john lennon on god

You mean someone who has realized brahman won't enjoy watching a good tv show or a movie? A good show or movie incites emotions within me, and it is usually enjoyable to be moved by ficiticious drama (as long as you realise it is Maya and are not bound by it).

Bra, something I saw in Victoria's Secret catalogues and loved,
Man, someone who appreciates a bra,
Me, a name I call my self,
Fa...

 

Bhaskar – most important observation. I have often thought about this but William Butler Yeats, the Irish mystic who went with Khrishnamurti, Madame Blavatsky and that grouping, had a more ponderous observation. Yeats writes: “What portion in the world can the artist have/Who has awakened from the common dream/But dissipation and despair?” In a word, Awakening in the West brings despair. I have an essay but will have to find it somewhere about Dr. Suzuki at Columbia in the 1950s introducing the students to zen – when they stratched the surface of their consciousness they found nihilism. Such was the lot of John Lennon as Yeats describes. Later in life, in torment, he wrote, “I was the Walrus, but now I’m John.” IN Los Angeles, he made a fool out of himself in a bar with his friend Harry Neilson – getting drunk and putting a kotex on his head. He was thrown out of the bar when he said to a waitress, “Do you know who I am?” She answered, “You’re an ass hole with a kotex on his head.” In Jung’s last address and last visit to Harvard, he pointed out that Jesus failed after the Transfiguration – falling into disgrace and allowing himself to be treated as an earthly king and riding on an ass on Palm Sunday – these are similar events. My only understanding of these three events is that we of European decent are only recently coming out of earth consciousness – Jesus is our first avatar – India has had 10 incarnations of Vishnu and perhaps longer beneath the waves of Indonesia . . .

 

In which case, what Lennon experienced was not brahman. It is not the same as being moved by a television show, his behaviour smacked of lust, of being a slave to phyiscal pleasure and the vagaries of his own mind. That is not realization. That is not the sign of someone who has seen brahman, it is the sign of one who is completely ensnared in the throes of maya. If you are going to speak in terms of Hindu scriptures, then you should see it through, with all related ideas, not just take whatever is convinient to make your point and leave.

No an artist does not have nothing but despair after waking from the dream of Maya. In case you have not heard of the mahabharata, the longest poem written in the history of mankind, was by the great realized sage Vyasa. The ramayana of valmiki was 24,000 verses long, he was a great gnani. So many great composers, poets and painters, were realized souls first, their blissful experience of union was what brought power to their art. And yes, that music and poetry is far, far more powerful than anything Lennon was capable of even imagining. Art does not die when realization comes, that is when it is born.

 

Simple thing. Awakening is awakening, just as sleep is sleep. When a westerner sleeps, it is no different form when an Indian sleeps. If it brings despair and degradation, then it is not an awakening at all, it is just a new trick of maya.

 

Such wonders...

A hindu revivalist meeting on the agnosticism forum

Occam

Ps.
Oh..and as a mater of interest...
In hinduism..is there any penalty for not being
a hindu?

If one specifically believed there is insufficient empirical
phenomena to support the veracity of the religions claims.

Does the dogma of the religion say punnishment will result?

[aside from the ignorance of the religions 'truth' ]

 

Bhaskar beat me to it. I was also just about to write that Lennon may have picked up intellectual snippets about this or that, but was hardly Christ-like. Anger in particular. Not just righteous anger but frequent and blazing violence at some periods of his life. His 'missing months' with May Pang were missing because he was constantly drunk on vodka (after previously being addicted to heroin). There's a theory with some data to support it now that the guilt he carried with him was that Stu Sutcliffe died of a brain hemorrage following an attack by JL in Hamburg when he voolently kicked his own friend's head in...


There's a book on music I have somewhere where a 60s hit by the Animals is analysed (in a quote from another book) by a musicologist. He spends a whole page saying how the song modulates from this to that key, how the rhythm changes -- actually I'd have to look it up to quote it to properly convey the high-brow analysis the hit is subjected to, as though the groups had spent a month delving into the deep musical implications of this composition. Then the author of the book containing that quote has a quote from the Animals themselves: "We piled into the back of a van to head for a gig. One of us started saying nonesense words and someone else began singing them and I wrote it down." My point is not to get too serious about what Lennon was saying, writing, doing. He flitted from one thing to another. He also sang "But if you want a revolution, don't you know that you can count me out." (In the days when revolution ususally meant violent overthrow, and he meant that, not to support Maoist violent revolution.) But later he wasn't sure and in concert sang: "Don't you know that you can count me out - in!" (Both options.)

