dorms of the Hebrew University, places that had accommodated me in 1957. Rechavia, Yemin Moshe, Nachlaot, Mount of Olives and the German Colony, all places where I had lived for shorter or longer periods.

 

In every location there had been a particular circle of friends and acquaintances, each with a unique and differing social dynamic of its own time. The neighborhoods had remained, but where were the friends now? They had moved on, no longer there. The past dynamic of each location was so clear to me, but it was now dead. Each period as a lifetime, all spread out in a line before my eyes. It was a devastating experience. I was weak and everything in front of me was dead, gone, finished. Only the buildings remained. The people? God knows where and what they were involved in now. I checked out of the hotel in a complete daze. 

 

I drove to the Nachlaot district and the house of an old and trusted friend from the Galilee. He was not at home. I went directly to the house of another close friend from Haifa, then living in Jerusalem. Later he told me that I looked grey and quite weak when I entered.

 

Within a few minutes he asked me to join him in a visit to another friend of his in the area. It was a Saturday and they used to meet regularly on Saturdays. I went along.

 

A surprise awaited me. They assumed a rare pleasure. Hard working and serious professionals that they were during the week, Saturdays they quietly and discretely relaxed smoking hash with the luxury of a large Arab 'bubbly-bubbly' otherwise known as a water pipe. I was invited to join them and half consciously through a dazed fog I  readily agreed.

 

The water pipe allowed in, with very little sensation, a large volume of cool smoke. I inhaled and held the smoke as if compulsively, inside. They told me not to hold it so long. I paid no attention. I hardly gave it, or for that matter anything else, a thought.

 

I guess I was drawing-in in the expectation of energy. I was most short of energy. Somehow the view from the Hilton and the overwhelming sense of all my pasts in Jerusalem and everything in between, the living and now the dead, had knocked me for a loop. I was hardly there. I kept smoking and holding my lungs full against all current advice.

 

I started to get dizzy. I stood up to regain control of myself. I leaned on the foot piece of a bed and it collapsed under my weight. I returned slightly more steady to my chair. Then it started to happen again. Dizziness, inner turmoil, a sinking inner disorder. I followed it with a total attention. I had to, to keep from passing out. I followed it deeper and deeper and it got more and more intense.

 

Then the moment of horror. The speed increased – there was no coming back. It was all instantaneous – an irresistible rush and pull into the depths of being. My lungs had collapsed, every cell in my body LIT-UP in an agonizing cry for oxygen. No time for fear, only instantaneous terror. It was all over, there was no coming back.

 

I had gotten to my feet, then I was down on my knees. They tell me that I then collapsed with my head hitting the floor. I missed that part.

 

Like a thousand year old olive tree with a vast network of massive roots deep into the earth and about to be violently jerked out of the ground by some giant crane, tearing and ripping all the roots, causing incredible pain, incredible agony, ripping and tearing, like fingers pulled out of the hand, limbs from the body.

 

This was about to happen to me. That was the moment of terror as I collapsed. And what happened? The tree popped out as clean as a whistle. Nothing tore, the tree popped out clean. 

 

ALL THE ROOTS HAD BEEN DUG AROUND,       THE   EARTH   LOOSENED. 

 

We then understood exactly what WORK had been all about, what it had been for.

 

Not  to  be  torn  apart.

To  go  out  consciously,  without  resistance.

Terror  maybe  –  but  never  to  lose  attention.

 

I was flying through space, through the galaxies, at millions of miles an hour. Beyond the speed of light, beyond time. Going far, very far. Not knowing where, but knowing that it was good, to a good place, VERY  GOOD.

 

Like a drop of water, I the drop of water, I seeing the drop of water, flying through space. 

 

GOING  HOME.

 

As all this was in progress, I was also aware of all that was going on in the room. They had me in a chair, they were in panic. Later I was told that they saw clearly that I was dead. They had seen the dead before in the wars. No doubt. Skin gone grey, eyes turned up. Dead, dead, no question about it.

 

Alan, Alan, was the cry as my dear and close friend was working me over in the chair. Alan, Alan, he kept yelling, imploring, as he worked over my back and head with his hands in a furiously determined manner, as if possessed.

 

He would not let go. No way. Alan, Alan, I could hear him yell, as I was flying millions of miles an hour through the universe, happy to go, going to GOOD, going home. Alan, Alan, he yelled as his hands worked me over. Water, WATER, he yelled to his friend. His friend rushed out to the kitchen and returned with a glass of water. No, NO, he screamed at him, a bucket of water, a BUCKET. The friend returned with a bucket and a towel. They used it on me. Alan, Alan, Alan, he yelled and yelled and yelled at me. I did not want to know from him, I was more than happy with my journey, but he would not let go, not a hair's worth, no give, no give at all.

 

ALAN,  ALAN,  ALAN.

 

I  RETURNED – I don't know how. He  INSISTED.

 

I had been conscious of everything in the room, I saw it all. They never told me anything. Years later and they still refuse to talk about it. Still scared. Won't even say how long I was out. My guess is, less than ten minutes. I saw it all. This side and that side. The living and the so-called dead.

 

The soul returned, more or less. It's true, the Angel of Death just taps you on the left shoulder, I felt it. Then you are gone. No time to object, no time for good-bye.

 

The holy books write about it, it's true. Very nice to be ready. No one would want to be torn apart.  NO  ONE.

 

 

The psychological consequences of the death experience were immense, although most difficult to identify within the variety of factors that go to make up any particular state. The soul was unquestionably separated from the body and although the play of imagination can place any perception or conclusion in legitimate doubt there were certain aspects of the experience that left an indelible mark. Most impressively, when they confirmed or elaborated facts that had been read about in various serious texts anywhere from the Bible to the Teachings of Osiris. 

 

My first reaction was to question whether this experience could or should ever be talked about. Living with Dina and knowing that things could never again be the same for me, in all fairness I had to tell her something. I returned to the apartment and told her the following day that: ‘I had an experience the other day that was EQUAL TO ALL THE EXPERIENCES OF MY LIFE TAKEN TOGETHER, MULTIPLIED BY ONE THOUSAND.' That much was certain, I would never again be the same. I had passed through the barrier of Death, survived the shock, seen the other side, although in dimensions inexplicable in 'worldly /wordly' terms, and RETURNED. In the death experience  EVERYTHING  OF  LIFE  HAD  BEEN  SHED. 

 

Then  what  exactly  had  returned?

 

 

 

 

I had known Avi since the early seventies when we met,  the day before his marriage to American Judy, in my house in Yemin Moshe, Jerusalem. Avi had been 'separated' for some years and among other things wanted to visit his daughter who was living with Judy in Los Angeles and also to see Sharona, the married and divorced daughter of Rosy and Abi Nathan, who was living close to her mother in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. In particular I wanted to check out Nashville, the capital of country music where I might do some recording at a future date.

 

Our first stop was London where we visited with our mutual friend Liza, and attired ourselves with suitable western clothing. From there we flew off to San Francisco and a short visit with Joni, alias Satarah, alias Sarah and her ex-husband Jonathan, alias Ikbal and the community that resulted from the inspiration of their teachers, then deceased, Sufi Sam and Hazrat Inayat Khan. 

 

My inner organs, severely disorganized from the death experience, were slowly strengthening and balancing out but my heart and lungs remained particularly vulnerable. Each flight across the Atlantic put me to bed for a week in complete exhaustion. I was most sensitive to the lack of normal atmospheric pressure in the jet aircraft and the straining of the biological clock to readjust itself.

 

I had not managed to get a rest in San Francisco before we hit the road in the direction of Los Angeles in order to get Avi to a rendezvous with his daughter. Rented the most comfort -able car available, a huge white Cadillac convertible, for the long trip south, and roughly half way down found myself slumped over the wheel, smack in front of a lovely rustic hotel in the Big Sur area on the coast, half dead. Avi went into the hotel and rented a lovely large room and I spent a week in there resting, as Avi gallivanted with the local fun lovers.

 

The room that we were given had been previously occupied by a member of the hotel staff, a black man, obviously highly respected as they had kept everything in the room exactly as it was left by the now deceased. On the side table next to the bed was a book titled 'LIFE AFTER LIFE' written by an M.D. from his records of patients that had suffered clinical death and were somehow revived in hospital. 

 

The book was right beside me. I read it. Only two interesting facts remain in memory; two facts that corresponded to my personal experience. One, that each individual that had returned had been totally aware of all the activity around his body, saw it all, as the doctors were attempting to resuscitate them. And secondly, each had 'agreed' to come back as a result of somebody close to them pleading and imploring them to do so with deep emotion. All had been clinically dead, all were happily gone, and all were aware of the circumstances transpiring in the vicinity of the dead body. 

 

Although these were curious facts, they were small compared to more significant confirmations that were personally experienced. It's difficult if at all possible to describe multiple experiences and insights that were not received sequentially but rather instantaneously. A few examples: The Tibetan Book of the Dead proved to be magic, and even somewhat explicable. Published in English, with an introduction by the psychiatrist Carl Jung, it is hardly written in a form in which a western intellectual could rationally determine its aims, or methods. I had read it more than once and what remained was the fact that in the throes of death the person is addressed as he passes through various stages called 'Bardos'. In each Bardo various enticing or frightening illusions confront the dying man. There, 'temptations' are described in some detail with the dead man being implored not to get drawn in, to let them pass and most importantly – to FOLLOW THE LIGHT. That might appear rational enough, except that in death there is NO TIME – the movement is faster than time, faster than the speed of light. No time for any determined yes or no.

 

And here enters the Magic. The book strikes the reader, and is, repetitious to what almost seems the point of the ridiculous. All the wording is as cycles as repetition and repetition and repetition and repetition on and on and on and on. As a caterpillar spins his cocoon a'round and a'round and a'round and a'round and a'round. Now for the inexplicable. At death there is NO TIME – everything is ALL  AT  ONCE. The repetitive cycles, as is the style of the book, created an artificial 'time body', a WHOLE. I came out of this death experience 'knowing' that this Tibetan Book of the Dead had formed a kind of cocoon, a safe enclosed vehicle for the protected passage from one world to another. It was not a thought-out conclusion, it was a fact, unexpected and beautiful.

