Howard Jay Rubin
Howard Jay Rubin is a financial planner and professional magician who lives with his wife and twin seven-year-olds in Corona, California. In the 1980s he was a contributing editor at The Sun and did nearly thirty interviews for the magazine. The interview reprinted in this issue was his first.
— From May 2014Reclaiming The Dark
An Interview With Starhawk
When we’re striving for all light we get away from the dark. As a witch I see the world itself as sacred. If there were such a thing as heresy in the craft, which there isn’t, that would be it — saying that you want to get away from half of what’s in the world. It’s a denial of what sacredness is. That particular metaphor, the light/dark split, is really a fundamental basis of racism in western culture. It was used very deliberately in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in the beginning of the slave trade. Part of the justification for taking the African slaves was that their color proved they were cursed by God. It has always been a metaphor used for genocide against people who were dark, against dark-haired Jews.
August 1983Picturing The Earth
An Interview With Stewart Brand
Ivan Illich has said he’s realized that computers are deeply new. Flying was not that new, telephones were not that new, industrialization was not that new, cars were not that new. But computers are really new, so we have no immunity to their virulence. Here I am coining money on their virulence.
July 1983Living Within The Question
An Interview With Reshad Feild
I was privileged to spend some time with Krishnamurti, and when we first met he said to me, “You know, a thought-form never dies.” That was a very important statement. But a thought-form can be redeemed.
June 1983The Depths Of A Clown
An Interview With Wavy Gravy
I got spotted by a plainclothes cop, who called the Secret Service and the FBI. He started patting me down and felt this bulge in my pocket. He said, “Is that a gun?” and took it out and these teeth started clicking on his hand. I said, “Quiet, our leader is speaking,” and he gave me back the teeth and said, “Get out of here, you’re too weird to arrest.”
May 1983The Pipe Or The Tomahawk
An Interview With Sun Bear
We’re trying to put our philosophy on a working level. This is important. People espouse different philosophies, but if it doesn’t work with flesh and blood on an everyday basis then it’s not real. You don’t have sovereignty until you control your own livelihood.
April 1983Listening
An Interview With Paul Winter
Our animal nature is quite different from that of a wolf, say, in our habitats, our social interactions. But we do have deeply powerful instincts, just like a wolf, that we rarely get in touch with. Listening is the least utilized instinctual sense by our species in the civilized world. It’s the one which many spiritual teachers feel is the real path to enlightenment.
February 1983Living With The Dying
An Interview With Dale Borglum
A lot of my work is to just stay as clear as I can, so I can be there, available and loving, but at the same time have a penetrating enough awareness that I don’t buy into the superficial sentimentality of the situation. And death, of course, is the ultimate melodrama.
January 1983Looking Back
Tuli Kupferberg On The Not-So-Bygone Sixties
In the Thirties a lot of artists were radicalized, the Village was radicalized. The streams were always together, and the Sixties seemed to be a real fruition of this period. It seemed as if it was going into the mainstream. The mistake, of course, was that it was just a youth movement, and it made no contact with anything past student life. And when the main student issue, which was the war, dissolved it was seen to be organizationally and theoretically a weak movement, because it was not able to link up with the rest of the country, the working class, the middle class, and with the older age groups.
December 1982Fixing The World
An Interview With Schlomo Carlebach
The way to receive light from God is through praying. The only difference is that some people pray unconsciously, some pray consciously, some pray super-consciously. You can walk into a restaurant and see a person who says, “I’m so hungry. I need some soup.” Deep down his soul is praying to God, “God, please give me life, I’m at the end.”
November 1982Changing Things
An Interview With David Spangler
We are completely and wholly unique and in a very special one-on-one relationship with the divine. If I can recognize that in my life, there may still be things I want to do, changes I want to make, growth I want to achieve, but I can do so companioned by this spirit of playful and compassionate lovingness. If I can find ways of extending that to others as God has offered it to me, then I’ve found a real gift.
October 1982The Success Inside
An Interview With Tom Paxton
The bottom line is whether I think I have the power to change people’s minds and the answer is no. All I can do is write my songs, put them out there, and what happens after that is out of my control. The effect that they have is beyond me. My job is to make sure that I write the best songs I can write.
July 1982Quiet Mind
An Interview With Matt Lippa
Each thought, each feeling, each idea, each sense, each desire creates a pattern. Usually, thought is random, desires are random, fears, worries are unchecked. They’re working counter to each other; there’s a lot of confusion. So what manifests in the person’s life is chaos. Well, you can control your mind and determine what will manifest in your life.
June 1982
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