The Baltimore Riots, 2015

My first reaction to the Baltimore riots was a personal one, in a narrow sense.  On the evening of the riots, my wife was about to come home from work, south of the city; she usually travels through it to get home.  Did she know about the disturbances?  Would she be safe?  I called and warned her to take an alternate route, which she did, and arrived safely.

My second reaction was also a personal one, but in a broader sense.  I felt and emphasized with the sense of frustration, despair and hopelessness that is present in large sections of my city; I was also very much disappointed by the violence.

When my wife got home, we turned on the TV, which we very rarely do.  Just at that moment, the mayor of Baltimore City, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake gave a press conference about the riots.  She looked tired and stressed.  This is what she said: "Too many people have spent generations building up this city for it to be destroyed by thugs who, in a very senseless way, are trying to tear down what so many have fought for," 

I had an immediate visceral reaction to her usage of the term, "thugs."  It made me feel even sadder.  No, I thought to myself, it's not right to call those young men thugs.  They are guilty of thuggish behavior, that is true; but I know it is morally wrong to sum up a fellow human being as a thug, despite obvious immoral acts. (In this case, immoral acts committed on a single day.) No, I said to myself, everyone of these young men are redeemable.  Everyone of these so-called thugs, have an inner core of decency, what I often refer to as a "Zen diamond," within them that is priceless and has just as much carats as the one inside you and me and everyone else.  Granted some inner diamonds are buried under a lot more outer mud than is the case of others, but everyone has one, everyone.  Whether that diamond will be ever accessed in some is another question.  Yes, the conviction of equality makes me an idealist, but I am also a realist.  Yes, I believe that we must love our neighbor as ourselves--no exceptions;  I also believe that no one can follow this commandment without taking responsibility for his or her own actions.  I also believe that we not make moral progress on a national level if we fail to create conditions that make one's taking personal responsibility more likely. This is especially true for our fellow citizens who live in poor, black communities.  We're not doing a horrible job of it--and I include myself in that "we".

I am neither a journalist or a pundit; I'm not going to descant about the riot, I will leave that to community members and to professional commentators.  I want make a few points of what I know, however, namely, that we must judge the behavior of others as well as our own, but it is always very wrong to judge the person. I will explain, after a few words about myself.

I came to Baltimore in 1980, having accepted a position as the Director of School Health for the Baltimore City Health Department.  During the next few years, I visited just about every school in Baltimore City.  I taught male health issues in some of them, including Walbrook High School, which is no more but was located in an area where riots took place.  Around 1985, I became medical director of a Baltimore City health center, located at the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and North Avenue, around which much of the violence did indeed take place. I left the Health Department in 1988, and was soon employed by a Johns Hopkins--associated clinic, where I served as a pediatrician for many years.  Now, in my seventieth year, I am just about retired from medicine and spend a good deal of my time writing, reading and playing music. Enough about me.

The dominant emotional reaction I had to the riots was one of overwhelming sadness.  When I heard about the destruction and the looting of many stores, I thought of people in my own age group who are not in as good shape as I.  If an elderly person needs, say, blood pressure medication and has no transportation, where will she go once the neighborhood pharmacy has been destroyed?  I'm sure many of the good people in the community will come to the aid of people in this predicament, but the chances are greatly increased that some will not have the medicine they need, at least for a while.  (This is just one example of the effects of the riots, which will fester long after CNN has changed its attention to other disasters.)

Yes, I was sad.  Then I was shocked; then I was mad.  I read a few reports from conservative pundits that assert that the cause of the riots was the failure of liberal policies!  One said that the mayor of Baltimore is black and the city council is composed largely of black members--so you can't blame it on racism.  He went on to say that the city has been governed by Democrats for decades--so you can blame failed liberal policies.  The ideology behind this is the belief that the poor have become too dependent on government programs, "have it easy" --I can't even write that without putting it in quotes--and, thus, the toxic combination of government programs and individual irresponsibility has caused this mess.  One even said they get free food, free housing, free education--what more do they want?  (After that was said, I imagined a travel poster depicting a burning ghetto with the message: Free Food!  Free Housing!  Free Education! Come Spend the Time of Your Life in Baltimore!" The poster, of course, would not include the fact that the time of your life will most likely be considerably shorter if you live in a poor, black neighborhood.)

The message of of these radical pundits--and they represent, unfortunately, a large segment of the population is this: it's their fault, not ours.  We are not like them.  All we need to do is to pull the cushy rug the government provides for them, on which the loll about like vagabonds;  yes, all we need to do is to pull that rug from under them--Once we do that, they will dance and sing to "God Bless America" instead of to that awful, barbaric rap music.  Once we do that, they will, just like we did, Fox-trot off to prosperity." 

Such attitudes are beneath comment.  If you agree with them, nothing I write is going to change your mind.  I will state only this very important fact: The United States ranks low among OECD countries regarding benefits and services to the working-age population.  (Denmark spends 30,1% of its GDP on social policies, which is broken down as follows: cash benefits for those of working age: 7.9% GDP; cash benefits to the elderly and survivors, 6.2 % GDP; services to the working-age population 7% GDP; services to the elderly 8% GDP.  In contrast, the U.S. spends only 18.3% of its budget on social policy, and, corresponding to the categories of spending in Denmark: 2.4%, 6.7%, 1.4% and 8%.  Medicare takes a big bite out of our GDP, while services for the working-age population takes barely a nibble.  And, as you probably know, there are no ghettos in Denmark.)

As I said in the outset, I want to discuss something about which I think I know more than a thing or two.  Let's zoom out of Baltimore and view a central problem of the entire planet.  That is, the problem of freedom vs. determinism.  Is a person ever completely responsible for a crime?  Can a person ever be declared innocent of a crime due to insanity, or to a particularly toxic combination of bad environment and bad genes?

