[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[seventhray1]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Emily Reyn emilymae.reyn@...
wrote:
 To capture another line used in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel - it's
always alright in the end; if it's not alright, it's not the end. Â

Great Pearl!

[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[merudanda]

So we must celebrate the changes.
Or haven't we traveled far enough that we cannot allow our tears to
fall？
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, seventhray1 steve.sundur@...
wrote:



 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Emily Reyn emilymae.reyn@
 wrote:
  To capture another line used in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel -
it's
 always alright in the end; if it's not alright, it's not the end.
Â

 Great Pearl!

[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[merudanda]

So we must celebrate the changes.
Or haven't we traveled far enough that we cannot allow our tears to
fall?
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, seventhray1 steve.sundur@...
wrote:



 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Emily Reyn emilymae.reyn@
 wrote:
  To capture another line used in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel -
it's
 always alright in the end; if it's not alright, it's not the end.
Â

 Great Pearl!

[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[turquoiseb]

Thanks for speaking up. As I have made clear in the
past, I don't interact with Robin because I believe
to do so is to become a codependent in helping an
already mentally ill person to become more so. But
it's been sad to see him reel in naive people 
here and do pretty much exactly what you describe. 

I have watched Fairfield Life and the general dance 
of spiritual naivete far too long to believe that
those who have been sucked into his web will actually
learn from what you said. In fact, they'll probably 
attack you for doing it. But thank you very much 
for trying. 


--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Lord Knows lordknows888@... wrote:

 Dear Robin,
 
 I know you well, I was in the inner circle of your followers. I lived in the 
 group house you named Annapurna in Victoria. I fully experienced what 
 ultimately became a waking nightmare in being a member of your cult. I have a 
 vivid memory of the day when a member of the group who had been extremely 
 close to you attempted suicide after you ruthlessly confronted her and 
 declared her to be an evil being who was only appearing in the guise of a 
 human being. I remember the meeting at Heronwater in which you spoke with ice 
 cold disdain about her when the news came of her attempted suicide, your only 
 concern was to send someone to her apartment to collect any items from her 
 belongings that could connect her to you. This is a fact, a horrible ugly 
 fact which could be verified by all the people in that room, about 15 members 
 of the inner circle.I am not proud of my involvement in this and many other 
 heartless atrocities that took place over the years I was
  associated with you. In due time my turn came to be on the receiving end of 
 an ultimate pronouncement on my soul as being irretrievably lost and after 
 being brutally confronted by you and the whole group I was ejected from the 
 cult with great scorn. This was the standard operating procedure and happened 
 to many others over the years. 
 
 Robin I have a simple question for you, what in your background gives you the 
 the standing, the credibility to make pronouncements about the ultimate value 
 of the Eastern Spiritual tradition and declare the death of Christianity?  I 
 would have thought that if you were truly remorseful for the harm you had 
 done to so many people, the last thing you would have wanted to do is to give 
 into the temptation to represent yourself as an authority capable of passing 
 judgment on whole spiritual traditions as well as in some instances making 
 harsh judgments about individuals on FFL. Robin you were never enlightened 
 nothing could be more obvious. The biographies of enlightened teachers down 
 through time are filled with stories of their extraordinary love, compassion 
 and sacrifice in being of profound service to their followers. Yours is a 
 record of extraordinary abuse done to your followers. I care not a whit for 
 your  experience of enlightenment it is all words,
  words, words. You did not walk the talk, you were never enlightened. In my 
 opinion you were someone who was mentally unbalanced who had a very expansive 
 spiritual experience whose ego appropriated it instantly and you ran with it. 
 You have natural gifts of intellect and charisma which made it possible for 
 you to attract a small group around you who fell for it hook, line, and 
 sinker. The center piece of your unique revelations as an enlightened man 
 was the imperative to confront your followers in order to expose the demonic 
 and then expel it. Where in the biographies of enlightened sages do you find 
 this method being used to enlighten the disciples? The idea that you were  
 faithful and true to Maharishi and his teaching is pure fiction that lives on 
 in your mind and your mind alone.   
 
  To put into perspective and accurate chronology your revelation about the 
 Eastern spiritual tradition, it came in 1987 when you told the group that the 
 the mantras we received through TM were the names of demons or fallen angels. 
 It did not come years later after you had purged yourself of your supposed 
 enlightenment.It was while you were still in a self admitted deeply 
 disturbed state that you received this truth, and not as you have 
 represented here as coming years later. In fact at the time this revelation 
 came to you, you also  believed that your wife was the incarnation of the 
 devil and that Jewish people were evil. This was the nature of your very 
 disturbed mind when you had the revelation that the whole Eastern spiritual 
 tradition was satanic.   
 The one new conclusion that you have offered here on FFL is that the 
 Christian tradition and most significantly the Catholic tradition no longer 
 has any spiritual substance whatsoever and has not since the bombing by the 
 Allies of the monastery of Monte Cassino (1945) during World War II. A very 
 strange and eccentric theory, which is at odds with the example of Mother 
 

[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[cardemaister]

Wonder if there could be even the remotest of possibilities
that the entities Robin and Lordknows occupy(?) exactly the
same space-time coordinates... ;D


--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradhatu@... wrote:

 This would make an excellent starting point for a RWC and WTS FAQ, in my 
 opinion. It's the bitch-slap of enlightened insight.
 
 Thanks for taking the time, effort and emotional digging it took to write 
 this. And ditto on wishing RWC the best - think of it as a `shirts off bear 
 hug' R. :-).
 
 On Aug 6, 2012, at 9:25 PM, Lord Knows lordknows888@... wrote:
 
  Dear Robin,
  
  I know you well, I was in the inner circle of your followers. I lived in 
  the group house you named Annapurna in Victoria. I fully 

[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[feste37]

I have never been a spiritual leader, or a leader of any kind, so I have never 
had followers. My task has been different. In that respect, there may well be 
legions of girlfriends, semi-girlfriends, sort-of girlfriends from way back in 
the 1980s who if they wanted to might well be able to write a screed here on 
FFL about what a jerk I was in those days. And maybe they would be right. But 
we all work on our stuff, and we are not the same people we were. We improve. 
We learn things. And what counts is not so much what we did but what we are 
now. Best to you, Robin. I hope you continue to post here because I enjoy your 
contributions. 

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Robin Carlsen maskedzebra@... wrote:

 Dear Lord Knows,
 
 I don't think it is possible to answer to your accusations here and even try 
 to dispute your account of those years you knew me. I am not the person you 
 depict in your indictment of me. Those who know me best (including persons 
 who were there at the beginning, some 35 years ago, and remain in close 
 contact with me even now) know me as I am. They would not agree with your 
 assessment of my character or my motivation. And they would, in your 
 presence, claim to have a more profound understanding of me than is revealed 
 by what you say about me in your post at FFL. If your judgment is the correct 
 one, there will have to be a consensus about this. And if someone who has 
 known me through these last twenty-five years believes your judgment of me is 
 essentially false, you will have to consider that as contradicting what you 
 so sincerely believe is the truth about me. I certainly am not prepared to 
 defend anything I did during those ten years when I was 
 enlightened--certainly not the incidents you cite in your case against me. 
 But that you have got the person Robin in your sights in a way which is 
 meaningfully related to who I am, there is where I believe you are very much 
 mistaken. 
 
 I cannot and will not attempt to justify my actions while I was enlightened, 
 but in terms of where I have come since then I do not recognize myself in 
 your portrayal of me here. And either would anyone who has known me through 
 this past quarter of a century. I can never hope to challenge your 
 interpretation of me based upon the evidence you present here during that 
 time you knew me; but in my conscience and in my soul my conviction of the 
 wrongness of your estimation of me now compels me to protest the unfairness, 
 the inaccuracy, and the unnaturalness of your analysis of me. The person 
 Robin is not who you would have me be. I am not that person.
 
 In speaking about Eastern or Western traditions I am merely exercising my 
 free speech and what I have to say is based upon my own personal history, my 
 reading, and my sense of what is true. I am not seeking for anyone to follow 
 me, and I doubt that anyone on this forum feels in any way that I am not 
 playing by the rules.
 