 

One more example: This image of the one-thousand year old olive tree with deep roots being torn from the ground with the resulting tearing and ripping of the roots. A particular stage, a Bardo, if you like. The terror of the impending separation at death, being torn away from everything, EVERYTHING, the very GROUND of our identity, what we have valued, like fingers gripping the earth. What a perfect analogy. The 'tree' popped out, the 'roots' had been dug around, the earth was loose, NOTHING TORE. 'Working for life and working for death are the same thing.' So be it. The energy of resistance was freed and converted to a powerful explosion/thrust towards a distant world, out of our solar system, out of our galaxy, into the distant starry world. One is either ready, or not. There is no more time. I had been released from earthly attachments without fully realizing it. 

 

Allah hu akbar.

 

So, in Work we progressively let go of attachments in life. Some elements drift away, some remain, but we insist on holding nothing. We know the limits of life and its temporariness. What difference does it make what we manage to have and to hold? As St. Paul says: 'If it were ONLY for this life that we work and suffer, we of all men are most to be pitied.'

 

 

I took Avi for a visit to the grounds of Esalen Institute without official sanctioning and got thrown out by a heavy-handed security guard, 'just doing his job' I presume. So we hit the road again for Los Angeles and a visit to ex-wife Judy and little daughter. Approaching Los Angeles, cruising along in a magnificent white Cadillac, at a distance of some forty miles we could see on the horizon of this clear sunny day the 'City of the Stars', its buildings towering into the sky. It appeared in the distance as an oasis, and from the top of the cluster of high buildings what seemed like a giant funnel of light/energy connecting the city with the heavens. An optical illusion? Maybe. On the other hand, what a concentration of energy and talent confined to this particular spot on the surface of the earth. The energy flow appeared to be going up rather than down. Could so much frustrated vanity be feeding the moon? In fact? I know, probably 'just' heat.

 

I spent some ten days in L.A. before leaving Avi to complete his business and flying off in a large jet to Denver, Colorado and then hopping a small two engine prop for a short flight, high up in the Rockies, to Aspin.

 

Carol, ex-college teacher, ex-wife to Marty who was previously Assistant District Attorney in charge of narcotics, Brooklyn, and more recently Chief of Police in Aspin, was running her own long dreamed for toy shop there. I loved Carol but had no designs on her nor her body. I did however find myself collapsed on her bed for a week, after making the mistake of flying in an un-pressurized aircraft to such a height in the Rocky Mountains. Carol had a male friend who was a heart specialist and I decided to let him have a look. Maybe I wasn't getting stronger. He took an electro-cardiograph and advised me that I was basically alright but did have an occasional irregular heartbeat. He should only have known.

 

When I recovered my strength I rented a car and took a slow and careful drive down to Denver and a return flight to L.A. to join up with Avi. We flew off together to Nashville for a week of checking out studio conditions and the scene in general, drove south through a few states to some airport and caught a flight to Miami and an immediate connection to Port-Au-Prince, Haiti.

 

Surprise of surprises. I had not been to Haiti in over twenty-five years. I had taken more than one winter vacation there during my days in business. Now we stepped into an exceptional scene.

 

 

 

In Haiti we dropped directly onto the main stage of the multi-media-movie of Katherine Dunham, into what is called 'her life'. I experienced her in 'my life'. Just who is she? Read on and you might find that she will take a minor role in YOUR  sense of reality/life.

 

The setting was on the upper and outer ridge of the capital city of Port-Au-Prince. This part of Haiti is lush green with a blanket of tropical vegetation that, with no more than a touch of paranoia, would not be difficult to imagine was just poised to embrace you in a warm, sweet smelling, salivating, over friendly death hug. Beautiful, overwhelmingly green. 

 

Avi and I were looking for the address of Sharona, and arrived at the gates of Katherine Dunham's small hotel that was being administered by Rosy, Sharona's mother. We entered directly into a swimming pool area and one of the most beautiful and gentle settings I have ever seen. The pool was the center piece, moderately large, whose far side was tucked in below a sharply angled hill, its top ending in the sky with the suggestion of vast empty spaces beyond. Across the pool from the hillside were four or five connected Spanish style apartment/cabanas with another two or three on the short end of the pool. There was an open space on the other end of the pool and then an impressive flight of deep rising stairs some six meters long, with the simple, powerful and elegant personal residence of Katherine Dunham at the top. The house gave the impression of a Greek temple overlooking its gardens, pool and guest facilities.

 

We had come to get an address but immediately on entering this unique hotel I was convinced that we must spend at least a few days there. At one hundred and fifty dollars a day and with little cash in the bank I might have given this a second thought, but this was obviously not an experience to pass up in good conscience. Avi and I were given a spacious enough cabana apartment with authentic French cuisine meals served by an elegantly trained Haitian staff, pool side, just outside our front door. Fine wine and delicate Caribbean grass manifested in our presence. 

 

One day passed into the next in this paradise, reading and relaxing. It seemed that neither boredom nor guilt could invade this gift of goodness. 

 

Avi's inner vibrations were experiencing some super-excited readjustments that I did not wish to be distracted by, so we shifted him into the cabana apartment next door. Now three-hundred dollars a day and running rapidly dry, but what the hell.

 

Avi came into my room one evening glowing with the excited satisfaction of a cat that had just caught the mouse. Having carried Ouspensky's 'The Fourth Way' since leaving Jerusalem, but for the first time looking into it, he entered sprouting incredulous appreciation for the clarity with which the immense issue of LIES was dealt with in the book. He saw something so clearly that his whole face was alight. The following day a statuesque eighteen year old black beauty who was back home on vacation from her studies at the University of Chicago, made her appearance and Avi was off to the beaches with her and with some questionable American jet-setters and 'businessmen'. Ouspensky was short-lived.

 

Peeking out of my door one day I spotted, on the far side of the pool, someone who I was sure was the patron of this estate. Katherine Dunham, now in her eighties, was taking a stroll supported on one side by a woman servant and on the other by a woman friend. Each step was painful, that was clear. Katherine had arrived back in the country just the day before. I knew nothing about her other than the hushed tones in which her name was mentioned with obvious respect and more than a little awe. The following day I asked our friend Rosy, the manager, to inquire whether Katherine would agree to a body treatment. I was sure that I could relieve her of some of the physical agony that was so clearly evident. Following a slightly nervous swallow, Rosy said, yes, she would ask.

 

A partial biography of Katherine Dunham, gleamed from a published autobiography, hearsay and some super-sensual data, adds up to something like this: Black American by birth, she was raised in a poor though respectable house in the Chicago ghetto district. Her father had a tailor shop or a small dry cleaning establishment. The sequence of the following events are not clear but it goes something like this: World renowned dancer and choreographer with her own extremely large company that frequently toured America and Europe. Honored by United States Government with her picture on a Postage Stamp commemorating dance in the United States. Personal friend of the ruling Peron family of Argentina and the President of Senegal, where she also maintained a residence. Owner of Habitation LeClerc, a large estate on a magic mountain that adjoined the hotel we were staying at. Habitation LeClerc was the estate Napoleon bestowed on his sister during the period that France controlled the island. Katherine had also been a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, reputed to be the best in the world. As part of her studies she was investigating the phenomenon of Voodoo in the Caribbean, and although warned at some point not to get drawn-in, she did. Subsequently she attained to the title of Second Degree Voodoo Priestess.

 

Katherine Dunham had been a very busy lady. Now, I was informed, she had considerable pain in her knees resulting from her many years in dance. I was told the following day that my visit would be welcomed.

 

I didn't look around very much as I entered her house but was left with the impression of an environment with simple functional items, much stone and light and wide open space. It was clear, all around, what I had come for and we got directly down to work. Light chocolate color, medium height, full body, and the strangest being that I have ever laid my hands on.

 

What appeared to be her maid/companion, a serious and mature Haitian woman, kept a steel eye on me as if ready to jump to her mistress' rescue should I exhibit the least uncareful or aggressive move. What was happening was obviously not a common occurrence. Katherine looked heavy but felt as light, and in a way empty, as a blown-up balloon. The work went well, she smelled lovely and responded simply. There was a minimum of talk centered exclusively on the question of just which couch would prove most practical to work on. It turned out to be something medium high, of stone, with a thin nicely upholstered mattress. I worked, she relaxed and the maid stood guard at a respectful distance. By the time we had finished everyone was at ease.

 

The next week developed into a gentle tug-of-war within a subtle new age communication network. It became clear that Katherine wanted me to return to her home and continue with what we had started. I was at least equally sure that she must make the next move in my direction. 'Come,' she was saying, 'ask,' I was replying. I wanted nothing from her; it had to be clear who was buying and who was selling. I knew little of the details of her life at the time but that she was a powerful and determined woman was obvious. 

 

A couple of days passed in this 'let's get things straight' disputation, when finally Rosy delivered a handful of folio papers from Katherine to my door. They contained verbal and diagrammatical descriptions of what I took to be an original method of notations for dance postures and movements. A kind of new written language for rapid and detailed choreography. Not my field but it did give me a sense of her, her mind and her interests, at least in that area. She was, in any case, responding/acknowledging. Still no 'request'. After a few days Rosy brought in an auto-biography written by Katherine of the early years of her life.

 

Then Hurricane David arrived in the area to test the nerves of the island population.

 

 

 

Nature threatened like I had never imagined possible. Hurricane David struck a devastating blow to the upper part of the island whose terra-firma is nationalistically identified as The Dominican Republic. Many killed, much destruction. Most people on the Island lived in Shanty-villes, housed in extremely fragile primitive structures. The Hurricane struck a vicious blow and then moved out to sea and along the coast towards the other end of the Island where we were located. The local radio was blasting away in the Creole language warning the inhabitants in frantic tones how to protect themselves from an imminent hit. 

