PHOTONIC MANIFESTO XI

PHOTONIC MANIFESTO

A work in progress

by Yeshe Dorje

Just a quick hello and to ask how the pregnancy is coming along. Hope Anci is
not having any problems with morning sickness etc. lol. I have been reading
your 'manifesto' Tony and find it quite interesting. Although I disagree
with what Bush did, it is done and we should now try to make the best of it.
My Iraqi friends say that things are quieting down and everybody is very
very happy. The things you are seeing on TV are isolated and instigated by
terrorists and Iranian influence. This is not Bush propaganda but right from
the source. In a democracy Tony, if you disagree with someone, try to vote
them out next election. If you can't, then you are in the minority and for
the system to work, you bow to the majority but still express your views.
Don't be so passionate, it's all a game. I preferred the antics of the skirt
chasing Clinton to the war mongering Bush but the circle will close. No one
man can control the world forever. In my time I have seen Hitler, Mussolini,
Franco, Idi Amin, Saddam, Stalin, etc. all gone now. Take care. Have you got
a job yet??

Dad

Tony Peru wrote:

Hey Dad: it was great to speak with you, but send money ;-}

the best part of our conversation was when you told me you think i should calm down and your remembering the Unabomber, I found it strangely satisfying to be compared to a fellow Luddite though i will always be an advocate and practitioner of non-violence and this is a clear difference between us… as far as technology being the motivation for sabotage of the capitalist superstructure, as the magnetic fluctuations continue and we find ourselves coming towards zero point and the Zone, we’ll notice many confused beings who resist the dream created by the manufacture of consent. Some will call them terrorists but I will see Franz Fanon writing Wretched of the Earth because this was the dream he lived. To set his people free.

Here is an excerpt from Franz Fanon’s 1959 speech to the Congress of Black African Writers:

" Colonial domination, because it is total and tends to over-simplify, very soon manages to disrupt in spectacular fashion the cultural life of a conquered people. This cultural obliteration is made possible by the negation of national reality, by new legal relations introduced by the occupying power, by the banishment of the natives and their customs to outlying districts by colonial society, by expropriation, and by the systematic enslaving of men and women."

There is an extraordinary manipulation of the facts of life, the most basic collective agreements that people make that create the fabric of their society are shaped to serve the Moloch. This is why the Manifesto discusses thought and concepts of reality, dreams and realms, the very nature of reality is being manipulated by a Lie. A lie that kills boys, women and children.

i did get the job as you know and your advice not to abuse my job is wise, though i cannot stop saying jobs abuse us, although I believe my speaking my truth and refusing to live a lie has led to the best job I will ever have.

as far as your Iraqi friends who say everything is normal in Iraq, that the dissidents are rabble rousers and punks out to loot the conquered cities and protest the occupation, 'the source' who is a millionaire, who left Iraq so he could make more money, who offered me a place to stay in his paid mistress's home, though we all thought he was doing me a favor at the time and was attempting to be kind, i think his kind doesn't see a fraction of the suffering that goes on because I saw his indifference to the suffering he creates... not that i want to offend you by saying i don't like him because he has been kind to you, but i don't like him or his kind.... and I love you but i need to speak my truth now more than ever and it feels so gloriously free to speak my truth to my father...

Here is a commentary from the Salt Lake Tribune, a conservative rag reveals the Lie:

By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate

    AUSTIN, Texas -- "We ought to be beating our chests every day. We ought to look in a mirror and be proud, and stick out our chests and suck in our bellies, and say, 'Damn, we're Americans!' " -- Jay Garner, retired general and the man in charge of the American occupation of Iraq.
    Thus it is with a sense of profound relief that one hears the news that Garner is about to be replaced by a civilian with nation-building experience. I realize we have all been too busy with the Laci Peterson affair to notice that we're still sitting on a powder keg in Iraq, but there it is. In case you missed it, a million Iraqi Shiites made a pilgrimage to Karbala, screaming, "No to America!"
    Funny how media attention slips just at the diciest moments. I doubt the United States was in this much danger at any point during the actual war. Whether this endeavor in Iraq will turn out to be worth the doing is now at a critical point, and the media have decided it's no longer a story. Boy, are we not being served well by American journal- ism...
   But the weirdest media reaction of all is to the ongoing nonappearance of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. More and more stories quoting ever-unnamed administration officials appear saying the administration would be "amazed if we found weapons-grade plutonium or uranium" and that finding large volumes of chemical or biological material is "unlikely."
    Look, if there are no WMDs in Iraq, it means either our government lied us to us in order to get us into an unnecessary war or the government itself was disastrously misinformed by an incompetent intelligence apparatus. In either case, it's a terribly serious situation…
    Why do you think people were so angry at Lyndon Johnson over the Gulf of Tonkin? At Richard Nixon over the "secret war" in Cambodia?…"

So Dad, as far as your advice not to be so passionate this would be the same advice given me by my Buddhist teachers, and you are all of you right. But I am feeling the most incredible inspiration to speak the truth and that is what makes for a good manifesto...

we live in interesting times, and people will choose truth before the Lie, and in this choice I see the seeds of the Revolution.

i have just had some interesting dreams and thought about some interesting ideas, but don't worry Dad, i feel great! Its all a dream and we are dreamers dreaming

And soon i will be so busy being a Dad, the Manifesto will be done.

