The skeptics apprentice.., p.1
The Skeptic's Apprentice: Astonishment at the Crumbling Edge of Reality, page 1
The Skeptic’s
Apprentice
The Skeptic’s
Apprentice
ASTONISHMENT AT THE
CRUMBLING EDGE OF REALITY
James Vincent Plath
Copyright © 2016 James Vincent Plath
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0692696776
ISBN 13: 9780692696774
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016912119
Dharma Lion Press, New York, NY
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Meeting the Master
Chapter 2 The Other Side of the Coin
Chapter 3 A Hard Pill to Swallow
Chapter 4 Down the Rabbit Hole
Chapter 5 Row, Row, Row Your Boat
Chapter 6 The Architecture of the Dream
Chapter 7 Sacred Outlaws
Chapter 8 Birth of a Bodhisattva
Chapter 9 Risking Everything
Chapter 10 Face to Face
Chapter 11 The End of Endings
Read this book
and then burn yourself up
in the fires of contemplation.
Dream Dialogue
One
Randi and I are sitting in a restaurant in Hawaii. (But it isn’t a restaurant. And we aren’t in Hawaii.)
Randi: (smiling) Jimmy, I can’t believe that we’re in Hawaii!
Me: But we’re not, Randi. We’re in New York. In my apartment.
Randi: We are in Hawaii, Jimmy. Certainly we’re in Hawaii!
Me: We are not.
Randi: Though I must say, these are just about the weirdest seat cushions I’ve ever sat on. Very thin!
Me: Well, that’s because they aren’t seat cushions. They’re maps, Randi. You are actually sitting on a map of Hawaii!
Randi: Hmm. This is a very strange restaurant, indeed.
Me: How do you like the food? Delicious?
Randi: No, no, it’s terrible. It tastes like cardboard!
Me: Well, maybe it tastes that way because you’re eating the menu, my friend.
Randi: (spits out chewed pieces of the menu onto the table)
Me: (wiping the corner of my mouth with a napkin, smiling) You should try the meal sometime, Randi.
Check!
CHAPTER 1
Meeting the Master
THE BEGINNING
MY STORY BEGINS IN THE great state of New York. I was born in Brooklyn to the most loving woman in the world, Carmela and to the toughest man I’ve ever met, Frank Plath. Carmela was going to be, of all things, a nun. Frank was a numbers runner, a street hustler, a real knock around guy. She was the incarnation of pure selfless love. He was a lot like Tony Soprano. Just rougher.
But the tough guy had a colossal heart and they fell in love and out I came: tossed mercilessly onto this great strange stage of confusion.
I was raised as a Catholic, but was quickly kicked out of religion class for asking one too many skeptical questions. The one that got me booted was a good one: Who made God? My religion teacher couldn’t answer that one and so she sent me packing. It was probably for the best.
My parents raised me to have a deep reverence for nature and science and a tremendous love of reading. Every Saturday, without fail, my mother and brother and I would take the bus to the Patchogue-Medford Public Library and I would return home with a stack of treasures. For free! Besides the great books, the other treat was that on those library days we were allowed to get a slice (or two!) of pizza and an ice cold Pepsi a few doors down from the library. Trust me when I tell you that if you’ve never had New York pizza, you’re missing out.
In the end, though, it was always all about the books. How I loved and still love books. I love the feel of them, the smell of them, everything about them. I bet you feel the same, dear reader, as you are right now reading this. I think you will really love it, this ride we’re about to embark on together, just you wait and see.
My mother’s stack of books always had some real heavy hitters included in it. She would take home passionate, heavyweight minds like Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Buber and Thomas Merton, just to name a few. My mom would keep her books on our kitchen corner table and I would gaze at the titles she had chosen with such longing, wishing I only had the understanding to read them, but knowing that I was far too young at the time. I remember skimming through her books and seeing so many sagely and enigmatic words. What in the world were they saying?
