Wulf Zendik

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Wulf Zendik (born Lawrence E. Wulfing) October 7, 1920 – June 12, 1999 was an American philosopher, artist, iconoclast and community founder. He was a Beat generation writer, producing poetry and philosophic literary works, performing, touring and recording with his band ‘the Eclectic Orgaztra” and staging many underground plays in the California Counterculture of the 1960s and 1970’s^{[citation needed]}. He founded the Zendik Farm^[1] Arts Commune in California in 1969 with his life partner, Arol Zendik.

Wulf's literary accomplishments include three novels, "A Quest Among the Bewildered,"^[2] "Zendik", and "Blackhawk: The Last American Warrior". Other literary works include three plays, six volumes of poetry and hundreds of dialogs and essays. But his prominence extends far beyond the traditional confines of literature.

Well-known throughout the American and international counterculture as a philosopher, musician, essayist and inventor^{[citation needed]}, Wulf has influenced two generations of iconoclasts and idealists. Zendik Farm Arts Foundation, the avant-garde artists' culture which was his home and the living embodiment of his ideals, continues his ongoing legacy: to teach, test and expand upon the social, political, and spiritual premises and principles he established. Since 1980 his poems, essays and philosophic writings have been widely distributed throughout the United States in copies of the Zendik Farm literary magazine (over 1.5 million to date)^{[citation needed]}.

The Zendik philosophy sets working premises for a brave new culture, including the religion of ‘Creavolution’, the socio/political premises of ‘Ecolibrium’ and the psychological therapy of ‘Living Therapy’^{[citation needed]}. Combined, these concepts and premises form a holistic philosophy — a blending of science, religion and the creativity of the artistic process. He articulated this philosophy in print and also on video^[3] over the last thirty years of his life. Wulf died at age 79 on June 12th 1999, at his home among his family and friends, having outlived most of his famous literary contemporaries. He stands as one of the preeminent philosophic and artistic forces of his generation^{[citation needed]}. A fiery, compassionate, deeply human presence, he remained totally committed to creating an enriching present, and future, for everyone and everything on planet Earth.^{[citation needed]}

Contents 1 Early Life 2 Literary Works 3 Arol Zendik 4 Music 5 Wulf’s daughter Fawn 6 Key Influences and Discoveries 7 Developing a holistic Philosophy 7.1 PSYCHOLOGY 7.1.1 Living Therapy 7.2 RELIGION 7.2.1 Creavolution 8 References 9 External links

[edit] Early Life

Wulf Zendik was born in El Paso, Texas, and spent his youth living in Los Angeles, California. Of German and (American Indian) Cherokee descent, his family on his father's side traces their German heritage to the era of Charlemagne in the 700s. He identified with his cousin, the artist Sulamith Wulfing from the Wuppertal Valley, the family ancestral home, and with his Indian ancestor Chief Bowles of the Cherokee.

His mother was a Southern Baptist, but left that religion and became a practicing Science of Mind (also known as religious science) Christian. She subjected Wulf as a child to eccentric religious healers, psychics, practitioners of phrenology and religious theorists. In late adolescence he investigated and converted to other religious beliefs, seeking to become "holy" himself, studying such groups as the Essenes.

He read voraciously as a child, and books like "All Quiet On The Western Front" (read when he was 9 years old)^{[citation needed]} had an enormous influence on him and helped form his lifetime abhorrence of war. Through truancy and general inability to conform to the rules of adolescent academia, he maintained a solid "D" during High school, which, in light of his high genius score on I.Q. tests^{[citation needed]} and vocabulary tests was puzzling to everyone. He was finally expelled from high school after being arrested on campus on suspicion of leading a midnight auto supply and gas siphoning gang of other teen-age hot rodders.^{[citation needed]} He was also in and out of jail for petty crimes during this period, but he was always protected and bailed out by his mother.

