Conversation with Richard May (“May-Tzu”/”MayTzu”/”Mayzi”) on “Fragments,” “Yaldabaoth is Dead,” “Don’t Take Your Life Personally. It’s Not About You!”, “Event Horizon,” and “Klein-bottle Clock”: Co-Editor, “Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society” (10)

Interviewer: Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Numbering: Issue 30.A, Idea: Outliers & Outsiders (25)

Place of Publication: Langley, British Columbia, Canada

Title: In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal

Web Domain: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com

Individual Publication Date: May 22, 2022

Issue Publication Date: September 1, 2022

Name of Publisher: In-Sight Publishing

Frequency: Three Times Per Year

Words: 1,477

ISSN 2369-6885

Abstract

Richard May (“May-Tzu”/“MayTzu”/“Mayzi”) is a Member of the Mega Society based on a qualifying score on the Mega Test (before 1995) prior to the compromise of the Mega Test and Co-Editor of Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society. In self-description, May states: “Not even forgotten in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), I’m an Amish yuppie, born near the rarified regions of Laputa, then and often, above suburban Boston. I’ve done occasional consulting and frequent Sisyphean shlepping. Kafka and Munch have been my therapists and allies. Occasionally I’ve strived to descend from the mists to attain the mythic orientation known as having one’s feet upon the Earth. An ailurophile and a cerebrotonic ectomorph, I write for beings which do not, and never will, exist — writings for no one. I’ve been awarded an M.A. degree, mirabile dictu, in the humanities/philosophy, and U.S. patent for a board game of possible interest to extraterrestrials. I’m a member of the Mega Society, the Omega Society and formerly of Mensa. I’m the founder of the Exa Society, the transfinite Aleph-3 Society and of the renowned Laputans Manqué. I’m a biographee in Who’s Who in the Brane World. My interests include the realization of the idea of humans as incomplete beings with the capacity to complete their own evolution by effecting a change in their being and consciousness. In a moment of presence to myself in inner silence, when I see Richard May’s non-being, ‘I’ am. You can meet me if you go to an empty room.” Some other resources include Stains Upon the Silence: something for no one, McGinnis Genealogy of Crown Point, New York: Hiram Porter McGinnis, Swines List, Solipsist Soliloquies, Board Game, Lulu blog, Memoir of a Non-Irish Non-Jew, and May-Tzu’s posterous. He discusses: “Fragments”; “Yaldabaoth is Dead”; “Don’t Take Your Life Personally. It’s Not About You!”; “Event Horizon”; and “Klein-bottle Clock.”

Keywords: C.G. Jung, G.I. Gurdjieff, God, May-Tzu, Nietzsche, P.D. Ouspensky, Richard May, Rupert Sheldrake, Seth Lloyd.

Conversation with Richard May (“May-Tzu”/”MayTzu”/”Mayzi”) on “Fragments,” “Yaldabaoth is Dead,” “Don’t Take Your Life Personally. It’s Not About You!”, “Event Horizon,” and “Klein-bottle Clock”: Co-Editor, “Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society” (10)

*Please see the references, footnotes, and citations, after the interview, respectively.*

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Hi! Okay, we’re back-ish. “Fragments” is a complex piece, though brief. In “dances dreams of the dead,” I imagine the dead being nothing, with nothing to dance to or about, and so stillness and emptiness of the ‘howling’ void as the dreams danced about the dead. What are you really getting at there?

Richard May[1],[2]*: ROFL! This little writing epitomizes some of my misunderstandings of G.I. Gurdjieff’s cosmology.

Jacobsen: What is the “devouring moon”?

May: LOL! Gurdjieff said that we were “food for the moon.” Go figure.

Jacobsen: There was an old 20th century science fiction author who tried to speak to a universe with conscious suns and such. I forget the name off the top of my mind. However, the term “star mind” brings this to – ahem – light for me. Is this, in any way, an allusion to this author?