 

The storm would approach the coast with killing speed,  and suddenly veer away. These probing and threatening gestures went on for days as the atmospheric pressure mounted to a skull shrinking intensity intermixed with the constant booming radio warnings with real time hurricane data. It was always 'about to hit' within the next few hours. At night the drums coming from the local village loud and clear, and from the distance like endless echoing, were sensed in one's total being as a real force holding off and pushing back this twisting monster of a hurricane. 

 

The native staff of the hotel who were by now treating me with close to reverence due to my 'hands on' relationship with their most revered mistress, were in a controlled panic, and with an obvious dilemma. The hotel was more or less safe, it was constructed of cement. If the storm hit directly, safety could most probably be found on the floor in the corner, and the building was most unlikely to collapse. The staff however would have family members in the surrounding areas. What of them? And their most loved Katherine, how could they leave her at such a time? What immense control they had to exert not to run away. Waiting for some word, some reaction from Katherine, they held on. They were given no special instructions, an added pressure.

 

The drumming went on incessantly, pushing, holding the storm at bay. The psychic and atmospheric pressure bordered the intolerable. It got to Avi one evening. Bolting from the hotel, mumbling to himself in an inner irritable protest, I followed him down a side road as he was practically running to the lower village, drums getting louder the closer we got. I could not convince him to return with me so I turned back myself. He followed within half an hour. We went to rest awaiting whatever tomorrow was to bring.

 

The next day the danger seemed to have abated somewhat. Hurricane David took a new move further off the coast. The day was slightly overcast, the air still and heavy. Around dusk I found myself standing on the far edge of the pool looking across and up the stairs of Katherine Dunham's house. Suddenly I saw a figure standing at the top of the stairs. The light was poor but it was obviously Katherine standing there. We set our eyes on each other with a connection as clear as holding hands. No attempt at inner communication, only each of us sinking deeper and deeper into the quiet, a quiet of immense depth, in some way fueled by the buildup of tension caused by all surrounding elements connected with Hurricane David. Deeper and deeper into the calm we went, eyes riveted on each other through the fading light.

 

Suddenly, the miraculous. As if the inner skeleton of Katherine became pure vibrating electricity. Katherine's body no longer visible, only a high voltage simmering spirit. Was it still Katherine? Had she been possessed, completely taken over by an entity from the spirit world? Evil possibly? Not my business, for sure, I concluded on the spot. I dropped my eyes. Voodoo shmu-do, higher or lower, it was not my way. Thanks, but no thanks.

 

When I looked up, not Katherine nor anything else was there.

 

 

 

The storm had passed on. The next day we were on a flight back to Miami. On the way out of the hotel we passed Katherine and a friend sitting by a pool side table. I offered  a rather sheepish good-bye, the two girls broke into light giggle. Haiti, the land of the intense, the VERY INTENSE.

 

We landed in Miami in what began to look like a city preparing for war, and checked into a beach side motel. Store windows taped up and with few people on the streets in this off season, as Hurricane David started to pursue us, leaving Haiti and moving towards the Florida coast. The build up of pressure in the air could already be sensed, and Miami Beach looked more like a semi-deserted mining town than America's most famous southern resort playground.

 

I had known Miami going back over thirty-five years when one winter my parents took me out of school, at the age of eight or nine, along with my sister and grandmother, and drove the eighteen hundred miles from freezing Montreal to semi-tropic southern Florida. New York City with Broadway, Times Square, Rockefeller Center and the Bowery; Washington with visits to Capitol Hill, the Supreme Court, the Smithsonian Museum; through the Carolinas and Georgia and into Florida with its orange groves and cotton fields. Memorable. In more recent years my parents owned a small condominium apartment on Miami's Bay Harbor Island. Now, with Avi, it all looked like the deserted set of last year's movie.

 

So much had been going on during this trip that it was almost impossible to separate the pieces. By the second night in Miami, however, the inner tension became intoler-able. I started to feel an intense pressure in my chest. It spoke as much of an undefined emotional pain being reflected from Avi as it did of the growing presence of Hurricane David. By four o'clock in the morning I knew that if I did not disengage myself from both these forces I would literally not survive; my heart was about to burst.

 

I had to make a move now, right now. I slipped out of our beach side motel, paid the bill, entered the rented car and started driving north in the dead of the night. I knew Avi would survive and my condition was so critical and there was no question but that I had to disengage immediately.     I would not have lasted the night.

 

 

 

I reached Fort Lauderdale as the sun rose and went into a Howard Johnson restaurant for some breakfast. I was already feeling better. From there I headed inland towards Orlando from where I knew I could catch a flight to New York. I needed to be away, far away, from Hurricane David.

 

I had never before been to Orlando and found myself cruising along the wide open flatlands, moving west in totally unfamiliar terrain. 

 

Suddenly I experienced a most strange, though surprisingly unshocking sensation, realization. Beside me in the front passenger seat was a 'presence'. Most difficult to describe but with a reality so strong that it left no doubt. It was Uncle Jack. Uncle Jack, I then remembered, had died some two years before. No doubt, it was Uncle Jack. Later, I recalled that he had occupied a small retirement apartment somewhere in that general area. I might have even visited it once many years back. Now, there was Uncle Jack riding along with me in this rented car. No shock, this kind of thing was almost beginning to seem natural. Dead in Jerusalem, close to dead in Big Sur and Aspin, Katherine Dunham's 'possession' in Haiti, and now this. I had no doubt. This was completely new. I just, so to speak, went along for the ride. Some months later in the Galilee, and then again in Jerusalem, Uncle Jack and I would meet up again and complete our business.

 

 

 

 

As I drifted into the Orlando area I spotted signs leading  to Disney world. Oh, thought I, let's go take a look. I made  it into a vast parking lot that appeared to have no end,  empty as it was, turned around and headed for the airport. Some few hours later I landed in New York City, pleased   to be still alive.

 

New York City for the millionth time. I checked into a small hotel off Fifth Avenue in the upper fifties and was immediately struck by an immense toothache. As was already my custom, I looked for the means to get it extracted. It had been years since I had stopped allowing anyone to mess around in my mouth.

 

The pain was severe. I remembered an old friend, a dentist, whom I had met in Vermont some years before during a period that he was investigating the possibility of securing a teaching position at the University of Vermont in Burlington, in an effort to extract himself from the money madhouse of New York City. He had a most successful practice in cosmetic dentistry, serving mainly Broadway actors and the city's upper crust, with his offices on Fifth Avenue merely two blocks away from my hotel.

 

I landed in his chair weak and helpless. 'Out,' I said, 'fix,' he insisted. I had no energy to resist. I told him I was about to leave the city but he overpowered me and got his operation into high gear. 

 

First a two hour cleaning by a special girl assistant, scraping and sandpapering with gusto. At one point this sadist looked down at me and said: 'I'd never let anyone do this to me!' What could I say, they had me. Then a root canal job by a young specialist in an upper floor office of the same building. He only did the hole, my friend the rest. First time and never again. Built up a whole new tooth that lasted, I think, two years. Then a gold cap on a back tooth; that came out lovely and held for maybe five years.

 

There was no stopping him once he got started. He also appeared to be going through a psychological crisis, shaky and dropping instruments on occasion. It was all mad. I had no intention of paying him a penny – he imposed himself, not giving a hell for my 'no'. I survived, just about. 

 

I located Avi, through his sister, under the blankets of a new girlfriend on the Upper West Side. A month in New York, then off I was to Montreal. 

 

 

 

Back in Montreal we had a rendezvous with old friends and family, the first in a very long time. Much could be related but we will continue to limit ourselves to the exceptional.

 

Tony Amor had been my most beloved 'big brother'. He had been my sister's boyfriend when she was seventeen, he probably nineteen, and I then fourteen. The period was the forties, the years of World War Two, and Tony, along with his mother, had been evacuated from London to Canada and lived at the corner of our street. A most accomplished musician, playing the sax, clarinet and flute, he, by his early twenties, was the leader of the biggest and best orchestra in Montreal. 

 

Without recalling anything extraordinary in his behavior, it is clear that I loved Tony very much. My sister broke up with him in her nineteenth year and married someone else and I lost contact for a few years. Then, after high school while working at my first job selling thread and ribbon to the needle trade, we met up again. 

 

Tony had married the pretty daughter of a well to do clothing manufacturer and was then working as a junior executive in the company that had its offices in one of the buildings that I was servicing. With great pleasure, as always,  I would come in to say hello every time I was in their building. How I loved him. At that age I never really reflected on the oddity and incongruity of this fine  musician working as a clothing executive. Today it feels criminal, though in its way understandable. 

 

In 1957, at the age of twenty-three, just before I was about to return to Israel for my second visit and a six month stay, I got word that Tony was ill. I visited him at the modest apartment that he shared with his wife and then three or four year old son. Tony had contracted leukemia and did not appear to have much longer to live. He must have been twenty-seven. My feelings for him were so strong that my joy at seeing him was hardly affected by his withered condition. What struck me as most sad was the sight of stacks of music records piled up in the corner of the living room, and the fact that he had no record player to play them on. How this could be, I did not, again, really reflect on but after taking him and his family for a short drive, him in obvious pain but happy to be out, I returned home and made arrangements to get him my record player before leaving the next week for Israel. I never saw him again. He died before I got back to Canada. 

 

Tony Amor of most most most blessed memory.

 

Now back in Montreal, over thirty years later, feeling good but more than a little weak after only a year from my own death experience, plus the multi-faceted trip that was nearing its end, I 'encountered' Tony, again. Resting in a one room apartment which had been loaned to me by a friend, I had a similar experience to the one I had on the road to Orlando some few months previously.

 

Tony's presence was being felt. 

 

I had already a little experience in such matters. Quietly, within myself, I asked him, 'what is it that you want?' It seemed clear that he did want something from me. 

 

'Talk to my boy, he is angry,' came the reply.