 Of course you are entitled to your extremely severe appraisal of my sanity 
 and my integrity; and if you are essentially right about me, it is indeed a 
 terrible thing for me to believe, as I do certainly believe, that you are 
 prejudiced and blind in the damning conclusion you have reached about the 
 person that I am. Now.
 
 Only good, however, can come from someone who speaks as you have spoken, and 
 who has laid out the case against me in the way that you have. I suppose it 
 was inevitable that this would happen. And I am glad it has. In the end it 
 will be what the Creator makes of all this that counts, and I hope that he 
 sees things more from my perspective than from your perspective. I will pray 
 for you, as you evidently have already prayed for me.
 
 Robin
 
 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Lord Knows lordknows888@ wrote:
 
  
  
  Dear Robin,
  
  I know you well, I was in the inner circle of your followers. I lived in 
  the group house you named Annapurna in Victoria. I fully experienced what 
  ultimately became a waking nightmare in being a member of your cult. I have 
  a vivid memory of the day when a member of the group who had been extremely 
  close to you attempted suicide after you ruthlessly confronted her and 
  declared her to be an evil being who was only appearing in the guise of a 
  human being. I remember the meeting at Heronwater in which you spoke with 
  ice cold disdain about her when the news came of her attempted suicide, 
  your only concern was to send someone to her apartment to collect any items 
  from her belongings that could connect her to you. This is a fact, a 
  horrible ugly fact which could be verified by all the people in that room, 
  about 15 members of the inner circle.I am not proud of my involvement in 
  this and many other heartless atrocities that took place over the years I 
  was
   associated with you. In due time my turn came to be on the receiving end 
  of an ultimate pronouncement on my soul as being 

[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[Susan]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb no_reply@... wrote:

 Thanks for speaking up. As I have made clear in the
 past, I don't interact with Robin because I believe
 to do so is to become a codependent in helping an
 already mentally ill person to become more so. But
 it's been sad to see him reel in naive people 
 here and do pretty much exactly what you describe. 
 
 I have watched Fairfield Life and the general dance 
 of spiritual naivete far too long to believe that
 those who have been sucked into his web will actually
 learn from what you said. In fact, they'll probably 
 attack you for doing it. But thank you very much 
 for trying. 
 

Barry, I agree 100% and could not have said it better. And for Lordknows, given 
what you went through all those years ago, I think your post was not only 
informative and accurate and insightful, but rather generous to Robin.   He had 
and has apparently incredible charisma, intellect and ability to attract 
people.  I , too wish him well in dealing with such a combination of 
characteristics. Glad you made it out and away and on to your life.
 
 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Lord Knows lordknows888@ wrote:
 
  Dear Robin,
  
  I know you well, I was in the inner circle of your followers. I lived in 
  the group house you named Annapurna in Victoria. I fully experienced what 
  ultimately became a waking nightmare in being a member of your cult. I have 
  a vivid memory of the day when a member of the group who had been extremely 
  close to you attempted suicide after you ruthlessly confronted her and 
  declared her to be an evil being who was only appearing in the guise of a 
  human being. I remember the meeting at Heronwater in which you spoke with 
  ice cold disdain about her when the news came of her attempted suicide, 
  your only concern was to send someone to her apartment to collect any items 
  from her belongings that could connect her to you. This is a fact, a 
  horrible ugly fact which could be verified by all the people in that room, 
  about 15 members of the inner circle.I am not proud of my involvement in 
  this and many other heartless atrocities that took place over the years I 
  was
   associated with you. In due time my turn came to be on the receiving end 
  of an ultimate pronouncement on my soul as being irretrievably lost and 
  after being brutally confronted by you and the whole group I was ejected 
  from the cult with great scorn. This was the standard operating procedure 
  and happened to many others over the years. 
  
  Robin I have a simple question for you, what in your background gives you 
  the the standing, the credibility to make pronouncements about the ultimate 
  value of the Eastern Spiritual tradition and declare the death of 
  Christianity?  I would have thought that if you were truly remorseful for 
  the harm you had done to so many people, the last thing you would have 
  wanted to do is to give into the temptation to represent yourself as an 
  authority capable of passing judgment on whole spiritual traditions as well 
  as in some instances making harsh judgments about individuals on FFL. Robin 
  you were never enlightened nothing could be more obvious. The biographies 
  of enlightened teachers down through time are filled with stories of their 
  extraordinary love, compassion and sacrifice in being of profound service 
  to their followers. Yours is a record of extraordinary abuse done to your 
  followers. I care not a whit for your  experience of enlightenment it is 
  all words,
   words, words. You did not walk the talk, you were never enlightened. In my 
  opinion you were someone who was mentally unbalanced who had a very 
  expansive spiritual experience whose ego appropriated it instantly and you 
  ran with it. You have natural gifts of intellect and charisma which made it 
  possible for you to attract a small group around you who fell for it hook, 
  line, and sinker. The center piece of your unique revelations as an 
  enlightened man was the imperative to confront your followers in order to 
  expose the demonic and then expel it. Where in the biographies of 
  enlightened sages do you find this method being used to enlighten the 
  disciples? The idea that you were  faithful and true to Maharishi and his 
  teaching is pure fiction that lives on in your mind and your mind 
  alone.   
  
   To put into perspective and accurate chronology your revelation about 
  the Eastern spiritual tradition, it came in 1987 when you told the group 
  that the the mantras we received through TM were the names of demons or 
  fallen angels. It did not come years later after you had purged yourself of 
  your supposed enlightenment.It was while you were still in a self 
  admitted deeply disturbed state that you received this truth, and not as 
  you have represented here as coming years later. In fact at the time this 
  revelation came to you, you also  believed that your 

Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[Share Long]

Thank you feste for this, its clarity and compassion.  I'd add only that if we 
have made mistakes that contributed, in the Marshall Rosenberg Non Violent 
Communication sense, to the pain of others, we can offer to make amends.  In my 
experience, that sets the healing in motion.  For all concerned.  I think it's 
big in 12 Steps too.




 From: feste37 fest...@yahoo.com
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Tuesday, August 7, 2012 7:41 AM
Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / 
umasking the zebra
 

  


I have never been a spiritual leader, or a leader of any kind, so I have never 
had followers. My task has been different. In that respect, there may well be 
legions of girlfriends, semi-girlfriends, sort-of girlfriends from way back in 
the 1980s who if they wanted to might well be able to write a screed here on 
FFL about what a jerk I was in those days. And maybe they would be right. But 
we all work on our stuff, and we are not the same people we were. We improve. 
We learn things. And what counts is not so much what we did but what we are 
now. Best to you, Robin. I hope you continue to post here because I enjoy your 
contributions. 

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Robin Carlsen maskedzebra@... wrote:

 Dear Lord Knows,
 
 I don't think it is possible to answer to your accusations here and even try 
 to dispute your account of those years you knew me. I am not the person you 
 depict in your indictment of me. Those who know me best (including persons 
 who were there at the beginning, some 35 years ago, and remain in close 
 contact with me even now) know me as I am. They would not agree with your 
 assessment of my character or my motivation. And they would, in your 
 presence, claim to have a more profound understanding of me than is revealed 
 by what you say about me in your post at FFL. If your judgment is the correct 
 one, there will have to be a consensus about this. And if someone who has 
 known me through these last twenty-five years believes your judgment of me is 
 essentially false, you will have to consider that as contradicting what you 
 so sincerely believe is the truth about me. I certainly am not prepared to 
 defend anything I did during those ten years when I was
 enlightened--certainly not the incidents you cite in your case against me. But 
that you have got the person Robin in your sights in a way which is 
meaningfully related to who I am, there is where I believe you are very much 
mistaken. 
 
 I cannot and will not attempt to justify my actions while I was enlightened, 
 but in terms of where I have come since then I do not recognize myself in 
 your portrayal of me here. And either would anyone who has known me through 
 this past quarter of a century. I can never hope to challenge your 
 interpretation of me based upon the evidence you present here during that 
 time you knew me; but in my conscience and in my soul my conviction of the 
 wrongness of your estimation of me now compels me to protest the unfairness, 
 the inaccuracy, and the unnaturalness of your analysis of me. The person 
 Robin is not who you would have me be. I am not that person.
 
 In speaking about Eastern or Western traditions I am merely exercising my 
 free speech and what I have to say is based upon my own personal history, my 
 reading, and my sense of what is true. I am not seeking for anyone to follow 
 me, and I doubt that anyone on this forum feels in any way that I am not 
 playing by the rules.
 
