The once and future cause

The future causes the past, I am convinced of it. You might say, that is impossible; a thing's cause must be in the past. If a ball flies through the air, for example, the cause is that a split second ago I applied a sufficient amount of force with my arm to send it aloft on its trajectory. But consider this: maybe the ball's motion is the cause of my throwing it. For in order to get it up there, I had to throw it. I am totally compelled to do so, if the ball's motion is to be accounted for.

The future already exists; it is all around us, impinging on us, forcing us to do things for no reason that we can imagine. But the Shadow knows—the shadow of things yet to come!

The opposite of shrubbery

I just received an e-mail that evidently has been going around for years with a story about how Einstein supposedly humiliated an atheist professor by showing him that a "good" God could not be held responsible for the existence of evil because evil could not properly be said to exist, just as in physics cold does not exist; it is merely the absence of heat. And evil is just the absence of good. This story is a well-known hoax, and as Einstein was something of a skeptic, it would have been out of character in any case for him to make such an argument.

But all that aside, does the argument have any merit? Basically it is saying, there's no dualism here! Good does not have an opposite. It is a physical entity. It's like saying, what's the opposite of shrubbery? Okay, I cannot think of a word in the English language that means "the opposite of shrubbery." But somehow we do have this word "evil." It has a linguistic meaning, certainly, as books have been written to explicate it: Paradise Lost, for instance. But if we follow this line of argument, we are to say that all these people who write about such a subject are under the spell of maya: they are writing about an illusion, something that has no real existence. Thus the famous "problem of evil" is solved by denying there is a problem to begin with because there is no evil. Well, you are going to have difficulty persuading people who have been tortured in prisons of the validity of this argument. In their worlds, evil exists and there is no doubt. Maybe in my world I can have the luxury of maintaining the non-existence of evil; I have not been tortured in prison and there is probably no incident in my direct experience throughout my life that I can specifically attribute to being caused by something so radical as the E-word.

However, I'm not going to take the position that Evil does not exist. I'm going to say to the torture survivor: I respect your experience of reality enough to admit this category to my lexicon. To say that to say something is good is not like saying it is shrubbery. To have any meaning whatsoever, "good" has to have an opposite. To say something is evil is actually to make a positive statement about its qualities, and not merely to make a meaningless noise. It rather gets my attention, in fact, and triggers a visceral response.

This says to me that there is some connection of this whole subject with the body. Perhaps the impulse to deny the existence of evil is related to the desire to just have done with the body per se and all its attendant frailties and indignities. Which brings us back to Hamlet: the desire to end "the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to." I'm sure Einstein would have something more to add at this point, but I am done for now, although the country is not yet done with malevolent shrubs.

Too late

It's too late to fix things, I'm afraid. They're too far gone. Oh yeah, the Man has got it all buttoned down. You're high and dry, without a word of warning, just helplessly hoping and rolling like a stone.

But seriously, isn't that kind of a relief? You can just give it up and let it be. And figure out what you want to do instead. Like get a new gig, all right? Because it's just too late to do anything else.

The last postmodern

The last postmodern sat alone in a silent white room, reading the tiny irregularities on the spotless, pristine walls. There was a knock at the door.

He hesitated. Nothing had penetrated his silence since he could remember. With trembling hands he turned the knob. There was no one there! But beyond the doorway he could see a marvellous vista of vast, verdant woods and flowering gardens. Everywhere a riot of vegetation engulfed the eye with colors and a burgeoning excess. In the trees he could see shadowy figures flickering as if transported in some kind of trance or dance. Intoxicating perfumes assaulted his senses and a distant flute seduced his ears.

Realizing that this earthly paradise was not as susceptible to interpretation as the white room, he stepped back into his hermeneutic heaven and shut the door.

I am waiting

I am waiting. Do you wonder what am I waiting for? I am waiting for that which I do not know. We are all waiting, as in the Rolling Stones song, "for someone to come out of somewhere." Just that. We don't know who they are or what they will bring. Maybe that someone is ourselves, about to emerge from the forest of our own night, and surprise us with a taste of otherness from within.

We wonder while we wait, and wonder why we wait. Eventually time disappears, and all the possible reasons for waiting evaporate, and all that is left is ourselves, calmly poised on the edge of a moment, simply and utterly waiting.

Enheatenment

I have been using the word enheatenment for awhile and I suppose I must have originated the term, as I don't find it anywhere on the Internet when I google. It means the corollary of enlightenment, for with light there is surely also heat, and if you expect to see celestial visions or shake hands with God, the temperature is going to rise. In fact, you might want to consider how much it could rise when you flick that switch. Do you really want to be incinerated for a few flashy moments of incandescent cosmic vision?

So do turn on, but dial it up gradually. Feel the heat, then dial it up some more. Let what needs to melt, melt, before you crank it up for the full effulgence. Get enheatened, by all means. It's a warm groove.