I knew that there was profound stuff stacked up high there in our kitchen. Would there be an answer to the question as to where both of my grandmothers went when they died? Or both of my grandfathers, who I had never even met, because both had died before I was born? Even at that very young age, I craved for immortality. I knew that the world might be a frightening place, but I also knew that I didn’t want to leave it.
I knew right then and there standing in that kitchen that I didn’t want to lose my mother and father and my brothers and sister and all of those that I loved. Most of all I knew that I didn’t want to lose my own self. I didn’t want my own consciousness to cease forever. That thought haunted me many a night. Yes, I would gaze at my mother’s philosophical books and quietly sit there in the kitchen with the tombstone blues.
PHILOSOPHY BEGINS IN DISAPPOINTMENT
Around this time I discovered philosophy, magic and the art of sleight of hand. From a very young age I wanted to do real magic. I tried and failed over and over again. It just didn’t work! I quickly learned that there wasn’t such a thing as breaking the laws of physics, so I settled for sleight of hand and the art of conjuring tricks.
One of my all-time favorite philosophers, Simon Critchley, once wrote that philosophy begins in disappointment. So it goes. I went out and bought a top hat and cape and a deck of cards and declared to my family and friends that I was an existential magician. I was twelve years old.
One day I asked my parents if they would please take me to a magic shop. They just looked at each other and smiled and then my dad said let’s take a ride to Port Jefferson. The magic shop was big and mysterious and had all sorts of strange masks and novelty items and best of all it was teeming with magic tricks. The owner, Ronjo, was very nice and he gave me personal attention and was just so wonderful to both me and my parents.
I will never forget the moment when he made a small red ball vanish into thin air, only to have it reappear seconds later, stuck to the ceiling high above my head. That was it. I was hooked. I bought my very first trick (a set of four of those magical red sponge balls) and began a life of magic and wonder that continues to this day.
SUPER MAGIC
By the age of fifteen I had found the two people, both world famous and extraordinary magicians, who would become lifelong heroes of mine. One was the brilliant magician Paul Harris, who many consider to be the greatest card magician of all time and a true innovative genius. I devoured book after book by Paul Harris, every one of them jam-packed with magical ingenuity. The ideas that he had created were beyond anything my young and voracious mind had ever witnessed.
To this day I have never seen anyone handle a deck of cards like Paul Harris. On guitar, Eddie Van Halen is the joyous wizard of the fret board and Paul Harris is the Eddie Van Halen of card magic. One of his books in particular, Super Magic, changed my life. This was a work of pure genius filled to the brim with far out, mind twisting ideas and beautiful, entertaining routines. There still isn’t any magic book like it. Paul Harris made me want to quit high school and be a true magical artist.
THE AMAZING ONE
The other guy was James “The Amazing” Randi, the world’s greatest escape artist since Houdini, who is an incredible magician and a heroic combatant of fraudulent psychics and other bizarre claims. The Amazing Randi was billed as The Man No Jail Could Hold and he was able to somehow escape from handcuffs, chains, ropes, jails-- just about anything. He even escaped from a straightjacket while hanging upside down high over Niagara Falls! A very mysterious fellow indeed.
James Randi also seemed to know everything. Smart? He had a 168 IQ (off the charts!) and was very well read in many subjects, such as physics and astronomy, just to name a few. Randi’s good friends were many of the geniuses of the twentieth century, including the Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman, the prolific author and scientist Isaac Asimov, the famous astronomer and creator of the Cosmos series, Carl Sagan, and the great writer Martin Gardner.
It also helped add to his mystique that Randi looked like a true wizard with his long white beard and equally bushy and skeptical eyebrows. This is the man who famously busted the psychic Uri Geller and hundreds and hundreds of other con artists who preyed on a gullible public. Randi is also the guy who single handedly took down the fraudulent faith healers and was granted the MacArthur Genius Award for his great work.
