Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Revised, Corrected, and expanded version of mhy Astgral Monk Blog


Astral Monk

Friday, July 20, 2012



            Welcome back! I received a very well written book about setting up a not-for-profit church or foundation a week ago, and I will begin applying for the exempt status very soon. Then yesterday the mail brought a certificate from the Universal Life Monastery bestowing the title of Spiritual Counselor on me. It looks nice near my PhD diploma and the four self-produced notices* listing the regionally accredited schools I graduated from with a BA, BS, and two MAs. On the door of the front bedroom (my studio and office), I hung a nicely framed text: "Bro. James' Cloister."
I decided to become the Astral Monk James about the middle of June. I am a retired educator. I taught as a De La Salle Christian Brother in New Mexico and Louisiana for eight years. In my fifty-year career, I was e certified educator in Louisiana, New Mexico and New Your City and State, as well as the Department of Defense Dependent Schools. I don't know if those certificates have lapsed since I retired and left active teaching and managing in the secondary schools where I spent most of my time from 1959 to 2005. I was an adjunct, lecturer, program coordinator or guest professor at a number of schools including Louisiana State University, the University of Maryland and Assumption University of Thailand/  I also  contributed to The Science Teacher and Science Scope 1983-1994 and had a weekly education column in The Bangkok Post in 2007.
            I've written or contributed to novels, a history book, a middle school and a high school textbooks, and my works have been republished in journals and books.
          But why become a monk? Well, as I said above, I taught as a Christian Brother for eight years. I spent six years training to be a Catholic monk, and I liked being a monk, but as times changed, I changed, and with Rome's approval I moved on.
           I continued as an active lay Catholic, working mainly as a composer, singer and directors of music programs at the Catholic chapel of NYU and in the Army chapels in Schweinfurt and Heidelberg. Misunderstandings made it impossible to continue that service when a new chaplain arrived in Schweinfurt, and ceased complete in my years in Ansbach. I was not involved in church work after I returned to America in 1995, but was more involved when I accepted a position as guest professor of educatonal leadership at Assumption Universotu of Thailand, a pretigious Catholic institution in Bangkok in 2005. My new boss was the president of the school, and was a member of the Brothers of St. Gabriel. It was great being back among brothers, though I was a layman and soon married a Buddhist doctoral student in her Cambodian home, blessed by four saffron robed Monks.
          During my time in Thailand I started and sustained a blog on religion and spirituality on Blogit.com/   it c instantly ranked in the top ten blogs on that subject and many comments came in, always very positive and enthusiastic.  I was amazed when I discovered there were over two thousand BlogIt bloggers writing on that subject. I was gratified at my success!
           I left BlogIt to save money when my wife entered Harvard ten days after receiving her floppy doctoral hat and her red robes with the three velvet stripes on each arm in our last formal event at
Assumption University of Thailand in Bangkok.  I sat just behind the president as he handed her the PhD diploma.  There were 8,000 graduates on the floor of the Convention Center, with more thousands of parents and friends in the audience.  She was the only new doctor to earn her degree with a GPA of 4.0, summa cum laude.

          Ten days later, she was at Harvard seated in the spacious studio-classroom at 1 Story Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, studying climate change and the complex ethical questions it involved. The two kind professors allowed me to attend as a guest auditor.  She earned her A, and in the fall semester, instead of continuing her post-doctoral studies, she used the cash she earned while working port-time during the course to start her own business in Boston, across the street from the historic Boston Macy’s.  She also took a position as medical interpreter at the famous Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a Harvard teaching hospital.  I began helping her regularly, especially on the days when she was called to the hospital.  I enjoyed working with her and for her while continuing to manage the little DrHansonScience Center from our home in Belmont, Massachusetts, just down the street from Harvard and MIT. The center produced my Mark V and Mark VI Lou-Vee-Air™Cars and eventually produced the first draft of my Teachers” Manual and Handbook that explained how to assemble and use the AirCar.

          Buoyed by me experience as a guest at Harvard, I helped a law professor at Penn State edit part of a book that was then published as an academic article on the professor’s acclaimed climateethics.org blog.  It is about the ethical obligations nations have when they contribute to global warming and neglect taking the means to reduce CO2 emmisions.


           I am not currently involved with Catholic institutions, but lately, in my quiet, uninvolved retirement, I have felt called to lead a monk’s life once again after 44 yeas.   I am settling in for a long stay in Austin, Texas, mainly because of the easy access I have to the medical services I need, the easy-going southern atmosphere, the access I have to my grown daughter and her lively friends and associates, and because of the exciting tempo of the musical community here.  From the gritty electric blues at the Victory Grill in mhy daughter’s neighborhood to the big band sounds of so many music graduates, and the parado of festivals Austin offers year-round, it’s a ery good place for me.

            But all this not enough.  I look at the powerful effect I’ve had on hundreds, maybe thousands of people as a teacher, school administraqtor, lecturer and mentor, and am determined to put my gifts to use in an acgtibve way as a 21st century monk,  I know the path I must tred in this my last quarter century of life on our beleaguered planet, and I will not wait patiently until some church wakes up to meet the drastically shifting needs of people living through these stressful times.