May: no  Read some of Rupert Sheldrake’s works for discussion of possible star minds and galactic minds. Some of Dr. Sheldrake’s material has been banned from TedTalks. He must have a dangerous mind, I suppose.

Jacobsen: Do you know those videos or images of the light from the Sun reflecting less off the Moon as the Moon becomes darker, as the line of light recedes from its surface? The star mind devouring the Orphean strains of the devouring moon with the soul-eyed shadows reminds me of these. The “Endless sun” cycles over billions of years off the surface of the moonscape, the ‘food.’ Throw me a bone because I’m howling at the Moon!

May: The “Endless sun” is a reference to ‘God’ at one of the levels physicality in the cosmos and levels of symbolism. The sun has symbolized God in virtually every culture, as psychologist C.G. Jung has noted. This surreal little writing is based up my misunderstanding of the cosmology of G. I. Gurdjieff. Gurdjieff taught that what he meant literally was taken as an allegory and what he taught as allegory was taken literally. It gets a bit confusing. Some of what he taught is preposterous, e.g., that the moon is going to become another sun. But maybe preposterous was sometimes the point. E.g., “Believe nothing not even yourself.” — G.I. Gurdjieff

Jacobsen: Why title this “Fragments”? 

May: The original title of P. D. Ouspensky’s book In Search for the Miraculous was Fragments of an Unknown Teaching. The publisher preferred the former. Ouspensky, Gurdjieff’s foremost pupil, thought that he did not posses the complete teaching and/or that it was not entirely extant and the teaching was at least to him partially unknown. I repeat, he was Gurdjieff’s foremost pupil.

Jacobsen: “Yaldabaoth is Dead” opens with the line of perpetual unknowability of our ‘inner’ and ‘outer.’ Any statements on the great unknown inner and outer worlds?

May: This little writing is my rendering of the Lord’s Prayer. It begins, perhaps somewhat unconventionally, with Nietzsche’s “God is dead,” using one of the Gnostic names for the God of the Bible, i.e., the Demiurge, a sort of unintelligent, blundering Cosmic Builder.

Jacobsen: Also, “Our Unknown” is not “our unknown,” which seems more accurate. It’s a subtle and important distinction on “Yaldabaoth is Dead.” What is the “Unnameable” set apart from here? (Where is “here,” Scott? I don’t know anymore; I know nothing.)

May: “Our Unknown” is ‘God.’ “The Unnameable” is ‘God’. I think “set apart” is the original meaning of “sacred” in Hebrew.

Jacobsen: “Presence” is, as the others, capitalized, while in the context of “here and now.” The now seems like an interesting one to me. You’re, obviously, a scientifically literate and intelligent person and utilize scientific know-how in the context of poetic statements, where space and time are space-time. “Presence” is “here and now,” in the here-now, ya dig? Are you consciously making these distinctions, or is this more automated based on the rich background in reading about modern physics?

May: Presence is capitalized at the beginning of an almost sentence. I’m not conscious of what is done by me consciously and what unconsciously. I’m rather ignorant of modern physics.

Jacobsen: “As above, so below” is a famous statement, and the “doing” in lower and higher reflects this for me. Do you see a relation between these ideas in “Yaldabaoth is Dead” and the phrase from Hermeticism?

May: Yes, sure, a relationship, but also a rendering of “on Earth as it is in Heaven.”

Jacobsen: What is “transubstantial food”? Is it the insubstantial Catholic form of “transubstantial”?

May: Oh, I don’t know, maybe impressions of something higher than my own illusory-ego identity. I don’t know enough about Catholic dogmas to answer.

Jacobsen: Forgiveness is important. What’s been an important moment of forgiveness in life for you?

May: I forgive you for asking these questions. I forgive entropy and gravitation, for existing. I forgive ‘God’ for sinning against me and my family. I forgive Mother and Father for being f*cked-up human beings, like everyone else. — But can I forgive myself for not forgiving?