During one of my weekly library visits with my mother and brother I checked out a paperback book called The Magic of Uri Geller by James Randi. This book had such an effect on me that I really did consider quitting school. I didn’t like how the teachers were teaching at all. There was no soul to their teachings, no instilment of wonder, no fire in their eyes. The Magic of Uri Geller also included, on the very last page, a challenge Randi had issued to all psychics. Randi offered to pay ten thousand dollars to anyone who could demonstrate the existence of paranormal powers under proper observing conditions. At the bottom of the challenge was Randi’s full home address, in Rumson, New Jersey. Hmm…
SCATTERING JOY
At school, I was on fire with my reading and magic and was also a big hit in the school cafeteria. I was a little shy, so my classmate Nicky Garone, who wasn’t shy at all and loved my magic, would bang his hand loudly on the table and shout out that it was magic time! My fellow students and friends would come running over and Nicky would just smile excitedly and say to me, Go get them, buddy! Knock ‘em dead!
That was my cue to whip out my trusty pack of playing cards and those red sponge balls and some coins and go to work, razzling and dazzling my classmates with magic, much of it inspired by Paul Harris and his amazing books. It was a joy for me to make those kids happy and believe me, this was no easy crowd to please. The angles in that cafeteria were atrocious. I had students in front, in back, next to, and practically in my pockets. I was totally surrounded and the only crowd control I had was good old Nicky, beaming. This was where I learned to hone my craft, where I learned to deal with any angle and any situation and be able to pull off some amazing feats. It also taught me to be the best in the world, no matter what the circumstances were. To deliver the goods.
Best of all, to scatter joy!
Eventually, I decided that high school just wasn’t for me. The teachers weren’t teaching curiosity of knowledge, they were just ploughing ahead through the readings, many of them teaching the same thing year after year. I needed some time to get away and to create something new. I felt suffocated and I knew I had to get out and be free. I even started to cut classes, cleverly sneaking past the guards like Houdini and walking up to the main road to take the bus to the magic shop.
There, or at the library, I felt completely at home. There in the magic shop or the library I was surrounded by mystery and I felt a strong pull towards wonder.
Little did I know what really was behind that pull.
I talked my parents into allowing me to leave school with the promise that I would return shortly. I just needed to be alone and to create at my own pace and do my own thing. I met with my guidance counselor, Mr. Baglio, who in a last ditch effort, tried to talk me out of leaving school. He was a real nice guy, but he just didn’t get it. He thought I was throwing my life away. He said, You want to be a what? A magician?
Mr. Baglio smiled and reached into his pocket and came out with a shiny quarter and flipped it to me across his big desk. He told me to go and buy a newspaper and then come back and show him all the jobs listed in the classified section for magicians. He laughed. I held the quarter in the palm of my hand for him to see, then slowly closed my fingers around it. I told him to watch as I gently blew on my hand. Again, slowly, I opened my hand, finger by finger.
It was totally empty! His quarter had vanished into thin air. Gone! I smiled and looked him directly in the eyes. His eyes and mouth were wide open, in complete amazement. There would be no more words from him. I told him I’d be back in the winter and threw him a wink and was out the door in a flash. Gone!
So that September, as eleventh grade was just heating up and just shy of my sixteenth birthday, I asked my loving mother to put pen to paper and to sign me out of school. I needed the freedom to read what I wanted, at my own faster pace, plus the freedom to create on my own, and to just burn, burn, burn. School was completely stifling that. Believe it or not, I did have a plan. I’d leave in September and come back in January after the holiday break. Then I would double up and take twelfth grade during the summer and graduate early. My parents reluctantly agreed. They trusted that I knew what I was doing.
At home, I slept upstairs in our half-finished attic and so as to not have any bad influence on my younger brother, Rob, I would stay quiet on school mornings, not moving or making a sound until he left for middle school. This ensured that he would think that I had already left for school every day before him and arrived home before him, too. I did this for four months. Rob never said a word about it, so the plan worked!
