The Purpose of this Journal

Note: This journal is of things ignored, not allowed or disabused in the culture at large . . . the large number of things and writers which I like were abandoned early in the American Century . . . Spengler, Yeats, William James. They saw, at least partially, life in the organic flow. But they may be on the rebound. In the 1950s there was a terrific movement of things rising into the air – Sputnik, visions of UFOs, the Apollo missions. These events were followed by pop culture reflecting the same theme, a theme which is inherently psychological – Star Wars, Star Trek and the madcap adventures of Leutenant Ripley, who loaned her ovaries to an alien for reproduction. Today we see returnings to earth – crop circles are the mystic symbols and pop culture returns to the 13^th century – Harry Potter, Frodo Baggins, the Knights Templar and the faux mysticism of The DaVinci Code. And as clairvoyants dreamed of being taken from the earth and abducted by aliens beginning in the 1950s, today acute Travelers dream of falling to earth, giving birth in the Earth and Awakening from the earth in a flight of doves. So perhaps those with the organic view – Yeats, Spengler, Arnold Toynbee - will return as well.

I have two plans for this journal in the next year. One, to look at Salvador Dali’s paintings as if they are dreams in entries called Orange Monk: Salvador Dali's Dream of The Second Coming of Christ. Consider this: Dali paintings are religious prophecy, but the religion hasn’t been started yet. The second is a journal of some thinking which occurred in my life from 1994 to 2005 a time which spanned two millennia and two Platonic months, that is, the two two-thousand-year eras of the zodiac which intersected in our time, one ending and one beginning - the Age of Pisces and the Age of Aquarius. This journal will be called Quigley in Exile: Notes from the Land of the Dead. In Tibetan Buddhism, Death is a space/time place – a place like this place but not like this, and the space between living events like Platonic months is a death as well. That date of the conditions and dreams and thoughts in the journal discussed, from 1994 to 2005, is the life span of Miracle, the White Buffalo, who was born in Pisces on August 20, 1994 and died in Aquarius, on September 19, 2004. Miracle was born to a white farmer and lived out his life in Janesville, Wisconsin. Native American shamans see an Awakening in the arrival of the White Buffalo and claim that the living spirit which guides such things sent the animal intentionally to a white farmer. B.Q.

The Sun King

At the turn of the millennium a few people, including myself, had extraordinary dreams. I had the honor of talking with two such women about their dreams in 2004. They were extraordinary dreams by extraordinary dreamers. I felt what gave these women this power was an inherent inclination – a gift – but also their situation in life. They are both women with children and large close families. Both are just beginning to enter the next phase of life (entering the third phase of the Triple Goddess; maiden, mother, wise woman). And there was something in the world between 1993 and 2005. They both live close to nature. Both of these women were in the Anglosphere – one Australian and one Canadian – and my own feeling was that perhsps because they are from non-revolutionary societies that their dreams are improved. Revolution breaks with the ancestors. Another woman I met at that time with this same gift was German but I did not share in her dreams. Scanning a few dream sites on-line briefly it was noticeable that Australians had extraordinary dreams with a greater frequency. This is one of the dreams by one of the gifted dreamers. Miss3 had this dream a few years before but it was still vivid to her. . . . it was not so much as God left us it is said somewhere, but we left God. Miss3’s dream brings a primal encounter.