There are two schools in this regard.  I will illustrate them with examples from two contrasting religious stances.  Once, when I was driving to South Carolina, I saw a church with a large sign in front of it, stating that this church was a "Free-Will Baptist Church."  We're completely responsible for our behavior; that's one way of looking at it.  Another comes from a form of Hinduism called advaita, or non-duality.  The individual self is an illusion; the concept of free will is simply and illusion of an illusion.  This view was at the center of the teaching of perhaps the greatest Hindu sage of the past century, Sri Ramana Maharshi, (1879-1950.)  He taught this view very eloquently.  He believed that all mental suffering stems from the mistaken belief that "I  am the doer."   It is the I behind the I, the very source of consciousness, that is doing everything.  One of his most striking illustrations of this view has to do with train travel.  In India, porters usually carry luggage on their heads.  Sri Ramana said that it is foolish to keep luggage on your head once the train is in motion.  In other words, once you realize that the train is doing the traveling, you can put the luggage down and rest. 

The first view I reject outright.  No one knows himself well enough to know whether he is completely responsible for his actions, not to mention the fact that one can't even get inside another person's head.  I have practical problems with the second view, however.  From a cosmic perspective, there may well be no such thing as free will; but for life in the world acceptance of personal responsibility is a necessity.  The individual self may well be an illusion, but it is an extremely potent illusion rooted in Darwinian evolution.  One has to plan for next Tuesday; one can't expect to live in this world--and nearly all of us live in this world--by putting down our luggage, putting one's feet up, and relaxing while life whizzes by with the scenery.

My strong belief that the solution of the free will/determinism dichotomy is that they are both correct.  Matters that are most important to human beings are never facts, they are paradoxes. Does God exist?  Well, in a way.  Does individuality exist?  Well, in a way. Does free will exist, etc.

The free will/determinism dichotomy is so mysterious that I state the obvious: we can't figure out our own behavior, much less anyone else's.  As responsible citizens, we must judge behavior and remove those from society--never with the use of the death penalty-- who are a very real danger to others.  But we must never judge the person.

This is hardly an original idea.  I will give three famous formulations of this view: "Do not judge anyone unless you have walked a mile in his moccasins;"  "Judge not lest ye be judged," and "There but for the grace of God go I."

That's all I have to say at present.  It is enough.

In summary:  First of all, I am still sad because I doubt that America at present has the political will to solve our problems. Second of all, all those who see the problem with an us against them mentality probably wouldn't deign to put on the moccasins of a poor black male and walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, and are thus woefully lacking in empathy.   Third, I believe the correct response to the problems in Baltimore as well as to all the problems of the world is to say to those guilty of thuggish behavior:  "You and I are both human, which is a great privilege.  Unfortunately, you have gone astray.  Unfortunately, I have gone astray as well.  From now on, let's walk to the promised land together."

Ramana Maharshi and the Rabbi

I am writing this on the sixty-fifth death anniversary (maha samadhi) of Sri Ramana Maharshi, 1879-1950, perhaps the greatest Hindu sage of the past century.  It is my hope that his wisdom will infuse this essay and inspire me to convey a very important message.  Ramana Maharshi, in my opinion, settled the question about the existence of God and hence about the meaning of life once and for all.  He answers the unanswered question without recourse to magical thinking, which is especially good news for those rationalists who, sensing that a large piece of the puzzle of life is missing in their lives, refuse to fill it with cardboard quotes from fairy tales masquerading as facts.  It is a truism that there is nothing new under the sun; the wisdom that Sri Ramana espoused is indeed the perennial wisdom that has been formulated in various ways throughout the centuries.  The mud of ignorance, however, has buried it and thus prevented it from being widely acknowledged. This is more true today than ever, hence the reason for this essay.

I want to state from the outset that the legitimacy of scientific assertions that continue to be overwhelmingly supported by data--such as those regarding evolution and the expansion of space--is incontrovertible.    If you think the stories of your particular religious tradition are factual as well, this essay is not for you.  It is written for those who have a desire--nearly everyone has it--to transcend thought, yet refuse to flout rationality in order to satisfy that desire.  My only request is that you read this article with an open mind.

The discussion is divided into four parts: 1. Is Belief Jewish?; 2. Ramana Maharshi's formulation of a great truth; 3. Consciousness, Self and God, and 4: Conclusion: three problems solved.

1. Is Belief Jewish?

On March 30, 2014, there appeared in the New York Times an article with that title.  It consisted of an interview of Howard Wettstein, a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside, conducted by Gary Gutting, a professor of philosophy at the university of Notre Dame.  (Wettstein is Jewish, but not a rabbi; the rabbi in the title of this article refers to Rabbi Hillel, whose principle teaching we will discuss later.)

It is rare these days that a practicing member of one of the three Abrahamic faiths has a non-dogmatic approach to religion to the degree professed by Professor Wettstein.  The majority of those who have abandoned religious dogmas have also abandoned God; Wettstein, however, remains a fervent believer. As we shall see, he comes very close to the truth, at least in my opinion

At the beginning of the New York Times article, the interviewer is flummoxed by the professor's assertions:

You say you're a naturalist and deny that there are any supernatural beings, yet you're a practicing Jew and deny that you're an atheist. What's going on here?

Everything!  Wettstein makes a clear distinction between rationality and inner experience.  He is perhaps an "outer" atheist, but very definitely not an inner one.  He would surely deny the Catholic assertion that reason can access a natural philosophy that points in the direction of God.  He does not seek to prove God's existence, yet he experiences what can be called God in prayer, in contemplation, in community and in action.  (The combination of disbelief and devotion, a stance that has no conflict at all with science, seems to be an oxymoron.  In this article, we hope to satisfactorily demonstrate that this is not the case.)

