I: LOVE AND THE MAN / II: THE MUSIC SHRINE's Blurbs
About me:
The promotional objective of this Lennon myspace is to make known to as many people as possible John Lennon's contribution to the transformation of consciousness that is underway through the meaning and practice of World Love.
For this enterprise, this movement, to take place, I need to amalgamate all the internet (and other) resources available. Hence, I need helpers, supporters, fellow seekers, to “spread the good news,” to engage participants worldwide in a dialogue to “harness the energies of love...so that for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire, " to quote Pierre Teilhard DeChardin, Jesuit priest, paleontologist, and mystic.
This Lennon myspace is but one of my main aspects of this conscious transformation. One other is my wisdom website , which is the natural extension of this myspace. For those interested, turn to www.ofwisdom.org.
As commonplace as this may sound, we are surely at the birth of a “brave new world,” in which, to quote the great philosopher-psychologist, William James, we are introduced into “a seething caldron of ideas, where everything is fizzling and bobbing about in a state of bewildering activity, where...treadmill routine is unknown, and the unexpected seems the only law.”
All suggestions that will help promote and advance this myspace are welcome for consideration. These can be made by e-mail to me at thepublicbenefit@roadrunner.com
Thank you,
Joseph
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Who I'd like to meet:
OF LOVE AND THE MAN
by
Joseph
Introductory Note
The following presentation is an an abridgement of my desktop published book on John Lennon's journey into the transcendence and humanity of human-transcendent Love. My comments linking each video-song are meant to give sequential meaning to the totality of this presentation.
I: THE MESSENGER
Lennon has a mystic (spiritually experienced) vision of Love ("I've been aware of soul. I've been aware of that power.") as not only universally human but as transcendentlyhuman underlying all things of the universe - ("Love is the underlying theme to the universe." JL) This will be the message that he sings to the world during his brief stay here.
"In My Life"
The first mention of what is to come regarding Lennon's Love vision is expressed in his "In My Life," in which he sings:
And these memories lose their meaning when I think of love as something new.
"The Word"
Once he and the Beatles were settled in the collective consciousness of their millions upon millions of fans, both young and old, worldwide (1963 - 1965), he proclaims his Love vision in the song "The Word." which he is to disseminate as Its messenger to the popular mind. And his unique contribution to the Love message is to say the word Love as a chant, a mantra.
Say the word and you'll be free
Say the word and be like me
Say the word I'm thinking of And the word, the word is love ... Now that I know what I feel must be right
I'm here to show everybody the light
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"Yer Blues"
In "Yer Blues," even though he is writhing in suicidal despair, he assures himself, reminds himself, that he is here in life for a mighty purpose, and so must carry on despite his human frailty and suffering.
My mother was of the sky My father was of the earth But I am of the universe And you know what it's worth
..
"God"[1]
In an alternate unreleased version version of "God" Lennon further proclaims himself messenger of world-Love:
I have a message from above,
and I'm here to tell you
that this message concerns our love,
The angels must have sent me
to deliver this to you
now hear me now
brothers and sisters:
God is a concept
by which we measure our pain
"God"[2]
To dispel any misunderstanding that might arise from this song, Lennon surely does believe in God - God is love - but not in the church or religious, theological, sense of the word. As he says, "The concept [is] of imagining no countries, imagining no religion, not imagining no God." He believe in God as the universal Being , or Power or Source or Meaning, of the world. It's just a matter of what we want to call It. He calls It Love: "Love is the universal theme of the universe."
So, in his song, "God," it is not God as Spirit, or Transcendence, that is "a concept," but God as we interpret "Him" as assuager of our suffering mortality.
Similarly, it is not the eternal message of Jesus, nor of Buddha, nor of the Bible, nor of the Gita that Lennon disbelieves, but rather the institutionalizing of this eternal message. Their eternal message, each in his/its own way, is "God is within you" (Jesus), and that through our humanity - "I just believe in me, Yoko and me" - we can realize this truth. And this, too, is Lennon's world message set in his muse of poetic music.
"The Ballad of John and Yoko"
Lennon also believes in the soul inasmuch as we, and all things, are essentially Soul. Again, it is a matter of words and semantics,and culture, that diffentiates what words we use for It; but in the final analysis, It is what It is, whether It be called God, Soul, Spirit, Love, Being, and so forth. - "I am that I am." (Genesis) "I've been aware of soul. I've been aware of that power." (JL)
Last night the Wife said,
Oh boy, when you’re dead
You won’t take nothing but your soul
Think!
