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Beauty is one of the rare things which does not lead to doubt of God. -- Jean Anouilh


arts / rec.music.beatles / Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'

SubjectAuthor
* Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
+* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
|+* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'geoff
||+- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||`* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
|| `* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Norbert K
||  `* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||   `* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Norbert K
||    +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||    `* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||     `* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Norbert K
||      `* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'geoff
||       +* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||       |`* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Norbert K
||       | `* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||       |  +* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Norbert K
||       |  |`* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||       |  | `* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Norbert K
||       |  |  `- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||       |  `* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'RJKe...@yahoo.com
||       |   +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Dennis Rowan
||       |   `* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||       |    `* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'RJKe...@yahoo.com
||       |     `* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||       |      `* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'RJKe...@yahoo.com
||       |       +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'RJKe...@yahoo.com
||       |       +* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curt Josephs
||       |       |`* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'geoff
||       |       | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
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||       |       | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Norbert K
||       |       | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
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||       |       | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Norbert K
||       |       | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||       |       | `* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||       |       |  `* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'geoff
||       |       |   +* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
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||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'RJKe...@yahoo.com
||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'RJKe...@yahoo.com
||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'RJKe...@yahoo.com
||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'RJKe...@yahoo.com
||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'RJKe...@yahoo.com
||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
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||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'RJKe...@yahoo.com
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||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'RJKe...@yahoo.com
||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
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||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'RJKe...@yahoo.com
||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'RJKe...@yahoo.com
||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
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||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'RJKe...@yahoo.com
||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
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||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'RJKe...@yahoo.com
||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
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||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'RJKe...@yahoo.com
||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'RJKe...@yahoo.com
||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'RJKe...@yahoo.com
||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||       |       |   | +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||       |       |   | `- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||       |       |   +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
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||       |       `- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||       `* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Norbert K
||        +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'super70s
||        `* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'geoff
||         +- Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
||         `* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Norbert K
||          +* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'geoff
||          `* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Curtis Eagal
|+* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'Norbert K
|`* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'RJKe...@yahoo.com
`* Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'RJKe...@yahoo.com

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Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'

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From: super...@super70s.invalid (super70s)
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Subject: Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'
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 by: super70s - Thu, 28 Apr 2022 20:27 UTC

In article <fa036881-29f7-47df-bb0b-13f103b66f5cn@googlegroups.com>,
Norbert K <norbertkosky69@gmail.com> wrote:

> Good point, he did plenty of that. How about Lennon's denunciation of
> Darwin as "absolute garbage" because "monkeys aren't changing into people
> now"? Is that what it looks like -- i.e., Donald Trump-level ignorance and
> stupidity -- or was Lennon courting controversy? (Sometimes audio of this
> [Playboy] interview can be found online, but one has to dig to find the
> particular passage.)

Must have been too busy to catch Carl Sagan's Cosmos series, lol.
Particularly the second episode which goes into evolution through
natural selection. Eleven of the thirteen episodes had aired before he
was assassinated.

Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'

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Subject: Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'
From: eagalita...@gmail.com (Curtis Eagal)
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 by: Curtis Eagal - Thu, 28 Apr 2022 21:18 UTC

On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 1:12:22 PM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 2:50:42 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 7:00:38 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 9:21:14 AM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 4:11:37 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 8:16:06 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail..com wrote:
> > > > > > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 3:56:31 PM UTC-7, geoff wrote:
> > > > > > > On 28/04/2022 4:03 am, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 5:30:15 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > > >> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 4:08:26 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > > > >>> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 3:12:36 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > > >>>>
> > > > > > > >>>> The song "Imagine" resulted from discussing a book about prayer with Dick Gregory - I have a family member who insists the line about "no religion" proves he was promoting heathenism, while my opinion is the theme follows the "Our Father" prayer: the best way for God's Will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven is to stop arguing about prejudices and possessions, manifest a rational society in the here and now. The full Maureen Cleave article from 1966 noted that two of John's favorite possessions were a Bible and a Crucifix; but wife Cynthia's gift of mechanized caged singing bird struck him as offensively bourgeois and partially inspired "And Your Bird Can Sing" - "when your prized possessions start to bring you down" is a similar anti-materialistic theme as "Can't Buy Me Love."
> > > > > > > >>> Your family member has a point; Lennon did occasionally purport to be a "born-again pagan." He had Christian phases, too -- one of which Yoko squelched because she feared it would prevent her from controlling him through the occult. Which brings up the point that he went along with Ono's occultism. And we know that John also had a soft spot for gurus. Like I said before, he was all over the map; he did not subscribe to any one belief system for too long.
> > > > > > > >>>
> > > > > > > >>> Didn't Lennon explain somewhere that by "Imagine no religion" what he meant to say is that there should be no "one religion" that excluded others?
> > > > > > > >>>
> > > > > > > >>> I expect we'd agree Lennon did not wish for an *absence* of religion any more than he wished for an absence of possessions.
> > > > > > > >>>
> > > > > > > >>> Did anyone ever discover the title of the book gifted to Lennon by Dick Gregory?
> > > > > > > >> John called his period circa 1969 "Christian Communist," recognizing it as a phase. We think of him pushing people's buttons on controversial issues, but in my book on the "Beatles For Sale" era ("The Quality Of Mersey") the whole group is being interviewed together, and they projected a unified religious perspective ("more agnostic than atheistic" was Lennon's assessment), with Paul and Ringo making some provocative remarks. Paul said, "We probably seem antireligious because none of us believe in God"; Harrison declared, "John's our official religious spokesman." John said that's how most people really feel, with Ringo agreeing, "It's better to admit it than be a hypocrite." Lennon saw hypocrisy in the clergy lamenting the conditions of the poor without being charitable to them. McCartney mentioned the cost of a single bronze door in the Vatican.
> > > > > > > >>
> > > > > > > >> Paul made it clear none of that discussion involved the actual teachings of Jesus: "Believe it or, we're not anti-Christ." Then Ringo qualified that with, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian." So there was agnosticism, leaning pro-Christ - but righteously anti-Christian, shared by the entire group.
> > > > > > > >>
> > > > > > > >> So the song "God" uses the title word to address the typical cultural perception, the concept that placates pain and suffering with the dubious promise of eternal happiness once everything is over. It could not be about Lennon's own personal conclusion that God does not exist, since he described in a 1968 interview that through drugs, diet and meditation he had sensed a Higher Power. What is being disbelieved in "God" is resorting to the victim mindset that effectively allows the oppressor minimal resistance. The idea is the more pain you have, the more God you need psychologically as a coping mechanism, usually for something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. Think of the 'Negro Spiritual' songs borne of suffering in slavery. Pie in the sky when you die by and by.
> > > > > > > >>
> > > > > > > >> At the time John was completing primal therapy with Arthur Janov, who considered religion madness, and Lennon later admitted the attempt to purge it from his psyche failed. He called himself "a most religious fellow." Even in childhood, John would point upwards and say "Somebody's watching" when he detected mischief; once he walked in announcing he had just seen God. John spoke of other religious figures who were advanced spiritually like Jesus, with admiration for their simple rational philosophies that few seem to grasp. An interviewer brought up the rumor he proclaimed he WAS God, receiving the reply he had not meant he was "A God or THE God," but shared a fragment of divinity: "We have all things within us," the option of being evil or righteous through exercise of free will. He said the recurrent dichotomy of moral extremes was summed up in the Christ-versus-Hitler contrast.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > I remember an interview with Lennon in which he pronounced vaguely that "God is an energy, a power source," but that "I never believed it was any one thing."
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Under Janov's influence, Lennon asserted that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Then there were his televangelist phases, during which he presumably accepted the god of Christianity.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > And the "born-again pagan" identification came in 1979, IIRC.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Again, I see a guy whose beliefs fluctuated wildly depending on what drugs he was on, what TV he was watching, and who he was hanging out with.
> > > > > > > More than that, comments not intended to indicate any genuine belief,
> > > > > > > but merely an off-the-cuff comments intended to rankle the other party,
> > > > > > > or to engender controversy for controversy’s sake.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > An approach which certainly seems to have worked extremely well with
> > > > > > > some fanatics !
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > geoff
> > > > > > A Beatle in a 1964 group interview (published in 1965) said, "We probably seem antireligious because of the fact that none of us believes in God" - that was Paul McCartney.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > When Paul continued, "We're not anti-Christ," one of them added, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian" - that was Ringo Starr.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > McCartney expressed outrage that there was a societal stigma against atheism.
> > > > > Really? How brave, if so. I'd very much like to see a quotation.
> > > > The full text is available online, it's Jean Shepherd's interview for Playboy; my commentary version delves into key points hinted by the actual content, separating from the high-energy banter for media consumption. They were resuming a national tour with two shows in Exeter, and it took place around 11 pm in their Torquay hotel room. The sense is that a tape ran as a rambling conversation developed, and it all got printed verbatim.
> > > >
> > > > Anyone can now hear the pro-religion single minute from John Lennon's interview with David Wigg (10:07 to 11:08 in the link below):
> > > >
> > > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db0Y4ul32U8
> > > >
> > > > For those who do not want to be bothered listening to this rare, intriguing interview, here is brief transcription --
> > > >
> > > > DW: "John, on one broadcast in France, you said that you were God. Were you serious about that? Do you really FEEL you are God?"
> > > >
> > > > JL: "We're all God. Christ said The Kingdom of Heaven is within you, and that's what it means. And the Indians say that, and the Zen people say that: It's a basic thing of religion - We're All God. I'm not A god, or THE God - NOT THE God! - But we're all God, and we're all potentially divine, and potentially evil. We all have everything within us, and The Kingdom of Heaven is nigh, AND within us. And if you look hard enough, you'll see it.."
> > > >
> > > > DW: "Do you then believe in life after death?"
> > > >
> > > > JL: "I do. Without any doubt I believe in it."
> > > >
> > > > DW: "Have you had any special experiences that make you believe so convincingly?"
> > > >
> > > > JL: "In meditation, on drugs, on diets, I've been aware of a Soul, and been aware of The Power."
> > > >
> > > > *
> > > >
> > > > Even the infamously controversial Maureen Cleave interview involved discussion of a book about Christ's Disciples, "The Passover Plot."
> > > That's interesting, but -- I should have been more specific -- I was actually asking about your statement that McCartney expressed outrage that there was a societal stigma against atheism."
> > A quote from Paul McCartney, probably early 29 October 1964 (after midnight):
> >
> > "In America, they're fanatical about God. I know somebody over there who said he was an atheist. The papers nearly refused to print it because it was such shocking news that somebody could actually be an atheist... yeah.... and admit it."
> >
> > Then JL made the comparison with Australia and not being sports fans. There might be more in the full text, but basically McCartney thought it was outrageous that such a self-declaration would be censored. As I said the conversation rambled.
> Thanks for the quote. Kudos to McCartney for saying that.


Click here to read the complete article
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 by: geoff - Thu, 28 Apr 2022 21:29 UTC

On 28/04/2022 11:10 pm, Norbert K wrote:
> On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 6:56:31 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
>> On 28/04/2022 4:03 am, Norbert K wrote:
>>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 5:30:15 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 4:08:26 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
>>>>> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 3:12:36 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The song "Imagine" resulted from discussing a book about prayer with Dick Gregory - I have a family member who insists the line about "no religion" proves he was promoting heathenism, while my opinion is the theme follows the "Our Father" prayer: the best way for God's Will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven is to stop arguing about prejudices and possessions, manifest a rational society in the here and now. The full Maureen Cleave article from 1966 noted that two of John's favorite possessions were a Bible and a Crucifix; but wife Cynthia's gift of mechanized caged singing bird struck him as offensively bourgeois and partially inspired "And Your Bird Can Sing" - "when your prized possessions start to bring you down" is a similar anti-materialistic theme as "Can't Buy Me Love."
>>>>> Your family member has a point; Lennon did occasionally purport to be a "born-again pagan." He had Christian phases, too -- one of which Yoko squelched because she feared it would prevent her from controlling him through the occult. Which brings up the point that he went along with Ono's occultism. And we know that John also had a soft spot for gurus. Like I said before, he was all over the map; he did not subscribe to any one belief system for too long.
>>>>>
>>>>> Didn't Lennon explain somewhere that by "Imagine no religion" what he meant to say is that there should be no "one religion" that excluded others?
>>>>>
>>>>> I expect we'd agree Lennon did not wish for an *absence* of religion any more than he wished for an absence of possessions.
>>>>>
>>>>> Did anyone ever discover the title of the book gifted to Lennon by Dick Gregory?
>>>> John called his period circa 1969 "Christian Communist," recognizing it as a phase. We think of him pushing people's buttons on controversial issues, but in my book on the "Beatles For Sale" era ("The Quality Of Mersey") the whole group is being interviewed together, and they projected a unified religious perspective ("more agnostic than atheistic" was Lennon's assessment), with Paul and Ringo making some provocative remarks. Paul said, "We probably seem antireligious because none of us believe in God"; Harrison declared, "John's our official religious spokesman." John said that's how most people really feel, with Ringo agreeing, "It's better to admit it than be a hypocrite." Lennon saw hypocrisy in the clergy lamenting the conditions of the poor without being charitable to them. McCartney mentioned the cost of a single bronze door in the Vatican.
>>>>
>>>> Paul made it clear none of that discussion involved the actual teachings of Jesus: "Believe it or, we're not anti-Christ." Then Ringo qualified that with, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian." So there was agnosticism, leaning pro-Christ - but righteously anti-Christian, shared by the entire group.
>>>>
>>>> So the song "God" uses the title word to address the typical cultural perception, the concept that placates pain and suffering with the dubious promise of eternal happiness once everything is over. It could not be about Lennon's own personal conclusion that God does not exist, since he described in a 1968 interview that through drugs, diet and meditation he had sensed a Higher Power. What is being disbelieved in "God" is resorting to the victim mindset that effectively allows the oppressor minimal resistance. The idea is the more pain you have, the more God you need psychologically as a coping mechanism, usually for something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. Think of the 'Negro Spiritual' songs borne of suffering in slavery. Pie in the sky when you die by and by.
>>>>
>>>> At the time John was completing primal therapy with Arthur Janov, who considered religion madness, and Lennon later admitted the attempt to purge it from his psyche failed. He called himself "a most religious fellow." Even in childhood, John would point upwards and say "Somebody's watching" when he detected mischief; once he walked in announcing he had just seen God. John spoke of other religious figures who were advanced spiritually like Jesus, with admiration for their simple rational philosophies that few seem to grasp. An interviewer brought up the rumor he proclaimed he WAS God, receiving the reply he had not meant he was "A God or THE God," but shared a fragment of divinity: "We have all things within us," the option of being evil or righteous through exercise of free will. He said the recurrent dichotomy of moral extremes was summed up in the Christ-versus-Hitler contrast.
>>>
>>> I remember an interview with Lennon in which he pronounced vaguely that "God is an energy, a power source," but that "I never believed it was any one thing."
>>>
>>> Under Janov's influence, Lennon asserted that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
>>>
>>> Then there were his televangelist phases, during which he presumably accepted the god of Christianity.
>>>
>>> And the "born-again pagan" identification came in 1979, IIRC.
>>>
>>> Again, I see a guy whose beliefs fluctuated wildly depending on what drugs he was on, what TV he was watching, and who he was hanging out with.
>> More than that, comments not intended to indicate any genuine belief,
>> but merely an off-the-cuff comments intended to rankle the other party,
>> or to engender controversy for controversy’s sake.
>>
>> An approach which certainly seems to have worked extremely well with
>> some fanatics !
>>
>> geoff
>
> Good point, he did plenty of that. How about Lennon's denunciation of Darwin as "absolute garbage" because "monkeys aren't changing into people now"? Is that what it looks like -- i.e., Donald Trump-level ignorance and stupidity -- or was Lennon courting controversy? (Sometimes audio of this [Playboy] interview can be found online, but one has to dig to find the particular passage.)
>
>

Deliberately 'winding up' people who are stupid enough to think along
those lines. Imagine the things he would be saying in this era to mock
the conspiracy/trump/etc rabble !

geoff

Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'

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Subject: Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'
From: eagalita...@gmail.com (Curtis Eagal)
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 by: Curtis Eagal - Thu, 28 Apr 2022 22:35 UTC

On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 2:29:12 PM UTC-7, geoff wrote:
> On 28/04/2022 11:10 pm, Norbert K wrote:
> > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 6:56:31 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
> >> On 28/04/2022 4:03 am, Norbert K wrote:
> >>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 5:30:15 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 4:08:26 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> >>>>> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 3:12:36 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> The song "Imagine" resulted from discussing a book about prayer with Dick Gregory - I have a family member who insists the line about "no religion" proves he was promoting heathenism, while my opinion is the theme follows the "Our Father" prayer: the best way for God's Will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven is to stop arguing about prejudices and possessions, manifest a rational society in the here and now. The full Maureen Cleave article from 1966 noted that two of John's favorite possessions were a Bible and a Crucifix; but wife Cynthia's gift of mechanized caged singing bird struck him as offensively bourgeois and partially inspired "And Your Bird Can Sing" - "when your prized possessions start to bring you down" is a similar anti-materialistic theme as "Can't Buy Me Love."
> >>>>> Your family member has a point; Lennon did occasionally purport to be a "born-again pagan." He had Christian phases, too -- one of which Yoko squelched because she feared it would prevent her from controlling him through the occult. Which brings up the point that he went along with Ono's occultism. And we know that John also had a soft spot for gurus. Like I said before, he was all over the map; he did not subscribe to any one belief system for too long.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Didn't Lennon explain somewhere that by "Imagine no religion" what he meant to say is that there should be no "one religion" that excluded others?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I expect we'd agree Lennon did not wish for an *absence* of religion any more than he wished for an absence of possessions.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Did anyone ever discover the title of the book gifted to Lennon by Dick Gregory?
> >>>> John called his period circa 1969 "Christian Communist," recognizing it as a phase. We think of him pushing people's buttons on controversial issues, but in my book on the "Beatles For Sale" era ("The Quality Of Mersey") the whole group is being interviewed together, and they projected a unified religious perspective ("more agnostic than atheistic" was Lennon's assessment), with Paul and Ringo making some provocative remarks. Paul said, "We probably seem antireligious because none of us believe in God"; Harrison declared, "John's our official religious spokesman." John said that's how most people really feel, with Ringo agreeing, "It's better to admit it than be a hypocrite." Lennon saw hypocrisy in the clergy lamenting the conditions of the poor without being charitable to them. McCartney mentioned the cost of a single bronze door in the Vatican.
> >>>>
> >>>> Paul made it clear none of that discussion involved the actual teachings of Jesus: "Believe it or, we're not anti-Christ." Then Ringo qualified that with, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian." So there was agnosticism, leaning pro-Christ - but righteously anti-Christian, shared by the entire group.
> >>>>
> >>>> So the song "God" uses the title word to address the typical cultural perception, the concept that placates pain and suffering with the dubious promise of eternal happiness once everything is over. It could not be about Lennon's own personal conclusion that God does not exist, since he described in a 1968 interview that through drugs, diet and meditation he had sensed a Higher Power. What is being disbelieved in "God" is resorting to the victim mindset that effectively allows the oppressor minimal resistance. The idea is the more pain you have, the more God you need psychologically as a coping mechanism, usually for something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. Think of the 'Negro Spiritual' songs borne of suffering in slavery. Pie in the sky when you die by and by.
> >>>>
> >>>> At the time John was completing primal therapy with Arthur Janov, who considered religion madness, and Lennon later admitted the attempt to purge it from his psyche failed. He called himself "a most religious fellow." Even in childhood, John would point upwards and say "Somebody's watching" when he detected mischief; once he walked in announcing he had just seen God.. John spoke of other religious figures who were advanced spiritually like Jesus, with admiration for their simple rational philosophies that few seem to grasp. An interviewer brought up the rumor he proclaimed he WAS God, receiving the reply he had not meant he was "A God or THE God," but shared a fragment of divinity: "We have all things within us," the option of being evil or righteous through exercise of free will. He said the recurrent dichotomy of moral extremes was summed up in the Christ-versus-Hitler contrast.
> >>>
> >>> I remember an interview with Lennon in which he pronounced vaguely that "God is an energy, a power source," but that "I never believed it was any one thing."
> >>>
> >>> Under Janov's influence, Lennon asserted that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
> >>>
> >>> Then there were his televangelist phases, during which he presumably accepted the god of Christianity.
> >>>
> >>> And the "born-again pagan" identification came in 1979, IIRC.
> >>>
> >>> Again, I see a guy whose beliefs fluctuated wildly depending on what drugs he was on, what TV he was watching, and who he was hanging out with.
> >> More than that, comments not intended to indicate any genuine belief,
> >> but merely an off-the-cuff comments intended to rankle the other party,
> >> or to engender controversy for controversy’s sake.
> >>
> >> An approach which certainly seems to have worked extremely well with
> >> some fanatics !
> >>
> >> geoff
> >
> > Good point, he did plenty of that. How about Lennon's denunciation of Darwin as "absolute garbage" because "monkeys aren't changing into people now"? Is that what it looks like -- i.e., Donald Trump-level ignorance and stupidity -- or was Lennon courting controversy? (Sometimes audio of this [Playboy] interview can be found online, but one has to dig to find the particular passage.)
> >
> >
> Deliberately 'winding up' people who are stupid enough to think along
> those lines. Imagine the things he would be saying in this era to mock
> the conspiracy/trump/etc rabble !
>

I think JL was too sophisticated to seriously promote Creationism. If you take the phrase 'born-again pagan' at face value it's like the idea of the Renaissance, a rebirth of Western culture through emulation of artwork unearthed from antiquity. Christians await some sort of rebirth, and that occurring outside of the Church would make it pagan by definition. Usually people are deceived by the packaging, and John used this to his advantage, changing his approach (the packaging) , while the 'product' inside remained the same.

Religious beliefs and institutions foster submission to pain and resorting to false hope, that's a song basis. We could make Earth into Heaven if we lived the moral essence of religion rather than practice its dogma, that's another. Those didn't emerge from the same circumstances, but that does not make one the witness against the other, they are both genuine for their respective times.

The genius of Lennon is in how he used sound to process what Christian society professes to revere into a captivating format, so his group was monitoring the unprecedented feedback, while they were picking up on various trends to infuse their productions. It was known at the outset the enterprise could only be protracted to a finite series of stages, so it was never his belief that mattered - it was a test of our Faith collectively. Once the subliminal becomes conscious it frequently is a sound-dramatization of the Christ story, gospel facts over which there is no possible debate.

The basis for "Baby's In Black" was not only a children's rhyme: the colors black and blue in the lyrics obviously suggest bruising. The guitar riff ends with a deep note that approximates the word 'Bruise'; the hidden subtext is the passage in Isaiah where the Messiah is foretold as One who would heal through His bruise - and the variations of the riff become alternated in the instrumental middle section with a unique few bars tonally suggesting,

'...According to Isai-ah,
A He-brew
Pro-phet...'

The two instrumental breaks in the slow ballad "If I Fell" progress from a stilted "Cho-sen Few' to the final ascent implying,


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Subject: Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'
From: norbertk...@gmail.com (Norbert K)
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 by: Norbert K - Fri, 29 Apr 2022 11:26 UTC

On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 5:29:12 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
> On 28/04/2022 11:10 pm, Norbert K wrote:
> > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 6:56:31 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
> >> On 28/04/2022 4:03 am, Norbert K wrote:
> >>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 5:30:15 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 4:08:26 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> >>>>> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 3:12:36 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> The song "Imagine" resulted from discussing a book about prayer with Dick Gregory - I have a family member who insists the line about "no religion" proves he was promoting heathenism, while my opinion is the theme follows the "Our Father" prayer: the best way for God's Will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven is to stop arguing about prejudices and possessions, manifest a rational society in the here and now. The full Maureen Cleave article from 1966 noted that two of John's favorite possessions were a Bible and a Crucifix; but wife Cynthia's gift of mechanized caged singing bird struck him as offensively bourgeois and partially inspired "And Your Bird Can Sing" - "when your prized possessions start to bring you down" is a similar anti-materialistic theme as "Can't Buy Me Love."
> >>>>> Your family member has a point; Lennon did occasionally purport to be a "born-again pagan." He had Christian phases, too -- one of which Yoko squelched because she feared it would prevent her from controlling him through the occult. Which brings up the point that he went along with Ono's occultism. And we know that John also had a soft spot for gurus. Like I said before, he was all over the map; he did not subscribe to any one belief system for too long.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Didn't Lennon explain somewhere that by "Imagine no religion" what he meant to say is that there should be no "one religion" that excluded others?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I expect we'd agree Lennon did not wish for an *absence* of religion any more than he wished for an absence of possessions.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Did anyone ever discover the title of the book gifted to Lennon by Dick Gregory?
> >>>> John called his period circa 1969 "Christian Communist," recognizing it as a phase. We think of him pushing people's buttons on controversial issues, but in my book on the "Beatles For Sale" era ("The Quality Of Mersey") the whole group is being interviewed together, and they projected a unified religious perspective ("more agnostic than atheistic" was Lennon's assessment), with Paul and Ringo making some provocative remarks. Paul said, "We probably seem antireligious because none of us believe in God"; Harrison declared, "John's our official religious spokesman." John said that's how most people really feel, with Ringo agreeing, "It's better to admit it than be a hypocrite." Lennon saw hypocrisy in the clergy lamenting the conditions of the poor without being charitable to them. McCartney mentioned the cost of a single bronze door in the Vatican.
> >>>>
> >>>> Paul made it clear none of that discussion involved the actual teachings of Jesus: "Believe it or, we're not anti-Christ." Then Ringo qualified that with, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian." So there was agnosticism, leaning pro-Christ - but righteously anti-Christian, shared by the entire group.
> >>>>
> >>>> So the song "God" uses the title word to address the typical cultural perception, the concept that placates pain and suffering with the dubious promise of eternal happiness once everything is over. It could not be about Lennon's own personal conclusion that God does not exist, since he described in a 1968 interview that through drugs, diet and meditation he had sensed a Higher Power. What is being disbelieved in "God" is resorting to the victim mindset that effectively allows the oppressor minimal resistance. The idea is the more pain you have, the more God you need psychologically as a coping mechanism, usually for something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. Think of the 'Negro Spiritual' songs borne of suffering in slavery. Pie in the sky when you die by and by.
> >>>>
> >>>> At the time John was completing primal therapy with Arthur Janov, who considered religion madness, and Lennon later admitted the attempt to purge it from his psyche failed. He called himself "a most religious fellow." Even in childhood, John would point upwards and say "Somebody's watching" when he detected mischief; once he walked in announcing he had just seen God.. John spoke of other religious figures who were advanced spiritually like Jesus, with admiration for their simple rational philosophies that few seem to grasp. An interviewer brought up the rumor he proclaimed he WAS God, receiving the reply he had not meant he was "A God or THE God," but shared a fragment of divinity: "We have all things within us," the option of being evil or righteous through exercise of free will. He said the recurrent dichotomy of moral extremes was summed up in the Christ-versus-Hitler contrast.
> >>>
> >>> I remember an interview with Lennon in which he pronounced vaguely that "God is an energy, a power source," but that "I never believed it was any one thing."
> >>>
> >>> Under Janov's influence, Lennon asserted that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
> >>>
> >>> Then there were his televangelist phases, during which he presumably accepted the god of Christianity.
> >>>
> >>> And the "born-again pagan" identification came in 1979, IIRC.
> >>>
> >>> Again, I see a guy whose beliefs fluctuated wildly depending on what drugs he was on, what TV he was watching, and who he was hanging out with.
> >> More than that, comments not intended to indicate any genuine belief,
> >> but merely an off-the-cuff comments intended to rankle the other party,
> >> or to engender controversy for controversy’s sake.
> >>
> >> An approach which certainly seems to have worked extremely well with
> >> some fanatics !
> >>
> >> geoff
> >
> > Good point, he did plenty of that. How about Lennon's denunciation of Darwin as "absolute garbage" because "monkeys aren't changing into people now"? Is that what it looks like -- i.e., Donald Trump-level ignorance and stupidity -- or was Lennon courting controversy? (Sometimes audio of this [Playboy] interview can be found online, but one has to dig to find the particular passage.)
> >
> >
> Deliberately 'winding up' people who are stupid enough to think along
> those lines. Imagine the things he would be saying in this era to mock
> the conspiracy/trump/etc rabble !
>
> geoff

I wish I could agree with you. However, if one looks at Lennon's existence at that time, there is no escaping the fact that he was confused. He was giving control over Double Fantasy to Ono -- who was by her own admission guided by pychics and astrologers (and who was conducting not one but two extramarital affairs at the time). Lennon's Playboy interview if full of paranoia and delusion -- for example Lennon's claim that McCartney had "subconsciously sabotaged" Lennon's best work. Lennon's best retort to people who thought he was being manipulated by Ono was "Fuck you brother and sister." Lennon had recently emerged from a phase of following televangelist Pat Robertson. And then if you listen to the audio of the Playboy interview, there is real anger in his voice towards this idea (evolution) he had no understanding of.