 

Was I still happy to speak to Tony? I can ask myself that now. At the time I 'merely' had to deal with it. What should I answer to such a request? 'I'll do what I can,' said I to him, 'but just because you are coming from such a strange place, and god knows I loved you, your request is not necessarily higher on the list than other obligations that I must respond to. I'll do my best.' 

 

In short, that is what was communicated.

 

My sister had maintained periodic contact with Tony's mother throughout the years. She gave her a ring and I was subsequently informed that Tony's son had just left on a trip to Europe. Some two years after, on another visit to Montreal, I again tried to reach the boy through his grandmother, but when she heard that I wished to talk to him about his father she advised against it. She said, the boy, who was then running a restaurant in Ottawa, was 'too sensitive'. I considered overriding her veto but in the end decided to respect it. Any contact with him would require a most delicate touch and this objection was just enough to effect the balance. Again, I decided, it would have to wait.

 

I had known more than one young boy who had lost his father, and I had witnessed similarly consistent reactions of confused anger directed towards God or the father himself. The ultimate injustice: 'How could you leave me?' or 'Why should this happen to me?' would burst out from an as yet undeveloped mind, leaving a residue of acute bitterness. It was almost inevitable that this would be the case here as well.

 

Why was I chosen to speak to the boy? Obvious. There was no one likely to be around who knew Tony as well, or loved him as much as I had. Musicians have a most delicate connection when playing together but generally have little time, or inclination for that matter, to relate to the personal social subtleties of their fellow musicians. Such consider-ations appear gross compared with the magic of musical communion. And, the family was unlikely to have any connection with Tony's ex-musicians in any case. Then, they got him into the 'business', a clear indication that they never really saw him. So, who knew him well and loved him deeply? And who would have the capacity to communicate with this young man, now in his thirties? And just who could have heard Tony's request? The boy/man obviously knew nothing real about his father. It all made perfect sense. It would, nevertheless, have to wait.

 

 

 

 

Shortly afterwards I returned to Israel and my house in the Galilee. One day while resting in bed I remembered Uncle Jack again, and was shocked to realize that I had completely forgotten the contact in Florida. I must set aside a time and concentrate, thought I – I must not totally forget this.

 

Immediately I took out a felt pen and wrote his name on the wall. After a day or two we moved back to Dina's apartment in Jerusalem and immediately on entering I wrote uncle Jack's name on the wall in the living room. This would be sure to require a most delicate effort on my part to reach a very right and exact place in myself and not merely the right scheduling. 

 

It happened not long afterwards. I brought Jack back into focus. Just who instigated the move is not perfectly clear but his presence was again with me. Strongly.

 

'What do you want?' I asked him. 

 

'What should I do?!' He responded.

 

Jack had always been a modest and simple man; a bachelor all his life who lived with and cared for his widowed mother, I believe until her death. He operated a small typewriter repair shop in the same building as my office for many years, and always exhibited, as I now see it in retrospect, a quiet respect and confidence in me. Love, in his own way, I suspect. Each and every birthday through to the time I left Montreal in my thirties, he would without fail send me a birthday card. Now dead, but caught and restricted to this world's 'atmosphere' and obviously 'lost', he had turned to me for advice. 

 

I reflected on his question for some time before our next contact. I had had the experience, and also the confirmation of more than one holy text. 

 

'Follow the light, you have no more business down here,'  I told him. FOLLOW  THE  LIGHT. 

 

I never heard from him again. I have no doubt that he 'moved on'. May God have mercy on his soul.

 

 

 

Of all that I have met up with in my life I cannot imagine anything as indispensable as that most fortunate recognition I received from three men, moved by the spirit of God. Tears of gratitude with waves of compassionate love well up in my heart, tingle in my body and fill my eyes with light, at the thought of any one of them. Considering them together could be overwhelming were it not for the fact that they melt into one another as if with a common essence. They loved children. They loved this child for sure. It was all so normal that attempting to describe our relationship seems almost profane. How can it be that the average adult is so far removed from a gentle, sincere, concerned, helpful, simple, joyful capacity to relate to a child? I encountered three such capable men before reaching my thirteenth birthday. Thank God, a thousand times.

 

First came Leon Levin, a friend of my father, and a Masonic brother of his, which may account for a lot. The two men played cards together as did their wives and as such Mr. Levin was not an infrequent visitor at our house. My father was a Mason, a member in a Jewish Lodge, possibly before the advent of B'nai B'rith which I believe might have been organized within the Jewish community in reaction to some suspicion of the not particularly Jewish nature of the Masons. That is supposition based on hearsay. My father and Mr. Levin, I am quite sure however, were brothers in a Lodge. I remember the most beautiful ceremonial items that my father carried to meetings in a smooth soft leather case, in particular a bib like soft blue finely made kind of apron. I also remember group photographs in formal dress at what appeared to be their annual banquet. I once asked my father just what they did there and he told me that they were forbidden to talk about it. 'We are all supposed to be like brothers to each other,' was the only bit of information he divulged.

 

My father had few real friends. Possibly Mr. Levin was but one of only two. My guess was that they in fact saw little of each other, but how he saw me! I used to call him the 'funny man'. On visiting the house, when I was but an infant, he would enter my room without fail and put on a routine of funny faces that left me 'tickled pink' and soul satisfied. 'Is the funny man coming tonight?' I would always ask my mother every time that I knew they were expecting guests over. What a joy this man represented in my life. Through-out the years I would see him periodically. I do not believe I ever had a conversation with him but his appearance was always a most joyful occasion; not less than meeting Santa Claus face to face. It was in fact meeting God face to face. It was. Leon Levin is no longer in this world. To say 'God bless him' would be superfluous, he was already blessed.

 

Next of my three wise men was a Mr. Sablov. He entered my world when I was about five years old. It is strange to look back at that period of time now while adding factors that obviously were part of the adult world reality then. It would have been the year 1939, just before or just after the outbreak of World War Two. My mother, sister and myself were spending the two summer months in the country as guests in a large farm homestead of the Labonte family on the edge of Little Lake Magog, one hundred miles from Montreal in the Eastern Townships. My father would visit from the city each weekend and during the week we were in the hands of the women and with not a hell of a lot to do. This was marginal farming country with four or five French Canadian families, all inter-connected by marriage, stretched out for about five miles along the shore of a sizeable lake some twenty miles long and about two miles across. A time when no electricity, no paved roads, no telephones and no tractors had been incorporated into the life style of the area. Just horses and cows, pigs and chickens, haying and ice cutting, maple syrup and corn. We returned, year after year, and eventually purchased a few acres by the lake and built a modest cedar cottage thereon. I did most of my growing up among these French Canadian Catholic Farmers who accepted me as one of their own.

 

At the point of entry of Mr. Sablov, our second wise man, at the age of only five, we children were almost exclusively under the restrictive wing of our mothers. There were maybe only five or so other children of around the same age staying at the Labonte Farm in that year of 1939. Mr. Sablov, himself a father of two older boys that must have been out moving on their own, was giving a lot of kind and intense attention to us five and six year olds and was possibly the only male around for the whole week as the other fathers were commuting from the city only on the weekends. This man will always be remembered for his deep quiet love and active concern. This was a time before the Cubs and Boy Scouts. He unobtrusively organized a kind of outdoor kindergarten/camp for the fatherless, marching us off in a straight line, over and around the grounds, with long sticks that we had searched out perched on our shoulders, as soldiers would march. These were years when many soldiers started marching. For us kids it was great diversion to be marching under the kind and quite unmilitary eye of our friend Mr. Sablov. Bonfires and heated marshmallows is at the moment the only other activity that I can recall. He took care of us boys; an open door into the world of men and responsibility just as strength was beginning to well up in our legs and arms at the age of five. Thank you dear Mr. Sablov, we will remember you through eternity.

 

The last of the three wise men arrived on the scene just before my thirteen birthday. This was Mr. Lerner, a most refined and gentle-man employed as a teacher in Westmount's most luxurious Sha'ar Ha'shamaim Synagogue and charged with the quite complex responsibility of preparing the young boys to sing their 'haftorah', the weekly portion of the Bible, on the occasion of their Bar Mitzvah.

 

I, who was never much of a student but did love to sing, was put completely at ease by this capable and loving soul as I learnt my portion practically by heart over a period of some three or four months in his bi-weekly classes. As was his custom, I suppose, Mr. Lerner sat on one side of me with a hand gently resting on my shoulder, my father on the other side, as we awaited my time to raise, before close to a thousand congregants, and sing to exact notes the portion of that Sabbath. No rock group could have had a more trusted and capable father/manager. The man was a gem. The man was exactly what this boy needed. The man was real. Some thirty years later word reached me that he was living in a retirement home in Jerusalem just a few years after his wife had passed away. I, then living in the Yemin Moshe area, located him and took him for a drive one day in the city. Again, a most simple pleasure. I cannot recall how it was that I never saw him again, how I managed to give back so little of what I had received from this, God's most real helper. Some of his goodness must be reflected through many, to this day and on.  Allah hu akbar.

 

 

 

 

'I  KNOW  A  LITTLE  BIT  ABOUT A  LOT  OF  THINGS 

BUT  I  DON'T  KNOW  ENOUGH  ABOUT  YOU . . .'

 

The recording of music that had been continued in London and stopped with the Sadat affair was still a burning issue. My singing, though not at all bad, was not as good as I knew it could be. I had not really sung since the star appearance at my Bar Mitzva some thirty odd years before. I carried the master tape with me the next year on another trip to America and practiced in studios in both Toronto and New York. I lost my taste quickly for studios in the West. Too many frustrated, underpaid and seemingly jealous technicians, many of them musicians that had just not made it up to their expectations. Hardly a creative atmosphere. I wanted to sing the songs again. I wanted to do it right. Japan, I thought – good technicians, no doubt, and enough of a cultural difference to avoid the pettiness experienced up to then.

 

Things never turn out as one expects. Projected imagination has absolutely no chance of matching multifaceted reality. I've never been disappointed. I don't get what I expect, but what I do get I always find immensely interesting. I love reality, love it.