II: LOVE AS PURE BEING
"Across the Universe"
In "The Word," Lennon sings that love is 'sunshine.' In "Across the Universe," this 'sunshine' is expanded a millionfold, infinitely, eternally.
"Limitless undying Love
which shines around me like a million suns
it calls me on and on across the universe.
"Tomorrow Never Knows"
Lennon's "Tomorrow Never Knows,"identifies Love with the more metaphysical-philosophic concept, 'Being' - which, as he sings, is the meaning within all things. For, if Love is 'all', as he sings in "Because," then, if being is within all things as their meaning, then love must be within all things as their meaning - a matter of word substitution. Synonymously, then, Love is the meaning of all things. Relatedly, Lennon says in an interview, "Love is the underlying theme to the universe."
That you may see the meaning of within it is being, it is being That Love is all and Love is ev'ryone it is knowing, it is knowing
"Because"
In "Because," Lennon reiterates his theme that Love is both eternal and infinite. In this ethereal song, he humananizes this cosmic perspective of Love with the truth that we, as well, are essentially eternal and infinite.
Love is old, love is new Love is all, love is you
"Love"
In his whispery, "Love," Lennon sings that Transcendent Love is an identifying reality at the center of our being, in that A is B and B is A - for example, yes is no and no is yes, up is down and down is up, and so forth. All distinctions, opposites, and relationships, resolve into the oneness of Love. And this Oneness, is no other than Being – pure Being – itself. Also, He subtly, movingly, interchanges both the transcendent and the human identifying aspects of love in this zen-like song so that the receptive listener blends into the mystery of all-embracing Love.
Love is real , real is love
Love is feeling , feeling love
Love is wanting to be loved
Love is touch, touch is love
Love is reaching, reaching love
Love is asking to be loved
Love is you
You and me
Love is knowing
we can BE.
Love is free, free is love
Love is living, living love
Love is needing to be loved
"Love Is All You Need"
In his enigmatic song, "Love is All You Need," Lennon identifies transcendent Love as omniscient (all-knowing) - "Nothing you can know that can't be known") - as omnipresent (everywhere) - "Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be," as omnipotent (all-powerful) - "Nothing you can make that can't be made" - and humanistic - "Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be in time."
Put ideally, if we are in touch with the essence of our being: Love, then there isn't anything human that we can't be or do.
Accordingly, to interpret Lennon's meaning of "all you need is love" simply in erotic or humanistic terms is by far to miss his point. The love that is all we need, is, for him, the love that moves mountains, that is the kingdom to which Christ refers in his words "Seek first the kingdom of heaven and all else will be given you." And to change the wording slightly in Christ's answer to the secret of this life, Lennon is, in effect, singing: Seek first the kingdom of Love, and all else will be given you. By this exchange of word-meaning, it will be easier to understand the meaning of Lennon's whole body of work, and of his mission; which is to sing his soul in urgency for his, and, for man's, human realization of this Love.
III:LOVE AS ONENESS
"Rain"
"Rain" exemplifies further Lennon's insight that Love is an identifying factor inasmuch "everything's the same". and his further point is that even though our mind necessitates making distinctions in our reality between, say, rain and sunshine, still, "It's just a state of mind". Which is to say, that in the ultimate state of mind - the transconscious mind - there are no such things as rain and sunshine; only that which determines both rain and sunshine in our perceiving mind.
"Ev'rybody's Got Something to Hide but Me and My Monkey"
Lennon repeats his message that "everything's the same" in "Ev'rybody's Got Something to Hide but Me and My Monkey," only in this song he takes a zen-like perspective that inward to this oneness of Love, all dualities, all opposites, resolve into one - oneness: down is up and up is down, inside is outside and outside is inside. This certainly is not the case in our reality; yetis the case in ultimate Reality, from whence all dualities and opposites ensue.
The deeper you go the higher you fly
The higher you fly the deeper you go
So come on (Come on) come on
Come on is such a joy
Come on is such a joy
Your inside is out and your outside is in
Your outside is in and your inside is out
So come on come on
Come on is such a joy
"I Am the Walrus"
In the opening verse of "I Am the Walrus," Lennon emphasizes in no uncertain terms, that we are all essentially one. And being "all one," we are all Love - cf "..Love is you / You and me."