As he got older and began his relationship with Arol, Wulf's mother no longer understood him, but came to him to be cured in the last sickness that took her life.^{[citation needed]} Stricken by her death, although they were not close as they had been, he stayed in her empty room and cried through the night for his beloved mother.^{[citation needed]} His conflicts with a father who understood male comradeship but not love, were enormous.

He was rejected by his father because he was small boned, delicate and tended to be sickly as a child — he suffered with tuberculosis. His father, on the other hand, was a boxer and football player who found his delicate son offensive and favored his daughter. From out of this classic conflict in the family came a rare male seeking the truth of mother and father, men and women, and culture.^{[citation needed]}

His first marriage was to his high school sweetheart, and it ended in divorce. He married again and set up housekeeping in a 1940’s tract home and worked his first and only "regular" job, in an airplane factory, and began living the life of the working middle class, the same as his parents. After about six months at the job, World War II arrived and the tract house was traded for a vintage 1928 Waco biplane, thereby bringing to life a never forgotten fantasy of flight, which had been fired in boyhood by model aircraft building and an insatiable consumption of "Flying Aces" pulp fiction books including the beautiful and inspiring books of Antoine de St. Exupery, himself a World War I pilot.

With the Waco, he began putting in the hours and learning the skills of flying, in order to qualify as a second lieutenant flight instructor or pilot. But the U.S. army considered his petty criminal background and his antisocial attitude totally inappropriate for the rigid military life, and listed him as 4-F unfit. All of this proved to be too much for the young couple. The marriage ended.

Wulf then went to work for a Hollywood bookmaker, and quickly got into the bookie business for himself. The money rolled in and soon he was playing out the Los Angeles hustler role - complete with the “right clothes, the right cars, and the right women.” At age 26 he began actively pursuing his passionate interest in music. The ‘next step’ for a ‘cool cat’ at the time was to get a jazz club, whereupon he got into playing drums and singing jazz and blues. He found himself enjoying it so much that he lost interest in bookmaking and the running of the club. He formed a group, toured and began writing songs. The songs soon became a major theme in his life and as the ‘fast life’ began to pale, the songs turned to poetry. He realized he wanted to write.

Now thirty four, he bought a house in Laurel Canyon in the Hollywood Hills and entered the realm of literature and the coffeehouse life of the 50s. He found himself a writer-poet in the Beat generation, discovering art to be the last remaining area for freedom of expression, and he was into that life all the way. Wulf became a guru to young actors^{[citation needed]} who sought the prizes of Hollywood, yet were intrigued by this outspoken writer who condemned them as frivolous and artistically irresponsible.^{[citation needed]} Wulf was heavily influenced by the writings of Henry Miller which, at the time, had to be smuggled-in because Miller’s work was banned in the US. During this time he met and fell in love with a French dancer while she was touring the United States. Soon he sold the house, and journeyed to Paris with her to begin seriously writing.

[edit] Literary Works

In Paris, Wulf lived on the famous Left Bank, a hotbed of avante-garde culture. There he finished his first book, a collection of autobiographical essays entitled "A Quest Among the Bewildered." He spent several years amidst the haunts of Henry Miller, hanging out with Paris dancers, jazz musicians, artists and poets such as Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso. Wulf met the American expatriate poet Lee Forrest and began one of the major romances of his life. Her heroin addiction finally became too much for the relationship and that affair ended.

Wulf left Paris for Rome, where he hoped to have his work published through the influence of Anais Nin, who had taken an interest in his work, passing it along to Somerset Maugham's agent. The agent told him he had fantastic promise, but for an unknown writer, a fictional novel would be prerequisite before the autobiographical essays of A Quest Among The Bewildered could be published.

Wulf traveled to Torremolinos, Spain, living on the Costa del Sol, which in the mid-50s was still an unspoiled artist’s colony. There he met a woman from Texas, Billie Miller, who offered him a place to write. He moved into her villa and began the novel "Zendik", which was to become a 900-page epic work. After a year in Spain, having completed the book's first draft, they left for London to check out the music, theater and art scene there. They then booked passage on a ship to the States, back to California and Hollywood.