True history

Having read The Da Vinci Code and now seen American Treasure, I realize that history as it is written is a vast distraction. The real history of any import has to do with secret organizations like the Knights Templar and the Freemasons, which have over centuries been harboring hordes of ancient treasure dating from the time of the Pyramids, and of course the Holy Grail itself. And these coveted items are squirreled away in church basements and the like, just waiting for those who are skilled enough to follow clues that have been placed on the dollar bill and other inconspicuous places.

These books and movies, of which we will doubtless see more, must themselves be messages implanted into the cultural mainstream by shadowy figures to awaken the human race to the hidden mystical currents underlying ordinary life. Be not deluded that because these mind-bending ideas are now being delivered through the popular media, they are somehow less credible than what is enshrined in history books.

Be warned. Heed these cryptic cyphers and follow them to the limit, or be engulfed in the miasma of error masquerading as truth.

Less is more

Less is more. We hear that. Just what does that mean? It seems to come out of the perception that when enough is too much, then less than enough is about right. Thus if I don't get enough to eat, that would be preferable, and if I don't have enough money to pay for the meal, so much the better. I hope the restaurant will be understanding if I'm a little short on cash tomorrow, knowing that actually my giving them less is better for them in so many ways. Because after all, they didn't give me enough. So I will still be hungry and they can continue to sell me less and less and make more and more.

Yes, let us be wary of getting enough and thus bringing progress to a standstill. We might even have to stop reincarnating to fulfill our desires, if they are all satisfied.

Less is more. Remember, it's not just good business. It's the right way to live.

Ipso ficto

Consider the meaning of the word "fact," which comes from a root meaning something "made," something done and which exists in truth. Although some facts can be easily agreed on, such as "it is raining" (a look out the window will confirm this), these are actually a very limited number. One does not have to look so far as a presidential election to find that what one person regards as indisputable fact is a blatant lie to another.

In fact, that fact about the rain applies only if we share a frame of reference in which the water in the air seems to precipitate in a certain fashion. If we were so tiny as not to be able to perceive the raindrops, the event would hardly qualify as a fact. By the same token, if we were gigantic creatures hundreds of miles wide, a bit of moisture somewhere on our body might not even register. To say that it is raining is to register an event as being of a certain magnitude such that it engulfs our perception.

Of all potential facts, we register only a very few, which become our "faction," the totality of facts that we call reality. Political factions arise when people with similar factions join together. These mega-factions should more rightly be called "fictions" because facts diluted across multiple subjectivities quickly become divorced from the facts from which they arose.

Dream within a dream

Edgar Allan Poe, in his poem "Dream within a Dream," depicts the poet standing on the "surf-tormented shore," contemplating a handful of sand, which is slipping through his fingers into the "pitiless wave." He weeps in the knowledge that he cannot save even a single grain from its extinction, and asks:

Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

He questions the reality not only of the world constructed by individual consciousness but the very cosmic framework in which that microcosm resides. Not even Plato was that extreme. Yes, Poe was very, very far out. He was interested in other things besides homicidal orangutans. Check out his cosmological essay Eureka. He holds that the universe is, as it were, the fragmented mind and body of God, with all beings as "infinite individualizations of God." Ultimately the "Heart Divine" of God is our own; consciousness and the human soul are eternal, and each soul is in a sense its own creator and own God. Radicool!

Absent parent

God save us from people with religious upbringings. Their religious ideas are formed at a very young age, and while it is theoretically possible for these to evolve with maturity, it doesn't seem to happen in a majority of cases. Instead, modern religious denominations themselves seem like overgrown children that base their beliefs on a profoundly dualistic concept of a divine parent lording it over the human kids with insuperable power. It's really an absent parent, though, and as a result humanity struggles under a profound anxiety, whether admitted or not, that they have been abandoned by mommy and daddy.

Let's try an experiment. Reserve religion only for those who have passed their 18th birthday. Keep all practice of religion small, private, mysterious, and cult-like, not publicly available to all comers or advertised on television. There should be much more diversity of religious belief, ritual, symbology, and myth than there is now, and there would be if the mainstreaming effects of mass culture had not trivialized and vitiated religion. On the other hand, religion could contribute to the regeneration of the human imagination if it returned to its roots as an organic adjunct to private experience.

A dose of dualism

Feeling sluggish in the morning? Is your mind not so clear anymore at work? Does it seem as though one day is just following the next in an undifferentiated haze? Maybe it's time to try dualism, a touch of the old black and white. You see, the mind gets settled into these homogeneous patterns, and nothing seems good or bad anymore. Well, a little dose'll do you.