June 30, 2004

Miss3: I was living with a tribe in a time before the appearance of the sun. We lived in permanent dusk. I had had a dream of a beautiful globe of light rising in the sky and tried to tell the other tribe members of this beautiful globe that gave colour to our land, awakening the darkness. But the members thought I was crazy and sent me to a hut outside the village. Night after night I had the vision until one night I knew this was it, the beautiful globe would rise. I ran out of my hut to a clearing at the center of the village and I began pounding the earth with my feet and dancing in a circle mournfully chanting "I am dying, I am dying," repeatedly. (I was chanting in a different language, but I knew what I was singing.) The villagers had gathered around me, thinking I'd really lost it when suddenly the sun began to rise before me. As it rose in the sky so did all the land become illuminated and the colours of the land were made visible and vibrant. By then all the villagers were gathered around me in a circle, they stood silently, in awe and some even had tears in their eyes. Then in the background I heard some festive sounds approaching me and the crowd parted and coming towards me was this figure all draped in beautiful silks of blue and gold. The figure had both a male and female torso and a common set of legs. They held instruments and gifts which they bestowed upon me. Then within the dream I awoke (in another dream) and was teaching a class of elementary students. I had been retelling this story to them and they suggested we act it out. They played the roles of the villagers and I played the part I had in the dream. I was in the center chanting the mournful tune when I noticed that school officials were standing at the door watching. (I'm not sure but I think the dream ends here.)

I thought that the God/Goddess figure might be from Hinduism, but I can't find the right image. The one figure seems to be growing from the other's belly.

Flyingsnake: “…school officials standing at the door watching.” In William Butler Yeats’ book on Irish folklore, the fairies and wee folk all dance with the common people in the valley until the priest shows up, then the fairies disappear. The priest never sees them. Like in your dream. This is a sacred dream and important to the rest of us – important to the world. Do you know Black Elk’s writings? I see Black Elk's visions as those of the end of the old and the beginning of the new. Black Elk writes of being in the center of the world and having a cosmic vision of the future: “Then when the many little voices ceased, the great Voice said: “Behold the circle of the nation’s hoop, for it is holy, being endless, and thus all powers shall be one power in the people without end. Now they shall break camp and go forth upon the red road, and your Grandfathers shall walk with them.” - from Black Elk Speaks. It is a dream of one-world unificaiton, the world being unified by “the red road” – the Native American shaman’s vision – “and your Grandfathers shall walk with them” – the whites and the others who came to this continent, will inherit the spirit guides of the Indians. Wabikimi, the forest center of Canada is in fact such a spot, the center of the world where the Eastern world now meets the Western world across the North American continent (so are the Great Lakes – the Manitou). In Western astrology the age that we entered in January 2001, known as Aquarius, it is marked by the rise of the Sun King. Your dream seems to be a prayer to the rising millennium. You must read Black Elk if you have not. As anthropologist Vine Deloria has said, “If any great religious classic has emerged in this century or on this continent, it must certainly be judged in the company of Black Elk Speaks.” I read your dream as a prayer and a sacred dance, of the same quality and spiritual force as Black Elk’s visions. Note: Jung also had an Indian guide, a chief of the Taos Pueblos named Mountain Lake who said to Jung: “The sun is God. Everyone can see that.”

Your cousin is your Animus (von Franz “ . . leads you to the SELF/to God.”) in this dream. He is a beautiful poet. But “separation” has murdered him. This separation represents varied public conditions that build like layers on the ancient consciousness or those which divide us, but more pertinent to you life, you are naturally separated in life from your “astral husband” when you are young because you have to leave that part of yourself behind to become a mature person and to make your way in the world. Then at one point your world work is established (work, kids, etc.), it (he, your cousin – the Animus which calls you to the city of God) calls you back. You find the holistic spiritual state that you left behind – transfigured, not the authoritarian institution of childhood (the teachings are for mature adults) but inherently rich in spiritual character and your poet cousin - desiccated in the tough everyday is transformed to his astral body. He is your ancient counterpart in space/time. He has always been with you and will always be with you. (I had dreams of a female equivalent and I was called “husband.”) July ’97. Did you see Hale-Bopp? It hovered above my barn for a month every morning when I went out to feed my sheep. The Hale-Bopp comet was in Feb. 1997. Technically, that was the beginning of the new zodiac constellation – the Age of Aquarius. No one believes in this but Jung did. (The Platonic months are 2,000 years in length and the last one started with the birth of the Christ – Christ was actually born in February, 3 B.C., exactly 2,000 years before Hale-Bopp.). When we have driven east in Canada at night – and it must be more so on the high road where you live - the night sky is transcendent. –

Miss3: Quote:

In my dream experience I felt the Templar I dreamed about was a timeless spirit of some sort. I understand that stretches peoples belief systems but I know what I know.