God Is A Dancing Bear

Walking along Fifth Avenue, realizing New York is deserted because this is a dream. As I walk towards a pile of trash beside the curb I notice an old record player. I’m hoping that it plays at 78 RPM, and check to see that it does. As I am bending over the machine, this bum appears behind me, taps me on the shoulder and says "God is a Dancing Bear." He points to a lamp shade sitting on the turntable, a medium sized ’50’s cylinder shade with holes symmetrically cut into the fabric. I take the turntable and shade home, which is a familiar apartment a few blocks away. The streets are black and white and I feel fear, hurrying along until I am relieved to put my key into the lock of the door. I am very happy to see the key turn, I remember this in particular, that there was this bliss energy as the key turned and the door opened. I reverently put the turntable in the center of the room, suspend a light bulb in the center of the lamp shade and turn on the dream machine.

What I want to tell you, what the manifesto ultimately reveals, is what I see when I catch glimpses past the veils of existence. Once HE Garchen Rinpoche taught me that the truth is beyond conceptual thought, my world was transformed by this awareness, and I became conscious in my dreams. In reading the Manifesto, you and I have become further aware that countless others have attempted and failed to describe the truth of our existence. This is why I meet all of these great teachers in my dreams. This dream is a gathering of the truth seekers.

Khenpo Sherab Orsul once gave a teaching by beginning with the concept of Mother, and these are some thoughts inspired by my teacher. Our mothers care for us unconditionally and love us more deeply than any other being ever will. They are our first and best teacher, for who else would feed us from their breast and make unconditional sacrifice?

When we cry, our mothers hand us tissues of truth and tissues of lies. Being a boy from a small town in Nova Scotia, where all mothers are revered by their community, and countless lovely wooded parks promote the frolicking of families, I have always been fascinated with mothers. I think the truth is that we all have our own peculiar fascination with Mother. So we get pop culture icons like Tony Soprano’s mother and Leave it to Beaver Wally Cleaver’s Mom.

The illusion, the manipulation of our experience of woman, begins with all of us acting out our karma as thief and angel, whore and Madonna; it begins with our mother, as she does her best to create an introduction to the truth of life, simply by leading hers. But in the end, the great suffering of all mothers is that the wisdom of motherhood comes from realizing she cannot really prepare us for our own suffering. Our awareness of suffering begins with the realization that many of our choices create our mother’s suffering.

This consideration of Mother and the suffering of all mothers is a door of perception; recognizing all beings as our mother, feeling compassion for the suffering of all mother sentient beings, leads one to some interesting places and discoveries in hidden worlds. Inevitably cultivation of love for our mothers, and the practice of extending loving kindness to all beings who have been our mothers, leads you to other dimensions, and you have the confidence that you are led by pristine unadulterated truth. Loving all beings and training one’s mind leads to the discovery of hidden treasures, revealed through special insights, developed through the time-tested and true methods of the great masters. The teaching of the great masters is to love all beings as our mother.

Wherever the wisdom is no matter the source

Make effort to obtain it

Some of the most beautiful flowers grow

From filthy water

Thus do not be discouraged by the source of knowledge

Concentrate your mind on using this knowledge

As long as you grab the essence of the teaching

You cannot be misled

The different teachings are offered to find the right medicine

Concentrate on the purpose of the teaching--H.E. Garchen Rinpoche

Franz Fanon was asking his sisters and brothers to beware those who mislead us, and so do I. Look past the filth and madness of those who speak the truth from the mud. So many beings have struggled with visions and been blessed with the glimpses of heavens and hells, when you aren’t supposed to see these things in this realm. Who are the dreamers dreaming?

I look for the magic in the bushes, because I see the bushes shaking. And so I wonder, are there so many of us that there are beings I cannot see? I wonder, am I one of us, shaking these bushes? These are my thoughts of wonder today, after visiting the Blake show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And now my search for the truth unexpectedly leads me to Moses Maimonides because this is the New Jerusalem. I am walking in New York hearing Count Basie’s Stormy Monday Blues, perfect for strides moving my open heart along the energy streets uplifted, thinking of our continuing love for William Blake’s visions. The great thing about wonderful art is that it opens our hearts. Every living thing is holy. The emotional reaction is directly proportionate to our perception of the truth. We experience Blake’s art as our own glimpses of the truth, moments within our minds so fantastic that we revere them and thus the artist. But Blake’s life of ‘madness’ and despair was filled with dangerous visions and destitution. Like mine sometimes. "If you read my letters baby, you wouldn’t have left me to sit alone and cry."

