THIS WEEK FEATURING: Tom Clancy's 60th Birthday Gala, The Morph, Hay House I Can Do It! Conference (Part 3), Deepak Chopra, Movies this Week, White Tantra, Spectacles of Death, and more.

Tom Clancy's 60th Birthday Gala. As you read this we have been in New York and New Jersey for several days to attend, on May 31st, Tom Clancy's 60th birthday black tie gala aboard the Battleship New Jersey! We have been friends for a long time with Tom and his wife Alex. Tom wrote the foreword to John's 1999 book "Future War." (Photo taken at Tom's estate on the Chesapeake Bay in 2001).

The Battleship New Jersey, the US Navy's most decorated battleship, is a unique and historic facility. From the Battleship's decks, the skyline of the Philadelphia and Camden Waterfronts provides an extraordinary backdrop. This Iowa-class battleship, designed for a crew of 117 officers and 1,804 enlisted personnel, can accommodate groups from 50 to 3000. Photos of the gala to follow next week.

The Morph. Hay House I Can Do It! Conference offered Stuart Wilde's presentation called "The Secrets of Life." For about 7 years Stuart has been working with what he calls The Morph. He says this is a gateway to other worlds that he claims exists at 280 degrees around the compass if you are facing north and at a 45 degree tangent downward, below you. Stuart currently holds seminars on The Morph and will be returning in a few months to give a two-day workshop on The Morph in Las Vegas. He's going to make it available for people who cannot afford going to his workshops in Europe or become a member of his Redeemer's Club.

According to Stuart Wilde Author Official Site, the Redeemer's Club is "an association in virtual reality of spiritual scallywags that seek their own redemption by learning how to offer it to others. It's a travel club, but it is also a study course that you receive every two weeks for a year and it's an Internet site that members are given access to where my main esoteric writings will be posted in the future."

Briefly, a few of the Redeemer's Club membership rules are as follows: "Membership fee of EUR 3300 (USD 4600) for the first year is NON-REFUNDABLE. Here at the club we sell information and a methodology, once we give you the access codes to the Internet site and the key we can't recover that information from you, so please understand we do NOT pay refunds or partial refunds. You may extend your membership for a second or third year at the fee of EUR 1500 (USD 2000) per annum.

"Members understand that as part of their annual membership they receive free entry to two or more (up to four) Stuart Wilde seminar events. The payment of the membership fee of EUR 3300 (USD 4600) is due within 30 days after we have received your membership application. The membership fee can not be paid in installments or by credit card." Redeemer's Club

Wilde talked about himself and the suffering he has been through to discover The Morph. He spent 6 months lying naked on a friend's kitchen floor as he went through a total transformation. His body was on fire and the kitchen's tile helped cool him off. Do you have a friend who would allow you to lie naked on their kitchen floor while they attempted to prepare meals? Didn't Stuart get in their way after a few weeks? Who paid Stuart's bills while is he wringing in pain? Such practical questions went unanswered. Stuart has had quite a few St. John of the Cross "Dark Nights of the Soul." He spent 3 1/2 years in a debilitating depression he called "The Morph Wars." Considering the number of books Stuart has written, he was depressed but productive.

Stuart gave us 3 exercises to prepare us for The Morph where people dematerialize. The Morph is the 9th Dimensional World. Stuart also had a firm message: "Concentrate on the true currency for a fulfilling life: absolute forgiveness, unbounded compassion, endless patience, and love." He kept telling us that we must be kind to everyone (he has a special dispensation from The Morph to exclude his evil, vile mother-in-law) especially the numerous faceless little people we come in contact with every day—the salesgirl, the supermarket checkout lady, the postal worker.

Yet, when the lady next to me—who had been a devotee since 1983 and has every book, tape, CD and DVD Stuart has produced (and claimed his writings changed her life), walked up to him as he returned from a break and asked him to sign her book, he glanced at her and said, "No."

