Mooji

version

Well-known member

History of Walter Knott explains why Pynchon is always namedropping boysenberry yogurt in his books. In the first chapter of "Inherent Vice" Denis orders a pizza topped with boysenberry yogurt from a pizza place that will put anything on a pizza. In "Vineland" Zoyd raids Mucho Maas' fridge to get food for his infant daughter Prairie, and feeds her boysenberry yogurt. One of those weirdly particular references that connects characters from all 3 of Pynchon's California novels (Mucho Maas being better known from Crying of Lot 49 but making a cameo in Vineland that links the 2 stories and gives Pynchon an opportunity to explain how the liberatory potential of LSD had been captured and subverted and the hippie counterculture turned to destructive hard drug use.)

Anyway boysenberries are a hybrid of 4 other berries (technically "Aggregate Fruits" not true horticultural berries) that were first grown in California by Rudolph Boysen, but popularized by Walter Knott who was the "Knott" in the "Kott's Berry Farm" amusement park and also a major funder of the John Birch Society. So even something that seems offhand and random in Pynchon like the boysenberry references can be read as a reminder that California and Californians are the product of these far-right eugenics programs.

"Aggregate Fruit" could also be a specific nod to the continuation of the Nazi V-Weapons program in California, as the rockets were known by their code name "Aggregate" to the Germans. And the whole "creamy bacterial culture on top, sugared-up eugenicized aggregat fruit on the bottom" thing about yogurt becomes a little metaphor for how to read the lurking subterranean fascism of the California Dream.

If Rudolph Boysen was the father of the Boysenberry, then Luther Burbank was its grandfather. Burbank created over 800 plant hybrids, including the ubiquitous "Shasta daisy". The "Shasta" in "Inherent Vice"'s "Shasta Fay Hepworth" is a reference to this eugenicist California lineage (can't help but think of the "Daisy Girl" from the 1964 Johnson vs Goldwater campaign ad in this context).

(also - follow up on "Sauncho Smilax" aka "Blessed Sarsaparilla" and the history of soft drinks)

California has a long history of treating human beings as an agricultural product to be bred or exterminated at will. Luther Burbank was a major proponent of eugenics, publishing a book called "The Training of the Human Plant". Burbank feared that immigration to America would lead to a disastrous mingling of races; while stopping short of calling for extermination of the "abnormal" Burbank did want to forbid "abnormals" from marrying. Burbank was in this way a "liberal eugenicist" in the same way Pynchon's Dr. Hilarius character did "liberal SS medical experiments."

The theme of hybridization, mixing traits from different species, explains the transformation of the California police state in 1970. The police were using the "Golden Fang" cult to create police / hippie hybrids from the local surf music scene, which could be used to expand the powers of the police state into environments where they formerly couldn't thrive. The protagonist "Doc" Sportello is himself a hybrid character in this regard, a hippie private detective who got his start as a repo man that used CIA drugs to interrogate debtors.

(Doc being a former repo man makes a nice circular allusion with the Alex Cox movie)

Burbank's "Training of the Human Plant" was a major source of inspiration for Paramahansa Yogananda, one of the first popularizers of yoga in the US. Yogananda dedicated his "Autobiography of a Yogi" to Burbank.

Autobiography of a Yogi" was hugely influential on the California counterculture despite (or specifically because of) its origins in the "master race" fantasies of California agricultural barons of the early 20th century.

(For the British Equivalent, see Gerard Wallop and Moral Re-Armament)

"Autobiography of a Yogi" claimed that yoga would give you superpowers like teleportation and clairvoyance. Yogananda created the "Self Realization Fellow" to teach these techniques, but much like in Scientology, the scripture and techniques are the intellectual property of the Fellowship and anyone who discloses them to outsiders can be sued.

Gateway to the SRF retreat in Hollywood. Note the hybrid use of Christian symbols.

So what kind of hybrid would you get when you crossed Luther Burbank with Paramahansa Yogananda? What would be the spiritual practices of Lutheran Yoga? Whose agendas would it serve?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boysenberry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Knott
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Burbank
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leucanthemum_×_superbum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smilax_ornata
http://joytoyou.com/tothp/tothp-p-000f-contents.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobiography_of_a_Yogi
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DBBeTeqUwAEG7MB.jpg:large
 
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luka

Well-known member
To follow on from what you lot were saying, something I've noticed in friendship groups which coalesced around the 'empathy drugs' MDMA or mephedrone is that sharing too much too soon leads to a terrible mess down the line.