Upon his return to the United States, Wulf began long intensive rewrites of his novel. It was during this period of exacting and isolating focus that his work ethic was truly formed. However, this was to prove especially tough on his relationships. After many attempts to work things out, Billie decided to leave, beginning a problem which would repeat itself frequently over the next few years, making it seem impossible for Wulf to build the intimate relationship he desperately desired. His isolation and loneliness became almost unbearable at times.

To survive while completing the novel, Wulf set up a Hollywood rooming house for actors, musicians, painters and other artists. It was a Charles Addams-style mansion of disrepair, which became infamous for parties and busts, several of which resulted in brief incarcerations and long probations for Wulf.

[edit] Arol Zendik

At age forty-two, he met Arol, then a twenty-two year old stage actress from ‘off Broadway’, Mexico City and San Francisco theatre. Arol was a dedicated artist herself, and had no problems living with the tough work grind of a writer. This was an ultimate bohemian couple — doing plays, poetry readings, producing a dramatization of Wulf's novel on KPFK Los Angeles, and cruising the Hollywood night for whatever — beginning a relationship which lasted nearly 40 years. Their response to the increasing debacle of the Vietnam War was to publish a pamphlet book, "Don't Go", the most vehement and effective antiwar book of the resistance movement, which was eventually published by Doubleday, translated into 7 languages, and even distributed by soldiers in Vietnam itself.

During this period, Wulf and Arol often supported themselves by dealing grass and hashish and Wulf remained almost constantly stoned on copious quantities of those drugs. In deep poverty after surviving a bust for those activities, Wulf only managed to retain his purpose and his sanity by staying close to his work and Arol, and by seeking ever deeper philosophic answers to what he termed the "human dilemma". Wulf and Arol began sharing intense dialogues and studies on religions, history, the arts, the occult, anthropology, and whatever subjects their interest in the human condition led them to. After finishing his final novel, "Blackhawk—The Last American Warrior", which he called "my stoned book", he returned to music and began teaching Arol this art, which he now approached in a new, exploratory, improvisational manner.

[edit] Music

In their tiny one-room studio in Hollywood, he designed and built numerous string, wind and percussion instruments, including the “I-tar” — an electric 8-string synthesis of guitar and sitar as well as the Space Horn, Karmonic Gongs, Bassura and Kardia drum. Wulf began performing again, playing and singing in coffeehouses with Arol accompanying him on strings and drums.

In 1969 they moved to the high California desert and established the community known as Zendik Farm. The Zendik Arts Group began, and musicians and other artists began moving in with them. Initially, the communal premise was musicians living together to facilitate survival and “getting the sound together”.

Zendik - “The Eclectic Orchestra” formed with many of the community's young members, and from this nucleus established an innovative, improvisational musical style which continues to be practiced today by Arol and the modern Zendik band. The group played gigs, concerts, and toured the California college circuit through the early 70s. In 1975 they school-bus-caravanned to Key West, Florida, where they joined a diverse communal group of writers, graphic artists, musicians, mechanics, craftsmen, actors. etc., and expanded into repertory theater. Here began the long effort of underground periodical magazine publishing.

[edit] Wulf’s daughter Fawn

In 1976 Arol gave birth to their daughter Fawn. Wulf was then fifty-six and this event inspired another major evolutionary leap in his life, namely the taking of what he termed ‘Cosmic Responsibility’ for the state of the planet which all children, including his own, would inherit. His drug days were now long over and the Zendik community moved back to the California high desert where Wulf began to concentrate on community and philosophy. He had become a new kind of open-ended philosopher - one who could, through the creative process of art, explore the expansion of truth. He was a religious thinker and a social and psychological commentator.

