IVIV (8): From an Ancient Indian Word Meaning "Serenity"

[Dave Monroe]

"The bank deposit form Sloane Wolfmann had given Doc was from Arbolada
Savings and Loan in Ojai...." (IV, Ch. 8, p. 111)


There is no direct cue from the narrator that this the next day, but
considering that Doc spent the night tripping, and now Aunt Reet's
office is open, it's safe to assume that this is the seventh day of
the narrative, Monday, March 30, 1970.

"Arbolada Savings and Loan in Ojai"

While the actual bank is apparently fictional, there is a neighborhood
in the Ojai Valley named "Arbolada." It is, at least today, one the
most expensive and desirable neighborhoods in the area. In Spanish,
"arbolada" refers to a woodland.

http://inherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_8#Page_111

The Ojai Arbolada was one of Ojai's first developed subdivisions. It
was designed and developed by Edward Libby around 1922. In the
beginning the original price of a lot started at $10,000 and sales
were slow. It was not until 1958 that the subdivision really took off
and many of the homes there were built. The subdivision is unique in
that each home enjoys from 1/2 to 2 acreas and the area is covered in
native Oaks trees.

Today the Arbolada is considered one of the high end neighborhoods for
the City of Ojai....

http://www.discoverojai.com/Arbolada.html


"Rosicrucians and Theosophists"

Rosicrucians

See, e.g., ...

http://www.crcsite.org/
http://www.rosicrucian.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosicrucianism
http://www.levity.com/alchemy/rosicros.html
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2225/what-is-rosicrucianism-all-about

Yates, Frances A.  The Rosicrucian Enlightenment.
   New York: Routledge, 2002 [1972].

http://www.routledge.com/shopping_cart/products/product_detail.asp?sku=&isbn=0415267692&parent_id=&pc=
http://books.google.com/books?id=MTvjkifGp04C

I still believe this may have been an official Source for M&D ...

And cf. ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9801&msg=22977
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9801&msg=22987
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9801&msg=23005
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9801&msg=23125

Thanks again, Keith!  Also ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0202&msg=65028
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0203&msg=65322
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0203&msg=65347
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0203&msg=65349

Theosophists

http://www.theosophy.net/
http://www.theosophical.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theosophy

Theosophy is a doctrine of religious philosophy (according to
Wikipedia) which holds that all religions are related to a higher
truth. The Theosophical Society in America operates an institute
called Krotona in Ojai, near the fictional Chryskylodon.

http://inherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_8#Page_111

Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna (1831-91)
269; A Russian-born American psychic and mystic. She founded the
Theosophical Society in New York in 1875 and later continued her work
in India. Although her psychic powers were widely acclaimed, they did
not withstand the scrutiny of the Society for Psychical Research,
though this had little effect on her following; the Blavatskian wing
in Psi section. Her day of death (May 8) is commemorated as White
Lotus Day.

http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=B

And cf./see as well ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9910&msg=42297
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0803&msg=124793
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0705&msg=118313
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0909&msg=141747
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0909&msg=141749

Thanks, Terrance!  Thanks, Robin!  Thanks, Doug!


Chryskylodon

Chryskylodon Institute
111; upscale rehabilitation facility in Ojai; where Japonica is sent,
171; Greek for "gold fang", 185; Doc visits, 186; 301. Any chance this
is a veiled critique or parody of Scientology? cf also Synanon

http://inherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=C


"As if his head was a 3-D gong struck by a small hammer"

?  But cf. ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLnyUZbJmOk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gongman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rank_Organisation
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/film-world-mourns-man-who-banged-the-paper-gong-for-rank-410952.html
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2128.htm

J Arthur Rank - Gong

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/plain/A1012591
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Bxv_HLwT7U


"from an ancient Indian word meaning 'serenity'"

433. Shantih. Repeated as here, a formal ending to an Upanishad. 'The
Peace which passeth understanding' is a feeble translation of the
conduct of this word.

http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html#433
http://eliotswasteland.tripod.com/notes.html#f433

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965).  The Waste Land.  1922.

http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html
http://eliotswasteland.tripod.com/

om
shantih  shantih  shantih

http://www.shantih.com/


"the unprecedented stressfulness of life in the sixties and seventies"

The term "stress" had none of its current general senses before the
1950s. As a semi-psychological term referring to hardship or coercion,
it dated from the 14th century. It is a form of the Middle English
destresse, derived via Old French from the Latin stringere – to draw
tight.

It had long been in use in physics to refer to the internal
distribution of a force exerted on a material body, resulting in
strain. In the 1920s and 1930s, the term was occasionally being used
in psychological circles to refer to a mental strain or unwelcome
happening, and by advocates of holistic medicine to refer to a harmful
environmental agent that could cause illness. Walter Cannon used it in
1934 to refer to external factors that disrupted what he called
"homeostasis".

A new scientific usage developed out of Hans Seyle's reports of his
laboratory experiments in the 1930s. Selye started to use the term to
refer not just to the agent but to the state of the organism as it
responded and adapted to the environment....

[...]

>From the late 1960s, Selye's concept started to be taken up by
academic psychologists, who sought to quantify "life stress" by
scoring "significant life events", and a large amount of research was
undertaken to examine links between stress and disease of all kinds.
By the late 1970s stress had become the medical area of greatest
concern to the general population, and more basic research was called
for to better address the issue....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_(biology)#History_and_usage

And see, e.g., ...

The Political Economy of Social Problems: From the Sixties to the Seventies

http://www.jstor.org/pss/800330

The Sixties and Seventies from Berkeley to Woodstock

http://www.fsmitha.com/h2/ch28B.htm