           This week I will visit the county clerk’s office and present my proposal for founding a not-for-profit organization that I will lead, drawing to it volunteers around the world who will support its work.  It’s chief aim is to comfort the victims of the times, people whose church has let them down, whose marriage is unsustainable, whose children are in danger, or who feel helpless to help themselves.  A glance at any tabloid proves that even the high and mighty celebrities face disillunions and disappointments, and the newspapers relate the woes of the common people everywhere.  The internet provides ways of helping people that ever existed before.  I write to former students in  Vietnam, Wales, Hong Kong and Boston.  I try to assiste them as they struggle with their plans and challenges.

            As I consider what I'd like to do in the fourth and final act of my personal drama. I will be a monk again. Forever?  I don’t have a gift for prophecy, but because  I've had six years of training for the monk’s life, and and eight years of practice as a religious Brother, I know what I must do to be a happy and effective monk.  As a self-appointed "Astral Monk," I will bring comfort and sense of belonging to those who come to me. I will welcome those who wish to join my Brotherhood/Sisterhood, As I did when I was writing my frequent posts at BlogIt.com, I will strive to inspire readers with courage and free them from fear and timidity, self-doubt, despair and anger. I will provide spiritual companionship in the difficult days that lie ahead, and I will be prepared to continue “to reach the unreachable stars!:”

          I saw Man of Ls Macha on Broadway.  If you have not listened to the famous “Impossible Dream,” please do.  It’s one of the great statements humanity was created for dreamers like me, and you may  enjoy it too.
          At Blogit.com, I called myself Twainman, partly in honor of Mark Twain, who spent some time visiting in Dilsberg, Germany decades before my family and I moved there, and partly because my grandfathers were both linked to trains. My mother's dad managed the construction of a rail line built from Lafayette, Louisiana to Arkansas and beyond in the late 19th century. He retired from the railroad after a long career. My dad's father was overseer of the large and historic Enterprise Plantation in Louisiana, and headed the construction of the narrow-gauge railroad that ran through the widespread sugar cane fields and transported the hand-cut cane back to the refinery where it was ground and processed into sugar.

          Now I hope that I can maintain the humor Mark Twain had, with a little less bite to it, and move farther into the Spiritual realms that I explored in my
Blogit days.

           Let me describe my Monastery, or Cloister, in Austin. It's a two-bedroom apartment in north Austin, quiet, for people 55 and older. Like my quarters on the Catholic campus of Assumption University in Bangkok, it has a swimming pool I can visit everyday. It is also quiet, since the older people here are not rowdy and tend to be friendly and kind. My bookshelf has Catholic, Protestant and Buddhist books, psychology and science book, photography books, music books and a variety of large National Geographic books filled with pictures and feature articles about world cultures, ecology and the cosmos.  

(You can  go to YouTube.com and search for DrHanzonScience.  I uploaded a couple of new “talking into the camera” videos there, kind of ad-libbing my first two messages about my Astral Monk James undertaking.  You’ll see that the wall in the background is very “monastery” style, except for my playful little spinning propellers, that are there to remind everyone that while I am living the transformational life of the spiritual quest, I also depend my my scientific adventures and inventions for my livelihood!)

          You and I find ourselves in perilous times. Anxiety is everywhere.  Amid the natural disasters, mass murders and political turmoil, people are desperate for comfort, reassurance, and something to believe in. Something solid. That's really impossible, since in physics, nothing is really
“solid.”  Technically, “solid” is a state of matter, and matter is intrinsically changeable!  Atoms are composed of wavelike electrons in motion around the unimaginably tiny speck called the nucleus. Even iron, lead and gold atoms are mostly space! if you hit your thumb with a hammer, it's not the atoms in the steel that hurt you. The iron, carbon, cobalt and other stoms in the hammer head individually are harmless. It's the invisible forces holding the atoms together that bruise your thumb. The elemental atoms are harmless individually.  And the forces?  They are pushes and pulls caused by the pervasive energy that seems to occupy all the space in the unibverse.  Believers attribute that the a Higher Power.  Like most Americans, I refer to that Power as “God,” and assume God is all-knowing and is the source of all energy and power.That’s a way of saying, God is everywhere, and keeps everything in existence.  Non-believers, agnostics and atheists simply deny these conclusions and say they don’t believe in them.  I notice that they generally assume that gravity, inertia, momentum, movement and the material universe we experience is “real.”  So whether we are non-believers or believers, we end up doing the same thing when we take an elevator: we make a practical “act of faith” in What Is, and hope no human technicians screwed anything up!
           So for something "solid," you have to reach for something that's not made of atoms, not made of parts at all. The only things that are not made of parts are spirits and the forces that rule all existence. 

           In everyday life, many or perhaps most people cling to the Eternal Truths they find in their religion’s sacred texts or learned from their homelife.  The Hebrew and Christian Bibles, the Koran,  Buddhist Pali texts, Hindu Scripture,s and the truths still alive in oral traditions are all simply reflections, analogs, analogies based on God's Truth as It was understood at the time when it was written, God's Nature and temperament are presented as the original writers himagined them.  Universally, cultures are made up of people who revere their own special writings or oral traditions as true expressions of their own classic Sacred Truths.  

