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I watched a biography of Thomas Merton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Merton last night and wondered a few times if he wasn't "eliminated" because of his growing influence and radical outspoken views on the cold war, the arms race, interfaith harmony, race relations, etc. Supposedly he died from an electrical shock from a fan after getting out of the shower in 1968 in Thailand after giving a very revolutionary speech (his only one filmed) to church members discussing how monasticism was the only pure communism being practiced quoting early Marx as very "Christian". He also talked about his recent visit with the Dali Lama and the need for religious orders to "stand on their own", which I guess he meant little to none governmental support or influence and spoke of the need for a greater dialogue to be had between Asian religious orders and western ones.

As you can imagine this and other outspoken views weren't going down well. Googleing a bit I found it interesting that he was to meet with Martin Luther King earlier in the year before MLK was assassinated.:

"At the time of his assassination, plans were underway for Martin Luther King, Jr., to make a retreat with Thomas Merton at Our Lady of Gethsemani Abbey. We shall never know what might have resulted from a dialogue between this Roman Catholic monk and this black Baptist preacher whose lives still fascinate and inspire us twenty years after their deaths. But the act of recalling their common struggle against the evils of racism, materialism, and militarism, may enable us to recover what they would have brought to such an encounter and to imagine the joint "word" they might have left those who strive to live out their legacy"
http://www.spiritualitytoday.org/spir2d ... oteau.html

It seems 1968 was not a good year for people with unpopular views: MLK assassinated in April, RFK in June and Merton has a mishap with fan in December
Others have wondered the same thing and I found this thread with comments:

http://gaymystic.blogspot.com/2009/10/w ... nated.html

WAS THOMAS MERTON ASSASSINATED?

Since 1968, many people have been fascinated by Merton's death. The seemingly unanswerable question is: "Was his death the result of a conspiracy?" In pre-Watergate America, such a question would have been dismissed as absurd. But we are a more sophisticated people today, and conspiracy theories don't sound so much like theater of the absurd. I remember reading Matthew Fox's autobiography Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denonimational Priest and being rather surprised that he believed that Merton might have been assassinated. He writes, "I once asked a CIA agent who was in Southeast Asia at the time whether they killed Merton. 'I will neither affirm it nor deny it,' he said. 'Could you have?' I asked. 'A piece of cake,' he replied." A rather enigmatic exchange, and although it's intriguing, it really doesn't prove a thing.

But proof be damned, for Bill Goodson's lively imagination has concocted a rather wild storyline, laying blame for Merton's death at the hands not of the CIA but of a secret, ultra-conservative Catholic organization called the "Bossuet Society," whose aim is to save the church from the infection of ecumenism. On its hit list are the Pope and Thomas Merton. Yes, it's crazily far-fetched, but a willing suspension of disbelief makes Goodson's novel fun to read.

taken from a review of The Bossuet Conspiracy

Well, here's the opinion of an old Thailand expatriate of twenty five years. Electronic devices in Thailand are notoriously unreliable and I've been shocked on a number of occasions by grasping a fan by the base. Had my feet been in water, well, who knows? But enough of a shock to cause a fatal heart attack? Please! What usually happens is that the fuse blows and the incident is over. Almost no one in the Church in Thailand believes that Merton died accidentally by grasping a fan. The story is just a little too neat. Had it fallen into the shower with him, or the tub, well that would have been another matter. And as my father always loved to say, "I only believe those conspiracy theories that are true?"

3 comments

1.
Terence Says:
October 19, 2009 2:30 PM
2.

I was reading the following just this afternoon. It's an extract from "Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church", the autobiography of Rembert Weakland, former Archbishop of Milwaukee, and previously Abbot Primate of the Benedictine order. In that capacity, in December 1968,he was attending a meeting in Thailand where Merton was also a speaker, on Dec 10:

"At about 3:00 that afternoon, a monk came running to tell me that Merton had been found dead in his room. I ran to his bungalow to find the body on the floor, face up, arms extended, hands free but slightly gnarled. A floor fan had fallen on his body leaving strips of burn marks on his arm where the fan lay. Sister Edeltraud Weist, a medical doctor and prioress of our monastery in Taegu, Korea, said he was internally electrically burned, an accident which had stopped his heart. His body was still warm and I anointed him.

The Thai police and coroners were called. The coroner's certificate stated "death was caused as a result of fainting - due to acute cardiac failure and electric shock due to accidental falling against the electric fan to the floor."