As soon as my brother had left for school and I heard the front door shut, I bolted downstairs and gobbled up some breakfast and read something amazing while I ate. Then, it was on! It was Michael Jordan time for me. It was Eddie Van Halen time. This meant it was time to put in the 10,000-20,000 hours and become a true master. As Salvador Dali wrote, to become a genius, one must play at being a genius. I played hard. It was time to learn as much as humanly possible and also to work as hard as I could on my magic skills and read everything I could get my hands on concerning philosophy, psychology, anthropology, cosmology, the neurosciences, art, literature, world masterpieces, poetry, and plays. The works!
Those few months off were such a creative time for me. During my self-imposed exile, I even dared to pen a letter to The Amazing Randi himself, telling him how much I admired him and asking for magic lessons at our house. In return, because I was just sixteen and penniless, I vowed to him that as payment my parents would cook him marvelous meals of delicious Italian and German food.
Hey, it was worth a shot, right?
SHIELDS AND SCHULZ
This wasn’t my first foray into reaching out to my heroes by mail. I had already written to the pretty model and actress Brooke Shields and also to Charles Schulz, the creator of The Peanuts cartoons. Now Brooke Shields was no hero of mine. She was more like a muse. I wrote her a really nice letter after seeing her on television and told her how beautiful she was and that I had this crush on her. She was kind enough to send me a colorful postcard thanking me for my interest. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that it was only a form letter reply that she probably sent out to everyone who had bothered to write her, but that was okay with me. I really enjoyed the picture of her on the front of the postcard, featuring Brooke lying on the floor looking up at me in her skin tight Calvin Klein jeans. So what if it was a form letter? The only form I cared about back then was her’s in those form fitting jeans. Hey, I was a healthy, growing boy. I tucked Brooke under my pillow and slept well.
Charles Schulz was a different story. He really did write me back. Shortly after writing him, I received a note written directly to me, even quoting details of my letter. I knew this to be the case, because I had sent him a drawing of Snoopy that I had done by hand and asked him for a job! Charles Schulz wrote me back saying that he pretty much had Snoopy and the Peanuts gang covered, although he did like my picture and that I did draw a really good Snoopy. His advice to me was that I should create something new, something of my own.
POSTCARD FROM THE EDGE
A few weeks after I had written that letter to Randi, a postcard arrived in the mail. Like the Brooke Shields postcard, this postcard also had a picture on the front. Thankfully, unlike Brooke’s postcard, The Amazing Randi wasn’t pictured lying on the floor in a pair of skin tight Calvin Klein jeans! This postcard featured a huge black and white photo of The Amazing Randi’s face, with his famous long white beard and raised eyebrow. I slowly flipped over the card and read it.
Hi Jimmy. While I can’t visit you out on Long Island, you are welcome to come here and visit me in New Jersey.
Wait. What!
I quickly flipped back to The Amazing Randi’s face. That beard! That eyebrow! His intense and penetrating skeptical stare. Both of my eyebrows raised in amazement. I read on. It said that he was going to be away for most of November and December, but that he would return home for the holidays in late December and he asked for me to pick a day and to please give him a call to confirm.
What a way to cap off my self-imposed high school sabbatical! There, at the bottom of the postcard, he had written his home phone number. This was no form letter, ladies and gentlemen. This was the real deal. My heart was pounding as I read it over and over again, all alone in the house. In true Zen fashion, I didn’t waste any time. I called and got Randi’s machine and left a message, choosing December 26th, the very next day after Christmas.
When that day finally arrived, was I ready. I had practiced and read for ten hours a day, every day, leading up to the holidays. Just to be on the safe side, my parents sent me off to New Jersey with my older brother, Frankie. Frankie was a bricklayer and tall and tough like my father. My parents knew that no one was going to mess with me or hurt me with Frankie around. Frankie and I had a fun talk on the train ride to Jersey and I could tell even Frankie was excited to meet The Amazing One!
