It feels strange that I am writing this but it has been in my mind and probably also in the collective unconscious so here it is. I can say that I am fairly socio politically aware and being Greek I have over the last few years been witnessing the societal breakdown and the rise of the extreme right in my country of origin, with horror. I am also aware that much of the west is on a similar economic path, each country at its own pace … so some months back I was sitting with a friend and talking about the situation in Greece and the nazis were calling themselves The Golden Dawn … when for some unknown reason I said, “If the shit hits the fan I’d rather be (after some thought) … with sannyasins.” Here I must stress (and this is very important) that NONE of my current or future actions, are or will be, direct towards this aim. I do what I do today because I enjoy what I am doing today and I don’t believe in sacrificing the now for the future. I also find militaristic survivalist type practices and philosophy abhorrent.
Back in October 2012 I happened to mention P-Orridge in a conversation about sex changes in the spiritual world in the thead on:
Enlightenment, Meditation and Alzheimers.
http://sannyasnews.org/now/archives/2269
… so I thought to look around and see what else he has been into since the last time I looked when bumped into this …
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge Talks About the Status and Impetus of the New TOPI
http://www.disinfo.com/2012/06/genesis-breyer-p-orridge-talks-about-the-status-and-impetus-of-the-new-topi/
You really just have to read it, if only the extract in disinfo.com (my favourite site for news). What is interesting is that it was published back in June 2012 probably around the time I was having the conversation with my friend. I like coincidences. Where would you rather be if the shit hits the fan? Looking forward to comments.
Vartan
You have no time, my friend, no time. None of us have time. Don’t just agree with me. Act upon it. What I recommend you to do is to notice that we do not have any assurance that our lives will go on indefinitely. Change comes suddenly and unexpectedly, and so does death. There are some people who are very careful about the nature of their acts. Their happiness is to act with the full knowledge that they don’t have time; therefore, their acts have a peculiar power.
Acts have power. Especially when the person acting knows that those acts are his last battle. There is a strange consuming happiness in acting with the full knowledge that whatever one is doing may very well be one’s last act on earth. I recommend that you reconsider your life and bring your acts into that light.
You don’t have time, my friend. That is the misfortune of human beings. None of us have sufficient time. Your acts cannot possibly have the flair, the power, the compelling force of the acts performed by a man who knows that he is fighting his last battle on earth.
We are all going to die. There is something out there waiting for me, for sure; and I will join it, also for sure. Use it. Focus your attention on the link between you and your death, without remorse or sadness or worrying. Focus your attention on the fact you don’t have time and let your acts flow accordingly. Let each of your acts be your last battle on earth. Only under those conditions will your acts have their rightful power. Otherwise they will be, for as long as you live, the acts of a timid man. There is no time for timidity, simply because timidity makes you cling to something that exists only in your thoughts. It soothes you while everything is at a lull, but then the awesome, mysterious world will open its mouth for you, as it will open for every one of us, and then you will realize that your sure ways were not sure at all. Being timid prevents us from examining and exploiting our lot as men.
Our death is waiting and this very act we’re performing now may well be our last battle on earth. I call it a battle because it is a struggle. Most people move from act to act without any struggle or thought. A hunter, on the contrary, assesses every act; and since he has an intimate knowledge of his death, he proceeds judiciously, as if every act were his last battle. Only a fool would fail to notice the advantage a hunter has over his fellow men. A hunter gives his last battle its due respect. It’s only natural that his last act on earth should be the best of himself. It’s pleasurable that way. It dulls the edge of his fright.
- CC
Look… beauty of man and existence all placed within our Love.
“something that exists only in your thoughts.” Ignorance.
“There are some people who are very careful about the nature of their acts.” Respect.
“There is a strange consuming happiness in acting with the full knowledge that whatever one is doing may very well be one’s last act on earth.” Ecstasy.
“There is something out there, waiting for me.” Must be Aliens other wise it is inside, isn’t it?
It is already opening any time, what opens its mouth, which instants? Knowing… facing it, watching that place what never dies, thoughts vaporize as snowflakes in the sun.
“Focus your attention on the fact you don’t have time and let your acts flow accordingly.” If motives are greed and fear, it can create a ruthless person. If motive out of understanding Truth – the rise out of realization is the alchemical Gold of mankind.