3.
Jayden Cameron Says:
October 19, 2009 3:21 PM
4.

Another example of synchronicity! Yes, this is the official account and no one doubts the veracity of Sister Edeltraud Weist. What is strange, however, is that Merton retired to his room to take a nap, but visitors heard voices coming from his room some 30 minutes before the body was discovered. But as I've said, I've been zapped a number of times by faulty electrical devices in Thailand, and I always felt there was something appropriate about this "Zen Catholic" monk getting zapped into eternity.

5.
Anonymous Says:
October 20, 2009 8:28 AM
6.

Well...if one thinks about it...how about this "conspiracy theory"?

John Coltrane,the jazz musician, died of liver cancer, supposedly the result of his previous alcohol and heroin addiction. But it was rather quick.

Robert Kennedy was assasinated by Sirhan Sirhan.

Merton dies.

All three were Americans who happened to be what might be called teachers/ leaders of the young people coming of age and political power in the U.S.

Bereft of these leaders, the young drfift about, lost in a haze of smoke and music, until the "Howdy Doody" of their childhood, Uncle Ronnie, charms them into the dream og Morning in Amerca.

Merton was a genius!

I've wondered this too, brekin. It's a good question. Thomas Merton could see — and that made him a threat. He wrote about much of what he saw — and that made him a target.

The religious arm of the empire tried to silence him and, when that didn't work, the political arm...

Well, like I said, this is a good question, isn't it?

Because Merton successfully contrasted the value of inner life compared to the drives of outer life, he was an irritant to National inSecurity State proxies.

It's much easier to tax becoming, than it is to tax being.

Yes it's possible if not probable.

Thanks for posting this brekin. At least now wikipedia has corrected my 'popular belief' that Trappist monks take a vow of silence... It always amused me that he wrote so much instead.

Zounder wrote:Because Merton successfully contrasted the value of inner life compared to the drives of outer life, he was an irritant to National inSecurity State proxies.

Unless you are putting extra emphasis on the word successfully , I don't see it. There's plenty of people pushing 'being'...although come to think of it, without necessarily contrasting it with becoming.

This guy is interesting:

http://www.adyashanti.org/

His audiences are full of fawning spiritually needy types. He even complains of the 'scene' becoming a spiritual consumer market place, but I'm not convinced he's helping.

Interesting that he died in Thailand in the middle of the Vietnam war.

chiggerbit wrote:

Interesting that he died in Thailand in the middle of the Vietnam war.

Yes, and he had met with Thich Nhat Hanh I believe on that trip. But he also had met with him as early as 1966.

http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/ ... hp?id=3600

Thomas Merton, the Catholic contemplative and social prophet, met Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist peace activist on May 26, 1966, and the two men from different religious traditions realized they were kindred spirits. Both were convinced that their spiritual practices had relevance to the problems of the contemporary world. Both believed that what Thich Nhat Hanh would later call "engaged spirituality" meant combining contemplation and action.

Thich Nhat Hanh don't forget was the one who urged Martin Luther King to speak out about Vietnam.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thich_Nhat_Hanh

Thich Nhat Hanh returned to the US in 1966 to lead a symposium in Vietnamese Buddhism at Cornell University and to continue his work for peace. Thich Nhat Hanh had written a letter to Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1965 entitled: “Searching for the Enemy of Man” and it was during his 1966 stay in the U.S. that Thich Nhat Hanh met with Martin Luther King, Jr. and urged him to publicly denounce the Vietnam War [14].

In 1967, Dr. King gave a famous speech at the Riverside Church in New York City [15], his first to publicly question the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Later that year Dr. King nominated Thich Nhat Hanh for the 1967 Nobel Peace Prize.

A couple of quick points... both likely irrelevant ...

1) the supposed method (different target) was given notoriety in the opening phases of a James Bond film....;

2) Merton, in addition to the above-noted inspirations, is the 'author' of the term 'Unspeakable' used by James Douglass in his highly-recommended book "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters".

i was just going to add that myself surfaceskimmer, Merton plays a big part in JFK and the Unspeakable

It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the void that gets into the language of public and official declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced, and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss. It is the void out of which Eichmann drew the punctilious exactitude of his obedience

http://mertoninasia.blogspot.com/2008/1 ... later.html

I've always thought he was assassinated.

tasmic wrote...

