Issue 71 | Correspondence | The Sun Magazine

Correspondence

Do not raise the price of THE SUN. THE SUN is not a business, it exists because of divine inspiration. What makes it continue has nothing to do with finances. Do not fall into the “box” of old world money thinking which so many of the new age “stars” are now into. THE SUN will continue to beam and you know it.

I love you very much even though at times you remind me of a good bottle of wine that is going bad by festering.

Charles Merrill World’s Edge Clarity Farm
Edneyville, N.C.

You have my praise (and two gift subscriptions, to date). Please accept my heartfelt criticism. It is my only one.

Where is the balance that politics could bring to your magazine? There was Mark Satin’s “New Age Politics,” but month to month we find little of what cannot be omitted from “a magazine of ideas.” Politics in the new age surely needs the boost that grassroots journalism can lend it.

Would like to see more of the above mentioned, issue to issue. To leave politics aside, or to deal with it only on occasion, only invites us to do the same in our attempts at engaging thoughts and dialogue in a political world.

Ben Wheeler New Haven, Connecticut

While ploughing through stacks of Bon Appétit and Mother Earth News (with some East-West Journals for a little balance), I came upon an old issue of THE SUN, and a tender spark was rekindled in my soul. Enclosed is enough to cover a subscription, plus some for inflation.

Dixie Mullineaux Stevenson, Maryland

In Issue 65, we printed a letter from Barbara Mor about illness and the suffering of children. I responded to her in that issue. Later, I sent her a note:

A few weeks after printing your letter, I had a dream in which I was walking down the hall of a hospital-like place where children — all badly burned or otherwise suffering — were lying in beds that were built like cradles.

The next day I realized this was similar to what you described. The dream hurt: up against such pain one’s beliefs — my beliefs — in the ultimate “justice” of existence are sorely tested (God’s justice; not men’s justice). I felt like the dream was your gift to me, putting me in touch with the harder realities that need to be reconciled, and not just with words.

 

Thanks for your note to me, about your dream. It helps me to know I’ve said something meaningful. The dream of burned children reminds me of something relevant:

In 1971-72 I worked at a free school, for teenage kids, in San Diego. We mostly had free-for-all rap sessions about “the world.” There were two girls there who really disliked each other; one espoused her notion of Krishna Hinduism, the other called herself a Maoist. They were both bright, and typified, I think, the young American versions at that time of those philosophies.

So when we were discussing Vietnam one day, the Krishna/Karma girl said that anti-war activity was a kind of trap, since everything that happened was a part of God. Someone asked her if the burning of Vietnamese children with napalm was a part of God. She said, “Yes.” The Maoist girl said, “You mean it’s their karma to get burned alive by napalm?” And the Krishna girl said, “Yes.” At that point the Maoist girl leaned across the circle and punched her in the mouth.

So that’s the problem: when our desire and capacity to see the World as a sacred gestalt becomes, on another level, a monstrous justification of what must not be justified.

I myself really lean toward the mystical — I like the idea that our minds can heal our bodies. And I believe it works sometimes — as ESP works sometimes (I’ve had enough precognition and telepathic experiences to know it’s real!). And I read with interest all the mind-healing articles that float across my eyes. A recent interesting one was in Science Digest, April 1981; it was about “image therapy” in which cancer patients, many of them kids, practiced daily visualization of, for example, their white cells as knights attacking the malignant cells, in the form of mean little beasts, etc. With much success.

But the point always remains: different capacities of people, different genetic vulnerabilities to cancer. Very young children, like two-year-old Chad Green, probably could not very successfully practice sustained visualization therapy. In the face of a lot of unknowns — including the Mysteries of Cosmic Justice — it seems the best rule of thumb is: Do whatever works to help justify your own pain. But beware of any system, no matter how well-intentioned, that allows us to justify, or “explain,” the pain of others. Because “the pain of others” is 99% of human history, and how much of that long stretch of suffering and real agony do we really want to rationalize?

Barbara Mor Albuquerque, New Mexico

Thaddeus Golas’ essays appeared in Issue 69. He is the author of The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment.

— Ed.

What a delightful and voluminous surprise! Yesterday the 20-copy shipment arrived before anything else. (Today brought your letter.) I wasn’t sure you would want to run the last piece at all, and of course didn’t know when.

After my car’s engine blew on the way to Santa Cruz (therefore no conference and no article), and that being a most uncommon mulishness in my trusty ’65 Mustang fastback, I wasn’t in an optimistic glow. (Just bemused again.)

Therefore I appreciated all the more that your presentation was exquisite on all counts — typography, proofreading, additional mandalas, and all. I had thought I was getting nowhere because I wasn’t getting another book done (not wanting to just keep repeating the Guide), and suddenly your publication of these short pieces makes an important statement of record, in the perfect vehicle. My appreciation to you knows no bounds.

For your information, in case anyone asks, I am enclosing a short rundown on what I meant by space relations being the “inverse” of mass relations. (Will do an article on this sometime later.)

The whole issue is great — Baca’s poetry was one of the first things to attract me to THE SUN — and “The First Day” is true poetry — art being the near-impossible achievement of using mass to evoke in others the knowing of the spirit.

Bless you and thank you.

 

APPEARANCES

Although there are many ways in which the space/energy/mass relation is repeated on all levels, like wheels within wheels (for instance, gas/ liquid/solid), there is also an appearance of oppositeness which is loosely suggested in this comparison:

IN SPACE
RELATIONS:
IN MASS
RELATIONS:
Like attracts like. Every action has equal and IDENTICAL reaction. (A tiny thought of glory becomes a blaze of GLORY!) “Opposites” attract. Every action has equal and opposing reaction.
Expansion brings others closer (merging in “same space”). Expansion repels others. (Force, enlargement, etc.)
Contraction separates entities. Contraction brings others closer.
All received vibrations are repeated and sent on. All received vibrations are held if possible, or repelled — setting up counter-vibration.

— So you can see that as you acquire some spiritual awareness, the physical world begins to look more and more as though it is upside down and backwards!

Fortunately, however, the material world is still rational, lawful, and consistent in its craziness.

Thaddeus Golas Redway, California
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