 Of course you are entitled to your extremely severe appraisal of my sanity 
 and my integrity; and if you are essentially right about me, it is indeed a 
 terrible thing for me to believe, as I do certainly believe, that you are 
 prejudiced and blind in the damning conclusion you have reached about the 
 person that I am. Now.
 
 Only good, however, can come from someone who speaks as you have spoken, and 
 who has laid out the case against me in the way that you have. I suppose it 
 was inevitable that this would happen. And I am glad it has. In the end it 
 will be what the Creator makes of all this that counts, and I hope that he 
 sees things more from my perspective than from your perspective. I will pray 
 for you, as you evidently have already prayed for me.
 
 Robin
 
 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Lord Knows lordknows888@ wrote:
 
  
  
  Dear Robin,
  
  I know you well, I was in the inner circle of your followers. I lived in 
  the group house you named Annapurna in Victoria. I fully experienced what 
  ultimately became a waking nightmare in being a member of your cult. I have 
  a vivid memory of the day when a member of the group who had been extremely 
  close to you attempted suicide after you ruthlessly confronted her and 
  declared her to be an evil being who was only appearing in the guise of a 
  human being. I remember the meeting at Heronwater in which you spoke with 
  ice cold 

[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[authfriend]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradhatu@... wrote:
 
 On Aug 7, 2012, at 9:05 AM, Seraphita wrote:
 
  I only learned of the existence of Robin Carlsen when I read  
  Suzanne Segal's memoir Collision with the Infinite (she called
  him Robert Peterson in the text) which included a brief
  account of her troubling encounter with his cult.
 
  Being curious about TM heretics-cum-rebels I was wondering if  
  anyone has any photos of the Victoria community back in the 
  1980s they could post on FFL.
 
  Lord Knows? Masked Zebra?
 
 It's been requested in the past that such photos not be
 shared publicly because of privacy concerns for those
 involved, esp. since many now have children, etc.

As Vaj was told when he posted a photo of Robin and his
group in Fairfield awhile back. These were concerns Robin
himself voiced here. Interesting that Vaj doesn't mention
this. Notice the passive voice: It's been requested...

Of course, privacy concerns didn't appear to bother Vaj
when he subsequently threatened to post video of Robin's
seminars on YouTube:

Well, I try to be sensitive to the fact that this whole
thing has to have been very traumatic for R.

It's amazing that none of the video has been leaked yet, but
that's really just a matter of converting the old analog video
to digital and we could have them up on YouTube quickly
thereafter. The pathology of supposed higher states of
consciousness - meditative disease -  is a new field really,
and I think video documentation could go a long way to helping jumpstart that 
field, potentially preventing suffering from
faux meditative lineages like Mahesh  Co.

Yes, Vaj is obviously the most sensitive of individuals,
isn't he?

 It would be interesting if you'd share what Segal found
 troubling with RWC and the WTS - perhaps an excerpt or two?

Says Vaj, demonstrating his great sensitivity once again.

[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[authfriend]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Susan wayback71@... wrote:
 
 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb no_reply@ wrote:
 
  Thanks for speaking up. As I have made clear in the
  past, I don't interact with Robin because I believe
  to do so is to become a codependent in helping an
  already mentally ill person to become more so. But
  it's been sad to see him reel in naive people 
  here and do pretty much exactly what you describe. 
  
  I have watched Fairfield Life and the general dance 
  of spiritual naivete far too long to believe that
  those who have been sucked into his web will actually
  learn from what you said. In fact, they'll probably 
  attack you for doing it. But thank you very much 
  for trying. 
 
 Barry, I agree 100% and could not have said it better. And for
 Lordknows, given what you went through all those years ago, I
 think your post was not only informative and accurate and 
 insightful, but rather generous to Robin.

Generous to Robin? This is a joke, right? You don't
really think how Lord Knows has characterized Robin's
activities on FFL bears any resemblance to the reality,
do you? You're *agreeing* with Barry that Robin is
sucking people into his web?

[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[Xenophaneros Anartaxius]

I was in the midst of replying to one of Robin's post to me, though work and 
events for me tend to put things on a hiatus from time to time. A number of 
things you have said here resonate with some of what I was going to say, but 
this post of yours is far more succinct and direct, and, I dare say, eloquent 
than what I could have produced, and also much clearer in delineating the 
issues. And you seem to have the advantage of knowing Robin, unlike me.

Most of the accounts of enlightenment and awaking I have encountered, including 
my own experiences give the distinct impression that this experience normally 
takes persons completely by surprise, and takes them aback in a way that leaves 
them essentially speechless, for it pulls the rug out from under one's beliefs 
and expectations.

I had been thinking of the analogy of American football, taking the ball and 
running with it, as you put it here before I even wrote it down. Robin 
definitely had an experience, but it does not appear to have shaken his world 
to its roots; instead he seems to have instantly taken it in hand rather than 
spending years afterward attempting to make sense of the insensible as other 
teachers have done. There is a gestation period of consolidation and growth in 
which one is certainly not ready to teach anything; one in fact may never teach 
anything at all and just choose to live quietly with it away from the eyes of 
the world.

Also the integrative experience is just that, one sees the commonality of 
spiritual traditions with a tendency to prune off the accumulated distractions 
of history and subsequent interpretation. That Robin maintains an essentially 
dualistic stance is an indication he did not experience true unity. I would say 
he had the experience of an ego having a unity-like experience. If he had 
experienced actual unity, he could not have undone it. One cannot really say 'I 
experience unity', there is just unity, and no one to observe it.

This post of yours was an especial treat. You could add a lot of value to this 
forum, should you choose to continue to post here.

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Lord Knows lordknows888@... wrote:
 
 Dear Robin,
 
 I know you well, I was in the inner circle of your followers. I lived in the 
 group house you named Annapurna in Victoria. I fully experienced what 
 ultimately became a waking nightmare in being a member of your cult. I have a 
 vivid memory of the day when a member of the group who had been extremely 
 close to you attempted suicide after you ruthlessly confronted her and 
 declared her to be an evil being who was only appearing in the guise of a 
 human being. I remember the meeting at Heronwater in which you spoke with ice 
 cold disdain about her when the news came of her attempted suicide, your only 
 concern was to send someone to her apartment to collect any items from her 
 belongings that could connect her to you. This is a fact, a horrible ugly 
 fact which could be verified by all the people in that room, about 15 members 
 of the inner circle.I am not proud of my involvement in this and many other 
 heartless atrocities that took place over the years I was
  associated with you. In due time my turn came to be on the receiving end of 
 an ultimate pronouncement on my soul as being irretrievably lost and after 
 being brutally confronted by you and the whole group I was ejected from the 
 cult with great scorn. This was the standard operating procedure and happened 
 to many others over the years. 
 
 Robin I have a simple question for you, what in your background gives you the 
 the standing, the credibility to make pronouncements about the ultimate value 
 of the Eastern Spiritual tradition and declare the death of Christianity?  I 
 would have thought that if you were truly remorseful for the harm you had 
 done to so many people, the last thing you would have wanted to do is to give 
 into the temptation to represent yourself as an authority capable of passing 
 judgment on whole spiritual traditions as well as in some instances making 
 harsh judgments about individuals on FFL. Robin you were never enlightened 
 nothing could be more obvious. The biographies of enlightened teachers down 
 through time are filled with stories of their extraordinary love, compassion 
 and sacrifice in being of profound service to their followers. Yours is a 
 record of extraordinary abuse done to your followers. I care not a whit for 
 your  experience of enlightenment it is all words,
  words, words. You did not walk the talk, you were never enlightened. In my 
 opinion you were someone who was mentally unbalanced who had a very expansive 
 spiritual experience whose ego appropriated it instantly and you ran with it. 
 You have natural gifts of intellect and charisma which made it possible for 
 you to attract a small group around you who fell for it hook, line, and 
 sinker. The center piece of your unique revelations as an enlightened man 
 was 

[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[laughinggull108]

Seraphita, your message sparked my curiosity regarding Suzanne Segal and
her memoir Collision with the Infinite (what a great title!), and some
Googling brought up a couple of links that may be of interest to some of
the readers here at FFL:

http://www.nonduality.com/suzanne.htm
http://www.nonduality.com/suzanne.htm  (Robin, under Part 6, this
passage caught my eye: Segal, had she lived and integrated her vastness
'body' with the physical/emotional/mental/spiritual body, may have
composed something like that which Adi Da composed below. Segal could
only speak of the vastness; she had not yet made the return journey,
that Adi Da speaks of, back to the body, back to unenlightenment.)

http://www.spiritualteachers.org/suzanne_segal.htm
http://www.spiritualteachers.org/suzanne_segal.htm  (link at bottom to
an interview several months before her death.)