“Being timid prevents us from examining and exploiting our lot as men.” Why, because of confusion or desire? That is especially a problem of Hunters and Gatherers, perhaps.
If the life’s question, rooted within devotion – celebration it is not caused by greed and desire for conquering this world… what one wants to gather or hunt? Man has already left his dark cave. It is the last respect of a Hunter, because he dies right now.
“It’s pleasurable that way. It dulls the edge of his fright.” That’s the problem again of Hunter and Gatherer, he can’t “give up”, stuck in wealth and greed for more life and power. But even symbols want help; perhaps a Transhuman is now the greed.
double-time says:
Only a fool would fail to notice the advantage a hunter has over his fellow men.
First things first. The whole of what you have written is a Castaneda quote, slightly paraphrased to hide the fact, which makes it even worse. Anyway I don’t mind Don Juan. It’s one of the better spiritual fictions.
As it happens I’ve been getting into Zen Kyudo and the hunter analogy is quite apt. I’ve also been looking into famous archers for inspiration and symbology, and my current favourite is … Eros. He never misses.
As for the rest of it, I am always running as fast as I can. I’ve been ill recently and some projects have been delayed (very annoying) but things take as long as they take.
Looks like the hunter got captured by the game.
Apparently you didnt notice that signature of – CC at the bottom of the page? As in Carlos Castaneda.
Open your eyes.
I thought it was Christopher Calder …
I thought it was Cheeky Cant.
“Anyway I don’t mind Don Juan. It’s one of the better spiritual fictions.” Cool!!! and what about Osho? Was another spiritual fiction? Or maybe better a reality show? And,will SN ever pubblish this comment?
YoungSannyasin says:
“Anyway I don’t mind Don Juan. It’s one of the better spiritual fictions.” Cool!!! and what about Osho? Was another spiritual fiction? Or maybe better a reality show?
If Osho was playing a role … well, he never stepped out of the role, so to all intents and purposes there was no other role. Unless you want to suggest one for him …
> And, will SN ever pubblish this comment?
That surprised you! All you have to do now is play your role as well as he played his and make the fiction a reality. Whether you want to make it into a show it’s up to you.
“If the shit hits the fan I’d rather be (after some thought) … with sannyasins.”
And where one finds the sannyasins?
And even if one finds few, what is the cost per day to be in their company?
When shit hits the fan, many of us look for our own family or tribal people. It depends how big was the shit hitting the fan!
shantam prem says:
> And where one finds the sannyasins?
I must be lucky because I found a terrific bunch and the cost is nothing more than sharing expenses.
> And even if one finds few, what is the cost per day to be in their company?
Very well said Shantam. As I pointed out in the past, we can never make the money necessary for our work, from each other. I will speak more when I have something to say. There was an old joke on, How do you make Osho laugh? Tell him your plans! So I am not going to tell you my plans but everything will be revealed in these pages. I can tell you one thing, it’s an 18 month plan and I am about 3 months into it.
There is no shit and there is no fan.
DT says, ‘There is something out there waiting for me, for sure; and I will join it, also for sure.’ Nicely writen comment, but I think such a statement is based in a very basic misconception, no matter how sure DT feels about it. There is no ‘out there’ and there is no ‘me’ to be waited upon. Like most people, DT’s sense of self is nothing more than a conglomeration of concepts, ideas and memories that have nothing to do with reality. Reality is that this ‘I’ we call our selves belongs to this world.. in the sense that it was created here sometime after the body we inhabit came into existence. Therefore that ‘I’ will return to the elements from which it was created upon the body’s dissolution. Yes, there is something that survives the death process, but it is impersonal. It is ever living, ever present and has always been here and will always be here. Hence we have such sayings as Osho’s epitaph….never born never died etc. If one merges with that there is no death, there is no out there. The longer I live the longer I see that this is the truth and most so-called spiritual ideas are as illusionary as the desire that says if you get such and such in the material world then I will be happy. It never ever happens, for to believe that our happiness in life is reliant upon attaining something which is out there is just a dream.
