Stay Puft Marshmallow Man

Author: David Christopher Lane
Publisher: Alt.religion.eckankar
Publication date: April 1996

E-mail David Christopher Lane directly at dlane@weber.ucsd.edu

I want to go back to the home base now.

The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, Bill Couch, and Blabla Mohenjo is Appearing at the Astral Starlite Tonite

What immediately strikes one about purported inner visions is the amazing plasiticity of the encounters--literally anyone can see anybody at anytime..... From Blabla Mohenjo (one of the Vairagi Masters) to Babaji (of Yogananda fame) to Jesus (that allegedly real person who died some 2000 years ago).

Now this reminds me of one my all-time favorite characters, The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man (apologies if my spelling of this fantastic creature is off), who made a delightful appearance in the first Ghostbusters film.

What happens if one sees him on the inner regions? Are we then to suggest that he "really" exists? Or, are we to say that the imagine-nation (one of the few places apparently with no boundaries, especially rational zones) allows for innumerable characters to live and breathe which have no empirical or super-empirical referent?

I think this is central to our ongoing discussions about inner masters and their historicity (world citizens? or merely part of the voting population on Tuza?) because it seems that we are confusing two very important issues: image produced characters which are an admixture of what we read, see, smell, and believe (hey, i just saw a pink unicorn playing with pee wee herman upon a pyramid in Elvis' deli at Plato's cave next to silly putty's newspaper stand) and images which are more or less reflections of what appears relatively stable and permanent in the here and now.

For instance: we can argue about the "love" of Jesus and debate endlessly about it (and never come up with a "best" answer). Why? Because we are stuck to speculation that has no fundamental or empirical referent. However, if we argued about how to start a car, our debate would more or less resolve itself by pointing to the key and pointing to how to turn it. Now i realize that my postmodern friends are going to tell me that that stuff is "relative" or "decontextualized" too.

But, quite frankly, when triple A shows up and you need a jump start, postmodern "textual" readings just collapse.... Or else you end up staying at Ralphs all night long......

But i digress, when we debate these inner visions, we are essentially talking non-sense. And, as such, anyone's vision is about as good as another's....

Stay Puft? Virgin Mary? Yaubl?

Unless, of course, there are some outer and inner criterion upon which we can have common agreement.

This post is not meant to be an answer, but merely a starting point.

Here's my question: how can we differentiate an inner vision of a Marshmallow man from a religious vision of our chosen guru? Is there a difference? If so, why? If not, why not? Here's the catch: the parameters by which we answer this question, i would suggest, should be at least pointing in the direction of how we start cars every morning. In other words, it should have some point at which we do it right, do it wrong, or just don't do it at all. Unless we do that, then of course we can simply lubricate all the more and never ever differentiate.... Which is okay, until the vision you have rapes or molests or kills you...... So here's the question in a simplified form: how does one know that an inner vision is "real"? (at least more real or more useful than one of Bill Couch dressed up as a dessert..... Bill Couch, by the way, was the stunt man who played the Stay Puft Marshmallow man.... He is also a good surfer)

E-mail The Neural Surfer directly at dlane@weber.ucsd.edu

I want to go back to the home base now.