Wettstein was friends with a late rabbi named Mickey Rosen, who once told him, "Belief is not a Jewish notion."  Although Judaism is arguably the least dogmatic of the three Abrahamic faiths, Rosen is perhaps guilty of some hyperbole here. I do assert, however, that for a contemporary mind familiar with science and the scientific method, dogmatic belief no longer can be a valid religious notion at all.  (I once wryly wrote that any literal statement about God should be classified as S.C.F.A.--that is, Santy Claus for Adults.) Rosen's "Bible School" was very unorthodox; he apparently believed that it was more important for his congregation to sing with him,  rather than to engage in biblical exegesis, song being  "somewhat closer to the soul than assent"--a very wise perspective.

Since traditional Judaism asserts that God intervenes in history, a devout Jew who is an outer atheist would seem to have a lot of explaining to do.  Wettstein, however, doesn't explain; he experiences.

Out of respect for tradition, he doesn't baldly state that the Torah is mostly historical fiction, but he implies it.  It is the transcendence behind the Torah, the wordless Story behind the stories, that has become "the pillar of his existence."  It is this experience which has transformed his life.  Although Wettstein isn't explicit regarding his view regarding God and history, he indicates--correctly, I believe--that while God might not intervene from without, he does indeed intervene from within.

It is inner experience that counts.  Science can describe what, say, ice cream is made of, but the experience of tasting it is another "matter"--it is inexplicable.  Bits don't have tongues!

Professor Wettstein is not threatened by God's apparent non-existence. He seems to concur with the view that God is absent in the outer world, yet he continues to be an observant Jew.  Yes, all the talk talk talk about God is nonsense; yet, as Ramana Maharshi once said, "Silence is also conversation."  Conversation with whom? Where is God? We will now answer that question.  In summary, Professor Weinstein's experiential stance comes very close to the truth. It is time to arrive.

2. Ramana Maharshi's Answer

 There are two, and only two, interrelated aspects of life that really matter: love and wisdom.  Wisdom is the knowledge that everything is connected in a basic unity; love is wisdom in action, working to assure that everyone attains the peace and joy that accompany wisdom as surely as spring follows winter.  You don't have to write volumes about these two aspects, they can be summed up very tersely.  Before we get to Ramana Maharshi's perspective, I would like now to present a brilliant formulation of the essence of love, which is very well known, followed by Sri Ramana's equally brilliant formulation of the essence of wisdom, which is almost entirely unknown.  Let us start with the first.

Hillel the Elder was the most outstanding representative of pre-Rabbinical Judaism  He was roughly a contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth.  He was teaching in Jerusalem when approached by a Gentile who asked him to define the essence of the Torah.  At that time, Roman paganism was in decline among many seekers--it was quite often debased to the level of emperor worship.  Judaism was known to be an ancient tradition and was much respected.  The idea of one God was attractive.  However, many Gentiles were troubled by all the rules, (mitzvot), some of which seemed to have little to do with wisdom.  (As one can imagine, the idea of adult circumcision, a necessity if one wished to convert, was not very popular.)  We can assume that the Gentile who approached Hillel viewed Judaism as containing diamonds buried under tons of coal.  He wanted to get to the diamonds, to the very essence of Judaism.  So he set a condition: Hillel was to tell him the essence of Judaism while standing on one foot--in other words, Hillel was asked to sum up Judaism in one sentence.  Hillel replied:

"That which is hateful to you, do not do it to anyone else.  That is the whole Torah, the rest is commentary; go and learn."

This is, of course, a variation of Leviticus 19:18: love your neighbor as yourself.  It is a form of what is known as the Golden Rule.  In one sentence, we have a wonderful summing up of the moral imperative, a goal that defines a good life to the degree that it is approached.

That is the well know statement regarding love.  What about wisdom, the seeking and  discovery of God?

The answer is found in the  teachings of Ramana Maharshi.  It is located  within a large collection of responses of Sri Ramana to questions posed by various visitors to the ashram in Tiruvannamalai, where the sage remained from the age of sixteen until his death.  (Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, V.S Ramanam, Sri Ramanasramam, Tiruvannamalai, 2000). In Talk number 244,  a woman with a troubled mind asks the following question: "How is God to be seen?"

Sri Ramana's response: "Within.  If the mind is turned inward, God manifests as inner consciousness."

Just as Hillel's assertion is the whole truth regarding ethical behavior, this one is the whole truth of the sages regarding God; all the rest is commentary.  Ramana Maharshi goes on to say, "He (that is, God) cannot be found outside.  He should be felt within," and, "Self and God are only mental conceptions."

In contrast to Western religion, revelation according to Eastern tradition does not come from an external source, but from an internal one.  Science has rightly challenged the literal belief in external revelation; it is likely that inner revelation will remain forever beyond the scope of science.

What more does one need to know about the eternal question? God manifests as inner consciousness, yet God is merely a mental conception.  What does that mean?  It means that the experience of inner consciousness is ineffable, beyond all forms of conceptualization; when the mind attempts to describe it, the mind often uses the highest term it has: God.  That is, however, merely a word.  If one feels that that term has been so debased that it ceases to have meaning, one can use other terms, such as The Inner Voice, Truth or The Diamond Inside, etc.--or remain silent, and let one's actions do the "talking".   (In my opinion, although the term has indeed been abused, there is no other word that comes closer to  the ineffability of inner experience.  Once it has been understood in Ramana Maharshi's sense of that word, all confusion regarding God is transcended.)

Now we have a clear understanding of what Professor Wettstein implied: the experience of the "God" present in inner consciousness is what is essential.  It cannot be put into words.  For many, God is a useful word to indicate this experience, provided that one acknowledges that there is no evidence that the supreme being has any reality beyond consciousness.

