Grooving with the Guru
an NIH special report!In accordance with ruling 2006-711B/213:C of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, NEW IMPROVED HEAD has filed with the Commission a plan to reduce substantially the Eurocentric content and bias of the articles on this site. As a first step in this plan we are expanding our spirituality department to include representatives of non-Western faiths. So our Pastor Bob and John Hazee have recently welcomed to their midst the Swami Vispi Agogo, To introduce the swami to you, our loyal readers, we are publishing an interview with him conducted by the noted writer on Eastern faith traditions, Fiona McPhee-McSorley.
Fiona McPhee-McSorley: It is a great honour to be able to speak with you, swami. Can you describe for us the stages of your spiritual quest?
Vispi Agogo: Quest? What quest? I have no spiritual quest. I am rather the object of a quest, one remorselessly conducted by truth or necessity, or whatever name you want to give it.
FMM: Let's call it Truth. What is Truth?
VA: It's what makes us do what we do. It's charming to believe that we come equipped with free will and formidable powers of reasoning which guide us in all aspects of our daily lives. We are, certainly, reasonable from time to time. But what are we reasonable about, generally? Things that aren't important to us. The rest of the time we are usually the puppets of our emotions.
Touch on any topic which arouses our emotions and reason is suddenly moved to the back seat. And we probably feel emotional about those topics because of some accident in our history – for example, somebody who's been made the centre of attention all through his childhood will react with panic if he doesn't continue to get constant attention when he's an adult. Or she, of course. So he or she spends the rest of his or her life striving to acquire power or fame when he or she could have been filling his or her time with wholesome, agreeable things like napping or playing the ponies.
FMM: Playing the ponies? Playing the ponies!
VA: Don't you read your own website? One of the reasons I consented to work with the social misfits who inhabit this place is that they occasionally publish deeply spiritual articles like the publisher emeritus's about the deep truths to be learned from playing the gee-gees.
FMM: So going to the racetrack is one of the ways in which we can increase the influence of Truth in our lives?
VA: Say what? Who said anything about increasing the influence of Truth? I mean, do we want to do that? It isn't divine or anything, you know. Here's a Truth – Churchill, Manitoba, is named for John Churchill, first governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. Now that you know that, is your life better?
FMM: ....
VA: As for reason, which you also seem to have elevated to a divine plane, the more things you reason about, the more complicated your life gets. If you've ever been to a restaurant with someone who analyzes the possible benefits and disadvantages of each item on the menu before ordering, you'll know what I mean.
FMM: But this is the counsel of despair!
VA: Oh, thank you, but it's nothing. Anyone could come up with it if he took long enough to think about it.
FMM: I don't appreciate being mocked.
VA: Oh, certainly not, but let's not change the subject. Okay – despair. Whoever doesn't experience despair is far from understanding the least thing. And whoever comes out with something like what I just did takes himself a bit too seriously. Or he's been drinking.
Anyway, despair is the normal condition of the human race. Are you against being normal or something?
FMM: No, but if you don't encourage reason, if you repudiate the idea of a spiritual quest, what can you recommend to us as a valid life goal?
VA: Do you mean something like how to lead a well-regulated, healthy, virtuous, profitable, admirable life?
FMM: ....
VA: Or perhaps you'd like to be HAPPY?
FMM: ....
VA: Well, there've been philosophers about, thousands of them, for thousands of years. There've been gurus and saints and religious figures. For thousands of years everyone's been thinking and talking about the Good Life, and the virtuous life and the happy life, and so far most of the time we still act like idiots. But from me you demand THE ANSWER. You demand that I EXPLAIN LIFE. Get a freaking grip.
FMM: Well, swami, thanks for your time and patience, but I must run, I have an appointment....
VA:Don't take any wooden mantras. Seriously.
Grooving with the Guru © John FitzGerald, 2006
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