I do enjoy the company of sannyassins, because we share certain established guidelines in the way we live our lives. On the other hand, I find most sannyasins to be caught up in just as many illusions as the next man. Those illusions are often dressed up as something ‘spiritual’. That spirituallity is actually based on a pack of lies that have been created down through the ages, lies that were created due to man’s living in the dark.
The truth is in fact very simple. Be still and know that you are that. This simplicity is not attractive to our sophisticated minds that love complexity. Hence we have all those imaginings that relate to things out there. There is no ‘out there’. The truth lies within you. Anyone whe tells you otherwise is out to deceive you. This deception is often not a conscious one but rather something created in the shadows of ignorance. Such is life.
Lokesh says:
> There is no shit and there is no fan.
I sincerely hope so.
> The truth is in fact very simple. Be still and know that you are that.
Today’s definition of truth (and I am sure you have heard it) is that which works. I appreciate what you’ve written in your long post and there is nothing I disagree with. Spirituality is a construct but I don’t mind fruitcakes and airheads as long as they behave. Behaviour is a far better judge than spirituality.
BV that’s a worldly kind of truth you are referring to. The truth that I am referring to means that there is something eternal as opposed to that which is transitory and thus false.
Your constant discursive antagonism does not prove your “enlightenment”, nor does it make you appear clever. In actuality, you are ruled by your unwillingness to accept reality as it is. That is what motivates your every desperate move. You do not have the “answers”, and I can assure you of that. You can substitute your mis-conceptions for real communication all day long in your efforts to save face, but its laughably transparent.
Here is another quote from Castaneda, relevant to your situation:
You think everything in the world is simple to understand because everything you do is a routine that is simple to understand.
Your problem is that you confuse the world with what people do. The things people do are the shields against the forces that surround us; what we do as people gives us comfort and makes us feel safe; what people do is rightfully very important, but only as a shield. We never learn that the things we do as people are only shields and we let them dominate and topple our lives. In fact I could say that for mankind, what people do is greater and more important than the world itself.
The world is all that is encased here; life, death, people, the allies, and everything else that surrounds us. The world is incomprehensible. We won’t ever understand it; we won’t ever unravel its secrets. Thus we must treat it as it is, a sheer mystery!
An average man doesn’t do this, though. The world is never a mystery for him, and when he arrives at old age he is convinced he has nothing more to live for. An old man has not exhausted the world. He has exhausted only what people do. But in his stupid confusion he believes that the world has no more mysteries for him. What a wretched price to pay for our shields!
And I wonder whether you, ‘double-time’ are any more authentic, if you need to quote at such great length from someone else’s words. Perhaps that’s your own particular ‘shield’?
As it is, I suspect you’re suffering from a fairly acute attack of ‘guru-itis’, not at all rare in people who think they’ve realised ‘something special’ and are therefore qualified, in their own eyes, to preach to others, even those they don’t and never will know.
When I was doing a lot of psychedelics Castenada was great for cosmic entertainment, I still remember a few quotes, but very little of what he wrote dings a dong for me today.
DT quotes, ‘You think everything in the world is simple to understand because everything you do is a routine that is simple to understand.’
That is not simple. It’s simplistic. A half-truth at best. Kid’s stuff.
There is something eternal…
This humanity knows from the time eternal…!
Few people get wise teeth before their milk teeth.
Wisdom comes before the common sense.
Mr. Double time S/o, Mr. Triple time seems to be one such.
Common sense requires that one introduces oneself before preaching any kind of wisdom. How old are you, married or single, homo or hetro, sannyasin or Papa-ji-ite?
Shantam, what business is it of yours to ask…How old are you, married or single, homo or hetro, sannyasin or Papa-ji-ite?
People write what they write on SN. Why this need to run a background check before you take them on. Is this your policeman personna once again coming to the fore? Your idiocy never ceases to entertain. How can anyone be so stupid? Must have required a lifetime of hard work.
Why do you feel the need to measure people by their social credentials?
Dont worry about me. Worry about you and your inability to recognize real knowledge wherever it can be found.
well,my personal experience was,that when the shit hit the fan,
i ended up with a lot of shit,and very few fans….
The idiots are those who respond to the words. Any man with little intelligence will respond to the person behind the words.
Here i see, people are so desperate to share their wisdom in a lonely cafe, therefore unwilling to know the person bit deeper. Who knows that person will run away. And finally they end up under the shower of abuses by some nothingness pretending to know everything.
