"Tell me, Dzogvi, " I said, " whose consciousness are you trying to transcend?"

" Mine, of course, ' he said. "I want to get beyond thinking into the Astral Plane."

"So, " I said, "you are saying that inside that skin of yours there is some other entity thinking your thoughts and feeling your feelings that you need to control so that it will focus on non-focussed silence?"

"Well, when I talk about controlling myself, I guess there has to be me and somebody or something I am trying to control. I have to stop myself from eating too much, I have to make myself stop smoking ; I have to remind myself to do things."

" Which is the real you, , then, you or yourself?

" There's me, myself, my soul, my mind and...   "

"Stop, " I said. " You told me once about how you stood between two mirrors and saw your image reflected over and over and over. Which of those images was the real you?"

"None of them, " he conceded. " The real me was standing there and all of the reflections were only pointing at one another ; and they all disappeared when I stepped out from between the mirrors."

" Then perhaps it may occur to you that all of those other entities you seem to feel in your head are only reflections of the one you," I said. "Your consciousness consists in the present activity of your brain as it reflects the real-time input from your senses and the pre-recorded input which you call memory. "

" I think I have trouble focussing my mind., " Dzogvi said, "because I am trying to use my mind to focus my mind.  A mirror which reflects itself reflects only itself.

" But that's a Gotcha, Dzogvi, " I said. " You had better whomp up a revelation on Meditation, because you have just shot it in the back-side. Without something to transcend into and mental orgasms to experience, Meditation is just relaxation. That's not all bad, of course, but where's the Spiritual Holy Interesting Transitioninto the Spiritus Profundus? Martin Luther had some of his best Transitions while straining on the pot ;  but of course that was before Preparation H. You have got to promise your Pisants more than the equivalent of a Spiritual Bowel Movement.

" I have to be a bit careful with this Meditation thing, " Dzogvi said. "I am inclined to think that it is probably a good thing for people to turn off the tv, the radio, the computer, the kids, the spouse -- but on the whole, I think that most of this trancendentalization hype has come out of fakirs who realized centuries ago that they could get free meals and exemption from honest labor by peddling it to the credulous. How much talent does it take to sit cross-legged, get on a thousand-yard stare, and croon OMMMMMMMM?   And keep in mind, that they have had a millennium to get their act together and whomp up goodies like planes of existance, mantras, yantras and mudras, and a selected cast of thousands of of dieties."

"I wondered about that, " I said. " In India, in China, in all of the places where the Mystical Magical Maharishis sat, the common folk had to bust their butts, pardon the expression, just to get enough rice to live. When you spend your short hard life mucking around in the mud and hoping you won't fall ill with a thousand kinds of diseases, you grab on to anything that offers hope of something better, even if it is in the next life -- or in reincarnation as anything else. They were -- and still are, I guess, the people on whose backs the Maharishis exist. "

"Except in Los Angeles," Dzogvi said.  " We now have a large, prosperous, and  credulous middle class who pour millions of beautiful green bucks into the collection basket.  However,  as always, you speak words. I shall consult Ascaridius on this."