Jacobsen: I love the last two lines, quoting you:

And led not into distraction,

but delivered from sleep.

Can you forgive me for being distractible and falling asleep before sending more questions to you, until the next morning, please?

May: Yes, certainly, I can. But you will probably burn in the Hell of the Loving Father for Eternity or at least for the duration of one commercial break.

Jacobsen: “Don’t Take Your Life Personally. It’s Not About You!” has a title almost as long as the content. Bravo! It speaks, to me, to the limits of self-knowledge from recollection, reflections, even contemplative practices. We’re a mystery to ourselves, ultimately. Why does one’s existence preclude publicity of knowledge to oneself and the conveyance of this to others?

May: I first wrote this as irony. What can you take personally, if not your life? Then I realized that it also perfectly embodied certain esoteric ideas; We are food in a cosmic food chain. We may have a purpose in the cosmos that transcends our illusory ego-identity. 

Jacobsen: “Event Horizon” plays with terms referencing past and present, and future, and the references to the past and the future. We hope for the future. Yet, the hopes are placed in the past in it. We have a present, “Now,” and it’s placed “too far in the future.” Time’s an illusion, a persistent one; I have it on good authority. Anyhow, is this your physics seeping into the poetry once more, my friend?

May: MIT physicist Seth Loyd thinks that retro-causality from the future to the present can occur and that the past can be changed, I think. But we are rarely present here and now. Now is an imagined future state, ironically. But there is also sarcasm. As ordinarily conceived, we cannot have hope for the past. So how can we have hope for the present? … So this combines ‘physics’, esotericism, and sarcasm. It’s very straight forward.

But actually Event Horizon is the brand name of a delicious high gravity beer!

Jacobsen: “Klein-bottle Clock” is surrealistic, certainly. How many cups of coffee can you make with these eternity-measuring coffee spoons in a tablespoon, even a teaspoon?

May: This writing was inspired by a certain illustrious member of the higher-IQ community who was among those interviewed by a certain well-known publication. When asked what he was doing, he said among other things that he was building an “inside-out clock.”

Doubtless because I have a warped, non-Euclidean mind, this struck me as ridiculous. So as not to be outdone I wrote “Klein-bottle Clock.” The outside of such a clock would be identical with its inside!

Jacobsen: You quote Arthur Schopenhauer in relation to time as one’s life-time and eternity as one’s immortality, which presumes an embedded identity in eternity living out ‘simultaneously’ in the time of one’s life. So, how many coffee cups can you get from this?

May: Not even one at Starbucks.

Jacobsen: How is identity embedded in eternality and terminality?

May: Beats me! Ordinary psychology explains at least to a degree the the origin of our illusory egoic identities. The psychology of Buddhist philosophy and that of G.I. Gurdjieff also deal with this. I doubt that what we regard as our identity is preserved eternally.

Jacobsen: What kind of infinity is eternity?

May: No kind. Eternity is not an infinity, it is not infinite time. Eternity is the condition of being outside of time, e.g., the present moment.

Jacobsen: What kind of finite is a lifetime?

May: The Buddha compare a human lifetime to the duration of a flash of lightening.

Jacobsen: Have you had any difficulties measuring out a mornings cup o’ joe in a lifetime measurement using an eternal coffee spoon? Or is the embedment making it easy to just, you know, reduce the quantification of the grounds in the eternal coffee spoon? 

May: Sorry, I don’t understand the question.

Footnotes

[1] Co-Editor, “Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society.”

[2] Individual Publication Date: May 22, 2022: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/may-10; Full Issue Publication Date: September 1, 2022: https://in-sightjournal.com/insight-issues/.

*High range testing (HRT) should be taken with honest skepticism grounded in the limited empirical development of the field at present, even in spite of honest and sincere efforts. If a higher general intelligence score, then the greater the variability in, and margin of error in, the general intelligence scores because of the greater rarity in the population.