In conclusion: As Ramana Maharshi would say, there are not two things but only one.  Hillel's view and Sri Ramana's view are two ways of looking at the same phenomenon.  The God of wisdom inside is also the God of love to be made manifest outside.

3. Consciousness, God and Self

A: I anticipate the following criticism: "Belief in a God that only exists within consciousness is merely "poetic" atheism. The soul finds cold comfort in solipsism.  If there is no God beyond us  to help and direct us, there is no God at all."  Such  objections stem from an unawareness of the majesty of consciousness.   Consciousness is an integral participant in the creation and maintenance of the universe.  The knowledge that observation somehow determines whether a photon behaves as a particle or a wave is now common knowledge.  Seminal theoretical physicists such as Wheeler wonder whether consciousness creates everything or whether the so-called objective world arises as a confrontation of the mind with things independent of it, the latter being Kant's unknowable "things in themselves."  Many physicists assert that the famous dead/alive cat paradox is resolved by the theory that both events occur as observation causes the universe to split in two, one universe containing a dead cat and one containing a live one.  (If you are unfamiliar with Schrödinger's dead/live cat paradox, please look it up online.) The power of conscious observation is,  in my opinion, weirder and much stranger than any religious myth--and, in contrast, true!  I will now briefly discuss one of the strangest and most amazing theories, the so-called Top Down Approach theory of Hawking.  He asserts that before the big bang everything existed simultaneously in a quantum state of possibilities.  It is consciousness that chose the universe we live in--in other words, it is the consciousness of humankind that created humankind's past!  Religious fundamentalists falsely assert that dinosaurs and humans at one time cohabited the planet.  Hawking's theory, and it is viewed by some experts as plausible, goes further and states that it is our consciousness that has created the dinosaurs!  (The temporal order of the epochs is, of course, inviolate, since the effect of consciousness on the universe has nothing to do with will. The color yellow exists only in consciousness, but the sensation of yellow is not chosen by the will.)

Ramana Maharshi asserts that consciousness does indeed create everything, a view that the wisdom school of Hindus has taught for centuries. But even if we take Wheeler's view--there is likely no other valid one--that consciousness is either everything or just about everything--the assertion that God exists "only" in consciousness takes on a whole new dimension. If the Hindus are right, and more than a few physicists agree, consciousness, the creator of everything, is also the creator of "what's out there."  It follows, therefore, that if creation is like a MÖbius strip, there is also here and, therefore, God exists everywhere.  The difference between this and religious fundamentalism is essential: the former has nothing to do with wishful thinking.  To sum up: the belief that God "only" exists inside is not in any way merely a "poetic" consolation for those seekers who do not permit atavistic beliefs to trump science.

B: How does the individual self fit into this?  In one word: essentially.  I will explain.

I have listened on YouTube, from time to time, to a group called the New Atheists--Richard Dawkins, the late Christopher Hitchens and others--debate with believers, usually fundamentalists of one sort or another, about whether God exists or not.  It is shocking to listen to--so many deny the truth of evolution--and boring.   Boring because people who do not appreciate science and have made a decision with their entire being that belief in God and dogma go together are not going to be influenced by facts.  I doubt if anyone changed her opinion about evolution during these debates.  Their logic is deficient; however, I find the arguments of the New Atheists to be deficient as well.

The latter assert that God doesn't exist.  We have asserted that as well; we also deny the existence of supernatural beings.  They don't go farther, as we do, however, and ask, "Who am I?" or "What is the nature of the self?" The nature of subjective truth is much more important than debates about external fictions.

We will now address this issue with an example from the evolutionary past. In the Carboniferous Period, over 300 million years ago, some animals for the first time in evolutionary history began to exit the sea, becoming amphibians, some of which eventually became exclusively land dwellers, some of which eventually became us.  Where was the problem of God during the Carboniferous Period?  We would all agree that it didn't exist at that time.  But we rarely assert what is just as obvious, the answer to the question, "Where was the self, that is, the sense of individuality, during that epoch?"  It, too, of course, didn't exist.  As deniers of all forms of supernatural intervention, we reject that the "soul" or self was injected into matter at some time by an immaterial source.  This is indeed nonsense.  If we assert that life arose from matter, and that there is no life-force apart from matter, what is the self but matter?  When neural systems become complex enough so as to imagine the body to be separate from nature, a sense of individuality arises.  This conferred a great biological advantage when it first happened; our unconscious genes "realized" that a sense of individuality helped bodies to be more fit, and thus better able to adapt to the environment and survive.  This sense of self permits humans to manipulate and change the environment.  Look around you; the change in the world since humans arrived on the scene is truly astounding.  Without this sense of self, as I have written many times, Mozart and Shakespeare and Plato, etc, etc, would have been impossible, and, alas! Hitler and Stalin, etc, etc, would not have been possible either.  Dawkins has a wonderful term for human creations, examples of which he calls the "extended phenotype"--an apt phrase which indicates that all things, even skyscrapers, are natural phenomena.  Self, the subjective sense of separation, is according to science an illusion, yet no one can deny the "reality" of the self and remain human. We might be composed of matter only, but a father who treats a daughter like a piece of meat is obviously a monster.  This duality remains in our daily lives and is only resolved--without words, of course--in silent contemplation.

