Lawrence R. Spencer's Blog, page 525
February 19, 2014
DELUSIONAL or HERETICAL?
"I am very sure that my new book, Vermeer: Portraits of A Lifetime, will be considered by many people to be delusional or heretical. Many will dismiss my observations and comments because they don't follow the dictates of "authoritative research" or the opinions of art "experts".
This book may threaten persons who have a financial vested interest in the Vermeer paintings that still exist today, as their livelihood or financial well-being depend to some degree on the value currently assigned to the paintings.
Although the monetary value of Vermeer's paintings have been vastly inflated, in part, due to the mystique created by authorities or speculators, it is not my intention to devaluate them. It is not my intention to invalidate property that was sold or bartered by Vermeer and his wife, Catharina, hundreds of years ago. Quite the contrary.
My intention is to honor the lives of Johannes, Catharina, their eleven surviving children and Maria Thins, his mother-in-law and patroness.
This book does not represent or endorse any financial, spiritual, religious, political organization or practice or philosophy of any kind. All personal observations and opinions offered by the author herein are purely and solely personal opinions, with no other source than those noted in the footnotes or appendix.
Any and all individuals or organizations from whom research and/or opinions have been borrowed or sited for referential purposes in this book are not affiliated with and do not in any way acknowledge the validity of or endorse the findings or assertions of the author or publisher of this book.
Finally, this book is not intended for people who have a vested interest, or who "know best". Personal observations, whether visual, empathetic or conjectural, of the author about the life and death of Vermeer, 300 years after the fact, are wholly subjective."
Vermeer: Portraits of A Lifetime https://itunes.apple.com/us/audiobook/vermeer-portraits-lifetime/id569744974
Paperback book --
February 17, 2014
DESOLATION ROW
When I graduated from high school in 1964, fifty years ago, I was a Young, Virile, Romantic with Visions of Idyllic Perfection and Dreams of Innocent Egalitarianism. I was a Denizen of Delusion floating in an Ocean of Ignorance wherein the Conflicting Paradox of Reality and Idealism Crashed against the Hopeless Shores of The Real World. My Infantile, Existential Fantasies were Nurtured by Poets and Musicians like Bob Dylan. I conceived My Self, with other fellow Idiots of Innocence, as an Evolutionary Revolutionary, resisting the military draft, protesting the Fascists War of Corporate Greed in Viet Nam, and dreaming of a Civilization Without Stupidity, Pain and Injustice. All the while being Deceived by the CIA Mind-Control Culture of Free Love, Drugs and Rock and Roll.
The Preeminent Poet of The Hippie Age was Bob Dylan. "Desolation Row" is a 1965 song written and sung by Bob Dylan. It was recorded on August 4, 1965 and released as the closing track of Dylan's sixth studio album, Highway 61 Revisited. This song Expressed the Epitome of Existential Angst.
I knew that Western "civilization" was fucked up. I KNEW that Humankind was Doomed by an Overwhelming Urge toward Atomic Self-Annihilation. Yet, in spite of These Certainties, I HOPED that there were Solutions to the Paradoxical Paradigm of The Perpetual Prison Planet called Earth.
Fifty Years have Passed.... Bobby Dylan has Sung His Song a Thousand Times Since. Nothing has changed. The Dreams and Desires of Civilization are Dissolved.... Corporate America is The New Rome...Soon to Subside Into Mists of Memory. What Goes Around, Comes Around. History Repeats. Humanity Habituates. Bob Dylan, and The American Dream of Egalitarian Love are Gone. Chevrolet has won.
"Desolation Row"
They're selling postcards of the hanging
They're painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they're restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row.
Cinderella, she seems so easy
"It takes one to know one," she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning
"You belong to Me I Believe"
And someone says, "You're in the wrong place, my friend
You better leave"
And the only sound that's left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row.
Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortunetelling lady
Has even taken all her things inside
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing
He's getting ready for the show
He's going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row.
Now Ophelia, she's 'neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid
To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an iron vest
Her profession's her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness
And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah's great rainbow
She spends her time peeking
Into Desolation Row.
Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet
You would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin
On Desolation Row.
Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They're trying to blow it up
Now his nurse, some local loser
She's in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read
"Have Mercy on His Soul"
They all play on penny whistles
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row.
