i saw ezra and his new (as of yesterday afternoon) apartment yesterday. he said that he wanted to be closer to school, and i don’t blame him. he’s got a schedule that only a 20-something college student could handle, from 9 in the morning until 8 to 10 at night, every day with no days off… i wonder how long he’s going to be able to keep it up. he also said that he moved partially because cornish is giving him several tons of money for rent, tuition, books and supplies, and so forth, which is probably a good thing since i can’t afford to give him money myself and katharyn’s in a mental institution. he seems to be doing a much more successful job of getting money for going to college than i ever did.

i’m going to the vedanta socity in about half an hour. swamiji’s lecture today will be “After death experiences existance” (brain injury) which should be interesting since it is subtitled “Fact or fiction”, and i’m pretty sure that swamiji will come down on the side of “fact”, but i’d like to see how he’s going to prove it.

more memes to ponder. i could just post a link to quizilla dot com (or whatever) and let whatever comes of it happen, but i’d like to post only those memes which i have personally come in contact with, even if i do only post links to them and not my actual results.

i don’t use windows… for much! so when i ran virus scan, found a bunch of spyware applications (on my recently installed system mind you) and deleted them, i wasn’t too worried when the result was an error message telling me that c:\winnt\system32\bridge.dll wasn’t installed… but i just got rid of the error message! apparently there’s a registry key that doesn’t get changed back when you eliminate spyware using “unusual” (that is to say “manual”) methods. in case you’re wondering, open the registry editor and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\run\ and the key that loads bridge.dll should be apparent (it contains the words “rundll”, “bridge.dll” and “load”. delete that key and you won’t get an error message any more!

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highlights of swamijis lecture (which i need to remember): there are five types of proof; direct perception, inference, comparison, reliable testimony and “non-perception” (the latter of which is not accepted by all schools of philosophy). existence after death can be proved by the fourth variety – reliable testimony – because the scriptures say so, and because people who have “super-sensual knowledge” say so. you can question this if you want to, but the only other way to prove it is with direct perception, which we will all have, eventually, but unfortunately for those of us who are left, the one who has this direct perception will be unable to share it with anyone else.

he included a descripiton of what a “non-perceptive” proof might be as well: a husband says “i left my wallet on the dresser, would you go and get it for me?” to his wife, so the wife goes and finds that it’s not there… that is a “non-perceptive” proof: the wife, by her “non-perception” of the wallet, proves that her husband didn’t leave it on the dresser…

there are actually two bodies which make up an individual (which is stuff i knew before): the “gross” body, which you can perceive, and the “fine” body, which is made up of as many as 17 or as few as 11 (depending on how you count them) limbs; the five sense organs, the five motor organs, the five energies (prana, upana, etc., which can be combined, as prana manifests differently depending on whether it is ingesting, digesting, excreting, etc.), buddhi and manas or “cognative ability” (which can be combined as “mind”). the mind is the “mirror” which reflects divinity resulting in the soul. thus where the mind is, the soul is as well.