Re: Mantra 19000

Some notes about "Mantra 19000"-

I was 52 on Oct. 27, but I thought that one week later,
when I was exactly 19,000 days old,  it seemed like
such a nice, round number that it made a better "birthday".

On an impulse, I felt a strange hunch that there might
be some greater significance to the number "19000", so
I started to do some web searches.

All of this material was out there on the web- I didn't
write any of this, it was just there, and I just extracted
pieces of the text.

For the record, there probably isn't anyone on the
face of the earth that is more disdainful of religion
than I am, so I am almost uncomfortable in
writing something that has religious overtones.
One of the key problems with the world is that there
is too much religious hatred, bigotry and superstition.

Normally, I would also normally groan at the thought
of numerology, and consider it to be the height of
flakiness.

I was a bit surprised by the material that came back
when I investigated my strange hunch.   I had never
seen anything  of this material- the hunch was based
in nothing but pure instinct.

As a skeptic, I then tried searching for other numbers like
18,000, 20,000 etc, to see if I got similar results.  To be sure,
some of it was similar.   It is easy to see, for example, with
such things as epidemic growth or numbers of nuclear
weapons, that if numbers are increasing or decreasing, and
there is regular reporting, at some point, it will cross
the 19,000 threshold (or any other multiple of 1000).

Be that as it may, the richness of the material for "19000"
does seem a bit special.    Whether it really is, well who
knows, this is poetry, not a documentary or a scientific
study.    A nice thing about poetry- you don't have to
support anything or prove anything, it is enough simply to
express,and to draw a word-picture.

Putting natural skepticism and disdain of religion aside
for a moment, I should clarify a belief that reality is
a profoundly strange thing, beyond our understanding.

"Beyond our understanding" should mean just that.
When we try to hard to understand, we make greater
fools of ourselves.   When we delude ourselves into thinking
that we *do* understand, we become the worst of fools.
Basically, that is what most organized religion is about-
the worst of fools.

If a European explorer set foot on a primitive island,
he might wind up with natives worshiping him as a
"god" for thousands of years, just because he produced
something beyond their understanding, like a cigarette
lighter, or a camera (much less a nuclear weapon).

The natives would probably imagine that they were
seeing a white "god",  and something perfect.   Wouldn't
it be absurd?

I believe that there very probably are forces of some kind,
beyond our understanding.  Probably those forces are not
perfect or all-wise.   When there is this much imperfection
on earth, the thing created, it also implies imperfection in the
very Creative Principle that produced it.

If there are greater forces, it would be characteristic of us
to greatly misunderstand their nature.

Should we ever be so impressed by prophets that we believe
everything that they say?

When I was visiting relatives last summer, I heard about
an old woman who regularly went to a roller-rink every
week.   One day, she said, "Well, I guess that I'm not going
to be coming back here, anymore."   No one understood what
she meant, and thought it was just an old woman,
rambling.

She went home that day and died of a stroke.

You might hear your own stories like this, in your lives,
things that never make the paper.

Probably, lots of people are prophets of some kind,  with a
small "p",  from time to time.

Yes, from time to time I have also had eerie glimpses of
the future, that came to be, fortunately without having to
die in the process.    Does it make one anything
terribly special?   Are you perfect, or should you listen
particularly to any other religious prophets who people
may claim are necessarily something more perfect?

I would not claim to be anything more than an old woman
at a roller rink.   That is a good enough of a thing to be.
Moved by something, yes.   Fallible, also yes, as are
all others.

That would make another good theme for a poem-
"Old Woman in a Roller-Rink".

Tom Keske