Try right/wrong, for instance. That will immediately straighten out the confusing world situation for you. Them and us, that's the ticket. Here's another one to solve all your religious issues. God up there, you down here. End of story. Now if you're a metaphysical sort, a very good dualism is Being and Becoming, also known as the absolute and the relative. Transcend the relative, be in the absolute, and you're done. Q.E.D. That's the ultimate dualism, isn't it?

Not quite. The ultimate dualism is Being and Being. Put your ism together with the ism of another being and that's the ultimate.

If you were here

If you were here, well, it would be different from what it is now, when you're not. It would still be here, but a bigger here. Not a smaller here, because even though there would be more of us in the same space, the mindspace would be bigger, you dig?

Using that logic, I guess you'd say that the more people we got in here, the better, right? Not. You start reaching a point of diminishing returns and the mindspace contracts. You don't want that.

So let's just get you here and leave it at that. We can explore the synergy for quite awhile before we exhaust the possibilities. At which point, we'll figure out what to do next. Like maybe go over there.

Black box

An article in the London Sunday Times today has a top scientist, Sir Martin Rees of Cambridge University, seriously questioning whether the universe is in fact just a simulation inside a giant supercomputer. Other scientists debunk the notion on the grounds that such a computer would have to be unimaginably large. But who would have ever thought that you could get the computing power we now have in such a small space? The Pocket PC that I hold in my hand is now much more powerful than the roomful of computers that once sent a man to the moon. And this is just the beginning of the trend towards miniaturization; a quantum computer can easily hold data in one table that encompasses all of the atoms in the known universe.

But perhaps it would take nothing more than the human brain to generate this simulation, for we do not even comprehend how complex that machine is. It consists of more than brain cells: it is wirelessly networked to vast reservoirs of computing power that we know nothing of. And it is through the brain that we absorb the size and shape of this world we inhabit. It's kind of like having a black box voting machine. It provides the result without any accountability.

So if you bemoan the state of affairs in the nation at present, just look at the universe. You yourself are the biggest black box going.

Freak flag

In the 60s one was aware of oneself as a "freak," which essentially established one as a counter-identity to the mainstream, along with all of one's fellow freaks, whose company made it quite a bit more palatable to be freakish. Not only did the word acquire a positive connotation, it was a metaphor that turned the established value system on its head. In other words, one could only be real if one was different, if one established for oneself modes of dress and behavior, and philosophies and cosmologies that suited one's own idiosyncratic vision.

This is why the references to flying one's "freak flag" in Jimi Hendrix's "If Six Was Nine" and David Crosby's "Almost Cut My Hair" transcend any literal connection to hair or flags; it is really representative of being in one's own space, a separate space from society or from anyone else, really; a symbol of that ontological zone where one has license to explore the structure of the individual quantum which some freak of nature bestowed upon us.

Letter from Mick #1

When I recently was offered the chance to become God, I'll admit that I was immensely flattered, as anyone would be. But at first I was reluctant to accept the post. I was a bit averse to accepting that knighthood too, and I suppose, as Bowie chucked his, I should have done the same. But because I wasn't on tour at the moment, I thought I may as well become Sir Mick, as it might give me a rationale for wearing that medieval suit of armour I practically pinched from Sotheby's last year for a few thousand quid.

Now being God is a different matter, altogether more serious. But if I actually listened to all these constant entreaties, I'd go mad. People are worse than a pack of agents. They could just listen to my records and realize that you can't always get what you want. So why cry to me? I can't get no satisfaction either. Well, we all need someone we can lean on, and if you want it, you can lean on me. But if you can't rock me, somebody else will!

Debugging

The problem is all in your mind. It really is. But the problem is not that there is a mind. There is, and that's okay. There's no point in railing against the mere possession of mental apparatus. It's there. Get used to it. And the problem is not that we are conditioned beings, run by those computer programs in our heads. We need them. We need both the hardware and the software.

And the problem is not with the Microsoft of the mind, either, the operating system. Maybe you can wing it with open source, but you need some kind of OS, replete with an identity (ego) on the network.

No, the problem is the bugs in these programs, the ones that cause us to fall into infinite loops of obsessive thoughts. When we consider our thinking patterns, we should look for places where some unforeseen condition causes us to unreel on endless journeys into the labyrinth. What we need is to add error trapping to our programs so that we have an out when these conditions occur: that will stop the thoughts from getting too loopy.

Give yourself an escape clause! Program your problems away!

Popping the wild qwiff

"Popping a qwiff" is Fred Alan Wolf's expression for the collapse of a quantum wave function, and it happens whenever an observer makes an observation. That act collapses the infinite possibilities of the quantum wave, or qwiff, into the finite, relative manifestation of the moment.

No wonder you get tired by the end of the day. Think how many qwiffs you had to pop to get there, how many observations you had to make. Now think how many qwiffs you whiffed—that is, that you failed to pop. You could have popped so many more, because the qwiffs were flying right and left and you didn't even notice, but you popped what you popped, and I won't chastise you for the "old maid" qwiffs that were left in the bottom of your quantum popper. We'll never know, any of us, how many qwiffs we whiffed in our popping career.

