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“No one who demands worship, however covertly, deserves respect.” — Wendy Kaminer, Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials
This new look made me anxious — it didn’t say “I’m spoken for” but was more of an advertisement, a neon sign of sexual availability. Nothing about it was appealing to me — it was blatant, a caricature, and bordered on the grotesque.
I first heard Lakshmi speak that a hundred thousand lights went on in my brain and that the psychic trash that crowded my head was recycled into a miraculous and liberating vision. The truth is I was a little bored. And a little irritated. It reminded me of something I just couldn’t place, something so embarrassing I’d forgotten it.
“God has invited us all to a floating temple of silver and gold that glistens under a sphere of perfect light. Come with me to a place of pure love with steps to a door that opens to a vision of God where he reigns in peace in his perfect universe.”
forgiveness of ourselves and others could heal illness, that the ultimate atoning was not in making amends for our own sins, but in forgiving those of others.
And as for Eve, we can’t blame her for the downfall of humankind — she was doing what any decent wife would do — she was sharing her food with her husband.”
“sickness is maya, an illusion, something like a nightmare. The cure for sickness, physical and mental, is to ask God to remove the illusion. If you are sick, you are asleep and you are dreaming you are ill — you are having an ill-lusion. The best medicine is to ask God to wake you up, to join him in the reality of his unending love.”
“To love your Self is to love God who loves all his children. To hate your Self is to hate God and to hate all his children.” “Be unashamed to be desperate for love, for love is desperate to be unashamed.” “To know your enemy is to know your ego but ego is an illusion that can never know You.”
But we deny the God that is both within and without us if we do not atone for our separation from him.
God is only love? I thought. So he’s made up of norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin?
Age is just a mindset.
“Acceptance of the Lard Jayzus as your personal savior is the one and only means of gainin’ eternal life.”
Part of me still believed in some entity, some source of creation, but what empirical evidence did Lakshmi have that God was real? What corroborated, peer-reviewed study at what accredited laboratory had proven that God was only love?
If God is love, did she mean he is the biological mechanisms that promote the survivability of mammalian species? If God is only love, is he the norepinephrine, serotonin and dopamine released during romantic attraction? Is he also the oxytocin and vasopressin that are a part of family bonding and friendships?
Lakshmi would likely say no — her God was some benevolent being who had created the world as an act of cosmic kindness. His love is something bigger, something so incomprehensible that it overwhelms and confou...
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Did he agree with Saint Paul, the real founder of Christianity, that “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.”?
Parrish’s mastery of technique is just astonishing, a real accomplishment, something that exceeded the old masters. If I was a painter, it would make me question my own abilities.”
“Something like that. If it happens, you may not have complete control of your reflexes. All you’ll want is to be with your bliss!” “So this Dinesh is dispensing nirvana?” “Not nirvana, but it’s a ‘beacon on the road to enlightenment,’ a ‘quickening of the process.’ The blue light is the lowest level of the colors the Buddha saw before he reached eternal bliss... but it is progress.” “I would love to drive you,” I said, and meant it. I wasn’t going to miss this.
“So you’re a minimalist,” I said as I looked around. “No, I’m just very selective,” he responded. “If I can’t have what I really want, I don’t accept any compromises.”
“Let us recognize that self is not just you but all of existence,” he said. He also spoke about ego, which he said was “sex, money and power, rolled into a big, shiny ball, but all of which can be vanquished with mindfulness.”
But I don’t know that Dinesh is really an ascended master. I think he’s more of a magician.” “A magician? Like someone who practices sleight of hand?” “No, he’s someone capable of real magic. But I think he’s more of a low-grade sorcerer than an ascendant master. He’s willing to display his powers when he should be hiding them. I think he’s kind of a benevolent trickster.
“So we’re in competition? Why can’t we do this together? When we were in film school, we used to be a team. We collaborated. It was fun. Cristy’s not competing with her big cheese. They’re a duo. He loves her and he wants her to succeed.” “But it’s how you criticize. You’re too honest. You’re brutal.” “Too honest? I’ll tell you what’s honest — when no one laughs at your jokes. What’s more honest than that?” “Now you’re being an asshole.”
“You don’t dig deep enough. Everything you do is on the surface. You go for the easy joke, the obvious pun, and you’re not selective. There’s nothing underhanded or textured, no subtext. And there’s no vulnerability in any of it. Funny comes out of feelings... from darkness, anger, sadness.”
I suddenly hated myself for being self-involved and stupid enough to think that God would or should give a shit about something as trivial as my screenwriting career. And if he wanted me to write something that celebrated the return to him as someone who might solve my little problems — well, fuck that God. He was just another needy narcissist who was starving for attention.
Lakshmi was touched. Motherhood had changed her, had softened her and given her a genuine femininity. Her face was rounder, less angular, and her smile was warm and genuine as the baby was admired.
He stepped forward and we were inches close to each other, baring our teeth and having an ugliest face contest.
It was giving me more ideas for some screenplay that was assembling in my unconscious. I picked up a sugar packet with my fingers and suddenly there was a seed in my head, something to plant and water then grow and trim.
