The Sun has not gone down in my dreams, so I don’t expect it to do so in Chapel Hill. Anything I can do to further the cause of free thinkers and beautiful visionaries captured between its pages, please let me know.
I really liked the way you presented that Whole Earth Jamboree: well-edited speeches from an interesting variety of folks who speeched. Didn’t seem to me that S. Brand did a lot of separating of the sheep from the goats. And I like to see the candid humor and self-irony that you displayed in your introduction. It does seem like Americans could come up with some sort of humble way to teach and disperse information on technological breakthroughs, etc. It always seems such a circus of eye-catching displays and hype. There ought to be a way that “new agers” could use their transformed values as a means of achieving their ends, rather than just as the ends themselves. The pseudo-scientific elitism that parades as solar technology among members of our generation will never bring about the “durable world peace” that Amory Lovins (1978) proposes in a clear, communicative manner accessible to persons not trained in technical fields. As I understand it, energy needs stem primarily from individuals, and it is at the level of the individual or the community that education and change must take place, not primarily at the level of the technicians.
I am overwhelmed . . . and pleased and tickled and flabbergasted. ME on a magazine cover. And I liked all the things you said. The wrinkles are genuine: I worked for them, and I like the things they say. I am not very photogenic, to say the least, and I am indeed pleased with the picture, for it is very like me.
My shirt didn’t say magic, it said MAGIAN . . . a private joke: it is also my license plate here in California . . . I got it mostly to drive other psychiatrists bananas (it works) . . . the reference, actually, is rather triple: the magi, the magus in Tarot, and the Magians . . .
So we subscribe . . . would three years make you smile?
I have tremendous admiration for what you are doing. Being myself a transplant from N.Y. and N.J. (East Orange) I see flickers of the east on almost every page of The Sun. I’ve read no. 39, which came today, from cover to cover. Even the Ads. And if I can find something for the auction I’ll send them on. I’ll soon have my 73rd birthday. Began writing in my teens, prose, then poetry, published 9 or 10 in the 50s. Busy as an Art Professor in Newark State College, N.Y.U. etc., until I had a bad coronary. The old pump stopped cold twice this year but is still ticking. I may write up my out of body experience and send it to you. Every day is Thanksgiving Day for me. Luck to you.
I recently picked up a copy of your magazine at a bookstore here in Atlanta and promptly subscribed, ordering back issues as well (hence the enclosed check). A large package of your magazines arrived today and I find myself sneaking back to them again and again as I sit here at my desk, ostensibly attending to my own writing. I freely confess that as yet I haven’t read enough to assume anything about your belief structure and those acts of assumption seem vaguely hostile anyway. But I wanted to include a note with the check for $24 which I owe you and the small donation (I have managed to get to the editor’s note in issue 39) because maybe you need positive feedback almost as much as money at this point.
I am somewhat of a magazine/book junkie and I have had to confess many times to our accountant that, yes, I know I singlehandedly subscribed to over 50 magazines in one short year. I must tell you that your magazine seems excellent, exuding a vibration of value and urgency that causes me to already look at it as a favorite, along with Village Voice, New York, New Age Journal and Andy Warhol’s Interview. I don’t agree with you that Brand’s CQ is the best; his pomposity repels as much as it facilitates and the New Age (talk about a semantical circus) probably cannot be bullied into existence anymore than the other savior/messiah cons we’ve played with on this planet.
The Synergy Foundation is pretty well explained on the back cover of the book I’m enclosing for you. One thing I would hasten to tell you is that we are much more than the Lazaris work spotlighted in this book. We have a mailing list of almost 20,000 people and our literature about Lazaris is sent to only a small core group of about one thousand. The majority of our work is aside from “him” and deals with seminars and writings, tapes and private therapies concerned with clearing old negative programmings, freeing up creativity and creating your own reality successfully and consistently. I’m sending you the book because it is our current “baby,” the first book by our publishing company arm and we’re happy with it.
While we do not actively promote or advertise Lazaris it isn’t because we’re ashamed of him; it’s just that we feel no need whatsoever to turn anybody onto him, to persuade them to “believe” in him or anything. We’re totally happy working with people who don’t even believe in him at all.
We created the foundation ourselves about three years ago and it’s extremely stable now, to our mutual surprise. It earns enough to support three adults in a style none of us was accustomed to in previous jobs as company executives and film makers. We’ve just created the publishing company “branch” and we are semi-serious about creating a national newspaper format communication device next year, utilizing the large mailing list. We want to see a greater degree of experimental, metaphysical, and personally responsible writing published and we strongly suspect that our naivete about this type of venture is staggering.
Anyway, good luck with your magazine. We are going to talk to people about it when we travel (a great deal of our work is in California around Marin County and Berkeley and in Miami and Michigan as well as smaller points in between) because we honestly feel that there is a need for your magazine as an entity on this planet.
Well, I’m going back to the stack of Suns now, armed with some wine and jazz on the stereo. You’re not fooling yourself, Sy; it really is a damn good magazine.
For an essay by Peny and her husband Michaell, The Only Source You Need, with excerpts from Lazaris: A Spark of Love click here.