John wasn't thinking straight.

Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'

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 by: geoff - Sat, 30 Apr 2022 01:09 UTC

On 29/04/2022 11:26 pm, Norbert K wrote:
> On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 5:29:12 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
>> On 28/04/2022 11:10 pm, Norbert K wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 6:56:31 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
>>>> On 28/04/2022 4:03 am, Norbert K wrote:
>>>>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 5:30:15 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 4:08:26 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
>>>>>>> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 3:12:36 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> The song "Imagine" resulted from discussing a book about prayer with Dick Gregory - I have a family member who insists the line about "no religion" proves he was promoting heathenism, while my opinion is the theme follows the "Our Father" prayer: the best way for God's Will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven is to stop arguing about prejudices and possessions, manifest a rational society in the here and now. The full Maureen Cleave article from 1966 noted that two of John's favorite possessions were a Bible and a Crucifix; but wife Cynthia's gift of mechanized caged singing bird struck him as offensively bourgeois and partially inspired "And Your Bird Can Sing" - "when your prized possessions start to bring you down" is a similar anti-materialistic theme as "Can't Buy Me Love."
>>>>>>> Your family member has a point; Lennon did occasionally purport to be a "born-again pagan." He had Christian phases, too -- one of which Yoko squelched because she feared it would prevent her from controlling him through the occult. Which brings up the point that he went along with Ono's occultism. And we know that John also had a soft spot for gurus. Like I said before, he was all over the map; he did not subscribe to any one belief system for too long.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Didn't Lennon explain somewhere that by "Imagine no religion" what he meant to say is that there should be no "one religion" that excluded others?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I expect we'd agree Lennon did not wish for an *absence* of religion any more than he wished for an absence of possessions.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Did anyone ever discover the title of the book gifted to Lennon by Dick Gregory?
>>>>>> John called his period circa 1969 "Christian Communist," recognizing it as a phase. We think of him pushing people's buttons on controversial issues, but in my book on the "Beatles For Sale" era ("The Quality Of Mersey") the whole group is being interviewed together, and they projected a unified religious perspective ("more agnostic than atheistic" was Lennon's assessment), with Paul and Ringo making some provocative remarks. Paul said, "We probably seem antireligious because none of us believe in God"; Harrison declared, "John's our official religious spokesman." John said that's how most people really feel, with Ringo agreeing, "It's better to admit it than be a hypocrite." Lennon saw hypocrisy in the clergy lamenting the conditions of the poor without being charitable to them. McCartney mentioned the cost of a single bronze door in the Vatican.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Paul made it clear none of that discussion involved the actual teachings of Jesus: "Believe it or, we're not anti-Christ." Then Ringo qualified that with, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian." So there was agnosticism, leaning pro-Christ - but righteously anti-Christian, shared by the entire group.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So the song "God" uses the title word to address the typical cultural perception, the concept that placates pain and suffering with the dubious promise of eternal happiness once everything is over. It could not be about Lennon's own personal conclusion that God does not exist, since he described in a 1968 interview that through drugs, diet and meditation he had sensed a Higher Power. What is being disbelieved in "God" is resorting to the victim mindset that effectively allows the oppressor minimal resistance. The idea is the more pain you have, the more God you need psychologically as a coping mechanism, usually for something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. Think of the 'Negro Spiritual' songs borne of suffering in slavery. Pie in the sky when you die by and by.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> At the time John was completing primal therapy with Arthur Janov, who considered religion madness, and Lennon later admitted the attempt to purge it from his psyche failed. He called himself "a most religious fellow." Even in childhood, John would point upwards and say "Somebody's watching" when he detected mischief; once he walked in announcing he had just seen God. John spoke of other religious figures who were advanced spiritually like Jesus, with admiration for their simple rational philosophies that few seem to grasp. An interviewer brought up the rumor he proclaimed he WAS God, receiving the reply he had not meant he was "A God or THE God," but shared a fragment of divinity: "We have all things within us," the option of being evil or righteous through exercise of free will. He said the recurrent dichotomy of moral extremes was summed up in the Christ-versus-Hitler contrast.
>>>>>
>>>>> I remember an interview with Lennon in which he pronounced vaguely that "God is an energy, a power source," but that "I never believed it was any one thing."
>>>>>
>>>>> Under Janov's influence, Lennon asserted that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
>>>>>
>>>>> Then there were his televangelist phases, during which he presumably accepted the god of Christianity.
>>>>>
>>>>> And the "born-again pagan" identification came in 1979, IIRC.
>>>>>
>>>>> Again, I see a guy whose beliefs fluctuated wildly depending on what drugs he was on, what TV he was watching, and who he was hanging out with.
>>>> More than that, comments not intended to indicate any genuine belief,
>>>> but merely an off-the-cuff comments intended to rankle the other party,
>>>> or to engender controversy for controversy’s sake.
>>>>
>>>> An approach which certainly seems to have worked extremely well with
>>>> some fanatics !
>>>>
>>>> geoff
>>>
>>> Good point, he did plenty of that. How about Lennon's denunciation of Darwin as "absolute garbage" because "monkeys aren't changing into people now"? Is that what it looks like -- i.e., Donald Trump-level ignorance and stupidity -- or was Lennon courting controversy? (Sometimes audio of this [Playboy] interview can be found online, but one has to dig to find the particular passage.)
>>>
>>>
>> Deliberately 'winding up' people who are stupid enough to think along
>> those lines. Imagine the things he would be saying in this era to mock
>> the conspiracy/trump/etc rabble !
>>
>> geoff
>
> I wish I could agree with you. However, if one looks at Lennon's existence at that time, there is no escaping the fact that he was confused. He was giving control over Double Fantasy to Ono -- who was by her own admission guided by pychics and astrologers (and who was conducting not one but two extramarital affairs at the time). Lennon's Playboy interview if full of paranoia and delusion -- for example Lennon's claim that McCartney had "subconsciously sabotaged" Lennon's best work. Lennon's best retort to people who thought he was being manipulated by Ono was "Fuck you brother and sister." Lennon had recently emerged from a phase of following televangelist Pat Robertson. And then if you listen to the audio of the Playboy interview, there is real anger in his voice towards this idea (evolution) he had no understanding of.
>
> John wasn't thinking straight.

Certainly. But his stock response to any question about anything from
anybody was anything that would shock or be controversial - whether he
actually believed it or not. Not only during that phase, but pretty much
any time.

geoff

Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'

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 by: Norbert K - Sat, 30 Apr 2022 11:25 UTC

On Friday, April 29, 2022 at 9:09:08 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
> On 29/04/2022 11:26 pm, Norbert K wrote:
> > On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 5:29:12 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
> >> On 28/04/2022 11:10 pm, Norbert K wrote:
> >>> On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 6:56:31 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
> >>>> On 28/04/2022 4:03 am, Norbert K wrote:
> >>>>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 5:30:15 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>>>>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 4:08:26 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> >>>>>>> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 3:12:36 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> The song "Imagine" resulted from discussing a book about prayer with Dick Gregory - I have a family member who insists the line about "no religion" proves he was promoting heathenism, while my opinion is the theme follows the "Our Father" prayer: the best way for God's Will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven is to stop arguing about prejudices and possessions, manifest a rational society in the here and now. The full Maureen Cleave article from 1966 noted that two of John's favorite possessions were a Bible and a Crucifix; but wife Cynthia's gift of mechanized caged singing bird struck him as offensively bourgeois and partially inspired "And Your Bird Can Sing" - "when your prized possessions start to bring you down" is a similar anti-materialistic theme as "Can't Buy Me Love."
> >>>>>>> Your family member has a point; Lennon did occasionally purport to be a "born-again pagan." He had Christian phases, too -- one of which Yoko squelched because she feared it would prevent her from controlling him through the occult. Which brings up the point that he went along with Ono's occultism. And we know that John also had a soft spot for gurus. Like I said before, he was all over the map; he did not subscribe to any one belief system for too long.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Didn't Lennon explain somewhere that by "Imagine no religion" what he meant to say is that there should be no "one religion" that excluded others?
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> I expect we'd agree Lennon did not wish for an *absence* of religion any more than he wished for an absence of possessions.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Did anyone ever discover the title of the book gifted to Lennon by Dick Gregory?
> >>>>>> John called his period circa 1969 "Christian Communist," recognizing it as a phase. We think of him pushing people's buttons on controversial issues, but in my book on the "Beatles For Sale" era ("The Quality Of Mersey") the whole group is being interviewed together, and they projected a unified religious perspective ("more agnostic than atheistic" was Lennon's assessment), with Paul and Ringo making some provocative remarks. Paul said, "We probably seem antireligious because none of us believe in God"; Harrison declared, "John's our official religious spokesman." John said that's how most people really feel, with Ringo agreeing, "It's better to admit it than be a hypocrite." Lennon saw hypocrisy in the clergy lamenting the conditions of the poor without being charitable to them. McCartney mentioned the cost of a single bronze door in the Vatican.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Paul made it clear none of that discussion involved the actual teachings of Jesus: "Believe it or, we're not anti-Christ." Then Ringo qualified that with, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian." So there was agnosticism, leaning pro-Christ - but righteously anti-Christian, shared by the entire group.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> So the song "God" uses the title word to address the typical cultural perception, the concept that placates pain and suffering with the dubious promise of eternal happiness once everything is over. It could not be about Lennon's own personal conclusion that God does not exist, since he described in a 1968 interview that through drugs, diet and meditation he had sensed a Higher Power. What is being disbelieved in "God" is resorting to the victim mindset that effectively allows the oppressor minimal resistance. The idea is the more pain you have, the more God you need psychologically as a coping mechanism, usually for something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. Think of the 'Negro Spiritual' songs borne of suffering in slavery. Pie in the sky when you die by and by.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> At the time John was completing primal therapy with Arthur Janov, who considered religion madness, and Lennon later admitted the attempt to purge it from his psyche failed. He called himself "a most religious fellow." Even in childhood, John would point upwards and say "Somebody's watching" when he detected mischief; once he walked in announcing he had just seen God. John spoke of other religious figures who were advanced spiritually like Jesus, with admiration for their simple rational philosophies that few seem to grasp. An interviewer brought up the rumor he proclaimed he WAS God, receiving the reply he had not meant he was "A God or THE God," but shared a fragment of divinity: "We have all things within us," the option of being evil or righteous through exercise of free will. He said the recurrent dichotomy of moral extremes was summed up in the Christ-versus-Hitler contrast..
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I remember an interview with Lennon in which he pronounced vaguely that "God is an energy, a power source," but that "I never believed it was any one thing."
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Under Janov's influence, Lennon asserted that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Then there were his televangelist phases, during which he presumably accepted the god of Christianity.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> And the "born-again pagan" identification came in 1979, IIRC.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Again, I see a guy whose beliefs fluctuated wildly depending on what drugs he was on, what TV he was watching, and who he was hanging out with..
> >>>> More than that, comments not intended to indicate any genuine belief,
> >>>> but merely an off-the-cuff comments intended to rankle the other party,
> >>>> or to engender controversy for controversy’s sake.
> >>>>
> >>>> An approach which certainly seems to have worked extremely well with
> >>>> some fanatics !
> >>>>
> >>>> geoff
> >>>
> >>> Good point, he did plenty of that. How about Lennon's denunciation of Darwin as "absolute garbage" because "monkeys aren't changing into people now"? Is that what it looks like -- i.e., Donald Trump-level ignorance and stupidity -- or was Lennon courting controversy? (Sometimes audio of this [Playboy] interview can be found online, but one has to dig to find the particular passage.)
> >>>
> >>>
> >> Deliberately 'winding up' people who are stupid enough to think along
> >> those lines. Imagine the things he would be saying in this era to mock
> >> the conspiracy/trump/etc rabble !
> >>
> >> geoff
> >
> > I wish I could agree with you. However, if one looks at Lennon's existence at that time, there is no escaping the fact that he was confused. He was giving control over Double Fantasy to Ono -- who was by her own admission guided by pychics and astrologers (and who was conducting not one but two extramarital affairs at the time). Lennon's Playboy interview if full of paranoia and delusion -- for example Lennon's claim that McCartney had "subconsciously sabotaged" Lennon's best work. Lennon's best retort to people who thought he was being manipulated by Ono was "Fuck you brother and sister." Lennon had recently emerged from a phase of following televangelist Pat Robertson. And then if you listen to the audio of the Playboy interview, there is real anger in his voice towards this idea (evolution) he had no understanding of.
> >
> > John wasn't thinking straight.
> Certainly. But his stock response to any question about anything from
> anybody was anything that would shock or be controversial - whether he
> actually believed it or not. Not only during that phase, but pretty much
> any time.
>
> geoff

He always liked to provoke, that's true.

I still think John had a lot more sense in his pre-LSD, pre-Yoko, pre-heroin-and-methadone existence.

It would have been interesting if John were talking to someone who had a basic education (which includes biology) and who wasn't awestruck by wealth & fame -- somebody who could challenge John's loopier assertions. John needed a cohort who could challenge him -- not Yoko with her superstitions or Mintz with his sycophantism.


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 by: geoff - Sat, 30 Apr 2022 12:42 UTC

On 30/04/2022 11:25 pm, Norbert K wrote:
> On Friday, April 29, 2022 at 9:09:08 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
>> On 29/04/2022 11:26 pm, Norbert K wrote:
>>> On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 5:29:12 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
>>>> On 28/04/2022 11:10 pm, Norbert K wrote:
>>>>> On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 6:56:31 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
>>>>>> On 28/04/2022 4:03 am, Norbert K wrote:
>>>>>>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 5:30:15 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>>>>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 4:08:26 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
>>>>>>>>> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 3:12:36 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> The song "Imagine" resulted from discussing a book about prayer with Dick Gregory - I have a family member who insists the line about "no religion" proves he was promoting heathenism, while my opinion is the theme follows the "Our Father" prayer: the best way for God's Will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven is to stop arguing about prejudices and possessions, manifest a rational society in the here and now. The full Maureen Cleave article from 1966 noted that two of John's favorite possessions were a Bible and a Crucifix; but wife Cynthia's gift of mechanized caged singing bird struck him as offensively bourgeois and partially inspired "And Your Bird Can Sing" - "when your prized possessions start to bring you down" is a similar anti-materialistic theme as "Can't Buy Me Love."
>>>>>>>>> Your family member has a point; Lennon did occasionally purport to be a "born-again pagan." He had Christian phases, too -- one of which Yoko squelched because she feared it would prevent her from controlling him through the occult. Which brings up the point that he went along with Ono's occultism. And we know that John also had a soft spot for gurus. Like I said before, he was all over the map; he did not subscribe to any one belief system for too long.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Didn't Lennon explain somewhere that by "Imagine no religion" what he meant to say is that there should be no "one religion" that excluded others?
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I expect we'd agree Lennon did not wish for an *absence* of religion any more than he wished for an absence of possessions.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Did anyone ever discover the title of the book gifted to Lennon by Dick Gregory?
>>>>>>>> John called his period circa 1969 "Christian Communist," recognizing it as a phase. We think of him pushing people's buttons on controversial issues, but in my book on the "Beatles For Sale" era ("The Quality Of Mersey") the whole group is being interviewed together, and they projected a unified religious perspective ("more agnostic than atheistic" was Lennon's assessment), with Paul and Ringo making some provocative remarks. Paul said, "We probably seem antireligious because none of us believe in God"; Harrison declared, "John's our official religious spokesman." John said that's how most people really feel, with Ringo agreeing, "It's better to admit it than be a hypocrite." Lennon saw hypocrisy in the clergy lamenting the conditions of the poor without being charitable to them. McCartney mentioned the cost of a single bronze door in the Vatican.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Paul made it clear none of that discussion involved the actual teachings of Jesus: "Believe it or, we're not anti-Christ." Then Ringo qualified that with, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian." So there was agnosticism, leaning pro-Christ - but righteously anti-Christian, shared by the entire group.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> So the song "God" uses the title word to address the typical cultural perception, the concept that placates pain and suffering with the dubious promise of eternal happiness once everything is over. It could not be about Lennon's own personal conclusion that God does not exist, since he described in a 1968 interview that through drugs, diet and meditation he had sensed a Higher Power. What is being disbelieved in "God" is resorting to the victim mindset that effectively allows the oppressor minimal resistance. The idea is the more pain you have, the more God you need psychologically as a coping mechanism, usually for something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. Think of the 'Negro Spiritual' songs borne of suffering in slavery. Pie in the sky when you die by and by.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> At the time John was completing primal therapy with Arthur Janov, who considered religion madness, and Lennon later admitted the attempt to purge it from his psyche failed. He called himself "a most religious fellow." Even in childhood, John would point upwards and say "Somebody's watching" when he detected mischief; once he walked in announcing he had just seen God. John spoke of other religious figures who were advanced spiritually like Jesus, with admiration for their simple rational philosophies that few seem to grasp. An interviewer brought up the rumor he proclaimed he WAS God, receiving the reply he had not meant he was "A God or THE God," but shared a fragment of divinity: "We have all things within us," the option of being evil or righteous through exercise of free will. He said the recurrent dichotomy of moral extremes was summed up in the Christ-versus-Hitler contrast.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I remember an interview with Lennon in which he pronounced vaguely that "God is an energy, a power source," but that "I never believed it was any one thing."
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Under Janov's influence, Lennon asserted that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Then there were his televangelist phases, during which he presumably accepted the god of Christianity.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> And the "born-again pagan" identification came in 1979, IIRC.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Again, I see a guy whose beliefs fluctuated wildly depending on what drugs he was on, what TV he was watching, and who he was hanging out with.
>>>>>> More than that, comments not intended to indicate any genuine belief,
>>>>>> but merely an off-the-cuff comments intended to rankle the other party,
>>>>>> or to engender controversy for controversy’s sake.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> An approach which certainly seems to have worked extremely well with
>>>>>> some fanatics !
>>>>>>
>>>>>> geoff
>>>>>
>>>>> Good point, he did plenty of that. How about Lennon's denunciation of Darwin as "absolute garbage" because "monkeys aren't changing into people now"? Is that what it looks like -- i.e., Donald Trump-level ignorance and stupidity -- or was Lennon courting controversy? (Sometimes audio of this [Playboy] interview can be found online, but one has to dig to find the particular passage.)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Deliberately 'winding up' people who are stupid enough to think along
>>>> those lines. Imagine the things he would be saying in this era to mock
>>>> the conspiracy/trump/etc rabble !
>>>>
>>>> geoff
>>>
>>> I wish I could agree with you. However, if one looks at Lennon's existence at that time, there is no escaping the fact that he was confused. He was giving control over Double Fantasy to Ono -- who was by her own admission guided by pychics and astrologers (and who was conducting not one but two extramarital affairs at the time). Lennon's Playboy interview if full of paranoia and delusion -- for example Lennon's claim that McCartney had "subconsciously sabotaged" Lennon's best work. Lennon's best retort to people who thought he was being manipulated by Ono was "Fuck you brother and sister." Lennon had recently emerged from a phase of following televangelist Pat Robertson. And then if you listen to the audio of the Playboy interview, there is real anger in his voice towards this idea (evolution) he had no understanding of.
>>>
>>> John wasn't thinking straight.
>> Certainly. But his stock response to any question about anything from
>> anybody was anything that would shock or be controversial - whether he
>> actually believed it or not. Not only during that phase, but pretty much
>> any time.
>>
>> geoff
>
> He always liked to provoke, that's true.
>
> I still think John had a lot more sense in his pre-LSD, pre-Yoko, pre-heroin-and-methadone existence.
>
> It would have been interesting if John were talking to someone who had a basic education (which includes biology) and who wasn't awestruck by wealth & fame -- somebody who could challenge John's loopier assertions. John needed a cohort who could challenge him -- not Yoko with her superstitions or Mintz with his sycophantism.
>
> One of the Fox News idiots once asked Richard Dawkins why monkeys weren't transforming into people, and Dawkins was outraged. "That question is spectacularly stupid! You might as well as why people aren't turning into monkeys!"
>
>
>


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Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'

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Subject: Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'
From: norbertk...@gmail.com (Norbert K)
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 by: Norbert K - Sat, 30 Apr 2022 13:21 UTC

On Saturday, April 30, 2022 at 8:42:55 AM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
> On 30/04/2022 11:25 pm, Norbert K wrote:
> > On Friday, April 29, 2022 at 9:09:08 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
> >> On 29/04/2022 11:26 pm, Norbert K wrote:
> >>> On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 5:29:12 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
> >>>> On 28/04/2022 11:10 pm, Norbert K wrote:
> >>>>> On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 6:56:31 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
> >>>>>> On 28/04/2022 4:03 am, Norbert K wrote:
> >>>>>>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 5:30:15 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>>>>>>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 4:08:26 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> >>>>>>>>> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 3:12:36 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> >>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>> The song "Imagine" resulted from discussing a book about prayer with Dick Gregory - I have a family member who insists the line about "no religion" proves he was promoting heathenism, while my opinion is the theme follows the "Our Father" prayer: the best way for God's Will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven is to stop arguing about prejudices and possessions, manifest a rational society in the here and now. The full Maureen Cleave article from 1966 noted that two of John's favorite possessions were a Bible and a Crucifix; but wife Cynthia's gift of mechanized caged singing bird struck him as offensively bourgeois and partially inspired "And Your Bird Can Sing" - "when your prized possessions start to bring you down" is a similar anti-materialistic theme as "Can't Buy Me Love."
> >>>>>>>>> Your family member has a point; Lennon did occasionally purport to be a "born-again pagan." He had Christian phases, too -- one of which Yoko squelched because she feared it would prevent her from controlling him through the occult. Which brings up the point that he went along with Ono's occultism. And we know that John also had a soft spot for gurus. Like I said before, he was all over the map; he did not subscribe to any one belief system for too long.
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> Didn't Lennon explain somewhere that by "Imagine no religion" what he meant to say is that there should be no "one religion" that excluded others?
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> I expect we'd agree Lennon did not wish for an *absence* of religion any more than he wished for an absence of possessions.
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> Did anyone ever discover the title of the book gifted to Lennon by Dick Gregory?
> >>>>>>>> John called his period circa 1969 "Christian Communist," recognizing it as a phase. We think of him pushing people's buttons on controversial issues, but in my book on the "Beatles For Sale" era ("The Quality Of Mersey") the whole group is being interviewed together, and they projected a unified religious perspective ("more agnostic than atheistic" was Lennon's assessment), with Paul and Ringo making some provocative remarks. Paul said, "We probably seem antireligious because none of us believe in God"; Harrison declared, "John's our official religious spokesman." John said that's how most people really feel, with Ringo agreeing, "It's better to admit it than be a hypocrite." Lennon saw hypocrisy in the clergy lamenting the conditions of the poor without being charitable to them. McCartney mentioned the cost of a single bronze door in the Vatican.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Paul made it clear none of that discussion involved the actual teachings of Jesus: "Believe it or, we're not anti-Christ." Then Ringo qualified that with, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian." So there was agnosticism, leaning pro-Christ - but righteously anti-Christian, shared by the entire group.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> So the song "God" uses the title word to address the typical cultural perception, the concept that placates pain and suffering with the dubious promise of eternal happiness once everything is over. It could not be about Lennon's own personal conclusion that God does not exist, since he described in a 1968 interview that through drugs, diet and meditation he had sensed a Higher Power. What is being disbelieved in "God" is resorting to the victim mindset that effectively allows the oppressor minimal resistance. The idea is the more pain you have, the more God you need psychologically as a coping mechanism, usually for something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. Think of the 'Negro Spiritual' songs borne of suffering in slavery. Pie in the sky when you die by and by.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> At the time John was completing primal therapy with Arthur Janov, who considered religion madness, and Lennon later admitted the attempt to purge it from his psyche failed. He called himself "a most religious fellow." Even in childhood, John would point upwards and say "Somebody's watching" when he detected mischief; once he walked in announcing he had just seen God. John spoke of other religious figures who were advanced spiritually like Jesus, with admiration for their simple rational philosophies that few seem to grasp. An interviewer brought up the rumor he proclaimed he WAS God, receiving the reply he had not meant he was "A God or THE God," but shared a fragment of divinity: "We have all things within us," the option of being evil or righteous through exercise of free will. He said the recurrent dichotomy of moral extremes was summed up in the Christ-versus-Hitler contrast.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> I remember an interview with Lennon in which he pronounced vaguely that "God is an energy, a power source," but that "I never believed it was any one thing."
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Under Janov's influence, Lennon asserted that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Then there were his televangelist phases, during which he presumably accepted the god of Christianity.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> And the "born-again pagan" identification came in 1979, IIRC.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Again, I see a guy whose beliefs fluctuated wildly depending on what drugs he was on, what TV he was watching, and who he was hanging out with.
> >>>>>> More than that, comments not intended to indicate any genuine belief,
> >>>>>> but merely an off-the-cuff comments intended to rankle the other party,
> >>>>>> or to engender controversy for controversy’s sake.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> An approach which certainly seems to have worked extremely well with
> >>>>>> some fanatics !
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> geoff
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Good point, he did plenty of that. How about Lennon's denunciation of Darwin as "absolute garbage" because "monkeys aren't changing into people now"? Is that what it looks like -- i.e., Donald Trump-level ignorance and stupidity -- or was Lennon courting controversy? (Sometimes audio of this [Playboy] interview can be found online, but one has to dig to find the particular passage.)
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> Deliberately 'winding up' people who are stupid enough to think along
> >>>> those lines. Imagine the things he would be saying in this era to mock
> >>>> the conspiracy/trump/etc rabble !
> >>>>
> >>>> geoff
> >>>
> >>> I wish I could agree with you. However, if one looks at Lennon's existence at that time, there is no escaping the fact that he was confused. He was giving control over Double Fantasy to Ono -- who was by her own admission guided by pychics and astrologers (and who was conducting not one but two extramarital affairs at the time). Lennon's Playboy interview if full of paranoia and delusion -- for example Lennon's claim that McCartney had "subconsciously sabotaged" Lennon's best work. Lennon's best retort to people who thought he was being manipulated by Ono was "Fuck you brother and sister.." Lennon had recently emerged from a phase of following televangelist Pat Robertson. And then if you listen to the audio of the Playboy interview, there is real anger in his voice towards this idea (evolution) he had no understanding of.
> >>>
> >>> John wasn't thinking straight.
> >> Certainly. But his stock response to any question about anything from
> >> anybody was anything that would shock or be controversial - whether he
> >> actually believed it or not. Not only during that phase, but pretty much
> >> any time.
> >>
> >> geoff
> >
> > He always liked to provoke, that's true.
> >
> > I still think John had a lot more sense in his pre-LSD, pre-Yoko, pre-heroin-and-methadone existence.
> >
> > It would have been interesting if John were talking to someone who had a basic education (which includes biology) and who wasn't awestruck by wealth & fame -- somebody who could challenge John's loopier assertions. John needed a cohort who could challenge him -- not Yoko with her superstitions or Mintz with his sycophantism.
> >
> > One of the Fox News idiots once asked Richard Dawkins why monkeys weren't transforming into people, and Dawkins was outraged. "That question is spectacularly stupid! You might as well as why people aren't turning into monkeys!"
> >
> >
> >
> John's comment re monkeys-humans would certainly have been a joke.
> Trump's equivalent would not have been.
>
> geoff