I'd like to hear more about this if you feel like sharing. All I know about the Templars is what I read in a book that had literally fallen before me and I couldn't resist it. The book was "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail," about the Rennes le Chateau mystery. It definitely captured my interest, but that was a while ago. I have heard of the Da Vinci code, is it not along the lines of Rennes le Chateau? I must read the thread under BOOKS.

When I was about 8 or 9 I found an ad at the end of a magazine and, absolutely captivated, I filled out the coupon and passed it on to my mom, but she said I couldn't join the Rosicrucions. (She said something about it being against our religion and it being scary etc...) I've often wondered about it.

As for Hale-Bopp, I can't remember, and I find that strange because all things in the sky fascinated me then as does now. It was a difficult time for me then and my journal entries only begin in July. Wait, I just remembered something! About that time I saw something flash in the sky from my bedroom window. I even went to get my son to see if he'd see anything but by then it had gone. From my bed I didn't have a direct view of the sky but what I saw was a light (like a star) that appeared to get closer (or larger) and suddenly it expanded into a diamond shape and poof - it was gone! I saw this on a few more occasions and because no one else saw it I began wondering if I was seeing things. (I also dreamed of this and other star formations, such as a winged horse, a unicorn, a witch. Sometimes it was planets in alignment. Once all the planets were aligned perfectly.)

The night sky here is marvellous, another thing I missed on my trips to Toronto. A favourite past-time here is laying on lawn chairs at night watching aurora borealis or the meteor showers.

I had a wonderful dream about anima/animus once and I think I will post it later under Angela's thread "Soul Mates."

I can't wait until the end of the month, going on a book buying spree and will try to get Black Elk Speaks as well as many other suggested readings.