Because it was a favorite hangout of his and he is another desperado seeking truth, as I near the Public Library I think of Jack Kerouac’s ideas of his book movie explorations of mind. He was an observer of mind, this is the secret door into his writing, and I am always arguing that Jack’s gift is to perceive the truth and his talent glimmers in his honesty revealing human suffering. He had great courage and became confused by his glimpses of universal mind, he must have been finding some pretty good acid when he first tripped and this eventually destabilizes the mind, I think he lost his way because he didn’t have a teacher. Listen to William Ginsburg read Brooklyn Bridge Blues, on Joy Kicks Darkness CD, and you know this is a transcendent moment in the life of a great poet. As the crazy wisdom archetype in my journeys, Jack points to love of mother and the need for a teacher.

My mind wants to create the idea of a documentary, and with the focus of one true will now I begin to see its images, the history of the photographic image, where the images desire to tell their own story. Each image chronologically represents a moment in the history of film, each moment becomes the next, as the images are seamlessly edited together in a very slow progression over one hundred and some odd years.

Of course I am seeing this idea because of the book movie thought, and now I see all of its nuances as is in keeping with my thoughts of Blake and Kerouac, and their search for truth in images and words. These thoughts mix with ideas of the current revolution as each moment of the film is a revolutionary moment in the life of moving images, revolution is the central theme of these memes – in this movie we see images of our species’ evolution, cyclic revolutions of thought.

Most movies are about us, as we project ourselves into the images, this thought is an excellent illustration of HH the Dalai Lama’s teaching of how we project our minds onto the object. By this projection, we create the concept of the object and our attachment, and human projections are the basis of all collective agreements. As I feel the blessing of His Holiness, my choice of images reflects the truth of human existence, as a species so self-aware that it consumes hyper-speed narcissism. Film has become the acme of art. Film is the rapidly disintegrating contemporary cultural detritus – my film is the making of all film, randomly discovering its evolutionary moments, discovering entropy – this process of discovery creates the narrative – the narrative is the evolution of the moving image, it is spontaneous, it is chance, it is the story film desires to tell of itself.

The film of our time is in flames.

I decide to go into the Library. The film of my mind first sees the doors and then wooden floors and the stairs walking up, glancing at the other patrons seeking truth, then into a great room filled with natural light and glass cases full of rare manuscripts so that now our mind is reading the second revised edition English translation of Maimonides’ Dalalat al-Hairin or ‘Guide to the Perplexed’.

It is similar to the Manifesto in that he crafted the work in such a way that it would reveal different levels of meaning to people with different philosophical knowledge and interpretive skills. I have found the words of Rambam. In my movie, because I detest rules and enjoy breaking them, I bring this book with me while leaving the New York Public Library. I have been visiting the Hand of the Poet exhibit. Because I am thinking of breaking rules, because I detest rules. I see naked city noir lighting in the black shadows and white contrast night of Fifth Avenue, then my mind sees the brief history of revolutions as they rode the waves of global transition into New York City. Leon Trotsky walked here, didn’t he? As I walk along thinking of all the beings who in the course of the history of this great city, sought to find the truth or bring the truth to all of their brothers and sisters, I consider the efforts of Leon Trotsky and Emma Goldman and Karl Marx who inspired them and Franz Fanon, and Maimonides for some old school.

Considering my inspirations takes me to the teaching of H.E. Garchen Rinpoche and always my mind comes back to the pivotal thought - truth is beyond conceptual thought – and here in the Guide I am trying to practice his teaching that it is incorrect to fixate upon any thought and continue to make the best choices for your entertaining experience.

All of this thought is coming from my mind while it is holding a book by Maimonides, Guide to the Perplexed. I consider this effort and wisdom found within the great libraries of the world, I see it all as just a feeble glimpse, unable to convey the hidden meanings of hearts opening to truth. We find our way to the truth in different ways in seemingly separate generations but in truth we are evolving into the shining ones led by Amrita Emelline to whom I pray: most venerable teacher and mother Amrita Emelline, will we ever find the truth?

Of course all of these words you are reading are part of this tradition, all of the mothers who came before us all having the same compassion and desire to assist us along our journey, as Maimonides did before, and he disapproved of the Sabeans, planetary beings who had interesting ideas about the stars and the trees that appeal to me now despite Maimonides’ disapproval, so the Sabeans say they have subtle relevance memes, programmed with the genes that find our way in this strangeness beauty.

In my practice I have been considering this phrase from the Chakrasamvara sadhana: ‘The world and all of its beings are the container and the contained of the Yidam.’ (The Yidam is the deity.) It has come to embody my small understanding of the Buddha’s teachings. This thought is a new juice, a new thought that turns my mind. A thought that creates spaciousness within my mind, and as I practice this spaciousness becomes a little more familiar. Many months later in Tucson after the entry of the two comets, I intuitively pick up my Chakrasamvara retreat notes to continue this New York meeting with my masters.

