Friday April 7, 2006

I would like to talk to someone about the Gospel of Judas that is in the news. What is going to happen (what is happening) to Christianity, and is there any part in it for me? I don’t know who to ask to contact. Bertram is closest, I suppose. For a silly moment I was thinking, Bertram, that you couldn’t help because you wouldn’t know what’s going on in modern times.

A reminder of how others see our lives. If you are able to disturb the idea that the past is dead and the dead are past, it will be a valuable contribution. 

Yes, I can see that. I really was casting about. I didn’t feel I could call on Jesus, and considered Columba, but it all seemed too close to what somebody called autography-collecting.

Unnecessary. You have within you connections to all, as all are one being – but it is unnecessary to go to the most exalted or even the most outré for information. Someone close to you will always have it, or will be able to get it. (more…)

[Friday March 10, 2006]

Michael Ventura had said, as a joke,  if I started channeling Elvis to be careful – but that made me think about it and I had a vivid sense of how imprisoned his life became. Hell.

Elvis, if you’d like to me to pass a message to Michael I am willing.

 The imprisonment of fame

 Thank you very much. (That’s a joke.) We do hear when our name is called, or anyway it’s sort of that way. And what the connecting mind knows, we know. At least, I do, or that’s how it seems to me. So I know your conversations. It seems to me that communicating through email isn’t much different from talking between the worlds, as you say.

I do have this to say. You both made the right decision, avoiding fame. Prison describes it exactly. I used to look out at the room full of people, in Vegas, say, and they all liked me, they weren’t mean about it, but they envied me, and I thought how they were all going to go back to wherever it was they lived and they were going to do what they wanted and nobody would much care. And my world kept getting smaller. I had my little bunch of pals – but that wasn’t really healthy, for me or for them. Hangers-on aren’t really pals. And my wife and even my baby – how was I to have a normal family life when nothing in my life was normal? But there wasn’t any way to get back to normal, even by failure. And the funny thing is, I’d have been happy being just somebody normal who sang. I loved performing, and I’d have sung for myself if nobody had listened – but all that money, and everybody wanting a piece of me, and people looking at me with this craziness in their eyes, wanting something that God Himself couldn’t give them—

People criticize the uppers and downers and the booze, but they don‘t understand, that was what was real in my life after a while. That wasn’t the craziness, it was the escape from the craziness.

Yes, I was created to open up the doors and blow in some fresh air and I did that. But at the same time,  I had to live a life as a human being, and that proved to be too much to do. You two stop and think – you think of me as older than you because that’s how it started – but you’re much older now than I ever got. And you’re managing your lives.

I hope you don’t think I’m complaining about getting to be Elvis Presley! But part of that involved living in a box that just got smaller and smaller the longer I went on. It was good to squeeze out of it.

Thank you for listening to me – and Frank, if you’ll think on why your father liked me, it will tell you something about him.

Yes I get it already. Thank you.

Session six of ten

Friday, October 20, 2000

Background

Health situation seems to have turned a corner – subject to change, of course. I was in a pretty bad way late in the evening of Sunday the 15th. Happened to be emailing, happened that Kelly and I were on at the same time. I asked for her help, which she promised to deliver. About five minutes later, no more, I felt a change with a sudden jolt, and was able to get a reasonable amount of sleep that night for the first time in many nights. The following night, again I felt a sudden shift; asked her the next morning if she had worked on me and she said she had. Nancy, similarly, was working on my behalf every so often, frequently in the early morning hours. And she had a dream about me – a message to deliver – that I mention during this session. Nice to have friends!

And of course, as soon as one things subsides, another begins. Wednesday at work an incautious movement led to what feels like a pulled muscle in my right shoulder blade, which makes standing, sitting, lying down very uncomfortable. So now what’s going on? Stay tuned. But Thursday night was very comfortable, in terms of breathing. Yet I began to have just a slight wheeze about an hour before I was scheduled to start the session. Again, health seems integrally connected with these sessions.