Flyingsnake: – I rememember those Rosecruchine ads in the back of magazines I saw in the barber shop –“cosmic consciousness” they said. I believe Jung carved the sign of the Rosecrucians on his stonework in Bolingen. He also carved the flying horse – Pegasus, the agent of Aquarius. A few more thoughts on the Templars if you like. I can only say so much because no one would believe it. At the time I was a college administrator in North Carolina and when I started having these dreams (’94-’97) a bunch of college students started hanging out in my office and at my home and barn where I was painting pictures of the dreams. They thought it was a hoot as they were still young enough to appreciate things they couldn’t understand without their belief systems being threatened, so I was lucky to have someone to talk to about these things at the time. Templar dream: I had a dream that a man on a horse was riding toward my “house” – my House was a round door in an old castle – my SELF, so the dream implies something coming from the outside to the SELF. You often see this in pictures of Jesus holding a light and coming to a door like this. This man had someone else on the back of the horse with him all in black. He casually climbed off the horse and came to the door of the castle. The dream ended there because at just that moment my four-year old son came into our bedroom and was troubled. He had had a dream at that same moment that had deeply religious significance. So these two dreams were connected. It was as if the man on the horse had “brought” the dream to my son through my dream. The man on the horse was a very popular public figure who died 20-some years ago. I researched the dream and found the pictures of the Templars which were always symbolized by “two on a horse.” I didn’t know anything about the Templars and back then there was little contemporary writing about them. But they are very similar to the Jedi Knights in the Star Wars movies. The Jedi’s I believe are actually based on Lao Tu’s “knights of dark and mysterious conscequences” in the Tao te Ching; “knight scholars” who travel in the unconscious and act in the conscious world at the same time. Like the Jedi knights, the Templars are guided by a woman in white; the Triple Goddess in her first phase (youth). That the man on the horse was a contemporary figure in my generation I thought was interesting. To understand these dreams I began reading Tibetan Buddhism which talks about space/time in a similar vein as Jung and Pauli – the Greek Orthodox idea of “chronos” time as well (roughly all time is a feature of one moment – this moment – rather than all bits of time all lined up in a row) – I thought to understand these dreams you had to come to understand that the Christ, for example, if the Christ was an avatar, lived in space/time and the part of his everyday life 2,000 years ago was largely irrelevant. (I am not a practicing Christian but I was raised RC – and my children were dreaming of Jesus. This had to be space/time events that the child under the age of six – or maybe just some children - would naturally enter into in dreams.) Likewise, I began to feel that agents like the Knights Templar appear to work on the unconscious today from the outside of one’s SELF – that our moment in time is no different than any other historical moment. The strangest thing about this series of dreams, which was often comical, was that a certain set of coincidences began to happen: for about a month period, time and time again, people came into my office wearing a cast or a brace on their right foot. “What happened to your foot,” I’d ask. And they always had a different answer. And people kept coming in in distress saying “ . . . sorry I’m late but the water broke in my bathroom.” Seems like everybody I knew had their pipes broken. A few years later we took the family to Chicago for Christmas on Dec. 31 – 2000 – and I was completing a recollection of these dreams in a lobby of a hotel at 4 am. Just then water started pouring through the ceiling – something had broken in a bathroom upstairs, and the clerks began running around furiously to repair it. Most of these dreams concerned a figure with leafs all around his head – the Green Man. The Templars were the last agents to hold together the Original Myths and Stories of the European people and the New Testament before Christianity took a new tack. One of their temples in Rosslyn, Scotland has over 120 carvings of the Green Man and only one of Jesus. I felt I was experiencing these Original Stories and they were being brought to my dreams by agents from the unconscious. I also came to understand the rabbi’s insight that the Gods hide in Low Places – it is not the High Priest but the lowly monk who finds god. William Butler Yeats, by the way, has a nice story of a unicorn like you mentioned – in his book Mythologies, which is hard to find and out of print, I think. He has a story of a unicorn, born to a prostitute in a Paris slum, as the avatar of Aquarius.

Miss3: Just for the fun of it I checked my dream recorded for December 31, 2000 and I found that I dreamt I was in a lobby of a strange hotel/resort. I was waiting for a ride with other stranded passengers and the person who was going to drive us his name was something like Glen, but I had just missed him and now we were supposed to walk back to town. At the desk in the lobby I began experiencing chest pains and the receptionist asked me if I was okay. I told her I had liver problems then my son woke me up. (I recorded 4 other dreams that night, including a recurring experience of darkness which I wrote about in another post.)

When I dream sometimes I get a name but my half-awake self (I often record my dreams in a semi-conscious state) sometimes spells things as they sound or exactly as they are written but far from what they sound. With this in mind I dreamt of a figure with a green-leafed hat, his name I recorded as Disquart. But I had once known his human name although I'd forgotten it. This name was what he was known as in his dimension. There's much more to this dream but was just curious about the name.

Fllyingsnake: Disquart – DeCoursy? It is a pen name I use sometime – my matriarchal line from France (Parthalon Flyingsnake DeCoursy – my kids helped make up the other parts). Maybe we met in space time. (I have met others who were strangely artists from Seattle and Vancouver where I’ve never been.) That hotel in Chicago was a nice moment; I am always happy when I am working while my wife and babies are sleeping upstairs – I was aware that it was in regular calendar time the very last evening of the Age of Pisces and the first day of the Age of Aquarius opening up ahead. And I was on the shore of the Manitou – the Great Lakes, spirit of the earth in Native culture – virtually the center of the world as it opened up before us – North, South, East and West in the new millenium. Very nice Green Man picture – man with a green hat from a different dimension. I’m off for a week or so – to the mountains in North Carolina and Virginia to bring the young ‘uns to see kin. By the way - chest pains and stressed liver - that sounds familiar. I am in good health but when I was young I was a night person - lungs especially - had several lung operations due to smoking in '76 thereabouts.