I found it very interesting reading.

LaughingGull



--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Seraphita s3raphita@... wrote:


 I only learned of the existence of Robin Carlsen when I read Suzanne
 Segal's memoir Collision with the Infinite (she called him Robert
 Peterson in the text) which included a brief account of her troubling
 encounter with his cult.
 Being curious about TM heretics-cum-rebels I was wondering if anyone
has
 any photos of the Victoria community back in the 1980s they could post
 on FFL.
 Lord Knows? Masked Zebra?

[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[Susan]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Susan wayback71@ wrote:
  
  --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb no_reply@ wrote:
  
   Thanks for speaking up. As I have made clear in the
   past, I don't interact with Robin because I believe
   to do so is to become a codependent in helping an
   already mentally ill person to become more so. But
   it's been sad to see him reel in naive people 
   here and do pretty much exactly what you describe. 
   
   I have watched Fairfield Life and the general dance 
   of spiritual naivete far too long to believe that
   those who have been sucked into his web will actually
   learn from what you said. In fact, they'll probably 
   attack you for doing it. But thank you very much 
   for trying. 
  
  Barry, I agree 100% and could not have said it better. And for
  Lordknows, given what you went through all those years ago, I
  think your post was not only informative and accurate and 
  insightful, but rather generous to Robin.
 
 Generous to Robin? This is a joke, right?

Not at all a joke. LordKnows paid for a healing ceremony for Robin, and clearly 
stated Robin's gifts in addition to the problems.  

 really think how Lord Knows has characterized Robin's
 activities on FFL bears any resemblance to the reality,
 do you? 

In my opinion it sounds pretty accurate, and like a horrible experience.

You're *agreeing* with Barry that Robin is
 sucking people into his web?

I think Robin is brilliant and working things out about himself and his beliefs 
- and can still be very powerful with words and ideas.  His style of thinking 
and writing are unusual and make me uncomfortable - almost mersmerizing.  I 
have said this before here, and to Robin hmself.  I think he is powerful, 
without intending to do anything negative to others.  He just has incredible 
power 

[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[authfriend]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb no_reply@... wrote:

 Thanks for speaking up. As I have made clear in the
 past, I don't interact with Robin

Interesting phrase considering how Barry has behaved
toward Robin.

For those who weren't here or don't recall, Barry's
first interactions with Robin were actually rather
friendly on both sides. But then when Robin had been
on FFL for about a week, Barry made a post that began:

MZ, here's a free clue to explain to you why I got no more
than two sentences into the self-serving drivel below: I
DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR 'ENLIGHTENMENT.' It (meaning the
stories you tell others and yourself about your experiences
and what you think they mean or meant) obviously are
very important to YOU, because you just won't STFU about
them. All these years later and you still won't STFU about
them.

This was a comment on a post Robin had made to Rick (not
to Barry) in response to Rick having questioned what Robin
had said about his enlightenment. As far as Barry was
concerned, it was inappropriate for Robin to describe his
experience in the face of Rick's challenge because Barry
wasn't interested in it.

Robin responded to Barry's attack with one of his irony
posts. From then on, Barry has continued to attack Robin
unrelentingly in posts to others. That's how he can say
he doesn't interact with Robin.

 because I believe
 to do so is to become a codependent in helping an
 already mentally ill person to become more so.

Right. But repeated vicious gratuitous, attacks on
such a person would definitely be helpful, I'm sure
we can all agree.

Oh, forgot to mention, while he's attacking Robin, Barry
brags over and over that he doesn't read any of Robin's
posts.

That must be why he gets so much of what he says about
Robin dead wrong.




 But
 it's been sad to see him reel in naive people 
 here and do pretty much exactly what you describe. 
 
 I have watched Fairfield Life and the general dance 
 of spiritual naivete far too long to believe that
 those who have been sucked into his web will actually
 learn from what you said. In fact, they'll probably 
 attack you for doing it. But thank you very much 
 for trying. 

[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[merudanda]

Dominus dedit, Dominus abstulit (...)?
Cave...cave
sit nomen Domini benedictum

and at a  far and forlorn  beach
merumaid fluttered with his wings
  in Job's morning cup
for the flagrance of a long forlorn flower

the hand and arm
who held this empty cup
holds a kite to surf
  with stench of sweat
the boat's in the sky


and  again
merumaid fluttered with his wings
feeling free
  when carried by the winds

Iob 1, 21
Nudus egressus sum
de utero matris meae
et nudus revertar illuc...
sit nomen Domini benedictum

Thanks for taking the time,...
good night
a night in rain storm and lightening
sleep well,
too
..
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Robin Carlsen maskedzebra@...
wrote:
snip
He had made me enlightened; I still acted as if he were my Master.
snip

[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[Robin Carlsen]

Dear Lord Knows,

There is something else which you must bear in mind in wondering how I received 
your categorical judgment of my sanity, my character, and my actions. It is 
this, Lord Knows: that I believe that the truth about those ten years, about my 
behaviour, about my enlightenment, about the pain and terror I created in the 
souls of other human beings, the matter of free will versus cosmic will--that 
all this is being discussed here inside what I believe is a context of reality 
where that reality--what created us, what created the universe, what created 
your first person subjective sense of yourself, what created even your ability 
to write that post--and for me to respond to it--will pass judgment (perhaps 
only silently within itself) on Robin Carlsen, and the extent to which you have 
represented the truth of those ten years.

I am keenly sensitive, then, Lord Knows, to those cues from within your 
post--and how you will act in response to the various rebuttals that have been 
directed towards you since you posted your letter--which would indicate--beyond 
what you yourself are identified with as the truth of this matter--reality's 
verdict here. In other words, Lord Knows--this is so important for you to grasp 
if you are sincere in wanting everyone to know the truth,--despite being the 
object of your castigation and damnation, I am still seeking to embrace the 
truth of those ten years. I have been dedicated to this very purpose for the 
past twenty-five years.

What this comes down to, Lord Knows, is that you must not let my own desire to 
know and to be responsible for the truth of my actions and all that happened 
during those ten years because of the assumption of my enlightenment, overtake 
and surpass your own honest and sincere determination to get the truth out. My 
philosophy asks this of me; that is, to recognize there may be more reality and 
truth inside the consciousness and point of view of another person than myself.

This, after all, is what got me launched on this self-rehabilitation project of 
the past twenty-five years. Someone demonstrating a more accurate perception of 
me than I had of myself. The beginning of the showdown: that I was gravely 
deceived about who I was and of course about the human normalcy of my 
enlightenment.

Now if you do not depend only on the truth of your experience, and, in the face 
of challenges to the final validity or definitiveness of that experience, 
become defensive and evasive and belligerent in the presence of the 
complexities and contradictions of this whole affair, then I shall have to 
conclude that, in the end, you are not that sure of your judgment, you are not 
that sure of your sincerity, and you are not willing to go to where you must go 
in order to know with a sense of conviction and courage that all that you say 
in your post--and perhaps future posts--is 'true'.

Because if you are right in what you have said about me, in the kind of person 
I really am (unchanged from what I was when you knew me), that I am mentally 
ill, deluded, and simply plain wrong, then you will trust in the objectivity 
and truthfulness of your testimony--without the need for any personal venom or 
hatred or irrationality to come into what you write. This at least--perhaps 
this is a simplification of reality--is how I understand the means to measure 
the truth of what you have said, what you are going to say, about me. *Reality 
and truth will do the work for you, Lord Knows*.

