I had a fireplace and an alter, above which I hung a 40x50 real color print of Shri Hans given to
me from the Ed D architecture collection.� Hans smiling like the sun and
squint/laughing (all the way to the bank, but who know then) and banging those
symbol wood thingies to a bhajan.

I always liked him and had
dreams of him being magical, divine, the source of and connection to the
eternal line of perfect masters on earth from the dawn of creation.  But I
once saw an old photo in India of him being held up by I think Bihai on one arm
and Charanand on the other, Shri Hans obviously in a final discombobulated
state of cerebral stroke, and I knew he hadn't sat in lotus position for three
days or whatever and then left his mortal body to merge with the infinite -- as
was said in the "Lord of the Universe" movie, or was it "Satguru
Has Come"?  ...well I suppose maybe he did anyway merge with the
infinite after sitting in perfect meditation for three days, we don't know do
we.  And I thought it was astonishing that he, the embodiment of bliss,
would walk around at a festival and whack people with his cane to secure
himself room to move through crushing crowds, and this ingrained in me
acceptance of his son Prem's tendency to sometimes be rude or harsh to or
dismissive of his loving premies. In the voiceover in the movie, or somewhere
or other, it was told that Shri Hans' premies felt it a great honor to be
whacked aside by him, a magic grace befallen them to be touched like that by
the Master's cane.  [Hasn't this been spoken of here before?] 

There was told of that one
fortunate blessed guy who Shri Hans for some reason always looked for to thrash
again and again, always asking "Where is that guy?"  ...as Prem
or Sampu recounted sometime, I believe.  But I suspect Shri Hans needed to
just kinda punch a way through the crowds for his own safety. I took it to
heart that anything the guy does or says to me is for my spiritual benefit, to
shock and uplift me out of my pit of unenlightenment, even if incomprehensible
or somehow mystically effecting the magic on me.  This is a common meme in
spiritual beliefs and disciplines isn't it, or as believed of a kind of magic
that pervades the living consciousness of a beneficent creation.  Don't
you often hear people saying that silly kneejerk phrase, "It's all
good." I no longer think things work quite that way.  But good cheer
and human warmth and kindness help all the way through, and a good lol at it
all lightens the heart if even if 
disappointingly there probably ain't not nothin' like any such thing as
Enlightenment with a big "E", and probly no big Father of All and his
son patiently waiting over on the other side of St. Peter's gate in a bloody
crown of thorns (It should be missing one thorn as I once saw one of the thorns preserved in the basilica of
Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in Rome, and the signboard INRI from the cross too,
and THE actual finger of the doubting St. Thomas now pretty shriveled and dried up which he stuck in side wound in the stomach of his resurrected returned-from-the-dead comrade to convince himself of the Resurrection -- millions of people have walked through that small well lit chamber at the east side of the basilica in states of relative reverence or just gaping curiosity. There's also the Domini Quo Vadis church at the place on the Via Appia where Peter, or was it Paul, encountered the ghost or was it the actual living Resurrected Christ who spoke to him on that spot in Rome at some later date; there are Jesus' footprints in stone there left in evidence that you can see with your own eyes, but only a copy while the original is kept elsewhere at "San Sebastiani Outside the Walls"... etc etc.

http://www.reidsitaly.com/destinations/lazio/rome/sights/quo_vadis.html

...nor is there likely a great nobodaddy smiling over everything, nor Abraham to fall back on, nor multitudes of Buddha incarnations, nor any of the great fantasies upheld only by faith -- well we just don't know for sure do we
-- except for there's the warmth of the sun that comes up in the east every day
-- and sometimes it eclipses.



One of my oldest past-girlfriends from our university days this year at an
elegant restaurant in front of a gathering of our friends inquiring about my
time as a premie, asked me if I believe in God.  I merely chuckled in
reply and said a simple, "No."  Later I heard she believes this
is just my psychological reaction from having been in and escaped a cult. 
Afterwards I thought I should have responded to her, replying, "Of which
god is it you ask my belief, which one? 
THE old one...or a new one...or what?"