          A passage in the New Testament says, "Everything holy and wholesome is from God." That's true even if the ideas expresses is the work of creative artists, painters, sculptors, playwrights, composers, actors and actresses, producers and directors, novelists and poets.
If you find what is really wholesome in a phrase by St. Paul or the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, or the writings of truly inspired people, you can hang on to that good expression, statement, or work of art.  It's solid if it is God-like. And “God-like” means it is good, positive, and filled with something that touches the heart, opens the spiritual eyes, and in no way hurts you or others.  It has to be Good, because God is Good, not mean, hateful, vengeful, impatient, jealous, greedy, hypocritical, lazy, cruel, vain and full of false pride, pompous and untruthful, dishonest and devoted to evil powers.

                                    Things I Don’t Do

          What I don't do: don't preach. I listen and respond, opening my heart and mind to God’s influence, begging God to let me say nothing that is wrong or harmful. 

           I don’t use the Bible or Koran or any other sacred text as a club to beat you with, I put myself in God’s hands, taking the essence of God's word, wherever it comes from, and I explain its real meaning. I have a gift for explaing things in a way people can understand, whether it is a physics or chemistry idea or something regarding faith, hope and love.  I see the true meaning because I know God's mind, for I have surrendered my own opinions to Devine Enlightenment. I act as a messenger carrying God's messages to you. I have done that all my life. It's a natural gift. Others have recognized that.  But no, I am not some deluded Wannbe guru, prophet, saint or oddball.  My understanding of physics and chemistry is not visionary and universal.  I concerns everyday concepts where things are simple.  I don’t pretend to offer new devine revelagtions or see mystical visions, either.  I just do my best to explain basic understandings in         simple terms, for I am basically a simple person with simple idas and principles.  
  

                Seeing with the Soul, Hearing with the Heart


          Somehow I hear people cry out through their eyes, I see their burdens in the way they walk, and listen to their silence. I can close my eyes and see the world as it may be in twenty, forty, sixty years. I don't “prophesize,” but I is easy to imagine the world as it will be in the future because I see where roads lead, I see the outcome of the choices we as individuals, as Americans, and as members of the huge and restless human race are making. I don't think about their bad choices in terms of sin, guilt, or Devine Retribution. That's generally the preoccupation of highly committed "religious" people, people who are living out a script written their parents, priests, preachers, mullahs, rabbis and zealots who themselves were strongly influenced or controlled by the teachings, practices, traditions and moral rules of their human mentors. You may know some pious people, following the harsh and deeply ingrained negative attitudes they learned in childhood or youth, harbor hatred and are convinced it is a reflection of "God's righteousness." But they are wrong. God is abundance, God is love. He has decided not to rob us of our free will. He knows some people are deliberately mean. But that's not how God is!



                 Example of What I See Coming

          Within five years people will be in desperate heed of food, water and housing  It will be clear that living conditions have taken a cosmic shift, and everyone will be doing things differently. 

          The motor vehicles will be different, more obsolete than we could  ever guess right now.  NASCAR will disappear. 

           The expensive and completely short-sighted building of elevated expressways an wonderfully connected and interwoven highways will be used for housing, with the cround beneath them paved to support housing and markets,   In places, walls will stretch from the ground up to the elevated roadway, and people will live beneath the roadways.

           On the roadwas themselves vehicles will move along drawing their motive power from the ambient energy filling the biosphere from solar energy and the energy transmitted from bnroadcasting towers and seized by power seizing antenns on the vehicles.s

            Individuals will not have to “drive” their  personal vehicles.  The vehicles (which will have replaces the “cars, vans and light trucks” we use today) will express the attitudes, status, and self-image of the owner and the entirely new world of the future.

          The climate will have caused massive retreats from the rising seas.

           Chaos in the American economy will have settled out as people adjusted to the new facts of life.  Things will be “normal” again but “normal” will be far different from what it is now, in the summer of 2012.                                       

                      Today’s Situation, Summer, 2012

Many find themselves bound as if in straitjacket by rules they hate. Many fear God will punish them for being true to themselves. Many profess to love God yet have no problem hating other people, other religions, other viewpoints. They hate people who have different morals, sexual feelings, spending habits, foreign accents, educational levels, skin colors, shapes, hair in the wrong place or the wrong color or texture, or addresses in the wrong part of town. Hate is powerful. It feeds on perceived unfairness and frustrated desires. It feeds on insecurity, fear of the unfamiliar, and feelings of self-loathing.

Oh how I pray that one word, one smile, one helping hand can shock a hater into the stunning realization that the hated one is okay! The hated one is really good! Really a fellow human, really an eternal conscious being operating in a unique human body, as strange or ugly or even as frighteningly beautiful that body may be!

Do you share some of these feelings? These are the dreams I live by, wishing that all people might somehow recognize that we are all alive because God - by whatever name we give our Higher Power!- is the source of our very existence, the sustainer of our lives, the ever flowing River of Life, Source of Light, Maker and Master of the entire Realm of Being, the Limitless Well of Wellness, Giver of Being.