I am he as you are he as you are me
As we are all together
"Glass Onion"
Lennon uses a perfect poetic image to depict the "nothingness," the "oneness," of Love in his "Glass Onion." Glass is seen as an image of purity; while the actual onion, when we peel off the skin layer by layer, we finally come to ...nothing - the "void. It is this void that folds each layer of the onion into a symetrial whole.
Looking through the bent backed tulips
To see how the other half live
Looking through a glass onion
Fixing a hole in the ocean
Trying to make a dove-tail joint, yeah
Looking through a glass onion
"Strawberry Fields Forever"
Another image of pure being, or "nothingness," is portrayed in Lennon's Strawberry Fields Forever," in which he sings, "nothing is real. Now, this "nothing can be interpreted as the nothingness of the (spiritual) void of pure Being, or Love; and/or indirectly,it can be interpreted as nothing in this, our, reality is real; it perhaps is just a dream; he doesn't quite know for sure:
"Always, no sometimes, think it's me, but you know I know when it's a dream
I think I know I mean a "Yes" but it's all wrong, that is I think I disagree"
His further point in this swooning song is that though we may not be on his wavelength of vision, we nontheless can experience his aesthhetic expression of that vision in this song "Let me take you down...; and hopefully this aesthetic experience will open our eyes (mind) so that we understand, rather than misunderstand "all you see."
Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see.
"Revolution Number 9"
As a concluding postscript to all the previous Lennon's Love-Being songs, his "Revolution Number 9" depicts in aural sound the pure being of Love. This depiction begins almost at the end of the recording in the video below. All that leads up to this aural burst into eternity, so to speak, is the mystery, the "sound and fury" of human life; and after It, the calming peace of enlightenment.
IV: LOVE AS HUMAN-TRANSCENDENCE
"Instant Karma"
"Instant Karma" emplifies the two main objectives of his world task: (1) that we are all eternal in the purity of our being - Love, and (2) that we have to surrender to It by minimizing our ego so that we can love beyond ourselves: to others, to life, to eternity - the truth of all spiritual leaders down through the ages.
Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Well we all shine on
Ev'ryone come on
"Hey Bulldog"
In "Hey Bulldog, amidst his apparently nonsense lyrics, "Lennon furthers his message by pointing out that all our attempts at consistent happiness prove in vain; we are too psychologically fragmented, too egoistic, too desiring, too impulsive, too fearing, too vain, and on and on. If we truly want to be happy, that is to say, free to be more loving, more understanding, then we must turn inward to our being - to Love itself; or as Lennon, sings, "You can talk to me." - "me," again, refers to our inward me: Love, God, Soul...
Some kind of happiness is
measured out in miles
What make you think you're
something special when you smile ...
Some kind of innocence is
measured out in years
You don't know what it's like
to listen to you fears ...
Some kind of solitude is
measured out in you
You think you know me but you haven't got a clue ...
You can talk to me
You can talk to me
You can talk to me
If you're lonely, you can talk to me
"And Your Bird Can Sing"
The basic message in, "And You Bird Can Sing," is that all that you have achieved and experienced in life on your own merits and worthiness will sooner or later "wear you down; and then where will you be? Well, as Lennon sings, you can turn to your - the - Source: Love, or your being, or your God whatever it may be,for the solace, the meaning, the joy, of your life. With that, you can effectively deal with both your successes and failures, your ever-changing moods, aging, grief, and the whole host of human complexities - all without palling. In which case, then , truly "Love is all you need." Again, the 'me' and the 'I'll' refer to Love, or God, or Being.
"I Dig a Pony"
Lennon's "I dig a Pony" is a word play on his "all you need is love" theme that, with and in (the flow of) Love, we can do: celebrate, penetrate, radiate, imitate, indicate, syndicate, anything we want - realistically speaking, of course.
"Baby You're a Rich Man"
"Baby, You're a Rich Man" caps Lennon's overall message, which is: Yes, money is the lord of this world, but now that you have experienced the riches and wonders of the Other world - why would you want to "keep all your money is a big brown bag inside a zoo"? This Experience, this "being in touch," is what it truly means to be rich, to be one of the beautiful people.
V:LOVE AS PEACE..
For Lennon, one side of the coin is love and the other side, is peace - "Love and Peace are eternal." And what can be more powerful than peace wedded to love!