[edit] Key Influences and Discoveries

Wulf's influences were many and varied. Poets, artists, scholars, saints, schools of religious thought, bohemians and writers shaped him and his work - including Miller, St. Exupery, Ayn Rand, Khrishnamurti, Buckminster Fuller, Freud, Reich, Christ, Creative Imagination, and Science of Mind, as well as various female vocalists, blacksmiths, body builders, healers, herbalists and naturopaths.

Science of Mind introduced him to the idea of Creative Imagination. This was a huge influence on his later religious thinking and his creation of the religious practices of Creavolution, which is an integration of Mind, Spirit and Body. Science and Religion as One. Religion, Evolution, and Art as One. In the sciences, Darwin, Freud and Einstein all changed humanity’s perception of itself. Wulf Zendik was a scientific religious thinker who’s work is also capable of changing our perception of ourSelves. Combining the discoveries of Freud, Darwin and Einstein with his own religious background and inclination, he realized that both sexuality and evolution were valid pursuits, and subjects to be dealt with in religious thinking.

Wulf was a late bloomer, as both Freud and Darwin were. It wasn't till his late fifties that he began to focus his attention on matters of the spirit, although he was always spiritually involved. Most of his attention before this had gone into matters of psychology, sociology and culture. Like Darwin and Freud, he responded to and was sensitive to criticism, but kept going ahead with his discoveries anyway. However, unlike them he was an artist and suffered intense rejection by the establishment. Also unlike them, he was not coming out of academia, but was self-taught, and from the streets. The establishment, as it famously does with artists and prophets, severely censured him, often by refusing to publish his work and although openly enthralled with his talent and craft, found him personally offensive.

Unlike classical philosophers, many artists and most religious thinkers, Wulf did not emerge from academia. Although he understood the mathematical theories of Einstein, he barely finished high school and never entered university. He came from the lower working middle class and entered society through the back door of illegality — stealing and conning for what he needed. He came from American streets in the mid-20th century - hot-rods, girl chasing and movies. He came out of a more or less typical American life, but with some severe differences, that made him able to know humans at their very worst, and best. One of these differences was his mother's deformity from childhood polio and society's reaction to her handicap.

[edit] Developing a holistic Philosophy

[edit] PSYCHOLOGY

[edit] Living Therapy

Drawn to studying psychiatric theory in his late 30's, he favored Freud and his later disciple, Wilhelm Reich. Reich's physical understanding of how bodily stasis is caused by neurosis interested Wulf and he practiced Reichian deep breathing and cathartic techniques on himself. He was also influenced by Andrew Salter's Conditioned Reflex therapy.

Wulf favored therapy techniques that combined physical action with mental understanding, which is why his religion of Creavolution includes a searching, ever forward-going sexuality, instead of a sexuality of accepted rules and "thou shalts" or "shalt nots", or the Tantra inspired quest for ways to step-by-step control and enhance sexuality. He discovered and articulated that sexuality could bring enlightenment - through sex we humans can ultimately share bliss together — share Oneness.

Unlike Freud with his endless devotion to the subject of sexual repression and dislike of music and art, Wulf was an extremely hardworking artist and sensualist. He worked to free the constraints upon his sexual/spiritual self. He felt that the term schizophrenia could be applied to any of us, referring to it as ‘the disease of a civilized human being’, not as a label reserved only for the few extreme clinically observable cases, but for all of us. Wulf observed the split in ourselves between civilization's demands and constraining societal mores, and our inner being, and how our human desire and impulsive drive for freedom from those constraints leads to an unavoidable schizophrenia. He came up with tools to handle this schizophrenia — of utmost importance, the "Internal Dialogue"—a means of befriending the split Selves.

Wulf's religious thinking has often been supported or confirmed by hard science; ie studies proving our ability to control the more primitive brain with focused reason. The primitive brain can always control the emotions, therefore reason is our only internal weapon with which to fight superstition and depravity within ourselves. His constant admonition, to himself and those he spoke to, was "Think, Think, Think". He believed we could solve any problem with our intelligence.