But as I speak these words to you, I know that I cannot possibly comprehend the effect they will have upon you. If I were to say to you, ‘I allow my thoughts to take up more space than thoughts should be allowed’, do you know what I mean?

Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? (obscure ‘70’s Lee Michaels pop song reference - Been forty days since I don’t know when, I just saw her with my best friend. Do you know what I mean? Do you know, know what I mean?)

If you can hear it now, as I can, from where did that pop song thought arise? Where do the thoughts that spontaneously recall pop songs originate?

If your mind is creating a brand new song, who is singing?

The view is to look at reality which is beyond intellect

Meditation is to rest in a state of non-distraction

Conduct is to sustain unceasingly whatever naturally occurs

The result is to abandon hopes fears and conventional terms--H.E. Garchen Rinpoche

Thought is the thinker. This is the essence of Mahamudra. Once in meditation at the Gar Island in Chino Valley a student had this thought: ‘thought is the thinker’. Garchen Rinpoche said that this is the essence of Mahamudra.

Thought is the thinker.

Does it help you to know this? Perhaps, but what is more likely is that these words are seeds for your own thoughts and contemplation, just as Maimonides desired to help us so long ago and left the Sabean Dakini letters burning within the covers of dusty texts, and the ancient wisdom once lost has been re-gathered in these times like a Terma. This dream is the rebirth of the Guide to the Perplexed, the discovery of a few secret volumes lost in the vaults of the great cities.

Why are we perplexed? The beaches of women are unsafe due to the men with knives. And now many of us would find the ancient wisdom too esoteric to solve such a problem, yet real truth speaks across time because the truth knows time. Here I am on the streets where Jack said it, I think of Dean Moriarity because he knows time. I think of Jack because he sought the truth, not because he found it.

I have told you before, when thought is gone God gets in, or rather Meister Eckhart said this and then at some time this ancient wisdom was discovered to benefit the patriots in these our difficult evolution times. Back then Meister Eckhart was a photonic pioneer living the same days and watching the Knights as Maimonides was walking, writing and breathing and they have both made their way to you, Amrita Emelline, Jack and me in New York City. My mind is in the twelfth century as I walk in twenty-first century New York surrounded by millions of people, and now in New York your thoughts might turn to God, and the battle men fight with Jealous Gods.

I realize that it is God’s will to find you in moments when you have lost your own. When we lose our will, we pray to God for some of His. Not that I think there is a God. I fixate on thoughts that we cultivate the deity within us, the deities arise within the student when needed… my concept of God is that all deities are the love within us and this love is more like the wisdom within all the light that is us. We visualize divine light because the truth has everything to do with light and the love we choose to create. We are all God together as we are the light within this display, this illusion of a cruel world, and I recall that the world and all its beings are the container and the contained of the deity.

Our job is to surrender our will in each moment, to observe our dance with hope and fear, attachment and aversion and become light beings, the shining ones… this is to be without a care for oneself, to stay in the moment and chase the consciousness by riding the waves of days and nights in the forbidden cities and nightmares of Samsara… We surrender to mind and let it see itself with your eyes.

Uma walks in, and she is the true nature of mind. Another Veronica.

Once the contrived layers of thought have been purified, there is only the true nature of mind, luminous and insubstantial, the darkness of ignorance has been eliminated to reveal the radiance of clear light.

The Second Whirled

As I look up at all the buildings and at the people as they walk by, I think ‘where is mind?’ "Who is the owner of your mind?" I’m another confused stranger in the east coast noir: ‘He Walked the Streets of New York City’, with Richard Basehart, a freaked out navy veteran who is suffering from post traumatic stress after the second world war, making creative electronic devices in his day job, ripping them off as he walks the streets at night, waiting to pummel me just around the next corner, then take me back to the Library and sell me a new telecommunication device of his own design.

Because I want visions I am preoccupied by men who have had visions, and my noir scenes of mind with Richard Basehart has a man haunted by the second world war. Here we see me, an extremely ordered and deeply rational man who is knocking himself out to have visions. We live the crest of the wave to get the best ride, and you can see further from there, all the way into the second whirled.

As all of these New York people parade by me on the sidewalk and I feel the jagged machinery of the streets pulse with downtown, I think that perhaps they who are least likely to have visions are most in need of them, down town visions of a city which reveres the mother that creates her. Something within me has always longed for the experience of visions, as soon as I became aware that others had visions I was prodded by an unspeakable desire to abandon this ordinary realm for what must be the fantastic dreams I can feel. I notice I am walking by East West Books, between 13^th and 14^th Streets and feel like resting.