Dream of John Lennon/Knights Templar

Letter to Fiorella Dorotea Gentile, Italian photojournalist 2004: I would pass along a thought to you. I recently gave this to Uri Geller who was friends with John Lennon in his last days in New York. Uri thought it was an amazing story and so do I.

Between 1992 and 1994 I was living with my family on a farm in North Carolina and working at a local college as a staff writer for their magazine and when my wife was pregnant with our third and fourth children I had an astonishing series of dreams. In one of the dreams John Lennon came to my "castle" - this was an old Medieval castle with a round wooden door - I knew it was the gateway to my Self (a Jung/Hindu term meaning the dominant director of the psyche) - he was riding on a horse and there was someone else on the horse with him, a Dark Figure, in shadow. John got off the horse and came to the door. Then I woke up. It was a Great Dream, more a vision, like many of the dreams I had in that period. I went to the library at the college I worked at and learned that the sign of two on a horse is the sign of the Knights Templar, the spiritual warriors of the 12th and 13th century, devotees of the White Goddess - the Earth Mother and the old ways, but Christian mystics as well (the Rosslyn Chapel of the Templars in Edinborough, for example has 120 some carvings of the Green Man and only one of Jesus). The archetype of two on a horse represents a mystic warrior who lived in the everyday world, but was motivated by the Dark Figure from the Unconscious who is the second rider (translated into Hindu terms (sanscrit), Dark One means Krishna - it is the avatar or cosmic guru who motivates the human agent).

I told this to Uri and as he seemed sincere in an essay he posted on-line about a golden nugget John gave to him, I told him the rest of the story. I'd never told anyone else this part of the story: just as I woke up from this dream by four-year-old son Tom came in from the other room, crying because he had had a bad dream. Just as I was dreaming of John on the horse, my little boy had a dream - he was crying because he dreamed that he had cuts in the palm of his hands and he was putting his fingers into the cuts. We did not raise our children in a Christian tradition and I am Tibetan Buddhist in orientation. My son did not know that a cut on the palm of the hand was the sign of the Christ, nor did he know that looking into the cut was the sign of St. Thomas. Uri is an Israeli and he understood the connection. John believed he was "channeling Jesus" and said so to the Beatles (see "A Day in a Life" by The New Yorker writer Mark Hertsgaard). This phenomenon is perhaps best explained by psychiatrist David Rosen at Texas A & M in his book, "The Tao of Elvis." In a word, the Christ is a time/space being. In my experience, so is John Lennon. I've had many synchronicities with him. As Uri said, "I know he's here watching us."

Where is the Center of the World?