Freud distrusted the unconscious. He found it filled with seemingly evil and uncontrollable feelings, thoughts, and repressions just waiting to bring us down. To Freud’s colleague Carl Jung, the unconscious was neutral and natural — we spend half our lives in a state of unconsciousness (sleep). He knew it wasn't evil, but natural and organic and could be understood through dreams - as did Freud. Wulf also understood the unconscious as natural, but believed that you had to befriend your unconscious, welcome the information from that source and understand it through dreams and other techniques he developed, such as the "Internal Dialog" and "Meditrance". Practicing the Internal Dialog technique, one can learn to be in touch with deeper feelings unknown to oneself in ordinary consciousness. He developed ‘ambient Meditrance’, whereby one can immediately enter a trance state - anywhere, anytime - and dialog with the inner Self to find out what's going on within the moments of daily life. When practicing Internal Dialog, your objective consciousness and your deeper unconsciousness can meet each other. This is the technique he used to achieve the path he named the ‘TruthWay’.

Many of Wulf’s psycho-spiritual thoughts run in the same vein as the great psychiatrist Carl Jung. Though he rarely mentions him, many of the ideas in Wulf’s work run parallel to Jung’s. He didn't study Jung — he was more interested in a physical freeing of the Self from the psyche's repressions, the mental and emotional clamp down. Wulf was also what could be called a "womanizer", similar to Jung. He found women endlessly fascinating and interesting - and absolutely necessary for his well being. He adored their femaleness and had many affairs. Unlike Jung, Wulf wrote about it and it led him to deeper theories of sexuality beyond Freud and Jung. Everything he did he would seek to understand under the microscope of his own mind. He had the ability to maintain a direct, healthy, and creative interest in himself - even in moments of great despair, howling psychic pain - and at the end of life, in the face of his oncoming death.

Wulf knew that when it comes to attaining wholeness, the ultimate therapist is the Self - and any friends who are willing to be honest. He understood that becoming well involves the quest for enlightenment by the individual, and he saw the need for a culture that supports the individual in this search; we are not islands unto ourselves and must have culture. He knew the major reason psychotherapy so often does not seem to work is because one does not have a society within which one can be oneself. The unconscious, he said, can only emerge from behind the persona (the civilized mask) within a society devoted to honesty, where a person can reveal their true Self. In Jungian therapy, the persona (the mask) is necessary to survive — so one can never wholly remove the mask to anyone. Wulf knew that this is an impossible situation for a gregarious social animal such as ourselves.

Psychotherapy has slowly but surely degenerated into the use of mind altering drugs. Wulf's theory of Living Therapy emerges as the rescue and expansion of the great discoveries made by Freud, Jung, Reich and Salter. Their discoveries are fantastically powerful tools for self-saving, but could not and cannot sustain in a culture that is neurotic itself. This groundbreaking discovery led to a new idea for culture, a new idea upon which to build a civilization of the entire world. He called it Ecolibrium.

[edit] RELIGION

[edit] Creavolution

In his 60s, Zendik began to become more and more involved with the spiritual structure of Creavolution — the religious legacy he has left. He understood that the secret of personal power was not any kind of brute force, but the understanding and living of that which he called the pursuit of Truth - not an absolute knowing of “THE TRUTH”, but an endless pursuit of the Truth - in everything and anything - seeking to understand everything.

His claim to greatness lies mainly in his relentless honesty, his courage about himself and his fearlessness in establishing a religion that could work for a humanity that is spiritually deprived. Fearless in self discovery, he would go anywhere within his psyche, plumbing the depths of his soul and probing his own mind no matter what he might discover about himself. This great Self-probing allowed him to understand that the search for truth is forever and continuous. His concept of the Truthway - his inner work on the unconscious - is about finally emerging from behind the mask to show oneself; something that cannot be done safely in a society built on accepted deception.