Join me as you read these words. Place your soul's being in the hands of the Almighty, and breathe deeply. Hold the moment. It is a sacred moment. Now rise, and let us walk with God, with Divinity, with Peace Personified. Forget all the hate, all the sinister rules, all the false prophecies that may be ruling your life. Raise your spirit to the Realm of Heaven. Forget the cartoon "Heaven," that infinitely wide cloud city ruled by a crotchety Old Man in wearing a Long White Nightgown, but raise your soul to where the Almighty really is, where there is no time, no distance, no pushing or pulling, no hurry, worry or fear. It is where people who have had areal near-death experience found themselves, where Reality is the light and substance of existence, and where the souls are one with each other and full of joy being with their Maker.

As some read these words, they will click away and escape this endless babbling. Or perhaps some hidden hatred will find yet another thing to hateh. I hope, you are not like that. Instead, you choose to join with me in Spirit. I hope you catch a breath the clean, fresh air of Freedom and feel yourself rising from the heaviness of Earthly life and for at least a moment, enter into the realm of Transforming Love. If you do, please return soon for more time with me as I welcome you into my Astral Home, my home in the center of God's love. I want you to spread your wings and take to the sky, right with me. I hope to be with you again, soon.
James, your Brother in the Starry, Starry Night.
* I lost all my other 4 diplomas, but have the official transcripts unopened and with raised seals.



Wednesday, July 18, 2012



Astral Monk James July 18, 2012



A Short Post about my adventures today







Tomorrow I have to finish some work on my paradigm changing

Science education project, so this will be brief.

I was touched by several religious videos on YouTube tonight.

With my Catholic background, hearing the beautiful background choral music with the echoing reverberation provided by a large cathedral (or some digital editing) it was inspiring to look at videos under the subject of Virgin Mary Appears in a Tree. Related videos
came up: Virgin Mary Appeared in Egypt, the Virgin Mary statue Opens her eyes, and so on. It made me think maybe I should narrow my focus and start my Religious Order, or my Brotherhood/Sisterhood, under the mantle of the sacred mother of Jesus. Readers who may find this offensive or too “Catholic” can relax, I’m still thinking as a Cosmic Brother rather than as a Roman-ruled monk. People are really justified in being suspicious of Roman meddling in our personal spiritual lives. Like every human on earth, Roman Catholics have the right and duty to think for themselves, and make up their own minds, whether it’s in regard to our pious practices or our private sex livesg. I still revere the Holy Mother, but I want to address all people who can use a little spiritual comfort and a kind, sympathetic listener.

Here are some items from my little life over the past ten days. My friend is unemployed. We chatted about it. My science education publications and the science devices that I produce have to go back on the market. I’m corresponding with the corporation in New York that markets them for me. I purchased two desk chairs. I returned the first to get a heavy-duty one. I found the replacement at a Thrift Store, but it turned out to have a broken caster. The plastic glue is curing. Today I received my documentation in the Universal Life Church, but the package was too big for my mailbox. It was placed in the office. I’ll get it tomorrow.



Meanwhile, words cannot express the lift I got Sunday afternoon when my younger daughter came by for a swim and a visit with Dad. She told me she’d take me to visit my sister and her husband in Louisiana July 19-22, so I’m excited about that. She’s a therapist as a local spa, and related a psychic experience that occurred last week, and told me she wants to take hypnotherapy instructions. I’ll find an instructor, and we’ll do it together. That will make me better at Spiritual Counseling. I put up my framed diplomas from five colleges and universities last night, and hope to hand my Counselor document tomorrow after I purchase a frame.



I was pleased at how my reacted to my newly decorated and reorganized apartment. We are very close as co-travelers in this world of time, space, energy and force, truly kindred spirits in every way.



I must sign off now, but please keep returning to the Astral Monk Blog at AstralMonk blogspot.com and I’ll be with you again soon.



Abundant blessings every step of your way,

James, the Astral Monk



Monday, July 16, 2012

Happiness and an invitation to join me in a Spiritual Journey

The Astral Monk



July 15, 2012







It’s been said by people as diverse as Dale Carnegie, Ingrid Bergman, and John Gray, but it’s a powerful truth:



‘Success is when you get what you want.



Happiness is when you love what you get.”



Spiritual people seem to be happier than materialistic, earth-bound people are because they are free from the confines of time and space that create an illusion of power, wealth, permanence and “reality” in the period we spend occupying our corporal bodies. Being loosed from the churning cycles of rise and fall, good times and bad times, and the vain hope for having and holding, building and sustaining the delights of “here and now,” without a spiritual awareness of the timeless and universal realities that one can enjoy even as one exists in this puzzling, baffling and frustrating condition we call “being alive,” a spiritual person possesses and enjoys life on a higher plane, where happiness is eternal and beyond he grasp of misfortune and inevitable death.







I welcome you into the Spiritual Life. As a Spiritual Counselor, I extend my love to you, and want to share with you the joys and freedom only Spiritual beings can possess.







It is a delight to reach out to you, to feel the thrill of Spiritual Union. I trained to be a Roman Catholic teaching brother, and wore the monk’s black robe and cloak and little white “rabat” around my neck. It was a glorious experience, a time of joy and fellowship, and now, forty-four later, I am sitting along in my apartment, in a community of people “55 or Better,” far from churches and shrines, missing the mission I once enjoyed, bringing meaning and joy and insight into the lives of young people. I am determined to heed the call again, to follow a new path, a Spiritual Life, remembering that, “To whom much has been given, much shall be expected.” Somehow, people are attracted to me, find comfort in my words and open their hearts to me. At seventy-five, I am not the handsome, talented young man I was as a De La Salle Brother. My spiritual life is so much more mature now, and the vicissitudes of youth are behind me. My travels in Europe, Asia and the United States of America have expanded my consciousness and mellowed my temperament I am embarrassed to think how limited I was, and still am.







