22 SEP 73 - From my text, Young and Veldman’s Introduction to Statistics for Behavioral Sciences, I read: "Science may be defined as the search for consistencies in the variation of natural phenomena. The primary criterion of a scientific finding is its replicability. The consistency must be capable of reproduction or repeated demonstration." It may be valid, within this definition, to speak of the results of LW meditation as scientific findings and of the quest for replicability of those findings within my own experience as being actually a science. The question is how to properly interpret the results obtained. And here objectivity is lost. Here science ends and the separate systems of reality-shaping take over. Much, much later, far beyond the individual and beyond his or her particular set of perceptual programs, even beyond the system or scheme by which we purposely leave behind our individualities, we may be able to attain that realm of Consciousness, if any, where even the mode of reality-shaping is transcended, where one somehow simply perceives Reality directly. Only then can we "return" to the objectivity which is the oft claimed but never really achieved basic tool of science. Here science becomes Science. And here it is no longer needed. For here objectivity is Objectivity. Here is paramount and beyond all question of consistency or inconsistency the totally consistent, ever self-replicating experience that is true being, That Which Is.

29 SEP 73 - 4:40 A.M. Up just now after gratefully awoke from a real freak-out of a nightmare. I had unwittingly chanced upon and then entered a forgotten old house full of things just as they must have been in the days before, when the house had been fully inhabited. But some horrible catastrophe had occurred and most or all of the saner occupants had been killed. While banging around in the dark in the huge place, I came upon a wealth of traps, such as light switches that plummeted me into a hellish separate reality, psychedelic telephones that tell the entire gruesome, subconscious histories of their lifetime users, the part not seen in people’s faces, the other side of the "and they lived happily ever after" myth. After various other shocking episodes, seeking a way out, I plunged through a door into a hall of terror, crowded with full-fledged Technicolor ghouls and maniacs, some as humanoid animals, some simply degenerative forms of the insane, creatures of a compulsive wretchedness of thought and violence of behavior, coupled with the strength of madmen, and all imbued with the intense virulence of the superconsciously unambiguous. And I, in turning on the light, had freed them from their own fiendish nightmare-daydreams to full attention to myself. They hurled one another about in childish, open eagerness to get at me, to begin gnawing brazenly upon the side of my head, drooling all the while into my bloodied ear, or snapping off my arms and legs like matchsticks, at the same time toying or teasing with my terror as a cat may do a wounded mouse. At last I awoke!

1 OCT 73 - I really dig the following passage from John Lilly’s The Mind of the Dolphin: "Once one has been through deep experiences in tune with the vast forces of the universe, the vast forces within ourselves, we see that the need for conflict, the need for hostility, and the need for hatred become less intense. One finds the universe inside and the one outside so vast and so lonely that any other living thing that loves or shows any signs of loving is precious and close. One’s own inner discontents show up as the trivial conflicts that they really are. Time on the earth is of immense value beyond the small grievances, the bickering, the complaints, the encroachments, and the fools. Time here is for the exploration of the unknowns. If, at the time of the death of each of our bodies, the spirit also dies, then this time is incredibly precious. It’s all the time we have for each one of us. If the spirit lives on, here or elsewhere, and continues to send and receive information, this time may also be precious and incredibly important. Our behavior, our achievements, the marks that we make now may or may not determine what sort of an afterlife we may have. I don’t know which of these alternatives is the real truth. I do know that it is important to spend our time now on important projects."

3 OCT 73 - There is a God. For evidence I offer you yourself, whom you could not have created or sustained on your own in a million, million lifetimes, and I offer you the vast universe of dimensionless dimension, possibility, mystery, no matter how large or small a scale we choose to consider, nor what aspect of time or space, or eternity itself.

Even if you consider yourself an atheist, you must affirm That Which Is to be so far beyond you that, for all practical purposes, It is God. This is not to say that God is personal or is at all human, except as we ourselves are an expression of That Which Is or through our projections upon all things are ourselves human and personal. I can offer no clear evidence within consensus reality for the existence of a personal God, caring about you and me. For love and caring, we must look only to ourselves and one another.

By following certain methods one may attain results in keeping with one’s expectations. Thus may one transcend ordinary reality.