 

This was Japan. I had not even bothered to guess what I would find; no more than if I was traveling to Mars. I was quite sure that I could survive. I lugged the music master tape along but knew I didn't know, had no idea what would result. Tokyo was so mad and mixed that as I look back it feels like someone sped a movie in front of my eyes at triple speed. Interesting and not so interesting. A hard city, harder than New York, a fast city, faster than New York, more crowded and more stupid. Its systems work with military precision. No bull-shit. A little frightening. Passengers ride an immaculate subway system in a statue fixed meditative stillness, eyes straight, no talk, no reading, a great conservation of energy. Powerful, disciplined, focused. World beware. I got out real quick. One of the last places in the world that I would want to sing a song, thank you very much. Great quality consumer goods. I'm still living in the pants that I bought there fifteen years ago. Get the picture?

 

I decided to visit Hiroshima. The least I could do. The day before leaving I saw a photo in a newspaper of the largest Buddha in the world, or at least in Japan, in the holy city of Nara. They clean it down once a year and the photo showed a man on ropes, scrubbing the Buddha's breast. The Buddha appeared a hundred times as large as the man, he, miniaturized on its breast.

 

Nara was a short detour by mountain train, up into the hills, on my way to Hiroshima. I spent a most unusual and memorable day and night there.

 

The Buddha at Nara proved to be more than an enormous oddity or curiosity. It proved to be an authentic piece of Objective Art, although its effect had a delayed reaction that did not expose itself for several months.

 

I disembarked from the Tokyo-Hiroshima express train at some mid-point in the lowlands and entered a small, old style, wooden benched, electric train into the mountains. Destination Nara. On arrival at the station I checked my bag in a locker and walked directly onto the streets asking for the Bud-dha, the Bud-dha! I was pointed up a long boulevard, the top of which melted into a vast park sprinkled with delicate trees, amongst which light-footed Bambi-like deer were unselfconsciously wandering about. A forty-five minute walk and a turning to the left brought me to a large, tall, many-sided wooden structure that housed the Buddha in question. We'll call it a Temple. Immense cathedral-like doors were open, three or four long, wide stairs descending a meter or so to an open space. Then, a large raised altar holding many lit candles. Behind the altar rose the Sitting Buddha; at least five meters wide and as high as a three or four story building. The surrounding atmosphere was neither noticeably holy nor even particularly respectful. Outside were what appeared to be thousands of working class Japanese young men, all in white open collared western type dress shirts, moving in masses down one or another of the wide paved park paths. At the doors of the Temple itself, although not overly crowded, were Japanese families, a few eating their sandwiches nonchalantly on the stairs or strolling around the Buddha. Something in me wanted to yell at them, 'hey, don't you know where you are, why don't you look up with some attention?' I looked at the Buddha from the top stair and each succeeding one. I paused on each stair and took in a long and deep look. I then circled the Buddha, paying attention mainly to this incredible wooden building said to be many hundreds of years old. Immense wooden pillars supported the roof from the inside, and the structure totally of thick wooden planks looked and felt as sturdy as any cement and steel edifice could be. A perfectly balanced and appropriate housing for this most impressive sculpture. I spent an hour or so in the area and then left to roam around this mountain town.

 

I retraced my path and ate lunch at a refined western style restaurant not far from the train station. Already considering an overnight stay, I then headed in the general direction of what appeared to be a large stone fortress like hotel at the edge of town and found myself walking through what seemed a quiet middle class residential area of simple wooden houses, on treeless neatly laid-out streets. Walking on a main street through this neighborhood I stopped before a dead-end cross street, at the end of which were large closed gates and to both sides fenced-in long wooden buildings surrounded by trees. I stood there quietly, looking down the street when a black robed monk, a Zen monk I sensed, opened the large gates and stepped out. It was now clear to me that this was some kind of monastery. The man stood facing me, I him, at a distance that did not permit the registration of any facial detail but with an obvious intensity of attention on both our parts. This mutual, as if checking out, lasted no more than one or two silent minutes but was so focused that it took place in a timeless open space. After this respectful stare, the tall slender monk walked slowly to a small gate in front of one of the buildings on the side and as he entered I continued on my way. After a few steps I realized that the following had happened: although I had consciously thought of nothing as we had our eyes on each other, in a flash I realized that we had communicated some practical essentials. It became clear that he had told me that normally they did not accommodate guests there but that if I were in need of a place to stay he would arrange it. I had replied that there was no necessity to disturb as I was quite capable of taking care of myself and had no particular needs or expectations from him. Just nice to see him and feel the wholesome quiet that permeated this enclosure and emanated down the street to me. I guess I had more than one thought when I had faced this monk and had pondered on just what those buildings were, but only after leaving did I realize that this very clear communication had taken place. My steps lightened and I found myself roaming for hours the various corners of town.

 

At what appeared to be one hour before nightfall and having passed up the elaborate fort-like hotel, I started seriously to look for a place to spend the night. Found myself in a rather run down almost criminal looking district and with no sign of any hotel. I started to ask around but no one spoke English. Down another side street I went which seemed to have a better class of houses, stopped at a door with a name plate on the entrance that I took to be a doctor or lawyer's residence and asked a lady who was standing there if there was some place in the area that I could sleep. Again no English, so I went into some sign language, resting my tilted head on my open palm in a gesture that I could not imagine was not clear. She nodded and motioned me to a house on the other side of the street not too far down. I entered to find a burly man and a couple of ladies, all roughly in their early fifties, sitting around a coca-cola vending machine in what I guessed was a Japanese style hotel/hostel. It was a little strange. The man was making motions to me as if asking what it was I wanted and did not seem to respond clearly to the same hand signs that had gotten me to him. Some long minutes of awkwardness with both of us using hand motions that were not at all clear to the other. Well, the Far East, I thought, who knows how they motion. The man did not seem very receptive or particularly caring to read me but as it was already dark I was being quite insistent. He finally gave in and showed me to a Japanese style paper or silk translucent walled room with a thin mattress resting on a large straw mat in the middle of the floor. The hand motions started again. If already in a traditional Japanese rest house, or whatever, I wanted one of those famous baths I had heard about. Language barrier or no language barrier and possibly with him playing dumb, I kept insisting. In a bit of a huff he gave in and showed me to the bathrooms and a not overly attractive pool in a side room. Had I seen it before I would not have pushed the issue. Now there was little choice. I got in hoping to relax, spotted some hairs along with other indescribables floating in the water and got the hell out as quickly as I could. In a word, it was filthy. Went back to my room, which might have been one of only two or three in the place and before lying down went to look over some  magazines that lay on a long low table running along the side wall. Comic books they were, full of the most graphic line drawn pornographic pictures. Almost no doubt , I was quartered in a not very high class whore house – alone. I slept the night well and was off the next morning on the way to Hiroshima.

 

 

Now, back to the Buddha and the aspect of Objective Art. Close to a year after my visit to Nara and back in the Galilee, I awoke in the morning with one unique and startling picture on my inner screen. THE BUDDHA WAS THERE. The Buddha took up the TOTAL AREA in the 'mind's eye'. Standing, probably dead-center on one of the top stairs facing the Buddha, the massive statue occupied the total field of vision, both left to right and up and down. There must have been absolutely nothing else in view other than the Buddha. The mind 'photographed' this scene. A single 'object,' the Buddha, and NOTHING ELSE, not even a background. The one and only impression that it could leave on the mind, if viewed from the right place. This, the classic description of Objective Art. 

 

The symbolism and the exact fact were exquisite:

 

 

THERE IS NOTHING BUT THE BUDDHA

 

 

As the train entered the outskirts of Hiroshima, some most unfamiliar associations began to circulate in my brain. I had never thought so very much about the Bomb; the horror of the act was obvious. But now I pictured myself, the WHITE MAN, easily mistaken for an American, entering the city that was brutally devastated by 'my people'. How could it be possible that I would not elicit contempt. This most peaceful looking city, hardly larger than a village, with a population of around one-hundred thousand, innocently spread out in a pastoral countryside with a backdrop of rolling hills and a distant mountain ridge, was being shamelessly entered, violated if you like, by yours truly. Would they spit on me, curse me, give me the 'evil eye'? Swift, vague thoughts suddenly buzzed through me. Guilty – I felt the White Man's guilt. Where did that come from? It felt real. Amazing. I got off the train, walked directly to the center of town and checked into the first hotel that I saw. To my amazement, the clerk smiled and actually appeared to appreciate my presence. I went up to my room, showered and was back out on the streets within twenty minutes. The sun had just set as I sauntered down Main Street experiencing no evil and already feeling quite comfortable. Some five blocks from the hotel and off the main drag, I saw a large circle of blaring lights illuminating the sky and an inexplicable rumbling of festivities coming from that direction. I crossed over to encounter what appeared to be a large stadium that I imagined must be hosting some kind of fair. I lined up with the ticket buyers, purchased one and entered to my amazement the bleachers of a baseball stadium with an exciting game going on with screaming joyful fans under the lights. It had all the lightness and simple excited fun and more than Delormier Stadium in Montreal of the forties. It had it all, booing of umpires, home-runs, fouls off the back screen, outfielders making fantastic saves in mid-field or against the wall. The crowd was in an almost constant uproar. The local team had an American outfielder who was obviously their top hitter. Twice when he sent the ball flying over the fence with a booming home-run, some rugged looking farmer seated just behind me insisted on slapping me on the back in appreciation. PRESTO – I was an instant hero in Hiroshima. I was accepted, I was at home, I was amazed.

 

The next day I boarded an electric streetcar, the same kind that I rode as a teenager in Montreal in the forties, for an overall look at the city. I loved it. I was totally puzzled at my sense of comfort and at-home-ness in this city. Other than the occasional shock of spotting someone with obvious radiation burns on their face or hands, the city had a tranquility that equaled the Montreal of my youth. I felt that I could easily live there, and with pleasure.