I will then, declare that I hold myself to that standard of truth whereby I 
utterly trust reality to make its judgment of me known to me--even through you. 
But if I sense reality's refusal to go along with your judgment of me--at least 
to some extent--then I shall pay attention to this, because this, after 
all--and I know this is a point of much bitterness and condemnation for 
you--this is how my philosophy 'works': I seek the moral and metaphysical and 
aesthetic cues within the subjectivity of another person which will enable 
me--if we are arguing about matters where there is some dispute--to know the 
extent to which reality is getting behind that subjectivity, and the extent to 
which, because reality is not getting behind that subjectivity, that 
subjectivity must make up for this, by becoming more strident, more bellicose, 
more defensive, more isolated.

If we take your post as corresponding pretty much to the truth about Robin 
Carlsen then it must follow that anything which is said, which has been said, 
which will be said, contra your judgment of me, will be received by you within 
a context wherein your experience is supported by reality (even if you are 
unaware of this support, I assure you, reality will be present in your words, 
in your point of view). And I would like to feel this, Lord Knows. I believe I 
am entitled to feel this--as are the readers on this forum.

And should I find myself on the defensive, and preferring to adhere to notions 

[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[authfriend]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Susan wayback71@... wrote:
 
 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote:
 
  --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Susan wayback71@ wrote:
   
   --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb no_reply@ wrote:
   
Thanks for speaking up. As I have made clear in the
past, I don't interact with Robin because I believe
to do so is to become a codependent in helping an
already mentally ill person to become more so. But
it's been sad to see him reel in naive people 
here and do pretty much exactly what you describe. 

I have watched Fairfield Life and the general dance 
of spiritual naivete far too long to believe that
those who have been sucked into his web will actually
learn from what you said. In fact, they'll probably 
attack you for doing it. But thank you very much 
for trying. 
   
   Barry, I agree 100% and could not have said it better. And for
   Lordknows, given what you went through all those years ago, I
   think your post was not only informative and accurate and 
   insightful, but rather generous to Robin.
  
  Generous to Robin? This is a joke, right?
 
 Not at all a joke. LordKnows paid for a healing ceremony
 for Robin, and clearly stated Robin's gifts in addition to
 the problems.

As I went on to make clear, I'm asking whether you truly
believe LK has been generous to Robin in his portrayals
of Robin's activities here on FFL (the only activities of
his you know about firsthand, obviously).

  really think how Lord Knows has characterized Robin's
  activities on FFL bears any resemblance to the reality,
  do you? 
 
 In my opinion it sounds pretty accurate, and like a horrible
 experience.

I beg your pardon? Robin's activities on FFL sound like
a horrible experience?

You must mean Lord Knows's characterization of Robin's
activities 30 years ago. But that wasn't what I asked you
about. (On the other hand, how would you know whether
LK's description of Robin 30 years ago was accurate?)

Now, would you mind answering my question? Do you think
LK's descriptions of Robin's participation on FFL are
accurate?

 You're *agreeing* with Barry that Robin is
  sucking people into his web?
 
 I think Robin is brilliant and working things out about himself
 and his beliefs

That, of course, is what he has repeatedly said himself:
that he is working things out about himself and his beliefs.

 - and can still be very powerful with words and ideas.  His
 style of thinking and writing are unusual and make me 
 uncomfortable - almost mersmerizing.  I have said this before
 here, and to Robin hmself.

I think you may be unique in this. I find what Robin writes
often compelling and fascinating, but it's never made me
uncomfortable; and I've never seen anybody else suggest that.

 I think he is powerful, without intending to do anything
 negative to others.  He just has incredible power 

I concur. But again, that isn't what I asked you. Do you
agree with Barry that Robin is trying to suck people into
his web?

And of course that's what LK has suggested as well. Do you
find that suggestion generous to Robin?

[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[cardemaister]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, merudanda no_reply@... wrote:

 Dominus dedit, Dominus abstulit (...)?

affero, abstuli, ablatum, afferre??

[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[authfriend]

Xeno, thought you might find this excerpt from one of Robin's
books of interest. It describes his experience of becoming
enlightened on a mountain in Arosa, Switzerland, in 1976:


My friend by this time was asking what was happening, and by the look on my 
face, knew something powerfully expansive was taking place. I could not speak 
and by this time had fallen to my knees, turning in the opposite direction to 
give some respite to my exploding vision; here on the other side was the 
panorama of mountains, and they too assumed the form and reality of Beingness, 
of the most liquid yet ethereal immortality. I was moaning as I experienced all 
these boundaries of perception dissolving, and then, as I turned to look up 
into my friend's face, I saw the perfection of God shining from his face and 
body. I put my head down to touch the ground when suddenly my whole being began 
to flow out of its self, engulfing me in the same ocean of light which had 
swept over the rock face, the mountains, and my now Godlike friend.

And then I as if woke up. The spell was broken. I knew myself to have always 
existed. All my suffering, all my strivings, time, space, personal history was 
but a dream. There had never been anything but the light of consciousness. I 
had never been born nor would I ever die. Something disappeared forever, and I 
later came to know what that was. Something continued to form the apparent 
boundaries of Robin but the ego that had previously had so much to say about my 
sensation and experience of the world was now the individuated expression of 
what was the unmanifest reality of God.

With the completion of my being, I assumed a silence and inner repose, having 
been transformed into the actuality of what existence was. I was the substance, 
the reality that so obviously had its being before and beyond the phenomenal 
forms that before seemed to have an existence of their own. Now I had become 
invisibly one with something whose integrity could only be described as God, 
for I saw how that something was the essential character of everything, indeed 
was naught else but that something. I had lost everything only to gain 
everything, and that everything now supported and motivated the particular 
something I was, giving me a uniqueness that was the purest form of the 
universality which now was the primary reality of my existence and of my being.

By this time I spoke quietly and persuasively to my friend about what had 
happened--that I was in Unity, the term all meditators and teachers were 
familiar with as equated with liberation, Enlightenment. Apparently my actions 
and my appearance during and immediately after the experience testified to the 
authenticity of what I now simply and innocently declared. The integration of 
my personality was suddenly absolute and every sensation of tension, worry, or 
doubt had dissolved leaving only the self-confidence of Being.

--Excerpt from The Sunnyside Drama: The First Three Years of Enlightenment © 
Robin Woodsworth Carlsen, 1979, ISBN 09-20910-03-3



--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Xenophaneros Anartaxius 
anartaxius@... wrote:

 I was in the midst of replying to one of Robin's post to me, though work and 
 events for me tend to put things on a hiatus from time to time. A number of 
 things you have said here resonate with some of what I was going to say, but 
 this post of yours is far more succinct and direct, and, I dare say, eloquent 
 than what I could have produced, and also much clearer in delineating the 
 issues. And you seem to have the advantage of knowing Robin, unlike me.
 
 Most of the accounts of enlightenment and awaking I have encountered, 
 including my own experiences give the distinct impression that this 
 experience normally takes persons completely by surprise, and takes them 
 aback in a way that leaves them essentially speechless, for it pulls the rug 
 out from under one's beliefs and expectations.
 
 I had been thinking of the analogy of American football, taking the ball and 
 running with it, as you put it here before I even wrote it down. Robin 
 definitely had an experience, but it does not appear to have shaken his world 
 to its roots; instead he seems to have instantly taken it in hand rather than 
 spending years afterward attempting to make sense of the insensible as other 
 teachers have done. There is a gestation period of consolidation and growth 
 in which one is certainly not ready to teach anything; one in fact may never 
 teach anything at all and just choose to live quietly with it away from the 
 eyes of the world.
 
 Also the integrative experience is just that, one sees the commonality of 
 spiritual traditions with a tendency to prune off the accumulated 
 distractions of history and subsequent interpretation. That Robin maintains 
 an essentially dualistic stance is an indication he did not experience true 
 unity. I would say he had the experience of an ego having a unity-like 
 experience. 

[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[Susan]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@... wrote:

 --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Susan wayback71@ wrote:
  
  --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote:
  
   --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Susan wayback71@ wrote:

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb no_reply@ wrote:

 Thanks for speaking up. As I have made clear in the
 past, I don't interact with Robin because I believe
 to do so is to become a codependent in helping an
 already mentally ill person to become more so. But
 it's been sad to see him reel in naive people 
 here and do pretty much exactly what you describe. 
 
 I have watched Fairfield Life and the general dance 
 of spiritual naivete far too long to believe that
 those who have been sucked into his web will actually
 learn from what you said. In fact, they'll probably 
 attack you for doing it. But thank you very much 
 for trying. 

