Robert Neale.

I was introduced to Gene by the Strange Eyed Twins.  When they got into trouble for their postings on the Electronic Grymoire, I wrote in defense of them. They were pleased and showed their appreciation by including me and my card tricks in their occasional shows.  They also informed Gene of my presence so he wrote to me.  We communicated by email for about a year and a half, and then by phone at the hospital until he died.

Gene was generous in spirit, so very helpful in response to material in serious need of refinement.  He was light-hearted, humble about his own extraordinary contributions.  And he was a bold as he was funny. We encouraged ourselves to take chances, especially with regard to presentations for tricks.  Do battle with God?  Yes!  It is what we ought to do.  Create a trick about the mother who drowned her children.  Of course! Otherwise, magic simply retains its nearly total irrelevance in contemporary life.

Gene was a miserable critter too.  In one sort of phrase or another, he would exclaim, "Have I told you how terrible my life is?  My life is terrible."  He was very funny about it.  So even his misery had style. His moans were majestic, something like those I would imagine were proclaimed by the Greek gods.  Perhaps this was because everything was a story for him. And his stories could be funny, sad or bizarre, but they were stories and that is what mattered.

The Twins became upset when I did not visit them as they had expected me too.  The blamed my wife who became "That Gail."  Then they discovered that, during a fight between us on our honeymoon, she threw one of my precious decks of cards at me.  Not only did the Twins forgive her, but Gene, the National Living Treasure himself, awarded her.  She received a medal especially engraved and the following statement on a specially designed scroll that read, in lavish printing and layout, as follows:

Decree.  Be it known annually on the celebratory anniversary of wedded bliss: That Gail, Heroine Oracle of NLTINIA shall forcefully fling one full deck of cards at Robert E. Neale to commemorate the auspicious event when her dopey new husband brought cards to their honeymoon.  Thus spake THE NLT.

We defined ourselves as twin brothers.  Undoubtedly as cross-eyed as the Twins.  But surely he was the elder brother.

Gene is what he said to people.  But he is also the grand total of his cartoons and sculpture, Arguments with God and other collections of his presentations for tricks, ideas for stage illusions and his crazy takeover (a self-acknowledged flop) of the Shadow Digest when given leave by the thankfully brief vacations of more prosaic leaders.  And Gene is even more the thinker about the human condition.  What he gave me most was his clarity about what matters.  This was an altar boy from Hamtramck who outgrew religious traditions, but not spirituality.  In that, he matured throughout his last days.

As I've already said, we communicated frequently by email and I would like to share with you, some of those thought provoking ones he sent me.  Here is what he wrote (if you don't already know, the Practitioner is a trilogy of books written by Gene, the first one has already been published and the other two will soon follow):

PLOTS FROM POINC

You mention greed for meaning Bob.  About three weeks ago I was chatting with my doctor after a check-up (he actually spends ten or fifteen minutes conversing).  The subject of meaning came up; how when we cross that disquieting line of biblical three score and ten, and realize shuffling off isn't that far off the, as you put it so aptly, greed for meaning becomes acute.  What's it all about.  I think that's what got me into the fine mess with the Practitioner.

He and Andrea have a brief encounter with Jesus on Gethsemane. That scene works well.  When Andrea asks, "Are you frightened?" He simply nods affirmatively. Since he knows what awaits him Andrea asks with an edge of frustration, "Do you understand the point of it...if there is one?"  "Not entirely." "Don't you have doubts about the sense of it, if there is any sense to it?" she persists, "Don't you have doubts?" Jesus, who is sitting on the ground leaning back against a boulder, looks down at his hands, at wrists that will soon be impaled, "Yes." "Then why go through it?" He stands up, brushes Gethsemane dirt from his robe, and it isn't quite clear what he says next is directed to Andrea or himself, whether it's in nature a question or conviction, "Of what substance faith...if there are no doubts?"

So that ends there; and lays the groundwork for the next Interlude in which the Practitioner considers the non-religious aspects of Confucianism, and the Tao.

Books Two and Three differ from the first in that along with the long story in three parts, between each routine there is a one or two page Interlude (talk of abject stupidity or dopey arrogance to even think of handling the Tao/Confucianism in a page or two).

Anyway, the Practitioner ponders Confucius' teaching of right behavior, ethics, morals, a ruler becoming great by example to those he rules, etc -- without a religious foundation.  Being moral, ethical, decent can at times be inconvenient, why should anyone bother without a supportive structure? Andrea's position is the obvious one of fear of retaliation be it by laws of society, or thunderbolt from the heavens or damnation; that inherent in every individual is the fear of punishment whether social, civic or divine.

The Practitioner views this as a surface explanation.  He feels, intuitively, there is something else  possibly as ineffable as Tao's "The Way", that he refers to as "The Why". Some functioning absolute (in terms of need) that motivates people to want to behave properly, need to do so although there are frequent failures, of course.  But the NEED is always there.

Sooooo...(here I may make total fool of self, but I'm well fortified with cookies to take it on the chin). Spinning off from the first book, the end lines, "Are you God?" "I don't know."

I thought what if the Practitioner comes to realize that the inter-relatedness of everything in the universe is all a conscious One (so far fine, fairly solid philosophical/theological ground...I think).  Call it Universal Mind, God, It, Whatever...a/the Tao in a constant state of evolving, maturing, and the Practitioner's "The Why" is it's need not to disappoint Self, it's expectation of the Self being the best Self can be. Which, isn't such a bad idea for human folk or deity in process of growing up.  In one way self-centered, in another way the antithesis of it

        **********

About twenty years ago I was meditating daily.  One day I went to Yogananda's Self Realization Temple.  Nothing special about the service. The monk gave an interesting lecture.  When it was over I walked out...and then it happened -- the Oneness.  Truly ineffable, Bob, but I'll try to describe it.  As I walked out the door toward my car something...well...clicked.  I remained cognizant of self, but simultaneously I was everything: the trees, the cars driving by, the clouds, the buildings, the dirt on the sidewalk...everything.  And permeating all was an incredible sense of love...as if this was the spiritual glue that bonded everything.

The experience lasted four hours, so awesome it was almost frightening.  Perhaps that's why I never went back to the temple. Perhaps it was fear I would never experience it again, or fear that I might with all subsequent attendant demands on  my life. Meditation had made a better person of me, and it hadn't been easy.  But something like the Oneness experience.....Probably best I didn't have it again...otherwise I might not have become the Shadow Digest's resident lunatic.

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