 

Let me tell you how I think the last World War ended in the Far East. The evidence, clearly, was on exhibit in Hiroshima. My last day there was spent mostly in department stores. They are the current temples of the masses. Every item on sale, a little or larger god. These items give, to one or another person, pleasure and peace, at least for awhile. The gods keep changing – new styles and new models – as if talking. The Church of Wall Street; pursuit of happiness, the right of ownership. The Temple Department Stores, all glass and mirrors, all shiny. The 'gods' in glass display cases like mummies ready to be brought back into life. Large open spaces, carpeted floors, hushed tones. Priest-like sales clerks. Abide by the rules and you get respect. Leave your dollar or yen offerings and take home the little gods that you were praying for.

 

I moved through department after department, sometimes standing quietly by the side, witnessing one or another transaction. Transactions certainly. Transformation certainly not. What a church! The meaning of life à la Wall Street. The logo – The  MUSHROOM  CLOUD.

 

I made it from the edge of the commercial district to the area of commemorative buildings of the Bomb. First, one large twisted steel burnt out building, left exactly as it remained after the city was flattened. A huge, almost one square city block, memorial plaza, with pools and the inscribed names of the dead. I did not take a very close look there but entered the Museum of the Bomb at the end of the afternoon, an hour or so before its closing time. Perhaps my energy had been squandered in the department stores as there are not many details of the museum that remain in memory. Estimates range from between one-hundred and two-hundred-thousand people incinerated in the blast. A slab of stone that was once part of the front of a municipal building, showing the outlined image of a vaporized person, the rest of the stone, burnt black by the atomic explosion. Photos of the city, before and after. Various statistics. As I moved from exhibit to exhibit with ear phones giving an English explanation of the displayed artifacts, the reality of this rather recent event began to sink in, deeper and deeper. I was in the second to last room of the building with the exit doors in sight when the guards began to announce 'closing time'. I refused to be rushed, the message was so immense as if too much to be absorbed by my being. The guards were becoming impatient, it was hard to ignore them but I did. They finally approached me directly. I started to hear, 'time to go, time to close, must go, wife's got dinner waiting,' in Japanese. Alright, I had reached the end. When I started to move, they became apologetic. We both sensed the irony of the situation. This is my most vivid recollection; Japanese guards, rushing me out of the Museum of the Bomb, in Hiroshima – apologizing! 

 

Hiroshima, now living in the most comfortable conviction that lightening never strikes twice in the same place. A particular vibration of anxiety, taken for granted in the world today, is markedly  absent in Hiroshima – now the world's most peaceful city.

 

 

 

 

I was riding a wave. The music was an aspect of the 'possible' relative to the 'useful' and was then the focus; to keep connected or as close to that as possible. We already knew well what that was. 

 

‘Ours is not to question why, ours is but to do or die.'

 

I was being moved out of Japan and now Los Angeles was beckoning as a possible location to advance the music. I left Hiroshima early one morning, flew some two hours to an inland airport on one side of Tokyo and then bused for close to two hours before reaching the International Airport on the other side of the city. After a three or four hour wait I was jetting my way to Honolulu some ten hours westward where I intended to break the trip and take a good rest in Hawaii before continuing to L.A.

 

I experienced a scene in the Honolulu airport that I could have never imagined. It resembled a crowded prison courtyard more than anything else. Shady characters, moving with determination, each more suspicious looking than the other. Best not to stand still, best to move quickly and complete your own business. I managed to rent a not very new station wagon from a cowboy-hatted, quick-buck, trailer-officed businessman. I was warned not to sleep in it by a beach as I had envisioned, then found myself on the most busy eight lane highway that I had ever seen, while heading towards the sea and away from Honolulu, only to turn back to the airport after twenty miles, return the car, and immediately board a flight for Los Angeles landing there at midnight after another ten hours in the air. My baggage did not arrive with me. I was forced to examine the luggage of more than five incoming flights from Honolulu before mine arrived after 2:00 a.m., only to find it impossible to rent either a car or a hotel room in a city then full of Convention-goers.

 

 

Enters Nancy. More than twenty years out of Montreal, now in her forties. Skipping the gay-fantastic with the likes of Judy Collins, Ravi Shankar and Leonard Cohen and more recently writing the story of her life, hopefully to be sold as a movie-script, while living comfortably in Hollywood's Laural Canyon. It had been a tragic year preceding my arrival at her doorstep. Her mother and father had died in Montreal, her live-in lover was killed driving a motorcycle and the beloved child of his, an eight year old girl, was subsequently repossessed by her biological mother. Nancy was empty handed as all the cards were being shuffled. I was placed in a small apartment below her residence, collapsed in bed for close to a month, heart and lungs barely functioning.

 

In a city of god-knows how many millions the one person that I was focused on and hoped to see was Dimi, an exiled Ethiopian aristocrat known from Jerusalem and then working as a music agent in L.A. Barely able to stand, one day I drifted out of Nancy's downstairs apartment, walked down the hill not really knowing where I was and found myself on Hollywood Boulevard not far from the restaurant where I had seen Dimi the previous year while in Los Angeles with friend Avi. I walked into the restaurant to find the sought after Dimi standing at the cash register paying his bill. I had not even the strength to talk to him, not even taking his telephone number. He drove me home to Nancy's.

 

A week or so later feeling somewhat stronger I rented a car, bought some grass at Venice Beach, and again returned to Nancy's. The grass gave me some energy and then left me totally depleted. I was back in bed, dying. My breathing functioned at a bare minimum and was failing rapidly. I was facing death again, I'd seen it before, there was no doubt. 

 

Beside me was a phone, and somewhere out there were those special cardiac ambulances. Now I understood exactly what they were for. If I did not get an oxygen mask on my face quickly I had no doubt I was a goner. 'Intellectually' I had rejected hospitals and artificial life sustainers but now I was faced with the reality. Should I call for an ambulance and live, or not. A few minutes reflection left me convinced that I would make no special move to save myself. 

 

I lay back and totally handed myself over to the universe, relaxed and totally ready to go. As I closed my eyes with a fixed attention on my sinking state a most remarkable phenomenon occurred. As if struck by a powerful stroke of lightning or as if momentarily connected to the L.A. high tension electrical-gird, my complete inwards were subject to a massive shock of energy/light. It flooded me with vitality. After a good sleep I was up early the next morning and hit the road towards San Francisco. Some twenty miles out of L.A. my energy again improved. The psychological load that I had been sharing with Nancy in this wiped-out period of her life was as much of a factor in my near death as was the twenty-five hours of torturous flying time from Japan.

 

 

 

 

 

20/2/1992 – Tel Aviv

 

1) Music / Publishing

2) Family

3) Group

 

Shlomit and Avinoam and the three children. Avital and Iris and Bat Sheva and the Disco party for Michael. Miki, Ditza and Amal left in Jerusalem.

 

The early '90's in Israel with 'peace talks' going on, and new fighting in Southern Lebanon. A sad and dull period.

 

Out of Rosh Pina now for almost two months. Mostly in  Tel-Aviv. 

 

SUCK.

 

 

21/2 /92

 

Nothing.

 

 

27/2/92

 

Dina at her mother's getting over a cold. Na'ama, last night; nothing new, but a family closeness with basic human intelligence, understanding. Nitza, spacey. Harry now  gone back to America, two days after our meeting with his new wife.

 

The social reality of known friends and family so clearly a mixture of vague fears and hopes. The needs and expectations of the OTHER SIDE are at a great distance from this city of Tel Aviv. Attempts to glue relationships together in anticipation of the mabul (flood).

 

'What to do and where to go, in a rush or do it slow.'

 

Of course nothing new, but each time one 'dives in' one must 'dry up' and there is a tendency for a lot of mud and grime to stick. The fear thing is the worst of all, like an invisible coating, talk of it as you will. 

 

And the sea out there, rough and sometimes angry. The wind screaming its displeasure at the crimes of man against nature.

 

Then all those 'good souls' somewhat isolated from the mechanical society and as a result straining for connections in their personal relationships. Much fear of disconnection.

 

 

Now we begin to talk with the INTELLIGENT ONE – the One with the clear and simple intelligence that overlaps the Two Worlds.

 

People in this World for such a blessed few years. Trapped in the pictures of History, both personal and general. The 'world' as it has framed itself up on the screen of their individual psyches. Each one running their own very personal movie trying to connect or overlap their sense of reality with the pictures of either another person or another group of people. A vain hope at best. A compromise within a lie. Not sustainable.

 

The fear to remain within one's own intelligence, test and clean up one's own pictures. Always the need for confirmation. The difficulty of remembering the possibility, and necessity of checking with the SOURCE OF TRUTH within himself, the 'gathering point', the Magnetic Center of True Understanding. Lack of Knowledge, lack of confidence in the truth or the Truth, lack of experience, lack of trust, lack of Love. Other than that everyone is doing just fine.

 

Again, this Life is a very short few days. It is meant to be a growth transition to a Higher and Finer World. The adjustment must take place HERE, so that at Death the psychological, electronic body, crystallized in its simplicity and disconnected from the false, temporary, results in a SURVIVAL  BEING, in The World To Come. 

 

 

 

Now, about those that 'happen-around’; those that are attracted by the god-knows-what of the Atmosphere, of the Other, the 'different'. What about them and how about them? They drift in dreams, based in the inevitable fear of the instability. The attraction is heartfelt but nonetheless blind. Direction they ask for, indications they need. Habit binds them. 

 

Will a new superimposed structure serve the 'cause'? They now move from their boredom and their fear. 

 

What possible results can come from such motivations? 

 

They now wish to be told what to do.

 

A place to gather? They get, learn, absorb more from what they see and generally experience than what they read and 'think' about. Environment is the issue. Something contrived? Too much room for error. Other than contrived? Connected with another Line of Work, structure. 

 

Under current circumstances the future is worry and the present is waste.

 

THE  REASONS  ARE  CLEAR.

 

At a person's 'normal' level the Mind is a mere reaction to fear, even in its striving for pleasure. The mind at that level is an I want, I don't want mechanism. There is no sustained overall picture, no relevance between one issue and another. At most a single issue can be focused on at one time.  