If we would realize God, whatever His/Her/Its true nature, it must be done within ourselves or not at all.

There are those who have attained to higher states of consciousness and are able now to move freely between such states and levels. We may look to such beings as teachers and masters, for they are qualified, then, to assist others aloft.

I think that it is unlikely I shall ever be a "good disciple" from a Lifestream Way point of view. My logical, left brain approach makes me see many of the LW explanations as highly unsatisfactory, despite its attractiveness for my more creative, intuitive, right brain self. Also, its rules on conduct, especially sexuality, seem to me arbitrary and unrealistic. Finally, I am simply too interested in this world to spend nearly three hours a day, over half my free time, on meditating for the next (hypothetical) realm. I may, therefore, limit my involvement in LW while also cultivating other interests. I shall pursue without pressure a style and form for my meditating that will seem best for me.

I keep waiting, for something, to come in the mail, or from a knock on the door, or by a call on the phone, or with an announcement on the radio, or...I keep waiting, for something, that will change everything...I keep waiting ("for Godot?"). And, of course, it never comes...

7 OCT 73 - I experienced a flash of light in the meditation today.

Have decided to drop my idea of returning to school any time soon. Instead, the entire emphasis now will be to work on myself, by meditation or other means.

10 OCT 73 - The dinosaur raising of ugly heads of failure and self-doubt. We may be free of these if we but let go of expectations. Yet, this is easier to say than to do!

I feel still very confused about my beliefs. Trying, without success, to adopt those of LW at least helps me to better define what seems right and true for myself. Here, then, are a few things with which I am comfortable (at least for now):

1. There is much more to reality than is obvious from ordinary appearances, popular opinion, or consensus.

2. Most of our experience is a paltry pablum that only rarely yields hints of the immense heights and depths of which we are capable.

3. In our ordinary states we can not know or even guess reality’s true nature, nor our own.

4. Everything we have ever learned is wrong, is limited, is stifling. At best it is convenient, expedient, and mechanical. We must stop accepting unconditionally any and all of the spoonfeeding of our usual experience.

5. Apart from the survival of ourselves and those we care about, the only thing of real significance is the quest for the truth about ourselves and the whole of That Which Is.

6. We perpetuate ourselves in ordinary reality by responding habitually to certain cues, by our conscious and unconscious automatic patterns of identification of and with these cues as being real and familiar and separate from us.

7. We invest great quantities of energy in keeping intact our false sense of separate self and familiar reality, thus keeping out of our awareness our true nature and the potential all around and within us.

8. If we are lucky we may find One Who is truly awake, by following Whom we may go beyond this existence into the unknown, where we may also find our Real Selves.

"Where does childhood end and maturity begin? Where do dreams border with reality? Where does truth separate from fantasy?...Early memories, early dreams. Early delights, early nightmares."

"In the country of the mad, the sane man is crazy."

"Truly it was the country of the mad. But the important question was: Who could define sanity? And if, indeed, anyone could remain sane in such an incomprehensible world, how long could they remain so?"

"We are prisoners, but protected prisoners...We reject protection. Such is our madness that we wish to escape into danger - if danger is the price of freedom - of truth."

"I am convinced of one thing. Behind the apparent unreason there is reason...It is just too much to believe that all this - ourselves included - was created for some idiotic caprice. There must be a purpose..."

"By will power people succeed in this field." Sawan Singh Ji, Spiritual Gems.

24 OCT 73 - Though my life itself be cozy and happy, fulfilled, and even blessed with that painful longing that shall one day take me breathless to the Lord, yet my writing shall be of the world, stark and shriveled. Here I portray the material side, the ephemeral, temporal, fleeting side of life, with death stalking, with fear and petty hatreds or lust or selfish love or sentimentality or fevered romanticism the only pastels of my pallet. I have the bad taste to go on writing though I know I do not do it well. I am vulgar, aesthetically a peasant. My breath smells bad, my body discharges white, yellow, brown, and glistening clear or oily liquids that reek, pollute, and disgust. My toes have fungus. My head has flakes of dandruff. My face is pale from too much coffee, too little sun, not enough sleep, indigestion, and junk food. My penis alternately is not big enough or swells on its own embarrassingly when my thoughts go to warm, wet, snug places where I can relieve it of its burden of semen while my tongue massages the nipples of ample breasts and sweet red lips it parts to penetrate and share hot breaths and passionate moans. My knife plunges into a gentle cat and my wrist jerks and twists till with pain, its face transfixed, the cat convulses and dies. I laugh and toss the carcass to my dog. He sniffs at it tentatively, settles down, and carefully tears and eats. And soon we must be off. We’ve miles yet to go before our next rest.

