SN thought this was a very good summary. Comments welcome.Young men are dying in thousands whilst we relax in the sun. War is still war… … and peace is infinitely preferable. No war is “just”.
ARE YOU CONFUSED… by what is going on in the Middle East ? This letter below is very good.
We (the UK) support the Iraqi government in the fight against the Islamic State. We dont like IS, but IS is supported by Saudi Arabia – whom we do like!
We dont like President Assad in Syria. We support the fight against him, but not IS, which is also fighting against him.
We dont like Iran, but Iran supports the Iraqi government against IS.
So, some of our friends support our enemies and some of our enemies are our friends, and some of our enemies are fighting against other enemies – whom we want to lose – but we dont want our enemies who are fighting our enemies to win.
If the people we want to defeat are defeated, they might replaced by people we like even less.
And all this was started by us invading a country to drive out terrorists who wern’t actually there, until we went in to drive them out.
DO YOU UNDERSTAND NOW ?!
Aubrey Bailey,
Fleet, Hants, UK
http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2014/07/03/blame-for-iraq-to-be-divided/
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/international/blair-applies-to-be-caliph-2014070188142
Survivor.
by
Roger McGough.
Everyday,
I think about dying.
About disease, starvation,
violence, terrorism, war,
the end of the world.
It helps
keep my mind off things.
Same old same old on the same old ball of confusion. Islam is rising and the Christians are mobilizing. What surprises me is that anyone is surprised about this. War is a big part of our global culture. It has been for a very long time and it does not look like it is about to change any day soon.
Good choice of Poem, Frank.
According to one commentary on Osho’s life I read, Osho only ever commented on an English poem once, and that was by Roger McGough.
It was the one about dying a young man’s death.
I like this verse from that poem:
When I’m 73
and in constant good tumour
May I be mown down at dawn
by a bright red sports car
on my way home
from an all-night party!
T.S. Eliot says in Choruses from ‘The Rock’:
But it seems that something has happened that has
never happened before: though we know not just
when, or why, or how, or where.
Men have left G O D not for other gods, they say,
but for no god; and this has never happened before
that men both deny gods and worship gods,
professing first Reason,
And then Money, and Power, and what they call
Life, or Race, or Dialectic,
The Church disowned, the tower overthrown, the
bells upturned, and what have we to do
but stand with empty hands and palms turned
upwards
In an age which advances progressively backwards?
Yes, something has happened that has never happened before: for the first time in the evolution of human consciousness man stands alienated from God. Man stands separated from existence. Man stands lonely, with no companion, in great darkness, with no light to lead him, guide him. Man has never been in such despair, man has never been in such a state of homelessness.
Osho.
The Guest
Chapter #7
Chapter title: The God Whom I Love Is Inside
Arps, I wonder how many other `non-mystic` poets Osho commented on?
I don`t think he mentioned John Cooper Clarke, but I do love his haiku:
To con-vey one`s mood
in se-ven-teen syl-la-bles
is ve-ry dif-fic
P.S:The Roger McGough poem Osho talked on was ‘At Lunchtime’, the one about everyone making love on a bus because they thought it was the end of the world.
Btw, do you think that the unfolding of WW3 bears any resemblance to the Osho turf wars?
The Resort reminds me of Saddam and his gang – despotic, but it holding it all together by giving people common ground for complaint. And despite its unfairness, actually quite modern and forward-looking…
Do a regime change and you will unleash all the regressive revenge-fuelled retro-religious nutters with their little private armies led by power-crazed beardos to battle it out, leaving a lot of folks completely confused about their allegiances!
Or when I`m 104
and banned from the Cavern
may my mistress
catching me in bed with her daughter
and fearing for her son
cut me up into little bits
and throw away every piece but one!
That first album of his was part of my vinyl collection at one time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SmM5ygFOso&app=desktop
Thanks, Frank. Clearly I had the wrong poem, if not the wrong poet.
Arps,
Clearly, as Osho commented on T.S. Eliot, and one guesses other ‘famous’ English-speaking poets, the commentator was mistaken.
I had the idea he commented on the ‘Four Quartets’ in fact. Can’t find ‘em though.
‹(•¿•)›
Osho on the meaninglessness of war:
http://home.online.nl/prembuddha/oshowar.html
http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/remembering-when-malala-left-jon-stewart-speechless–x1MCkak1Ug
Yesterday evening, I discovered the new thread here taking place, Friends –
and my first response was: Oh, No…
The second impulse, stepping in and out of mind, has been the remembrance, when I had read the original text, captured ´website-wise´ under the rubric ´Humour´ (?) at Osho News.com: Aahhh, synchronicity, I mumbled.