Also – no connection? – yesterday I received the typeset pages for Muddy Tracks for me to proof. That will be out in the world soon. Will it be well received? Will it do some good? Again, stay tuned; yet I suspect that these sessions themselves may contain material that could contribute toward a book. (What about the one I am already contracted for?)

The differences between Skip and me came up in my telling him that I lived in history, I wasn’t just a history buff as though it were a hobby. As he thinks in science, so I think in history. It was an interesting thing, to realize that he and I commonly communicate not in his or in my preferred language, but in a common third language, a sort of pidgin-English. And typing this up it occurs to me that of course, this is true of all of us. It’s a wonder one person can even ask another for directions.

And, finally, in our pre-briefing, I told Skip I was concerned lest I begin making stuff up just to construct something. He reminded me (for the how-many-thousandth time?) that everybody, at all levels, keeps asking themselves, “am I making this up” and I remembered that in fact my usual answer is, “say I am making it up; why am I making this up rather than something else?” So, into the black box, proceeding as usual on faith and recklessness. (more…)

[Thursday March 9, 2006]

Woodrow Wilson on the creation of the Federal Reserve System

(9:40 p.m.) A first, a “by request” attempt to reach a specific historical individual. In this case it is Woodrow Wilson, at my brother Paul’s suggestion.

“Here is the quote. If you reach Mr. Wilson, before you ask him about the late amendment ask first if he ever actually said this:

“`I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.’ -Woodrow Wilson”

Mr. Wilson, my brother makes the excellent suggestion that I try to contact you to see if we can get the truth about the creation of the Federal Reserve System. We see that this will be valuable for two reasons if successful. First, because I don’t know the answer and so will know that this information (not just opinion) did not come from me, and second because we would like to know the facts. Many a conspiracy theory has been spun around the Federal Reserve system and it would be valuable to get to someone whose knowledge and word we trust.

You know perhaps that I have admired your work for years, though not without reservation. And we were told years ago that there is a direct connection between the author of any book and anyone who ever reads it. So let us see if that is so. I read your Division and Reunion at least twice – very interesting book, by the way.

Did you say it, or write it, and if so, where and when, and if not did you say anything like it? (more…)

(more…)

Do you understand what Mr. Lincoln was driving at in his second inaugural address? I’ll bet you don’t. Or, let’s put it this way, I learned something from this little talk, which afterward seemed obvious but hadn’t seemed so beforehand.

[Thursday March 29, 2006 (4:32 a.m.)]

I awoke thinking about Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address as an act of war against the vindictive policies of the Radical Republicans, sensing that Mr. Lincoln wanted to come in. So I found it at http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/inaug2.htm. This is the speech in its entirety, saying more in four paragraphs – four paragraphs! – than any political speech I have heard in my lifetime with the possible exception of John F. Kennedy’s currently underrated elegant inaugural address, which shared many of this speech’s qualities.

I leave the introductory material because it seems to me important. (more…)

Thursday March 9, 2006

Books as weapons

(6:30 p.m.) I don’t mean to quarrel, Mr. Bowers, but the final taste your book leaves in my mouth is one of partisanship. All the nobility on one side, rascality the only motive on the other side. It is overdone, and ultimately doesn’t wash. This book looks to have been written at least in part for partisan purposes, not as a testimonial. It is somewhere between history, journalism, and propaganda.

Say that is so, it will not find itself alone on the shelf! As I said, books are written to be tools or weapons, not as monuments.

Well, I think it might have had a longer life had it been balanced.

And with the Republicans still in charge of the national government – which in context meant the manufacturing and financial interests of whom the Republican Party was the wholly owned subsidiary – where was the corresponding fairness that would have balanced the picture? Does it occur to you, sometimes excess balances excess, and moderation does not.

Evidently my place is not in politics.