The mind untrained is a chameleon, instantly and unconsciously assuming the hue of its environment. (By coincidence, this statement, written some hours after the paragraph just above, is exemplified through that paragraph: Later the same day, I read, in a newly bought western paperback, for the first time, a passage in which a lone traveler, in the wilderness, traveling only with a pack of wolves, that is, who have somehow befriended him, saves himself when attacked by a mountain lion by raising his knife onto which the springing cat impales itself. With a few twists and snarls of pain, the lion lies dead, Then he feeds it to the wolves who were with him, before heading off again, a long way to go before he could stop for the night.)

"Whatever the outcome may be, take it as the best." Maharaj Charan Singh Ji

25 OCT 73 - Hope (a woman who works the evening shift with me at The Orange Squeezer) and I have arranged a movie date.

Feeling bitter at my lot in life (jest got those lot-in-life blues, dee dum dee dum dee dee dum!) tonight, that at thirty I’m earning $1.75/hour as a dishwasher and "smoothie" maker for someone like Steve. Of course, I’ve made the decisions which put me here today. But, if anything, this somehow makes it harder to accept.

"Apart from one’s own hallucinations, in reality there are no such things existing outside oneself as Lord of Death, or god, or demon." The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

"For me there is only the traveling on paths that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length. And there I travel, looking, looking breathlessly." Carlos Castaneda, quoting Don Juan, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge.

30 OCT 73 - In a humorous dream anecdote/sequence, last night, there is a dinner party and a middle-aged man is talking about his master, whom he had never seen, how he (the speaker) had never been initiated but was certainly looking forward to that event. He was going on in this way loquaciously and often spoke to a friendly looking, attentive gentleman seated across from him who had a full, silver beard and a twinkle in his eyes. He had been talking in a lively manner for some time, to the evident entertainment of several seated or standing around him. At this point, Maharaj Ji, whom several of us in attendance had known to be one and the same as the friendly gentleman to whom the man had been speaking all evening, and hence our amusement, and who was dressed simply and without his turban for once, made a gesture toward the man, getting his attention, and, smiling, said simply "This is your master..." The man did not understand and looked puzzled. Smiling still, Maharaj Ji repeated, "Here is your own master." Still the man looked perplexed and it was all we who knew could do to keep from breaking into mountains of laughter. At last, chuckling, Maharaj Ji said, making a slight gesture with his hand toward himself, "Your Master is here and is speaking to you at this very moment." His eyes twinkled. And finally understanding dawned in the eyes of the loquacious man and his countenance collapsed in awe, confusion, and giddy happiness. Everyone laughed with joy, delight, and affection. Maharaj Ji said he was there to initiate the man and his wife, left at once with them both, took them to a quiet room, and gave them the meditation instructions.

11 NOV 73 - Hope and I went to see "American Graffiti" last night. Although it is generally a very funny picture, it left me quite sad. I had not realized how much things had changed since 1962. I found it hard to account to myself for how I had spent the last decade or so of my life. And Hope is so much younger than I that she was in the second grade in 1962, when I was in my second year of college. Staggering! Find myself thinking might-have-been thoughts, like how it might have been if I’d not been so foolish as to give up my high school sweetheart, but had married her instead when I had the chance. I have blocked out so much of the pain that I no longer even remember her name. Later, twice more, I was to break things off when they got "too close," though up till then, with each woman, I would have sworn I had not ever been happier in my life. Damned fool!

"My only advice is that whatever we may do and in whatever circumstance we may live, our meditation should be our main concern, and this should never be sacrificed for anything of this life." Maharaj Charan Singh Ji, a Sikh Master.