I brought two pre-signed books by Stuart Wilde. Affirmations and The Force.

I was not going to be swept away by Wilde's disciples. I did the exercises and frankly, they were very powerful. The first one I'm calling "Self-Talk White Tantra."* The second exercise (I'm calling it "The Kundalini Sway") had us swaying back and forth with a partner each of us placing a hand firmly on our partner's head. The third exercise was another kundalini- raising exercise ("The Chakra Eye Twirl") visualizing a ball coming out of our chakras, opening up like an eye and looking around. Moving the "Eye-Ball" to the crown chakra our partner released the energy out through the top of the head.

Hay House I Can Do It! Conference (Part 3). May 20th Sunday's program began with the Morning Keynote by Christiane Northrup, M.D. on "Menopause & Beyond: Embracing the Vast Possibilities of Midlife." This was the third workshop on the joy of menopause and getting older. Obviously, the overwhelming crowd of older female attendees have issues that need addressing. No need to summarize Northrup's lecture except to say, if you are over 50 you must love yourself, do positive self-talk, and affirmations about how fabulous you are. Because, as Northrup states and you well know, baby boomers are more spiritual.

And lucky you! You're in menopause!

Cancer IS a Blessing. I have never heard anyone say to someone: "You should pray for cancer. It's a blessing." I have never heard anyone say: "I'm praying for colon cancer. It's a blessing." Have you? Yet, anyone who has ever survived cancer always says it was the most positive thing that ever happened to them! Before his Sunday Afternoon Keynote lecture, Deepak Chopra, M.D. introduced a screening of the film "The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success" based on his book.

The film stars spiritually-attuned breast cancer survivor Olivia Newton-John. The film is flowers, Malibu waves and people talking about how their awakened spirituality brought them worldly success. I was not convinced by the stories. Newton-John talked about how her cancer was a true blessing. Newton-John also explained that her music comes effortlessly through a higher power. She doesn't even have to work at it. Lucky for Newton-John she doesn't need arrangers, studio technicians, producers, or other musicians. I was very impressed that someone so spiritually evolved could have survived in the ugly world of show business without compromising.

The I Can Do It! Conference (Hay House, Inc. | Homepage) ended on a high note for attendees—Deepak Chopra's Afternoon Keynote address was on "Explorations in Consciousness."

Deepak Chopra. I was not impressed with Dr. Chopra, widely considered one of the world's great spiritual leaders. In fact, I was confused. Chopra, who has written a book on the life of Buddha (Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment), spoke of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. Previously, the Four Noble Truths were a contingency plan for dealing with the suffering humanity faces—suffering of a physical kind, or of a mental nature.

The First Truth identifies the presence of suffering. The Second Truth seeks to determine the cause of suffering. In Buddhism, desire and ignorance lie at the root of suffering. By desire, Buddhists refer to craving pleasure, material goods, and immortality, all of which are wants that can never be satisfied. As a result, desiring them can only bring suffering. Ignorance, in comparison, relates to not seeing the world as it actually is. Without the capacity for mental concentration and insight, Buddhism explains, one's mind is left undeveloped, unable to grasp the true nature of things. Vices, such as greed, envy, hatred and anger, derive from this ignorance.

Chopra skips over this recognized understanding of what Buddha meant by "suffering." Chopra's fame has been built on the positive message of getting whatever you want, so Buddha's "suffering" is not really about a craving for pleasure, materials goods or immortality. In Chopra's understanding of Buddha's concept of suffering, suffering is about "not knowing oneself."

Deepak Chopra's Perfect Health and Spiritual Success does not come cheap. At the Chopra Center the 5-day programs "Perfect Health" costs $3375, "Soul of Healing" costs $4375, and "Synchrodestiny" costs $3475. "Healing the Heart" is a give-away for the modest fee of $1375. All programs are led by Chopra and David Simon, M.D. www.chopra.com/

This Week's Movie. They opened acclaimed director William Friedkin's "Bug" without much fanfare, press screenings or even a promotional screening. Why? Judd gives her everything to this perfectly crawly psycho-conspiracy movie.