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Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'

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Subject: Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'
From: RJKel...@yahoo.com (RJKe...@yahoo.com)
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 by: RJKe...@yahoo.com - Mon, 2 May 2022 14:12 UTC

On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 9:21:14 AM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 4:11:37 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 8:16:06 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 3:56:31 PM UTC-7, geoff wrote:
> > > > On 28/04/2022 4:03 am, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 5:30:15 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > >> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 4:08:26 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > >>> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 3:12:36 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > >>>>
> > > > >>>> The song "Imagine" resulted from discussing a book about prayer with Dick Gregory - I have a family member who insists the line about "no religion" proves he was promoting heathenism, while my opinion is the theme follows the "Our Father" prayer: the best way for God's Will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven is to stop arguing about prejudices and possessions, manifest a rational society in the here and now. The full Maureen Cleave article from 1966 noted that two of John's favorite possessions were a Bible and a Crucifix; but wife Cynthia's gift of mechanized caged singing bird struck him as offensively bourgeois and partially inspired "And Your Bird Can Sing" - "when your prized possessions start to bring you down" is a similar anti-materialistic theme as "Can't Buy Me Love."
> > > > >>> Your family member has a point; Lennon did occasionally purport to be a "born-again pagan." He had Christian phases, too -- one of which Yoko squelched because she feared it would prevent her from controlling him through the occult. Which brings up the point that he went along with Ono's occultism. And we know that John also had a soft spot for gurus. Like I said before, he was all over the map; he did not subscribe to any one belief system for too long.
> > > > >>>
> > > > >>> Didn't Lennon explain somewhere that by "Imagine no religion" what he meant to say is that there should be no "one religion" that excluded others?
> > > > >>>
> > > > >>> I expect we'd agree Lennon did not wish for an *absence* of religion any more than he wished for an absence of possessions.
> > > > >>>
> > > > >>> Did anyone ever discover the title of the book gifted to Lennon by Dick Gregory?
> > > > >> John called his period circa 1969 "Christian Communist," recognizing it as a phase. We think of him pushing people's buttons on controversial issues, but in my book on the "Beatles For Sale" era ("The Quality Of Mersey") the whole group is being interviewed together, and they projected a unified religious perspective ("more agnostic than atheistic" was Lennon's assessment), with Paul and Ringo making some provocative remarks. Paul said, "We probably seem antireligious because none of us believe in God"; Harrison declared, "John's our official religious spokesman." John said that's how most people really feel, with Ringo agreeing, "It's better to admit it than be a hypocrite." Lennon saw hypocrisy in the clergy lamenting the conditions of the poor without being charitable to them. McCartney mentioned the cost of a single bronze door in the Vatican.
> > > > >>
> > > > >> Paul made it clear none of that discussion involved the actual teachings of Jesus: "Believe it or, we're not anti-Christ." Then Ringo qualified that with, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian." So there was agnosticism, leaning pro-Christ - but righteously anti-Christian, shared by the entire group.
> > > > >>
> > > > >> So the song "God" uses the title word to address the typical cultural perception, the concept that placates pain and suffering with the dubious promise of eternal happiness once everything is over. It could not be about Lennon's own personal conclusion that God does not exist, since he described in a 1968 interview that through drugs, diet and meditation he had sensed a Higher Power. What is being disbelieved in "God" is resorting to the victim mindset that effectively allows the oppressor minimal resistance. The idea is the more pain you have, the more God you need psychologically as a coping mechanism, usually for something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. Think of the 'Negro Spiritual' songs borne of suffering in slavery. Pie in the sky when you die by and by.
> > > > >>
> > > > >> At the time John was completing primal therapy with Arthur Janov, who considered religion madness, and Lennon later admitted the attempt to purge it from his psyche failed. He called himself "a most religious fellow." Even in childhood, John would point upwards and say "Somebody's watching" when he detected mischief; once he walked in announcing he had just seen God. John spoke of other religious figures who were advanced spiritually like Jesus, with admiration for their simple rational philosophies that few seem to grasp. An interviewer brought up the rumor he proclaimed he WAS God, receiving the reply he had not meant he was "A God or THE God," but shared a fragment of divinity: "We have all things within us," the option of being evil or righteous through exercise of free will. He said the recurrent dichotomy of moral extremes was summed up in the Christ-versus-Hitler contrast.
> > > > >
> > > > > I remember an interview with Lennon in which he pronounced vaguely that "God is an energy, a power source," but that "I never believed it was any one thing."
> > > > >
> > > > > Under Janov's influence, Lennon asserted that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
> > > > >
> > > > > Then there were his televangelist phases, during which he presumably accepted the god of Christianity.
> > > > >
> > > > > And the "born-again pagan" identification came in 1979, IIRC.
> > > > >
> > > > > Again, I see a guy whose beliefs fluctuated wildly depending on what drugs he was on, what TV he was watching, and who he was hanging out with.
> > > > More than that, comments not intended to indicate any genuine belief,
> > > > but merely an off-the-cuff comments intended to rankle the other party,
> > > > or to engender controversy for controversy’s sake.
> > > >
> > > > An approach which certainly seems to have worked extremely well with
> > > > some fanatics !
> > > >
> > > > geoff
> > > A Beatle in a 1964 group interview (published in 1965) said, "We probably seem antireligious because of the fact that none of us believes in God" - that was Paul McCartney.
> > >
> > > When Paul continued, "We're not anti-Christ," one of them added, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian" - that was Ringo Starr.
> > >
> > > McCartney expressed outrage that there was a societal stigma against atheism.
> > Really? How brave, if so. I'd very much like to see a quotation.
> The full text is available online, it's Jean Shepherd's interview for Playboy; my commentary version delves into key points hinted by the actual content, separating from the high-energy banter for media consumption. They were resuming a national tour with two shows in Exeter, and it took place around 11 pm in their Torquay hotel room. The sense is that a tape ran as a rambling conversation developed, and it all got printed verbatim.
>
> Anyone can now hear the pro-religion single minute from John Lennon's interview with David Wigg (10:07 to 11:08 in the link below):
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db0Y4ul32U8
>
> For those who do not want to be bothered listening to this rare, intriguing interview, here is brief transcription --
>
> DW: "John, on one broadcast in France, you said that you were God. Were you serious about that? Do you really FEEL you are God?"
>
> JL: "We're all God. Christ said The Kingdom of Heaven is within you, and that's what it means. And the Indians say that, and the Zen people say that: It's a basic thing of religion - We're All God. I'm not A god, or THE God - NOT THE God! - But we're all God, and we're all potentially divine, and potentially evil. We all have everything within us, and The Kingdom of Heaven is nigh, AND within us. And if you look hard enough, you'll see it."
>
> DW: "Do you then believe in life after death?"
>
> JL: "I do. Without any doubt I believe in it."
>
> DW: "Have you had any special experiences that make you believe so convincingly?"
>
> JL: "In meditation, on drugs, on diets, I've been aware of a Soul, and been aware of The Power."
>
> *
>
> Even the infamously controversial Maureen Cleave interview involved discussion of a book about Christ's Disciples, "The Passover Plot."


Click here to read the complete article
Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'

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Subject: Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'
From: dennisro...@gmail.com (Dennis Rowan)
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 by: Dennis Rowan - Mon, 2 May 2022 14:58 UTC

On Monday, May 2, 2022 at 10:12:27 AM UTC-4, RJKe...@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 9:21:14 AM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 4:11:37 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 8:16:06 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 3:56:31 PM UTC-7, geoff wrote:
> > > > > On 28/04/2022 4:03 am, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > > On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 5:30:15 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail..com wrote:
> > > > > >> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 4:08:26 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > >>> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 3:12:36 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > >>>>
> > > > > >>>> The song "Imagine" resulted from discussing a book about prayer with Dick Gregory - I have a family member who insists the line about "no religion" proves he was promoting heathenism, while my opinion is the theme follows the "Our Father" prayer: the best way for God's Will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven is to stop arguing about prejudices and possessions, manifest a rational society in the here and now. The full Maureen Cleave article from 1966 noted that two of John's favorite possessions were a Bible and a Crucifix; but wife Cynthia's gift of mechanized caged singing bird struck him as offensively bourgeois and partially inspired "And Your Bird Can Sing" - "when your prized possessions start to bring you down" is a similar anti-materialistic theme as "Can't Buy Me Love."
> > > > > >>> Your family member has a point; Lennon did occasionally purport to be a "born-again pagan." He had Christian phases, too -- one of which Yoko squelched because she feared it would prevent her from controlling him through the occult. Which brings up the point that he went along with Ono's occultism. And we know that John also had a soft spot for gurus. Like I said before, he was all over the map; he did not subscribe to any one belief system for too long.
> > > > > >>>
> > > > > >>> Didn't Lennon explain somewhere that by "Imagine no religion" what he meant to say is that there should be no "one religion" that excluded others?
> > > > > >>>
> > > > > >>> I expect we'd agree Lennon did not wish for an *absence* of religion any more than he wished for an absence of possessions.
> > > > > >>>
> > > > > >>> Did anyone ever discover the title of the book gifted to Lennon by Dick Gregory?
> > > > > >> John called his period circa 1969 "Christian Communist," recognizing it as a phase. We think of him pushing people's buttons on controversial issues, but in my book on the "Beatles For Sale" era ("The Quality Of Mersey") the whole group is being interviewed together, and they projected a unified religious perspective ("more agnostic than atheistic" was Lennon's assessment), with Paul and Ringo making some provocative remarks. Paul said, "We probably seem antireligious because none of us believe in God"; Harrison declared, "John's our official religious spokesman." John said that's how most people really feel, with Ringo agreeing, "It's better to admit it than be a hypocrite." Lennon saw hypocrisy in the clergy lamenting the conditions of the poor without being charitable to them. McCartney mentioned the cost of a single bronze door in the Vatican.
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >> Paul made it clear none of that discussion involved the actual teachings of Jesus: "Believe it or, we're not anti-Christ." Then Ringo qualified that with, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian." So there was agnosticism, leaning pro-Christ - but righteously anti-Christian, shared by the entire group.
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >> So the song "God" uses the title word to address the typical cultural perception, the concept that placates pain and suffering with the dubious promise of eternal happiness once everything is over. It could not be about Lennon's own personal conclusion that God does not exist, since he described in a 1968 interview that through drugs, diet and meditation he had sensed a Higher Power. What is being disbelieved in "God" is resorting to the victim mindset that effectively allows the oppressor minimal resistance. The idea is the more pain you have, the more God you need psychologically as a coping mechanism, usually for something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. Think of the 'Negro Spiritual' songs borne of suffering in slavery. Pie in the sky when you die by and by.
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >> At the time John was completing primal therapy with Arthur Janov, who considered religion madness, and Lennon later admitted the attempt to purge it from his psyche failed. He called himself "a most religious fellow." Even in childhood, John would point upwards and say "Somebody's watching" when he detected mischief; once he walked in announcing he had just seen God. John spoke of other religious figures who were advanced spiritually like Jesus, with admiration for their simple rational philosophies that few seem to grasp. An interviewer brought up the rumor he proclaimed he WAS God, receiving the reply he had not meant he was "A God or THE God," but shared a fragment of divinity: "We have all things within us," the option of being evil or righteous through exercise of free will. He said the recurrent dichotomy of moral extremes was summed up in the Christ-versus-Hitler contrast.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I remember an interview with Lennon in which he pronounced vaguely that "God is an energy, a power source," but that "I never believed it was any one thing."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Under Janov's influence, Lennon asserted that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Then there were his televangelist phases, during which he presumably accepted the god of Christianity.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > And the "born-again pagan" identification came in 1979, IIRC.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Again, I see a guy whose beliefs fluctuated wildly depending on what drugs he was on, what TV he was watching, and who he was hanging out with.
> > > > > More than that, comments not intended to indicate any genuine belief,
> > > > > but merely an off-the-cuff comments intended to rankle the other party,
> > > > > or to engender controversy for controversy’s sake.
> > > > >
> > > > > An approach which certainly seems to have worked extremely well with
> > > > > some fanatics !
> > > > >
> > > > > geoff
> > > > A Beatle in a 1964 group interview (published in 1965) said, "We probably seem antireligious because of the fact that none of us believes in God" - that was Paul McCartney.
> > > >
> > > > When Paul continued, "We're not anti-Christ," one of them added, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian" - that was Ringo Starr.
> > > >
> > > > McCartney expressed outrage that there was a societal stigma against atheism.
> > > Really? How brave, if so. I'd very much like to see a quotation.
> > The full text is available online, it's Jean Shepherd's interview for Playboy; my commentary version delves into key points hinted by the actual content, separating from the high-energy banter for media consumption. They were resuming a national tour with two shows in Exeter, and it took place around 11 pm in their Torquay hotel room. The sense is that a tape ran as a rambling conversation developed, and it all got printed verbatim.
> >
> > Anyone can now hear the pro-religion single minute from John Lennon's interview with David Wigg (10:07 to 11:08 in the link below):
> >
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db0Y4ul32U8
> >
> > For those who do not want to be bothered listening to this rare, intriguing interview, here is brief transcription --
> >
> > DW: "John, on one broadcast in France, you said that you were God. Were you serious about that? Do you really FEEL you are God?"
> >
> > JL: "We're all God. Christ said The Kingdom of Heaven is within you, and that's what it means. And the Indians say that, and the Zen people say that: It's a basic thing of religion - We're All God. I'm not A god, or THE God - NOT THE God! - But we're all God, and we're all potentially divine, and potentially evil. We all have everything within us, and The Kingdom of Heaven is nigh, AND within us. And if you look hard enough, you'll see it."
> >
> > DW: "Do you then believe in life after death?"
> >
> > JL: "I do. Without any doubt I believe in it."
> >
> > DW: "Have you had any special experiences that make you believe so convincingly?"
> >
> > JL: "In meditation, on drugs, on diets, I've been aware of a Soul, and been aware of The Power."
> >
> > *
> >
> > Even the infamously controversial Maureen Cleave interview involved discussion of a book about Christ's Disciples, "The Passover Plot."
> I honestly have no idea what it means to say "We're all God." I don't consider myself godlike. Are bad guys also God according to John?


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Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'

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Subject: Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'
From: eagalita...@gmail.com (Curtis Eagal)
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 by: Curtis Eagal - Wed, 4 May 2022 14:26 UTC

On Monday, May 2, 2022 at 7:12:27 AM UTC-7, RJKe...@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 9:21:14 AM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 4:11:37 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 8:16:06 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 3:56:31 PM UTC-7, geoff wrote:
> > > > > On 28/04/2022 4:03 am, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > > On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 5:30:15 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail..com wrote:
> > > > > >> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 4:08:26 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > >>> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 3:12:36 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > >>>>
> > > > > >>>> The song "Imagine" resulted from discussing a book about prayer with Dick Gregory - I have a family member who insists the line about "no religion" proves he was promoting heathenism, while my opinion is the theme follows the "Our Father" prayer: the best way for God's Will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven is to stop arguing about prejudices and possessions, manifest a rational society in the here and now. The full Maureen Cleave article from 1966 noted that two of John's favorite possessions were a Bible and a Crucifix; but wife Cynthia's gift of mechanized caged singing bird struck him as offensively bourgeois and partially inspired "And Your Bird Can Sing" - "when your prized possessions start to bring you down" is a similar anti-materialistic theme as "Can't Buy Me Love."
> > > > > >>> Your family member has a point; Lennon did occasionally purport to be a "born-again pagan." He had Christian phases, too -- one of which Yoko squelched because she feared it would prevent her from controlling him through the occult. Which brings up the point that he went along with Ono's occultism. And we know that John also had a soft spot for gurus. Like I said before, he was all over the map; he did not subscribe to any one belief system for too long.
> > > > > >>>
> > > > > >>> Didn't Lennon explain somewhere that by "Imagine no religion" what he meant to say is that there should be no "one religion" that excluded others?
> > > > > >>>
> > > > > >>> I expect we'd agree Lennon did not wish for an *absence* of religion any more than he wished for an absence of possessions.
> > > > > >>>
> > > > > >>> Did anyone ever discover the title of the book gifted to Lennon by Dick Gregory?
> > > > > >> John called his period circa 1969 "Christian Communist," recognizing it as a phase. We think of him pushing people's buttons on controversial issues, but in my book on the "Beatles For Sale" era ("The Quality Of Mersey") the whole group is being interviewed together, and they projected a unified religious perspective ("more agnostic than atheistic" was Lennon's assessment), with Paul and Ringo making some provocative remarks. Paul said, "We probably seem antireligious because none of us believe in God"; Harrison declared, "John's our official religious spokesman." John said that's how most people really feel, with Ringo agreeing, "It's better to admit it than be a hypocrite." Lennon saw hypocrisy in the clergy lamenting the conditions of the poor without being charitable to them. McCartney mentioned the cost of a single bronze door in the Vatican.
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >> Paul made it clear none of that discussion involved the actual teachings of Jesus: "Believe it or, we're not anti-Christ." Then Ringo qualified that with, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian." So there was agnosticism, leaning pro-Christ - but righteously anti-Christian, shared by the entire group.
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >> So the song "God" uses the title word to address the typical cultural perception, the concept that placates pain and suffering with the dubious promise of eternal happiness once everything is over. It could not be about Lennon's own personal conclusion that God does not exist, since he described in a 1968 interview that through drugs, diet and meditation he had sensed a Higher Power. What is being disbelieved in "God" is resorting to the victim mindset that effectively allows the oppressor minimal resistance. The idea is the more pain you have, the more God you need psychologically as a coping mechanism, usually for something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. Think of the 'Negro Spiritual' songs borne of suffering in slavery. Pie in the sky when you die by and by.
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >> At the time John was completing primal therapy with Arthur Janov, who considered religion madness, and Lennon later admitted the attempt to purge it from his psyche failed. He called himself "a most religious fellow." Even in childhood, John would point upwards and say "Somebody's watching" when he detected mischief; once he walked in announcing he had just seen God. John spoke of other religious figures who were advanced spiritually like Jesus, with admiration for their simple rational philosophies that few seem to grasp. An interviewer brought up the rumor he proclaimed he WAS God, receiving the reply he had not meant he was "A God or THE God," but shared a fragment of divinity: "We have all things within us," the option of being evil or righteous through exercise of free will. He said the recurrent dichotomy of moral extremes was summed up in the Christ-versus-Hitler contrast.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I remember an interview with Lennon in which he pronounced vaguely that "God is an energy, a power source," but that "I never believed it was any one thing."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Under Janov's influence, Lennon asserted that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Then there were his televangelist phases, during which he presumably accepted the god of Christianity.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > And the "born-again pagan" identification came in 1979, IIRC.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Again, I see a guy whose beliefs fluctuated wildly depending on what drugs he was on, what TV he was watching, and who he was hanging out with.
> > > > > More than that, comments not intended to indicate any genuine belief,
> > > > > but merely an off-the-cuff comments intended to rankle the other party,
> > > > > or to engender controversy for controversy’s sake.
> > > > >
> > > > > An approach which certainly seems to have worked extremely well with
> > > > > some fanatics !
> > > > >
> > > > > geoff
> > > > A Beatle in a 1964 group interview (published in 1965) said, "We probably seem antireligious because of the fact that none of us believes in God" - that was Paul McCartney.
> > > >
> > > > When Paul continued, "We're not anti-Christ," one of them added, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian" - that was Ringo Starr.
> > > >
> > > > McCartney expressed outrage that there was a societal stigma against atheism.
> > > Really? How brave, if so. I'd very much like to see a quotation.
> > The full text is available online, it's Jean Shepherd's interview for Playboy; my commentary version delves into key points hinted by the actual content, separating from the high-energy banter for media consumption. They were resuming a national tour with two shows in Exeter, and it took place around 11 pm in their Torquay hotel room. The sense is that a tape ran as a rambling conversation developed, and it all got printed verbatim.
> >
> > Anyone can now hear the pro-religion single minute from John Lennon's interview with David Wigg (10:07 to 11:08 in the link below):
> >
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db0Y4ul32U8
> >
> > For those who do not want to be bothered listening to this rare, intriguing interview, here is brief transcription --
> >
> > DW: "John, on one broadcast in France, you said that you were God. Were you serious about that? Do you really FEEL you are God?"
> >
> > JL: "We're all God. Christ said The Kingdom of Heaven is within you, and that's what it means. And the Indians say that, and the Zen people say that: It's a basic thing of religion - We're All God. I'm not A god, or THE God - NOT THE God! - But we're all God, and we're all potentially divine, and potentially evil. We all have everything within us, and The Kingdom of Heaven is nigh, AND within us. And if you look hard enough, you'll see it."
> >
> > DW: "Do you then believe in life after death?"
> >
> > JL: "I do. Without any doubt I believe in it."
> >
> > DW: "Have you had any special experiences that make you believe so convincingly?"
> >
> > JL: "In meditation, on drugs, on diets, I've been aware of a Soul, and been aware of The Power."
> >
> > *
> >
> > Even the infamously controversial Maureen Cleave interview involved discussion of a book about Christ's Disciples, "The Passover Plot."


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Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'

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Subject: Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'
From: eagalita...@gmail.com (Curtis Eagal)
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 by: Curtis Eagal - Wed, 4 May 2022 16:44 UTC

On Friday, April 29, 2022 at 4:27:02 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 5:29:12 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
> > On 28/04/2022 11:10 pm, Norbert K wrote:
> > > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 6:56:31 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
> > >> On 28/04/2022 4:03 am, Norbert K wrote:
> > >>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 5:30:15 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > >>>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 4:08:26 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > >>>>> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 3:12:36 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > >>>>>>
> > >>>>>> The song "Imagine" resulted from discussing a book about prayer with Dick Gregory - I have a family member who insists the line about "no religion" proves he was promoting heathenism, while my opinion is the theme follows the "Our Father" prayer: the best way for God's Will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven is to stop arguing about prejudices and possessions, manifest a rational society in the here and now. The full Maureen Cleave article from 1966 noted that two of John's favorite possessions were a Bible and a Crucifix; but wife Cynthia's gift of mechanized caged singing bird struck him as offensively bourgeois and partially inspired "And Your Bird Can Sing" - "when your prized possessions start to bring you down" is a similar anti-materialistic theme as "Can't Buy Me Love."
> > >>>>> Your family member has a point; Lennon did occasionally purport to be a "born-again pagan." He had Christian phases, too -- one of which Yoko squelched because she feared it would prevent her from controlling him through the occult. Which brings up the point that he went along with Ono's occultism. And we know that John also had a soft spot for gurus. Like I said before, he was all over the map; he did not subscribe to any one belief system for too long.
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>> Didn't Lennon explain somewhere that by "Imagine no religion" what he meant to say is that there should be no "one religion" that excluded others?
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>> I expect we'd agree Lennon did not wish for an *absence* of religion any more than he wished for an absence of possessions.
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>> Did anyone ever discover the title of the book gifted to Lennon by Dick Gregory?
> > >>>> John called his period circa 1969 "Christian Communist," recognizing it as a phase. We think of him pushing people's buttons on controversial issues, but in my book on the "Beatles For Sale" era ("The Quality Of Mersey") the whole group is being interviewed together, and they projected a unified religious perspective ("more agnostic than atheistic" was Lennon's assessment), with Paul and Ringo making some provocative remarks. Paul said, "We probably seem antireligious because none of us believe in God"; Harrison declared, "John's our official religious spokesman." John said that's how most people really feel, with Ringo agreeing, "It's better to admit it than be a hypocrite." Lennon saw hypocrisy in the clergy lamenting the conditions of the poor without being charitable to them. McCartney mentioned the cost of a single bronze door in the Vatican.
> > >>>>
> > >>>> Paul made it clear none of that discussion involved the actual teachings of Jesus: "Believe it or, we're not anti-Christ." Then Ringo qualified that with, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian." So there was agnosticism, leaning pro-Christ - but righteously anti-Christian, shared by the entire group.
> > >>>>
> > >>>> So the song "God" uses the title word to address the typical cultural perception, the concept that placates pain and suffering with the dubious promise of eternal happiness once everything is over. It could not be about Lennon's own personal conclusion that God does not exist, since he described in a 1968 interview that through drugs, diet and meditation he had sensed a Higher Power. What is being disbelieved in "God" is resorting to the victim mindset that effectively allows the oppressor minimal resistance. The idea is the more pain you have, the more God you need psychologically as a coping mechanism, usually for something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. Think of the 'Negro Spiritual' songs borne of suffering in slavery. Pie in the sky when you die by and by.
> > >>>>
> > >>>> At the time John was completing primal therapy with Arthur Janov, who considered religion madness, and Lennon later admitted the attempt to purge it from his psyche failed. He called himself "a most religious fellow." Even in childhood, John would point upwards and say "Somebody's watching" when he detected mischief; once he walked in announcing he had just seen God. John spoke of other religious figures who were advanced spiritually like Jesus, with admiration for their simple rational philosophies that few seem to grasp. An interviewer brought up the rumor he proclaimed he WAS God, receiving the reply he had not meant he was "A God or THE God," but shared a fragment of divinity: "We have all things within us," the option of being evil or righteous through exercise of free will. He said the recurrent dichotomy of moral extremes was summed up in the Christ-versus-Hitler contrast..
> > >>>
> > >>> I remember an interview with Lennon in which he pronounced vaguely that "God is an energy, a power source," but that "I never believed it was any one thing."
> > >>>
> > >>> Under Janov's influence, Lennon asserted that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
> > >>>
> > >>> Then there were his televangelist phases, during which he presumably accepted the god of Christianity.
> > >>>
> > >>> And the "born-again pagan" identification came in 1979, IIRC.
> > >>>
> > >>> Again, I see a guy whose beliefs fluctuated wildly depending on what drugs he was on, what TV he was watching, and who he was hanging out with..
> > >> More than that, comments not intended to indicate any genuine belief,
> > >> but merely an off-the-cuff comments intended to rankle the other party,
> > >> or to engender controversy for controversy’s sake.
> > >>
> > >> An approach which certainly seems to have worked extremely well with
> > >> some fanatics !
> > >>
> > >> geoff
> > >
> > > Good point, he did plenty of that. How about Lennon's denunciation of Darwin as "absolute garbage" because "monkeys aren't changing into people now"? Is that what it looks like -- i.e., Donald Trump-level ignorance and stupidity -- or was Lennon courting controversy? (Sometimes audio of this [Playboy] interview can be found online, but one has to dig to find the particular passage.)
> > >
> > >
> > Deliberately 'winding up' people who are stupid enough to think along
> > those lines. Imagine the things he would be saying in this era to mock
> > the conspiracy/trump/etc rabble !
> >
> > geoff
> I wish I could agree with you. However, if one looks at Lennon's existence at that time, there is no escaping the fact that he was confused. He was giving control over Double Fantasy to Ono -- who was by her own admission guided by pychics and astrologers (and who was conducting not one but two extramarital affairs at the time). Lennon's Playboy interview if full of paranoia and delusion -- for example Lennon's claim that McCartney had "subconsciously sabotaged" Lennon's best work. Lennon's best retort to people who thought he was being manipulated by Ono was "Fuck you brother and sister." Lennon had recently emerged from a phase of following televangelist Pat Robertson. And then if you listen to the audio of the Playboy interview, there is real anger in his voice towards this idea (evolution) he had no understanding of.
>
> John wasn't thinking straight.

