Essays

Managing Freedom

Freedom to drink and ask pressing questions

ONE NIGHT the US teacher and minister Harry E. Fosdick (1878-1969) was awakened by a tipsy young student banging on his door. After Dr. Fosdick had admitted him, the young man asked him to explain to him the difference between modernism and fundamentalism.

"Go home and sober up," advised Fosdick, "and come back when you have slept it off and I will gladly give you the answer."

The young man began to sob: "The trouble is, doctor, when I'm sober, I won't give a damn." [Of]

Maybe Reading and Listening to Wise Sayings Can Help You Sober Up

Vanity-free, a decent life goal

Some use of gongs has a meritorious history in itself. The sound of gongs are said to be spiritually helpful, and ringing bells too. Otherwise, study wise sayings neatly too.

Stay attuned to traditions that assist your acceptance and keep your gear tidy to thrive. Blandness and discretion may be better than vanity deals. Enough freedom helps kind souls to maintain interest in finding out - it comes by degrees. Make way for much human kindness and healthful explorations in time, before the good id gets stunted.

Human freedom helps human judgements to get better. Einstein thinks science depends a long way on free spirits, and so do I.

The surface wise teach management and use statistically had prognoses

Men and women nowadays probably need help against fragmented teachings and getting outsmarted. What is needed is what helps or sustains moderate self-assertion too.

The surface of traditions makes for acceptance.

Careful or religious-looking dwarfing silliness often yields future pay-offs, but - blunderbuss teachings may later serve top-dogs. Where holy and salient lore look silly, how can you tell who is wise? A wise one can tell. But maybe he won't.

In statistics, generalisations serve and suit statistical medleys.

Get peaceful so as to think well. Frantic cackling will regrettably not help all the way. Spare some room and time for your spiritualising efforts and reading excellent literature, if you can. Let bland judgements and evaluations help good management so that things go better after some time, at least. Avoid swerving from what helps sanity and holistic health.

Portents and polar bears

The art of taking portents is not much in vogue nowadays, is it? [Link] Look to nature for a solution that may work very well if transposed and very well modified. Biology paves the way for much and deep pondering, and comparisons.

"The Lord is the Sole Doer." A polar bear might want to add "- is a sole walker".

The art of molesting inappropriate reverance

A brown bear of the Jotunheimen mountain range in Norway stretched his neck one sunny morning and looked into a rather hidden mountain pass while he uttered: "To expand on some canon through molesting some of its key concepts and other constructs and look at things in many different ways can fit an art - a Yoganandic art of getting Christianity to be Hinduism, even. Regardless of what Yogananda did, such artfulness could mean progress in some fields. We saw it happen by Picasso and comrades [Pap]."

To the degree it is so, a clue has to be substantiated or documented. Substantiation rests in part on on how well things get measured, and on measuring devices. Things have to be done according to plan. And good measurements should eventually help us to compete in the art of living."

Yogananda also foretold that India would be one of the two leading countries of the world before 2000. If he had said "ten" it would not have been so wrong. Geoffrey Falk seeks to evaluate other of his prophesies as presented in an out-of-print booklet by Kriyananda (1974). Before he passed away in 1952, Yogananda had offered many predictions for the future. Included was a Third World War around the 1970s to spread communism throughout "much of the free world." Europe was said to be devastateed in the 1990s. The guru has predicted much else, and it is quite revealing. [Falk ch 26]

SRF has occasionally published Yogananda prophesies as found in talks by him, in Self -Realization Magazine through decades after his passing. SRF is more reserved about being categorical -

Back to India. Lore and other aspects of India teach how to get proficient in some Indian way. And jovial is sagacious. And you have to go deep into the value of looking foolish.

A lot of artistry lies in appropriate boundaries and skills in presenting imagery. Figurative mentions and proverbs could sabotage unwanted, undue, and undecent reverence.

Bottom lines

1. It can be wise to go for assets that are documented to be very useful.

2. Bulward in preferably accepted ways. Brick walls bulwark a home in some ways, hedges, buffer zones, neighbours and friends in others.

3. Self-help confidence in those who grow up, is a nice thing.

Literature  

Falk: Falk, Geoffrey D. Stripping the Gurus: Sex, Violence, Abuse and Enlightenment. 2008. On-line.
[www.strippingthegurus.com/stgsamplechapters/yogananda.asp]

Of: Fuller, Edmund. 2500 Anecdotes for All Occasions. New York: Wings, 1970.

Pap: Warnche, Carsten-Peter: Pablo Picasso 1881-1973. Edited by Ingo Walther. Vols 1-2. Køln: Benedikt Taschen, 1995.



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