The city rises up around me, I am very small and sitting on a piece of granite, on the store’s doorstep. As I look out I am aware that there is an innate awareness within me of other realms, beyond what I perceive with these untrustworthy rational faculties and the thoughts my mind projects out onto objects and the people passing. There is a surface to what I see, and thus I ponder what it is beyond that surface and there emerge hidden depths and planes, and when I practice mindfulness I am always aware that the truth is just out of my grasp, just like this city that is passing by before my mind.

I sit in the entrance of a bookstore, just to allow these excited big city thoughts settle, and I hear Jimmy Reed, ‘Bright Lights Big City’, an unbidden but welcome reference from my mind to the city around me and the blues make me think of suffering, that’s what the blues is, and as I consider impermanence I think of the movie creating itself and each of its images is of men holding knives and women lying on beaches, an entire film of one long slow death in paradise that never truly dies, it is the florid moments just before death, as all life is really a moment before dying. I see the towers slowly disintegrate and bodies suspended in space… Samsara is a place of hidden dimensions with transparent doves bludgeoned by transparent daggers.

We’re all perplexed, are we not? Are we not given to wonder and to wander aimlessly here in Samsara when the truth is we are the earthlight and our suffering comes from our ignorance of the power within all light?

The Guide to the Perplexed is a lamp, it is the dream machine.

The Photonic Manifesto is a letter to our shadow.

"My dear shadow, shadow darling. You see, there is no more sun to run from. The true nature of mind is free from death. The essence of everything is within the Uma. It is the pathway to Mahamudra."

Shadows suffer because they know, this is why Jack Kerouac loved the Shadow.

I pick up the book and from the ancient shadows, Maimonides tells us it is well known that the patriarch Abraham was brought up in the religion and the opinion of the Sabeans. So say the Sabeans, who believed that there was no one omnipotent divine being per se, but they knew in their hearts that the stars were all divine...

Kick out the jams… and abandon all axioms motherfucker…

The axe in the hand of him that hews with it

I stop and look up at the people walking by in nice down town suits and incredible shoes, so many kinds of beautiful shoes, as I look down and see feet of the stars, the sky is in the sidewalks and the moon is reflected in a long silver puddle by the curb. As the men and women go by the have no idea of our fraternity. I want to say ‘your mind is reflected in the moon down there in that puddle’ and I want to ask each of you what you think of stars and why didn’t they tell us about the Sabeans before? I don’t know about you, but this sounds close to the truth to me, as we know we are all made from stars don’t we? As I hear ‘we are stardust’, I worship the closest star, its waves bring us the high tides of change, and so Maimonides gets my attention.

"I will show you their opinion and their practice. They say distinctly that the sun governs the world, both that which is above and that which is below; these are exactly their expressions… The sun acts in the same manner as the axe in the hand of him that hews with it."

That’s what I’m talking about! The sun acts in the same manner as the axe in the hand of him that hews with it!

I see Manjushri with his sword, I see all the knives of men and the beaches of all the women. Manjushri rises up from the reflection of the moon, rises up in the space above New York City and holds the flaming sword of the Photonic Revolution.

I watch a woman walk by with a bouquet of everlastings shaped like my blood anemone, she carries the forest of my dreams, and my mind is the axe that hews it.

As I was saying we are caught in a world of transparent daggers and doves, and the way out is a surrender to the stars, we must surrender to the sun. So say the Sabeans. These are thought remnants of the Sabeans who once walked this same planet until they found the way out. The Sabeans who believed Adam was a prophet sent by the moon.

"Adam left the torrid zone of India and made his way to Babylon, bringing with him wonderful things, such as a golden tree, that was growing and had leaves and branches made of gold, and a stone of the same kind and a fresh leaf proof against fire."

Could be why we’re having a war in Iraq.

The Sabeans placed gold and silver images in temples, and assumed that the stars sent forth their influence upon them, so that the images were thereby enabled to speak, to comprehend, to understand and inspire human beings and to tell them what is useful to them. This same influence fell upon the trees, which had the same qualities as the stars, especially when a certain tree, which is peculiar to the star, is dedicated to the name of this star. So certain things are done to the tree and for the tree, by the star. The spiritual force of that star which influences that tree inspires men, and speaks to them when they are asleep. Now this all strikes me as particularly useful knowledge in these difficult times and as reasonable explanation as any of the way wisdom works. It speaks through trees.

So say the Sabeans and this enhances my enjoyment of trees exponentially, it seems this is the universal rule of spiritual awakening to find hidden worlds within this one, as our awareness expands beyond where our mind habitually projects, and I listen to the voices in my dreams, the dialogue of dreams guides me. It is the voices of the stars. We could call the message of these voices the Photonic principles, and identify the voices as The voice of Veronica after the triumphant Christ imprinted upon a piece of cloth, a veil worn by Veronica. The Truth.

So say the Sabeans and they lead us to the truth of the stars, which speaks to the trees, which speak in our dreams and has the voice of Veronica. Are you perplexed? When I am fortunate in my confusion, in my dreams I have meetings with remarkable teachers.

God is a Dancing Bear

Tonight I have a strange dream where Jack has a crazy smile, comes to my bed and whispers in my ear: "God is a dancing bear", and I then watch as he sits down and writes out anagrams from god is a dancing bear, picks the paper off my bed and hands it to me

"This is a poem of egolution."

God is a dancing bear

Grandiose acid bag

Gabardine Inca dogs

A bad arsenic gin God

I be sardonic DNA gag

Big age sardonic DNA

Sang a braiding code

DNA radiances go big

Do big sang radiance

I look at Jack as he takes me back into the New York Public Library, I keep looking at him as we walk up the stairs and think he looks like the man I saw in a 1957 New Year’s photo, that he is an embodiment of this image, and he sits me down for an earnest discussion of what it means to be an evolutionary. I become aware that he and a group of photonic radicals are able to access my dreams and teach me the Dharma, gradually transforming my DNA and assisting me during the difficult navigation of my rapidly changing life. I feel blissfully reassured by the presence of spirit, and as the energy passes through my body I realize the energy of the deity comes from within me… I see the glass top of the display case opening and we are looking at an old history text from 1906:

Among the terrorists none was more ardent and indefatigable than Saint-Just, a young photonic fanatic of unimpeachable probity, who, as a member of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee and as agent of the Eternal Photon in the provinces, urged on the war against all the enemies of the Revolution, whether within or without the Earth.

At this point Jack whispers: "Think of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. There is one among us who will reveal the truth beyond all knowledge."

I see Jack and a group of smiling men and women, most of whom are movie stars from the Thirties and Forties, with a crowd of people surrounding them I have met or worked with in waking life. The archetypes transform into these being who always enter my dreams as familiar archetypes. I am aware of a confidence that they have taken these forms to represent different aspects of my experience, assisting me on my journey, and as I realize they are here for our assistance my thoughts become an incredibly vivid lucid dream. One of them hands me the book:

Saint-Just left behind him some hidden teachings on the dreams and photonic constitutions written during his last months, when he foresaw that, among so many opponents of his exalted ideas, he was likely to lose his life and leave this realm. IN the future, all life on the planet will live in peril in the days of many comets passing, for the new dawn brings the grasping of the shadows, and the photonic patriots will need this hidden teaching and the efforts of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. The few selections which are given below serve to show how Saint-Just, Rousseau, Balthazar, the Dalai Lama, Pepe le Moko, and their sympathizers proposed to elaborate and to carry out, at the cost of no matter how much bloodshed, the lightwork of Amrita Emelline, whose ardent disciples they were. If they had succeeded, the future photonic revolution would not be necessary, and the end to the suffering of all beings on the planet would have been accomplished. All else is the Lie in the service of the Moloch…

Jack leans forward and whispers in my ear and I look up from the book to see all these people gathered here in the Library like it’s a Bardo cocktail party and looking around feeling that I love this Library my heart is open. As I hear Jack’s voice I feel free...

"This is why you’ve been thinking of Rousseau man…",

he looks over towards Rousseau and says:

"We want to have Rousseau make a contribution to the Manifesto if it’s all right with you, but first Saint-Just…"

But all I can think of is my own concerns, that I don’t have a job in this revolution, somehow in this meeting with remarkable minds I have to get guidance on finding my ideal job, and I realize I want to ask about why its so hard to practice compassion when one is working for a wage, how hard it is to find right livelihood and wasn’t there a great deal of blood shed? Jack comes back without my having said a word, he’s read my thoughts…

"You have trouble with work because you see it as becoming a part of the great Lie, by accepting your money without knowing it is yours, you feel co-opted, you understand the cause of your alienation and on some level must choose to reject the root of alienation… this is a lesson in non-attachment man, and your success at truly feeling compassion with your co-workers is your job…"

As I think about this, Saint-Just walks towards me and it’s a close friend when I was a teenager, he died two years ago, he can’t seem to keep from laughing as he hands me flaming Dakini letters. I feel like he is laughing at me, because I always felt that Mark was superior to me. We all begin to recite mantra but I can’t now remember what it is we were saying. I remember looking at Saint-Just and then Jack saying he was a great revolutionary, very dedicated but confused and I think he was involved in the Terror, why would he be here? Saint-Just looks at me and though he’s speaking French and I do not, I understand everything he’s saying and he’s looking deeply into my eyes:

"Tony…you find many poor people boxing their way out of the Barrios of the borderlands… Man was not made for the workplace, the hospital, or the poorhouse and yet we find him there. All that is horrible is found in these places. Men must live in independence, each with his wife and his healthy children. We must have neither rich nor poor..."

Everyone is nodding in agreement and I feel a warmth and sense of peace come over me and we’re reciting the mantra again, its like they’re teaching me this mantra from the Dakini letters and all the while Saint-Just is giving a speech.

"The poor man is superior to government and the powers of the world, especially the Empire and its ministers; the minister should address the poor man as a master. We must have a system which puts all these principles into practice and assures comfort to the entire people. Opulence is a crime…"

"Remember to always revere your mother." Jack interrupts loudly and for a short while everyone is repeating "révérer votre mere", and I hear the voices of my teachers chanting so that there is a choir of voices now with deep resonant Tibetan chanting and the cocktail party singing "révérer votre mere" and moving together as if it is choreographed and we’re in a scene from a musical called God Is A Dancing Bear/ Révérer Votre Mere.

Saint-Just steps forward a few feet into the center of the group and looks at me as he speaks passionately about mother and children as the future of our species. I am thinking about how societies have undervalued womanhood throughout time and how Marx said women are exploited as a reserve army of labor, I’m just inside the circle of people, sitting on a wooden chair watching Saint-Just.

"The mother who does not suckle her children ceases to be a mother in the eyes of the country. Child and citizen belong to the country, and a common instruction is essential. Children shall be brought up in the love of silence and scorn for fine talkers. They shall be trained in laconic speech…"

I get up from my chair and for some reason I’m shouting:

"You can’t make people feel the way they should, the revolution cannot make people be and act a certain way, this is the failing of all revolutions. This is a revolution of the mind, we must all transform our own mind and it is our responsibility to do this, and in so doing we set ourselves free and contribute to the freedom of our sisters and brothers. This is not a revolution that prescribes behavior!"

Saint-Just ignores me now looking around the Library as he speaks, it seems like the light from the windows is getting brighter, and as if I hadn’t said a word he continues, while the chanting and singing grow softer until there is only harmonious Rain Forest humming and all the people in the musical become calm:

"The brothers and sisters recognize the existence of the power of light, we surrender to the Photon and recognize the immortality of the soul. The first day of every month is consecrated to the Eternal Photon, in this way we shall cultivate the transformation of the mind and provide stability of consciousness to the citizens of loving kindness. Incense shall burn day and night in the temples and shall be tended in turn for twenty-four hours by all citizens of loving kindness who have reached the age of sixty, and in this way the revolution will care for the elders."

"But how can we really change people’s minds when they are subject to karma?" As I say this I realize I have begun crying and have a deep feeling of loneliness, like no one will listen to the voices of my dreams. Saint-Just appears not to notice what I say and continues his speech.

"The temples shall never be closed. The Photonic people devote their fortunes and their children to the Eternal Photon. The immortal souls of all those who have died for the Photon, who have been good citizens, who have cherished their father and mother and never abandoned them, are in the bosom of the Eternal Photon."

I look up and notice the light changing subtly and look to the front of the Library where Saint-Just is weeping now and he takes the hands of a young couple as they step into the center of the gathering. It is a glowing Marie-Thérèse Walter and Pablo Picasso. Maybe they’ll finally work it out…

"In the temple every year on the first day of Photonic Floreal, the people of each commune shall select from among the commune’s citizens, a young man or woman benefiting from accumulating virtue over countless lifetimes, now rich and virtuous and without deformity, at least twenty-one years of age and not over thirty, who shall in turn select and marry a poor man or woman who suffers from the continuation of difficult karma. This will be the union of wisdom and compassion, in everlasting memory of human equality. In this way we will revere the photonic consorts Balthazar and Amrita Emelline."

Saint-Just turns to me and speaks for what seems like an hour or more, telling me of the time when Dora Maar and Marie-Thérèse got into a fight over Picasso.

"You know that Picasso said ‘painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war ... against brutality and darkness’. But he represents the conflict between men and women, when he painted Dora Maar's features into Guernica in the woman holding up a lamp, he was also creating the memory of the woman with the lantern in his Minotaur series, based on Marie-Thérèse.

"Did you know that Marie-Thérèse and Dora came to blows while he painted Guernica. Marie-Thérèse entered the studio one day, and began to insist that Dora leave.

"I have a child by this man. It's my place to be here with him," said Marie-Thérèse.

"You can leave right now." Dora said, "I have as much reason as you have to be here. I haven't borne him a child but I don't see what difference that makes."

Picasso kept on painting while they kept on arguing. Finally, Marie-Thérèse turned to Picasso and said, 'Make up your mind. Which one of us goes?'"

Pablo told me that it was a hard decision to make because he liked them both, for different reasons: Marie-Thérèse because she was sweet and gentle and did whatever he wanted her to, and Dora because she was intelligent. He told them they'd have to fight it out themselves. So they began to wrestle."

Everyone is either crying or laughing as Saint-Just then continues with a fascinating story about when Robespierre wanted to create karma temples.

"These are temples for the purification of karma, temples of liberty, equality, glory, immortality, frugality, disinterestedness, stoicism, old age, and misfortune. But then my brother lost his way in the carnage."