Barry, I agree 100% and could not have said it better. And for
Lordknows, given what you went through all those years ago, I
think your post was not only informative and accurate and 
insightful, but rather generous to Robin.
   
   Generous to Robin? This is a joke, right?
  
  Not at all a joke. LordKnows paid for a healing ceremony
  for Robin, and clearly stated Robin's gifts in addition to
  the problems.
 
 As I went on to make clear, I'm asking whether you truly
 believe LK has been generous to Robin in his portrayals
 of Robin's activities here on FFL (the only activities of
 his you know about firsthand, obviously).

I was not talking only about LK's portrayals of Robin's posts on Ffldlife.  I 
was talking about LK being generous in his assessment of Robin actions in the 
past (30 years ago) and how he sees some of the same patterns remaining, altho 
faded out . And especially generous given how harmful those experiences of 30 
years ago probably were to LK and many others.  Of course, neither you nor I 
was part of Robin's group, so both of us are only basing our opinions on the 
reports of others. Sounds hairraising to me.  If I had been thru that and it 
was as bad as has been suggested, I think I would feel justified in expressing 
the things LK did.
 
   really think how Lord Knows has characterized Robin's
   activities on FFL bears any resemblance to the reality,
   do you? 
  
  In my opinion it sounds pretty accurate, and like a horrible
  experience.
 
 I beg your pardon? Robin's activities on FFL sound like
 a horrible experience?

No.  I was talking about being in Robins' cult 30 years ago.
 
 You must mean Lord Knows's characterization of Robin's
 activities 30 years ago. But that wasn't what I asked you
 about. (On the other hand, how would you know whether
 LK's description of Robin 30 years ago was accurate?)
 
 Now, would you mind answering my question? Do you think
 LK's descriptions of Robin's participation on FFL are
 accurate?

Dealt with above.
 
  You're *agreeing* with Barry that Robin is
   sucking people into his web?
  
  I think Robin is brilliant and working things out about himself
  and his beliefs
 
 That, of course, is what he has repeatedly said himself:
 that he is working things out about himself and his beliefs.

Yes, so we agree about that.
 
  - and can still be very powerful with words and ideas.  His
  style of thinking and writing are unusual and make me 
  uncomfortable - almost mersmerizing.  I have said this before
  here, and to Robin hmself.
 
 I think you may be unique in this. I find what Robin writes
 often compelling and fascinating, but it's never made me
 uncomfortable; and I've never seen anybody else suggest that.
 
  I think he is powerful, without intending to do anything
  negative to others.  He just has incredible power 
 
 I concur. But again, that isn't what I asked you. Do you
 agree with Barry that Robin is trying to suck people into
 his web?
No, I do not think Robin is doing that intentionally.  But he has a way of 
writing that switches that I feel keeps at least me off balance. Anyway, I 
guess we fundamentally disagree about this and how much we enjoy reading 
Robin's posts. We can agree he is brilliant, incredibly articulate and has 
great knowledge of many fields.  
 
 And of course that's what LK has suggested as well. Do you
 find that suggestion generous to Robin?

Not generous in that particular instance or phrase, but generous nthe big 
picture and in other ways, as I already explained.

[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[Yifu]

So, you've changed in the intervening years.  Have you accepted Jesus as your 
personal Savior?

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Robin Carlsen maskedzebra@... wrote:

 Dear Lord Knows,
 
 There is something else which you must bear in mind in wondering how I 
 received your categorical judgment of my sanity, my character, and my 
 actions. It is this, Lord Knows: that I believe that the truth about those 
 ten years, about my behaviour, about my enlightenment, about the pain and 
 terror I created in the souls of other human beings, the matter of free will 
 versus cosmic will--that all this is being discussed here inside what I 
 believe is a context of reality where that reality--what created us, what 
 created the universe, what created your first person subjective sense of 
 yourself, what created even your ability to write that post--and for me to 
 respond to it--will pass judgment (perhaps only silently within itself) on 
 Robin Carlsen, and the extent to which you have represented the truth of 
 those ten years.
 
 I am keenly sensitive, then, Lord Knows, to those cues from within your 
 post--and how you will act in response to the various rebuttals that have 
 been directed towards you since you posted your letter--which would 
 indicate--beyond what you yourself are identified with as the truth of this 
 matter--reality's verdict here. In other words, Lord Knows--this is so 
 important for you to grasp if you are sincere in wanting everyone to know the 
 truth,--despite being the object of your castigation and damnation, I am 
 still seeking to embrace the truth of those ten years. I have been dedicated 
 to this very purpose for the past twenty-five years.
 
 What this comes down to, Lord Knows, is that you must not let my own desire 
 to know and to be responsible for the truth of my actions and all that 
 happened during those ten years because of the assumption of my 
 enlightenment, overtake and surpass your own honest and sincere determination 
 to get the truth out. My philosophy asks this of me; that is, to recognize 
 there may be more reality and truth inside the consciousness and point of 
 view of another person than myself.
 
 This, after all, is what got me launched on this self-rehabilitation project 
 of the past twenty-five years. Someone demonstrating a more accurate 
 perception of me than I had of myself. The beginning of the showdown: that I 
 was gravely deceived about who I was and of course about the human normalcy 
 of my enlightenment.
 
 Now if you do not depend only on the truth of your experience, and, in the 
 face of challenges to the final validity or definitiveness of that 
 experience, become defensive and evasive and belligerent in the presence of 
 the complexities and contradictions of this whole affair, then I shall have 
 to conclude that, in the end, you are not that sure of your judgment, you are 
 not that sure of your sincerity, and you are not willing to go to where you 
 must go in order to know with a sense of conviction and courage that all that 
 you say in your post--and perhaps future posts--is 'true'.
 
 Because if you are right in what you have said about me, in the kind of 
 person I really am (unchanged from what I was when you knew me), that I am 
 mentally ill, deluded, and simply plain wrong, then you will trust in the 
 objectivity and truthfulness of your testimony--without the need for any 
 personal venom or hatred or irrationality to come into what you write. This 
 at least--perhaps this is a simplification of reality--is how I understand 
 the means to measure the truth of what you have said, what you are going to 
 say, about me. *Reality and truth will do the work for you, Lord Knows*.
 
 I will then, declare that I hold myself to that standard of truth whereby I 
 utterly trust reality to make its judgment of me known to me--even through 
 you. But if I sense reality's refusal to go along with your judgment of 
 me--at least to some extent--then I shall pay attention to this, because 
 this, after all--and I know this is a point of much bitterness and 
 condemnation for you--this is how my philosophy 'works': I seek the moral and 
 metaphysical and aesthetic cues within the subjectivity of another person 
 which will enable me--if we are arguing about matters where there is some 
 dispute--to know the extent to which reality is getting behind that 
 subjectivity, and the extent to which, because reality is not getting behind 
 that subjectivity, that subjectivity must make up for this, by becoming more 
 strident, more bellicose, more defensive, more isolated.
 
 If we take your post as corresponding pretty much to the truth about Robin 
 Carlsen then it must follow that anything which is said, which has been said, 
 which will be said, contra your judgment of me, will be received by you 
 within a context wherein your experience is supported by reality (even if you 
 are unaware of this support, I assure you, reality will 

[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[Robin Carlsen]

Dear Lord Knows,

Just to make sure you understand my position here: I take very seriously the 
truth and the feeling contained inside your initial post. I believe it was in 
some basic sense a just response to those ten years--within a certain 
inevitable perspective. But having had your say, then anything which challenges 
your thesis, your judgment, has to be evaluated according to the extent to 
which it either consolidates your thesis, or brings it--in some respects at 
least--into question.

Now regardless of how it may have seemed to you or to others, I was only 
interested in responding to it with complete honesty and candour. That is, I 
wanted to take all of it into me and see what kind of experience I had once I 
had received it its most extreme point of purported truthfulness. Once I had 
done that, then, over the course of time, certain thoughts occurred to me--You 
must remember that I have been thinking about those ten years for twenty-five 
years now, and you must suppose, because of this, that I have considered all 
possible judgments of myself--and I chose to articulate those thoughts in the 
form of three posts. I did not conceive of what I did as some attempt to 
destroy your testimony in its essential integrity. But having suffered deeply 
and wrestled with this matter over a quarter of a century, I am naturally going 
to have some response to a judgment like yours since I will have to compare it 
with my own interrogation of myself, which I can assure you, in some very real 
way is more severe and searching than is represented by what you have said in 
that initial post.