Unless you are putting extra emphasis on the word successfully , I don't see it. There's plenty of people pushing 'being'...although come to think of it, without necessarily contrasting it with becoming.

tasmic, your right, in my mind successfully was slanted, but I forgot to add it in the posting. Gurus, even if they don’t like it, find it easier to sell becoming rather than being.

I read and enjoyed the writing of the guru fellow you linked to tasmic. It feels odd to not care much for gurus and yet still have great respect for many of the ideas presented.

Such as this;
http://www.adyashanti.org/index.php?fil ... itingid=30

To cease cherishing illusions is a way of inverting the energy of seeking. The energy of seeking will be there in one form or another until you wake up from the dream state. You can’t just get rid of it. You need to learn how to invert it and use the energy to deconstruct the illusions that hold your consciousness in the dream state. This sounds relatively simple, but the consequences can seem quite disorienting, even threatening. I’m not talking about a new spiritual technique here; I’m talking about a radically different orientation to the whole of your spiritual life. This is not a little thing. It is a very big thing, and your best chance of awakening depends on it. “Do not seek the truth; simply cease cherishing illusions.” And if you’re like most spiritually oriented people, your spirituality is your most cherished illusion. Imagine that.

The following u-tubes are good for a bit of SDS history and relations to the science of when to murder the dissident.
(There is a second vid to complete the story.)

Yes, smiths and surfaceskimmer JFK and the Unspeakable is a remarkable book. I've always thought it is a great intro to RI type themes for non-RI people.

The same author also wrote this article about Martin Luther King Jr. assassination related to the Phoenix Program.

http://www.ratical.com/ratville/JFK/MLKconExp.html

The testimony of writer Douglas Valentine filled in the background of the men Carthel Weeden had taken up to the roof of Fire Station 2. While Valentine was researching his book The Phoenix Program (1990), on the CIA's notorious counterintelligence program against Vietnamese villagers, he talked with veterans in military intelligence who had been re-deployed from the Vietnam War to the sixties antiwar movement. They told him that in 1968 the Army's 111th Military Intelligence Group kept Martin Luther King under 24-hour-a-day surveillance. Its agents were in Memphis April 4. As Valentine wrote in The Phoenix Program, they "reportedly watched and took photos while King's assassin moved into position, took aim, fired, and walked away."

It doesn't seem like to much of a leap to surmise how easy it would be for them to take out another anti-war non-violent figure for structural change. Especially in South East Asia.

Thanks for starting this thread, brekin. Two days ago, by coincidence, I picked up a book by Merton for the very first time. I knew little about him, and absolutely nothing about his contacts with Thich Nhat Hanh and MLK. He was an interesting guy, and this only makes him all the more interesting.

JFK and the Unspeakable is another book I am clearly going to have to read. I think it was sunny who first recommended it to me, over a year ago; but frankly, I've been avoiding delving very deeply into the political assassinations of that aborted decade, because the whole topic is simply so depressing, almost too grim to contemplate.

Sometimes I wonder if that's not the main thing that puts off most people about "conspiracy theories": they'd just rather not know, or at least not in too much detail. Deciding to study it is like resolving to take a holiday in a cesspit. (9/11 was different, because I experienced it live, and as an adult - no choice was available.)

Ignorance may not be bliss, but it is undeniably a comfort zone.

Mac, one of the great things about JFK and the Unspeakable is that it is, indeed, utterly heartbreaking. Or to steal a line from a poster on another message board, "James Douglass made it come alive". I bought a copy for my dad at Christmas hoping it would shake him out of the Dark Side of Camelot/Legacy of Secrecy zone that he's in. It's a powerful book.

Interesting video, Sounder, and the follow-ons as well in terms of learning more about things and people mentioned in it.. and brekin makes a good point as well. Indeed, it is nice to know there are people following the skein and examining the tapestry.

If you go no further than this with JFKU, it is a remarkable explanation of how the security state apparatus emplaces people within organizations well beyond the norm and the obvious (we could call them sleeper cells) to do its bidding, and how that same apparatus lays down multiple disinformation and misinformation bomblets embedded within the operation to be developed and played or self-imploded by investigators and researchers in the future.

It is the answer to the debunking questions "How can there be so many people involved...?" and the way in which debunkers can quickly cast doubt and aspersion at those who are questioning "official stories".