Shantam, I don’t see anyone as desperate who is posting on SN..except you perhaps…Soap Box Shantam trying to rally the troops for a coup de etat in the resort. Do you worship Ganesh, patron of lost causes?
You say, ‘Any man with little intelligence will respond to the person behind the words.’ Even if that were true you won’t be able to fill the little intelligence criteria, so I guess we can count you out on that one.
That said, I do appreciate your presence on SN. Every community needs a village idiot.
Make gay marriage compulsory for greek clergy and stop greek mammas overfeeding their podgy lost offspring for lack of emotive intelligence.. then roll out the gay marriage option nationwide sothat if wilhelm reich was right the nazis won’t be able to contol a nations repressed libido.. as it will be insured against via plurimal sexuality.. or at least the colonels will be well dressed next time and not in those ill fitting costumes for short arses borrowed from the CIA costumes department.
Calling a greek man a ‘pusti’ is second only to calling him a mother.coitionist,,,,as the ancient spartan handshake was designed to ensure hardened warrior bonding… nowadays a meeting of the golden dawn could be brought into chaos by instructions for this ancient form of greeting…where the shit did indeed ….hit…… the cock….
‘Golden dawn….my arse’….. should stop any Greek man voting for Kirk Douglas adonises….
The Greeks invented sex and the stupid English went and introduced it to women. Doh.
Anyway, Osho thought that gaydom was a perversion so I am sticking to women from now on. Apart from the occasional goat. Oh you didn’t know about the goats? Allow me to introduce you to Caprine-ology …
“I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live.” ― Anaïs Nin
she`s not wrong there
Double-time is a dummy created by Lokesh’s alter ego.
Second guess?
Wrong again, Sergeant Shantam.
Private Parts,more like..
and he`s very fond of
Major-General Isations.
and he sees a lot of Seaman Staines when he`s on duty.
Perhaps he should apply for a job as a projectionist. That way Private Parts will get paid for what appears to be a full-time hobby.
“The world is incomprehensible. We won’t ever understand it; we won’t ever unravel its secrets. Thus we must treat it as it is, a sheer mystery!”
This is almost worth a blog unto itself! But it is baloney.
Castanada basically cribbed stuff from many spiritual sources and put them together (nicely) through the mouth of a sorcerer from an ancient time.
I have a different view, I dont see the world of science and the world of mysticism as mutually exclusive. I’ve got high even reading some of that Einstein stuff and seeing the surface of Mars, and got high like many a mystic sitting on a mountain top just being there.
No need to be in competition with each other, and one is a better man taking both in. Its that old Ecclesiastical wisdom – there’s a time to love, and a time not to love, there’s a time to understand the world, and there’s a time to let it go. The secret that old book did not allude to is to grow, such that one recognises “the correct time” for each modality of being. That’s an elusive art.
Parmartha says:
> … an elusive art.
In Greek there is no word for art. The closest, techni, implies a technology, the technology of emotion manipulation. In ancient Greece what we define today as art, were works (theatre, statues, iconography) financed by the elite to manipulate the society’s opinion.
I see art as elegant science. The correct time is a science. God after all was a watchmaker.
Every time big P skins up, he gets ever so flowery from the begonias of time to the herbaceous borders of thought he can reduce any ego nullifying separation into a mulch of liquified concettias, which in their turn will, in their time, will, if the conditions of invited non interfering allowance and associated tax credits, will beckon the busy bees of fertilising stupendosity back into the garden of one’s being….
Either that or watch old re-runs of the Ashes victories on the screen of nature’s own portable, recollected, memory, closed eye-pads.