As humour is missing me, concerning this kind of stuff, I decided to w a i t, look at what’s happening: inside-outside…
And – saw with inner eyes (like in a vid.), ‘double-bound, sick-of-pain seekers’, trying their best to get the square in a circle fitting together, being ever more confused (as already), depressed, potentially harming themselves in an as fatal way then as then harming others too. The one (so) unavoidably linked to the other side of the coin (like all features of the ´Double Bind´ as a sickening, habitual (fixed) process, defined by Inner Science).
War indeed has lost all parameters meanwhile! And that´s what the original text shows up with.
Today I would like to contradict Lokesh:
“Islam is rising and the Christians are mobilizing. What surprises me is that anyone is surprised about this” – especially in this interpretation – of the war issues of today.
My feeling for quite a while is that the intransparencies and confusion are more than partly intentionally triggered as such – as well as just happening by after-effects of an Internet open to all kinds of people – also mentally, utterly disturbed people. Some in power. some with the will to power and all kind of sections out of their senses to an inconceivable extent.
The frontiers are not that clear at all, not at all!
And I would even go further as the poem Frank is quoting with: “It helps – keep my mind off things.” When I keep busy with that stuff – no, that´not how I see it…because there are new ways to keep us HOSTAGE. As we are not an island – nowhere and nobody is, having to deal in everyday terms and dimensions with the rage, the helplessness, as deal with the innumerable amount of actions of anybody we come across and/or even in fact with those (´anonymous´) who, unknown by us, are hacking or perverting anything that we try to share in electronic ways (like this, here-now).
As ever very grateful that Arpana found a quote in ‘The Guest’ from the Master as I often experienced Him – :
NOT as a consoling entity, BUT as an uncorrupted Being, stating what we are AT:
“Man stands separated from existence. Man stands lonely, with no companion, in great darkness, with no light to lead him, guide him. Man has never been in such despair, man has never been in such a state of homelessness.”
And it sounds a paradox, but for me life ever so often had an effect, that In all ´homelessness´, I felt at Home. Not knowing a ´Solution´, but like you meet a doctor whom you trust – more like that.
And about that, I am IN WONDER, even today and even HERE-NOW (hardcore Germany, Bavaria).
And isn’t that great?
Love
Madhu
PS: Have a beautiful day, Friends! In the midst of all that – like me – are as well
under similiar conditions.
Interesting response, Madhu. Not least as it included such phrases as “The frontiers are not that clear at all, not at all!” and “there are new ways to keep us HOSTAGE” – most appropriate for the news of the current times…
I think you might be onto something by citing the boundary-less, “frontier”-less internet as a major contributing factor to the escalating inner and outer collective mess we’re in. Not forgetting the rest of the 24 hours media, of course, spreading alarm and despondency, fear and its inevitable aggressively hostile reaction…It doesn’t take long these days for vast numbers of people to be virtually ‘possessed’ by such negativity and its potential for violence – whatever side they’re on.
But could you clarify exactly what you mean in this case by ‘double-bind’, when you say, ” ‘double-bound, sick-of-pain seekers’, trying their best to get the square in a circle fitting together, being ever more confused (as already), depressed, potentially harming themselves in an as fatal way then as then harming others too”?
Do you mean violent reactions to violence, as described by Osho in Parmartha’s recent quote here?
I note you say your notes on ‘double bind’, Madhu, are gleaned from what you term “Inner Science”. Would that also be equivalent to Inner Sense? Or even Innocence?
2014 GAZA WAR BY NUMBERS:
Palestinians killed: 2,139
Palestinian children killed: 490
Israeli soldiers killed: 64
Israeli civilians killed: 6
Israeli children killed: 1
Palestinians wounded: 11,000
Palestinian children wounded: 3,000
Gaza residents displaced: Up to 500,000
Homes destroyed in Gaza: 20,000
Source: UN
And what do you want to SAY and to say here at this place, at a Sannyas caravanserai cut room virtual wise, Prem Martyn, the way you are counting and counter-counting corpses? And I guess we agree that even o n e corpse and o n e life being captured, tortured, killed is TOO MUCH!
And what do you want to silence specifically, with counting and counter-counting?
And what kind of response is possible?
And how? And where do you live when writing?
And I would be sincerely interested if you’d please like to answer my questions, or at least one or two.
Madhu
“Don’t understand the Middle East?”