I did hear the interview, and I think your tendency is to presume when JL spoke with intensity it was more like insanity, without even addressing his actual words and the ideas they reflect, which could explain the emotion. In religious texts evolution has to be inferred from the 'Days of Creation' being figurative and protracted.

However I noted when Yoko drifted in herself, she said something very strange about her husband's former band:

"They were like mediums.
They weren't conscious of all they were saying,
But it was coming through them."

This implies John had told her about something meant to be heard one way that inadvertently had a parallel audio transcription manifest, perhaps several instances. When an interviewer asked John if he was upset about people reading things into his work that were not there he replied,


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Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'

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Subject: Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'
From: curtissd...@gmail.com (curtis...@gmail.com)
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 by: curtis...@gmail.com - Wed, 4 May 2022 19:11 UTC

On Wednesday, May 4, 2022 at 12:44:56 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Friday, April 29, 2022 at 4:27:02 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 5:29:12 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
> > > On 28/04/2022 11:10 pm, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 6:56:31 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
> > > >> On 28/04/2022 4:03 am, Norbert K wrote:
> > > >>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 5:30:15 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > >>>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 4:08:26 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > >>>>> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 3:12:36 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > >>>>>>
> > > >>>>>> The song "Imagine" resulted from discussing a book about prayer with Dick Gregory - I have a family member who insists the line about "no religion" proves he was promoting heathenism, while my opinion is the theme follows the "Our Father" prayer: the best way for God's Will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven is to stop arguing about prejudices and possessions, manifest a rational society in the here and now. The full Maureen Cleave article from 1966 noted that two of John's favorite possessions were a Bible and a Crucifix; but wife Cynthia's gift of mechanized caged singing bird struck him as offensively bourgeois and partially inspired "And Your Bird Can Sing" - "when your prized possessions start to bring you down" is a similar anti-materialistic theme as "Can't Buy Me Love."
> > > >>>>> Your family member has a point; Lennon did occasionally purport to be a "born-again pagan." He had Christian phases, too -- one of which Yoko squelched because she feared it would prevent her from controlling him through the occult. Which brings up the point that he went along with Ono's occultism. And we know that John also had a soft spot for gurus. Like I said before, he was all over the map; he did not subscribe to any one belief system for too long.
> > > >>>>>
> > > >>>>> Didn't Lennon explain somewhere that by "Imagine no religion" what he meant to say is that there should be no "one religion" that excluded others?
> > > >>>>>
> > > >>>>> I expect we'd agree Lennon did not wish for an *absence* of religion any more than he wished for an absence of possessions.
> > > >>>>>
> > > >>>>> Did anyone ever discover the title of the book gifted to Lennon by Dick Gregory?
> > > >>>> John called his period circa 1969 "Christian Communist," recognizing it as a phase. We think of him pushing people's buttons on controversial issues, but in my book on the "Beatles For Sale" era ("The Quality Of Mersey") the whole group is being interviewed together, and they projected a unified religious perspective ("more agnostic than atheistic" was Lennon's assessment), with Paul and Ringo making some provocative remarks. Paul said, "We probably seem antireligious because none of us believe in God"; Harrison declared, "John's our official religious spokesman." John said that's how most people really feel, with Ringo agreeing, "It's better to admit it than be a hypocrite." Lennon saw hypocrisy in the clergy lamenting the conditions of the poor without being charitable to them. McCartney mentioned the cost of a single bronze door in the Vatican.
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>> Paul made it clear none of that discussion involved the actual teachings of Jesus: "Believe it or, we're not anti-Christ." Then Ringo qualified that with, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian." So there was agnosticism, leaning pro-Christ - but righteously anti-Christian, shared by the entire group.
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>> So the song "God" uses the title word to address the typical cultural perception, the concept that placates pain and suffering with the dubious promise of eternal happiness once everything is over. It could not be about Lennon's own personal conclusion that God does not exist, since he described in a 1968 interview that through drugs, diet and meditation he had sensed a Higher Power. What is being disbelieved in "God" is resorting to the victim mindset that effectively allows the oppressor minimal resistance. The idea is the more pain you have, the more God you need psychologically as a coping mechanism, usually for something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. Think of the 'Negro Spiritual' songs borne of suffering in slavery. Pie in the sky when you die by and by.
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>> At the time John was completing primal therapy with Arthur Janov, who considered religion madness, and Lennon later admitted the attempt to purge it from his psyche failed. He called himself "a most religious fellow." Even in childhood, John would point upwards and say "Somebody's watching" when he detected mischief; once he walked in announcing he had just seen God. John spoke of other religious figures who were advanced spiritually like Jesus, with admiration for their simple rational philosophies that few seem to grasp. An interviewer brought up the rumor he proclaimed he WAS God, receiving the reply he had not meant he was "A God or THE God," but shared a fragment of divinity: "We have all things within us," the option of being evil or righteous through exercise of free will. He said the recurrent dichotomy of moral extremes was summed up in the Christ-versus-Hitler contrast.
> > > >>>
> > > >>> I remember an interview with Lennon in which he pronounced vaguely that "God is an energy, a power source," but that "I never believed it was any one thing."
> > > >>>
> > > >>> Under Janov's influence, Lennon asserted that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
> > > >>>
> > > >>> Then there were his televangelist phases, during which he presumably accepted the god of Christianity.
> > > >>>
> > > >>> And the "born-again pagan" identification came in 1979, IIRC.
> > > >>>
> > > >>> Again, I see a guy whose beliefs fluctuated wildly depending on what drugs he was on, what TV he was watching, and who he was hanging out with.
> > > >> More than that, comments not intended to indicate any genuine belief,
> > > >> but merely an off-the-cuff comments intended to rankle the other party,
> > > >> or to engender controversy for controversy’s sake.
> > > >>
> > > >> An approach which certainly seems to have worked extremely well with
> > > >> some fanatics !
> > > >>
> > > >> geoff
> > > >
> > > > Good point, he did plenty of that. How about Lennon's denunciation of Darwin as "absolute garbage" because "monkeys aren't changing into people now"? Is that what it looks like -- i.e., Donald Trump-level ignorance and stupidity -- or was Lennon courting controversy? (Sometimes audio of this [Playboy] interview can be found online, but one has to dig to find the particular passage.)
> > > >
> > > >
> > > Deliberately 'winding up' people who are stupid enough to think along
> > > those lines. Imagine the things he would be saying in this era to mock
> > > the conspiracy/trump/etc rabble !
> > >
> > > geoff
> > I wish I could agree with you. However, if one looks at Lennon's existence at that time, there is no escaping the fact that he was confused. He was giving control over Double Fantasy to Ono -- who was by her own admission guided by pychics and astrologers (and who was conducting not one but two extramarital affairs at the time). Lennon's Playboy interview if full of paranoia and delusion -- for example Lennon's claim that McCartney had "subconsciously sabotaged" Lennon's best work. Lennon's best retort to people who thought he was being manipulated by Ono was "Fuck you brother and sister." Lennon had recently emerged from a phase of following televangelist Pat Robertson. And then if you listen to the audio of the Playboy interview, there is real anger in his voice towards this idea (evolution) he had no understanding of.
> >
> > John wasn't thinking straight.
> I did hear the interview, and I think your tendency is to presume when JL spoke with intensity it was more like insanity, without even addressing his actual words and the ideas they reflect, which could explain the emotion. In religious texts evolution has to be inferred from the 'Days of Creation' being figurative and protracted.
>
> However I noted when Yoko drifted in herself, she said something very strange about her husband's former band:
>
> "They were like mediums.
> They weren't conscious of all they were saying,
> But it was coming through them."
>
> This implies John had told her about something meant to be heard one way that inadvertently had a parallel audio transcription manifest, perhaps several instances. When an interviewer asked John if he was upset about people reading things into his work that were not there he replied,
>
> "It IS there.
> It's like abstract art, really."
>
> In 1967 Paul McCartney told David Frost,
>
> "Everything has a message -
> But you can't just pick out one little thing and say,
> 'Is THAT their message?'
> Everything we do is never intended to have a great deep message -
> But it HAS."
>
> It was PM who made a distinction about the passage of time affecting perception of JL's controversial Cleave interview.
>
> "Was it a mistake?
> I don't know.
> In the SHORT term, yes.
> Maybe not in the LONG term."
>
> Harrison thought Christians feeling they had a franchise on Jesus could be false representatives, indoctrinating him from an early age; but the view in India was to withhold belief from ANYTHING unless you have direct perception. So George embraced the notion of discovering esoteric truth for himself through books and mystics.
>
> The messages and sequencing from the second side of the "A Hard Day's Night" album demonstrate that Lennon was acutely aware of the intricacies of Mary Magdalene's encounter with the Risen Christ at the tomb, where when she attempted to touch Him, Jesus basically responded, "You Can't Do That"! John in the middle plays guitar in the style of Wilson Pickett, subliminally elaborating that Ascension to the Father was required before He could be physically touched. And there is the vocal line, "If they'd seen you talking that way they'd laugh in my face," that transmutes the ending into "...they'd laugh at my Faith."
>
> The vocalists in some tunes have lyrics that allow for role-playing, sometimes as inanimate objects - the next stage in my book series covers the "Help!" phase, and "Another Girl" seems to be from the point of view of The Cross itself, temporarily carried by Simon of Cyrene, yet with a destiny linked to the Lord. Cyrene is known for ruins very similar to those used for the song scene in the Bahamas portion of the film.
>
> Lennon was extremely lucid regarding his group's collective accomplishments.
>
> "With The Beatles, the records are the point,
> NOT The Beatles as individuals.
> You don't need the package,
> Just as you don't need the Christian package or the Marxist package to get the message.
> People always got the image I was an anti-Christ or anti-religion.
> I'm NOT.
> I'm a MOST religious fellow.
> I was brought up a Christian and I only NOW understand SOME of the things that Christ was saying in those parables...
> The people who are hung up on The Beatles and the 'Sixties dream MISSED the whole point when The Beatles and the 'Sixties dream BECAME the point."
>
> The best evidence that Paul McCartney wants people to reach that enlightened level is the subliminal content of "Old Siam Sir" from the "Back To The Egg" (the last for Wings). The manic opening suggests a repetition of,
>
> 'Broke up, Broke up!'
>
> As that is going a single note intrudes, implying,
>
> '...But -'
>
> Then the drums seem to finish that thought -
>
> 'BUT NOT -
> SETTLED!'
>
> Then a vaguely Oriental theme chimes in, yet the tonal melody suggests,
>
> 'When The Beatles Are Consummated,
> They'll Be Known As
> "A Band Subliminal"'
>
> This follows the vocal line melody and repeats frequently.
> A powerful guitar riff quasi-vocalizes,
>
> 'REAP What's Sown By "The Legend"!'
>
> This repeats until undergoing a variation -
>
> 'REAP What's Sown By The -
> Sown By "The Myth"!'
>
> The drum sequence also has a variation in the middle when the opening bit repeats, to imply instead,
>
> 'BUT NOT -
> CON-SUMMATED!'
>
> The mood cools in a few quietly played guitar chords, suggesting,
>
> 'One Step Away...'
>
> And the guitar flourish afterwards seems to append,
>
> '...From Consummating'
>
> This appears deliberate, a belief that the "long term" enlightened perspective would emerge eventually, because The Beatles' collection of songs already efficiently planted something to be discerned later.


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Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'

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Subject: Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'
From: norbertk...@gmail.com (Norbert K)
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 by: Norbert K - Thu, 5 May 2022 11:24 UTC

On Wednesday, May 4, 2022 at 12:44:56 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Friday, April 29, 2022 at 4:27:02 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 5:29:12 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
> > > On 28/04/2022 11:10 pm, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 6:56:31 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
> > > >> On 28/04/2022 4:03 am, Norbert K wrote:
> > > >>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 5:30:15 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > >>>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 4:08:26 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > >>>>> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 3:12:36 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > >>>>>>
> > > >>>>>> The song "Imagine" resulted from discussing a book about prayer with Dick Gregory - I have a family member who insists the line about "no religion" proves he was promoting heathenism, while my opinion is the theme follows the "Our Father" prayer: the best way for God's Will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven is to stop arguing about prejudices and possessions, manifest a rational society in the here and now. The full Maureen Cleave article from 1966 noted that two of John's favorite possessions were a Bible and a Crucifix; but wife Cynthia's gift of mechanized caged singing bird struck him as offensively bourgeois and partially inspired "And Your Bird Can Sing" - "when your prized possessions start to bring you down" is a similar anti-materialistic theme as "Can't Buy Me Love."
> > > >>>>> Your family member has a point; Lennon did occasionally purport to be a "born-again pagan." He had Christian phases, too -- one of which Yoko squelched because she feared it would prevent her from controlling him through the occult. Which brings up the point that he went along with Ono's occultism. And we know that John also had a soft spot for gurus. Like I said before, he was all over the map; he did not subscribe to any one belief system for too long.
> > > >>>>>
> > > >>>>> Didn't Lennon explain somewhere that by "Imagine no religion" what he meant to say is that there should be no "one religion" that excluded others?
> > > >>>>>
> > > >>>>> I expect we'd agree Lennon did not wish for an *absence* of religion any more than he wished for an absence of possessions.
> > > >>>>>
> > > >>>>> Did anyone ever discover the title of the book gifted to Lennon by Dick Gregory?
> > > >>>> John called his period circa 1969 "Christian Communist," recognizing it as a phase. We think of him pushing people's buttons on controversial issues, but in my book on the "Beatles For Sale" era ("The Quality Of Mersey") the whole group is being interviewed together, and they projected a unified religious perspective ("more agnostic than atheistic" was Lennon's assessment), with Paul and Ringo making some provocative remarks. Paul said, "We probably seem antireligious because none of us believe in God"; Harrison declared, "John's our official religious spokesman." John said that's how most people really feel, with Ringo agreeing, "It's better to admit it than be a hypocrite." Lennon saw hypocrisy in the clergy lamenting the conditions of the poor without being charitable to them. McCartney mentioned the cost of a single bronze door in the Vatican.
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>> Paul made it clear none of that discussion involved the actual teachings of Jesus: "Believe it or, we're not anti-Christ." Then Ringo qualified that with, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian." So there was agnosticism, leaning pro-Christ - but righteously anti-Christian, shared by the entire group.
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>> So the song "God" uses the title word to address the typical cultural perception, the concept that placates pain and suffering with the dubious promise of eternal happiness once everything is over. It could not be about Lennon's own personal conclusion that God does not exist, since he described in a 1968 interview that through drugs, diet and meditation he had sensed a Higher Power. What is being disbelieved in "God" is resorting to the victim mindset that effectively allows the oppressor minimal resistance. The idea is the more pain you have, the more God you need psychologically as a coping mechanism, usually for something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. Think of the 'Negro Spiritual' songs borne of suffering in slavery. Pie in the sky when you die by and by.
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>> At the time John was completing primal therapy with Arthur Janov, who considered religion madness, and Lennon later admitted the attempt to purge it from his psyche failed. He called himself "a most religious fellow." Even in childhood, John would point upwards and say "Somebody's watching" when he detected mischief; once he walked in announcing he had just seen God. John spoke of other religious figures who were advanced spiritually like Jesus, with admiration for their simple rational philosophies that few seem to grasp. An interviewer brought up the rumor he proclaimed he WAS God, receiving the reply he had not meant he was "A God or THE God," but shared a fragment of divinity: "We have all things within us," the option of being evil or righteous through exercise of free will. He said the recurrent dichotomy of moral extremes was summed up in the Christ-versus-Hitler contrast.
> > > >>>
> > > >>> I remember an interview with Lennon in which he pronounced vaguely that "God is an energy, a power source," but that "I never believed it was any one thing."
> > > >>>
> > > >>> Under Janov's influence, Lennon asserted that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
> > > >>>
> > > >>> Then there were his televangelist phases, during which he presumably accepted the god of Christianity.
> > > >>>
> > > >>> And the "born-again pagan" identification came in 1979, IIRC.
> > > >>>
> > > >>> Again, I see a guy whose beliefs fluctuated wildly depending on what drugs he was on, what TV he was watching, and who he was hanging out with.
> > > >> More than that, comments not intended to indicate any genuine belief,
> > > >> but merely an off-the-cuff comments intended to rankle the other party,
> > > >> or to engender controversy for controversy’s sake.
> > > >>
> > > >> An approach which certainly seems to have worked extremely well with
> > > >> some fanatics !
> > > >>
> > > >> geoff
> > > >
> > > > Good point, he did plenty of that. How about Lennon's denunciation of Darwin as "absolute garbage" because "monkeys aren't changing into people now"? Is that what it looks like -- i.e., Donald Trump-level ignorance and stupidity -- or was Lennon courting controversy? (Sometimes audio of this [Playboy] interview can be found online, but one has to dig to find the particular passage.)
> > > >
> > > >
> > > Deliberately 'winding up' people who are stupid enough to think along
> > > those lines. Imagine the things he would be saying in this era to mock
> > > the conspiracy/trump/etc rabble !
> > >
> > > geoff
> > I wish I could agree with you. However, if one looks at Lennon's existence at that time, there is no escaping the fact that he was confused. He was giving control over Double Fantasy to Ono -- who was by her own admission guided by pychics and astrologers (and who was conducting not one but two extramarital affairs at the time). Lennon's Playboy interview if full of paranoia and delusion -- for example Lennon's claim that McCartney had "subconsciously sabotaged" Lennon's best work. Lennon's best retort to people who thought he was being manipulated by Ono was "Fuck you brother and sister." Lennon had recently emerged from a phase of following televangelist Pat Robertson. And then if you listen to the audio of the Playboy interview, there is real anger in his voice towards this idea (evolution) he had no understanding of.
> >
> > John wasn't thinking straight.
> I did hear the interview, and I think your tendency is to presume when JL spoke with intensity it was more like insanity, without even addressing his actual words and the ideas they reflect, which could explain the emotion. In religious texts evolution has to be inferred from the 'Days of Creation' being figurative and protracted.

Not insanity per se, but ignorance. Darwin didn't say that monkeys "turned into" men or even that men evolved from monkeys. Lennon's alternative (to an evolution he didn't understand) hypothesis is some sort of direct lineage between humans and fish. Goodness knows what that assumption was based on. He had no scientific background and his criticism of evolution isn't worth taking seriously.


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Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'

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Subject: Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'
From: RJKel...@yahoo.com (RJKe...@yahoo.com)
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 by: RJKe...@yahoo.com - Sat, 7 May 2022 18:07 UTC

On Wednesday, May 4, 2022 at 10:26:33 AM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Monday, May 2, 2022 at 7:12:27 AM UTC-7, RJKe...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 9:21:14 AM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 4:11:37 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 8:16:06 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 3:56:31 PM UTC-7, geoff wrote:
> > > > > > On 28/04/2022 4:03 am, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > > > On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 5:30:15 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > >> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 4:08:26 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > > >>> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 3:12:36 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > >>>>
> > > > > > >>>> The song "Imagine" resulted from discussing a book about prayer with Dick Gregory - I have a family member who insists the line about "no religion" proves he was promoting heathenism, while my opinion is the theme follows the "Our Father" prayer: the best way for God's Will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven is to stop arguing about prejudices and possessions, manifest a rational society in the here and now. The full Maureen Cleave article from 1966 noted that two of John's favorite possessions were a Bible and a Crucifix; but wife Cynthia's gift of mechanized caged singing bird struck him as offensively bourgeois and partially inspired "And Your Bird Can Sing" - "when your prized possessions start to bring you down" is a similar anti-materialistic theme as "Can't Buy Me Love."
> > > > > > >>> Your family member has a point; Lennon did occasionally purport to be a "born-again pagan." He had Christian phases, too -- one of which Yoko squelched because she feared it would prevent her from controlling him through the occult. Which brings up the point that he went along with Ono's occultism. And we know that John also had a soft spot for gurus. Like I said before, he was all over the map; he did not subscribe to any one belief system for too long.
> > > > > > >>>
> > > > > > >>> Didn't Lennon explain somewhere that by "Imagine no religion" what he meant to say is that there should be no "one religion" that excluded others?
> > > > > > >>>
> > > > > > >>> I expect we'd agree Lennon did not wish for an *absence* of religion any more than he wished for an absence of possessions.
> > > > > > >>>
> > > > > > >>> Did anyone ever discover the title of the book gifted to Lennon by Dick Gregory?
> > > > > > >> John called his period circa 1969 "Christian Communist," recognizing it as a phase. We think of him pushing people's buttons on controversial issues, but in my book on the "Beatles For Sale" era ("The Quality Of Mersey") the whole group is being interviewed together, and they projected a unified religious perspective ("more agnostic than atheistic" was Lennon's assessment), with Paul and Ringo making some provocative remarks. Paul said, "We probably seem antireligious because none of us believe in God"; Harrison declared, "John's our official religious spokesman." John said that's how most people really feel, with Ringo agreeing, "It's better to admit it than be a hypocrite." Lennon saw hypocrisy in the clergy lamenting the conditions of the poor without being charitable to them. McCartney mentioned the cost of a single bronze door in the Vatican.
> > > > > > >>
> > > > > > >> Paul made it clear none of that discussion involved the actual teachings of Jesus: "Believe it or, we're not anti-Christ." Then Ringo qualified that with, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian." So there was agnosticism, leaning pro-Christ - but righteously anti-Christian, shared by the entire group.
> > > > > > >>
> > > > > > >> So the song "God" uses the title word to address the typical cultural perception, the concept that placates pain and suffering with the dubious promise of eternal happiness once everything is over. It could not be about Lennon's own personal conclusion that God does not exist, since he described in a 1968 interview that through drugs, diet and meditation he had sensed a Higher Power. What is being disbelieved in "God" is resorting to the victim mindset that effectively allows the oppressor minimal resistance. The idea is the more pain you have, the more God you need psychologically as a coping mechanism, usually for something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. Think of the 'Negro Spiritual' songs borne of suffering in slavery. Pie in the sky when you die by and by.
> > > > > > >>
> > > > > > >> At the time John was completing primal therapy with Arthur Janov, who considered religion madness, and Lennon later admitted the attempt to purge it from his psyche failed. He called himself "a most religious fellow." Even in childhood, John would point upwards and say "Somebody's watching" when he detected mischief; once he walked in announcing he had just seen God. John spoke of other religious figures who were advanced spiritually like Jesus, with admiration for their simple rational philosophies that few seem to grasp. An interviewer brought up the rumor he proclaimed he WAS God, receiving the reply he had not meant he was "A God or THE God," but shared a fragment of divinity: "We have all things within us," the option of being evil or righteous through exercise of free will. He said the recurrent dichotomy of moral extremes was summed up in the Christ-versus-Hitler contrast.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > I remember an interview with Lennon in which he pronounced vaguely that "God is an energy, a power source," but that "I never believed it was any one thing."
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Under Janov's influence, Lennon asserted that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Then there were his televangelist phases, during which he presumably accepted the god of Christianity.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > And the "born-again pagan" identification came in 1979, IIRC.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Again, I see a guy whose beliefs fluctuated wildly depending on what drugs he was on, what TV he was watching, and who he was hanging out with.
> > > > > > More than that, comments not intended to indicate any genuine belief,
> > > > > > but merely an off-the-cuff comments intended to rankle the other party,
> > > > > > or to engender controversy for controversy’s sake.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > An approach which certainly seems to have worked extremely well with
> > > > > > some fanatics !
> > > > > >
> > > > > > geoff
> > > > > A Beatle in a 1964 group interview (published in 1965) said, "We probably seem antireligious because of the fact that none of us believes in God" - that was Paul McCartney.
> > > > >
> > > > > When Paul continued, "We're not anti-Christ," one of them added, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian" - that was Ringo Starr.
> > > > >
> > > > > McCartney expressed outrage that there was a societal stigma against atheism.
> > > > Really? How brave, if so. I'd very much like to see a quotation.
> > > The full text is available online, it's Jean Shepherd's interview for Playboy; my commentary version delves into key points hinted by the actual content, separating from the high-energy banter for media consumption. They were resuming a national tour with two shows in Exeter, and it took place around 11 pm in their Torquay hotel room. The sense is that a tape ran as a rambling conversation developed, and it all got printed verbatim.
> > >
> > > Anyone can now hear the pro-religion single minute from John Lennon's interview with David Wigg (10:07 to 11:08 in the link below):
> > >
> > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db0Y4ul32U8
> > >
> > > For those who do not want to be bothered listening to this rare, intriguing interview, here is brief transcription --
> > >
> > > DW: "John, on one broadcast in France, you said that you were God. Were you serious about that? Do you really FEEL you are God?"
> > >
> > > JL: "We're all God. Christ said The Kingdom of Heaven is within you, and that's what it means. And the Indians say that, and the Zen people say that: It's a basic thing of religion - We're All God. I'm not A god, or THE God - NOT THE God! - But we're all God, and we're all potentially divine, and potentially evil. We all have everything within us, and The Kingdom of Heaven is nigh, AND within us. And if you look hard enough, you'll see it."
> > >
> > > DW: "Do you then believe in life after death?"
> > >
> > > JL: "I do. Without any doubt I believe in it."
> > >
> > > DW: "Have you had any special experiences that make you believe so convincingly?"
> > >
> > > JL: "In meditation, on drugs, on diets, I've been aware of a Soul, and been aware of The Power."
> > >
> > > *
> > >
> > > Even the infamously controversial Maureen Cleave interview involved discussion of a book about Christ's Disciples, "The Passover Plot."
>
> > I honestly have no idea what it means to say "We're all God." I don't consider myself godlike. Are bad guys also God according to John?
> If God created everything, then what material is it ALL made from? Having a fragment of the Godhead's divinity through existence itself is not the same as BEING The Godhead, it is a simple distinction. I doubt many evil figures throughout history ever thought themselves so - there is always a justification, rationalizing whatever is done as improvements. Evil people simply exercise free will in ways that do not please God, to eventually incur a negative judgment.
>
> So bearing a fragment of divinity carries responsibility that one's lifetime(s) might not manifest as righteous acts.
>
> Any religious statement will be controversial until the soul separation (Reaping) events make the esoteric explicit - but of course then it will be too late to repent and convert.
>
> Remember that JL from 1964 was saying The Beatles were not show business, it was a task that once performed would be finished, there could be no gimmicks or tricks to keep things going (despite what people thought), and that the project should be completed in about five years (i.e., circa 1969). In 1980 he quoted the Bible that there is nothing new under the sun, so an existing story as subtext source was being insinuated.
>
> "If you want to use The Beatles or John and Yoko, people are expecting us to do something FOR them - that's not what's gonna happen: because THEY'RE the ones that didn't understand ANY message that came before anyway, and they're the ones that will FOLLOW Hitler, or follow the Reverend Moon, or whatever. FOLLOWING is not what it's about."
>
> More to your issue: "I think the idea of leadership is that old Judao-Christian idea of the separateness of God - FROM us, as being OUTSIDE of us - the Other. We ARE The Other: there is only One. So therefore, people kind of expect more from us than they expect from themselves... We take responsibility for the WHOLE THING, because we're ALL responsible for the whole thing."
>
> A reunion of his former band suggested the crowd would be "expecting God to perform."
>
> The rooftop concert controlled the elements of their actual concerts: they could not be shouted down, their personas and movements were not a distraction from the music, and the excuse the fans already had the records since the material was new.
>
> Canonical texts attributed to Henoch include a dream involving animals that forecast the entire course of human history, from Cain killing Abel to the Apocalyptic period. It has correct chronology and scenarios about the ascension of Elijah, Christ and His disciples, Constantine's three sons, etc. leading into the Nazi Holocaust: the next passage could be the first instance of Isaiah 6, regarding an inability to properly process audio-visual material, which Jesus reiterated. The story has one of the eyes-open sheep group being killed, then someone represented as ram also opens his eyes and sprouts a horn of Faith, which many try to break. Ultimately an Abyss opens in the physical and astral dimensions simultaneously, into which the 'blind sheep' are thrust with their unrighteous leaders, along with the demons who were actually guiding them.
>
> The open eyes signify awareness of the subliminal aspects, to which the blind sheep remain oblivious.
>
> The old tunes brought out for 1969 had some musical communication that was too fast and unfamiliar to expect conscious comprehension by the people in the street. The opening of "Dig A Pony" just seems like a rapid rambling guitar passage that repeats - but without giving away the startling whole message, the first portion sounds like,
>
> 'Jesus was a Leader -
> THE Apostle Leader -
> But without...'
>
> The next five transcribed words completing that musically hidden remark is essentially dismissive of those thinking declaring themselves a follower is all that was required.
>
> George Harrison in "Something" with the line, "You know I believe, and how," was announcing his self-confirmation was complete - certainly enough had occurred to reinforce his faith. Yet with John's "God" we have the contrasting, cynical view, actually a 'Crisis of Faith," which takes into account the public reaction in a more practical way - yes, there was a big reaction, but not the one that was anticipated, of clarity with conceptual esotericism. John knew that although his band was intellectual, that was not their appeal.
>
> John proverbially described how The Beatles were in the crow's nest or at the masthead, but we are all in the same boat.