My impressions of monotheistic greek family society were of a mountain people who had just learnt how to make fire….should never have tried to become a european player with lying mortgages for all the kids on second and third houses…they should’ve stayed happy with their backwater idylls and cheap tourism. I remember sending a full photo fax of the archimandrake of the church with the caption ‘is this man a homosexual’ to the athens airport ticket offices of their major airline which had in greek style managed to avoid answering any urgent faxes previously sent. I got the reply quickly afterwards, with the terse injunction, ‘there is no need to insult our religion etc etc…’
Like the Israelis , the greeks have never had an anti theocratic revolution, nor a secular state, nor the erudition of an atheistic scientific humanist revolutionary critique used by an aspirational middle class for a legalistic social democracy. Entry into Greek procedures of legitimacy are by way of provincial chain smoking fiefdoms of byzantine postponement. Luckily for them the law has not usurped their emotional life, where codified behaviour in the UK has supplanted emotive delight as in most emotively embarassed anglo saxon societies, along with the deadening call centre technocracy of unlived lives. What the issue always is, is not the conditioning itself , but the mechanisms that enable the accountability of any system to justify its means and its ends. “The Office” provided for a needed mirror into the tacit injunctions of value and purpose in a life filled with none. I suggest the Greeks start producing some aristophanean comedic equivalents for a regular dose of ‘expose and redeem’ the neuroses. The first episode to be called ; Fatherios Tedios Pusti..and take a leaf out of Eire’s book who when the state wanted to foster it’s credentials as a new EU progressive member state, co-financed this series to bring all the fluff out of the drawers. These points of common culture will maybe prevent the average Greek from talking endless political harangues over coffee without profit or change from a drachma.
How about the prediliction for suicide combined with energies and magic …a whole subculture sponsored by family abuses… when Igot to the sannyas centre on corfu once , 1999 ish, the apartments where Iwas renting seemed unusually quiet….the owner had forbidden his daughter to see a local boy romantically, the week earlier she threw herself off the local cliffs…want more stories of similar vein ? No wonder osho seemed liked a breath of air to counterbalance that world.. greece only took off as a venue in the last ten years, for indigenous greeks to start open warfare on their heritage.
i heard in the early 80s,i think it was,some group leaders introduced encounter groups in greece to greek participants.
apparently,it was a disaster.
after shouting abuse at each other in a crowded room,the participants never spoke to each other again.
they couldnt forgive the insults.
i remember going to greece when i was a lad with my mum and dad.
my mum would get really irritated.
“look at all those those useless men sitting in the cafe smoking and drinking and talking rubbish,whilst the women do all the work” she would say.
My current mala is not the one was given on the ranch. I gave that one to a Turkish friend of mine who decided to take sannyas. Me and him have been to lot of groups but we never encountered each other. There is no point. We know better.
Don’t joke prem martyn. The orthodox church is a very weird cult that was created in Armenia and spread into Russia and from there all over eastern europe. They are really odd, dressed all in black, and talking bollocks. I can tell you a lot but I won’t. I knew that church stuff was rubbish when I was 11 … nuff said. They are very wealthy because they look after old women who when they die leave all their money to the church. (Is that was Sheela is doing? hehe) I’ve never been to Greece as a sannyasin (apart from in Crete just after Osho left but with still lots of sannyasins around) I don’t think they can get their heads around it. As Osho said, our particular interest is only for the rich. Greeks have always been way too poor to worry about their spiritual development. Rich expats are a different story. Don’t forget Ma Mukta was Greek and her daughter hanged-out with the boss for a bit. I am sure that a lot of what came out of Osho’s mouth about Greeks was directed at Mukta. I have tried to have ‘conversations’ in Greece but there is no point. Would you believe that the idea of communal living is a sin and the church opposes it. And don’t mention vegetarianism. You might as well be promoting cannibalism.
Kazantzakis (of Zorba fame) wrote another book, Christ Recrucified (that in strange way it could be the story of Osho) which was banned in Cyprus at the time because it portrayed Jesus fucking sheep. Well I read that around the age 11 under the bedsheets but at the time I couldn’t figure out what the fuss was about. I remember having a book on hypnotism and trying to hypnotise my mates. That was much more than a kid who thought he was Jesus.
“Don’t forget Ma Mukta was Greek and her daughter hanged-out with the boss for a bit.” Could you illuminate Vartan, who was the daughter and who do you consider to be the boss?