David P. Barash, a psychology professor at the University of Washington, wrote an op-ed recently in the LA Times complaining about the proliferation of sports on tv. “Now we have the World Series bearing down on us with all of its predictable sound and fury and heavy breathing signifying less than nothing,” he says. “Karl Marx was wrong: The opiate of the masses isn’t religion, it’s spectator sports.” Letter to Barash, Oct. 23, 2005: My son said much the same thing when I would be watching Hockey Night in Canada, a 50-year Canadian ritual on Saturday night (we live on the border), “What’s the point?” But now that he in the football band at college, he emails, “ . . . the football gets kind of contagious.” In Canada hockey is a “religion.” And it is the only religion holding contrarian provinces together. I have a theory that sports form a substitute for religion in a region which has not yet found its true identity (like North America). Another way of looking at it is that sports form a yang religion (yang, meaning masculine or extroverted – EJ in Myers-Briggs terms/all buildings are square). That is, in Enlightenment cultures like our own – extraverted forms committed to material improvement – the inner life or Introverted (yin, meaning feminine or introverted – IP in Myers-Briggs terms/all buildings are round) culture (i.e. spiritual orientation and religious culture) dries up. Sports substitute. Notice that in every major city nowadays the only round buildings – the circle being the sign of the psyche and the traditional shape of religious buildings – are sports arenas. Hockey is in effect a masculine religion and can be understood in that way by reading Winston King’s most interesting book, Zen and the Way of the Sword, on how Japan’s ruling class developed out of the cult of the Samurai – virtually a yang religion. Generally speaking, one could do an archetypal study of all history to see how sports flourished in Extroverted systems – the Greeks and Romans in conquest mode were devoted to sports and – the Romans especially, oblivious to the will of the gods -, then the same matrix realms Introverted to sacred quests much later after their Extraverted affairs crashed and burned out – Hagia Sophia and Notre Dame – Our Mother – yin cultures were formed and circular buildings designed with feminine archetypes. Sports today is world religion and the so-called actual religions merely folkloric traditions (the prize of Christiandom, Notre Dame on the Ile de la Cite in Paris is virtually gynecological in architectural motif – the interior virtually a womb). Today – the Big Noise of the Politicans aside - we live without gods and soccer is generally is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic path of the outside world around us but outside fo the United States. Two billion around the world watched the last World Cup of soccer, but very few in the United States. What is interesting is that this forms a donut-lie Mandela of the world today, the United States being the hole in the donut. And although Cal Kline, Michael Jackson, Coke, etc. market universally throughout the world, out own sports - baseball, football, basketball, etc. - no not. This is an interesting pattern. The return of baseball in the last two years is also interesting. TV ratings six years ago had more people (including myself) watching “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (primarily a series on “old school” Earth Mother religion) than the All Star Game. Now – last year – baseball has come back from the Land of the Dead. My email dream friends – some far away in Australia and California – were talking about the World Series between the Red Sox and the New York Yankees. And now the Dalai Lama reveals that he is a big baseball fan. Deep inside in some secret and unknowable place, everyone in the Anglosphere is either a Red Sox fan or a Yankees fan. Sports sublimate antagonisms – a substitute for war among the Cherokee when too many warriors were dying in the annual winter conflict – as anyone who saw the recent Winter Olympics in which Canada won the gold in both man and women’s hockey could easily determine. Contention had been growing in Canada for more than a year with the Joe Canada Molson ad and the hilarious “Talking to Americans,” show, the most popular show in Canadian history and a playful mockery of American pretensions. But I prefer the cosmic sub-text explanation. Like Black Elk pointing north to “the center of the world,” Boeing Co. recently made a decision to move its world headquarters to Chicago, a central hub more appropriate to the current world economic dynamic between the newly developed Eastern economies and a reunited Europe. Its other choice was Houston, but finally it chose Chicago. Likewise, in the first days in the millennium the traditional power vortex of the Northeast yields to the Midwest and the eastern-most time-honored teams, Red Sox and Yankees, yield to teams in the center of the country - Houston, St. Louis and Chicago. When the Sword of Discrimination removes the illusion of every-day life, all that is left is baseball. Where is the center of the world in the new milenium, Houston or Chicago? The next six games of the World Series will answer Black Elk’s riddle. (Note: Chicago won. It is the center of the world, but I prefer Detroit.) . . . the essence of Taoism can be readily seen in the annual tv show, “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!” At the end of the show Linus appears disappointed because once again the Great Pumpkin did not appear, after he stayed up all night watching. But he tells Charlie Brown, that next year he would find a “more sincere” pumpkin patch. I found Detroit to be the essence of sincerity. Philadelphia as well. And dreams come more readily in the Appalachians than in New Hampshire due to some inherent sincerity of the earth and the place and the people and weather maybe which I do not begin to understand but feel and intuit. 'Tis a love thang. In Taoism it is called chi. When places have a specific sincerity they are said to have chi. And a mythical totem animal it often associated with them – the Manitou dragon in the Great Lakes, the Lock Ness Monster. Chi manifestations. Elvis. Elvis sightings are chi manifestations. Black Elk speaks in prophecy & the American Indian guides us in dream on this continent. But not others outsied our borders (perhaps it is what makes us Americans. Chief Joseph said, "Our spirit will walk among you."). AS we enter the new millenium the Manitou swims in the Center of the World from city to city. It is the way of all things.