 

Very limited activity, perspective, indeed. The mind as a reaction to pain and fear. Nothing more can be expected without applied Knowledge.

 

It appears to them DANGEROUS not to act from fear, as so many frightening things might actually afflict them. They must always be taking care of themselves, as if.

 

Then, who is it that can Work?

 

 

28/2/92 

 

Subjects to be developed, now or later:

 

The force that inspires people to be completely occupied with keeping others 'happy'.

 

a)  That they may not 'give offence' and therefore not reap   

       'revenge' at one level or  another, at one time or another.

 

b)  'Make a friend' that will give them what they  want now   

          or will be available for what might be needed in the future.   

       Guilt can usually be relied  upon.

 

The point being is that if one were to take the time and look in depth at a wide variety of relationships, both those past and present, they would become aware of the incredible amount of energy being expended and the most peculiar focus demanded in their relationships with all people as to the 'necessity' of keeping them 'happy'. And, the Why behind it all.

 

There are of course those at the other extreme; the 'challengers' who look to provoke. Now why do you suppose they do that?

 

People it seems have their hopes and fears in other people – not in anything Higher (i.e. Truth, God, their own Integrity).

 

 

29/2/92 

 

So we go on. A few noted subjects that are calling for elaboration.

 

First of all there is a lot more to say on the subject of 'people keeping people happy'. Then the subject of the psyche – psychological body/soul – of individuals in terms of shape, size, content. Then a delving into the totally different perceptions of people identified predominantly within one or another center (man number 1, 2 or 3). The depth of the notion (reality) that there can be no understanding at that level. And just how vast the differences are in detail, dimensions and participation of one or another 'sense', or one or another 'center'. The inevitability of conflict, violence.

 

 

Cont'd:

 

One or another kind of wrong functioning is inevitable in the absence of directed Conscious Effort.

 

Conscious effort can only result from pondered, evaluated, applied Knowledge of the Work – there can be no other way. All other so-called spiritual activity is at best preparatory.

 

The lower gives way to the Higher when Higher Knowledge is  ACT-IVATED.

 

 

2/3/92  

 

It's not so much that people have the tendency to do what is either foolish or useless, but that they miss the chance to do what would have real value to themselves, the world, even the Creator/Creation Itself.

 

Now, what might that be?

 

True connections – connections within the Unity. Man, with the capacity to know himself and his  PLACE.

 

ENERGY is the main issue that a person can deal with. Energy refinement that allows the functioning of more 'sophisticated' elements within to come  ALIVE.

 

The Small School is You. The Large School is the World. Everything in-between is School at one level or another. 

 

Your ideas about School are at best vague or a matter of hearsay. You must turn every life happening, take every life situation as a lesson and thus deal with the whole of life as the  SCHOOL THAT  IT  IS.

 

Nothing taken lightly. Stand accused of being 'heavy', no matter – energy will come.

 

 

Cont'd:

 

From family disabilities to the agony of the Planet and everything in-between; all subject to the abuses of men. The infinite possibilities to justify negativity. Energy leaks from top to bottom – useless circles. 

 

With sufficient energy and strength there is Connection, Intelligence, Function, Conscience. Without refined energy there is one or another degree of agonizing within Mechanical Imagination. 

 

All and any negativity must be separated from immediately. No (be)cause can justify it. Negativity is ignorance – no and, ifs, or buts.

 

The money issue is based in fear, no question about that. Fear can always be 'justified', but none the less its vibrational tone and atmosphere remain a cosmic limitation from whence no good can come.

 

To do right as right as you can see it, and find yourself with no money, would be to find yourself, literally, in the hands of God. Who would risk that? Can any other way be called faith? And if not faith there, then where? Read the SERMON  ON  THE  MOUNT – God's promises  are  true.

 

 

Cont'd:

 

'I'   STAND 

                  BEHIND  THE  HELPER 

                                                      AND  THE  HELPED 

 

UNITY at the SOURCE is a fact. But the Human locali-zation is also a fact.  

 

Let's take a look at these 'Human localizations'. Each 'center' and 'sense' within each individual has different strengths, different 'colorations', producing persons with varying tendencies and appetites. What is in one is within all but to varying degrees. What are the implications?

 

In the usual state of identification the differences manifest in disagreement, conflict, violence – except when some kind of 'business' is being engaged in, where an agreement is being sought and patience is being exercised. Self-interest makes for strange bed-fellows. 

 

Each man in fact lives and functions in his 'own world' with everyone else appearing, without doubt, strange, with the exception of recognized common weaknesses. People play on those weaknesses and call it relationship. That is the most usual state of affairs in the world. You bet. 

 

The alternate possibility is the development of the SEER.

 

 

3/3/92 

 

The SEER is always focused on the learning and never on the advantage or safety. 

 

He comes to see, among other things of lesser importance, that THAT which SEES in him is HIM. All else is but variations on the theme, in more or less harmony. As an orchestra leader he is able to call-out the right notes, cords, tones, by his mere  ATTENTION. 

 

All and Everything, in fact, tends, yearns, for Harmony. Attention being Light illuminates the Way. 

 

So, the market place that we all live in. The unthought of, the non-necessity to think, monetary considerations that justify human relationships. Advantage is the key word; coming out 'on top', getting 'the better' of a situation or person. Your 'friend' confirms your advantage, position. For the most part all this is taken for granted as the only game in town. 'Virtue' is a joke word, sentimental, weak. Advantage, Advantage, Advantage,  Advantage.

 

This needs no explanation, no justification. Get more of anything and you are 'successful'. People's minds are generally not in the least open to any other logic. Closed systems for the most part. They may be touched for a few moments, shifted to a new perspective by some massive shock such as war or the death of a close one, or by being 'cornered in a lie'. But the term of the shock is short and the memory dull. 

 

People are 'well' conditioned and kept in place by a mass of supporting 'logic' of all kinds.

 

Shall we take a look at the 'coupling phenomena’ – the Boy/Girl thing? No accident that the Family is considered the 'corner stone of society'. Society, that is rushing head long into total disaster and is already sick from top to bottom, PRIZES THE FAMILY. Now you just look at that.

 

 

3/3/92 

 

The family:

 

They continue to circulate the most patently-absurd wishful thinking, fantasies; lies of the general commercial /consumer society.

 

Members of the family (exceptions excluded) squeeze the emotional blood out of each other. They give no comfort, even in sickness. They block anything new as a threat to the status-quo.

 

Hardly anyone sees all of this and a lot of other facts because of the general blindness. But, so it is. 

 

The fear of being alone is overwhelming, intolerable. Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know is lived by. Fear is the undercurrent of it all and there is no energy left even to consider questioning it.

 

How come even the serious get caught in this trap? That's the serious matter. The masses always have and always will drown in the shit. They will know nothing else.

 

How do the serious get caught? What about you? Do you want the ENERGY? Do you understand the impossibility of getting anything really useful at the level of energy that you habitually function with? Are you ready to leave the nonsense, now, once and for all? Have you no hope in anything higher, more REAL, more true, not compromised?

 

SHAME.

 

Compromised to shit. That's it in a nut shell.

 

Now, again, the question of Jews as they appear to be in this present living period of history. Not a very pleasant nor encouraging sight, putting it mildly.

 

Never mind the rest of humanity. What do we know about them anyway? Travel for twenty years out there in the world and realize that you still have barely touched the surface of Humanity at large. It's all just talk, those fancy 'evaluations'.

 

 

3/3/92  

 

So, the Jews, as they are seen in this local context.

 

Self pictures, measured against  WHAT ?

 

Hold  onto  the Land.

Hold  onto  Life.

Hold  onto  Family.

Hold  onto  Property.

 

GREAT!

 

BUT  what  FOR ?

 

The holding brings no joy or satisfaction to the holders nor anyone else. These are potential means, at best. But without Knowledge, without Love, without Care, without Compassion, all goes to waste. And the garbage piles up.

 

Is this the start or the finish of the matter?

 

Is there more to say?

 

Is there what to do?  WHAT  TO  DO ?

 

Corruption, Laziness, Blindness. These are the current realities. A most serious condition and most dangerous for a Soul in the Universe.

 

They know not who or what to serve, not inside and not outside. A gross amount of too little too late.

 

 

6/3/92 

 

The few words on the state of family and the state of the Jews as seen in the last pages are truths easily forgotten and with implications not easy to evaluate.

 

Not to get lost in the sentimentality of 'our people' at the expense of clarity within the widest possible considerations, relative to a useful environment from a Work point of view.

 

Can these people GROW ?

Is their 'hot and heavy' past a possible asset?

How Straight can they be spoken to?

The atmosphere is Dense. 

The confusion is Widespread.

The resistance is Compulsive. 

The fear is Deep.

 

 

9/3/92

 

Fearful thoughts can never ever connect with 'higher parts of centers'. The small circles that they revolve in can only become ever more restricted. 

 

SERVICE, compassionate and sincere, however limited in scope or perception, alone has the possibility of opening up connections with higher parts of centers and eventually Higher Centers themselves. A cumulative process.

 

Like neighboring Countries, neighboring Personalities ask, demand, that the 'others' see the world from their perspective. Other than being impossible it is violence with unfortunate/ unsatisfactory results.

 

Only Real Work based on True Ideas can overcome this disastrous syndrome. The focus of Work must not slip.

 

 

11/3/92

 

THERE  ARE  SO  MANY  GLORIOUS  THINGS  TO  DO  THAT  SOCIETY  DOES  NOT ACKNOWLEDGE.

 

Our response-ability is not limited to our mother and father. Not limited to our family. Not limited to our friends. Not limited to our community. Not limited to our country, nor to our specie, nor to this world.

 

 

This is the Truth, recognized or not, acknowledged or otherwise. Unity is the Fact, like it or not.

 

RESPONSIBILITY is not limited to the physical level as is assumed by 'sense-based-man'. Emotional, Psychic, Spiritual and Divine attributes are definitely within the realm of peoples' response-ability.

