Rememberance IV:

On this the 60th anniversary of the assasination of M.K.Gandhi

I'd like to recall Dick Gregory, a serious student of Gandhi's methods and champion in his own right of our continuing collective leap to post-colonial worldspace.

In an Integral Health thread I briefly recount the time I worked for him.

As a black who ran for the U.S. Presidency twice (through the write-in ballot, 1968, and '76) I think of him (as I do Barbara Marx Hubbard in relation to Hillary Clinton's candidacy) as a cultural forerunner to the candidacy of Sen.Obama. By one analysis, if Dick had not run in '76, Carter would not have won. Rather than remember him as only political I want to express my appreciation for his modeling important aspects of Integral Life Practice.

Through hunger strikes he was able to wield his celebrity for the systemic sake of raising public awareness. Working with all quadrants, the practice of fasting was always accompanied with prayer. He taught this. A balancing of being politically active with spiritual practice; and of tending to the vessel, the body, in ways that reflect one's own degree of freedom from the myriad, subtler colonialisms still woven tightly into our increasingly post-colonial era. For instance, the rare form of cancer that he was diagnosed with in 2001 he is now free of, and which he treated with a thoroughly holistic regimen.


One lesson I Iearned from Dick is that revealing and examining our relativistic ruts and comforts is a valid instigation of Second Tier perspecting. I found him to be a reliable master at "highlighting our fixation to the green meme", which, as KW wrote in A Theory of Everything (English, page 29), "By highlighting our fixation to the green meme, I believe that we can begin more readilly to transcend and include its wonderful accomplishments in an ever more generous embrace."

After a screening of the movie, Gandhi, at the Whole Life Expo (Plaza Hotel, Manhattan, '83), Dick spoke to the packed house of holistic health practicioners and enthusiasts ( a sea of green? ). The crowd was aglow with the triumphal, romanticised depiction of their hero. Dick said, "That ain't nothin' but a vicious movie", and went on to point out a few consecutive scenes. In one, the Indian populace is affirmed in their capacity to accomplish their liberation on their own, in the very next, an altruistic white woman appears as a necessary catalyst for the movement. Implicit meanings of such a reading (of that scripting and editing) may not have been conscious, even for Attenborough, its producer, but the nuances of colonialism and its transposed perpetuations were recognized by Dick. And he still does that these days.

Dick is good at deconstructing the "golden shadow" of Green, prompting the members of his audiences to start with their own empowerment, thereby actualizing the Gandhian slogan, "Be the change you wish to see...".

He does have his far out side, and I don't agree with many of the statements he makes. But as someone who has long used their own position in society to reflect that society back to itself, I consider Dick Gregory an exemplar of the full richness possible for a single human life.