Is that a question? That is a question. It is to do with people that shouldn’t be there but somehow think they should be there because they are born there or their grandmothers were born there. It will take many years, probably hundreds to find a balance, so don’t lose any sleep over it, but feel free to jump on any side that your interest takes you.
I somehow don’t think we have all that “many years”, certainly not “hundreds”, to “find a balance”, Vartan!
But perhaps you were being ironically provocative?
I rarely get into an ongoing exchange of views or explanations here, not my cup of tea.
What I do is post links, invent a load of bollocks for the fun of creative writing, make completely unsubstantiable claims, write stories, promote ludicrous ideas, abjectly fail in my endeavour, tease, mock and make merry mayhem, and occassionally try to cure my Tourettes Syndrome by writing out the words.
Whatever gets past the moderators is my claim to fame, done in the service of my online guru…Saint Parmartha Affordable-Holmes.
Will that do ?
Yes, thanks, will do, Prem Martyn.
Indifference has more than a thousand faces.
It’s me who is in delusion about that.
Madhu
Interesting, Frank, you mentioned non-mystical poets!
Osho certainly weaved mystical poets like Tagore and Kibran into his talks, but I think Arps is wrong, having done a further search, about him using any English poet, mystical or otherwise, other than Roger McGough.
As I see it for forty years he has been trying to take poetry out of the library and universities, and live, dance, have fun and see life with a sense of humour. Good for him, and glad that Osho seemed to think he had something also.
I see that recently he was made a ‘Freeman’ of the city of Liverpool. Don’t really know what that means, but it feels good.
“There are a few lines from T.S. Eliot. You must have heard them. They are of the most beautiful poems of this century:
‘Between the idea and the reality,
between the notion and the act
falls the shadow.
Between the conception and the creation,
between the emotion and the response
falls the shadow. Between the desire and the spasm,
between the potency and the existence,
between the essence and the descent
falls the shadow.’
That shadow is the ego. Nothing is hindering you except your idea of ‘I am’. The more you feel you are, the farther you are from God. The more you dissolve your ‘I am-ness’, the closer and closer you come to Him.
Jesus crucified is nothing but a symbol of the ego crucified, the ego dissolved. Then the shadow disappears, and that shadow is hiding the reality.
‘Between the idea and the reality, between the notion and the act falls the shadow’ – and that shadow is yours. The bigger you think you are, the bigger is the shadow. The smaller you think you are, the smaller is the shadow. And if you think that you are not, the shadow disappears. Once the shadow disappears, you know what reality is.”
Osho.
Come Follow To You, Vol 4
Chapter #1
Chapter title: This In Remembrance Of Me
Thanks, Arps, for that.
I found the quote under Eliot with one L.
I was searching with two.
Loads more, by the the way.
‹(•¿•)›
Dear Satyadeva,
That´s what I was referring to – see the small ‘Wicki’ quote below – in my response to the thread quote. The whole of the ‘Wicki’ research is inspiring and a good read and I often read it again and want to recommend it again here.
Your questions:
“Would that also be equivalent to Inner Sense? Or even Innocence?”
Seductive and nicely put out, I won´t answer today, but recommend a read:
Double bind
(From ‘Wikipedia’, the free encyclopedia)
“Not to be confused with double-blind.
Part of a series on
Medical and psychological
anthropology
Basic concepts[show]
Case studies[show]
Related articles[show]
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v t e
“A double bind is an emotionally distressing dilemma in communication in which an individual (or group) receives two or more conflicting messages, and one message negates the other. This creates a situation in which a successful response to one message results in a failed response to the other (and vice versa), so that the person will automatically be wrong regardless of response. The double bind occurs when the person cannot confront the inherent dilemma, and therefore can neither resolve it nor opt out of the situation.
Double bind theory was first described by Gregory Bateson and his colleagues in the 1950s.[1]
Double binds are often utilized as a form of control without open coercion — the use of confusion makes them both difficult to respond to as well as to resist.”
I am still convinced that anybody here is longing to get more sane instead of more sick in mind and psyche, dealing with stuff, what´s moving us, or also when we feel moved and confronted with seemingly insoluble issues.
And sometimes, especially when I see thread issues like this one, I’m just possessed by an urge: There must be another WAY…
When I get to the Soul level, or what sometimes is called an “essential level”
- there always IS.
And to bring that into manifestation in everyday terms and in a way that deserves the word ‘PEACE’ is hidden deep inside anybody. You feel it when silently sitting in Meditation with others, that we have that in common: the HEART of any Sutra….
Love,
Madhu
Thanks for another interesting response, Madhu.