My point is this: both the belief in God and in the self arise simultaneously.  They are illusions, albeit essential ones.  As a human being becomes enlightened, that is, when one's sense of individuality is subsumed into the unity of all things, belief in self and  belief in God decline.  Very few have transcended duality completely, but some are closer to this truth than others.  Until one achieves full wisdom, however, the duality of self and God will remain.  Until a then which may well never occur, it is important, if we are to live well, to have the highest possible concepts regarding the self and God. Thus I reply to Professor Dawkins.  "God doesn't exist?  Neither do you! So Who cares?" Since God and the self are illusions that arise simultaneously, the New Atheists would do a much better job in their search for truth if they argued against the existence of the self as vociferously as they do against the existence of God.  Their basic assumption that science is primary is also false.  Science is contained within consciousness, which is what is truly primary.  A group of four stones have no idea that they add up to the number four!  There is no science without consciousness; it never can replace the ineffable inner experience that can be called God. 

4. Conclusion: Three fundamental problems solved

The ability of what we might call "the inner solution" to provide answers and guidance to the perplexed is obviously the subject of a book-length manuscript.  I will therefore limit my final comments  to a brief discussion of how the inner solution answers three fundamental questions that have been thought by many to be insoluble.

A: The Conflict Between Religion and Science

It is obvious that the view described in this article is not in any way in conflict with science.  The inner solution denies any form of supernatural intervention.  It asserts that there is absolutely no evidence for a God completely external to consciousness.  It also has no purchase for "Fundamentalism Lite," as it were, that is, the assertion that creationism is a valid alternative to the theory of evolution.  

There is not the slightest conflict between religion and science according to the Hillel/Maharshi view of reality.

B: Are passion for science and passion for religion mutually exclusive or mutually compatible?

Scientists and rationalists make the mistake of letting fundamentalists define religion.  The former come to the mistaken conclusion that religion is a deleterious atavism.  This article has undermined that notion.  Music is undoubtedly one of the greatest aesthetic experiences consciousness affords.  Ptolemy was wrong; there is no evidence that music exists outside consciousness--at best, only vibrations that the brain interprets as music exist.  Can one sensibly assert that one cannot be simultaneously passionate about music and science?  Similarly, can one claim that a passion for the ineffability of inner experience is incompatible with a passion for science?   Of course not! Humankind will only prosper if there is a passion for both.

C: The Holocaust Problem

In physics, there was something that was called "the horizon problem."  It was resolved by the theory that the universe expanded at an incredibly fast rate shortly after the big bang, smoothing things out and resolving the horizon problem, that is, the hitherto unanswered question as to how the  universe came to be uniform in all directions at an early stage, when there wasn't enough time to accomplish this uniformity.  (No information can travel faster than the speed of light.)  By analogy, I call the problem of suffering and the existence of God, which has vexed human beings from time immemorial, the Holocaust problem.  How can a loving God permit suffering?  The inner solution also solves this problem with the assertion that there is no external God who intervenes in history.  However, the inner God can indeed intervene, if we listen to  and obey our inner voice.  Evil happens when power and madness combine.  We are responsible for listening to the inner voice in ourselves and to act in ways that help assure that society obeys the voice of "God" within, common to all.   If we abrogate our responsibilities, horrible things will continue to happen.  If we listen to the Self within ourselves, peace and joy will increase.  It's that simple, it's that complex.

What more does one need to know?

In summary: Wisdom asserts, as another rabbi of the past famously stated,  "The Kingdom of God is within you."  Ethics asserts that this wisdom must be made manifest in society through acts of love.  The combination of these two notions compose the truth; all the rest is, indeed, commentary.

Music is Music! Part 1: Beautiful Hurts

"Music is my rampart, and my only one," wrote Edna St Vincent Millay.  Yes, this is an exaggeration; having written that, I must add that I'm up on that rampart as well.  

Those on the ramparts are almost never musically exclusive; they don't make statements such as only classical music is worthwhile, or that popular music isn't worth listening to, etc.  They let music happen to them; they let their inner aesthetics, faster than thought and free of all snobbery, decide what sounds move them, be they from birds, Bach, Björk or Mahalia Jackson.  Music lovers are also well aware that while the queen of the arts at her best must always be entertaining, she is also able to be much more than merely pleasing; sometimes what's beautiful hurts. A mirror (with speakers) of life herself, she intensifies any emotion she chooses.

I will now discuss two beautiful hurts, two non-classical classics. Both are grooves as defined by Daniel J. Levitin in his wonderful book, This Is Your Brain on Music, from which I excerpt here:

Groove is that quality that moves the song forward, the musical equivalent to a book that you can't put down. When a song has a good groove, it invites us into a sonic world that we don't want to leave. Although we are aware of the pulse of the song, external time seems to stand still, and we don't want the song to ever end. Groove has to do with a particular performer or particular performance, not with what is written on paper.
                                                                                      page 170

Well said!

First Groove: Ne Me Quitte Pas, written and performed by Jacques Brel, 1959

This is one of the most emotionally intense performances of a standard ever recorded, a unique combination of a great song, great singing--and great acting.  It's a beautiful hurt.

I'm not sure of the date of this recording, which was presumably made during a television appearance.  The song was written in 1959, but this video was certainly made after that.  Brel rerecorded some of his past hits in 1972, with Ne Me Quitte Pas as the title of the album.  If this video dates from around 1972, Brel would have been 43 at the time.  He does indeed look about that age in this video, but the film does not have the quality one would expect from the seventies.  Perhaps it dates from the mid-sixties, when Brel was in his mid-thirties. If that's the case, he looks older.

First, let us concentrate on the visual element.  Brel obviously demanded that the camera film him at close range; it almost seems that a mirror, a few inches from his face, is doing the recording.  A consummate actor, Brel wanted to intensify the emotion by performing in this way.  It is safe to say that many aging actors who have obtained fame would be too vain to allow themselves to be filmed at such close range without any make-up.

At first you see a handsome face; it soon becomes almost hideous.  One sees the sweat--it even looks as if his nose is running.  You can't help but notice the huge, misshapen teeth; at times you can imagine a skull with a macabre grin underlying his face. The man appears to be very vulnerable, even desperate.