..
..
..
....
"Revolution"
"Revolution" sets the stage for Lennon's future peace activisim. The revolution that he emphasizes is a revolution in the mind that frees the mind from ignorance and injustice. With that change, peace will reign.
You tell me it's the institution
Well you know
You better free your mind instead
"Mind Games"
We have to fight for this psychological revolution. We have to fight, face up to, our own demons as well others'. We have to attain a kind of wisdom by "feeling our own pain," as he sang in "I Found Out." Peace is not a passive fixture in life; it has to be ever vigilant against its adversary, war, in all its multiplicities. Peace, we might say, is war against our ego's negative side, against our self-destructiveness, against our lusts, our greeds, and on and on. We have to be ever knowledgeable of "what's going on" about us. We have to be ever seeking, and living by, the transcendent in us. We have to be "mind guerrillas." This is the drift of Lennon's "Mind Games."
"Give Peace a Chance"
So let us give peace a chance is Lennon's chant for the future of mankind.
"Happy Xmas"
It's up to the people who want peace and what follows from it, justice, to take the initiative, and then finally, the ascendency over war, and all that follows from that. And Lennon is not just referring to war on the battlefront, but war in our minds, war against our neighbors, war in politics, and, in the end, war of ego against ego. This will take a kind wisdom that balances our humanness withour transcendence - a human-transcendent wisdom. "So, yes, war is over if you want it"; and so merry christmas and a happy new year.
"Imagine"
And we finally come to Lennon's signature song, "Imagine," in which he sings the ideals of peace and love, that, yes, we will never fully attain in this strifeful life, but we can near it. All we have to do is imagine it can be done - be peace warriors, mind guerillas.
VI: LOVE AS EROTIC
"Help"
Yes, Lennon is "of the universe," and
is "representative of the human race"; but first and foremost, in this life, he is a frail and flawed human being; and so subject to all common human pleasures and pains, wants and needs, and ego. And so, he must love and be loved. He has been loved, but not fully; he has loved, but not fully. And so he suffers for this want. And so, he cries out for help in his song "Help." He needs somebody, "not just anybody." And Yoko Ono was soon to be that person.
"I Want You"
Lennon has found his soul mate,Yoko Ono, and he wants her so badly - her body, mind, and soul - that it's driving him "mad."
"Don't Let Me Down"
He's "in love for the first time," and he cries out for her not to let him down, as he has been by his mother and father, especially.
"Oh, My Love"
With their love together he has found the fulfillment, the glow, of his life. His eyes and mind are "wide open." Everything is clear. Of course, life is much more complicated than the simplicity of "being in love," as he will find out as the years go on. He has many psychological issues to be resolved, many masks to be shed; but, with Yoko, they at least can be resolved. For those issues to be resolved, love, both transcendently and humanly, is all he needs."
"Woman"
"Woman" is Lennon's tribute to both Yoko and to all women. Without the right woman, we men are lost, however "on top of it" we may seem, whatever success or acclaim we may attain.
"Grow Old Along with Me"
VI: TRIBUTES
George Harrison's song tribute: "All Those Years Ago"
Paul McCartney's song tribute: "Here Today"
FOR VIDEOS OF SELECTED LENNON INTERVIEWS, TURN TO www.youtube.com, AND TYPE IN THE BOX, "Lennon Interviews," AND THERE THEY'LL BE.
THE MUSIC SHRINE
INTRODUCTORY NOTES AND QUOTES
Having established John Lennon as the Artist-messenger of world Love, who sang of It, spoke of It, and lived by It in its three basic aspects: transcendently, humanly, and human-transcendently,I feel it would be appropriate to add to his contribution of "the Word" on this myspace a music shrine that aesthetically carries over his task through the inspiration of other musicians on the same topic.
Accordingly, I offer the following rock and instrumental music below that, upon listening to, I hope will inspire the listener to aspire to the wisdom of Love; that is, to contemplate It, meditate on It and to act through It.
If the listener is so inspired, then he or she might turn to our
website www.theconscioustransformation.net for that wisdom that will surely transform one's consciousness.
Before the music, I present a number of pertinent quotations to give an overview of the mystic connection between music and the spirituality of Love.
Schopenhauer
1. "We can regard the phenomenal world, or nature, and music as two different expressions of the same thing[underlying reality."