Across the street they've nailed the curtains
They're getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera
In a perfect image of a priest
They're spoon feeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured
Then they'll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words
And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls
"Get outa here if you don't know"
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row.
At midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row.
They be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
Everybody's shouting
"Which side are you on ?"
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row.
Yes, I received your letter yesterday
About the time the door knob broke
When you asked me how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke ?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can't read too good
Don't send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row.
February 16, 2014
February 14, 2014
February 12, 2014
OUR LEGACY
"The history of mankind seems blanketed in a simultaneous state of amnesia and deja vu. The ruins of ancient civilizations whisper a reminder that we have forgotten everything we knew.
A multitude of gods have shown themselves like shadows in the halls of history. We know not yet, except by our own observation and decision, which of them is real. We are betrayed by those who teach us that we must trust the Wizards of the West. While pretentious politicians defend the castles of the Witch, the media monkeys swarm to spin perverted lies to cover up their covert tricks.
The voiceless bones of wonderful wizards have dissolved to mortal dust once more. Their words have vanished in the smoke of sacred libraries, searing our souls with the stupefying stench of wisdom lost forever in their flames. From day to day the timeworn treadmill of survival forces us to worship at the soulless bankers' shrine. Gold is still the god of the great and powerful Oz.
We have crash-landed in a twisted alien landscape of pain and mortality, far away from our home Universe. As a race we have amnesia. We are repeatedly bumped on the head by the recurring cataclysmic upheavals of a planet whirling in space like a farmhouse in a tornado.
The future is an extension of the present. We must live our lives in the present in a manner which will create the greatest good for the greatest number of beings in the future. If we are aware of our own past lives, we must also be aware that we are creating our own future by our present actions. We will inherit our own legacy." --excerpt from The Oz Factors, by Lawrence R. Spencer
Read the book:
February 9, 2014
February 8, 2014
February 6, 2014
TRUTH
Jiddu Krishnamurti was born on 11 May 1895 in Madanapalle, a small town in south India. He and his brother were adopted in their youth by Dr Annie Besant, then president of the Theosophical Society. Dr Besant and others proclaimed that Krishnamurti was to be a world teacher whose coming the Theosophists had predicted. To prepare the world for this coming, a world-wide organization called the Order of the Star in the East was formed and the young Krishnamurti was made its head. In 1929, however, Krishnamurti renounced the role that he was expected to play, dissolved the Order with its huge following, and returned all the money and property that had been donated for this work. What follows is the speech made by Jiddu Krishnamurti in 1929 when he dissolved the Order of the Star.
"We are going to discuss this morning the dissolution of the Order of the Star. Many will be delighted, and others will be rather sad. It is a question neither for rejoicing nor for sadness, because it is inevitable, as I am going to explain….
I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others. This is what everyone throughout the world is attempting to do. Truth is narrowed down and made a plaything for those who are weak, for those who are only momentarily discontented. Truth cannot be brought down, rather the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountain-top to the valley….
So that is the first reason, from my point of view, why the Order of the Star should be dissolved. In spite of this, you will probably form other Orders, you will continue to belong to other organizations searching for Truth. I do not want to belong to any organization of a spiritual kind; please understand this….
If an organization be created for this purpose, it becomes a crutch, a weakness, a bondage, and must cripple the individual, and prevent him from growing, from establishing his uniqueness, which lies in the discovery for himself of that absolute, unconditioned Truth. So that is another reason why I have decided, as I happen to be the Head of the Order, to dissolve it.
This is no magnificent deed, because I do not want followers, and I mean this. The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth. I am not concerned whether you pay attention to what I say or not. I want to do a certain thing in the world and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies. Then you will naturally ask me why I go the world over, continually speaking. I will tell you for what reason I do this; not because I desire a following, not because I desire a special group of special disciples. (How men love to be different from their fellow-men, however ridiculous, absurd and trivial their distinctions, may be! I do not want to encourage that absurdity.) I have no disciples, no apostles, either on earth or in the realm of spirituality.
Nor is it the lure of money, nor the desire to live a comfortable life, which attracts me. If I wanted to lead a comfortable life I would not come to a Camp or live in a damp country! I am speaking frankly because I want this settled once and for all. I do not want these childish discussions year after year.
