Written Messages

Paris, France

7 May, 2019

 

 

Author Paul Johnson’s reputed book named “Intellectuals’’ was presented to me by a devotee Kriyaban saying “Your Swadhyay teachings are well-reflected in this book”. The contents of the book are stated below:

 

1.       Jean Jacques Rousseau: ‘An Interesting Madman’

2.       Shelley, or the Heartlessness of Ideas

3.       3. Karl Marx: ‘Howling Gigantic Curses’

4.       Henrik Ibsen: ‘On the Contrary’

5.       Tolstoy: ‘God’s Elder Brother’

6.       The Deep Waters of Ernest Hemingway

7.       Bertolt Brecht: Heart of Ice

8.       Bertrand Russell: A Case of Logical Fiddlesticks

9.       Jean Paul Sartre: ‘A Little Ball of Fur an Ink’

10.   Edmund Wilson: A Brand from the Burning

11.   The Troubled Conscience of Victor Gollancz

12.   Lies, Damned Lies and Lillian Hellman

 

Thank Goodness! The profound - sensitive - brilliant - blissful Sages of Ancient India, were not “Intellectuals’’, but holy humans with immeasurably deep Insight in the dimension of ‘Is-ness’ without any trace of ‘I’-ness or ego-gratification in any form (gross or subtle / open or clandestine). There was only seeing ‘what is’ and with the fire of pure seeing, the burning of all ‘what should be’ - manufactured by the myth called mind and its cunning calculations. Only the validity of the mind for performing practical tasks was utilised. In modern times, this old sage-phenomenon was seen in J. Krishnamurti. And perhaps in Rajanish (Osho) too. Pure energy of holistic sacred Understanding without any trace of profane entanglements with shoddy mental undertakings.

 

Overpowering egoism and self-pity made Jean-Jacques Rousseau an ‘Interesting Madman’ who had expired in 1778 ten years before the famous French Revolution. He received many compliments after his passing away. To Shelley he was a sublime genius. For Schiller he was ‘a Christlike soul for whom only Heaven’s angels are fit company’.

 

Shelley died at the age of twenty nine! He never had money for his needs and had defrauded many people at many places, as there was no other way for him to live.

The ability to get the best of both worlds - the world of progressive self-righteousness and the world of privilege of all sorts, including rampant sexual gratification, is a theme which runs through the lives of many leading intellectuals including the famous Bertrand Russell!

 

Communist Ideologue Bertolt Brecht’s life-long womanising was justified by quoting Lenin and arguing one had to be ruthless with individuals to serve the collective!

 

Be aware of ‘’Intellectuals’’ and suspect their advice! The worst of all despotisms is the heartless tyranny of “ideas’’ of the Intellectuals without any trace of loving insight whatsoever!

 

In spite of the wonderful intellectual gifts, Karl Marx’s howling gigantic curses in the hight and depth of anger, were rather unfortunate and made anyone sensitive so sad. His vision of the dictatorship of the proletariat had taken the concrete and terrifying shape. Stalin - the ruler who achieved absolute power - was just beginning his catastrophic assault on Russian peasantry. All this happened before Karl Marx’s death in January 1929. Twenty million were led to mass slaughter on the sacrificial altar of Karl Marx’s ideas in Godly Tolstoy’s holy Russia he loved so dearly.

 

One thing that is seen from a study about most Intellectuals, is their scant regard for veracity, as they remain amused with their vanity and various vested interests, with their gratifications and glorifications in multiple forms of heartless ‘Ideas’. 

 

Earnest Hemingway sought the help of alcohol, a ‘Rum St. James’ in front of him while writing his ‘philosophy’, even a parody of his earlier work. The general level was naturally low. Readers driven by emotion-ego were impressed and influenced, although Hemingway was in the spinning circle of drink and depression. He was a man killed by his ‘’art’’. Let us learn that “art’’ is not enough - it is Awareness Division free (Divinity indeed) that is important.

Henrik Ibsen’s most satisfying gratification was to disagree with any other ‘Intellectual’ with a nod of the head indicating ‘no’ and then beginning his assertive ego saying ‘on the contrary’ —- an intellectual drudgery par excellence! His extraordinary vanity was well brought out in Max Beerbohm’s famous cartoon. He always carried a stick with a huge gold head!

 

 

The name of Jean Paul Sartre in this list of Intellectuals is an anomaly perhaps. His Existentialism (Being-ness) is Effortlessness -  Living in a state of let-go without  any trace of pursuits and their paradoxes of a shoddy little mind and its myth. As such it reflects the same wisdom of ancient sages. All efforts are ego-trips and all ego-trips are trips in the wrong direction - not in the direction of Divinity - the  Division free Awareness - right within one’s own Being inside. This is no where to go and thus there is no path to Truth!

 

The author Paul Johnson, however, did not appreciate this holy Being-ness! Thus, through this demonstration of his lack of understanding, he has perhaps qualified to add his own name to the list of  the very “Intellectuals” he criticises in his large book.

 

Similarly, Edmond Wilson’s humanism enabled him to understand well-enough mind-ego’s fanciful activities as also the right action of direct perception from the dimension of pure impartial intellect.

Victor Gollancz was an outstanding intellectual publicist of the twentieth century. He also made the modern sage (not intellectual, but immensely insightful), J. Krishnamurti, famous and known all over the world.

He abandoned his inherited orthodox Judaism and became a secular atheist. And he exercised the Jewish privilege of telling innocuous anti-Jewish jokes. He was successful in his Book publishing business and could make much money.

Lillian Hellman was a strange Intellectual to whom falsehood, it seems, came naturally! She achieved a position of prestige and power in the American intellectual scene which has seldom been equalled. Her writings were on the best-seller list for weeks and months. She got prestigious medals and honorary PhDs from several universities. She left nearly four million dollars, which went to two trusts. Lies, Damned lies and the superlative is Lillian Hellman - the Intellectual of prominence! She was expert in hooking people, then booking them and thereafter cooking them!

Jai Ancient Sages, Jai Insight