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Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'

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Subject: Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'
From: eagalita...@gmail.com (Curtis Eagal)
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 by: Curtis Eagal - Mon, 16 May 2022 19:16 UTC

On Wednesday, May 4, 2022 at 12:11:08 PM UTC-7, curtis...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Wednesday, May 4, 2022 at 12:44:56 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Friday, April 29, 2022 at 4:27:02 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 5:29:12 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
> > > > On 28/04/2022 11:10 pm, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 6:56:31 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
> > > > >> On 28/04/2022 4:03 am, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > >>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 5:30:15 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail..com wrote:
> > > > >>>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 4:08:26 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > >>>>> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 3:12:36 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > >>>>>>
> > > > >>>>>> The song "Imagine" resulted from discussing a book about prayer with Dick Gregory - I have a family member who insists the line about "no religion" proves he was promoting heathenism, while my opinion is the theme follows the "Our Father" prayer: the best way for God's Will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven is to stop arguing about prejudices and possessions, manifest a rational society in the here and now. The full Maureen Cleave article from 1966 noted that two of John's favorite possessions were a Bible and a Crucifix; but wife Cynthia's gift of mechanized caged singing bird struck him as offensively bourgeois and partially inspired "And Your Bird Can Sing" - "when your prized possessions start to bring you down" is a similar anti-materialistic theme as "Can't Buy Me Love."
> > > > >>>>> Your family member has a point; Lennon did occasionally purport to be a "born-again pagan." He had Christian phases, too -- one of which Yoko squelched because she feared it would prevent her from controlling him through the occult. Which brings up the point that he went along with Ono's occultism. And we know that John also had a soft spot for gurus. Like I said before, he was all over the map; he did not subscribe to any one belief system for too long.
> > > > >>>>>
> > > > >>>>> Didn't Lennon explain somewhere that by "Imagine no religion" what he meant to say is that there should be no "one religion" that excluded others?
> > > > >>>>>
> > > > >>>>> I expect we'd agree Lennon did not wish for an *absence* of religion any more than he wished for an absence of possessions.
> > > > >>>>>
> > > > >>>>> Did anyone ever discover the title of the book gifted to Lennon by Dick Gregory?
> > > > >>>> John called his period circa 1969 "Christian Communist," recognizing it as a phase. We think of him pushing people's buttons on controversial issues, but in my book on the "Beatles For Sale" era ("The Quality Of Mersey") the whole group is being interviewed together, and they projected a unified religious perspective ("more agnostic than atheistic" was Lennon's assessment), with Paul and Ringo making some provocative remarks. Paul said, "We probably seem antireligious because none of us believe in God"; Harrison declared, "John's our official religious spokesman." John said that's how most people really feel, with Ringo agreeing, "It's better to admit it than be a hypocrite." Lennon saw hypocrisy in the clergy lamenting the conditions of the poor without being charitable to them. McCartney mentioned the cost of a single bronze door in the Vatican.
> > > > >>>>
> > > > >>>> Paul made it clear none of that discussion involved the actual teachings of Jesus: "Believe it or, we're not anti-Christ." Then Ringo qualified that with, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian." So there was agnosticism, leaning pro-Christ - but righteously anti-Christian, shared by the entire group.
> > > > >>>>
> > > > >>>> So the song "God" uses the title word to address the typical cultural perception, the concept that placates pain and suffering with the dubious promise of eternal happiness once everything is over. It could not be about Lennon's own personal conclusion that God does not exist, since he described in a 1968 interview that through drugs, diet and meditation he had sensed a Higher Power. What is being disbelieved in "God" is resorting to the victim mindset that effectively allows the oppressor minimal resistance. The idea is the more pain you have, the more God you need psychologically as a coping mechanism, usually for something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. Think of the 'Negro Spiritual' songs borne of suffering in slavery. Pie in the sky when you die by and by.
> > > > >>>>
> > > > >>>> At the time John was completing primal therapy with Arthur Janov, who considered religion madness, and Lennon later admitted the attempt to purge it from his psyche failed. He called himself "a most religious fellow." Even in childhood, John would point upwards and say "Somebody's watching" when he detected mischief; once he walked in announcing he had just seen God. John spoke of other religious figures who were advanced spiritually like Jesus, with admiration for their simple rational philosophies that few seem to grasp. An interviewer brought up the rumor he proclaimed he WAS God, receiving the reply he had not meant he was "A God or THE God," but shared a fragment of divinity: "We have all things within us," the option of being evil or righteous through exercise of free will. He said the recurrent dichotomy of moral extremes was summed up in the Christ-versus-Hitler contrast.
> > > > >>>
> > > > >>> I remember an interview with Lennon in which he pronounced vaguely that "God is an energy, a power source," but that "I never believed it was any one thing."
> > > > >>>
> > > > >>> Under Janov's influence, Lennon asserted that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
> > > > >>>
> > > > >>> Then there were his televangelist phases, during which he presumably accepted the god of Christianity.
> > > > >>>
> > > > >>> And the "born-again pagan" identification came in 1979, IIRC.
> > > > >>>
> > > > >>> Again, I see a guy whose beliefs fluctuated wildly depending on what drugs he was on, what TV he was watching, and who he was hanging out with.
> > > > >> More than that, comments not intended to indicate any genuine belief,
> > > > >> but merely an off-the-cuff comments intended to rankle the other party,
> > > > >> or to engender controversy for controversy’s sake.
> > > > >>
> > > > >> An approach which certainly seems to have worked extremely well with
> > > > >> some fanatics !
> > > > >>
> > > > >> geoff
> > > > >
> > > > > Good point, he did plenty of that. How about Lennon's denunciation of Darwin as "absolute garbage" because "monkeys aren't changing into people now"? Is that what it looks like -- i.e., Donald Trump-level ignorance and stupidity -- or was Lennon courting controversy? (Sometimes audio of this [Playboy] interview can be found online, but one has to dig to find the particular passage.)
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > Deliberately 'winding up' people who are stupid enough to think along
> > > > those lines. Imagine the things he would be saying in this era to mock
> > > > the conspiracy/trump/etc rabble !
> > > >
> > > > geoff
> > > I wish I could agree with you. However, if one looks at Lennon's existence at that time, there is no escaping the fact that he was confused. He was giving control over Double Fantasy to Ono -- who was by her own admission guided by pychics and astrologers (and who was conducting not one but two extramarital affairs at the time). Lennon's Playboy interview if full of paranoia and delusion -- for example Lennon's claim that McCartney had "subconsciously sabotaged" Lennon's best work. Lennon's best retort to people who thought he was being manipulated by Ono was "Fuck you brother and sister.." Lennon had recently emerged from a phase of following televangelist Pat Robertson. And then if you listen to the audio of the Playboy interview, there is real anger in his voice towards this idea (evolution) he had no understanding of.
> > >
> > > John wasn't thinking straight.
> > I did hear the interview, and I think your tendency is to presume when JL spoke with intensity it was more like insanity, without even addressing his actual words and the ideas they reflect, which could explain the emotion. In religious texts evolution has to be inferred from the 'Days of Creation' being figurative and protracted.
> >
> > However I noted when Yoko drifted in herself, she said something very strange about her husband's former band:
> >
> > "They were like mediums.
> > They weren't conscious of all they were saying,
> > But it was coming through them."
> >
> > This implies John had told her about something meant to be heard one way that inadvertently had a parallel audio transcription manifest, perhaps several instances. When an interviewer asked John if he was upset about people reading things into his work that were not there he replied,
> >
> > "It IS there.
> > It's like abstract art, really."
> >
> > In 1967 Paul McCartney told David Frost,
> >
> > "Everything has a message -
> > But you can't just pick out one little thing and say,
> > 'Is THAT their message?'
> > Everything we do is never intended to have a great deep message -
> > But it HAS."
> >
> > It was PM who made a distinction about the passage of time affecting perception of JL's controversial Cleave interview.
> >
> > "Was it a mistake?
> > I don't know.
> > In the SHORT term, yes.
> > Maybe not in the LONG term."
> >
> > Harrison thought Christians feeling they had a franchise on Jesus could be false representatives, indoctrinating him from an early age; but the view in India was to withhold belief from ANYTHING unless you have direct perception. So George embraced the notion of discovering esoteric truth for himself through books and mystics.
> >
> > The messages and sequencing from the second side of the "A Hard Day's Night" album demonstrate that Lennon was acutely aware of the intricacies of Mary Magdalene's encounter with the Risen Christ at the tomb, where when she attempted to touch Him, Jesus basically responded, "You Can't Do That"! John in the middle plays guitar in the style of Wilson Pickett, subliminally elaborating that Ascension to the Father was required before He could be physically touched. And there is the vocal line, "If they'd seen you talking that way they'd laugh in my face," that transmutes the ending into "...they'd laugh at my Faith."
> >
> > The vocalists in some tunes have lyrics that allow for role-playing, sometimes as inanimate objects - the next stage in my book series covers the "Help!" phase, and "Another Girl" seems to be from the point of view of The Cross itself, temporarily carried by Simon of Cyrene, yet with a destiny linked to the Lord. Cyrene is known for ruins very similar to those used for the song scene in the Bahamas portion of the film.
> >
> > Lennon was extremely lucid regarding his group's collective accomplishments.
> >
> > "With The Beatles, the records are the point,
> > NOT The Beatles as individuals.
> > You don't need the package,
> > Just as you don't need the Christian package or the Marxist package to get the message.
> > People always got the image I was an anti-Christ or anti-religion.
> > I'm NOT.
> > I'm a MOST religious fellow.
> > I was brought up a Christian and I only NOW understand SOME of the things that Christ was saying in those parables...
> > The people who are hung up on The Beatles and the 'Sixties dream MISSED the whole point when The Beatles and the 'Sixties dream BECAME the point."
> >
> > The best evidence that Paul McCartney wants people to reach that enlightened level is the subliminal content of "Old Siam Sir" from the "Back To The Egg" (the last for Wings). The manic opening suggests a repetition of,
> >
> > 'Broke up, Broke up!'
> >
> > As that is going a single note intrudes, implying,
> >
> > '...But -'
> >
> > Then the drums seem to finish that thought -
> >
> > 'BUT NOT -
> > SETTLED!'
> >
> > Then a vaguely Oriental theme chimes in, yet the tonal melody suggests,
> >
> > 'When The Beatles Are Consummated,
> > They'll Be Known As
> > "A Band Subliminal"'
> >
> > This follows the vocal line melody and repeats frequently.
> > A powerful guitar riff quasi-vocalizes,
> >
> > 'REAP What's Sown By "The Legend"!'
> >
> > This repeats until undergoing a variation -
> >
> > 'REAP What's Sown By The -
> > Sown By "The Myth"!'
> >
> > The drum sequence also has a variation in the middle when the opening bit repeats, to imply instead,
> >
> > 'BUT NOT -
> > CON-SUMMATED!'
> >
> > The mood cools in a few quietly played guitar chords, suggesting,
> >
> > 'One Step Away...'
> >
> > And the guitar flourish afterwards seems to append,
> >
> > '...From Consummating'
> >
> > This appears deliberate, a belief that the "long term" enlightened perspective would emerge eventually, because The Beatles' collection of songs already efficiently planted something to be discerned later.
> Is it fair to say George was a mystic?


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Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'

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Subject: Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'
From: eagalita...@gmail.com (Curtis Eagal)
Injection-Date: Mon, 16 May 2022 19:35:19 +0000
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 by: Curtis Eagal - Mon, 16 May 2022 19:35 UTC

On Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 4:24:46 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> On Wednesday, May 4, 2022 at 12:44:56 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Friday, April 29, 2022 at 4:27:02 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 5:29:12 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
> > > > On 28/04/2022 11:10 pm, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 6:56:31 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
> > > > >> On 28/04/2022 4:03 am, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > >>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 5:30:15 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail..com wrote:
> > > > >>>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 4:08:26 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > >>>>> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 3:12:36 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > >>>>>>
> > > > >>>>>> The song "Imagine" resulted from discussing a book about prayer with Dick Gregory - I have a family member who insists the line about "no religion" proves he was promoting heathenism, while my opinion is the theme follows the "Our Father" prayer: the best way for God's Will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven is to stop arguing about prejudices and possessions, manifest a rational society in the here and now. The full Maureen Cleave article from 1966 noted that two of John's favorite possessions were a Bible and a Crucifix; but wife Cynthia's gift of mechanized caged singing bird struck him as offensively bourgeois and partially inspired "And Your Bird Can Sing" - "when your prized possessions start to bring you down" is a similar anti-materialistic theme as "Can't Buy Me Love."
> > > > >>>>> Your family member has a point; Lennon did occasionally purport to be a "born-again pagan." He had Christian phases, too -- one of which Yoko squelched because she feared it would prevent her from controlling him through the occult. Which brings up the point that he went along with Ono's occultism. And we know that John also had a soft spot for gurus. Like I said before, he was all over the map; he did not subscribe to any one belief system for too long.
> > > > >>>>>
> > > > >>>>> Didn't Lennon explain somewhere that by "Imagine no religion" what he meant to say is that there should be no "one religion" that excluded others?
> > > > >>>>>
> > > > >>>>> I expect we'd agree Lennon did not wish for an *absence* of religion any more than he wished for an absence of possessions.
> > > > >>>>>
> > > > >>>>> Did anyone ever discover the title of the book gifted to Lennon by Dick Gregory?
> > > > >>>> John called his period circa 1969 "Christian Communist," recognizing it as a phase. We think of him pushing people's buttons on controversial issues, but in my book on the "Beatles For Sale" era ("The Quality Of Mersey") the whole group is being interviewed together, and they projected a unified religious perspective ("more agnostic than atheistic" was Lennon's assessment), with Paul and Ringo making some provocative remarks. Paul said, "We probably seem antireligious because none of us believe in God"; Harrison declared, "John's our official religious spokesman." John said that's how most people really feel, with Ringo agreeing, "It's better to admit it than be a hypocrite." Lennon saw hypocrisy in the clergy lamenting the conditions of the poor without being charitable to them. McCartney mentioned the cost of a single bronze door in the Vatican.
> > > > >>>>
> > > > >>>> Paul made it clear none of that discussion involved the actual teachings of Jesus: "Believe it or, we're not anti-Christ." Then Ringo qualified that with, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian." So there was agnosticism, leaning pro-Christ - but righteously anti-Christian, shared by the entire group.
> > > > >>>>
> > > > >>>> So the song "God" uses the title word to address the typical cultural perception, the concept that placates pain and suffering with the dubious promise of eternal happiness once everything is over. It could not be about Lennon's own personal conclusion that God does not exist, since he described in a 1968 interview that through drugs, diet and meditation he had sensed a Higher Power. What is being disbelieved in "God" is resorting to the victim mindset that effectively allows the oppressor minimal resistance. The idea is the more pain you have, the more God you need psychologically as a coping mechanism, usually for something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. Think of the 'Negro Spiritual' songs borne of suffering in slavery. Pie in the sky when you die by and by.
> > > > >>>>
> > > > >>>> At the time John was completing primal therapy with Arthur Janov, who considered religion madness, and Lennon later admitted the attempt to purge it from his psyche failed. He called himself "a most religious fellow." Even in childhood, John would point upwards and say "Somebody's watching" when he detected mischief; once he walked in announcing he had just seen God. John spoke of other religious figures who were advanced spiritually like Jesus, with admiration for their simple rational philosophies that few seem to grasp. An interviewer brought up the rumor he proclaimed he WAS God, receiving the reply he had not meant he was "A God or THE God," but shared a fragment of divinity: "We have all things within us," the option of being evil or righteous through exercise of free will. He said the recurrent dichotomy of moral extremes was summed up in the Christ-versus-Hitler contrast.
> > > > >>>
> > > > >>> I remember an interview with Lennon in which he pronounced vaguely that "God is an energy, a power source," but that "I never believed it was any one thing."
> > > > >>>
> > > > >>> Under Janov's influence, Lennon asserted that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
> > > > >>>
> > > > >>> Then there were his televangelist phases, during which he presumably accepted the god of Christianity.
> > > > >>>
> > > > >>> And the "born-again pagan" identification came in 1979, IIRC.
> > > > >>>
> > > > >>> Again, I see a guy whose beliefs fluctuated wildly depending on what drugs he was on, what TV he was watching, and who he was hanging out with.
> > > > >> More than that, comments not intended to indicate any genuine belief,
> > > > >> but merely an off-the-cuff comments intended to rankle the other party,
> > > > >> or to engender controversy for controversy’s sake.
> > > > >>
> > > > >> An approach which certainly seems to have worked extremely well with
> > > > >> some fanatics !
> > > > >>
> > > > >> geoff
> > > > >
> > > > > Good point, he did plenty of that. How about Lennon's denunciation of Darwin as "absolute garbage" because "monkeys aren't changing into people now"? Is that what it looks like -- i.e., Donald Trump-level ignorance and stupidity -- or was Lennon courting controversy? (Sometimes audio of this [Playboy] interview can be found online, but one has to dig to find the particular passage.)
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > Deliberately 'winding up' people who are stupid enough to think along
> > > > those lines. Imagine the things he would be saying in this era to mock
> > > > the conspiracy/trump/etc rabble !
> > > >
> > > > geoff
> > > I wish I could agree with you. However, if one looks at Lennon's existence at that time, there is no escaping the fact that he was confused. He was giving control over Double Fantasy to Ono -- who was by her own admission guided by pychics and astrologers (and who was conducting not one but two extramarital affairs at the time). Lennon's Playboy interview if full of paranoia and delusion -- for example Lennon's claim that McCartney had "subconsciously sabotaged" Lennon's best work. Lennon's best retort to people who thought he was being manipulated by Ono was "Fuck you brother and sister.." Lennon had recently emerged from a phase of following televangelist Pat Robertson. And then if you listen to the audio of the Playboy interview, there is real anger in his voice towards this idea (evolution) he had no understanding of.
> > >
> > > John wasn't thinking straight.
> > I did hear the interview, and I think your tendency is to presume when JL spoke with intensity it was more like insanity, without even addressing his actual words and the ideas they reflect, which could explain the emotion. In religious texts evolution has to be inferred from the 'Days of Creation' being figurative and protracted.
> Not insanity per se, but ignorance. Darwin didn't say that monkeys "turned into" men or even that men evolved from monkeys. Lennon's alternative (to an evolution he didn't understand) hypothesis is some sort of direct lineage between humans and fish. Goodness knows what that assumption was based on. He had no scientific background and his criticism of evolution isn't worth taking seriously.
>
> Yeah, there are "modernized" versions of creationism which try to rationalize that each "day" really refers to a billion years or somesuch. The only problem is that there is nothing in the original creation myth to indicate such symbolism.
>
>
>
> > However I noted when Yoko drifted in herself, she said something very strange about her husband's formernd:
> >
> > "They were like mediums.
> > They weren't conscious of all they were saying,
> > But it was coming through them."
> >
> > This implies John had told her about something meant to be heard one way that inadvertently had a parallel audio transcription manifest, perhaps several instances. When an interviewer asked John if he was upset about people reading things into his work that were not there he replied,
> >
> > "It IS there.
> > It's like abstract art, really."
> You're giving Yoko a lot more credit than I am willing to give her. Yoko didn't witness the Beatles at work until 1968, and even then she appears to have sat there resentfully, feeling she was the one who belonged in front of the microphone. She didn't know or care about their creative processes. She was out to promote herself.
>
> Yoko's talk about the Beatles being "mediums" makes me cringe. It's on par with her admission that she bought Egyptian artifacts for their "magical powers," or her having the interviewer (David Sheff) vetted by her astrologers. She was mired in superstition and not of sound mind.