Now let's look and listen.  As we do listen, the emotional impact--carefully planned--intensifies.  How he shakes his head in despair at the end, followed by the syncopated phrase, "ne me quitte pas!"  We see and hear a heart-rending portrait of a man coming apart.

Brel wrote the song after his mistress threw him out of the house.  He has transformed the incident into art, however, transcending it completely.  You don't have to know anything about Brel's biography to appreciate this song; in any case, the song is probably only based on an event in his life. (That all art has biographical elements is a well known nostrum.)

We see and hear a man begging for love and begging for his life. He comes across as so needy that we can well imagine why his lover might not take him back.  You would expect that an intense portrait of such vulnerability would be over-the-top and perhaps even risible, but Brel pulls it off brilliantly.

The words, written by Brel, are quite effective.  (Warning: avoid the English translation by Rod McKuen--it is atrocious.  It sure helps to understand the French!)  My translation of a portion of the song is as follows: "Let me be the shadow of your shadow, the shadow of your hand, the shadow of your dog."  In his desperation, the narrator has lost all self-respect; in Brel's performance, the effect is harrowing.

Brel gives the impression of a man losing control.  It appears spontaneous, but don't let that fool you--every gesture, every phrase is deliberate and has been perfected by much practice, I am certain of that.

The timing is breathtaking!  One couldn't imagine anyone syncopating the phrase, "ne me quitte pas," to greater emotional effect.  Sometimes he swallows the "pas;" sometimes he accelerates the phrase--it is sung differently each time, always in a way to lay bare the increasing desperation of the narrator.  At the end Brel seems to be at the point of tears--the consummate artist, however, is smiling, unseen.  That final shake of his head is unforgettable--That something so exquisitely planned appears so exquisitely spontaneous is the mark of a great artist.

The performance is so intense that it is sometimes difficult to watch and to listen.  A commentator on the video says it best: "Cette chanson me fait mal au coeur.  J'essaie de ne pas écouter pour ne pas souffrir." ("This song wounds my heart.  I try not to listen so I don't have to suffer.")  A perfect description of a beautiful hurt!


Second Groove: My Funny Valentine, Rodgers/Hart, Performed by Sarah Vaughan

Sarah Vaughan's performance of My Funny Valentine is no less intense than  Brel's, thus making it one of the most riveting performances of all time; its intensity, however, is of a  different order. Brel was a singer, actor and composer; Sarah Vaughan was a great singer, unplain and unsimple.  If you close your eyes during Brel's performance, you miss a great deal; if you do the same with Vaughan's, you might have an even  richer experience, since just about everything is in the voice.

First a few words about the song.  The music was written by Richard Rodgers, the lyrics by Lorenz Hart; it premiered as part of a musical, Babes In Arms, which ran on Broadway for 289 performances in 1937.  To my knowledge, it hasn't been revived much since then, or perhaps not even at all.  The lyrics by Hart, a much less sentimental and a much more ironical lyricist than Hammerstein, are first-rate.  In the play, the song is addressed to a man named Valentine LaMar, hence the word-play of the title.  The words poignantly point to one of the great mysteries of love: finding a person priceless  whom most would consider hardly worth a second look. Val is neither intelligent nor good-looking, and the narrator of the song knows it.  She loves him deeply, however, and doesn't want him to change: Don't change a hair for me/not if you care for me/ Stay little Valentine, stay/ Each day is Valentine's Day.  Falling in love with someone whom most would consider to be unlovable is not the norm, true, but it does happen, and Hart's unsentimental treatment of this sentiment is noble and uplifting, without ever being trite.  Rodgers plays down the irony and intensifies the emotion, a very good path for a composer to take.  Rodgers was a brilliant melodist; admittedly, however, some of his songs seem dated today.  Even the lovely "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" and "You'll Never Walk Alone" come across to the modern listener as being somewhat preachy in tone.  Other songs by Rodgers are more versatile and have become jazz standards.  "My Favorite Things" is one such piece; "My Funny Valentine" is another.  The latter has been recorded hundreds of times; in my opinion, Vaughan's recording is the best one by far. (Ella Fitzgerald's is wonderful in its own right, but it is much less intense.  The timbre of her voice had few peers; her personality, however, was different from Vaughan's.  What Fitzgerald accomplished came close to an upbeat type of perfection; compared to Vaughan, however, her emotional as well as scalar range was limited.)

Sarah Vaughan, as one critic pointed out and with whom I am in complete agreement, had one of the most amazing voices of the twentieth century.  She had a range that spanned more than  three octaves, which is extraordinary in itself.  If you believe as I do, however,  that what is most important is emotional subtlety and intensity, technical ability is not enough.  Vaughan indeed gave us more than enough; she is one of those rare performers whose expressive abilities were even greater than her amazing technical prowess. As this recording demonstrates, Vaughn's musicality and ability to convey emotion are second to none.

Vaughan had two nicknames, "Sassy" and "The Divine One."  "Sassy" had more to do with her personality when she was young, a quality that certainly comes across in some of her recordings. By the time of this recording, among the last she ever made, most of the sassiness had been knocked out of her voice  by age and adversity.  We are left with "The Divine One" at her most radiant.  The recording on YouTube is dated 1990; since it has some Japanese subtitles, it was most likely recorded during her tour of Japan that she began in late 1989.    She was sixty-five at the time and in failing health--though you wouldn't surmise that from listening to her voice.  She was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1989 and died on April 3, 1990, a week after her sixty-sixth birthday.    

