Class Notes 3/24

April 12....blog your thesis statment for your paper ...

Dr. Sexson wanted to reinforce some things...

Maggie saw the class as becoming cultish...reminding us not to blindly follow the leader figure....could turn into a Jim Jones figure.

(As a side comment of my own: I understand if anyone might be feeling a bit overwhelmed in Dr. Sexson's class. Dr. Sexson's classes are usually full of repeat customers. To someone new to the "Sexson" experience, it might be cultish, but really, it is just people who enjoy what and how they learn in class. And this is something I enjoy being a part of. Learning with people who have an interest and passion in class. The mutual enjoyment of learning and comradeship in class is brought out by Dr. Sexson, and I have yet to find anything like it in any other class, and I've been at MSU for 5 years. And if it looks like we've all drank the Kool Aid.....it's because we have.)


The magician or leader exposes self to be not so smart... hmmmm..(but that is what smart people do.)
-Oracle in The Matrix
-Ovid's witch
-Prospero, gives everything up in the end..."drown my books"

where will you be without that feather, Dumbo

We watched a clip of a movie version of The Tempest.....a clip of Prospero drowing his books....

when we call something wierd, we are applying it to something we don't understand.

Vishnu Dreaming the World, Joseph Campbell

"Hence, we are all one in Vishnu: manifestations, inflections, of this dreaming power of Vishnu; broken images of himself rippling on the spontaneously active surface of his subtle mind stuff. Moreover, this sleeping god's divine dream of the universe is pictured in Indian art as a great lotus plant growing from his navel. The idea is that the dream unfolds like a glorious flower, and that this flower is the energy-or, as the Indians say. the shakti or goddess-of the god. I hope that some of you are recalling the counterparts of some of these images in the Biblical tradition. The waters that are stirred into action when creation takes place are comparable to those of the first verse of the Bible, where it is said that the wind or breath of god blew, or brooded, over the waters. "

we are all the dreams of Vishnu - what happens when he wakes up?
something dreams through you, you are not your dream....part of the Self (catpital ess).

Midsummers Night Dream, dreamer, sacred marriage
bottoms dream because it had a bottom

The Alchemist

Doug reminded of Siddhartha
paradox

should not cease from exploration and return to where you started and know the place for the first time.

transmutation of the soul.....metaphor lead into gold

define: McGuffin
Google: elixir of life

Santiago's treasure a metaphor, like the battlefield in the Bhagavad-Gita

Harry Potter........got people reading again.....also a lot of Alchemy in the books.

*we have to evolve our sense of imagination
young: read the Alchemist
older: read Joyce's The Al-Shem-ist in Finnegans Wake.

Michael, Dr. Sexson...a person worth saving from Hawaii, ocean of stories we need to appreciate.
The Following Story, recapitulates & deals with every theme of the class. We should be re-reading that and blogging on it.....