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Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'

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Subject: Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'
From: eagalita...@gmail.com (Curtis Eagal)
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 by: Curtis Eagal - Mon, 16 May 2022 20:17 UTC

On Monday, May 16, 2022 at 12:35:21 PM UTC-7, Curtis Eagal wrote:
> On Thursday, May 5, 2022 at 4:24:46 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > On Wednesday, May 4, 2022 at 12:44:56 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Friday, April 29, 2022 at 4:27:02 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 5:29:12 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
> > > > > On 28/04/2022 11:10 pm, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 6:56:31 PM UTC-4, geoff wrote:
> > > > > >> On 28/04/2022 4:03 am, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > >>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 5:30:15 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > >>>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 4:08:26 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > >>>>> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 3:12:36 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > >>>>>>
> > > > > >>>>>> The song "Imagine" resulted from discussing a book about prayer with Dick Gregory - I have a family member who insists the line about "no religion" proves he was promoting heathenism, while my opinion is the theme follows the "Our Father" prayer: the best way for God's Will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven is to stop arguing about prejudices and possessions, manifest a rational society in the here and now. The full Maureen Cleave article from 1966 noted that two of John's favorite possessions were a Bible and a Crucifix; but wife Cynthia's gift of mechanized caged singing bird struck him as offensively bourgeois and partially inspired "And Your Bird Can Sing" - "when your prized possessions start to bring you down" is a similar anti-materialistic theme as "Can't Buy Me Love."
> > > > > >>>>> Your family member has a point; Lennon did occasionally purport to be a "born-again pagan." He had Christian phases, too -- one of which Yoko squelched because she feared it would prevent her from controlling him through the occult. Which brings up the point that he went along with Ono's occultism. And we know that John also had a soft spot for gurus. Like I said before, he was all over the map; he did not subscribe to any one belief system for too long.
> > > > > >>>>>
> > > > > >>>>> Didn't Lennon explain somewhere that by "Imagine no religion" what he meant to say is that there should be no "one religion" that excluded others?
> > > > > >>>>>
> > > > > >>>>> I expect we'd agree Lennon did not wish for an *absence* of religion any more than he wished for an absence of possessions.
> > > > > >>>>>
> > > > > >>>>> Did anyone ever discover the title of the book gifted to Lennon by Dick Gregory?
> > > > > >>>> John called his period circa 1969 "Christian Communist," recognizing it as a phase. We think of him pushing people's buttons on controversial issues, but in my book on the "Beatles For Sale" era ("The Quality Of Mersey") the whole group is being interviewed together, and they projected a unified religious perspective ("more agnostic than atheistic" was Lennon's assessment), with Paul and Ringo making some provocative remarks. Paul said, "We probably seem antireligious because none of us believe in God"; Harrison declared, "John's our official religious spokesman." John said that's how most people really feel, with Ringo agreeing, "It's better to admit it than be a hypocrite." Lennon saw hypocrisy in the clergy lamenting the conditions of the poor without being charitable to them. McCartney mentioned the cost of a single bronze door in the Vatican.
> > > > > >>>>
> > > > > >>>> Paul made it clear none of that discussion involved the actual teachings of Jesus: "Believe it or, we're not anti-Christ." Then Ringo qualified that with, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian." So there was agnosticism, leaning pro-Christ - but righteously anti-Christian, shared by the entire group.
> > > > > >>>>
> > > > > >>>> So the song "God" uses the title word to address the typical cultural perception, the concept that placates pain and suffering with the dubious promise of eternal happiness once everything is over. It could not be about Lennon's own personal conclusion that God does not exist, since he described in a 1968 interview that through drugs, diet and meditation he had sensed a Higher Power. What is being disbelieved in "God" is resorting to the victim mindset that effectively allows the oppressor minimal resistance. The idea is the more pain you have, the more God you need psychologically as a coping mechanism, usually for something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. Think of the 'Negro Spiritual' songs borne of suffering in slavery. Pie in the sky when you die by and by.
> > > > > >>>>
> > > > > >>>> At the time John was completing primal therapy with Arthur Janov, who considered religion madness, and Lennon later admitted the attempt to purge it from his psyche failed. He called himself "a most religious fellow." Even in childhood, John would point upwards and say "Somebody's watching" when he detected mischief; once he walked in announcing he had just seen God. John spoke of other religious figures who were advanced spiritually like Jesus, with admiration for their simple rational philosophies that few seem to grasp. An interviewer brought up the rumor he proclaimed he WAS God, receiving the reply he had not meant he was "A God or THE God," but shared a fragment of divinity: "We have all things within us," the option of being evil or righteous through exercise of free will. He said the recurrent dichotomy of moral extremes was summed up in the Christ-versus-Hitler contrast.
> > > > > >>>
> > > > > >>> I remember an interview with Lennon in which he pronounced vaguely that "God is an energy, a power source," but that "I never believed it was any one thing."
> > > > > >>>
> > > > > >>> Under Janov's influence, Lennon asserted that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
> > > > > >>>
> > > > > >>> Then there were his televangelist phases, during which he presumably accepted the god of Christianity.
> > > > > >>>
> > > > > >>> And the "born-again pagan" identification came in 1979, IIRC.
> > > > > >>>
> > > > > >>> Again, I see a guy whose beliefs fluctuated wildly depending on what drugs he was on, what TV he was watching, and who he was hanging out with.
> > > > > >> More than that, comments not intended to indicate any genuine belief,
> > > > > >> but merely an off-the-cuff comments intended to rankle the other party,
> > > > > >> or to engender controversy for controversy’s sake.
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >> An approach which certainly seems to have worked extremely well with
> > > > > >> some fanatics !
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >> geoff
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Good point, he did plenty of that. How about Lennon's denunciation of Darwin as "absolute garbage" because "monkeys aren't changing into people now"? Is that what it looks like -- i.e., Donald Trump-level ignorance and stupidity -- or was Lennon courting controversy? (Sometimes audio of this [Playboy] interview can be found online, but one has to dig to find the particular passage.)
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > Deliberately 'winding up' people who are stupid enough to think along
> > > > > those lines. Imagine the things he would be saying in this era to mock
> > > > > the conspiracy/trump/etc rabble !
> > > > >
> > > > > geoff
> > > > I wish I could agree with you. However, if one looks at Lennon's existence at that time, there is no escaping the fact that he was confused. He was giving control over Double Fantasy to Ono -- who was by her own admission guided by pychics and astrologers (and who was conducting not one but two extramarital affairs at the time). Lennon's Playboy interview if full of paranoia and delusion -- for example Lennon's claim that McCartney had "subconsciously sabotaged" Lennon's best work. Lennon's best retort to people who thought he was being manipulated by Ono was "Fuck you brother and sister." Lennon had recently emerged from a phase of following televangelist Pat Robertson. And then if you listen to the audio of the Playboy interview, there is real anger in his voice towards this idea (evolution) he had no understanding of.
> > > >
> > > > John wasn't thinking straight.
> > > I did hear the interview, and I think your tendency is to presume when JL spoke with intensity it was more like insanity, without even addressing his actual words and the ideas they reflect, which could explain the emotion. In religious texts evolution has to be inferred from the 'Days of Creation' being figurative and protracted.
> > Not insanity per se, but ignorance. Darwin didn't say that monkeys "turned into" men or even that men evolved from monkeys. Lennon's alternative (to an evolution he didn't understand) hypothesis is some sort of direct lineage between humans and fish. Goodness knows what that assumption was based on. He had no scientific background and his criticism of evolution isn't worth taking seriously.
> >
> > Yeah, there are "modernized" versions of creationism which try to rationalize that each "day" really refers to a billion years or somesuch. The only problem is that there is nothing in the original creation myth to indicate such symbolism.
> >
> >
> >
> > > However I noted when Yoko drifted in herself, she said something very strange about her husband's formernd:
> > >
> > > "They were like mediums.
> > > They weren't conscious of all they were saying,
> > > But it was coming through them."
> > >
> > > This implies John had told her about something meant to be heard one way that inadvertently had a parallel audio transcription manifest, perhaps several instances. When an interviewer asked John if he was upset about people reading things into his work that were not there he replied,
> > >
> > > "It IS there.
> > > It's like abstract art, really."
> > You're giving Yoko a lot more credit than I am willing to give her. Yoko didn't witness the Beatles at work until 1968, and even then she appears to have sat there resentfully, feeling she was the one who belonged in front of the microphone. She didn't know or care about their creative processes.. She was out to promote herself.
> >
> > Yoko's talk about the Beatles being "mediums" makes me cringe. It's on par with her admission that she bought Egyptian artifacts for their "magical powers," or her having the interviewer (David Sheff) vetted by her astrologers. She was mired in superstition and not of sound mind.
> I gave my impression of the only way she could have uttered such a statement: it had to come from John, which she knew he would not have said himself publicly, but was important enough to interject vaguely. There are several instances where The Beatles created sounds obviously intending one idea, while the way it manifested inexplicably also sounds like it could be something else. Paul said things take on millions of meanings in 1967.
>
> There was a sad growing apart with Cynthia, evident in the song whose working title was "You Don't Get Me," emerging months before John met Yoko in 1966. Yoko gave John a mental workout he compared to his collaborating with Paul. I am looking at the timing of their meeting on 8 November 1966, against the final Beatle album release date of 8 May 1970: that is exactly 3.5 years to the day, timing of the second half of the critical seven-year period, given as 1260 days. The first half for 'sacrifice and oblation' was forty two months, matching the debut album month of March 1963 continuing through the end of August 1966 (i.e., the touring period as published artists).
>
> Yoko did not have to be known for her vocal modulation, but instead there are implications consistent with Bag Productions, white clothing, wrapped in sackcloth events etc., and the mission of peace signified by olive trees.. And that association emerged in the latter half of the period, just as foretold. So the very thing that people thought was tearing the band apart was a sign the second stage was underway.


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Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'

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Subject: Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'
From: eagalita...@gmail.com (Curtis Eagal)
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 by: Curtis Eagal - Mon, 16 May 2022 22:24 UTC

On Saturday, May 7, 2022 at 11:07:39 AM UTC-7, RJKe...@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Wednesday, May 4, 2022 at 10:26:33 AM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Monday, May 2, 2022 at 7:12:27 AM UTC-7, RJKe...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > > On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 9:21:14 AM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 4:11:37 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 8:16:06 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail..com wrote:
> > > > > > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 3:56:31 PM UTC-7, geoff wrote:
> > > > > > > On 28/04/2022 4:03 am, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 5:30:15 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > > >> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 4:08:26 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > > > >>> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 3:12:36 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > > >>>>
> > > > > > > >>>> The song "Imagine" resulted from discussing a book about prayer with Dick Gregory - I have a family member who insists the line about "no religion" proves he was promoting heathenism, while my opinion is the theme follows the "Our Father" prayer: the best way for God's Will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven is to stop arguing about prejudices and possessions, manifest a rational society in the here and now. The full Maureen Cleave article from 1966 noted that two of John's favorite possessions were a Bible and a Crucifix; but wife Cynthia's gift of mechanized caged singing bird struck him as offensively bourgeois and partially inspired "And Your Bird Can Sing" - "when your prized possessions start to bring you down" is a similar anti-materialistic theme as "Can't Buy Me Love."
> > > > > > > >>> Your family member has a point; Lennon did occasionally purport to be a "born-again pagan." He had Christian phases, too -- one of which Yoko squelched because she feared it would prevent her from controlling him through the occult. Which brings up the point that he went along with Ono's occultism. And we know that John also had a soft spot for gurus. Like I said before, he was all over the map; he did not subscribe to any one belief system for too long.
> > > > > > > >>>
> > > > > > > >>> Didn't Lennon explain somewhere that by "Imagine no religion" what he meant to say is that there should be no "one religion" that excluded others?
> > > > > > > >>>
> > > > > > > >>> I expect we'd agree Lennon did not wish for an *absence* of religion any more than he wished for an absence of possessions.
> > > > > > > >>>
> > > > > > > >>> Did anyone ever discover the title of the book gifted to Lennon by Dick Gregory?
> > > > > > > >> John called his period circa 1969 "Christian Communist," recognizing it as a phase. We think of him pushing people's buttons on controversial issues, but in my book on the "Beatles For Sale" era ("The Quality Of Mersey") the whole group is being interviewed together, and they projected a unified religious perspective ("more agnostic than atheistic" was Lennon's assessment), with Paul and Ringo making some provocative remarks. Paul said, "We probably seem antireligious because none of us believe in God"; Harrison declared, "John's our official religious spokesman." John said that's how most people really feel, with Ringo agreeing, "It's better to admit it than be a hypocrite." Lennon saw hypocrisy in the clergy lamenting the conditions of the poor without being charitable to them. McCartney mentioned the cost of a single bronze door in the Vatican.
> > > > > > > >>
> > > > > > > >> Paul made it clear none of that discussion involved the actual teachings of Jesus: "Believe it or, we're not anti-Christ." Then Ringo qualified that with, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian." So there was agnosticism, leaning pro-Christ - but righteously anti-Christian, shared by the entire group.
> > > > > > > >>
> > > > > > > >> So the song "God" uses the title word to address the typical cultural perception, the concept that placates pain and suffering with the dubious promise of eternal happiness once everything is over. It could not be about Lennon's own personal conclusion that God does not exist, since he described in a 1968 interview that through drugs, diet and meditation he had sensed a Higher Power. What is being disbelieved in "God" is resorting to the victim mindset that effectively allows the oppressor minimal resistance. The idea is the more pain you have, the more God you need psychologically as a coping mechanism, usually for something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. Think of the 'Negro Spiritual' songs borne of suffering in slavery. Pie in the sky when you die by and by.
> > > > > > > >>
> > > > > > > >> At the time John was completing primal therapy with Arthur Janov, who considered religion madness, and Lennon later admitted the attempt to purge it from his psyche failed. He called himself "a most religious fellow." Even in childhood, John would point upwards and say "Somebody's watching" when he detected mischief; once he walked in announcing he had just seen God. John spoke of other religious figures who were advanced spiritually like Jesus, with admiration for their simple rational philosophies that few seem to grasp. An interviewer brought up the rumor he proclaimed he WAS God, receiving the reply he had not meant he was "A God or THE God," but shared a fragment of divinity: "We have all things within us," the option of being evil or righteous through exercise of free will. He said the recurrent dichotomy of moral extremes was summed up in the Christ-versus-Hitler contrast.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > I remember an interview with Lennon in which he pronounced vaguely that "God is an energy, a power source," but that "I never believed it was any one thing."
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Under Janov's influence, Lennon asserted that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Then there were his televangelist phases, during which he presumably accepted the god of Christianity.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > And the "born-again pagan" identification came in 1979, IIRC.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Again, I see a guy whose beliefs fluctuated wildly depending on what drugs he was on, what TV he was watching, and who he was hanging out with.
> > > > > > > More than that, comments not intended to indicate any genuine belief,
> > > > > > > but merely an off-the-cuff comments intended to rankle the other party,
> > > > > > > or to engender controversy for controversy’s sake.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > An approach which certainly seems to have worked extremely well with
> > > > > > > some fanatics !
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > geoff
> > > > > > A Beatle in a 1964 group interview (published in 1965) said, "We probably seem antireligious because of the fact that none of us believes in God" - that was Paul McCartney.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > When Paul continued, "We're not anti-Christ," one of them added, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian" - that was Ringo Starr.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > McCartney expressed outrage that there was a societal stigma against atheism.
> > > > > Really? How brave, if so. I'd very much like to see a quotation.
> > > > The full text is available online, it's Jean Shepherd's interview for Playboy; my commentary version delves into key points hinted by the actual content, separating from the high-energy banter for media consumption. They were resuming a national tour with two shows in Exeter, and it took place around 11 pm in their Torquay hotel room. The sense is that a tape ran as a rambling conversation developed, and it all got printed verbatim.
> > > >
> > > > Anyone can now hear the pro-religion single minute from John Lennon's interview with David Wigg (10:07 to 11:08 in the link below):
> > > >
> > > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db0Y4ul32U8
> > > >
> > > > For those who do not want to be bothered listening to this rare, intriguing interview, here is brief transcription --
> > > >
> > > > DW: "John, on one broadcast in France, you said that you were God. Were you serious about that? Do you really FEEL you are God?"
> > > >
> > > > JL: "We're all God. Christ said The Kingdom of Heaven is within you, and that's what it means. And the Indians say that, and the Zen people say that: It's a basic thing of religion - We're All God. I'm not A god, or THE God - NOT THE God! - But we're all God, and we're all potentially divine, and potentially evil. We all have everything within us, and The Kingdom of Heaven is nigh, AND within us. And if you look hard enough, you'll see it.."
> > > >
> > > > DW: "Do you then believe in life after death?"
> > > >
> > > > JL: "I do. Without any doubt I believe in it."
> > > >
> > > > DW: "Have you had any special experiences that make you believe so convincingly?"
> > > >
> > > > JL: "In meditation, on drugs, on diets, I've been aware of a Soul, and been aware of The Power."
> > > >
> > > > *
> > > >
> > > > Even the infamously controversial Maureen Cleave interview involved discussion of a book about Christ's Disciples, "The Passover Plot."
> >
> > > I honestly have no idea what it means to say "We're all God." I don't consider myself godlike. Are bad guys also God according to John?
> > If God created everything, then what material is it ALL made from? Having a fragment of the Godhead's divinity through existence itself is not the same as BEING The Godhead, it is a simple distinction. I doubt many evil figures throughout history ever thought themselves so - there is always a justification, rationalizing whatever is done as improvements. Evil people simply exercise free will in ways that do not please God, to eventually incur a negative judgment.
> >
> > So bearing a fragment of divinity carries responsibility that one's lifetime(s) might not manifest as righteous acts.
> >
> > Any religious statement will be controversial until the soul separation (Reaping) events make the esoteric explicit - but of course then it will be too late to repent and convert.
> >
> > Remember that JL from 1964 was saying The Beatles were not show business, it was a task that once performed would be finished, there could be no gimmicks or tricks to keep things going (despite what people thought), and that the project should be completed in about five years (i.e., circa 1969). In 1980 he quoted the Bible that there is nothing new under the sun, so an existing story as subtext source was being insinuated.
> >
> > "If you want to use The Beatles or John and Yoko, people are expecting us to do something FOR them - that's not what's gonna happen: because THEY'RE the ones that didn't understand ANY message that came before anyway, and they're the ones that will FOLLOW Hitler, or follow the Reverend Moon, or whatever. FOLLOWING is not what it's about."
> >
> > More to your issue: "I think the idea of leadership is that old Judao-Christian idea of the separateness of God - FROM us, as being OUTSIDE of us - the Other. We ARE The Other: there is only One. So therefore, people kind of expect more from us than they expect from themselves... We take responsibility for the WHOLE THING, because we're ALL responsible for the whole thing."
> >
> > A reunion of his former band suggested the crowd would be "expecting God to perform."
> >
> > The rooftop concert controlled the elements of their actual concerts: they could not be shouted down, their personas and movements were not a distraction from the music, and the excuse the fans already had the records since the material was new.
> >
> > Canonical texts attributed to Henoch include a dream involving animals that forecast the entire course of human history, from Cain killing Abel to the Apocalyptic period. It has correct chronology and scenarios about the ascension of Elijah, Christ and His disciples, Constantine's three sons, etc. leading into the Nazi Holocaust: the next passage could be the first instance of Isaiah 6, regarding an inability to properly process audio-visual material, which Jesus reiterated. The story has one of the eyes-open sheep group being killed, then someone represented as ram also opens his eyes and sprouts a horn of Faith, which many try to break. Ultimately an Abyss opens in the physical and astral dimensions simultaneously, into which the 'blind sheep' are thrust with their unrighteous leaders, along with the demons who were actually guiding them.
> >
> > The open eyes signify awareness of the subliminal aspects, to which the blind sheep remain oblivious.
> >
> > The old tunes brought out for 1969 had some musical communication that was too fast and unfamiliar to expect conscious comprehension by the people in the street. The opening of "Dig A Pony" just seems like a rapid rambling guitar passage that repeats - but without giving away the startling whole message, the first portion sounds like,
> >
> > 'Jesus was a Leader -
> > THE Apostle Leader -
> > But without...'
> >
> > The next five transcribed words completing that musically hidden remark is essentially dismissive of those thinking declaring themselves a follower is all that was required.
> >
> > George Harrison in "Something" with the line, "You know I believe, and how," was announcing his self-confirmation was complete - certainly enough had occurred to reinforce his faith. Yet with John's "God" we have the contrasting, cynical view, actually a 'Crisis of Faith," which takes into account the public reaction in a more practical way - yes, there was a big reaction, but not the one that was anticipated, of clarity with conceptual esotericism. John knew that although his band was intellectual, that was not their appeal.
> >
> > John proverbially described how The Beatles were in the crow's nest or at the masthead, but we are all in the same boat.
> Old Siam Sir, that's worth a revisit.
>
> That's one of Paul's most underrated albums.


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Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'

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Subject: Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'
From: RJKel...@yahoo.com (RJKe...@yahoo.com)
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 by: RJKe...@yahoo.com - Wed, 18 May 2022 15:01 UTC

On Monday, May 16, 2022 at 6:25:01 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Saturday, May 7, 2022 at 11:07:39 AM UTC-7, RJKe...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > On Wednesday, May 4, 2022 at 10:26:33 AM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > On Monday, May 2, 2022 at 7:12:27 AM UTC-7, RJKe...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > > > On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 9:21:14 AM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 4:11:37 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 8:16:06 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 3:56:31 PM UTC-7, geoff wrote:
> > > > > > > > On 28/04/2022 4:03 am, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > > > > > On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 5:30:15 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > > > >> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 4:08:26 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > > > > >>> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 3:12:36 PM UTC-4, eagali....@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > > > >>>>
> > > > > > > > >>>> The song "Imagine" resulted from discussing a book about prayer with Dick Gregory - I have a family member who insists the line about "no religion" proves he was promoting heathenism, while my opinion is the theme follows the "Our Father" prayer: the best way for God's Will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven is to stop arguing about prejudices and possessions, manifest a rational society in the here and now. The full Maureen Cleave article from 1966 noted that two of John's favorite possessions were a Bible and a Crucifix; but wife Cynthia's gift of mechanized caged singing bird struck him as offensively bourgeois and partially inspired "And Your Bird Can Sing" - "when your prized possessions start to bring you down" is a similar anti-materialistic theme as "Can't Buy Me Love."
> > > > > > > > >>> Your family member has a point; Lennon did occasionally purport to be a "born-again pagan." He had Christian phases, too -- one of which Yoko squelched because she feared it would prevent her from controlling him through the occult. Which brings up the point that he went along with Ono's occultism. And we know that John also had a soft spot for gurus. Like I said before, he was all over the map; he did not subscribe to any one belief system for too long.
> > > > > > > > >>>
> > > > > > > > >>> Didn't Lennon explain somewhere that by "Imagine no religion" what he meant to say is that there should be no "one religion" that excluded others?
> > > > > > > > >>>
> > > > > > > > >>> I expect we'd agree Lennon did not wish for an *absence* of religion any more than he wished for an absence of possessions.
> > > > > > > > >>>
> > > > > > > > >>> Did anyone ever discover the title of the book gifted to Lennon by Dick Gregory?
> > > > > > > > >> John called his period circa 1969 "Christian Communist," recognizing it as a phase. We think of him pushing people's buttons on controversial issues, but in my book on the "Beatles For Sale" era ("The Quality Of Mersey") the whole group is being interviewed together, and they projected a unified religious perspective ("more agnostic than atheistic" was Lennon's assessment), with Paul and Ringo making some provocative remarks. Paul said, "We probably seem antireligious because none of us believe in God"; Harrison declared, "John's our official religious spokesman." John said that's how most people really feel, with Ringo agreeing, "It's better to admit it than be a hypocrite." Lennon saw hypocrisy in the clergy lamenting the conditions of the poor without being charitable to them. McCartney mentioned the cost of a single bronze door in the Vatican.
> > > > > > > > >>
> > > > > > > > >> Paul made it clear none of that discussion involved the actual teachings of Jesus: "Believe it or, we're not anti-Christ." Then Ringo qualified that with, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian." So there was agnosticism, leaning pro-Christ - but righteously anti-Christian, shared by the entire group.
> > > > > > > > >>
> > > > > > > > >> So the song "God" uses the title word to address the typical cultural perception, the concept that placates pain and suffering with the dubious promise of eternal happiness once everything is over. It could not be about Lennon's own personal conclusion that God does not exist, since he described in a 1968 interview that through drugs, diet and meditation he had sensed a Higher Power. What is being disbelieved in "God" is resorting to the victim mindset that effectively allows the oppressor minimal resistance. The idea is the more pain you have, the more God you need psychologically as a coping mechanism, usually for something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. Think of the 'Negro Spiritual' songs borne of suffering in slavery. Pie in the sky when you die by and by.
> > > > > > > > >>
> > > > > > > > >> At the time John was completing primal therapy with Arthur Janov, who considered religion madness, and Lennon later admitted the attempt to purge it from his psyche failed. He called himself "a most religious fellow." Even in childhood, John would point upwards and say "Somebody's watching" when he detected mischief; once he walked in announcing he had just seen God. John spoke of other religious figures who were advanced spiritually like Jesus, with admiration for their simple rational philosophies that few seem to grasp. An interviewer brought up the rumor he proclaimed he WAS God, receiving the reply he had not meant he was "A God or THE God," but shared a fragment of divinity: "We have all things within us," the option of being evil or righteous through exercise of free will. He said the recurrent dichotomy of moral extremes was summed up in the Christ-versus-Hitler contrast.
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > I remember an interview with Lennon in which he pronounced vaguely that "God is an energy, a power source," but that "I never believed it was any one thing."
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > Under Janov's influence, Lennon asserted that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > Then there were his televangelist phases, during which he presumably accepted the god of Christianity.
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > And the "born-again pagan" identification came in 1979, IIRC.
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > Again, I see a guy whose beliefs fluctuated wildly depending on what drugs he was on, what TV he was watching, and who he was hanging out with.
> > > > > > > > More than that, comments not intended to indicate any genuine belief,
> > > > > > > > but merely an off-the-cuff comments intended to rankle the other party,
> > > > > > > > or to engender controversy for controversy’s sake.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > An approach which certainly seems to have worked extremely well with
> > > > > > > > some fanatics !
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > geoff
> > > > > > > A Beatle in a 1964 group interview (published in 1965) said, "We probably seem antireligious because of the fact that none of us believes in God" - that was Paul McCartney.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > When Paul continued, "We're not anti-Christ," one of them added, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian" - that was Ringo Starr.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > McCartney expressed outrage that there was a societal stigma against atheism.
> > > > > > Really? How brave, if so. I'd very much like to see a quotation..
> > > > > The full text is available online, it's Jean Shepherd's interview for Playboy; my commentary version delves into key points hinted by the actual content, separating from the high-energy banter for media consumption. They were resuming a national tour with two shows in Exeter, and it took place around 11 pm in their Torquay hotel room. The sense is that a tape ran as a rambling conversation developed, and it all got printed verbatim.
> > > > >
> > > > > Anyone can now hear the pro-religion single minute from John Lennon's interview with David Wigg (10:07 to 11:08 in the link below):
> > > > >
> > > > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db0Y4ul32U8
> > > > >
> > > > > For those who do not want to be bothered listening to this rare, intriguing interview, here is brief transcription --
> > > > >
> > > > > DW: "John, on one broadcast in France, you said that you were God.. Were you serious about that? Do you really FEEL you are God?"
> > > > >
> > > > > JL: "We're all God. Christ said The Kingdom of Heaven is within you, and that's what it means. And the Indians say that, and the Zen people say that: It's a basic thing of religion - We're All God. I'm not A god, or THE God - NOT THE God! - But we're all God, and we're all potentially divine, and potentially evil. We all have everything within us, and The Kingdom of Heaven is nigh, AND within us. And if you look hard enough, you'll see it."
> > > > >
> > > > > DW: "Do you then believe in life after death?"
> > > > >
> > > > > JL: "I do. Without any doubt I believe in it."
> > > > >
> > > > > DW: "Have you had any special experiences that make you believe so convincingly?"
> > > > >
> > > > > JL: "In meditation, on drugs, on diets, I've been aware of a Soul, and been aware of The Power."
> > > > >
> > > > > *
> > > > >
> > > > > Even the infamously controversial Maureen Cleave interview involved discussion of a book about Christ's Disciples, "The Passover Plot."
> > >
> > > > I honestly have no idea what it means to say "We're all God." I don't consider myself godlike. Are bad guys also God according to John?
> > > If God created everything, then what material is it ALL made from? Having a fragment of the Godhead's divinity through existence itself is not the same as BEING The Godhead, it is a simple distinction. I doubt many evil figures throughout history ever thought themselves so - there is always a justification, rationalizing whatever is done as improvements. Evil people simply exercise free will in ways that do not please God, to eventually incur a negative judgment.
> > >
> > > So bearing a fragment of divinity carries responsibility that one's lifetime(s) might not manifest as righteous acts.
> > >
> > > Any religious statement will be controversial until the soul separation (Reaping) events make the esoteric explicit - but of course then it will be too late to repent and convert.
> > >
> > > Remember that JL from 1964 was saying The Beatles were not show business, it was a task that once performed would be finished, there could be no gimmicks or tricks to keep things going (despite what people thought), and that the project should be completed in about five years (i.e., circa 1969). In 1980 he quoted the Bible that there is nothing new under the sun, so an existing story as subtext source was being insinuated.
> > >
> > > "If you want to use The Beatles or John and Yoko, people are expecting us to do something FOR them - that's not what's gonna happen: because THEY'RE the ones that didn't understand ANY message that came before anyway, and they're the ones that will FOLLOW Hitler, or follow the Reverend Moon, or whatever. FOLLOWING is not what it's about."
> > >
> > > More to your issue: "I think the idea of leadership is that old Judao-Christian idea of the separateness of God - FROM us, as being OUTSIDE of us - the Other. We ARE The Other: there is only One. So therefore, people kind of expect more from us than they expect from themselves... We take responsibility for the WHOLE THING, because we're ALL responsible for the whole thing."
> > >
> > > A reunion of his former band suggested the crowd would be "expecting God to perform."
> > >
> > > The rooftop concert controlled the elements of their actual concerts: they could not be shouted down, their personas and movements were not a distraction from the music, and the excuse the fans already had the records since the material was new.
> > >
> > > Canonical texts attributed to Henoch include a dream involving animals that forecast the entire course of human history, from Cain killing Abel to the Apocalyptic period. It has correct chronology and scenarios about the ascension of Elijah, Christ and His disciples, Constantine's three sons, etc. leading into the Nazi Holocaust: the next passage could be the first instance of Isaiah 6, regarding an inability to properly process audio-visual material, which Jesus reiterated. The story has one of the eyes-open sheep group being killed, then someone represented as ram also opens his eyes and sprouts a horn of Faith, which many try to break. Ultimately an Abyss opens in the physical and astral dimensions simultaneously, into which the 'blind sheep' are thrust with their unrighteous leaders, along with the demons who were actually guiding them.
> > >
> > > The open eyes signify awareness of the subliminal aspects, to which the blind sheep remain oblivious.
> > >
> > > The old tunes brought out for 1969 had some musical communication that was too fast and unfamiliar to expect conscious comprehension by the people in the street. The opening of "Dig A Pony" just seems like a rapid rambling guitar passage that repeats - but without giving away the startling whole message, the first portion sounds like,
> > >
> > > 'Jesus was a Leader -
> > > THE Apostle Leader -
> > > But without...'
> > >
> > > The next five transcribed words completing that musically hidden remark is essentially dismissive of those thinking declaring themselves a follower is all that was required.
> > >
> > > George Harrison in "Something" with the line, "You know I believe, and how," was announcing his self-confirmation was complete - certainly enough had occurred to reinforce his faith. Yet with John's "God" we have the contrasting, cynical view, actually a 'Crisis of Faith," which takes into account the public reaction in a more practical way - yes, there was a big reaction, but not the one that was anticipated, of clarity with conceptual esotericism. John knew that although his band was intellectual, that was not their appeal.
> > >
> > > John proverbially described how The Beatles were in the crow's nest or at the masthead, but we are all in the same boat.
> > Old Siam Sir, that's worth a revisit.
> >
> > That's one of Paul's most underrated albums.
> The title implies 'Old's I Am,' there was video featuring a lot of the "Back To The Egg" (there's some heavy embryonic-reversal symbolism) songs, some tracks were recorded in a castle. The lyrics include some British locations, in a fanciful tale for the conscious mind, while the music itself takes the subconscious elsewhere - by unexpectedly having instruments seem to be voicing phrases on a theme with expressive cadence. The cover image had the bizarre twist of unrolling a living room rug to view Earth through a floor portal. That was after the "London Town" cover featured the Thames in the same position as 'distant Earth,' some recorded on a yacht in the Virgin Islands.
>
> The BTTE inner sleeve had the dome of Chapel where the Holy Shroud resides in Turin, designed by Guarino Guarini.