A newspaper reporter, who interviewed me, considered it a magnificent act to dissolve an organization in which there were thousands and thousands of members. To him it was a great act because he said: “What will you do afterwards, how will you live? You will have no following, people will no longer listen to you.” If there are only five people who will listen, who will live, who have their faces turned towards eternity, it will be sufficient. Of what use is it to have thousands who do not understand, who are fully embalmed in prejudice, who do not want the new, but would rather translate the new to suit their own sterile, stagnant selves?….
Because I am free, unconditioned, whole, not the part, not the relative, but the whole Truth that is eternal, I desire those, who seek to understand me, to be free, not to follow me, not to make out of me a cage which will become a religion, a sect. Rather should they be free from all fears – from the fear of religion, from the fear of salvation, from the fear of spirituality, from the fear of love, from the fear of death, from the fear of life itself. As an artist paints a picture because he takes delight in that painting, because it is his self-expression, his glory, his well-being, so I do this and not because I want any thing from anyone. You are accustomed to authority, or to the atmosphere of authority which you think will lead you to spirituality. You think and hope that another can, by his extraordinary powers – a miracle – transport you to this realm of eternal freedom which is Happiness. Your whole outlook on life is based on that authority.
You have listened to me for three years now, without any change taking place except in the few. Now analyze what I am saying, be critical, so that you may understand thoroughly, fundamentally….
For eighteen years you have been preparing for this event, for the Coming of the World Teacher. For eighteen years you have organized, you have looked for someone who would give a new delight to your hearts and minds, who would transform your whole life, who would give you a new understanding; for someone who would raise you to a new plane of life, who would give you new encouragement, who would set you free – and now look what is happening! Consider, reason with yourselves, and discover in what way that belief has made you different – not with the superficial difference of the wearing of a badge, which is trivial, absurd. In what manner has such a belief swept away all unessential things of life? That is the only way to judge: in what way are you freer, greater, more dangerous to every society which is based on the false and the unessential? In what way have the members of this organization of the Star become different?….
You are all depending for your spirituality on someone else, for your happiness on someone else, for your enlightenment on someone else…. when I say look within yourselves for the enlightenment, for the glory, for the purification, and for the incorruptibility of the self, not one of you is willing to do it. There may be a few, but very, very few. So why have an organization?….
No man from outside can make you free; nor can organized worship, nor the immolation of yourselves for a cause, make you free; nor can forming yourselves into an organization, nor throwing yourselves into work, make you free. You use a typewriter to write letters, but you do not put it on an alter and worship it. But that is what you are doing when organizations become your chief concern. “How many members are there in it?” That is the first question I am asked by all newspaper reporters. “How many followers have you? By their number we shall judge whether what you say is true or false.” I do not know how many there are. I am not concerned with that. If there were even one man who had been set free, that were enough….
Again, you have the idea that only certain people hold the key to the Kingdom of Happiness. No one holds it. No one has the authority to hold that key. That key is your own self, and in the development and the purification and in the incorruptibility of that self alone is the Kingdom of Eternity….
You have been accustomed to being told how far you have advanced, what is your spiritual status. How childish! Who but yourself can tell you if you are incorruptible?….
But those who really desire to understand, who are looking to find that which is eternal, without a beginning and without an end, will walk together with greater intensity, will be a danger to everything that is unessential, to unrealities, to shadows. And they will concentrate, they will become the flame, because they understand. Such a body we must create, and that is my purpose. Because of that true friendship – which you do not seem to know – there will be real co-operation on the part of each one. And this not because of authority, not because of salvation, but because you really understand, and hence are capable of living in the eternal. This is a greater thing than all pleasure, than all sacrifice.
So those are some of the reasons why, after careful consideration for two years, I have made this decision. It is not from a momentary impulse. I have not been persuaded to it by anyone – I am not persuaded in such things. For two years I have been thinking about this, slowly, carefully, patiently, and I have now decided to disband the Order, as I happen to be its Head. You can form other organizations and expect someone else. With that I am not concerned, nor with creating new cages, new decorations for those cages. My only concern is to set men absolutely, unconditionally free."
DISCOVER MORE ABOUT THE TEACHINGS OF KRISHNAMURTI ON THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE
