Dear Toby, letters to my gay nephew

I knew that Allen was in town when there was a knock at the front door at 3:30 exactly. A young man, 21 but not a month more, clean shaven, holding a book, asked, “Is this the Philip Whalen Zendo?” I invited him into the living room where he sat down and quietly continued his reading.  Allen would be at the door shortly; I could hear Phil beginning to make his way up the stairs. He and Allen shared years of friendship. They were punctual. I began to prepare tea. I loved when Phil’s friends came to visit. Phil was on his best behavior. Not that he was normally badly behaved though in private moments he could be angry, even insulting. Despite being one of the foremost leaders of a movement that questioned the very roots of believing and behaving what my parents taught me, when he was proper, he was extremely proper. But there was another quality to the conversations with his poet friends. Their language was careful and measured. It was literate. I was always looking for any innuendos, an

“Out of the bars and into the streets” It was something that we shared with other civil rights movements.

SAT, Naranjo, the Enneagram, the beginnings, and “the Work." Originally written for "The Enneagram Monthly" to be published in 2021 Claudio Benjamín Naranjo Cohen (24 November 1932 – 12 July 2019) is gone. Óscar Ichazo (24 July, 1931 – 26 March, 2020) died less than a year later. The meditation teacher Ajahn Dhiravamsa (5 November, 1934 - 28 July, 2021) passed away more recently. Rezeleah Landman Schaeffer has left us though I can find no obituary. The only teachers and leaders still alive from the early history of Naranjo’s SAT are Kathy Speeth who told her story of sitting in Gurdjieff’s lap when she was a young child and the Nyingmapa teacher Tarthang Tulku who had an enormous influence on Naranjo. At 86 Tarthang is still teaching though no longer traveling internationally. These were the men and women who first introduced the Enneagram in the West. My friend Dan Kaplan forwarded an email promotion for a course by some proponents of the Enneagram that promises to unlo

The Foray into Scientology When I first heard about the idea, I thought what a quixotic enterprise, and then, what a totally bizarre idea, and then what total insanity, and then, why not? I had after all “fallen away” from a very rigorous religious practice but I still found solace in the very Jesuit exercise of the “examen.” If Scientology had some powerful spiritual medicine, why not raid the cabinet?  Aubrey is correct to mention that Naranjo was interested in what L Ron Hubbard called “The Tone Scale,” but he also was truly fascinated by the use of the galvanometer, skin response lie detector, known as the e-meter in Scientology, and the technique of tracing of memories back in time, called in Scientology shorthand, a “run-down,” perhaps even back to past lives. A note about “kath.” At one meeting I was present when two members of SAT described being trained as Scientology auditors. They described “beating the e-meter.” The ethics officer asked them if they were currently involved

  “By their fruits you shall know them.” Matthew 7:16-17  “And pay attention to who they're fucking.” Kenneth 8.12.21 Examine the myth of the “Man who Knows,” “The Person who never sleeps.” And other bullshit that persuades us to give up our power. Who we were Where we came from What we were seeking What we found What we did with it The involvement of the traditional religious practices Claudio’s banquet table concept Abby Hoffman, and the Hoffman Process Jerry Rubin and est https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Rubin#Post-activism The Vietnam War The Apollo Space Project and Edgar Mitchell The Sexual Revolution Haight-Ashbury and drugs Psychotherapy Educated, even the painters and house builders Scientology/the nexus of a pragmatic epistemology and spirituality “The One who knows.” I ask myself why so little has been written about those early days? There was some reckless experimentation. Sexually it wasn’t Peyton Place even though at times that’s what it felt like. The rumblings of