--- In [email protected], Vaj <vajradhatu@...> wrote: > > > On Jun 21, 2011, at 3:36 PM, maskedzebra wrote: > > > RESPONSE: No, Lawson, I very much did need to validate it for myself. But > > you see, Unity Consciousness validates itself—I wrote 11 books about this: > > either about Unity Consciousness directly, or about world events as seen > > through the perspective of my enlightenment. (All these books, what > > remained of them, after I disavowed the reality of enlightenment, were > > destroyed. But some of them are floating around.) Regarding world events, > > if you want to get a dose of what enlightenment can do for you, see my > > description of meeting Ayatollah Khomeini. > > > Would your meeting with Keith Jarrett be an equal dose of blessed-tragic > unity? > > Didn't he tell you to "fuck off" or something similar? He read your book and > then you laid some sort of trip on him backstage -- he bailed? > > Is that just carpet burn from going against the grain of the cosmos? Ouch! > > What about Werner Erhard? > RESPONSE: Keith Jarret reacted strongly, vehemently to the artificial silence emanating from the people I was with (after his performance): they unfortunately deferred way too much to me and to KJ. He apparently felt this was stupid, and said so. Although he had previously invited me up to his room at his hotel because of his experience of reading one of my books. In retrospect I thought his response providential and appropriate: had he not had this negative experience, he would have (based upon our previous private conversation in his hotel room), been drawn into the context of a cult. So, as fate would have it, he was spared this complication. Best album: Koln Concert (1975).
Werner Erhard? That was intense, even violent. I stood up to ask him a question when he was giving a lecture to an inside group (I had been given secretly an invitation by some subversive within his organization—at that point called est), and he physically attacked me. Werner is used to imposing his authority; I found what he was saying untrue, and within my enlightened integrity I was going to challenge him. He sensed this, and made sure he and his henchmen kept me from speaking. Of course this is MY version of the event. You might want to hear the POV of those loyal to WE. I think everything to do with Werner extremely problematic, and the effect on the mind of his seminars (now called Landmark Education) mystically inhibiting and even dissociative. He has it all wrong, even though his trainers (those who conduct the Landmark Education seminars) are deceptively clear, strong, and confident personalities. But they too are victims of his metaphysical system, which, when analyzed carefully is the biggest reality rip-off that I have known. See? I have my prejudices, but in the case of Werner, I think that prejudice well-founded. People are subtly brainwashed at Landmark Education: and I wonder whether any of them fully recover. Whatever my enlightenment turned out to be, it was enough for me to know that I could place Werner inside a context where his teaching could be exposed as contradictory to reality. He is a formidable character to confront. But in a very different way from Maharishi, I believe with all my heart he is terribly mistaken in his idea and experience of what reality is. And my experiences of talking with anyone who has taken the est or Landmark training is that he or she is dislocated from the person they really are. It's pretty deep, the matter of WE. You have to get experimental knowledge see through what he and Landmark Education is all about. > > I get the feeling you fell for the placebo and are still trying to convince > everyone else it's still pure Pfizer. But then that's always been the dilemma > of the awakened TM teacher or die-hard TM lover: can they stop projecting > some scripts from the TM screenplay onto their own (supposedly autonomously > Self-produced) "enlightenment"? Don't think I entirely understand what you are saying here, Vaj. Perhaps you could pose the question a different way. Oh, by the way: my enlightenment, it was REAL. >
