SKIPPING ROCKS WITH EINSTEIN

(please click)

1879-1955

PRESENTED BY:
the Wanderling

Over and over, for some reason, people seem interested in my comments regarding Albert Einstein. My Uncle first met Einstein in January or February of 1931 or 1932 in Pasadena, California, while both were traveling on the west coast. Although I am not sure of the specific circumstances surrounding their meeting, it was related somehow to Einstein visiting California Institute of Technology and my uncle being in the same general area at the same time. It is said the two of them had lunch in the Athenaeum at the Institute together. Why, I don't know. They both did have, at least at one time, similar or parallel political feelings, and may have met or been put together through a mutual third party. As well, my uncle had studied under John Sloan, who also had similar political views, and including Sloan, counted many upcoming and well established artists within his circle. Einstein's daughter Margot, who eventually studied sculpture with Oronzio Maldarelli at Columbia University, was in her early 30s at the time and an aspiring sculptor, so there may have been mutual acquaintances there.[1]

As to their meeting, in January of 1932, in an extremely rare weather event, downtown Los Angeles was hit with two inches of snow --- and the foothills of Pasadena a few miles northeast of downtown were peppered even harder. Einstein, who was at Cal Tech in Pasadena at the time, has been quoted as saying in jest that if he wanted snow he would have stayed in Germany. In January of 1949 I was a kid living in Los Angeles and once again the city was covered in snow. I remember being totally amazed by it all as well as my uncle saying the last time it snowed like that in L.A. he had just met Albert Einstein.

The meeting between Einstein and myself occurred two decades after that initial meeting between my uncle and Einstein. It took place near a dock that was close to what I was told was a boat house, along some lake near, I guess, Princeton, on the day of a new moon night of August, 1952. Most of the conversation centered around small talk, getting caught up and the like. However, I remember the timing of the meeting specifically because there was a brief discourse regarding the new moon Sun-Moon-Earth alignment and gravitational tidal attraction between them. It was brought up in conjuction with a much larger discussion between Einstein and my uncle. The scientist had been sailing a small boat and there was some joking about him coming in on the tide or what the tide brought in or some such thing (the lake not having a tide per se' of course). I was quite proud of myself for being able to cull out the meaning from the much larger conversation using astronomy stuff I had gleaned over the years through my association with my uncle and famed mathematician, meteorite hunter, and astronomer, Dr. Lincoln La Paz. I also remember Einstein knew my uncle well enough we could walk alone. At the time I didn't think much of it one way or the other, but as I look back now it always seems odd that a person could just walk up and start talking to someone with such stature as Albert Einstein. To me he seemed very old and quite frail. When he spoke he was hard to understand as his words were slow and heavily accented. He wore funny shoes and no socks. While we strolled along I was either way up ahead or dropping behind exploring or throwing rocks. Although he didn't attempt it himself, Einstein seemed totally amazed, sometimes engrossed, at my ability to skip stones across the surface of the lake, some with up to four or five bounces. As Einstein spoke with my uncle, all the while ensuring that I was within easy earshot, he recalled how he used to summer in Maine regularly several years before, and how he had a friend there he would walk with on the beach nearly everyday who, it seemed, could easily skip rocks a half dozen times before they eventually sank into the water.[2] Our tranquil walk was interupted by a man Einstein seemed to know who was walking with a woman, a fellow professor or scientist that I wasn't introduced to, named Immanuel Velikovsky.

I have many fond memories of my childhood with my uncle and the many great people I met under his auspices from the likes of Franklin Merrell-Wolff to Einstein. When I think back to that warm summer afternoon walking with Einstein, with his funny shoes, no socks, and his seeming fascination with my stone-skipping skills, I am reminded of a comment attributed to Larry Darrell, the main character in the novel The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham wherein at the end of the all-important Chapter Six Larry says:

"Nothing that happens is without effect. If you throw a stone in a pond the universe isn’t quite the same as it was before. . . It may be that if I lead the life I’ve planned for myself it may affect others; the effect may be no greater than a ripple caused by a stone thrown in a pond, but one ripple causes another, and that one a third; it’s just possible that a few people will see that my way of life offers happiness and peace, and the they in turn will teach what they have learnt to others."

I can't help but thinking Einstein had similar thoughts that afternoon, from seeing my stone throwing that day to the effects of his own theories on mankind.

RETURN TO:

THE WANDERLING: CONTINUED

SEE:

THE GREAT 1947 SUNSPOT AND CORONAL MASS EJECTIONS

MEDITATION ALONG METEOR CRATER RIM

ALBERT EINSTEIN ONLINE

THE DRAKE EQUATION

ROGERS AND DEVINE

ROSWELL UFO

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HERE FOR
ENLIGHTENMENT

ON THE RAZOR'S
EDGE

THE

RAZOR'S EDGE
RING

FOOTNOTE [1]

My uncle's mother was a Quaker. Even though he was raised in the religion he never followed it nor practiced it. However, through her practice of the religion his mother met and knew a woman by the name of Gretchen Green. Green was a nurse who just so happened went to India and opened, then ran, a health clinic for a major Indian personage by the name of Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore's father was a Maharshi and Tagore himself was an artist and international renowned poet, Tagore having received the Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature in 1913.

In October of 1930 Tagore was in the United States doing educational fundraising and exhibiting his artwork, with shows in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. Through the long standing connection between my uncle's mother and the nurse Gretchen Green, a steadfast healthcare professional who Tagore had an exceptionally high opinion of, my uncle was able to finagle an introduction --- an introduction that turned out to be much more destiny filled than just a mere passing handshake in a crowded, cold gallery.

