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Today Plan for today. Because if today is important, when tomorrow becomes today, it will be important, too. But when today is not important, tomorrow can never be important. All it can be is a line on top of which you scribble something, "Lunch. Meeting. This and that." That's all tomorrow is. But today is the magical day. Today is the magical moment. Maharaji, somewhere in the moment...
Modified by Cynthia at Thu, May 10, 2007, 06:05:20
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Well this is from Prem Rawat, the guy who would like everyone to forget about all his yesterdays. Think I'll stick with Santayana for inspiration: "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it"
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actually it's 'Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it'
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Well I haven't got the relevant book to hand - but all the aguely respectable Internet Sources agree that the original (though now much paraphrased) is: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it
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Falcon and Nik: As I have mentioned before when this topic came up, the quote was on a board which was over Jim Jones' chair in the Jonestown pavilion. Community members sat in the pavilion every night and listened to Jones rant at them. Marianne
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Thanks for posting it. Beyond words...
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Thanks for that reminder Marianne I had quite forgotten about the Jones quote - and as I began the misquoting in this thread let's be clear what Satayana actually wrote: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. which is somewhat different from Jones's Those who do not remember the past..... Satayana was pointing out the fate of the amnesiac and the uneducated - while Jones was admonishing those wilfully forgetful in his flock who might be tempted to consider a past that didn't fit with history according to Jim Jones. N
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May be Ocker meant Shiva's noble-prize winning older brother, V.S. Naipaul, who is indeed a gifted and skilled author.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_Naipaul
Goodbye to Little Red Ridinghood by the sociogist Dr. Thomas Robbins, first published in the magazine Update X 2 in June 1986
"There are times, of course, when taking responsibility does entail
accepting a share of the blame. The late Shiva Naipaul, no admirer of
cults, expressed some critical irony regarding the exculpatory impact
of brainwashing theories in his book on Jonestown.
But caution, humility and contrition were not conspicuous among the
defectors. They emerged from their years of subservience and loyalty
untouched, they tell us, by any moral taint--the hapless victims of
"mind control" and "coercive persuasion," heroes and heroines who ought
to be applauded for their courage rather than pardoned for their sins.
"The one thing we have learned," wrote one of their leading lights, "is
not to blame ourselves for the things Jim made us do."27
An activist who was the director of the Human Freedom Center had defected from the People's Temple in 1975.
It was then that she had made the remarkable discovery--under the
tutelage of the mind control experts--that neither she nor any other of
the reformed disciples bore any responsibility for anything untoward
they might have done during their Temple years. The burden was entirely
Jim's.28
But the burden--of explanation as well as moral responsibility--is
never exclusively Jim's (or Adolf's or Muammar's or Swami's). Things
just aren't that simple."
27. Shiva Naipaul, Journey to Nowhere (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980), p. 157.
28. Ibid., p. 180.
Modified by Andries at Fri, May 11, 2007, 13:57:09
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was the man I was thinking of but as I have read Shiva Naipaul's "Journey To Nowhere" I confused the two as one. I cannot remember the specifics of Jones' followers written about in your quote but usually only the "insiders" in any cult do "bad stuff", the main group are as ignorant and deluded as we premies were and have no need to blame themselves for anything but bad judgements. I honestly don't think I ever lied once or did one ethically challenged action as a premie being a premie.
What concerns me most about Elan Vital is the way that Rawat has sucked his followers into beliefs/situation where they are basically all liars about him, his history and their "experience".
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>But the burden--of explanation as well as moral responsibility--is never exclusively Jim's (or Adolf's or Muammar's or Swami's). Things just aren't that simple."< Well yes, but neither is it tenable to arrive at a position where all participants in a cult are deemed equally culpable for acts of harm. Cults are never organised as anarcho syndicalist collectives, they always involve hierarchies mediated by power relationships. It also seems to me to lack insight, to take any human who has come through a traumatic experience - surviving mass suicide or close involvement with such an event, and to expect the ready adoption of personal responsibility. The whole point about a 'mass event' is that almost all humans will experience it as being part of 'something bigger than me'. Only by a process of sustained reflection and the consequent restablishment of a non group sense of a 'moral me' can the individual accept the responsibilities that Naipaul and Robbins are suggesting are conveniently absent in the 'reformed disciple'. The arguments in Robbins' article continue to be exercised, primarily as a dispute between psychologists and sociologists of religion -and in respect of the latter the concluding line from one of the following links says a great deal: >This rather good book demonstrates the very bad condition of the social science of religion.<
http://www.cjsonline.ca/reviews/miscults.html also http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0SOR/is_4_64/ai_112357744
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I think that if I had the power and authority then I would eventually surround myself with yes-men. I think that over the years I would not be able to resist the temptation. Fortunately for others I do not have this power and authority to do so.
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An angle I hadn't noticed, in such clear perspective. It explains a lot. Then of course those yes men will surround themselves with yes men and so on and so on.
A telling pattern, to be found in religious and cult phemona, and wherever people feel it to their advantage to persuade others to mistake belief for knowing, or to dictate belief.
Unfortunately where the assumed power and authority takes on the proportions of an Absolute Order; as in the grandiose claims of such a "guru"; the "yessing" of the yes men approaches becoming totally blind and without reason, common sense, or any sense of fair play toward other human beings.
Absolute power and authority corrupts the holder; but makes mindless life slaves with the word 'yes'.
I could still probably benefit from a night class in 'when to say no' or when to walk away.
Lp
Modified by Lp at Sat, May 12, 2007, 06:20:56
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Andries, I would love nothing more than to be your yes-man. Before I start, though, may I comment on how wonderful you look today? Oh, and that was a brilliant post by the way. 
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Wow Jim, It is really, really amazing the way you immediately recognised the brilliance of Andries' post and the wonderfully direct and perfect way you expressed that incredibly intuitive insight but then that's what we've come to expect from you and I guess that's why we love you so much.
Your post keeps ringing in my ears, along with your post saying that every moment is a new beginning, another opportunity to
learn even more. I remember staring at your gorgeous face, the eyes I have
grown to love dearer than anything, the kindness around your mouth as you
speak beauty into my heart, and I remember your face like that from
years ago, in teh Vancouver ashram, and every time our eyes met ever since. By now my heart is
so full that your words end up floating on the ocean of gratitude
between us. I know I am not alone in this, you can sense the gratitude
in the air as the air itself.
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Don't you think having yes men around you would be stultifying, even maybe denying you something you really want and need - the honest conversation of friends.
The sum is greater than it's parts. We know that. Our parents lived it in a way we have been spared so far.
This idea some people have that having power and authority over others makes it any different for them in being a part not the sum is flawed in my opinion. I think you are right that people in positions of power are affected by the position and influenced probably even more by the people around them than someone leading a more sober life.
Do you want to have a position of power and authority, Andries?
A yes do anything to have one
B yes as long as I don't have to do anything horrible to get it
C yes as long as I don't have to do anything horrible to keep it
D yes as long as everyone was really nice to me all the time
Oh bugger it, how about, no not really?
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