 

 

13/3/92 – Tel-Aviv

 

The City – as an instrument of Take. The World as a field of Take. Man as the hunter, Woman as the survivor. Appetite and Fear as the Motivation. The, in fact, insatiability of these strivings. The repetitive failures in darkness and the resulting almost total blindness. 'From dust to dust', with nothing to show for it all. So passes the life of 'men'.

 

Another day and another day. Life being 'spent' and not a thought of any lasting 'return'. The 'factory' consuming all kinds of 'raw materials' and producing no useable output. No sense of waste. And so it is for the overwhelming majority of humanity, busy evacuating their 'waste products'. Most of the so called 'serious' and 'good-willed' are for the most part in the same boat. In fact MINDLESS. Confusion reigns.

 

People, we have seen, in various 'unusual circumstances'  are ready and able to do with very little food, but unable it seems to do without some source of immediate SENSE GRATIFICATION. Alcohol, drugs of all kinds, sex, violence, sport etc.

 

A wide variety of impressions and physical activity are necessary for the development of a healthy human organism. They were meant to come from necessary life sustaining activities; plowing, planting, reaping, food preparation, construction of shelters, making of clothes, and traversing the land in pursuit of these and other natural necessities. Now the 'powerful' produce these items with the help of mechanical devices and the need and use of increasingly fewer slaves. Man in general gets confined in cement and glass boxes with electronic media being pumped into his system, while craving exotic foods, alcohol, drugs and sex. Forgive the repetition. And, the  POISONS  BUILD  UP.

 

People have the ability to see more clearly just what could be healthy, sane and productive for others, than they are able to see in relationship to themself. So, we now must WORK ON BEHALF OF OTHERS. We cannot 'do' for our self in isolation. That's always been the case. Who can wake up to this simple fact? Our habits are for Take. We need to learn new patterns, habits for the Give, thus using the Highest Intelligence of our God-given potential.

 

 

13/3/92

 

It is no longer enough for us to think merely in terms of saving 'our people'. We must, as if, save the world. In any case, all those 'our' things are confusion within illusion. We are in fact ONE with and within GOD/ALLAH/THE UNITY. There is only One Happening – ONE BEING – it's all interconnected. This is pretty well acknowledged by the more aware/intelligent in the world today, even within the scientific community. The answer is clear. However, the ability of people to respond is at best seriously in doubt, and at worst considered an impossibility.

 

The currently praised economic system, Free Market Capitalism, is completely determined, dependent on the motivations of fear and greed. Isolated and unbalanced. For this 'system' to stop would in the immediate instance cause immense human suffering over and above that which is current. The Planet might begin to heal but man would be even more lost than he is today. Barbarism is the prospect.

 

It appears that 'America' has convinced the secular leaders of the world that the New World Order, hi-tec, Space Exploration etc. are the hope of the future and that no one has any practical choice but to 'go along'. 

 

No choice but more Mechanical Development. They have 'convinced' the World. 

 

The Religious fanatics of all kinds say no no no, but offer little that is really practical.

 

 

We now take the risk of delving into the local political mind.

 

What could the Palestinians really be hoping for as a 'best case scenario'?

 

   1) The Jews all 'out' and a Country of their own from   the Mediterranean Sea to the Kingdom of  Jordan. And  then what? Do they see themselves sitting around computers and               television sets? Do they envision their own space program, want to visit  the Moon and Mars? What program could  they   possibly  promote? The Fundamentalists  will no doubt carry the day. 

 

   2) A 'Democratic State', including what is now Israel, the West Bank and Jordan, where all would have the vote. Who owns the Public Land? What Laws? Immigration? Army? An  American State? That's the 'word', you know.

 

Let's turn to the Jews for a bit.

 

If there was peace with the neighboring states of Israel or a confederation/union with them, what would happen to the Flag, Army, Ha'tikva, ideology, the horrah etc.?

 

Young Israeli boy with 'brains' and computer skills wishes, he believes realistically, to be space traveler/superman, off to Mars or elsewhere. We've witnessed this. Others wish to be a rockstar, race car driver, millionaire or sportsman. Some still wish to be Doctors. Just about there the Dreams and the Hopes end for any kid that's really got some life in him. Well, the State is a good platform for such wishes, they seem almost reasonable and attainable. AS THE GARBAGE  BUILDS  UP.

 

Then there are also the Jewish Fundamentalists. They are not so sure to 'carry the day'. They have impressive secular opposition with impressive options to offer. They also like the computer. 

 

The Religious Fundamentalists dream of God, and the Seculars dream of 'Buck Rogers'. Both superstitious as hell.

 

The Israeli secular dream is very American. It will stand as long as America stands.

 

Oh, I almost forgot, they all want to get laid.

 

 

15/3/92

 

She thinks

that what she thinks she understands

she knows.

 

To KNOW

is to be and to act

from the very roots 

of that knowing

without abstraction

nor effort.

To KNOW 

and to not act from that knowing 

that would be effort.

 

 

16/3/92 

 

If you want/expect anything from someone, now or in the future, you are forced (and limited) to think, conceive, cerebrate, within the extent, limits, pers-pectives, form, size, and content, as if, of their mind.

 

In the above case, you must 'leave your mind' and enter theirs with your 'want'. You also, inevitably, have the tendency, consciously or otherwise, to limit their mind to the general area of your 'want' when they come to consider you. 

 

The fear of the future is in large part a result of not being HERE. All the 'fear things' interfere with the Guidance.

 

 

22/3/92

 

The friends tend to live on the fringes of society. And the fringes of society are precisely the areas that are eroding the fastest. The friends are in great danger. All the resources, money, property, production and every last piece of land is being tied to and pulled towards the 'center'. The body-politic is being squeezed and contracted. Friends on the fringes are being pushed-out into the nothingness. Food is necessary, three kinds. A reasonably normal environment is necessary.

 

Of The Most Beautiful Names Wisdom is sent to our assistance.

 

Among the friends, the 'brighter' are still accepted as computer operators and the 'stronger' as house cleaners and security guards. But with the rapid development of electronics, the more 'reliable' will become available and the need will shrink. 

 

The Haves will increasingly get along without the Have-nots. The have-nots will be starved of all three foods. Best beware, best prepare. Survival of the Soul is the issue, but there is work to be done here on earth.

 

So, how can the friends be brought to their senses. They in most cases still seem determined to 'play out their imaginations'. Most often they do not see the uselessness of something before it crumbles before their eyes. Their hopes as well as their fears are still tied to this man made distorted society. Now, good is no longer good enough. They must CHANGE  HORSES.

 

How many musicians will society feed? There is  already an overabundance. Even Doctors have already flooded the market. We cannot keep up with the machines. The masters manipulate and hoard, and the slaves push the buttons. The friends must keep, as if, apologizing. The images that Hollywood has created IS the World that we all live in. The celluloid-film is in flames but images remain in the psyche. All has been pasted together from the subliminal education of the Screen. That's it.

 

A new world? Now, what might that be?

 

 

23/3/92

 

Where do you 'fit', what is your PLACE?

 

That's the Question that people continually ask themselves at a conscious or more likely sub-conscious level. What does it mean?

 

This job or that job, this wife or that wife, this city or that city, this friend or that friend, this thought or that feeling ?

 

Connections! What am I connected with, what's my roll? Where do I 'fit’ – what is my PLACE ?

 

That is the question of questions, the basic one that is 'buzzing' at the bottom all the time. All other questions are trying to answer that one.

 

We try to establish connections with a variety of things and people but they are always changing, moving. Nothing stands still. Things and situations have a natural tendency to de-compose. Connections do not last or at least change out of the range of re-cognition. Oh well!

 

That's the big thing about 'God'. That's at the bottom of peoples' interest in God, believers and so-called non-believers. That's why it is such a hot issue.

 

The word 'God' stands for the ONE THING in the Universe that is UNCHANGING, and beyond the 'mind' that can ONLY see changes.

 

Something unchanging is the only thing you can have a SURE relationship with. That connection is deep within you, behind the 'creative' mind. THAT which exists and existed  BEFORE  THE  CREATION.

 

Get it ?

 

A little bit ?

 

Well, that's a start.

 

'It's a long long way to Tipperary –

it's a long way to go.'

 

 

23/3/92 – Tel-Aviv.

 

 

People count their friends like they count their money – preparation for a rainy day.

 

From just whose eyes do we see all that surrounds us in this present time is not so clear. In a city that in fact has little or no meaning to us personally. A strange kind of 'refugee city'. As if no one who really had any viable choice would want to live here. A city as most cities, a money making machine with a few 'cultural' diversions supplying some kind of identity, as if.

 

The rush, problem, don't bother me, no time, how much – life of the city dweller. How pretty are some of the clothes, how sad are most of the faces. A forced-smile is the biggest gift that anyone can offer. Few can manage even that. A slippery mountain with a lot of loose rocks, large and small.

 

Choice? Have they any choice?

 

 

Informed by telephone from Jerusalem, by Avital, that satellite readings from outer space shows more LIGHT emanating from the regions of JERUSALEM than any other area of the planet. Jerusalem a 'power spot', a Holy City – THE Holy City. That's been known for quite a while.

 

 

 

 

IDENTIFICATION, in any center, is always relative to either trying to get what you want or trying not to get what you don't want – or whatever seems to move in one of those directions.

 

All or any IDENTIFICATIONS, 'high' or 'low', inevitably and exclusively are activated relative to the above.

 

ONE antidote is needed for all or any such traps/ devils/vultures, as there we are most surely lost to ourself, to our patience, our most serious evaluation – our connection, love of 'God'. 

 

You can never know anything other than minimum, relative, temporary peace, at best, until you find that ONE antidote – the one thing in life of real value.

 

THIS  IS  THE  ISSUE  OF  ISSUES.

 

It is either ONE all-inclusive antidote, or one or another level of anxiety, relative to what you fear 'might come up next'.

 

Look at all of this, without any useless guilt. There and there alone would you be established in this ultimate, singular Aim.

 

REAL  PEACE can only be found within that Aim, not in some sort of subjectively-conceived 'enlightenment'.