Monday, January 5, 2015

After peeking behind the veil, Joe says, "why carl likes this book".

How insightful of you Joe. Of course the big difference between Tom
Robbins explanation and mine, is that he is being paid to produce an
entire book, while I am writing free. But Tom does say it well. Read
his words and then sit back and think about them. A jug of hooch will
help the thought process.

Carl Jarvis

On 12/27/14, joe harcz Comcast <joeharcz@comcast.net> wrote:
> Tom Robbins: From Skinny Legs And All....Dig the last ironic line here...
> Early religions were like muddy ponds with lots of foliage. Concealed
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> there, the fish of the soul could splash and feed. Eventually,
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> however, religions became aquariums. Then, hatcheries. From farm
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> fingerling to frozen fish stick is a short swim.
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> The Reverend Buddy Winkler was correct about Spike Cohen and
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> Roland Abu Hadee: they did not glide in numb circles inside a glass
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> box of religion. In fact, they, Spike and Abu, wouldn't hesitate to
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> directly attribute the success of their relationship to their lack of
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> formal religion. Were either of them actively religious, it would have
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> been impossible for them to be partners or pals. Dogma and tradition
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> would have overruled any natural instinct for brotherhood.
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> It was as if Spike and Abu had been granted a sneak preview
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> behind the veil, a glimpse in which it was revealed that organized
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> religion was a major obstacle to peace and understanding. If so, it
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> was a gradual revelation, for it unfolded slowly and separately, a
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> barely conscious outgrowth of each man's devotion to humanity and
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> rejection of doctrine.
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> At best, perhaps, when the fourth veil does slip aside. Spike and
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> Abu will be better prepared than most to withstand the shock of this
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> tough truth: religion is a paramount contributor to human misery. It
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> 300
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> is not merely the opium of the masses, it is the cyanide.
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> Of course, religion's omnipresent defenders are swift to point out
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> the comfort it provides for the sick, the weary, and the disappointed.
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> Yes, true enough. But the Deity does not dawdle in the comfort zone!
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> If one yearns to see the face of the Divine, one must break out of the
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> aquarium, escape the fish farm, to go swim up wild cataracts, dive in
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> deep fjords. One must explore the labyrinth of the reef, the shadows
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> of lily pads. How limiting, how insulting to think of God as a
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> benevolent warden, an absentee hatchery manager who imprisons us
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> in the "comfort" of artificial pools, where intermediaries sprinkle our
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> restrictive waters with sanitized flakes of processed nutriment.
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> 1 6 7
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> Tom Bobbins
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> A longing for the Divine is intrinsic in Homo sapiens. (For all we
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> know, it is innate in squirrels, dandelions, and diamond rings, as
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> well.) We approach the Divine by enlarging our souls and lighting
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> up our brains. To expedite those two things may be the mission of
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> our existence.
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> Well and good. But such activity runs counter to the aspirations of
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> commerce and politics. Politics is the science of domination, and
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> persons in the process of enlargement and illumination are notoriously
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> difficult to control. Therefore, to protect its vested interests,
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> politics usurped religion a very long time ago. Kings bought off
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> priests with land and adornments. Together, they drained the shady
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> ponds and replaced them with fish tanks. The walls of the tanks were
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> constructed of ignorance and superstition, held together with fear.
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> They called the tanks "synagogues" or "churches" or "mosques."
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> After the tanks were in place, nobody talked much about soul
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> anymore. Instead, they talked about spirit. Soul is hot and heavy.
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> Spirit is cool, abstract, detached. Soul is connected to the earth and
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> its waters. Spirit is connected to the sky and its gases. Out of the gases
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> springs fire. Firepower. It has been observed that the logical extension
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> of all politics is war. Once religion became political, the exercise of it,
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> too, could be said to lead sooner or later to war. "War is hell." Thus,
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> religious belief propels us straight to hell. History unwaveringly supports
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> this view. (Each modem religion has boasted that it and it alone
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> is on speaking terms with the Deity, and its adherents have been quite
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> willing to die--or kill--to support its presumptuous claims.)
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> Not every silty bayou could be drained, of course. The soulfish
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> that bubbled and snapped in the few remaining ponds were tagged
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> "mystics." They were regarded as mavericks, exotic and inferior. If
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> they splashed too high, they were thought to be threatening and in
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> need of extermination. The fearful flounders in the tanks, now
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> psychologically dependent upon addictive spirit flakes, had forgotten
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> that once upon a time they, too, had been mystical.
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> Religion is nothing but institutionalized mysticism. The catch is,
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> mysticism does not lend itself to institutionolization. The moment we
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> attempt to organize mysticism, we destroy its essence. Religion, then, is
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> mysticism in which the mystical has been killed. Or, at least diminished.
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> Those who witness the dropping of the fourth veil might see
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> clearly what Spike Cohen and Roland Abu Hadee dimly suspected:
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> that not only is religion divisive and oppressive, it is also a denial of
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> all that is divine in people; it is a suffocation of the soul.
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