Nor in warfare, and this is no slight upon you. The world has a crying need for gentle souls who shrink from landing blows for fear of the damage and pain they would thereby inflict. What do you think it was that was killing Lincoln right along, before the assassination plot succeeded? He would not hurt a fly, and yet he was placed so that by his inaction he would cause more hurt than his action, yet his entire being revolted against the necessity.

Surely it is less hurtful to shade a picture than to starve a nation of workmen, and women, and children.

I understand what you are saying. It amounts to “this is war.” But I agree with Eric Sevareid, I think it was, who said “the chief cause of problems is solutions.” So the chief cause of outrages is revenge. Yet I can see your point too.

The ability to see many sides of an issue is valuable and can be of great use to a people. But it is not a characteristic of political leadership.

Joseph’s reaction

Okay, enough of this. I am glad to have read your book, and I suppose it is a corrective to Joseph’s views, somewhat. Joseph? (more…)

[8:30 p.m. Tuesday March 14, 2006]

Friend Henry, you wrote in Walden that after a while sometimes at two in the afternoon things got a little slow – that you were on the edge of being bored. That seems to be where I am now, in my freedom that is only a few months old, and perhaps temporary at that. Can you offer suggestions beyond “Get to work!”? 

How many times recently in walking in the woods have you had my words running through your consciousness, if a man walks in the woods half the day for love of them he is in danger of being thought an idler—

It is true, what your friends are telling you, sometimes you need to stop. You don’t think you are doing much and so you wonder how much less you should be doing, but consider that much of your work goes on invisibly to you. It is not as though you ceased to think, to ponder, to daydream, to imagine – to put these activities in ascending order of abstraction – and so you needn’t chain yourself to your plow. The ox won’t thank you for it and you won’t be a better plowman for sleeping at the plow waiting for the ox to wake up! 

“Lowly faithful, banish fear,” as Waldo said.

Session five of ten (continued)

Friday, October 13, 2000

S: Let’s go ahead and move to 21 and get outside of time and considerations to that next level.

F: [long pause] As I try to communicate with Bertram, the waves of cold just come overwhelmingly. I still feel like I’m inside the crystal, or rather again, and so it isn’t that. [pause]

Maybe this unfamiliar energy has something to do with connecting in this way to someone else. Even if it’s another part of ourselves. That seems to be reasonable. [pause] I’d like to meet the Egyptian, really. He’s only a concept to me right now. [pause] As soon as I say that, I got this concept of elongated hands. My own fingers are long, but these are longer. They would be almost malformed, to us. Not ghastly, but just a little longer than ours. (more…)

[I sent this post out to my friends feeling particularly vulnerable, for reasons that will appear.]

Not being particularly fond of the idea of being laughed at, I still don’t see any choice but to send this out, as either one tells the truth about one’s experiences, or one does not. But this process sure leaves me feeling naked.

Thursday March 9, 2006

9 a.m. All right, Mr. Bowers. I was thinking about your point of view – being now within a couple of chapters of the end – and I still don’t entirely agree with you. For instance, I think some form of compensation was owed slaves and slave-owner alike, though I can see why Unionists would ask bitterly why they should give any of their tax money to pay the families who had caused the rebellion and the war. You know Emerson’s response to a proposal that the slave owners should be compensated. He agreed:

But who is the owner?

The slave is owner

And ever was. Pay him.

It seems to me appropriate to take the lands of the slaveholders and divide them among their slaves – not just their slaves, but taking the total pool, dividing it among the total pool of ex-slave families. It would have been a horrible mess to untangle, but worse than what resulted? And the shareowners need not have been left with nothing. In fact, perhaps some form or compensated emancipation could have compulsorily bought the land – thus giving the slave owners something for the capital in slaves they were losing – and giving homesteads to the black families out of that land. If we could give homesteads to white immigrants, why not to black ex-slaves some of whose ancestors had been there two hundred years? I think that your denying any such adjustment is merely taking one side of an argument and ignoring the other. (more…)