2. "[M]usic differs from all the other arts by the fact that it is not a copy of the phenomenon [ as, say a painting or a poem, or a novel], or more exactly of the will’s adequate objectivity, but it is directly a copy of the will itself, and therefore expresses the metaphysical to everything physical in the world, the thing-itself [ the essential being] to every phenomenon. Accordingly, we could just as well call the world embodied music as embodied will; this is the reason why music makes every picture, indeed every scene from real life and from the world, at once appear in enhanced significance, and this is the reason why music makes every picture, indeed every scene from real life and from the world, at once appear in enhanced significance, and this, of course, all the greater, the more analogous its melody is to the inner spirit of the given phenomenon. It is due to this that we are able to set a poem to music as a song, or a perceptive presentation as a pantomime, or both as an opera.
"
3. The inexpressible depth of all music, by virtue of which it floats past us as a paradise quite familiar yet eternally remote, and is so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from its pain."
Beethoven
"Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life."
Joseph Addison
"Music,the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of heaven we have below."
Aldous Huxley
1. "After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."
Thomas Carlyle
"If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music."
James Duffecy
"Music can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable."
Martin Luther
"I have no pleasure in any man who despises music. It is no invention of ours: it is a gift of God. I place it next to theology. Satan hates music: he knows how it drives the evil spirit out of us."
Goethe
"Mozart is the human incarnation of the divine force of nature."
J. K. Rowling
"Ah, music. A magic beyond all we do here!"
Geoffrey Latham
"Music is the vernacular of the human soul."
Victor Hugo
"Music expresses that which can not be said and on which it is impossible to be silent"
Camus
"Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.
Nietzsche
"Without music, life would be a mistake."
Napoleon Bonaparte
"Music of all the arts has the most influence on the passions and the legislator should give it the greatest encouragement."
Geoffrey Latham
"Music is the vernacular of the human soul."
Van Morrison
"Music is spiritual. The music business is not."
Lingerman, Hal A
"Just as certain selections of music will nourish your physical body and your emotional layer, so other musical works will bring greater health to your mind."
Plato
"Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue."
Jean Baptiste Montegut
"Music like religion, unconditionally brings in its train all the moral virtues to the heart it enters, even though that heart is not in the least worthy."
Red Auerbach
"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."
George Eliot
"I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music."
George Steiner
"The new sound-sphere is global. It ripples at great speed across languages, ideologies, frontiers and races. The economics of this musical Esperanto is staggering. Rock and pop breed concentric worlds of fashion, setting and life-style. Popular music has brought with it sociologies of private and public manner, of group solidarity. The politics of Eden come loud."
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NOTE: to hear-see each music-video, simply copy its URL, paste it in the URL address box at the top of the page, and click. If you find that it takes too long for the window to come up, then you might open another internet explorer window, and paste the URL address in its address box.
GEORGE HARRISON
"My Sweet Lord"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_6MU4bszDc
"Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWy9q24wfdU
"All Things Must Pass"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxaYeAEvqq0
"Beware of Darkness"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5aSspIVrK0
"Isn’t It a Pity"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aoyWoO28Fc
"Concierto de Aranjuez" by Joaquín Rodrigo II-Adagio
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsXLfnVuj30
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CLOSING NOTE: All questions and comments are welcome. E-mail me at the publicbenefit@roadrunner.com, and/or visit my website wwww.theconscioustransformation.net for an in-depth study of the conscious transformation, including a further discussion of Lennon's role in it set in book form.
I: LOVE AND THE MAN / II: THE MUSIC SHRINE's Friend Space (Top 6)
I: LOVE AND THE MAN / II: THE MUSIC SHRINE has 27 friends.
I look to you when I need to find away to let my inner feelings show, when words are rushing quietly through my mind like a beautiful river as it flows. Holding you in my arms I move my fingers up and down your neck, I plug you in just to turn you on while deciding on the perfect effect. Finding within us the message to awaken their awaiting senses, while making them believe they're walking through lush green meadows, maybe being surrounded by little white fences. As I touch and move your strings you respond with the magic of your caressing sound, inspiration is lending itself from every direction, only needing me to be aware of what we together may have found. Speak to me easy my six string image of beauty, let me hear yet another dream that will share someone else's weight that they alone are still trying to carry.... ~Nick Nichols~ Have a great day my talented friend, enjoy the poem I wrote.... Many miles of smiles to you, ~Nick~