As the grind and fires of life temper the steel and purify the gold, my decades have worn off some of my rough edges and purified my motives. I have lost much of the “attitude” I once exhibited, and am more understanding of the way people in higher echelons of systems handle difficult situations. Some dance around issues, some pretend there are no issues, and some boldly tackle difficult problems, with some success and often without success. “That’s life!”



I hope you contact me if you feel troubled by relationships with individuals, with the expectations or demands of your spouse, your children, your boss or your pastor. Maybe I can just be a good listener. Maybe I can offer you some sympathy. Maybe we can pray together about a difficulty you find.



Maybe you, too, are ready to help others, joining me in my journey into Spiritual Counseling. I consider myself a kind of Astral Monk, convinced that other individuals of various kinds populate the Cosmos, and visit our planet. Is that too far out? Evidently, it is a notion ridiculed and shunned by those too rigid or timid to study the matter. That’s okay, but I know the Astral realities, I’ve accepted the fact that we are spirits in corporal bodies, composed mostly of water, with some carbon, oxygen, iron, sulfur, chromium, sodium and nitrogen stirred in, operating within our various organs and systems by processes programmed into our cellular chemistry, our nerves, and our brains. Beyond that, we are spiritual beings, with “souls,” that are capable of doing unimaginably mystical or paranormal things even now, during our cosmically brief lifetimes.



Would you like to Join me in my Astral Brotherhood/Sisterhood?



If you would like to join me in my Astral Brotherhood/Sisterhood, email me. Until I set up my new mail boxes, you can senjd me "snail mail" at 1026 Clayton Lane, #3207,

Austin, Texas 78723.



We can get to know one another. I have no material wealth to share, not trove of secret knowledge, no special psychic or paranormal powers. Don’t come to me with hope of being wealthier or more prominent in society. I have only my heart, my kindness, and my integrity to share.



Hoping to hear from you with comments or suggestions, I am your Monk friend,

Brother James, the Astral Monk.



Sunday, July 8, 2012

I live in the United States. I see things in a strange way. Riding on the highways, transported in a special vehicle through the huge, massive complex of roadways typical of cities from San Diego to Boston, Miami to Seattle, I realize that everyone driving vehicles on these roadwars is driving like I drove from 1954 until 2005, thinking I was seeing what wa all around me, knowing that I was driving a car, van, bus or truck, certain that that what they see is all there is to reality. I don’t I see it from “above,” or with differebnt eyes, and I don’t think about how it will look in 30 years. I know how it will look!

n 2005, I gave up my pickup truck and took a series of airplanes to Memphis, San Francisco, and Tokyo to Bangkok. There I went to work at a Catholic university, first as a guest professor. Then, on the fateful day of Wednesday, August 31, 2005, I received notice that my duties were over. The regular professor was on his way back.

The dean drove me across town to a second school for an interview he had arranged, and I was offered a permanent position. That same day the news told about Jirrocame Katrina urning my former home, New Orleans, into a nightmare of wind, rain, flood, crime and death. I have many relatives there, and taught in three schools in the area between 1962 and 1974.



I was prepared to depart Assumption University, but stopped by the president's office to thank him for welcoming me to Thailand, and bid him farewell. From out of nowhere, the president of the university said, “No! I want you here!” and asked me to write an anthem for the large, prestigeous Catholic university (www.au.edu). “I have to go to India," he said. "When I return in ten days, I will contact you.”



The tragedy of Katrina continued, but I was busy with my new task as composer for the president.



Assumption University has several campuses, so I visited the towering Cathedral of Learning in the “University in a Park” campus near the new International Airport, and in the Music Conservatory, I was welcomed by the famous dean and befriended by the faculty. Using their MIDI lab, I soon produced a draft ofr my Anthem. Within a week my new friends had prepared two presentation copies of the words and music, one for my prospective boss, Brother Bancha Saengerhin, Ph,D., f.s.g, the president, and a second for the President Emeritus, Rev. Brother Martin who founded, designed, and financed the amazing school through far-sighted

land purchases and sales, and bold, visionary leadership, resulting in a truly international university with a brilliant faculty composed of excellent English speaking professors from around the world.

I had been through a world of experiences since my arrival in late July, 2005, and my proposed meeting with Brother Bancha, which took place in early October, 2005. I visited an American monk who was uncle of my former wife, he gave me a general absolution for all my sins in a very informal “confession” at his monastary near his parish in the infamous sex city of Pattaya on the coast of the Sea of Thailand. I purchased a Rosary at one of the large Catholic churches an American monk had designed and built near Bangkok. I was driven around by the lady who was a volunteer caretaker for the aged uncle. She keeps me informed of the uncle’s welfare even now by Internet.



By my 69th birthday, I was engaged to a Khmer graduate student, and by June we were married and had moved back into my faculty quarters on the main campus of my university in Bangkok proper.