They fast track these relationships without having the necessary trust and familiarity with one another, condense years into weeks and months and are left feeling intensely vulnerable, exposed and overstretched.
 

luka

Well-known member
It's not that I think the empathy states the drugs engender are in any way fake it's that they can't be sustained.
 

luka

Well-known member
Psychoanalysis psychotherapy has developed to try and contain and facilitate that vulnerability without it causing too much irreparable damage. There's protocols in place and a body of knowledge around what you can expect to happen and how you might be able to deal with it. Even within that frame it's very dicey and notoriously prone to abuse. Once you take it out into the Wild the dangers multiply.
 

luka

Well-known member
But we won't let that stop us from building the compound needless to say. We won't let a few breakdowns and fractured psyches get in our way. Put on the starry robes brethren and let's begin.
 

Woebot

Well-known member
But we won't let that stop us from building the compound needless to say. We won't let a few breakdowns and fractured psyches get in our way. Put on the starry robes brethren and let's begin.

:crylarf:
 

catalog

Well-known member
I think there are dangers of looking inside ourselves too much, and then talking about it. 'its good to talk'. Yeah but is it? Most of the old religions, they place higher value on not talking I think, unless it's necessary. Like if you can not look at anyone, and not talk to anyone, unless it's absolutely necessary, I think that's what wants to be aimed for
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
in 1996 no less. hmm!

it must be impossible to resist drinking your own kool aid after breaking the threshold. you're no longer gary the bongmaster in a moth bitten wooly knit round at daves house, always good for a few choice lines about the bhagavad gita. you're now gohvatsu sri sri tarematsu with a bunch of broken but highly attractive people at your feet ready to devour your every last word. and apparently there's an endless supply of those people in pretty much every country.

Fuck me, what am I doing in this 9-5?!

You might have changed my life here.
 

catalog

Well-known member
they had to study a lot before getting to the no talking part, though, no?

Yeah or some traumatic/visionary event usually. It still doesn't tend to involve chatting with people tho. Like they go sit in a cave on their own. Maybe they read a bit. Or listen.
 

luka

Well-known member
I think there are dangers of looking inside ourselves too much, and then talking about it. 'its good to talk'. Yeah but is it? Most of the old religions, they place higher value on not talking I think, unless it's necessary. Like if you can not look at anyone, and not talk to anyone, unless it's absolutely necessary, I think that's what wants to be aimed for

Jesus and Buddha done a fair bit of chat
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
Yeah or some traumatic/visionary event usually. It still doesn't tend to involve chatting with people tho. Like they go sit in a cave on their own. Maybe they read a bit. Or listen.

wouldn't it be all of the above? it's like learning a musical instrument or any skill really. theory, oral and practical. probably be one of the hardest things of all to be autodidactic about
 

catalog

Well-known member
Well it's grace technically I suppose, something gets put in you, out of your conscious control. The genuine ones I mean. They don't necessarily go looking for it. It comes to them. I mean this is just a way of thinking I mean, im not saying I agree or believe it all
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
i mean, if we're talkig about mooji then he's obviously full of shit. but idk if there's only one way of going about this stuff. and when you say genuine, do you mean mohammed, jesus, etc or who?
 

catalog

Well-known member
Yeah those two, others like Nanak, loads of others as well, Joan of arc. The longer ago and less verifiable obviously that's easier to accept
 

catalog

Well-known member
I mean thinking about it, there's no reason why all of those I've just mentioned were not doing mooji like things. I mean, you think definitely not, because they are not well explored topics, but why not really? They were probably all at it as well. If not the abuse then at least the taking over minds or vulnerable people bit
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
I mean thinking about it, there's no reason why all of those I've just mentioned were not doing mooji like things. I mean, you think definitely not, because they are not well explored topics, but why not really? They were probably all at it as well. If not the abuse then at least the taking over minds or vulnerable people bit

yeah and that's what i find interesting about people like mooji. all that knowledge is out there, in the ether, waiting to be tapped into. it's the same well all those others were drinking from. just very different outcomes. and yeah, history obscures it all.
 
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