Is the double bind you originally referred to in Martyn’s post as I suggested, ie an implicitly ‘violent’ reaction to extreme violence, as in: “I’d like to destroy those violent bastards” – which perhaps essentially brings us down to a similar level to the ones we condemn?
Or is it something else?
That is so true.
I recall a conversation along the lines of,
“What I hate about fascists is they turn me into such a fascist.” (Not quite that bad actually, but I’m sure you get my drift).
Yes indeed, well, just recently, hearing about the atrocities committed in the Middle East I found myself wanting to obliterate the outfit responsible for it all. You know, no compunction whatsoever, just wipe ‘em out…
Sheer self-preservation, survival instinct, born of fear – but, apart from all that happening so far away that it doesn’t impinge upon my everyday life – except, thanks to the media, in my head – perfectly, primitively natural, surely?
However, apart from the small matter of practicalities (ie it ain’t that easy, not least because there are apparently so many all over the world who’d jump at the chance to join the merry band of total nutters, if not in an army then through terrorism), such action wouldn’t do a lot to deal with the underlying causes of such psychosis.
Unfortunately though, I think it’s gone too far, ie there’s no genuine possibility of a collective ‘solution’, certainly not in our lifetimes. Too much anger, resentment, hostility, injustice, false teachings – in a word, ‘madness’ – to expect anything much more than an escalation of current conditions.
Might be worth investing in a tin helmet and an Anderson Shelter…Just a thought….
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/oct/13/freedom-of-speech-extremists-katharine-whitehorn
Sounds all very liberally democratic and ideally it ‘should’ happen – but it seems to me it’s hopeless expecting to have a genuine dialogue with fascistic religious psychotics who want to destroy you. I mean, these people won’t even engage in debate with moderates of their own persuasion – because they’re ‘mad’.
Didn’t the British government support ‘appeasement’ while the Nazis rose to power, despite their well-publicised ambitions of world domination, ‘Master Race’ ideology etc? Didn’t Neville Chamberlain attempt a dialogue with Hitler in 1939?
And don’t forget, their paranational equivalent nowadays have ‘God on their side’. Need I say more?
Do you recall that BNP character on ‘Question Time’ (BBC tv programme)?
Liberals arguing for the right to free speech of someone who would ban it.
Yes, the very idea is just absurd.
Imagine, for example, Osho allowing anti-sannyasin extremists into the Pune ashram, insisting that they be allowed ‘freedom of speech’.
People like Katharine Whitehorn don’t appear to realise the nature of what’s confronting ‘western (so-called) civilisation’.
Anyone for Dad’s Army? Come on, Whitehorn, look lively – don’t you know there’s a war on?!!
Perhaps there’s a parallel between one’s happening in the world now and what happened over 1500 years ago, when the once-great Roman Empire was brought to its knees over a period of time by the barbarian hordes, who continuously stretched and undermined its military and economic resources over vast distances for many years.
It may well be that what might as well be called the American Empire (or western civilisation) is beginning to go the same way.
And, to be realistic rather than pessimistic, there’s nothing much we can do about it, is there? I mean, I can barely ‘save’ myself, let alone western civilisation or the American Empire….
History notes:
Neville Chamberlain: re Appeasemen
1) Chamberlain had profound sympathies for the anti-war , inter -war movement following his own experiences in the WW1 trenches. He apparently convivially shared these with Adolf over their Munich sandwiches, discovering they had been just feet from each other , those years before.
2) There had been many attempts by the old aristocratic nobility in the German military to establish a coup with British assistance. The British ,however, were confused by their very-own strategic ploys and scarce UK intelligence reports and avoided supporting this organised high-level opposition to Adolf.
3) The main inter-war threat was not Adolf or Benito, indeed , it was the Bolsheviks whom the Brits and US feared most.Adolf and Benito were invested in by US capital against the red menace. Churchill esteemed Benito. The Brits even offered to concede his annexation of southern France , to keep him out of the war.
Benito had been involved, since the twenties, in ongoing negotiations with Standard Oil , of the US , for continued oil extraction rights in Italian-occupied Libya.
4) British bomber command in 1938 was aware of the strength of the Nazi air force. They implored Chamberlain to buy as much time as possible to build up the UK’s own air arm. Hence the white letter of agreement held aloft was also a strategic delay tactic by them.
Churchill launched the very first bombing raids on Lubeck, in the face of Adolf’s warning for consequent total retribution. Exeter was one of the first medieval towns to be hit and destroyed by the ‘ Baedeker Guide’ revenge fire- bombings.
True story follows.