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Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'

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Subject: Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'
From: RJKel...@yahoo.com (RJKe...@yahoo.com)
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 by: RJKe...@yahoo.com - Sat, 21 May 2022 20:45 UTC

On Wednesday, May 18, 2022 at 11:01:32 AM UTC-4, RJKe...@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Monday, May 16, 2022 at 6:25:01 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Saturday, May 7, 2022 at 11:07:39 AM UTC-7, RJKe...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > > On Wednesday, May 4, 2022 at 10:26:33 AM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > On Monday, May 2, 2022 at 7:12:27 AM UTC-7, RJKe...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > > > > On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 9:21:14 AM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 4:11:37 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > > > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 8:16:06 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 3:56:31 PM UTC-7, geoff wrote:
> > > > > > > > > On 28/04/2022 4:03 am, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 5:30:15 PM UTC-4, eagali....@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > > > > >> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 4:08:26 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > > > > > >>> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 3:12:36 PM UTC-4, eagali....@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > > > > >>>>
> > > > > > > > > >>>> The song "Imagine" resulted from discussing a book about prayer with Dick Gregory - I have a family member who insists the line about "no religion" proves he was promoting heathenism, while my opinion is the theme follows the "Our Father" prayer: the best way for God's Will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven is to stop arguing about prejudices and possessions, manifest a rational society in the here and now. The full Maureen Cleave article from 1966 noted that two of John's favorite possessions were a Bible and a Crucifix; but wife Cynthia's gift of mechanized caged singing bird struck him as offensively bourgeois and partially inspired "And Your Bird Can Sing" - "when your prized possessions start to bring you down" is a similar anti-materialistic theme as "Can't Buy Me Love."
> > > > > > > > > >>> Your family member has a point; Lennon did occasionally purport to be a "born-again pagan." He had Christian phases, too -- one of which Yoko squelched because she feared it would prevent her from controlling him through the occult. Which brings up the point that he went along with Ono's occultism. And we know that John also had a soft spot for gurus. Like I said before, he was all over the map; he did not subscribe to any one belief system for too long.
> > > > > > > > > >>>
> > > > > > > > > >>> Didn't Lennon explain somewhere that by "Imagine no religion" what he meant to say is that there should be no "one religion" that excluded others?
> > > > > > > > > >>>
> > > > > > > > > >>> I expect we'd agree Lennon did not wish for an *absence* of religion any more than he wished for an absence of possessions.
> > > > > > > > > >>>
> > > > > > > > > >>> Did anyone ever discover the title of the book gifted to Lennon by Dick Gregory?
> > > > > > > > > >> John called his period circa 1969 "Christian Communist," recognizing it as a phase. We think of him pushing people's buttons on controversial issues, but in my book on the "Beatles For Sale" era ("The Quality Of Mersey") the whole group is being interviewed together, and they projected a unified religious perspective ("more agnostic than atheistic" was Lennon's assessment), with Paul and Ringo making some provocative remarks. Paul said, "We probably seem antireligious because none of us believe in God"; Harrison declared, "John's our official religious spokesman." John said that's how most people really feel, with Ringo agreeing, "It's better to admit it than be a hypocrite." Lennon saw hypocrisy in the clergy lamenting the conditions of the poor without being charitable to them. McCartney mentioned the cost of a single bronze door in the Vatican.
> > > > > > > > > >>
> > > > > > > > > >> Paul made it clear none of that discussion involved the actual teachings of Jesus: "Believe it or, we're not anti-Christ." Then Ringo qualified that with, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian." So there was agnosticism, leaning pro-Christ - but righteously anti-Christian, shared by the entire group.
> > > > > > > > > >>
> > > > > > > > > >> So the song "God" uses the title word to address the typical cultural perception, the concept that placates pain and suffering with the dubious promise of eternal happiness once everything is over. It could not be about Lennon's own personal conclusion that God does not exist, since he described in a 1968 interview that through drugs, diet and meditation he had sensed a Higher Power. What is being disbelieved in "God" is resorting to the victim mindset that effectively allows the oppressor minimal resistance. The idea is the more pain you have, the more God you need psychologically as a coping mechanism, usually for something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. Think of the 'Negro Spiritual' songs borne of suffering in slavery. Pie in the sky when you die by and by.
> > > > > > > > > >>
> > > > > > > > > >> At the time John was completing primal therapy with Arthur Janov, who considered religion madness, and Lennon later admitted the attempt to purge it from his psyche failed. He called himself "a most religious fellow." Even in childhood, John would point upwards and say "Somebody's watching" when he detected mischief; once he walked in announcing he had just seen God. John spoke of other religious figures who were advanced spiritually like Jesus, with admiration for their simple rational philosophies that few seem to grasp. An interviewer brought up the rumor he proclaimed he WAS God, receiving the reply he had not meant he was "A God or THE God," but shared a fragment of divinity: "We have all things within us," the option of being evil or righteous through exercise of free will. He said the recurrent dichotomy of moral extremes was summed up in the Christ-versus-Hitler contrast.
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > I remember an interview with Lennon in which he pronounced vaguely that "God is an energy, a power source," but that "I never believed it was any one thing."
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > Under Janov's influence, Lennon asserted that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > Then there were his televangelist phases, during which he presumably accepted the god of Christianity.
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > And the "born-again pagan" identification came in 1979, IIRC.
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > Again, I see a guy whose beliefs fluctuated wildly depending on what drugs he was on, what TV he was watching, and who he was hanging out with.
> > > > > > > > > More than that, comments not intended to indicate any genuine belief,
> > > > > > > > > but merely an off-the-cuff comments intended to rankle the other party,
> > > > > > > > > or to engender controversy for controversy’s sake..
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > An approach which certainly seems to have worked extremely well with
> > > > > > > > > some fanatics !
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > geoff
> > > > > > > > A Beatle in a 1964 group interview (published in 1965) said, "We probably seem antireligious because of the fact that none of us believes in God" - that was Paul McCartney.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > When Paul continued, "We're not anti-Christ," one of them added, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian" - that was Ringo Starr.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > McCartney expressed outrage that there was a societal stigma against atheism.
> > > > > > > Really? How brave, if so. I'd very much like to see a quotation.
> > > > > > The full text is available online, it's Jean Shepherd's interview for Playboy; my commentary version delves into key points hinted by the actual content, separating from the high-energy banter for media consumption. They were resuming a national tour with two shows in Exeter, and it took place around 11 pm in their Torquay hotel room. The sense is that a tape ran as a rambling conversation developed, and it all got printed verbatim.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Anyone can now hear the pro-religion single minute from John Lennon's interview with David Wigg (10:07 to 11:08 in the link below):
> > > > > >
> > > > > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db0Y4ul32U8
> > > > > >
> > > > > > For those who do not want to be bothered listening to this rare, intriguing interview, here is brief transcription --
> > > > > >
> > > > > > DW: "John, on one broadcast in France, you said that you were God. Were you serious about that? Do you really FEEL you are God?"
> > > > > >
> > > > > > JL: "We're all God. Christ said The Kingdom of Heaven is within you, and that's what it means. And the Indians say that, and the Zen people say that: It's a basic thing of religion - We're All God. I'm not A god, or THE God - NOT THE God! - But we're all God, and we're all potentially divine, and potentially evil. We all have everything within us, and The Kingdom of Heaven is nigh, AND within us. And if you look hard enough, you'll see it."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > DW: "Do you then believe in life after death?"
> > > > > >
> > > > > > JL: "I do. Without any doubt I believe in it."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > DW: "Have you had any special experiences that make you believe so convincingly?"
> > > > > >
> > > > > > JL: "In meditation, on drugs, on diets, I've been aware of a Soul, and been aware of The Power."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > *
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Even the infamously controversial Maureen Cleave interview involved discussion of a book about Christ's Disciples, "The Passover Plot."
> > > >
> > > > > I honestly have no idea what it means to say "We're all God." I don't consider myself godlike. Are bad guys also God according to John?
> > > > If God created everything, then what material is it ALL made from? Having a fragment of the Godhead's divinity through existence itself is not the same as BEING The Godhead, it is a simple distinction. I doubt many evil figures throughout history ever thought themselves so - there is always a justification, rationalizing whatever is done as improvements. Evil people simply exercise free will in ways that do not please God, to eventually incur a negative judgment.
> > > >
> > > > So bearing a fragment of divinity carries responsibility that one's lifetime(s) might not manifest as righteous acts.
> > > >
> > > > Any religious statement will be controversial until the soul separation (Reaping) events make the esoteric explicit - but of course then it will be too late to repent and convert.
> > > >
> > > > Remember that JL from 1964 was saying The Beatles were not show business, it was a task that once performed would be finished, there could be no gimmicks or tricks to keep things going (despite what people thought), and that the project should be completed in about five years (i.e., circa 1969). In 1980 he quoted the Bible that there is nothing new under the sun, so an existing story as subtext source was being insinuated.
> > > >
> > > > "If you want to use The Beatles or John and Yoko, people are expecting us to do something FOR them - that's not what's gonna happen: because THEY'RE the ones that didn't understand ANY message that came before anyway, and they're the ones that will FOLLOW Hitler, or follow the Reverend Moon, or whatever. FOLLOWING is not what it's about."
> > > >
> > > > More to your issue: "I think the idea of leadership is that old Judao-Christian idea of the separateness of God - FROM us, as being OUTSIDE of us - the Other. We ARE The Other: there is only One. So therefore, people kind of expect more from us than they expect from themselves... We take responsibility for the WHOLE THING, because we're ALL responsible for the whole thing."
> > > >
> > > > A reunion of his former band suggested the crowd would be "expecting God to perform."
> > > >
> > > > The rooftop concert controlled the elements of their actual concerts: they could not be shouted down, their personas and movements were not a distraction from the music, and the excuse the fans already had the records since the material was new.
> > > >
> > > > Canonical texts attributed to Henoch include a dream involving animals that forecast the entire course of human history, from Cain killing Abel to the Apocalyptic period. It has correct chronology and scenarios about the ascension of Elijah, Christ and His disciples, Constantine's three sons, etc. leading into the Nazi Holocaust: the next passage could be the first instance of Isaiah 6, regarding an inability to properly process audio-visual material, which Jesus reiterated. The story has one of the eyes-open sheep group being killed, then someone represented as ram also opens his eyes and sprouts a horn of Faith, which many try to break. Ultimately an Abyss opens in the physical and astral dimensions simultaneously, into which the 'blind sheep' are thrust with their unrighteous leaders, along with the demons who were actually guiding them.
> > > >
> > > > The open eyes signify awareness of the subliminal aspects, to which the blind sheep remain oblivious.
> > > >
> > > > The old tunes brought out for 1969 had some musical communication that was too fast and unfamiliar to expect conscious comprehension by the people in the street. The opening of "Dig A Pony" just seems like a rapid rambling guitar passage that repeats - but without giving away the startling whole message, the first portion sounds like,
> > > >
> > > > 'Jesus was a Leader -
> > > > THE Apostle Leader -
> > > > But without...'
> > > >
> > > > The next five transcribed words completing that musically hidden remark is essentially dismissive of those thinking declaring themselves a follower is all that was required.
> > > >
> > > > George Harrison in "Something" with the line, "You know I believe, and how," was announcing his self-confirmation was complete - certainly enough had occurred to reinforce his faith. Yet with John's "God" we have the contrasting, cynical view, actually a 'Crisis of Faith," which takes into account the public reaction in a more practical way - yes, there was a big reaction, but not the one that was anticipated, of clarity with conceptual esotericism. John knew that although his band was intellectual, that was not their appeal.
> > > >
> > > > John proverbially described how The Beatles were in the crow's nest or at the masthead, but we are all in the same boat.
> > > Old Siam Sir, that's worth a revisit.
> > >
> > > That's one of Paul's most underrated albums.
> > The title implies 'Old's I Am,' there was video featuring a lot of the "Back To The Egg" (there's some heavy embryonic-reversal symbolism) songs, some tracks were recorded in a castle. The lyrics include some British locations, in a fanciful tale for the conscious mind, while the music itself takes the subconscious elsewhere - by unexpectedly having instruments seem to be voicing phrases on a theme with expressive cadence. The cover image had the bizarre twist of unrolling a living room rug to view Earth through a floor portal. That was after the "London Town" cover featured the Thames in the same position as 'distant Earth,' some recorded on a yacht in the Virgin Islands.
> >
> > The BTTE inner sleeve had the dome of Chapel where the Holy Shroud resides in Turin, designed by Guarino Guarini.
> I'll have to look for the videos.
>
> What do you think, is it a solid album? I remember that the critics were vicious.


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Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'

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Subject: Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'
From: curtis4...@gmail.com (Curt Josephs)
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 by: Curt Josephs - Sun, 22 May 2022 17:21 UTC

On Wednesday, May 18, 2022 at 8:01:32 AM UTC-7, RJKe...@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Monday, May 16, 2022 at 6:25:01 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Saturday, May 7, 2022 at 11:07:39 AM UTC-7, RJKe...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > > On Wednesday, May 4, 2022 at 10:26:33 AM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > On Monday, May 2, 2022 at 7:12:27 AM UTC-7, RJKe...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > > > > On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 9:21:14 AM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 4:11:37 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > > > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 8:16:06 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 3:56:31 PM UTC-7, geoff wrote:
> > > > > > > > > On 28/04/2022 4:03 am, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 5:30:15 PM UTC-4, eagali....@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > > > > >> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 4:08:26 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > > > > > >>> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 3:12:36 PM UTC-4, eagali....@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > > > > >>>>
> > > > > > > > > >>>> The song "Imagine" resulted from discussing a book about prayer with Dick Gregory - I have a family member who insists the line about "no religion" proves he was promoting heathenism, while my opinion is the theme follows the "Our Father" prayer: the best way for God's Will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven is to stop arguing about prejudices and possessions, manifest a rational society in the here and now. The full Maureen Cleave article from 1966 noted that two of John's favorite possessions were a Bible and a Crucifix; but wife Cynthia's gift of mechanized caged singing bird struck him as offensively bourgeois and partially inspired "And Your Bird Can Sing" - "when your prized possessions start to bring you down" is a similar anti-materialistic theme as "Can't Buy Me Love."
> > > > > > > > > >>> Your family member has a point; Lennon did occasionally purport to be a "born-again pagan." He had Christian phases, too -- one of which Yoko squelched because she feared it would prevent her from controlling him through the occult. Which brings up the point that he went along with Ono's occultism. And we know that John also had a soft spot for gurus. Like I said before, he was all over the map; he did not subscribe to any one belief system for too long.
> > > > > > > > > >>>
> > > > > > > > > >>> Didn't Lennon explain somewhere that by "Imagine no religion" what he meant to say is that there should be no "one religion" that excluded others?
> > > > > > > > > >>>
> > > > > > > > > >>> I expect we'd agree Lennon did not wish for an *absence* of religion any more than he wished for an absence of possessions.
> > > > > > > > > >>>
> > > > > > > > > >>> Did anyone ever discover the title of the book gifted to Lennon by Dick Gregory?
> > > > > > > > > >> John called his period circa 1969 "Christian Communist," recognizing it as a phase. We think of him pushing people's buttons on controversial issues, but in my book on the "Beatles For Sale" era ("The Quality Of Mersey") the whole group is being interviewed together, and they projected a unified religious perspective ("more agnostic than atheistic" was Lennon's assessment), with Paul and Ringo making some provocative remarks. Paul said, "We probably seem antireligious because none of us believe in God"; Harrison declared, "John's our official religious spokesman." John said that's how most people really feel, with Ringo agreeing, "It's better to admit it than be a hypocrite." Lennon saw hypocrisy in the clergy lamenting the conditions of the poor without being charitable to them. McCartney mentioned the cost of a single bronze door in the Vatican.
> > > > > > > > > >>
> > > > > > > > > >> Paul made it clear none of that discussion involved the actual teachings of Jesus: "Believe it or, we're not anti-Christ." Then Ringo qualified that with, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian." So there was agnosticism, leaning pro-Christ - but righteously anti-Christian, shared by the entire group.
> > > > > > > > > >>
> > > > > > > > > >> So the song "God" uses the title word to address the typical cultural perception, the concept that placates pain and suffering with the dubious promise of eternal happiness once everything is over. It could not be about Lennon's own personal conclusion that God does not exist, since he described in a 1968 interview that through drugs, diet and meditation he had sensed a Higher Power. What is being disbelieved in "God" is resorting to the victim mindset that effectively allows the oppressor minimal resistance. The idea is the more pain you have, the more God you need psychologically as a coping mechanism, usually for something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. Think of the 'Negro Spiritual' songs borne of suffering in slavery. Pie in the sky when you die by and by.
> > > > > > > > > >>
> > > > > > > > > >> At the time John was completing primal therapy with Arthur Janov, who considered religion madness, and Lennon later admitted the attempt to purge it from his psyche failed. He called himself "a most religious fellow." Even in childhood, John would point upwards and say "Somebody's watching" when he detected mischief; once he walked in announcing he had just seen God. John spoke of other religious figures who were advanced spiritually like Jesus, with admiration for their simple rational philosophies that few seem to grasp. An interviewer brought up the rumor he proclaimed he WAS God, receiving the reply he had not meant he was "A God or THE God," but shared a fragment of divinity: "We have all things within us," the option of being evil or righteous through exercise of free will. He said the recurrent dichotomy of moral extremes was summed up in the Christ-versus-Hitler contrast.
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > I remember an interview with Lennon in which he pronounced vaguely that "God is an energy, a power source," but that "I never believed it was any one thing."
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > Under Janov's influence, Lennon asserted that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > Then there were his televangelist phases, during which he presumably accepted the god of Christianity.
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > And the "born-again pagan" identification came in 1979, IIRC.
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > Again, I see a guy whose beliefs fluctuated wildly depending on what drugs he was on, what TV he was watching, and who he was hanging out with.
> > > > > > > > > More than that, comments not intended to indicate any genuine belief,
> > > > > > > > > but merely an off-the-cuff comments intended to rankle the other party,
> > > > > > > > > or to engender controversy for controversy’s sake..
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > An approach which certainly seems to have worked extremely well with
> > > > > > > > > some fanatics !
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > geoff
> > > > > > > > A Beatle in a 1964 group interview (published in 1965) said, "We probably seem antireligious because of the fact that none of us believes in God" - that was Paul McCartney.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > When Paul continued, "We're not anti-Christ," one of them added, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian" - that was Ringo Starr.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > McCartney expressed outrage that there was a societal stigma against atheism.
> > > > > > > Really? How brave, if so. I'd very much like to see a quotation.
> > > > > > The full text is available online, it's Jean Shepherd's interview for Playboy; my commentary version delves into key points hinted by the actual content, separating from the high-energy banter for media consumption. They were resuming a national tour with two shows in Exeter, and it took place around 11 pm in their Torquay hotel room. The sense is that a tape ran as a rambling conversation developed, and it all got printed verbatim.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Anyone can now hear the pro-religion single minute from John Lennon's interview with David Wigg (10:07 to 11:08 in the link below):
> > > > > >
> > > > > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db0Y4ul32U8
> > > > > >
> > > > > > For those who do not want to be bothered listening to this rare, intriguing interview, here is brief transcription --
> > > > > >
> > > > > > DW: "John, on one broadcast in France, you said that you were God. Were you serious about that? Do you really FEEL you are God?"
> > > > > >
> > > > > > JL: "We're all God. Christ said The Kingdom of Heaven is within you, and that's what it means. And the Indians say that, and the Zen people say that: It's a basic thing of religion - We're All God. I'm not A god, or THE God - NOT THE God! - But we're all God, and we're all potentially divine, and potentially evil. We all have everything within us, and The Kingdom of Heaven is nigh, AND within us. And if you look hard enough, you'll see it."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > DW: "Do you then believe in life after death?"
> > > > > >
> > > > > > JL: "I do. Without any doubt I believe in it."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > DW: "Have you had any special experiences that make you believe so convincingly?"
> > > > > >
> > > > > > JL: "In meditation, on drugs, on diets, I've been aware of a Soul, and been aware of The Power."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > *
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Even the infamously controversial Maureen Cleave interview involved discussion of a book about Christ's Disciples, "The Passover Plot."
> > > >
> > > > > I honestly have no idea what it means to say "We're all God." I don't consider myself godlike. Are bad guys also God according to John?
> > > > If God created everything, then what material is it ALL made from? Having a fragment of the Godhead's divinity through existence itself is not the same as BEING The Godhead, it is a simple distinction. I doubt many evil figures throughout history ever thought themselves so - there is always a justification, rationalizing whatever is done as improvements. Evil people simply exercise free will in ways that do not please God, to eventually incur a negative judgment.
> > > >
> > > > So bearing a fragment of divinity carries responsibility that one's lifetime(s) might not manifest as righteous acts.
> > > >
> > > > Any religious statement will be controversial until the soul separation (Reaping) events make the esoteric explicit - but of course then it will be too late to repent and convert.
> > > >
> > > > Remember that JL from 1964 was saying The Beatles were not show business, it was a task that once performed would be finished, there could be no gimmicks or tricks to keep things going (despite what people thought), and that the project should be completed in about five years (i.e., circa 1969). In 1980 he quoted the Bible that there is nothing new under the sun, so an existing story as subtext source was being insinuated.
> > > >
> > > > "If you want to use The Beatles or John and Yoko, people are expecting us to do something FOR them - that's not what's gonna happen: because THEY'RE the ones that didn't understand ANY message that came before anyway, and they're the ones that will FOLLOW Hitler, or follow the Reverend Moon, or whatever. FOLLOWING is not what it's about."
> > > >
> > > > More to your issue: "I think the idea of leadership is that old Judao-Christian idea of the separateness of God - FROM us, as being OUTSIDE of us - the Other. We ARE The Other: there is only One. So therefore, people kind of expect more from us than they expect from themselves... We take responsibility for the WHOLE THING, because we're ALL responsible for the whole thing."
> > > >
> > > > A reunion of his former band suggested the crowd would be "expecting God to perform."
> > > >
> > > > The rooftop concert controlled the elements of their actual concerts: they could not be shouted down, their personas and movements were not a distraction from the music, and the excuse the fans already had the records since the material was new.
> > > >
> > > > Canonical texts attributed to Henoch include a dream involving animals that forecast the entire course of human history, from Cain killing Abel to the Apocalyptic period. It has correct chronology and scenarios about the ascension of Elijah, Christ and His disciples, Constantine's three sons, etc. leading into the Nazi Holocaust: the next passage could be the first instance of Isaiah 6, regarding an inability to properly process audio-visual material, which Jesus reiterated. The story has one of the eyes-open sheep group being killed, then someone represented as ram also opens his eyes and sprouts a horn of Faith, which many try to break. Ultimately an Abyss opens in the physical and astral dimensions simultaneously, into which the 'blind sheep' are thrust with their unrighteous leaders, along with the demons who were actually guiding them.
> > > >
> > > > The open eyes signify awareness of the subliminal aspects, to which the blind sheep remain oblivious.
> > > >
> > > > The old tunes brought out for 1969 had some musical communication that was too fast and unfamiliar to expect conscious comprehension by the people in the street. The opening of "Dig A Pony" just seems like a rapid rambling guitar passage that repeats - but without giving away the startling whole message, the first portion sounds like,
> > > >
> > > > 'Jesus was a Leader -
> > > > THE Apostle Leader -
> > > > But without...'
> > > >
> > > > The next five transcribed words completing that musically hidden remark is essentially dismissive of those thinking declaring themselves a follower is all that was required.
> > > >
> > > > George Harrison in "Something" with the line, "You know I believe, and how," was announcing his self-confirmation was complete - certainly enough had occurred to reinforce his faith. Yet with John's "God" we have the contrasting, cynical view, actually a 'Crisis of Faith," which takes into account the public reaction in a more practical way - yes, there was a big reaction, but not the one that was anticipated, of clarity with conceptual esotericism. John knew that although his band was intellectual, that was not their appeal.
> > > >
> > > > John proverbially described how The Beatles were in the crow's nest or at the masthead, but we are all in the same boat.
> > > Old Siam Sir, that's worth a revisit.
> > >
> > > That's one of Paul's most underrated albums.
> > The title implies 'Old's I Am,' there was video featuring a lot of the "Back To The Egg" (there's some heavy embryonic-reversal symbolism) songs, some tracks were recorded in a castle. The lyrics include some British locations, in a fanciful tale for the conscious mind, while the music itself takes the subconscious elsewhere - by unexpectedly having instruments seem to be voicing phrases on a theme with expressive cadence. The cover image had the bizarre twist of unrolling a living room rug to view Earth through a floor portal. That was after the "London Town" cover featured the Thames in the same position as 'distant Earth,' some recorded on a yacht in the Virgin Islands.
> >
> > The BTTE inner sleeve had the dome of Chapel where the Holy Shroud resides in Turin, designed by Guarino Guarini.
> I'll have to look for the videos.
>
> What do you think, is it a solid album? I remember that the critics were vicious.