I experienced two miracles before my return to the campus, both having to do with the Rosary beads I’d purchased at the large mission church. I may describe them later.


Since my marriage, my wife has earned her PhD and successfully completed a course at Harvard that featured four IPCC Nobel Prize winners and a number of guests from the media, the university and the Boston/Cambridge area who are all involved with the challenges facing humanity due to pollution of the atmosphere and the human impact pollution and disarray among humans in general are having on the well-bing of the planet and its living occupants.

My soul has been evolving rapidly since I first arrived in Bangkok in 2005. My wife invited me to seminars and guest presentations and congresses presented by experts from around the world. She also arranged for me to attend classes at Harvard with her from January to May, 2008, as a guest of the professors. In turn, I helped her establish her now flourishing silk=import business. It opened in August, 2008, just as AGI and Lehman Brothers were collapsing. Her business in located across the street from Boston’s Macy’s and the now defunct Filene’s Basement. Her first year in busines brought immediate success. The local FOX Television affiliate interviewed her at her business during her first year.


In 2010, her preparations for the Christmas rush and her duties as an on-call medical interpreter at a famous Harvard teaching hospital in Boston required my presence nearly every day in November and Decenber. We experienced three devastating blizzards and I came down with sever colds and bronchitis. Often I had to be excused from work, and my wife and I looked forward to flying to Cambodia to stay with her parents and siblings, neices and nephews for two months. I laid out plans for a permanent move from Boston to Phnom Penh, expecting that my little “DrHanzon Science Center” that had an office in Belmont, MA and a workshop in Louisiana would easily be shifted across the ocean and flourish in Asia.

Providence, also known as God’s continuing care for his creatures, led to a lifechanging revision of my status while we were in Cambodia. My little business collapsed and I contracted a dangerous infection in my left foot. Doctors in Phnom Penh told me to leave immediately for treatment or surgery in the USA, and to find a climate warmer than Boston’s where I could get afforable long-term care.



My daughter “J” knew of an excellent hospital in Austin, and a wonderful apartment where I would be among good people and could enjoy free excusions, a free shuttle bus, and a beautiful swimming poor all at a price I could afford on my modest pension.


I caught a flight from Phnom Pehn to Seoul to Washington to Boston on April 3, 2011, and from Boston to Austin, Texas on April 9. “J” is a therapist, and took me to the Seton Medical Center where it was confirmed that I had osteomylitis and I chose to undergo amputation of the middle toe on my left foot. It was succdessful, and I transferred to an outstanding rehab center for nearly a month. In mid-May, 2011, I moved into my two-bedroom apartment, set up my little studio/office, and began experiencing a contibnuing life changing series of unforseen events that have continued to broaden my vision in areas and in ways I could never have forseen.

I will continue this story, perhaps on a freequent basis. Not one of my blog postings will ever be “complete” until I write my very last word. That may come about because I have a physical or psychological breakdown, or the USA undergoes its long forseen collapse due to political, economic, or physical cataclysims. Whatever happebns, I hope you will find visiting with me useful and at least thought provoking.


(This post lay dormant for at least a year, so I'm finally publishing it. Meanwhile, my little business seems to have revived, and I've extablsihed a new lifestyle in Austin, featuring lots of get togethers with my daughter and her friends, singing and playing guitar around the city and in various places in my apartment complex, and ongoing adventures as a writer and observer of the sky.

Am I Really “The Hoseman”?

If something I write strikes you as “inspired,” let me wqrn you: I am not very special, I am not some kind of prophet, but even while I was a science program coordinator at LSU in 1995, one of the grad students I’d known since childhood said I was “The Hoseman,” a guy acting like a “hose” carrying idas from “Above” down to listeners on earth. If that’s so, and I know for certain that sometimes it is, don’t expect me to help you get over illnesses, get rich, or levitate. .I have chronic illnesses, I don’t have any extra money, and I’m stuck at a weight of over 260 pounds. Levitation has haver worked for me!

So take what I say with a cool head and a grain of skeptic salt, and chart your own course.

I can be reached at drhanzonscience@gmail.com. If you need to chat by phone, email me and set up the time. I’ll give you my cell number after we extablish mutual trust by email.



Sincerely,

James P Louviere Search Google.com for more information about meContact me at james@astralmonkjames.org




























