[Fraudulent document? — Editor] Marcus Garvey’s diaries were amongst the improbable finds at Saddam Hussain’s ill-financed palaces. Their contents have always been overshadowed, by the incredible story of their theft and doctoring by the Church of Scientology away from the Catholic Church (who were hiding it from common knowledge). They describe a man who investigated other wisdoms...
A man receives a vision in the psych ward that causes him to perceive his own life in its terms. *foreshadowing* [The rest was added much later. That line was an idea I once had for a story about a man who is studying history and a crime that occurred in the past, when his (original idea was for neural disease/cancer) delusions overlap his life with the past, and he discovers that he was the...
Editorial notes: Shai opens this essay on how life and beauty (symbolised in the term “lilacs”) can be produced out of what looks at first like mere dead materiality (“dead soil”) with what looks like a claim to have had a mystical experience of God. He terms that experience as “How I solved the theocratic paradox in trans-noumenal space” – “trans-noumenal space” refers to the infinite...
Editorial notes: This is a meditation on the Shema, and the nature of love. It is pointed out that, as Midrashic commentators say, the reference in the Shema to loving God with all one’s hearts (plural) signifies both with the good and the bad impulse, etc., bringing the evil urge into conformity with the good urge and directed to God. Within the fleshly and worldly is the spiritual and heavenly...
Parallel story of Saul and Shabbatai Tzvi to create a single narrative that turns the conversion of the latter into an act of secret heroism, frame the whole story as being told by Monsieur Chouchani as a commentary to the story of Isaac’s celebration by his father, to a street urchin called Avram in Paris 1945, revealing to him that the secret of the story is not helplessness and confusion, but...
{Part 1 – 01/06/2017} [This is a draft, because a polished version is not necessary right now, from my perspective] Letter to a variegated nation of nations, On one foot here is a summary of where we’re all at: We’re in a world filled with all sorts of people, all asking “How can we all think ourselves as each one being on the most important journey, how can we think...
Editorial notes: This essay offers a meditation on the meaning of the festivals, and especially of course Shavuot. Since Shai merely alludes in passing to Rashi’s interpretations, Midrashic accounts, and Kabbalistic teachings, any fuller explanation even of some of his allusions must be longer than his account [EZ*]. *Many thanks to Dr. Evan Zuesse for providing the commentary for this essay...
Editorial notes: Reflections about drug (and love) experiences, in which emotions and feelings are analysed (“Hacking”) that are intensely felt but too changing and formless (as in “chariot mysticism”) to give reliable solid information; “to be studied but not believed; or Hacking the chariot of fire.” The reflections are deeply introspective. They relate to the levels and qualities of the...
{Part 1 – 09/01/2017} How do we move ourselves forward in time? The Haftorah echoes David preparing for death (as does Yaakov in the parashah), instructing his son (and Yaakov does this in the blessing, and in the meaning of Vayechi Yaakov). There are many difficulties. We are drowned by our own suffering (Zohar Vayechi 216), and we are hidden by our flaws (Dvarim 31.18). This is a terrible...
Editorial notes: The short story below was found in Shai’s Google Drive notes and is clearly incomplete. The Brain Storming section at the end of the narrative alludes to the continuation of the story An apocryphal Braisa, non-canonical and existing only in Arabic: “Rabbi Yona was lost at sea. Can a man’s name be changed in absentia to avert an ill-luck? […]” Thus I have heard, when...