No one—remember when starved, elegant Nicole Kidman tried to play a janitor and then a Civil War Cold Mountain woman with a perfect coiffure, alabaster skin, and acrylic nails?—plays worn-down white trash like Ashley Judd. She gives everything she has in this tour-de-force performance staged in a seedy motel room. Judd has no scenery or sets to distract us from her descent into madness.

No false eyelashes for Judd or strategically placed camera work! She has a nude scene. Finally a male actor actually behaves like a real man and walks around naked in a room after sex.

Agnes is a barmaid-recreational drug user whose lesbian girlfriend and co-worker picks up a weird drifter, Peter (Michael Shannon). Peter has no place to go so Agnes invites him to stay the night. He says he's not into women.

Agnes is being harassed by constant phone calls she thinks are from her recently released brutal ex-boyfriend Jerry (Harry Connick Jr., bulked up and dangerous). Peter tells Agnes he thinks he could have sex with her. Agnes says: "Come here boy."

Peter notices a bug in the bed and, as he keeps searching for what is biting him, goes into bug-killing mode. Peter was in the Army and claims to have been experimented on. He escaped an Army hospital. He believes—like past CIA experiments with LSD and The Tuskegee Syphilis and Plutonium Experiments on civilians by the U.S. military, and let's not forget the dreaded MKULTRA mind control work (see the seminal 1969 work "Physical Control of the Mind: Toward a Psychocivilized Society" by Jose M.R. Delgado, M.D.)—he has been implanted with bugs that are feeding on his blood.

The screenplay by Tracy Letts is psychologically vivid and smartly constructed. While the hallucinatory nature of Peter and Agnes' decline strongly suggests a psychotic breakdown with reality, the door is ajar. I'd like to believe Peter was right.

Judd dives deep into this role and she is a revelation. Giving so much of herself to decadent abuse and a ride into Crazytown, Judd is the vortex surrounding and enhancing her fellow actors. There's enough physical horror and a clever grasp of aberrant psychology to make "Bug" a superior thriller. It is director William Friedkin's return to what he does best—addressing the question: When is what you believe to be true not real?

Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome. I have a large collection of books of The Roman Games and gladiator sports, but Donald G. Kyle's book, "Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome" is truly terrifying. (Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome (Approaching the Ancient World)). I'd like to quote from Kyle's Introduction:

"To explain the widespread popularity of violent sports, anthropologists speculate about innate aggression and violence in human nature, and sociologists theorize about how societies accommodate and use symbolic and real violence. Violence and blood sports seem to be a universal legacy from the long prehistory of man as a hunter and killer that all societies retain in sublimated or ritualized form. Some suggest that all social order is ultimately based on violence. To reinforce the social order violence must be performed or proclaimed in public, and public violence tends to become ritualized into games, sports, and even spectacles of death."

History is filled with human sacrifice as necessary to either appease gods or to keep the sun rising (The Aztecs). The Romans were the first to use horrific public human and animal death purely for large-scale entertainment.

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*When I lived in New York, I frequently attended White Tantra 2-day intensive workshops. White Tantra was introduced to westerners by Yogi Bhajan. Yogi Bhajan became Master of Kundalini Yoga at the age of 16 in his native India. He came to the West in 1968. The authority to be the Mahan Tantric (Master of White Tantric Yoga) was bestowed on him in 1971, when the then Mahan Tantric, Lama Lilan Po of Tibet passed from his body. There is only one Mahan Tantric at any given time. White Tantric Yoga, as with most sacred Eastern wisdom, was a tradition passed on from teacher to student in a mystical and selective way. As a pioneer of this age, Yogi Bhajan decided to open the experience of White Tantric Yoga to anyone who wanted to commit to the discipline. White Tantric Yoga.