The Astral Monk had a lot of fun meeting new people today. I joined the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) about 2 months ago, but could not make the first meeting I was expecting to attend. The former head of the Austin TX local chapter sent out an email announcing his departure from the local group and his cessation of the MUFON activities. Today I finally made it to a meeting, but the leader, Catherine, called the meeting "Son of MUFON," for it was not an official MUFON meeting and would not be following the MUFON protocols. It was very spirited and enjoyable nonetheless.
It was held at the quarters of a group that conducts research into paranormal and other kinds of mental or spiritual activities, and maintains at the quarters a considerable library of print materials (books) that cover a wide range of materials.
Our group consisted of four women and eight men. I was the newbie. Catherine, who is from Montreal, opened with a few remarks and a lively discussion of one member's experiences north of the Arctic Circle, where she teaches Inuit children part of the year. She related several recent conversations she had with known researchers. A young man spoke for forty minutes or more about experiences he had with a woman who was evidently filled with various energies. I forgot to bring my hearing aid, so I missed out on about 90% of the group discussions, but managed well when speaking to individuals during the snack break and outside after the meeting ended. At one point, I was given time to present my latest Lou-Vee-Air(tm)Car (the Mk VI version), and
explain how it has been on sale for 17 years in various iterations, and exists in a scratch-built version as well. My theme was not just to show my little AirCar zipping along for a second or two on the carpeted floor, but rather on how we must solve some major problems in our science education system before we can move into Cosmic Science Teaching, which we should be doing now, but we are not ready for. I mentioned that I have taken on the role of Astral Monk to serve as a Spiritual Counselor in this troubled time when so much apprehension surrounds us. When I was done, and as the break was ending, I distributed AirCar kits to about eight of the attendees, and urged them to download my "method" that used the AirCar to teach research and development (R&D) and leads to publication of student work on a special Student Research Site, with the goal of setting up a world wide exchange of ideas about how to make science exciting and encourage learners everywhere to become inventors working in synergistic teams.
It was a very enjoyable visit with compatible people.
If you feel alone and marginalized by those around you, do some Web browsing and look for groups you might like to visit or join. Here's the lyric I wrote and you can find on my "drhanzonscience" channel onYouTube,
Day Glow
(c) 2000 James P Louviere
I never knew that I could fly above the lovely rainbow!
I never knew that I could make another person's day glow!
I feel so happy when I'm flying high above the rainbow!
I feel so happy when I make another person's dayglow!
If you are ever sad and lonely, wishing you could die,
Just lift another's spirit up and you'll begin to fly!
You'll fly up high into the sky and wear a little halo,
For you're an angel when you make another person's day glow!

Walk with a joyous heart! James, the Astral Monk









Saturday, July 7, 2012


This is the second post your Astral Monk is writing. It is now 4:30 AM on Saturday, June 7, 2012.

Your Astral friend wishes you a very consoling day filled with tiny blessings like little sparkles along your footpath, little things that you may not pay attention, but are not just coincidences. They are part o the divine plan for you.

What's making me excited enough to spend the middle of the night at the computer?

Well, on June 6, I did not notice it, but the person who is the "buyer" of my little educational devices send a request for my demographics, bank account number, etc. so she could order more of my products. I had given up on the business because I lost the buyer who was my on-lime friend for about 12 years. I got no word from the company for over a year, and was planning to find new ways to increase my income and spread my vision of reformed Science Education using my recent book and my newest educational product. (You can find out more if you download my free science book at

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxsb3V2ZWVhaXJjYXJtYW51YWx8Z3g6MWUxM2NlYjkxY2RmZmM5YQ&pli=1

Anyway, it looks like my business is going to rise from the dead!

Don't worry, though, I'm still going to continue and develop my AstralMonk vocation, for it is truly a call from God leading me to rejoin the ranks of Spiritual Counselors.

What is that? Well, many of us have suffered a whole lot from misapplied "religious" rules, commands, expectations, exhortations, demands and assumptions that actually conflict with our own unique personal soul identity. Not every foot can squeeze into one size shoe, and often one's religion is like an ill-fitting shoe, maybe too loose, but more often too tight. You find yourself in pain with every step you take, spiritually, and unless someone is there to help you discern (figure out) what is bothering you, you may spend years, even your whole life thinking you are not a "good person" because you are in pain due to the religion that you're in. I'm like the guy in the shoe store who wants to fit you into a comfortable, healthy, nice shoe. Except I try to fit you into a good fit with your soul's relation to the Higher Power. Maybe you belong to this or that very strict religion, and think there's something wrong with you.

Generally, there are some strong family ties, or maybe social ties, that bind you. You are not comfortable but fear that if you abandon the ways of your family (usually in regard to religion, business, loyalty to traditions, and other constraints) you will be rejected as a "bad person."

My job is to console you, reassure you, and comfort you. I look at people I really admire, like Jesus, or my patron saint, Peter (the apostle), or the Lord Buddha, who is the enlightened one of millions, even billions of people, or other wise and pure souls, and I try to see how their teaching and actions apply to your suffering. Love is everything, my friend. If something is mean, cruel, hateful, vengeful, bickering, faultfinding, or fearful, I look at that as unloving, and therefore not from Above.

I'm finished with this little posting. I hope it gives you some idea of my mission as the Revered Brother James P Louviere, the Astral Monk, your spiritual counselor.

You can write to me at
james@astralmonkjames.org

Adios!





Thursday, July 5, 2012



Astral Monk James Blogger July 4 2012 Post Number one







Astral Monk James



A Cosmic Minister



On this American Independence Day, 2012, I step into the mystic world of Cyber Reality, communicating at the speed of light with beings large and small, wishing you peace and abundant joy. Raised as a Roman Catholic, I hope I don’t become anathema to my fellow believers as I take on a new role in the fourth quarter century of my life. I am moved to act as a Spiritual Counselor, for many of us are troubled, and many feel that there is no one who talks their language, surely not in the rectory, parsonage, mosque, temple, chapel or retreat house.