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Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'

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Subject: Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'
From: eagalita...@gmail.com (Curtis Eagal)
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 by: Curtis Eagal - Sun, 22 May 2022 17:36 UTC

On Wednesday, May 18, 2022 at 8:01:32 AM UTC-7, RJKe...@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Monday, May 16, 2022 at 6:25:01 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Saturday, May 7, 2022 at 11:07:39 AM UTC-7, RJKe...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > > On Wednesday, May 4, 2022 at 10:26:33 AM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > On Monday, May 2, 2022 at 7:12:27 AM UTC-7, RJKe...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > > > > On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 9:21:14 AM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 4:11:37 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > > > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 8:16:06 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > > > On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 3:56:31 PM UTC-7, geoff wrote:
> > > > > > > > > On 28/04/2022 4:03 am, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 5:30:15 PM UTC-4, eagali....@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > > > > >> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 4:08:26 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
> > > > > > > > > >>> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 3:12:36 PM UTC-4, eagali....@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > > > > > > >>>>
> > > > > > > > > >>>> The song "Imagine" resulted from discussing a book about prayer with Dick Gregory - I have a family member who insists the line about "no religion" proves he was promoting heathenism, while my opinion is the theme follows the "Our Father" prayer: the best way for God's Will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven is to stop arguing about prejudices and possessions, manifest a rational society in the here and now. The full Maureen Cleave article from 1966 noted that two of John's favorite possessions were a Bible and a Crucifix; but wife Cynthia's gift of mechanized caged singing bird struck him as offensively bourgeois and partially inspired "And Your Bird Can Sing" - "when your prized possessions start to bring you down" is a similar anti-materialistic theme as "Can't Buy Me Love."
> > > > > > > > > >>> Your family member has a point; Lennon did occasionally purport to be a "born-again pagan." He had Christian phases, too -- one of which Yoko squelched because she feared it would prevent her from controlling him through the occult. Which brings up the point that he went along with Ono's occultism. And we know that John also had a soft spot for gurus. Like I said before, he was all over the map; he did not subscribe to any one belief system for too long.
> > > > > > > > > >>>
> > > > > > > > > >>> Didn't Lennon explain somewhere that by "Imagine no religion" what he meant to say is that there should be no "one religion" that excluded others?
> > > > > > > > > >>>
> > > > > > > > > >>> I expect we'd agree Lennon did not wish for an *absence* of religion any more than he wished for an absence of possessions.
> > > > > > > > > >>>
> > > > > > > > > >>> Did anyone ever discover the title of the book gifted to Lennon by Dick Gregory?
> > > > > > > > > >> John called his period circa 1969 "Christian Communist," recognizing it as a phase. We think of him pushing people's buttons on controversial issues, but in my book on the "Beatles For Sale" era ("The Quality Of Mersey") the whole group is being interviewed together, and they projected a unified religious perspective ("more agnostic than atheistic" was Lennon's assessment), with Paul and Ringo making some provocative remarks. Paul said, "We probably seem antireligious because none of us believe in God"; Harrison declared, "John's our official religious spokesman." John said that's how most people really feel, with Ringo agreeing, "It's better to admit it than be a hypocrite." Lennon saw hypocrisy in the clergy lamenting the conditions of the poor without being charitable to them. McCartney mentioned the cost of a single bronze door in the Vatican.
> > > > > > > > > >>
> > > > > > > > > >> Paul made it clear none of that discussion involved the actual teachings of Jesus: "Believe it or, we're not anti-Christ." Then Ringo qualified that with, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian." So there was agnosticism, leaning pro-Christ - but righteously anti-Christian, shared by the entire group.
> > > > > > > > > >>
> > > > > > > > > >> So the song "God" uses the title word to address the typical cultural perception, the concept that placates pain and suffering with the dubious promise of eternal happiness once everything is over. It could not be about Lennon's own personal conclusion that God does not exist, since he described in a 1968 interview that through drugs, diet and meditation he had sensed a Higher Power. What is being disbelieved in "God" is resorting to the victim mindset that effectively allows the oppressor minimal resistance. The idea is the more pain you have, the more God you need psychologically as a coping mechanism, usually for something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. Think of the 'Negro Spiritual' songs borne of suffering in slavery. Pie in the sky when you die by and by.
> > > > > > > > > >>
> > > > > > > > > >> At the time John was completing primal therapy with Arthur Janov, who considered religion madness, and Lennon later admitted the attempt to purge it from his psyche failed. He called himself "a most religious fellow." Even in childhood, John would point upwards and say "Somebody's watching" when he detected mischief; once he walked in announcing he had just seen God. John spoke of other religious figures who were advanced spiritually like Jesus, with admiration for their simple rational philosophies that few seem to grasp. An interviewer brought up the rumor he proclaimed he WAS God, receiving the reply he had not meant he was "A God or THE God," but shared a fragment of divinity: "We have all things within us," the option of being evil or righteous through exercise of free will. He said the recurrent dichotomy of moral extremes was summed up in the Christ-versus-Hitler contrast.
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > I remember an interview with Lennon in which he pronounced vaguely that "God is an energy, a power source," but that "I never believed it was any one thing."
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > Under Janov's influence, Lennon asserted that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > Then there were his televangelist phases, during which he presumably accepted the god of Christianity.
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > And the "born-again pagan" identification came in 1979, IIRC.
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > Again, I see a guy whose beliefs fluctuated wildly depending on what drugs he was on, what TV he was watching, and who he was hanging out with.
> > > > > > > > > More than that, comments not intended to indicate any genuine belief,
> > > > > > > > > but merely an off-the-cuff comments intended to rankle the other party,
> > > > > > > > > or to engender controversy for controversy’s sake..
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > An approach which certainly seems to have worked extremely well with
> > > > > > > > > some fanatics !
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > geoff
> > > > > > > > A Beatle in a 1964 group interview (published in 1965) said, "We probably seem antireligious because of the fact that none of us believes in God" - that was Paul McCartney.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > When Paul continued, "We're not anti-Christ," one of them added, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian" - that was Ringo Starr.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > McCartney expressed outrage that there was a societal stigma against atheism.
> > > > > > > Really? How brave, if so. I'd very much like to see a quotation.
> > > > > > The full text is available online, it's Jean Shepherd's interview for Playboy; my commentary version delves into key points hinted by the actual content, separating from the high-energy banter for media consumption. They were resuming a national tour with two shows in Exeter, and it took place around 11 pm in their Torquay hotel room. The sense is that a tape ran as a rambling conversation developed, and it all got printed verbatim.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Anyone can now hear the pro-religion single minute from John Lennon's interview with David Wigg (10:07 to 11:08 in the link below):
> > > > > >
> > > > > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db0Y4ul32U8
> > > > > >
> > > > > > For those who do not want to be bothered listening to this rare, intriguing interview, here is brief transcription --
> > > > > >
> > > > > > DW: "John, on one broadcast in France, you said that you were God. Were you serious about that? Do you really FEEL you are God?"
> > > > > >
> > > > > > JL: "We're all God. Christ said The Kingdom of Heaven is within you, and that's what it means. And the Indians say that, and the Zen people say that: It's a basic thing of religion - We're All God. I'm not A god, or THE God - NOT THE God! - But we're all God, and we're all potentially divine, and potentially evil. We all have everything within us, and The Kingdom of Heaven is nigh, AND within us. And if you look hard enough, you'll see it."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > DW: "Do you then believe in life after death?"
> > > > > >
> > > > > > JL: "I do. Without any doubt I believe in it."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > DW: "Have you had any special experiences that make you believe so convincingly?"
> > > > > >
> > > > > > JL: "In meditation, on drugs, on diets, I've been aware of a Soul, and been aware of The Power."
> > > > > >
> > > > > > *
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Even the infamously controversial Maureen Cleave interview involved discussion of a book about Christ's Disciples, "The Passover Plot."
> > > >
> > > > > I honestly have no idea what it means to say "We're all God." I don't consider myself godlike. Are bad guys also God according to John?
> > > > If God created everything, then what material is it ALL made from? Having a fragment of the Godhead's divinity through existence itself is not the same as BEING The Godhead, it is a simple distinction. I doubt many evil figures throughout history ever thought themselves so - there is always a justification, rationalizing whatever is done as improvements. Evil people simply exercise free will in ways that do not please God, to eventually incur a negative judgment.
> > > >
> > > > So bearing a fragment of divinity carries responsibility that one's lifetime(s) might not manifest as righteous acts.
> > > >
> > > > Any religious statement will be controversial until the soul separation (Reaping) events make the esoteric explicit - but of course then it will be too late to repent and convert.
> > > >
> > > > Remember that JL from 1964 was saying The Beatles were not show business, it was a task that once performed would be finished, there could be no gimmicks or tricks to keep things going (despite what people thought), and that the project should be completed in about five years (i.e., circa 1969). In 1980 he quoted the Bible that there is nothing new under the sun, so an existing story as subtext source was being insinuated.
> > > >
> > > > "If you want to use The Beatles or John and Yoko, people are expecting us to do something FOR them - that's not what's gonna happen: because THEY'RE the ones that didn't understand ANY message that came before anyway, and they're the ones that will FOLLOW Hitler, or follow the Reverend Moon, or whatever. FOLLOWING is not what it's about."
> > > >
> > > > More to your issue: "I think the idea of leadership is that old Judao-Christian idea of the separateness of God - FROM us, as being OUTSIDE of us - the Other. We ARE The Other: there is only One. So therefore, people kind of expect more from us than they expect from themselves... We take responsibility for the WHOLE THING, because we're ALL responsible for the whole thing."
> > > >
> > > > A reunion of his former band suggested the crowd would be "expecting God to perform."
> > > >
> > > > The rooftop concert controlled the elements of their actual concerts: they could not be shouted down, their personas and movements were not a distraction from the music, and the excuse the fans already had the records since the material was new.
> > > >
> > > > Canonical texts attributed to Henoch include a dream involving animals that forecast the entire course of human history, from Cain killing Abel to the Apocalyptic period. It has correct chronology and scenarios about the ascension of Elijah, Christ and His disciples, Constantine's three sons, etc. leading into the Nazi Holocaust: the next passage could be the first instance of Isaiah 6, regarding an inability to properly process audio-visual material, which Jesus reiterated. The story has one of the eyes-open sheep group being killed, then someone represented as ram also opens his eyes and sprouts a horn of Faith, which many try to break. Ultimately an Abyss opens in the physical and astral dimensions simultaneously, into which the 'blind sheep' are thrust with their unrighteous leaders, along with the demons who were actually guiding them.
> > > >
> > > > The open eyes signify awareness of the subliminal aspects, to which the blind sheep remain oblivious.
> > > >
> > > > The old tunes brought out for 1969 had some musical communication that was too fast and unfamiliar to expect conscious comprehension by the people in the street. The opening of "Dig A Pony" just seems like a rapid rambling guitar passage that repeats - but without giving away the startling whole message, the first portion sounds like,
> > > >
> > > > 'Jesus was a Leader -
> > > > THE Apostle Leader -
> > > > But without...'
> > > >
> > > > The next five transcribed words completing that musically hidden remark is essentially dismissive of those thinking declaring themselves a follower is all that was required.
> > > >
> > > > George Harrison in "Something" with the line, "You know I believe, and how," was announcing his self-confirmation was complete - certainly enough had occurred to reinforce his faith. Yet with John's "God" we have the contrasting, cynical view, actually a 'Crisis of Faith," which takes into account the public reaction in a more practical way - yes, there was a big reaction, but not the one that was anticipated, of clarity with conceptual esotericism. John knew that although his band was intellectual, that was not their appeal.
> > > >
> > > > John proverbially described how The Beatles were in the crow's nest or at the masthead, but we are all in the same boat.
> > > Old Siam Sir, that's worth a revisit.
> > >
> > > That's one of Paul's most underrated albums.
> > The title implies 'Old's I Am,' there was video featuring a lot of the "Back To The Egg" (there's some heavy embryonic-reversal symbolism) songs, some tracks were recorded in a castle. The lyrics include some British locations, in a fanciful tale for the conscious mind, while the music itself takes the subconscious elsewhere - by unexpectedly having instruments seem to be voicing phrases on a theme with expressive cadence. The cover image had the bizarre twist of unrolling a living room rug to view Earth through a floor portal. That was after the "London Town" cover featured the Thames in the same position as 'distant Earth,' some recorded on a yacht in the Virgin Islands.
> >
> > The BTTE inner sleeve had the dome of Chapel where the Holy Shroud resides in Turin, designed by Guarino Guarini.
> I'll have to look for the videos.
>
> What do you think, is it a solid album? I remember that the critics were vicious.


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Re: Getting To 'The Riff Stage'

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 by: geoff - Mon, 23 May 2022 01:01 UTC

On 23/05/2022 5:21 am, Curt Josephs wrote:
> On Wednesday, May 18, 2022 at 8:01:32 AM UTC-7, RJKe...@yahoo.com wrote:
>> On Monday, May 16, 2022 at 6:25:01 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> On Saturday, May 7, 2022 at 11:07:39 AM UTC-7, RJKe...@yahoo.com wrote:
>>>> On Wednesday, May 4, 2022 at 10:26:33 AM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>> On Monday, May 2, 2022 at 7:12:27 AM UTC-7, RJKe...@yahoo.com wrote:
>>>>>> On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 9:21:14 AM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>>>> On Thursday, April 28, 2022 at 4:11:37 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
>>>>>>>> On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 8:16:06 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>>>>>> On Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 3:56:31 PM UTC-7, geoff wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> On 28/04/2022 4:03 am, Norbert K wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 5:30:15 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>> On Tuesday, April 26, 2022 at 4:08:26 AM UTC-7, Norbert K wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>> On Monday, April 25, 2022 at 3:12:36 PM UTC-4, eagali...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> The song "Imagine" resulted from discussing a book about prayer with Dick Gregory - I have a family member who insists the line about "no religion" proves he was promoting heathenism, while my opinion is the theme follows the "Our Father" prayer: the best way for God's Will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven is to stop arguing about prejudices and possessions, manifest a rational society in the here and now. The full Maureen Cleave article from 1966 noted that two of John's favorite possessions were a Bible and a Crucifix; but wife Cynthia's gift of mechanized caged singing bird struck him as offensively bourgeois and partially inspired "And Your Bird Can Sing" - "when your prized possessions start to bring you down" is a similar anti-materialistic theme as "Can't Buy Me Love."
>>>>>>>>>>>>> Your family member has a point; Lennon did occasionally purport to be a "born-again pagan." He had Christian phases, too -- one of which Yoko squelched because she feared it would prevent her from controlling him through the occult. Which brings up the point that he went along with Ono's occultism. And we know that John also had a soft spot for gurus. Like I said before, he was all over the map; he did not subscribe to any one belief system for too long.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>> Didn't Lennon explain somewhere that by "Imagine no religion" what he meant to say is that there should be no "one religion" that excluded others?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>> I expect we'd agree Lennon did not wish for an *absence* of religion any more than he wished for an absence of possessions.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>> Did anyone ever discover the title of the book gifted to Lennon by Dick Gregory?
>>>>>>>>>>>> John called his period circa 1969 "Christian Communist," recognizing it as a phase. We think of him pushing people's buttons on controversial issues, but in my book on the "Beatles For Sale" era ("The Quality Of Mersey") the whole group is being interviewed together, and they projected a unified religious perspective ("more agnostic than atheistic" was Lennon's assessment), with Paul and Ringo making some provocative remarks. Paul said, "We probably seem antireligious because none of us believe in God"; Harrison declared, "John's our official religious spokesman." John said that's how most people really feel, with Ringo agreeing, "It's better to admit it than be a hypocrite." Lennon saw hypocrisy in the clergy lamenting the conditions of the poor without being charitable to them. McCartney mentioned the cost of a single bronze door in the Vatican.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> Paul made it clear none of that discussion involved the actual teachings of Jesus: "Believe it or, we're not anti-Christ." Then Ringo qualified that with, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian." So there was agnosticism, leaning pro-Christ - but righteously anti-Christian, shared by the entire group.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> So the song "God" uses the title word to address the typical cultural perception, the concept that placates pain and suffering with the dubious promise of eternal happiness once everything is over. It could not be about Lennon's own personal conclusion that God does not exist, since he described in a 1968 interview that through drugs, diet and meditation he had sensed a Higher Power. What is being disbelieved in "God" is resorting to the victim mindset that effectively allows the oppressor minimal resistance. The idea is the more pain you have, the more God you need psychologically as a coping mechanism, usually for something that shouldn't be happening in the first place. Think of the 'Negro Spiritual' songs borne of suffering in slavery. Pie in the sky when you die by and by.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> At the time John was completing primal therapy with Arthur Janov, who considered religion madness, and Lennon later admitted the attempt to purge it from his psyche failed. He called himself "a most religious fellow." Even in childhood, John would point upwards and say "Somebody's watching" when he detected mischief; once he walked in announcing he had just seen God. John spoke of other religious figures who were advanced spiritually like Jesus, with admiration for their simple rational philosophies that few seem to grasp. An interviewer brought up the rumor he proclaimed he WAS God, receiving the reply he had not meant he was "A God or THE God," but shared a fragment of divinity: "We have all things within us," the option of being evil or righteous through exercise of free will. He said the recurrent dichotomy of moral extremes was summed up in the Christ-versus-Hitler contrast.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> I remember an interview with Lennon in which he pronounced vaguely that "God is an energy, a power source," but that "I never believed it was any one thing."
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Under Janov's influence, Lennon asserted that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Then there were his televangelist phases, during which he presumably accepted the god of Christianity.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> And the "born-again pagan" identification came in 1979, IIRC.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Again, I see a guy whose beliefs fluctuated wildly depending on what drugs he was on, what TV he was watching, and who he was hanging out with.
>>>>>>>>>> More than that, comments not intended to indicate any genuine belief,
>>>>>>>>>> but merely an off-the-cuff comments intended to rankle the other party,
>>>>>>>>>> or to engender controversy for controversy’s sake.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> An approach which certainly seems to have worked extremely well with
>>>>>>>>>> some fanatics !
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> geoff
>>>>>>>>> A Beatle in a 1964 group interview (published in 1965) said, "We probably seem antireligious because of the fact that none of us believes in God" - that was Paul McCartney.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> When Paul continued, "We're not anti-Christ," one of them added, "Just anti-pope and anti-Christian" - that was Ringo Starr.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> McCartney expressed outrage that there was a societal stigma against atheism.
>>>>>>>> Really? How brave, if so. I'd very much like to see a quotation.
>>>>>>> The full text is available online, it's Jean Shepherd's interview for Playboy; my commentary version delves into key points hinted by the actual content, separating from the high-energy banter for media consumption. They were resuming a national tour with two shows in Exeter, and it took place around 11 pm in their Torquay hotel room. The sense is that a tape ran as a rambling conversation developed, and it all got printed verbatim.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Anyone can now hear the pro-religion single minute from John Lennon's interview with David Wigg (10:07 to 11:08 in the link below):
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db0Y4ul32U8
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> For those who do not want to be bothered listening to this rare, intriguing interview, here is brief transcription --
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> DW: "John, on one broadcast in France, you said that you were God. Were you serious about that? Do you really FEEL you are God?"
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> JL: "We're all God. Christ said The Kingdom of Heaven is within you, and that's what it means. And the Indians say that, and the Zen people say that: It's a basic thing of religion - We're All God. I'm not A god, or THE God - NOT THE God! - But we're all God, and we're all potentially divine, and potentially evil. We all have everything within us, and The Kingdom of Heaven is nigh, AND within us. And if you look hard enough, you'll see it."
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> DW: "Do you then believe in life after death?"
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> JL: "I do. Without any doubt I believe in it."
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> DW: "Have you had any special experiences that make you believe so convincingly?"
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> JL: "In meditation, on drugs, on diets, I've been aware of a Soul, and been aware of The Power."
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> *
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Even the infamously controversial Maureen Cleave interview involved discussion of a book about Christ's Disciples, "The Passover Plot."
>>>>>
>>>>>> I honestly have no idea what it means to say "We're all God." I don't consider myself godlike. Are bad guys also God according to John?
>>>>> If God created everything, then what material is it ALL made from? Having a fragment of the Godhead's divinity through existence itself is not the same as BEING The Godhead, it is a simple distinction. I doubt many evil figures throughout history ever thought themselves so - there is always a justification, rationalizing whatever is done as improvements. Evil people simply exercise free will in ways that do not please God, to eventually incur a negative judgment.
>>>>>
>>>>> So bearing a fragment of divinity carries responsibility that one's lifetime(s) might not manifest as righteous acts.
>>>>>
>>>>> Any religious statement will be controversial until the soul separation (Reaping) events make the esoteric explicit - but of course then it will be too late to repent and convert.
>>>>>
>>>>> Remember that JL from 1964 was saying The Beatles were not show business, it was a task that once performed would be finished, there could be no gimmicks or tricks to keep things going (despite what people thought), and that the project should be completed in about five years (i.e., circa 1969). In 1980 he quoted the Bible that there is nothing new under the sun, so an existing story as subtext source was being insinuated.
>>>>>
>>>>> "If you want to use The Beatles or John and Yoko, people are expecting us to do something FOR them - that's not what's gonna happen: because THEY'RE the ones that didn't understand ANY message that came before anyway, and they're the ones that will FOLLOW Hitler, or follow the Reverend Moon, or whatever. FOLLOWING is not what it's about."
>>>>>
>>>>> More to your issue: "I think the idea of leadership is that old Judao-Christian idea of the separateness of God - FROM us, as being OUTSIDE of us - the Other. We ARE The Other: there is only One. So therefore, people kind of expect more from us than they expect from themselves... We take responsibility for the WHOLE THING, because we're ALL responsible for the whole thing."
>>>>>
>>>>> A reunion of his former band suggested the crowd would be "expecting God to perform."
>>>>>
>>>>> The rooftop concert controlled the elements of their actual concerts: they could not be shouted down, their personas and movements were not a distraction from the music, and the excuse the fans already had the records since the material was new.
>>>>>
>>>>> Canonical texts attributed to Henoch include a dream involving animals that forecast the entire course of human history, from Cain killing Abel to the Apocalyptic period. It has correct chronology and scenarios about the ascension of Elijah, Christ and His disciples, Constantine's three sons, etc. leading into the Nazi Holocaust: the next passage could be the first instance of Isaiah 6, regarding an inability to properly process audio-visual material, which Jesus reiterated. The story has one of the eyes-open sheep group being killed, then someone represented as ram also opens his eyes and sprouts a horn of Faith, which many try to break. Ultimately an Abyss opens in the physical and astral dimensions simultaneously, into which the 'blind sheep' are thrust with their unrighteous leaders, along with the demons who were actually guiding them.
>>>>>
>>>>> The open eyes signify awareness of the subliminal aspects, to which the blind sheep remain oblivious.
>>>>>
>>>>> The old tunes brought out for 1969 had some musical communication that was too fast and unfamiliar to expect conscious comprehension by the people in the street. The opening of "Dig A Pony" just seems like a rapid rambling guitar passage that repeats - but without giving away the startling whole message, the first portion sounds like,
>>>>>
>>>>> 'Jesus was a Leader -
>>>>> THE Apostle Leader -
>>>>> But without...'
>>>>>
>>>>> The next five transcribed words completing that musically hidden remark is essentially dismissive of those thinking declaring themselves a follower is all that was required.
>>>>>
>>>>> George Harrison in "Something" with the line, "You know I believe, and how," was announcing his self-confirmation was complete - certainly enough had occurred to reinforce his faith. Yet with John's "God" we have the contrasting, cynical view, actually a 'Crisis of Faith," which takes into account the public reaction in a more practical way - yes, there was a big reaction, but not the one that was anticipated, of clarity with conceptual esotericism. John knew that although his band was intellectual, that was not their appeal.
>>>>>
>>>>> John proverbially described how The Beatles were in the crow's nest or at the masthead, but we are all in the same boat.
>>>> Old Siam Sir, that's worth a revisit.
>>>>
>>>> That's one of Paul's most underrated albums.
>>> The title implies 'Old's I Am,' there was video featuring a lot of the "Back To The Egg" (there's some heavy embryonic-reversal symbolism) songs, some tracks were recorded in a castle. The lyrics include some British locations, in a fanciful tale for the conscious mind, while the music itself takes the subconscious elsewhere - by unexpectedly having instruments seem to be voicing phrases on a theme with expressive cadence. The cover image had the bizarre twist of unrolling a living room rug to view Earth through a floor portal. That was after the "London Town" cover featured the Thames in the same position as 'distant Earth,' some recorded on a yacht in the Virgin Islands.
>>>
>>> The BTTE inner sleeve had the dome of Chapel where the Holy Shroud resides in Turin, designed by Guarino Guarini.
>> I'll have to look for the videos.
>>
>> What do you think, is it a solid album? I remember that the critics were vicious.
>
> I've processed a lot of what the critics focus on, and it does not mesh with their intentions. The Nativity element appears in the last track, "Baby's Request," done for the Mills Brothers, with the instrumental bit starting,
>
> 'Virgin Has A Sacred Body...'
>
> The supergroup performs the "Rockestra Theme," mostly an instrumental, and there was recently a radio show offering a prize for the vocal refrain, which somebody won by saying it was about not having 'any dinner' - but even if that were technically true, I still hear something about God never having any dealing with the devil (which could be deliberately close-sounding to what what actually sung).
>
> Critics generally care about how music makes listeners feel as representative of certain genres; The Beatles turned that around by shifting between and inventing genres, while building some hidden message itself into the various musical structures, which in aggregate induces a sustained subconscious satisfaction. So the average reviewer lacks the observational tools to evaluate the tunes on a comprehensive esoteric level, doing better by considering the cultural stylistic implications.
>
> Remember, after "Back To The Egg" McCartney had nowhere to go with the Christian format but to return to the beginning, which was actually the conclusion, i.e., The Ascension of Jesus - and the follow-up was "McCartney II," which featured the hit "Coming Up," whose obsessively repeated lyric obviously suggests a rising or ascending.


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