Now I composed several posts in response to your post, and after the third 
post, I saw that, while I was composing that third post, you had already 
posted, giving there an indication that you were contemplating going against 
your initial decision that you would not be drawn into to answering anything I 
had to say. I am sure, by the way, Lord Knows, that even God himself will give 
us a chance (should there still be something in the way of a personal judgment 
of our souls) to explain ourselves, to defend the  actions of our life--that 
is, if we feel ourselves to have a clear conscience. And that is the difference 
here: whatever atrocities I have committed in my life, I have--although you 
will be furiously opposed to accepting the validity of this--done my penance 
over the course of these twenty-five years. And I have a personal witness to 
this, and his testimony is more sophisticated and profound than your own, as 
expressed in your post. Were you to speak to him and listen to his account of 
the past twenty-five years, you would immediately realize how very serious he 
is, how informed he is, and how his grasp of both the truth of those ten years 
and his grasp of the nature and problems (which were serious and almost 
never-ending) of his friend make your own analysis in your post seem, 
paradoxically enough, superficial. And he himself knows all about the 
excoriating and cruel humiliation and terror of confrontation--perhaps more 
than anyone who lived through those ten years.

So. what I have done, then, Lord Knows, is to meet your post not in the 
ambition to demolish its truthfulness, but instead to meet it within my own 
sense of the truthfulness of those ten years--and the very complex and 
multi-leveled understanding I have gained from these past twenty-five years. 
What I know now about why I behaved as I did, and who I am, goes well beyond 
what I believe can be inferred from your post describing the Robin that you 
knew in those ten years and certainly what you know about the kind of human 
being I am now.

I found your response to my fourth and provocative post a complete indulgence. 
You chose to put your entire focus there, neglecting--perhaps accidentally 
(that still is a serious matter)--to consider what I had said in the three 
posts which followed upon your initial post.

I do not in any way consider this conversation, this dispute to be a matter of 
tactics or moves on the court as you put. I consider it to be almost a matter 
of life and death, since there are souls out there who were part of those ten 
years who will want us--especially if they still have some moments of 
perplexity and torment--to do justice, complete justice to what happened. I do 
believe you have laid out a case against me. I am not shirking my 
responsibilities in facing your charges; but, as I have tried to say here, I 
have lived with the misery and agony of those ten years--and the horror and 
terror of it all--for twenty-five years. That you would think me to be the very 
same person that I was when you last knew me seems intolerant and close-minded 
indeed. You made some reference in your second post to my being more temperate 
and restrained than you would have anticipated in my first two posts to you. 
But then, when I gently derided you for stepping outside of the affective 
context within which you had 

[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[Seraphita]

Excerpt from Suzanne Segal's Collision with the Infinite  [New Age
Books, pp80-81]. The Victoria community is a minor episode in the book,
which is anyway essential reading for anyone who took up TM and
subsequently had uncomfortable or alarming experiences of unboundedness
or depersonalization. Note that Robert = Robin Carlsen:

Robert called me late one night. He said he had felt strange ever since
our talk the previous week, and he wondered what I had done to him. This
was the kind of accusation that Robert often levelled at others.
Whenever he felt dissociated, spacey, or dissolved in someone's
presence, he concluded that the person must be evil . . .

. . . At six in the morning, Robert's wife came into my room and woke
me. She said that Robert was outside in the entryway and wanted to speak
with me. What she didn't tell me was that Robert had been telling the
other students in the house that I was evil because I was Jewish.The
previous week, apparently, he had come to the conclusion that all Jews
were evil . . .

I met Robert . . . He started by accusing me of making him feel
strange the previous week, then proceeded to enumerate all the things
I had done to him. Finally he told me I needed to leave right away
because all Jews were evil and therefore were no longer welcome in this
house, which was a sacred space to him.

[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[authfriend]

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Yifu yifuxero@... wrote:

 So, you've changed in the intervening years.  Have you accepted
 Jesus as your personal Savior?

Have you not bothered to read any of Robin's posts?

If he's said once, he's said dozens of times that he
converted to Catholicism back in 1987 and then
deconverted. He no longer follows any religion and
does not believe Jesus is even accessible in the
world any longer.

[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[Robin Carlsen]

Seraphita:

This was indeed a spectacularly disturbing and violent episode during those ten 
years. I did attempt to find within Suzanne the evidence which seemed to make 
of her someone invulnerable to the reality of everything that I thought I was 
living for as the enlightened man. But this incident has some important 
antecedents.

First of all, my brother is an Orthodox Jew, and has close ties to the state of 
Israel. In the time I spent in Israel in 1985 I had a profound experience of 
the beauty of the Jewish people. They seemed a superior race of people (I have 
already in another post referred to the Jewish settler that I intreviewed, and 
my time in being invited to dinner in a Israeli household where we talked 
freely. I had very serious conversations with many Israelis while I was there. 
I took away an experience of Israel which was ultra-positive, I would say, even 
mystically positive.

And when I returned to North America I had intended to write a book about 
Israel and the Jewish people, especially in regard to the Palestinians. It 
would set out the fact that I believe the Jewish people to be more beautiful 
than any other race of people. They had the genetic credentials, then, to be 
the Chosen People.

But in preparation for writing this book I began to perceive the integrity of 
Jewishness as being something dominant and overpowering, and it seemed that a 
Jewish person subconsciously looked down upon the goyim--the non-Jew. This 
became a metaphysical perception, and dominated my experience. And I especially 
felt my own vulnerability in this context even as I was enlightened and 
presumably beyond the power of being influenced by what I selected out as the 
metaphysical reality of Jewishness.

However, before I became aware of what seemed, from within my enlightenment, to 
be a preternatural form of integrity inside every Jewish person (and my brother 
seemed the exemplary instance of this; I had known him all my life, and 
although we were raised in a goyim household he became convinced while at 
graduate school during the Six Day War that we had Jewish ancestors and he was 
a Jew. So he converted, and as soon as he did--and married an Orthodox Jewish 
woman--he suddenly seemed comprehensible to me. And after that I always saw him 
as a Jew first (which he believed he was) and my brother second. He meanwhile 
looked upon me as the classic and quintessential goyim and he controlled the 
context intellectually, and made it very clear to me the rightness and 
truthfulness of himself as a Jew. He was inside reality; I was now on the 
outside--and he made this the most natural thing there could be. 

When I told an Orthodox Jew the story about all this, this Jewish man insisted 
I come to the synagogue, that my soul was the soul of a Jew, that my mother was 
Jewish, that God had made me a Jew and I must stop thinking I was a Gentile. 
But I never believed in the evidence for my Jewish ancestry (although I did not 
examine this as my brother did), and have remained a goyim to this moment. 
Although after the last 24 hours I am thinking of seeking refuge in the 
enclosed community of the Orthodox here in Toronto. :-) 

(I should just here stipulate that all this began before I had any interest in 
Catholicism; I had always, once I was grown up, rejected Christianity as 
utterly mythological--including the supposed divinity of Christ.

Meanwhile in preparing to write my book I had a personal exchange of letters 
with Benjamin Netanyahu, who was then Israeli Ambassador to the United States.

However, my perception of the metaphysical superiority and power of the Jewish 
people became an obsession, and it dominated my consciousness, even my way of 
seeing reality. Suzanne Segal was the most terrible victim of this perception, 
as I analyzed her in the most ruthless and uncompromising way: attempting to 
get right to the mystical level of her contempt for the goyim. It was perhaps 
the most intense confrontation of the ten years. I can only assume that Suzanne 
now, from where she exists, understands what happened, what drove me into this 
obsession, and even how the integrity of the Jew has always been somewhere--up 
until the the last 75 years or so--a problem for the Gentile since the 
Crucifixion of Christ, although throughout my anti-Semitic period Christ never 
entered into equation.

