December 11, 2009

• Books of the Realizations 3 and 4

  THE BOOKS OF THE REALIZATIONS: A series of philosophical/spiritual essays

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  Today's blog entry comprises the THIRD & FOURTH BOOKS of THE REALIZATIONS.  These five chapters were written in 1999 as a preface to what eventually became "The Universal Blog". , a website where I post my spiritual entries. The Books of the Realizations tell the story of my own "personal" journey toward enlightenment. For those of you who might stumble across this entry and are interested in perusing the complete text of Five Books or Chapters right now, the complete Books of the Realizations are on the web HERE. Chapter Three and Four, or The Third and Fourth Book follows. MFN (Originally Posted: 3/23/05)

  The Realizations
  the true story of faith and how it can be obtained.
  by Michael F. Nyiri

  THE BOOK OF THE FIRST REALIZATON

  THE BOOK OF THE SECOND REALIZATON

  THE BOOK OF THE THIRD REALIZATION

  Another Plane of Existence

  Dissatisfied with the search for meaning and purpose in life, by the dawn of the eighties, I had pretty well given up on gaining any insights at all, and dove headfirst into a life of rampant hedonism, fueled by the good money I made as a truck driver, and then warehouse manager for the retail chain. Spirituality really had nothing to do with my life at this point, but I gained the third realization as a result of experimentation with drugs. The spiritual meaning imparted to me came after reading Carlos Casteneda and injesting vast amounts of LSD.

  Every disjointed connection in my tortured psyche was shown to me under the influence of LSD. Although I was using the drug recreationally, the truths it gave to me far outshone it's entertainment qualities. First and formost, it was the first drug I ever took which "altered" the concept of reality. People have long discussed the hallucinogenic qualities of acid. Even before I used the substance, there were quite a few treatises written on the subject. I knew that with a drug that powerful, people could tend to believe the misconstrued reality, and in effect, go crazy. That is what Albert Hoffman had in mind when he invented the properties of the drug to study the schizophrenic mind.. The main thing LSD taught me was that even though the hallucinogenic feelings and images seemed to be real, I knew they were not. But little things the drug did to the mind, like bending the perception of one's field of peripheral vision, for instance, told me that the human mind is not being fully tapped, and there are perceptions and properties of the mind, that through experimentation with drugs like LSD, that have not fully been realized by mankind.

  In no way do I condone drug use. As I have related,, the genesis of my introduction to the drug culture came about merely as a result of the times and my youth.The drug itself was not beneficial. The opening of Aldous Huxley's "doors of perception" was somewhat beneficial by default. Since I now saw that the mind does not use all of it's power, I wanted to see how many doors I could open. In the end, what I realized was quite simple. There is another plane of existence which coincides with the corporeal plane in which we all live. It is not visible, but it exists, Just like the perceived realities which I experienced while on acid,, my mind perceived that the current reality , i.e., our existence on Earth in the "here and now" was not the only existence. I did not receive this realization from Religion, but from "expanding the mind" through mind altering substances. There of course is a precedent for this. The indigenous peoples of this continent used peyote and psilocybin as a means of "connecting" to the spiritual godhead.. Some tribes believed that the substances opened a "spiritual window" through which they could gain insight into the spiritual world. Although Western Civilization discounts such beliefs, they are somewhat true.

  The process of my "realizations" was not quick nor prescient. Throughout time, with the life lessons I learned gradually simply by the process of living and noticing the clues life had to offer, I came to know the truth. Eventually, the drug use abated.. As I grew older, I did not need this means of entertainment, and in fact was nearly fired from another management position attained at the retail establishment because of drug use off work. That point proved moot however, as the retail chain could not find a foothold in the Los Angeles marketplace, and went out of business, so I found myself out of work again in 1982.

  Since my position as a "Merchandise Manager" for this chain was pretty far up the store management ladder, I found myself without a job but with a sizable severence income. I used the three months taking vacation trips and spending money. I had three months rent paid, on the apartment in which I lived, so sought to take pleasure in the time off. By Christmas, I had a new job at a new retail establishment,, but farther down the chain of command. When one retail chain goes out of business, the pond is then full of managers who need jobs with the established chains. I had experienced this firsthand. My "Godfather" had been downsized. Now so was I. Before I gained employment during Christmas season of 1982, I was hit hard by the fourth realization. Up till then, I had really been abusing alcohol. Although the drug use tapered off, I had a penchant for drinking large quantities of beer. One evening, while at a bar with a friend, I had "a bit too much" to drink, and found myself literally "in the gutter" after being beat up in the bar parking lot by a couple of bikers who stole my money, broke my glasses, and knocked me out.

  This was enough of a realization that I had to quit drinking.

  THE BOOK OF THE FOURTH REALIZATION

  Destiny Is Preordained by the Self

  A lot of the lessons I have learned come from simply living in the world, watching the actions and reactions of people, and using the information gained to chart my own course through the time I have on the planet. After a particularly brutal beating while drunk, I literally found myself "in the gutter" and quit drinking. Since I had been drinking , mainly beer, since before I was even of a legal age, I had been pulled over a few times on the road while drunk, and eventually even had my driver's license revoked by the State of California. With a new job at a new retail establishment, I realized I had a commitment to make to my sanity. So I gave up drinking "cold turkey", on my own, simply because it was the most intelligent thing to do at the time.