So many spiritual and religious leaders are wrestling with problems of the mid or late 20th century. So many are afraid to speak or even think the truth! What would people say? What would become of the pastor, mullah, rabbi, monk or Wicca who talked about things beyond the scope of clerical handbooks, books based on Bronze Age assumptions or written by people who looked upon things once held sacred, but now more and more outdates, far from today's situation?



It is apparent that a Great Realization is about to shake us into Cosmic Consciousness. More than a decade of this 21st Century has slipped by already, but who is there to welcome all of you into this New Cosmic World?



How could I possibly be the one you need?



I am not a prophet. My birth came about through the same process that produced my brother and sister. Don't look for me in the writings of big-name prophets who lived thousands of years ago. No signs in the heavens or visits from angelic messengers came around when I was born.



My words have been published in science education journals and mentioned or included in published books, but nothing in my writings could be classified as “religious.” I don’t lay down commandments, invent rituals, or pronounce things so full of non-sepultures that they can be balled mysteries of faith. I don’t claim to have been marked with holy oils or raised to high rank by someone with a bigger hat or a more expensive robe.



I don’t have the power turn one chemical into another except in ways described in science textbooks. I know that if I put a couple of tablespoons of dollar-store peroxide into a baby food jar and add a teaspoon full of Clorox, I'll get some pure oxygen, and if I pass the end a little steel wool "cigar" through a candle flame, then stick it into the jar with oxygen bubbling out, the steel will burn brightly. That's no "miracle" even if I always say, "Though thou are but steel, you shall burn like flash NOW!" while doing the trick.



I'm not even a chemist! I just know some ordinary reactions. The words don't do a thing.



So what do I have for you? I am a Spiritual Counselor. I have been drawn to a spiritual way of life for as long as I can remember.



Funny, but as I aged, the less religious I was, the deeper my spiritual life became. I take comfort in building my spiritual life. I read about the life and work of St Paul, the apostle, and the writings of or about mystical monks and nuns, most of whom were proclaimed “canonized saints” some years after they died. I noted that sometimes a person is doing great things for the people, and the people love them and flock to them. Then the



authorities of the religion give them all kinds of trouble, forbid them to preach or teach or minister to souls. The person dies, and the people carry the body to the church singing. So the Authority, whoever he (or she) may be come running along in the purple and scarlet, followed by altar boys, and, runs to the font of the line with incense and a gold crucifix on a long pole, and starts saying how wonderful the holy person was. The Authority tries to pre-empt the people. It was like that once during Fidel Castro's early days. A young boy protested Castro's policies, and developed a following. He was killed and as the people prepared to carry him through the streets, the government took charge and with loudspeakers blaring the called on everyone to come and celebrate the "heroic acts" the boy did "in the name of the Revolution!" He was transformed into a Communist icon after he was shot dead opposing the Revolution. Oh, well.



I left the Brotherhood after fourteen years and travelled to Washington D.C. for the MLK Poor People’s March on a bus chartered by the Black Panthers of Watts. I spent an entire night seated next to Reyes Tijerrina, who later served 77 months in the New Mexico State Prison for the part he played in the murder of a deputy in Tierra Amarillo. Reyes led the political movement called La Raza, and during the night ride, he told me his life story. He was an ordained minister. I have never forgotten his stories.



I attended the Poor People’s March, squatted at the knee of Jesse Jackson as he held forth on this “when push comes to shove” principles, and I joined with Jack Shaffer (the author’s son) to take a mentally handicapped young man back to his roots in the Sangre de Cristo mountains a few days before we were scheduled to depart.







I ended up in San Antonio, leading a Theater in the Streets troupe of minority teens and lived in a vacant room at the Catholic seminary while awaited a dispensation from my five lifetime vows (poverty, chastity, obedience, the vow to teach the poor free of charge, and the vow to remain a teaching brother forever). I slowly began to work through the issues that confronted me as a Catholic. I married a former teaching nun, and we baptized our children in infancy. They made their first communions but none of the four was ever “confirmed” by a bishop. None went to “confession” as I had done in school. None ever became a practicing Catholic. Eventually I gave up the struggle to raise them Catholic. My former wife was with me in our struggle, but our children were all absolutely devoid of any piety, though we got them into Mass every Sunday. Then things fell apart completely, and our careers in Germany ended after the Desert Storm 100 hour war. Perhaps I’ll regale with more of this later. For now, please “like” me and subscribe to my blog. You can send me mail at james@astralmomkjames.org. I will be setting up a non-profit foundation to carry my message and spiritual counseling worldwide. I have visited several countries in Europe and spent over twenty years there as an educator and writer. I have lived in Thailand and for a short time in Cambodia, and visited Singapore. I also visited Mexico several times in the sixties. Wherever I go, I take my guitar and sing for the people.



God be with you, and notice all the tiny little sparkles along your footpath, the little blessings and unexpected nice things that come your way every day.

James, the Astral Monk.






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About Me



I like the nickname "DrHanzonScience" because I received a degree in 1985 and taught in schools and universities until in 2008, right after enjoying the annual Graduation Ceremonies at www.au.edu in Thailand, I resigned and went to study climate science at Harvard. I worked with a former student for a year and finally, January 1, 2010, I started writing this manual. It has to be proofed and polished, but I'm taking a color printed copy to the NSTA conventiom today and I want you to have access to it before I go.




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