Citations

American Medical Association (AMA): Jacobsen S.  Conversation with Richard May (“May-Tzu”/”MayTzu”/”Mayzi”) on “Fragments,” “Yaldabaoth is Dead,” “Don’t Take Your Life Personally. It’s Not About You!”, “Event Horizon,” and “Klein-bottle Clock”: Co-Editor, “Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society” (10)[Online]. May 2022; 29(A). Available from: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/may-10.

American Psychological Association (APA, 6th Edition, 2010): Jacobsen, S.D. (2022, May 22).  Conversation with Richard May (“May-Tzu”/”MayTzu”/”Mayzi”) on “Fragments,” “Yaldabaoth is Dead,” “Don’t Take Your Life Personally. It’s Not About You!”, “Event Horizon,” and “Klein-bottle Clock”: Co-Editor, “Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society” (10). Retrieved from http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/may-10.

Brazilian National Standards (ABNT): JACOBSEN, S.  Conversation with Richard May (“May-Tzu”/”MayTzu”/”Mayzi”) on “Fragments,” “Yaldabaoth is Dead,” “Don’t Take Your Life Personally. It’s Not About You!”, “Event Horizon,” and “Klein-bottle Clock”: Co-Editor, “Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society” (10). In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 29.A, May. 2022. <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/may-10>.

Chicago/Turabian, Author-Date (16th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott. 2022. “ Conversation with Richard May (“May-Tzu”/”MayTzu”/”Mayzi”) on “Fragments,” “Yaldabaoth is Dead,” “Don’t Take Your Life Personally. It’s Not About You!”, “Event Horizon,” and “Klein-bottle Clock”: Co-Editor, “Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society” (10).” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 29.A. http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/may-10.

Chicago/Turabian, Humanities (16th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott “ Conversation with Richard May (“May-Tzu”/”MayTzu”/”Mayzi”) on “Fragments,” “Yaldabaoth is Dead,” “Don’t Take Your Life Personally. It’s Not About You!”, “Event Horizon,” and “Klein-bottle Clock”: Co-Editor, “Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society” (10).” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 29.A (May 2022). http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/may-10.

Harvard: Jacobsen, S. 2022, ‘ Conversation with Richard May (“May-Tzu”/”MayTzu”/”Mayzi”) on “Fragments,” “Yaldabaoth is Dead,” “Don’t Take Your Life Personally. It’s Not About You!”, “Event Horizon,” and “Klein-bottle Clock”: Co-Editor, “Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society” (10)’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 29.A. Available from: <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/may-10>.

Harvard, Australian: Jacobsen, S. 2022, ‘ Conversation with Richard May (“May-Tzu”/”MayTzu”/”Mayzi”) on “Fragments,” “Yaldabaoth is Dead,” “Don’t Take Your Life Personally. It’s Not About You!”, “Event Horizon,” and “Klein-bottle Clock”: Co-Editor, “Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society” (10)’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 29.A., http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/may-10.

Modern Language Association (MLA, 7th Edition, 2009): Scott D. Jacobsen. “ Conversation with Richard May (“May-Tzu”/”MayTzu”/”Mayzi”) on “Fragments,” “Yaldabaoth is Dead,” “Don’t Take Your Life Personally. It’s Not About You!”, “Event Horizon,” and “Klein-bottle Clock”: Co-Editor, “Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society” (10).” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 29.A (2022): May. 2022. Web. <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/may-10>.

Vancouver/ICMJE: Jacobsen S.  Conversation with Richard May (“May-Tzu”/”MayTzu”/”Mayzi”) on “Fragments,” “Yaldabaoth is Dead,” “Don’t Take Your Life Personally. It’s Not About You!”, “Event Horizon,” and “Klein-bottle Clock”: Co-Editor, “Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society” (10)[Internet]. (2022, May 29(A). Available from: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/may-10.

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