While it is true my uncle never told me directly, it is my belief that it was through Tagore that my uncle was able to set HIS first meeting with Einstein. In July of 1930, about four months before my uncle met Tagore, Tagore Interviewed Einstein. It is thought, by extrapolating inferences over time from my uncle, that it was through the Tagore-Einstein connection the initial meeting between my uncle and Einstein unfolded, inturn setting the stage for the meeting between the scientist and myself as outlined above.

Tagore traveled in all the right circles, writers, artist, politicians, mystics, gurus. Among others he met Shunyata who, in 1974, I met as well. Equally interesting, during his 1930 visit, Tagore appeared on stage with the interpretive dancer Ruth St. Denis at the Broadway Theater in New York City. Inturn, twenty-four years later, it was St. Denis who, in 1954, introduced me to Swami Ramdas.

Although Tagore was not an Enlightened being nor did he present himself as such, he did play to the hilt the Indian side of things by strongly portraying himself as a mystic poet and philosopher --- which in all reality, he was. There was something soothing or mystic-like about him my uncle sensed while in his presence. In the process my uncle was taken by Tagore and, for awhile, immersed himself into Indian religious thought.

For my uncle, raised in a Quaker tradition, eastern spiritual thought seemed so open and exotic. About ten years before meeting Tagore the groundwork for things spiritual on the eastern side of things had been set into motion, generously, in an odd sort of way, opening the door for a much more receptive attitude by my uncle when Tagore came along.

From my uncle's early post high school years through to the end of the depression he was a struggling artist. He did everything he could to earn a few bucks as long as it was art related. In the early 1920s he took a job doing minor art resoration for Edward I. Farmer. Farmer was an art dealer in New York City with upscale galleries at both 5 West Fifty-sixth Street and 16 East Fifty-sixth Street. He offered a variety of Chinese works of Art as well as European antiques. He is remembered for the most part for mounting fine Chinese porcelains and jades into decorative lamps and desk accessories. While my uncle was working in the gallery studios he met a Japanese man by the name of Yeita Sasaki that was sculpting jade for Farmer. Sasaki, who at the time was a formost Zen adept and one of the first major Zen Buddhists in America, would, in 1928, become a full-fledged Zen master known as Sokei-an, receiving Inka Shomei from his teacher Sokatsu Shaku.

Sokei-an was an advocate of "direct transmission," as was his student and follower Mary Farkas. If you have gone to my page on Alfred Pulyan you may recall he too was an advocate of "direct transmission." You may also recall that Pulyan's mysterious female teacher, the person most responsible for his transformation, was a friend of Farkas. About "direct transmission," Sokei-an, in his own words, says:

"I am of the Zen sect. My special profession is to train students of Buddhism by the Zen method. Nowadays, there are many types of Zen teachers. One type, for example, teaches Zen through philosophical discourse; another, through so-called meditation; and still another direct from soul to soul. My way of teaching is the direct transmission of Zen from soul to soul."

Years later, because of a still lingering sub-surface lean toward Zen Buddhism and Indian philosophy-religion, and knowing I had been to India and returned in a somewhat can't quite put your finger on it altered state, it is my belief that my uncle talked with my father about his concerns, putting an India type philosophic-like spin on things. In the process he must have informed my dad that he had taken me to see Paramahansa Yogananda at his Self-Realization Fellowship near San Diego. My father never heard of Yogananda, but it just so happened he knew Franklin Merrell-Wolff, the two of them having met when they were both gold prospectors together in the old days. Talking with my uncle my dad remembered that Merrell-Wolff had some sort of a spiritual epiphany. Knowing him both before and after that epiphany, and remembering after that Merrell-Wolff exhibited similar --- as my father called them, fucked up tendencies --- he sent me and my uncle to see him. See The Tree.

RETURN TO:
UFO OVER L.A.: THE BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES

FOOTNOTE [2]

Several years after my above article on Einstein appeared for the first time on the web a reader of my works emailed me an article she came across regarding Einstein that she thinks discusses the same summer "rock skipping event" in Maine that he alludes to in my article. I submit the incidents so alluded to in both articles are uncanny in their comparison, so much so I think it could very well be the same event(s) as mentioned. For your own edification please go to:

A Single Drop of Water Helps to Swell the Ocean

The article is attributed to one Jason Emma Sattler who writes for Ten Car Train and a number of other web based sites --- usually found under a number of pseudonyms. He can be reached at Petenicely if you would like to comment on his Einstein article. At onetime, on his Stumbleupon Homepage, he provided the following:

Jason is a 32 year old guy in a relationship from Lafayette, California, USA. Member since Feb 06, 2007 I think Stumbleupon is the best thing to happen to my web browser since Google.

I am a writer and a teacher in Northern California. I read wildly and compulsively. Right now I'm in the middle of Middlemarch, Brothers K, Superfudge, The Four-Hour Workweek, How to Write a Damn Good Novel, Naked Lunch, a book on Faulkner and the Modernist novel and, finally and ironically, Getting Things Done. If you Stumble humor or fiction stuff, you may see some of my stories from dosmasks.com, tencartrain.com or valleyjew.com around. The opinions on and quality of both my writing and teaching vary. Verily I say to you, if you like one thing I write, you'll like something about most if it. If you hate it, your hatred will fester and seethe like a scar on Harry Potter's forehead. Now, I return to Stumbling.