  Again, like most of the "realizations" which have come to me, this was not a spiritual message from some ethereal presence. It was a hard life lesson which had to be followed. The fourth realization was that I was completely in control of my destiny. Other people had problems "going sober". Other people needed some sort of crutch to get them through life. I realized I did not need any crutches. I suddenly realized, that I was totally in control of every aspect of my life. I also realized that even though no one admitted it, they could "throw away their crutches" as easily as I had. Some friends would tell me it was only because of "my nature" that I could go from drinking twelve cans of beer a night to total abstinence. (Well, actually not total abstinence. I started eating a lot of ice cream. But I never felt this was another crutch. I like ice cream.)

  If a human being wants to accomplish something, it is in "his nature" to do so. The "self-help" movement of the seventies was merely an attempt to foist this philosophy on paying searchers, most of whom didn't "realize" it was that easy in the first place.I spent the remainder of the decade sober, and rose through the ranks of the retail establishment, finally becoming an "Area Manager" in charge of four departments before the company went out of business. My personal life was fairly stable at this point. I had a couple of relationships with "girlfriends" that didn't last too long, and I was writing poetry , drawing artwork, and making videos.

  Since the fourth realization had already taught me that I was in charge of my life, the loss of meaningful employment did not really bother me. I pretty much knew that I had nothing to worry about, I knew I would get a job, and did. Even before the company closed it's doors, I had found work in management for another retail chain. Since I obtained the job before the company I worked for closed it's doors, this time I didn't receive any severence benefits. I did receive the benefit of getting a higher management position than I would have if I had waited for the pond to fill up with other out of work fish.

  My understanding of the principles of life were paying off for me, Of course one cannot with certainty say that one is completely in charge of his destiny. One could get hit by a bus crossing the street. But essentially, the roads one chooses to take in life are chosen either because of knowledge of self , or because of the philosophical equivalent of a coin toss. Those who misconstrue the lessons life teaches and do not learn by them are usually the ones who complain about the random nature of existence. There are those who passively become part of their own scenery, and there are those who carry around their own paintbrushes.

  My father's family came to this country from Hungary.. He always told my siblings and myself that an explosive temper is part of being Hungarian. I have always had an explosive temper. But it became very interesting to me, that although I do tend to get "explosive" and yell a lot when confronted with small trifles, the larger problems and setbacks which have occured in my life do not really bother me. I seem to sense that even though a major loss like that of one's livelihood, or even a friend's death, will not really "bother" me. I never get really upset when major setbacks occur. If anything, I tend to become calmer. I see the connections taught by life. I learn and I go on. So far, I have been either lucky, or I have been able to gauge my existence and react to each setback in a proper manner.

  Although not a true realization, this quasi realization had occured some years earlier after I had been in a car wreck on a particularly hairy California freeway on the way home from classes at USC. It was raining, and my Volkswagen hit a puddle while maneuvering a turn, hydroplaned, and hit a fence at 60 mph. I walked away from the wreck with no injuries and had no one else in the car. Serendipity had been at work and I spun out between packs of traffic, and although one whole side of the freeway had to be closed down in order to get what was left of my car disconnected from the chain link fence, nobody else was involved in the accident. I remember thinking that I was indeed lucky to be alive, and I remained calm as two tow trucks arrived to try to figure out a way to remove my vehicle. The highway patrolmen were very humorous in the situation. It seems that the fence I had destroyed was a known "danger zone" and had just been repaired a few weeks earlier following another wreck. Since the fence separated the freeway from a concrete "wash", it was serendipity again that decreed that it had been fixed or else I might have sailed into the culvert and met my final realization. That was not the case, however. I always will remember the song playing on the radio right before I spun out. It was "Jesus is Just Alright With Me" .

  I spent only a year at the last retail establishment before getting fired for what was supposedly an infraction of company security. I still believe I did nothing "wrong" but was merely a pawn of the company's established principles. Although a key carrying "duty manager" in charge of the total operations of the store, in the Christmas shopping season of 1987 I offered a friend of mine, a church deacon in Orange county, a "markdown" for some defective typewriters which his churchmembers would repair and use in the ministry. I did not use the company's "posted" markdown procedure, and was recorded by a security camera. The store manager even saw these events as ridiculous, but was a slave to the company dictates. I was without work again. But even this turn of events for me did not signal a mind-boggling sense of loss. A few months earlier my best friend had died in surgery following an operation to repair his spinal column after he fell twenty feet off of a "picking machine" at his work pulling merchandise for distribution by the Toy manufacturer for which he worked. Neither of these events caused me that much grief. I had lost jobs before. I had lost my parents. The events merely set me up for the fifth realization.

  Each decade taught me lessons. Each realization built upon the last. Things change, people die, time marches on. You either learn to live with what you've got, or you lose your somewhat fragile sanity. Some people cannot cope with loss, but these people probably have not been able to learn from their life lessons. This is what I have learned, and what I am learning every day of my life.

  The stage was being set for the fifth realization.

  Next time: The final Chapter, or click here for the rest of the story.

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  From the Philosophy Section in 1999:  For years I have held to a belief system which incorporates lessons from life which I have learned. I call these lessons realizations. They lead to the final realization, from which humankind will embrace the Universal Mind. These beliefs are not new, and are not mine. They are realizations which affect everybody. With the Millennium upon us, I feel compelled to write down the history and origins of these realizations. This is a work in progress.

  The Personal Journey to the Realizations is over for the writer in the book of the Fifth Realization.
  From the beginning part of the foundation for AllThingsMike consisted of a philosophical discussion of existence and the existence of the Universal MInd, which supplants and replaces all religion and philosophical thought which has gone before. MFN 1999

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