Dreaming North & South - Where are the Khrishnas now?

Correspondence to novelist Curtis White: I enjoyed your essay in Context about Middle Mind. [RE]: The Hari Krishnas. You ask: “What ever happened to those guys, anyway?” I ran across Khrishnas quite a lot when my wife was at Chapel Hill and we had to live there for awhile. They have two bases, one in the Blue Mountains between Virginia and North Carolina and one in West Virginia. (Cold Mountain in western North Carolina is considered a vortex – thus the quote from Han Shan, the Taoist monk/poet, at the beginning of the novel of the same name.) The Khrishnas work in places like Circuit City and dress normal except for the funny hair thing. It is interesting that the three big swamis from the 1960s – The Khrishnas, Marharishi Mahesh Yogi and Swami Satchidananda (“the Woodstock guru”) have all settled in the Blues (the Maharishi has a quite big and consistent following business-looking types and a whole lot of land around Eagle, [NC], and Satchidananda’s Yogatown, I think it is called, is near Appomatux, VA – Mia Farrow gave Satchidananda some land in Connecticut and he quickly sold it and bought the place in Virginia. Retired clerks go there.). The Big Deal Buddhists have all settled up here in cold country – Thich Knat Han has a monestary in Woodstock [VT], there is one in Woodstock, NY, where the Karmapa, reigning Tibetan monk next to the Dalai Lama was/is expected to move, and one up here near us in Barnet, [VT], which preceded the Naropa Institute. I started to become a Buddhist in 1967 when I was sent to be a soldier in Thailand, during the Vietnam war and it is interesting how it has bled into Middle Mind since then. Buddhism is intended to quicken the life force, not kill it, but these new people are lame. D. T. Suzuki’s essays, first published in English in a magazine called Eastern Buddhism around 1930, are still useful, I think, as most Middle people in America enter from the same place the Japanese starts – from the Rational Mind. To the Japanese, it is their cultural fate and destiny, but it is a deception and a spiritual prison. Indeed, you can take large chunks from Andre Malraux or Kenneth Burke or a million others Westerners including The Accidental Tourist about finding yourself somehow detached and wanting to get back to the “natural man” and it would seem to come from Suzuki’s earliest English writings (I think much of it did, via Malraux and others after Suzuki came to Columbia in the 1950s). But what is interesting is that although Suzuki says all Buddhism comes from the Hindu (See Introduction to Zen, Grove Press), you do not find this detachment in Hinduism. Maybe it is a product of cold country. I feel detached. Sleeping/dreaming up here in the mountains of New Hampshire is like sleeping/ dreaming in an empty auditorium with endless and overwhelming silence and the chairs all folded up. And it was like that when I grew up up here in Rhode Island. But I didn’t feel like that in Thailand, nor did I feel like that for the ten years we lived by chance in the South. Thais never feel like that nor do most Southern people or Africans unless they want to be on with Terry Gross. But we lived near Cold Mountain. Sleeping/dreaming was like traveling in a vivid paradise; great blue and orange birds landed on electric wires and travelled through the universe in coffee pots – ancient charred black Viking ships filed into slips that were subway stops in Washington, D.C, but filled with water. And you could touch them and the pitch was still fresh. Trees talked and complained like in the Tolkein stories, and always there was the constant chatter of critters, the rustle in the woods and the sounds of running water. Maybe it is that vortex thing. Cheers, Bernie Quigley, Haverhill, [NH]