Vaughan knew she had little time left at the time of this performance, and it shows. This is her swan song, and the swan has brought me to close tears on several occasions. Her performance illustrates one of the few glories of old age: an increase in tenderness and poignancy and a decrease in vanity, combined with a visceral understanding about how fleeting and how precious life is.  (As one Blues musician said: if you're growing older and don't know the Blues yet--you will.)          

Vaughan couldn't have made this recording at any other time in her life.   And even at this time in her life, not every performance was a perfect groove like this one.  There is another version of this song from her final tour that is great, but not as great.

She made other recordings of this song, one from early in her career.  At that time she followed the arrangement, this time the pianist followed her, allowing her to improvise freely.  In her old age the voice, as one would expect, is lower, but its full range is intact.  Listen to how she uses her full voice and then leaps to a pianissimo head tone on "day" on one occasion and on "(Valen)-tine" on another, both toward the end of the performance--it is unforgettable. Her phrasing throughout is impeccable.  Indeed, everything is impeccable in this recording, which makes it a groove.

As she did in her youth, she sang beautifully to the very end; singing about love in an old body that is falling apart, however, gives hr singing a new dimension.  The way I hear it, the character of the song,"Valentine," with all his foibles, has been transformed in this performance into a personification of life with all its sorrows and difficulties. Despite its defects, Vaughan seems to be revealing to us, life is still very much worthy of passionate devotion.  In apostrophizing life in this way, Vaughan raises the song into a realm of universality that deeply touches us all.  It is Old Age singing, being at its very best.  

Like saying good-bye to a loved one forever, it is a beautiful hurt.  

Thank you for reading this article; it is my hope that you will follow the entire series.  As always, I invite you to join as a follower of this blog; your comments, whether positive or critical, are most welcome.      

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Note: This is the first of a series of articles entitled, "Music Is Music!"  To follow are analyses of a Gospel standard, of a jazz standard and of a lied.  
                                                     

God and the Quest for Marriage Equality

Last night I had trouble sleeping. Instead of Captain Imagination leading his crew of thoughts toward a distant planet of repose, an enterprise that is almost always successful, I received an urgent message from conscience: stay awake and listen.  I am very well aware that the voice of one's  conscience is the closest approximation one has to the voice of God; I, therefore, lay back, closed my eyes, and listened carefully. This is what the God of conscience said:

The essence of My law is this: love your neighbor as yourself. Any infringement of this law is morally and religiously wrong.  I have been distressed of late that some of My children not only have been disobeying my greatest commandment, but claiming to do this in the name of religious freedom.    I have given human beings the freedom to obey or to disobey me; I have also given them a moral sense to know the difference.

There are more betrayals today than there are people;  many, many aspects of the world you live in and are responsible for make me sad.  I could mention many, such as this one, which I find especially troublesome, namely, the sin of treating one of my children differently because he or she was born somewhere and not somewhere else. Tonight I will, however, address only one: the mistaken belief that opposition to gay marriage can be justified on religious grounds.   Religious opposition  to marriage equality is an oxymoron.  I am now here and there and everywhere to explain why.

My great commandment is found in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, and is thus thousands of years old.  Although it is a perfect formulation, it was at first understood imperfectly--it is still understood imperfectly, but much less imperfectly than it was when first written.  The Ancient Hebrews thought it only applied to their Jewish neighbors and kin.  Later on, the Talmud made it clear that My intent is to include everybody, including the foreigner.  Only recently, however, has humanity become aware that loving your neighbor as yourself entails gender equality and other forms of equality as well.  There will be future extensions of this law also, provided that humankind acts more according to My law so as to have a future.

What exactly do I mean by this great commandment?  The first word, "love," is what is essential, but it needs commentary.  The love I mean is reciprocal--if you don't love yourself, you won't love your neighbor; conversely, if you don't love your neighbor you won't love yourself.  I don't require that you love everything that you do, else there would be no need for repentance--and there is a great need for repentance.  Similarly, I don't require that you love everything that your neighbor does, else there would be no need for moral behavior--and there is a great need for moral behavior.  It's important to be a neighbor to yourself and to criticize your own bad behavior for your own sake as well as for the sake of others; it is equally important to be a neighbor to one's neighbor in a similar way when a fellow human being acts inhumanely.  However, to the degree that  you are acting according to My law, that is, according to the law of love, you must support yourself even in adversity as I support you even in adversity; similarly, when a neighbor acts according to My law, you must support him as I support him--even if it makes you uncomfortable.

If My law were interpreted to apply merely to mirror images of oneself, it would be nothing more than a parochial solipsism.  You must also love those who look different and act differently.  You must love the individual despite immoral behavior, which you must oppose.  However, when an individual behaves consistently with the law of love, you must love that individual and her behavior. I repeat: even if that behavior makes you uncomfortable.

Now it's time to turn to the question of marriage equality.  Is love in the deepest sense of that word possible between two individuals of the same gender?   I have seen many examples of a man holding another man's hand as tenderly as Romeo ever held Juliet's.  I have seen many examples of women living together and of men living together for decades in a spirit of love and devotion.  I have seen children raised in loving, same-sex households doing as well as children living in loving heterosexual households.

The answer is clear.  To oppose gay marriage is another way of opposing Me.  Forgive those who are ignorant and direct them to My law; if they persist in their opposition, lovingly and firmly oppose their flouting of My commandment.  I reveal to you once and for all: to oppose gay marriage on "religious" grounds is an abomination.

Having said that, your inner voice--and everyone else's--will let you get some sleep now, Thomas Dorsett; you have a lot of work to do tomorrow.  I will end by pointing out the falsehood of a very common argument that is used as a "religious" objection to marriage equality, namely, that I created the sex organs for procreation and any way that the genitalia are used in which procreation is impossible is against My original design.  This is not correct; I will briefly explain why.