I still recall the May Pang book and the image of Lennon having to be shoved, screaming and violently kicking, into the back of a car and driven off. At the time he was consumed with violence and hatred (and drink).

He also did sing of peace etc. The whole of the man has to be understood as best we can. We all have a number of sides to us. But Lennon was hardly the stuff of what saints are made of. And I'm a fan!

Akasha7

 

hey sorry to burst your bubble, I Am The Walrus, was written in response to a fan's informing to the beatles that their songs had entered the likes of other literature educated at school. John found this funny so he decided they would write a song that was so obscure but with so much room for interpretation, that it would have people around the world argueing over the meaning of the lyrics.

most of it were just references to silly things like personal jokes of theirs, old songs, foods of preference, and cultural icons or motifs or events of their time.

what a wonderful joke on us all

 

Now that stoner bill mentions it, I do remember reading what John had to say on the subject, that the words were just a way of messing around with people who were trying to read more into his words than were there. I bet he'd giggle if he saw this thread.

 

as far as i'm concerned, john is a god. whenever i hear imagine, i feel my soul being lifted from me, and i feel in a total state of peace. actually, whenever i hear his voice i feel at peace. he has a magical quality. i'm sure there is some kind of god in all of us but john lennon is our century's jesus. does anyone feel the same?

 

Not at all.

 

God is a word, and the mainstream definition of god is entirely false... people just redefine what 'god' means in order to say "i believe in god" but it's all b ullshit... why must people fear disbelief in god so much th at they redefine their own special definition of God so that they can claim they believe in a god and there is one.

 

john is cool


but I hate to tell him

he is not the eggman

In fact my cat is.


j/k

 

There is nothing wrong with faith, if its foundations are strong.

 

Bhaskar

Thankyou.... For your courtesy

It is with glad heart
That this one.. occam, understands you to mean.
That one is NOT penalised for NOT being a hindu.
[by the religion itself]

This elevates occam's perspective on this faith.
Any faith that promotes violence or sufering as a
result of non-adherance to that faith/religion.

CANNOT be accepted by occam as a valid path.

This should be plainly obvious to all thinking beings.

Occam

 

john is a role model not a god

people dont look to gods as role models
people shouldnt look to lennon as a god

 

Occam was once a cockaroach?
No..wrong phylum.

But he WAS once a small thoughtless marsupial.

 

Bill

As was jesus.

Occam

 

There are no individual gods. The same divinity is in Jesus and in Lennon, in Krishna and in Occam. That divinity, the life force, the consciousness, is the same in all. There are those, who knowing this essential divine unity of the universe, interact in this world in the same way that different parts of the body interact with each other. Then there is no problem. Do your nose and your big toe ever have arguments? Do your tongue and belly button ever fight? Think!

However, there are many, the vast majority, who move in this world under the delusion of separateness, under the sway of the ego and the demands of the body. Even such people, as they grow spiritually, have flashes of the divine in themselves. John was one such person, who was express those flashes of divinity through music. However, he was still a slave to the dictates of his body and mind.

He wasn't the best role model, because he did not practice what he preached. He spoke of peace, but he was often violent. He had no inner peace, he was tortured and angry. He was often lost in a haze of drugs and alcohol, fooling around with other women when he was married... These are not divine qualities, these are not things to mirror. These are not signs of one who has mastery over himself.

Jesus showed all the opposite qualities. He had infinite patience. He loved all beings as one. He was self sacrificing to the very end. H ehad total control over his own mind and body, he was a master of himself and that was what gave him the power to be what he was and do what he did.

Lennon was a good musician and a good writer. But he was not a master of himself. In the end, he was just a celebrity. This, from one of his bigger fans. Don't let stardust get in your eyes.

 

Lets remember how JL wrote I am the Walrus before we interpret it too much.

According to him, im pretty sure, it was just a bunch of random phrases that he liked and strung together. Individually, these may have had meanings to JL, but there is no way we can peice that together from context, because there isnt any.

 

john cheated on yoko? i find that hard to believe, but will believe if you can find a source on that. actualyl a source on all of that stuff, regarding his life after he left the beatles.