After being arrested in Vienna and slung into jail in 1938, by the Nazis, for not saluting a military parade, my father, an ordinary suburban Englishman, returned (after release by the British Consul) with his best friend and his own brother in their open-top tourer car from their visit to Anschlussed-Austria and Nazi Germany, after seeing and knowing for himself with his own eyes, what was happening.
Realising that war was inevitable he, already in 1938/9, then joined a voluntary corps in the British military to get a choice of where he might serve and how, and thus avoided the flying corps because it meant certain death, despite having flown the early Sopwith Camel biplane at Norwood Aerodrome.
He was then sent to train at the officer corps at Sandhurst, which again meant he would most certainly be killed in action, so, after completing some of the course for officers, and whilst standing to attention on Parade with some inspecting high – ranking visitor on a horse, he intentionally, duly collapsed into a faint on the ground. Following which he never became an officer either, and was dismissed from Sandhurst.
Later, after domestic posting in central London, (telling me only once of the Polish Officers’ limbs that he saw in trees after a night of bombing of their club – a “ghastly sight” ) he instead was sent to entertain the troops in Aberdeen, as part of a theatre troupe for soldiers (he loved the musical theatre, especially comedy before and after the war) then sent sailing off ( with torpedoes whistling along the ships hulls ) and went on to serve in a battlefield command and signals unit for the Eighth and Ninth Armies in North Africa for two and half years, notably in El Alamein, Sidi Bou Said and Tobruk. His radio- lorry units were responsible for intercepting the messages the Nazis were sending on their ‘Ultra’ machines back to Berlin, and which the British managed to decode…which is another story.
The thing my father showed me, which I choose to remember here, was how to dance and shuffle to a busker’s jazz music , like a tap dancing ‘hoofer’, on a trip to Paris, that just me and him went on when I was 14. He never talked about the war in detail, ever. And only these few facts remain. This apparently was common to many of my generation’s fathers. They worked a lot and said little.
We are all children of someone else’s nightmare, and that affected so many of them and even some of us, inevitably, in some way, even to this day. How today’s wars affect all of us is ongoing, whether laterally through society or personally.
And although my father has been dead for many years, I’m still gob-smacked at his endeavours, stuff which I will never experience but still remain in my awareness of that time and him.
There is still a lot of hurt on this globe. Utterly unnecessary and insane.
Maybe a dance is welcome. A last waltz perhaps.
Now back to reality…or not, if you prefer.
A horse walks into a police station…
http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/oct/10/horse-walks-cheshire-police-headquarters-video&sa=U&ei=9A87VN2mNczPaK-zgcAF&ved=0CAYQFjAA&client=internal-uds-cse&usg=AFQjCNGQ7f5beUXsR7BHkqYrXNyphYTSwA
P.S:
Satyadeva, and sometimes a ´Doctor´is needed, a doctor who is uncorrupted and is wishing you well….
Friends,
The so called ‘unavoidability’ of war is a myth.
So often repeated – also in actions of war – that merely anybody is believing in it.
It’s ever so often said and repeated that humans are the crown of creation. Because ´human´ is gifted with ´consciousness´ as ´intelligence´ as with the capacity to ´communicate´ and to share – nowadays in measures expanded in extraordinary ways.
We should doubt the one or the other’s assumptions.
Fruitful doubts.
Maybe….
Madhu
No, Satyadeva, I have been referring to the issue thread post subject as such mirroring double binds and more of that…profoundly…and the way how Aubrey Bailey and others have expressed it in words.
My response given to Prem Martyn is just this one-liner given addressed to him, because he asked, “Will that do?”
It’s not the first time that I mentioned double binds and effects.
It’s happening everywhere and daily in abundance and especially in war times of all kinds. And all such areas, suffocating good communication or the possibility of that.
Madhu
I still don’t understand exactly what double bind you’re specifically referring to just recently, here at SN, Madhu.
Is it simply Martyn’s “Will that do?” If so, why can’t you say, “No” – if that’s what you’d like to say?
If not that, then would you spell it out, please?
“If not that, then would you spell it out, please?”
I didn’t ‘spell that out’ , Satyadeva, because that was not my truth at that moment.
If Prem Martyn is up to what he is up to, in posting (which he summed up), who am I to burden him with my expectations?
Me, I wanted to simply give a feedback that I´ve been reading what he answered partly to my questions. Also letting in what he understands or wants to share about his motives to write here. And his answer left me with less illusions and that´s what I expressed.
Madhu
Madhu, that much was clear enough. What isn’t clear is the relevance of your ‘double bind’ references to what people write here at SN or to what goes on in the wider Sannyas community or to the wider society, because you’ve provided no examples.