First of all, the penis has a dual purpose, namely, the elimination of waste and the ejection of semen.  But there is even a better example that illustrates My multi-purpose designs: that of the mouth.  The mouth is the first part of the digestive system, but it is more than that.  It is also an organ of speech, rendering into language thoughts received from the brain.  Since it contains the tongue which itself contains the taste buds, it is also the organ of taste.  Since it is also involved in sexual intimacy, the mouth is also an organ of intimacy.  It is certainly not contrary to My will to use the mouth in any and all of those functions.  What makes one think that I designed the mouth with great complexity and the sexual organs in a simplistic, dogmatic way?  I hope I make Myself clear: I am for love, I am for intimacy, I am for marriage, I am for decency.  I have designed the genitalia as organs of procreation and  as organs of communication.  I don't require that they always perform the same function simultaneously any more than I require the mouth to speak and to eat at the same time.

I will say it even more succinctly: I am much more concerned with responsible love between two individuals than I am with the plumbing of their bodies.

Now get some sleep, Thomas.  After you wake up, have a cup of coffee, then sit down at your computer and write My words as best you remember them.  Then post it onto your blog for the instruction of all.  It may be that few will read it; it may be that the majority of those who do read My words will dismiss, even despise, what I have said through you.  No matter.  I will read it--and I will be pleased.

When Pounds Talk, Pences Listen

The late, multi-talented Harris Wittels coined a very culturally apt verb: to humble-brag.  An example: "My wealth has isolated me from ordinary Americans.  Your poverty, however, has kept you close to the people.  I envy you, I really do!" Inspired by him, I have coined a verb of my own: to treacle-stomp.  Treacle-stomping occurs when someone, especially a politician, speaks platitudes while his feet, as it were, continues to stomp on opponents.

The Republican Governor of Indiana, Mike Pence, treacle-stomps at least as well as Savion Glover tap dances.

Recently, Governor Pence passed a so-called freedom of religion bill into law.  Although written in lawyer-savvy neutral terms, the intent is clear, namely, to let fundamentalists get away with discrimination against gays and lesbians.  (If you claim that opponents of this law merely have a "perception problem" and that the law doesn't permit discrimination of any kind, you are either woefully ignorant or a treacle-stomper yourself.)

To the governor's apparent surprise, the law resulted in a vociferous backlash.  Big businesses such as Apple and Walmart protested.  Some states canceled state-funded travel to Indiana.  Plans of major boycotts began popping up everywhere, like mushrooms after rain.  What was he to do, listen to his conscience--that is, to his base? The voices of Walmart and Apple were apparently louder.  

When decency talks, politicians sometimes listen; when money talks, however, they always listen--and almost always obey.

Threatened with the prospect of economic damage for which he would be blamed--and refusing, of course, to admit that he had been wrong--Governor Pence decided to hold a press conference to help clear things up. The purpose of his speech was to tamp down protests without distancing himself from his ultra-conservative base.  In other words, he treacle-stomped.

I couldn't stop laughing while listening to his speech.  Hoosiers are the friendliest people on Earth.  The governor has always hated all forms of discrimination.  The law does not allow businesses to deny services to anyone.  Religious freedom is the most important freedom of all.  Anyone who believes that the law permits discrimination of any kind has a perception problem.  The governor will advocate for legislation that clarifies this misperception.

When Pounds talk, Pences listen.

The law is supposedly an extension of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, (RFRA), passed by President Clinton in 1993. The law was designed to prevent Native Americans from being fired (or not hired) when they fail a drug test due to the use of peyote, a mind-altering drug which is consumed during well-established Native-American religious rituals. That makes sense.  If a Native American owner of a casino, however,  refuses to let a gay person gamble at his establishment, that wouldn't make sense at all.  If you replace "Native American" with "Christian";  if you replace "casino" with "pizzeria" or what have you; if you let the "gay person" remain in the sentence and make a few other minor changes, you are left with the following dependent clause: "If a Christian owner of a pizzeria refuses to let a gay person be served at his establishment,..."  The intent of the legislation which  Governor Pence signed into law completes the sentence with: "the Christian's sincerely held religious beliefs must be taken into account while adjudicating a discrimination suit filed by a gay or a lesbian."  The bill, despite its treacle-stomping platitudes, threatens to make  bigotry legal. Do you think President Clinton would ever have signed that into law?  Just as with a possum, when laws get eviscerated, things get bloody--in the latter case, the British sense of that word applies as well.

If you didn't understand the intent of the law, that is, to allow fundamentalist Christian business owners to get away with  certain forms of discrimination, you wouldn't get the joke.  (One can't refuse services on the basis of race--there is a federal law against that, thank God.  Indiana, however,  has no state law which protects gays and lesbians.)

Governor Pence is a gifted speaker which made his treacle-stomping all the more shameful and all the more hilarious.

The comedy continues.  During an interview, the governor claimed that the intent of the law is not to discriminate against gays but to help assure that Obamacare can never force an owner of a business whose "sincerely held religious beliefs" forbid the provision of  contraception to women covered under an employee health plan.  Regarding gays, he treacle-stomped; regarding women, he simply stomped.  (If he thought that denying contraception to women would significantly threaten his chances of re-election, he would have treacle-stomped there as well.)

He's not pro-sense, he's simply pro-Pence.

The governor's speech was, indeed, a stellar example of treacle-stomping. There are, unfortunately, many others.  If, however, you regret having missed the governor's performance, don't worry; I'm absolutely convinced that the show isn't over. (The show certainly isn't over in Congress, which is to treacle-stomping as Nashville is to country music.)  Governor Pence, like almost all politicians, will undoubtedly learn new t.s.-moves as circumstances demand, in order to remain in power. 

It's all very funny, but, alas! the joke is on us.