The man of the house in which I am living at this time in my life - a vey successful businessman, with the valuable learning experience of vicissitudes along his way - asked me at the dinner table last evening where I had gone to college. He has asked me that question before, and in the same setting - as is his wont, to ask me questions about my life, perhaps to help include me in the family’s dinner table conversations - but had obviously forgotten. But worse: When I told him - “Stanford” - he looked a bit nonplussed for a moment, and then asked me where it was. And then it was my turn to look, and feel, a bit nonplussed. Someone who grew up in San Francisco didn’t know where Stanford was? Just down the road a bit from it?? Had Stanford fallen in prestige over these years???(1) In any event, his question brought ‘it’ all up again for me. Which story I shared then, briefly, with these people.(2)
But first, to clarify: Stanford University, at least in my day - and we are talking here about the ’50s - was known as ‘the Harvard of the West,’ with prestige accordingly. I had chosen it - to say, to accept its (full) scholarship, out of a number that I was awarded, for a stellar high-school record - for that reason, and for the specific prestige of its Medical School, which I had decided to shoot for, in my higher/graduate school education. But then a funny thing happened to me on the way to it; the story of which experience I shared briefly with this man and his family (and that of my niece) at this time, well down the road from that pit stop along My Way. That story, in brief:
I attended Stanford for three years, leaving before the end of the last quarter of my Junior year, and in fact during Finals Week itself. (And the very day of my 21st birthday, not so incidentally.) Earlier that year, during the second quarter of said Junior year, I had received word of admittance to Stanford’s Medical School, to commence the following school year.(3) That Mission Accomplished, I relaxed a bit in my pre-Med studies, with its heavy load of scientific sorts of classes, and took a Short Story writing class. I mention this factoid because it figures into my mental state at that time, when I began, in the course of writing a short story for that class, to get into deeper parts of myself. But to continue:
The short of My Story was that I had what I called ‘a spiritual experience,’ and it led me to want to go to ‘the largest public library in the Western world,’ in order to research out answers to life; to what it was really all about. Even at that early stage of my subsequent quest I can remember thinking, on my way back to my Independent Men’s dormitory that fateful evening of my said experience, that said library must be in New York City. But first, I needed to go home and face the music, in the form of facing up to my mother, and trying to explain to her why I was ‘throwing away’ such an opportunity in life.(4)
I put off said confrontation for a couple of weeks, when I decided, upon arriving back in Southern California, at the train station in downtown L.A., to rent a car and first spend some time at the beach, to sort things out in my head. Having grown up in So Cal, with much time spent on its beaches, I knew that setting to be conducive to, in a word: healing. Reflection. A safe space. So, off I went, to a motel down near Santa Monica, to gather my wits, before my Next Steps along the mysterious Path that I was on, had ‘stumbled’ across. That story, which I shared briefly with this level-headed businessman, included My Year In Manhattan, doing said very thing - reading everything I could lay my hands on in that library on subjects such as all the world’s religions (and specifically, ‘deeper’ aspects of the Christian ’thing’), spirituality in general, ancient history,(5) ESP/psychic phenomena, UFOs - the gamut of subjects on aspects of life on this planet, and thinking as to What It Is All About - and then having to face the very down-to-earth matter of The Draft.
In those days - just after the hostilities in Korea had come to an uneasy Armistice - the U.S. operated under a Draft, whereby every able-bodied young man who was not involved either with raising a family or in full-time education was subject to two years of military service. While doing my cosmic thing in NYC I received my letter of Greetings, which curtailed my higher-education but informal research into ‘matters of substance’. But in coming down to earth from that summons, I carried with me some of the spirit of my Quest, and ended up as a conscientious objector during my two years of service spent over in South Korea, before continuing my lifelong search for Answers upon return to my beloved States. All of this I shared briefly with my interlocutor at said dinner table. But here, I want to concentrate on the gist of the matter. Which is, that in all these succeeding years upon my ’coming of age’ - which have involved many years living overseas, first in a spiritual community in the north of Scotland and then in a committed relationship with a lovely woman Down Under in Australia and then, that bit of business completed (the Law of Karma at work, and fulfilled??) back to said Community, before some years of retirement back in my old home town on the beach in So Cal -
I have stayed the course.
And have no regrets. Because life is a matter of
first things first.
—
footnotes:
(1) Perhaps somewhat from being put off my mental stride at that question, I momentarily forgot the name of the small town where Stanford was/is located. My niece quickly came up with the answer with the ever-ready (and amazing-to-me) aid of her smart phone: Palo Alto. Of course. And Menlo Park nearby. And…
…memories flooding in…
(2) With the rest of the family fading away during that course of the meal, leaving me and the head of the house to go at it, mano a mano, as he then shared some of his story.
(3) Many of us pre-Meds were on such an accelerated learning schedule, in order to save a full year in our prospective long years of preparation for finally entering, full-fledged, said profession.
(4) The matter, in all honesty, also had to do with my lack of funding actually to attend Stanford Medical School. I was, as I have said, on a full scholarship for my undergraduate years, which was the only way that I could have attended Stanford. What was I going to do about the financial ‘thing,’ now that I had actually accomplished my undergraduate’s goal?? Questions about applying for a grant, or whatever, were superseded by my ’spiritual experience’.
One step at a time…
(5) I was particularly drawn to checking out the story of the Sumerians, which story I had first come across in my Freshman-year class on ‘Western Civ,’ but which subsequently intrigued me when, in my research further into such things as the origins of history on the planet, I saw the images they had left behind in their scripts of their great gods, which identified such beings with a star over their heads. This was all well before our current time’s ‘understanding’ of such subjects as ‘ancient astronauts,’ as delved into beautifully in the original-source research works of Zechariah Sitchin. Clarifying, that
we are not alone in the universe.
Nor, for that matter, is this the only universe there is.
Nor, for that matter, is this material universe - or any such 3D universes - the only realms of reality that there are.
If one can even call this classroom, of Separation and Duality, a ‘reality’. Given that
All Is One. And there is no corruption in
The One.
A condition - state of Being - that we, by our better natures, are programmed to aspire to.
With some fractals of The One getting lost along
The Way.
A ‘matter’ of deep regret. But
Our choice.
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