I do think there is a mystery here which remains not entirely resolved for me, 
but I certainly have no perception of the metaphysical  integrity of a Jew such 
as to make me anti-Semtic. But during one year there, after I returned from 
Israel, I was under the dominion of a prejudice, a prejudice which has gone 
with my enlightenment. Although I have to watch for my tendency to be 
especially alert in the presence of Jew, for I have always found Jewish 
people--with the example of my brother, who is more gifted than I am 
intellectually and musically--to be formidable, much more formidable than the 

[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[authfriend]

lordknows888, I never encountered Robin before he joined
this forum back in June 2011, so I can't address any of
what you say about him from his WTS days--except to
point out that he has openly acknowledged here how
deeply disturbed he was and how painfully he regrets
the damage he did back then.

However, I do not recognize Robin as you describe him
with regard to his participation on FFL.

For example:

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Lord Knows lordknows888@... wrote:
snip
 To put into perspective and accurate chronology your revelation
 about the Eastern spiritual tradition, it came in 1987 when you 
 told the group that the the mantras we received through TM were
 the names of demons or fallen angels. It did not come years
 later after you had purged yourself of your 
 supposed enlightenment.It was while you were still in a self 
 admitted deeply disturbed state that you received this truth,
 and not as you have represented here as coming years later.

It has been my understanding all along from Robin's posts
that he disavowed Eastern spiritual traditions not long
after he converted to Catholicism in 1987. I don't know
which post or posts you're referring to in which you
perceived him to have claimed that he did so only after
de-enlightening himself. I have to wonder whether you
didn't misunderstand something he wrote.

snip
 Robin your record of accuracy on your grand theories and insights
 is abysmal. A pharmacy student in college is allowed only 3 
 occasions of lethal errors in making up prescriptions before he
 is bounced out of the pharmacy department, if you were held to
 the same standard as a practicing spiritual teacher you would
 have flunked out a hell of long time ago.

He did flunk out a hell of a long time ago, over 25 years ago,
in fact. He no longer considers himself a spiritual teacher,
practicing or otherwise.

 Why it is you think anyone would believe and trust what you
 have to say about religious or metaphysical truth is beyond
 all reckoning.

I have never had the impression that Robin expects anyone
to believe and trust what he has to say, any more than
the rest of us do concerning what we say. In fact, he
frequently says explicitly that he does not expect this.

Personally, given the extraordinary trials Robin has been
through, given that he's been there, done that to a
greater extent than anybody else here, I'm inclined to
consider his ideas and reflections on spirituality
quite seriously. (Note that I said consider, not adopt.)

snip
 Why have you made yourself now the great teacher of anti-
 enlightnment with essentially the same way of projecting that
 you have the inside track on what the truth is? This is really
 just the same as before, you have only changed the content.
 You are now the specially gifted one you is the only person in
 all history to reveal the mystical lie at the heart of the
 Eastern spiritual traditions

I'm sorry, but your tone is so hostile and your characterizations
are so unfair and distorted with regard to how Robin actually
presents himself on FFL that you've done significant damage
to your credibility, as far as I'm concerned.

snip
 Finally Curtis confronted Robin with the deception Robin had
 been carrying on about not having hit any of his followers
 when in fact he had.

And here you're simply wrong. Robin had 'fessed up to the
deception, such as it was, of his own accord, in a post
titled How Robin Struck People—And Lied About it: An Open
Letter to Barry Wright:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/message/302421

(You might want to actually read the letter, since it
confirms a couple of things I said above.)

Curtis had nothing to do with this revelation. Only after
the fact did he decide to take his revenge on Robin by
excoriating him when he was most vulnerable, in one of
the ugliest posts I've ever seen on FFL (although yours
approaches it in sheer viciousness).

 To fill in an additional point about that incident, the person
 who Robin hit told me he thought his jaw might have been broken
 by the force of the blow.

Yes, we've heard about this incident from another former
follower of Robin who posts here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/message/302425?var=1l=1

snip
 One additional point is about Robin's use of irony, he can
 not disprove any factual statement through his use of irony,
 try as he might.

I've never observed Robin attempting to disprove a factual
statement through the use of irony. Have you?

Please note, however, that I've disproved several of your
purportedly factual statements. Your account of Robin on
FFL is pretty disgracefully sloppy where factual issues
are concerned.

One would be inclined to have sympathy for you on the basis
of the difficult times you endured while you were one of
Robin's followers 30-some years ago, if it weren't for the
malice with which you attempt to discredit who he is today.
It appears to me that you've simply projected your outrage
at what you and others had 

[FairfieldLife] Re: Some facts and background on Robin Carlsen / umasking the zebra

[Robin Carlsen]

Dear Lord Knows,

I don't think it is possible to answer to your accusations here and even try to 
dispute your account of those years you knew me. I am not the person you depict 
in your indictment of me. Those who know me best (including persons who were 
there at the beginning, some 35 years ago, and remain in close contact with me 
even now) know me as I am. They would not agree with your assessment of my 
character or my motivation. And they would, in your presence, claim to have a 
more profound understanding of me than is revealed by what you say about me in 
your post at FFL. If your judgment is the correct one, there will have to be a 
consensus about this. And if someone who has known me through these last 
twenty-five years believes your judgment of me is essentially false, you will 
have to consider that as contradicting what you so sincerely believe is the 
truth about me. I certainly am not prepared to defend anything I did during 
those ten years when I was enlightened--certainly not the incidents you cite in 
your case against me. But that you have got the person Robin in your sights in 
a way which is meaningfully related to who I am, there is where I believe you 
are very much mistaken. 

I cannot and will not attempt to justify my actions while I was enlightened, 
but in terms of where I have come since then I do not recognize myself in your 
portrayal of me here. And either would anyone who has known me through this 
past quarter of a century. I can never hope to challenge your interpretation of 
me based upon the evidence you present here during that time you knew me; but 
in my conscience and in my soul my conviction of the wrongness of your 
estimation of me now compels me to protest the unfairness, the inaccuracy, and 
the unnaturalness of your analysis of me. The person Robin is not who you would 
have me be. I am not that person.

In speaking about Eastern or Western traditions I am merely exercising my free 
speech and what I have to say is based upon my own personal history, my 
reading, and my sense of what is true. I am not seeking for anyone to follow 
me, and I doubt that anyone on this forum feels in any way that I am not 
playing by the rules.

Of course you are entitled to your extremely severe appraisal of my sanity and 
my integrity; and if you are essentially right about me, it is indeed a 
terrible thing for me to believe, as I do certainly believe, that you are 
prejudiced and blind in the damning conclusion you have reached about the 
person that I am. Now.

Only good, however, can come from someone who speaks as you have spoken, and 
who has laid out the case against me in the way that you have. I suppose it was 
inevitable that this would happen. And I am glad it has. In the end it will be 
what the Creator makes of all this that counts, and I hope that he sees things 
more from my perspective than from your perspective. I will pray for you, as 
you evidently have already prayed for me.

Robin

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Lord Knows lordknows888@... wrote:

 
 
 Dear Robin,
 
 I know you well, I was in the inner circle of your followers. I lived in the 
 group house you named Annapurna in Victoria. I fully experienced what 
 ultimately became a waking nightmare in being a member of your cult. I have a 
 vivid memory of the day when a member of the group who had been extremely 
 close to you attempted suicide after you ruthlessly confronted her and 
 declared her to be an evil being who was only appearing in the guise of a 
 human being. I remember the meeting at Heronwater in which you spoke with ice 
 cold disdain about her when the news came of her attempted suicide, your only 
 concern was to send someone to her apartment to collect any items from her 
 belongings that could connect her to you. This is a fact, a horrible ugly 
 fact which could be verified by all the people in that room, about 15 members 
 of the inner circle.I am not proud of my involvement in this and many other 
 heartless atrocities that took place over the years I was
  associated with you. In due time my turn came to be on the receiving end of 
 an ultimate pronouncement on my soul as being irretrievably lost and after 
 being brutally confronted by you and the whole group I was ejected from the 
 cult with great scorn. This was the standard operating procedure and happened 
 to many others over the years. 
 
 Robin I have a simple question for you, what in your background gives you the 
 the standing, the credibility to make pronouncements about the ultimate value 
 of the Eastern Spiritual tradition and declare the death of Christianity?  I 
 would have thought that if you were truly remorseful for the harm you had 
 done to so many people, the last thing you would have wanted to do is to give 
 into the temptation to represent yourself as an authority capable of passing 
 judgment on whole spiritual traditions as well as in some instances making 
 harsh judgments about