Wulf’s theory of the God-force, of "ele-Mental energy", is a central theme in his modern, here-and-now religious philosophy of Creavolution. It is based in the scientific knowledge of energy — that energy is all pervasive and that everything is made of energy, and humans can use energy for good or evil — for a positive or negative destiny. Humans have knowledge and a depth of perspective from intelligent objectivity, and we are able to see where to go with this energy, which has no beginning, nor end.

The discoveries of physics were a constant study of Zendik’s. Science, he often said, meant simply the quest for knowledge. He combined this quest with the poetic mind of the artist, far exceeding Goethe and Nietzsche in his quest for understanding and for the empowering of ourselves. Wulf believed that if a religion does not deal with the here-and-now nuts and bolts of survival, and doesn't contain within it the idea that the soul of humanity is the soul of the universe, it essentially cannot work as a daily experience of one's own divinity. His concept of Creavolution takes the knowledge of evolution and puts it together with the great Creativity inherent in the human Mind.

The main difference between Wulf and other great scientists and religious thinkers is that he was an artist. He was a natural, self-taught, masterful artist. As a freethinking Christian religious explorer, he produced a great out-take on Christianity and the anthropomorphic god of that Judeo-Christian tradition. As a child, in his worship of the Christ he wanted to know why Christ hadn't gotten a family together to protect him and live out his ideas. Wulf's search for the meaning of divinity, in himself and the universe, led him to the idea of ele-Mental energy as the consistent God-force in everything. He came first from the Baptist, then the Science of Mind traditions, and Mind became his overriding religious touchstone and cornerstone. He believed that anything could be accomplished through Mind and that this Mind energy came first, would be forever and could reach through everything — that ele-Mental energy was the creative and unifying force in the Universe.

In statements such as "only art can save any of us", there is much that is not apparent until you realize where he was coming from. He was coming from the perception that what happens to the artist in the practice of great art — what the artist goes through to get to perfection, the ongoing sense and knowledge of never quite getting there, but going for it anyway, and the improvisation of it — is the divine process of Life itself. When you subject yourself to that process you can then know the process your life must go through. The statement "only religious passion can save ourselves and our fellow creatures... and the forests... and the seas..." is another packed statement — packed with the idea of what he meant by religious passion. The passionate quest of his lifetime was to come up with the concepts, and actions for practicing those concepts, that would rescue humanity from its destructive course, providing one of hope and the belief that we can create our own destinies.

Wulf drew on the discoveries of Darwin, Einstein, Buckminster Fuller, Freud, Krishnamurti and Jung. He used their theories and expanded upon them to develop religious, social and personal enlightenment techniques, in order to expose the great potential of the human species. He knew that there was purpose in the Universe and that this unifying God-force was in all humans — that Divinity could be attained by all.

Wulf was also an excellent mechanic — he could build a hot rod and fix most any car. He was also an inventor. He was very bold in his use of materials to make things work. He understood nuts and bolts, the right metals and materials and their function. He could build the most delicate and complicated musical instruments as well as automobiles. He understood function. Unlike Darwin and Freud, his view of the universe and man within it was holistic; he believed that everything contained everything within it.

As any inventor or mechanic, he wanted to make things and have them work. He understood machinery, and using this knowledge he could understand humans. He understood that everything has a function - nothing is meaningless.

Wulf discovered purpose for man, as there is purpose in anything that works - nothing is random. In this way he had the understanding and intuition of a primitive man together with the consciousness of a man who understood the internal combustion engine and the theory of relativity. He considered himself a "quantum-mechanic of philosophy" and his simple profound equation, expressed as “I=eMe”, (I am ele-Mental energy) reflects his study of quantum mechanics.

[edit] References

1. ^ http://www.zendik.org Zendik Farm
2. ^ http://www.zendik.org/questfiles/questindex.html
3. ^ http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wulf+zendik&search=Search

[edit] External links

review of Wulf Zendik's "A Quest Among the Bewildered"

• [1]