The boss was Osho, Mukta’s daughter was Seema. Osho talks about her here …
http://www.osho.com/library/online-library-alive-beautiful-grandmother-b1e1d739-458.aspx
As “pm” said, the Greek brought the Monotheisms, one God. However it can not see separate in Humans History. Via Alexander the Great who gathered from the east a lot even enlightened Masters. Because a lot comes from the east, even the Sun rises in the east. Such it came to Greece although from Egypt, where the old Archetypes have their home and the Ideologies of Leadership, using people for the own wealth. From after Greek political collapsed and the Greek philosophers already had made from that source what we understand about our culture of living together. The benefit still is for the same scene, the others get the Religions. From here it went to Rome, all what Rome had to add was flaunt and splurge simply the known worldly decadence. Now it came over the Alps and made that Christian / Gothic society we live in now. All has its place important for us, bringing it rightly together if we like to understand the whole background, that’s what I would say.
“Where would you rather be if the shit hits the fan?”
Hopefully with friends, fixed within “our” Love, finding the passage, alone Love manages.
Not 100% sure, but Vartan’s original post seems to be an invitation to cogitate on with whom and where one might wish to be if the “end of days” arrives?
if so, I certainly could see the point of being near a Master, or “one’s” Master. As for sannyains, they sure have been a very mixed bunch in my experience. But of course some carry the flavour of Osho wherever they are – so they too might be good company at the end of days.
But sannyas, especially organised sannyas attracted a lot of bureaucrats, fundamentalists and idiots, like any other attempt at changing individuals and not the world. There are a minority of people I met in the communes who I would not now be happy to share the same railway carriage with, on a journey from London to Bristol, let alone the end of times!
do you remember the story about the famous therapist/mini guru and DIY nostradamus,can`t remember his name now, who was preaching that it was the end of the world,.and the only safe place to be at the “end of days” would be out on the ocean?
he managed to convince a bunch of his people that he was right,and so they got themselves together, bought a boat,stocked up and set sail.
5 days later,they hit a storm,and sunk…no survivors.
the moral of the story is..at the end of the day..er..
it goes dark.
Parmartha says:
Not 100% sure, but Vartan’s original post seems to be an invitation to cogitate on with whom and where one might wish to be if the “end of days” arrives?
My motivation for wishing to post was the P-Orridge article and most of it is more or less in the first paragraph.
“If you’re living in a city, who’s going to be better prepared to survive? Hells Angels, Bloods and Crips and gangs, even survivalist fanatical Christians because they’ve already got loyalty to a group. They’ve got basic core belief. They’re prepared to protect themselves and fight for themselves. They’re more mobile and more paranoid so they’re more able to provide it. People who just live in their apartments in the suburbs and do their 9 to 5 jobs are going to be devastated literally and physically …”
It wasn’t so much a “where would you rather be at the end of days?” but more of a “I think that with the right motivation we can work together better than many groups”. It was also a call to any who may happen to “just live in their apartments in the suburbs and do their 9 to 5 jobs” to perhaps consider being part of a network. I am doing so myself without too much fuss, so I thought to share the idea.
These people had the fan hit them .. and now the town is alive again after centuries of depopulation.. using its own currency ..the riace euro..
http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12138404
VT.
…so it`s recruit a team of sannyasins from the suburbs,so when a kind of “28 days later” scenario kicks in,you`ve got a firm that can battle it out with rival gangs in the underground alongside porridge-brain and his crack legion of psycho trannie hard(wo)men who`ve got a grudge against people with 9-5 jobs,and cathart your way to survival….
it`s a novel take on “osho`s vision”,for sure…..
frank says:
> it`s a novel take on “osho`s vision”,for sure…..
Yup, it’s novel but it’s also fantasy. My fantasy sees me in an up and coming country with potential growth rather than these old, falling-apart European behemoths.
absolutely.
“i have abandoned my search for truth and am now looking for a good fantasy”
—ashleigh brilliant
definitively.
“It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.”
The Mentat Mantra. (Dune)
http://shipoffools.com/features/2005/laugh_judgment_results.html
Worried about those skid marks on the sheets caused by a minority of farsecists?
Is the natioanal socialist brigade ( Athens IWC) looking for a swing bin to the right, after neither shitting nor getting off the pot?
Do self blocking greek toilets force fascists to give a diddly squat about the mess they left behind?
Must workers unite as they have nothing to pull but their chains ?
If you too are worried then get your free tube of Golden Dawn haemorrhoids and anal retentive producing fan cream…for ultimate control…..
‘Seal-IT Bung’