He describes each temple in detail so that I can see and feel the nature of the suffering they purify.

"Karma temples?" I say.

A young guy, a teenager about sixteen is holding Saint-Just’s hand and somehow I know it’s the Fifth Dalai Lama. He smiles and says:

"We talk a lot but none of know us what we’re saying."

I become aware of wisdom awareness.

I see Emelline… and at once I realize that His Holiness is in my dream and I think of non-attachment… releasing my consciousness thoughts… then thinking of seeing the sun, observing the solar thoughts… seeing the waves wash upon the solar system. As I think of the changes making their way through the vastness of space from the Great Central Sun, this thought always comes back to me: I am the sun… I am transformed until I see me observing me and then… see the thought floating in the air of the Library… ‘who am I but patterns of karma?’ I am being changed, this is why I think of revolutions and evolutions and always then the trinity: egolutions… And if I am being changed, if I am subject to karma, then everyone else here in Samsara must be getting slightly altered.

As I awake I am thinking, who were all those people in the Library? Some of them are long dead… I recall that I saw Paul, the man who killed himself in 1989, he killed himself as I slept in the apartment above him. Paul was a landscape artist from South Africa who was tortured because he belonged to the opposition to Apartheid. They took his mind and he introduced me to the Saint-Just Vigilantes, a conceptual art group he belonged to in Toronto, and then he took his life in his last battle with his demons. I have a Saint-Just Vigilantes sticker on my computer.

Drifting back into my dream, the Library reappears and the Truth and Reconciliation Committee are debating methods of alleviating the suffering of all beings… I am one of the citizens, (there seems to be a group of us and I am the spokesperson) demanding to know about the changes that are happening with the sun and the comets and our collective ideas of peace in times of war, and I want to tell all of my brothers and sisters about it. These are voices in my dreams, I am aware of this, but if we’re not supposed to fixate on any thought, and truth is beyond conceptual thought, how is one to use dream wisdom as discernment while navigating Samsara and speak about it? Someone begins to speak to me, it is the beautiful Marie-Thérèse, she is Veronica:

"The Sun is the greatest collection of light in this local small speck in beginningless space. It is a point of concentration in the Buddha’s mind, a focus of compassion and wisdom. Visualize the sun within your heart and perceive this as a thought within the Buddha’s continuum. The boundless love of light is within every heart and it grows with attunement with all light, these points of light you perceive as the Universe are the Buddha’s thoughts of compassion for the suffering of all beings."

So say the Sabeans, I think this as she tells me of the sun and as I do this 1950’s pop song ‘Cherry Blossom Pink, Apple Blossom White’ percolates into my dream and I can’t help it, these songs and people are my dreams and its my choice to dream them, and I realize in this moment that my dreams choose me, so I ask:

"But why when I work so hard to surrender and accumulate merit, attend great teachings and choose to have my teachers transform my mind, why do things have to be so hard? I thought by practicing the Dharma my life would improve but its gotten more difficult and I seem addicted to adventure and my lust for life and for fighting the Great Lie means it has been difficult in jobs as I am the talented but odd one, and for the strong feelings that arise in my colleagues and my inexcusable behavior of speaking the truth and telling lies at the same time for what is Samsara but this exchange, I can’t keep a job and my life is dematerializing before my eyes as I practice compassion and non-attachment…"

Saint Jack smiles warmly at me and says: "It is the fruition of your negative karma, you have been given a precious opportunity to overcome anger and frustration with compassion, the karma of your past lives is the fuel for your evolution as we all create interplanetary heart medicine. The reason you all revere Elvis and me is because we made art with our suffering, and we made it for our mothers, and sure we died ignominiously sitting on a toilet but the Truth is that when you think of us you are secretly revering mother sentient beings you all know we were momma’s boys after all… And now Mother is in great transition, she is about to give birth to a new consciousness, the goddess Amrita Emelline, and though we surrender in prayers to assist our Mother, the birth is subject to the causes and conditions of karma, even for this exalted consciousness, for she is a sentient being."

I look at Saint-Just and say: "You and I hold up the corners of the universe and call out to each other as to how it might be rearranged."

I look at Amrita Emelline. She points towards my heart and gives me this transmission:

"Yes… the sun is, and the planets and stars and you, all are sentient beings and the Buddha holds each of us within this Mind of wisdom and compassion."

Saint-Just looks at Amrita Emelline who is really just a light meme at this moment, my daughter and mother not quite born, but glowing there just the same, and I feel this great surge of emotion go through the room as Saint-Just declares:

"Each patriot of the Photonic revolution is called upon by their own consciousness, they are mind volunteers transforming their suffering for the benefit of all beings, and especially the great Mother as she nurtures this embryonic idea of freedom. Recall the mother and child and cultivate the heart of loving kindness, this is the mode of transformation…"

Continued