We both started laughing, the kind of low snicker that comes out of a guilty pleasure. We tried to stop and found we couldn’t.
“Tim had a real warmth, something you could never —” I stopped myself. “Something the rest of us could only aspire to.” Gene was quiet and had another of those moments in which his arrogance disappeared and in its place was a gaping wound, something plastered on his face that betrayed his longing for adoration. It wasn’t long before his vicious smirk reappeared with one eyebrow raised up and his lip curling like a Disney villainess.
I was struck by the splash photo of Lakshmi. It was a glamour shot that depicted her as a sex kitten. She was heavily made up with deep red lipstick on a pouty mouth and rouge to heighten her cheekbones. She looked straight into the camera with eyes dramatized by mascara and she was wearing a Hustler pink skirt suit with an open jacket to reveal a black, lace-trimmed camisole. On her feet were some expensive-looking, snakeskin heels and extending from her short, hiked-up skirt were her legs, pulled up and prettily splayed across a dark cushion. It was a good, flattering shot but intriguingly
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it could have been a pose for a Playboy centerfold. The photographer, a woman, may have pushed this image to coincide with the content of the article, but clearly, Lakshmi wanted to be seen as an object of desire. It was a provocative photo and by no means a dignified portrait of an “authority.” She looked evil, like Joan Collins as Alexis Carrington.
It is a syncretic belief system that uses terms from Judaism and Christianity but is infused with the mystical traditions and philosophies of the East.”
“I studied history and political science. And I know a lot about the nature of employer-employee relations. It’s completely within human nature for one human to exploit another, to wring as much as possible out of someone else and offer the least in return. The enslavement and exploitation of some by others is the history of our species, it’s built into us. Our progress as humans is the ongoing attempt to treat each other as equals, to make fair deals, to have situations that are
win-win. I’m going a long way to make the point that it’s natural and expected that even in a small nonprofit like this one, employees have to demand what’s fair and employers have to make concessions.”
“But we all have within us the capacity to see the world in a different way, and by doing that, to change it. All of us can experience the world as a manifestation of God as love, as a being who is incapable of mistakes, and see ourselves as a pure expression of his perfect creation.”
“I was drawn to Manna from Heaven in the same way I am drawn to love, for there is so much love here. It’s something you can see, something that rises up from this church, like the chimney smoke from a warm fire in winter.
“In case anyone from the media is here,” said Jonnie for Lakshmi, “please note that Manna from Heaven and Ma Nerada Matanji are not associated. And on that note, let us all bow our heads and thank God for the opportunity to serve him, to serve our clients and make each of us more loving and loved. Amen.”
Baba had been “spiritually avaricious,” but it made me wonder... had he ever really been spiritually satisfied? Was anyone ever?
“This universe was preceded by another and will be followed by an infinite number of universes after that,”
As Prabhupada said, ‘The homosexual appetite of a man for another man is demoniac and is not for any sane male in the ordinary course of life.’”
“Gary and Gary have loved each other for so long,” Mama squeaked in her comical accent. “And today, each of them has planted seeds in the field of each other that they will cultivate and harvest for a shared prosperity, a food that ends the hunger that is loneliness. The Garys have tied a knot that binds them, but it is a rope that is long enough to let them walk their own paths, a rope they can tug on when they need each other. There is nothing more holy than service, and the Garys will fulfill the holy duty of serving each other as well as of serving the world.”
“She offers religion to people who’ve been rejected by the one they were brought up in.” “Spirituality, Tyler. Mama says it again and again: ‘This is not a religion, this is an interfaith spirituality.’”
As I looked at Kyle draped in green, purple and yellow necklaces, he was like some bizarre apparition, a grotesque, glittering entity from another world. I felt like I was watching him from afar, through a tear in the space-time continuum. He had become a garish demon with an insatiable hunger for attention. I imagined he had a pointed tail that extended from the bottom of his spine and that his feet had turned into hooves. He looked satanic as he leered at me with yellowed goat teeth.
Some, like the hero, struggled to prove himself.
“They told him to do things... that he didn’t do.” “Yeah, that’s the definition of insubordination. What didn’t he do?”
And there it was, an admission as to why Bravermann was terminated. Lakshmi was jealous of him, surely, but her reasoning, her official justification was that he didn’t accept her as his spiritual authority. The only way in which he had been “insubordinate” was in his rejection of her new religion rebranded as “spirituality.”
Bravermann had a case for religious discrimination.
When it was over, he fell asleep and appeared to me like some sad, freakishly oversized baby. I felt a strange, deepening sorrow for him and accepted that perhaps he was ruled by urges he couldn’t control.
“And this is for you,” she said, handing me Lakshmi’s book. “We have copies at the office. You should read it.” “Why?” “Everything you’ve told me was foreshadowed. She’s repeating a pattern. I’ll tell you, Tyler, the word that keeps coming up around this woman is ‘bitch.’ Read it. It’s loaded with ammunition.”
Emma was right — The Way of the Miraculous had not transformed Lakshmi from a spoiled child to a responsible adult. She was the same, impossible brat she had always been, a chaos agent who left others to clean up her nuclear messes.