Every time I see you

Every time I see you, I feel touched by divinity. In fact, what's the difference between you and God? There can be none. You are God.

But you are not omnipresent because much of the time we are not together. You are not omniscient because much of the time you are struggling to understand what is befalling you, and you are always dealing with the complex emotions that arise in you. You are not all loving nor do you always do good.

But none of that matters, because those are only qualities that have been ascribed to God. God Himself/Herself has other ideas. Godliness consists in whatever God does. So whatever you do next, that's your godliness. I honor that spirit in you. And I love the fact that I cannot predict or understand what it is.

Department of redundancy

Let us begin in our quest to eliminate redundancy with the word redundancy itself, along with tautology and pleonasm. These are roughly synonymous, but if correctly used they do have shades of difference.

To begin with, do not say "pleonasm" in polite company. When you do say it, use it to refer to syntactic rather than semantic redundancies. For example, call the phrase "I know that you are coming" a pleonasm (because of the unnecessary "that") but the phrase "Could you repeat that again?" where "again" is totally unnecessary, should be termed a "redundancy." Although you would not be wrong to call the latter a pleonasm, use "redundancy" so as not to be redundant. Use "tautology" only amongst logicians to show that you can recognize dual propositions that have some pretense at differentiation but are actually saying the same thing. To wit: "It's very important for folks to understand that when there's more trade, there's more commerce" (George W. Bush, at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, April 21, 2001).

The greatest redundancy is, of course, the universe itself, which seems to be replicated over and over in every individual's consciousness, for no apparent reason. Perhaps it is due to some inherent principle of extravagance in nature. Did it never enter the mind of God that it would save a considerable amount of effort to simply create one universe rather than many? The recent presidential election showed, however, that despite appearances people definitely inhabit different universes, some of them very different indeed.

It is a wonder any of us can communicate at all. Luckily, redundancies are rife in common parlance and fill up the space that would otherwise be used for understanding each other.

Aftermath

About all I can think to say after the election is what I wrote to a friend: "Humanity has cast its vote and it wasn't for the Light. Hell can now open its gates and proceed with impunity."
On a more cheerful note, I refer you to W. B. Yeats's Second Coming:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Ringing endorsement

This is the first time the qubikuity blog has endorsed a presidential candidate. One reason is that qubikuity has only been in existence since May of 2004. Another, however, is that recently the realm of politics has imposed itself upon the mind of this writer for the first time in appreciable degree since the 1960s. That was a long time ago, and yet somehow the nation still seems to be fighting the Vietnam War. We thought it ended; but no! It's still going on in the minds of many people in this country. We are still debating whether it was right or not that a candidate opposed the war forty years ago, as if to do so were traitorous and disloyal. Vietnam is truly the Energizer Bunny war. Somehow it was forgotten along the way that it was a really stupid war, and an immoral one to boot. Now, at a safe remove from its horrors, we can reclaim it and add it to the honor roll of Great American Wars. I have a problem with that. My ringing endorsement is for the candidate who wants to get us out of Vietnam. I think you know who I'm talking about, okay? Enough said. Now let's roll. And will somebody please toss that chimp in the pilot's seat out of the plane? "This is the Voice of Reason and I approve this message."

That which is not

That which is, is. It's pretty hard to argue with that. Does that mean conversely, that that which is not, is not? Actually, not. My contention is that that which is not, is. In order not to exist, something must have existence. Otherwise you could not even make the statement that it is not; note that you have to use that two-letter word in order to do so. Once something is, it can blink out into a state of non-existence, but then its non-existent status is maintained in Being. Its isness, in other words, has no time property. That which was, is, and that which will be, is. As well as that which is, of course. By the way, the word maya means "that which is not." And there's plenty of that around, as we know.

The most important holiday

When the end of October rolls around, those witches and monsters within all of us are really ready to rock. And no wonder; they have been held in check the rest of the year by our overly vigilant sense of propriety. And what they require of us at this time is participation in their mystique, through which we will explore in the dark corners of our imagination that we normally shun, and feel the exhiliaration of freeing ourselves to run amuck in the libidinous, anarchic release that comes with wearing those masks. Halloween is the most important holiday, more so than even Christmas. Or at least the rebirth of Christmastide would be unthinkable without the journey into the underworld that we take at Halloween. It is more ancient, more primal, more real. So celebrate it: let it work its spell on you. Find out what it wants from you and give it up. Get down with your bad self. It's good for you.

Letter from God #5

Dear Friends: This will be my last letter to you. As you will have noted, I have for some time been something of a reluctant deity. However, despite the rather excessively diagnostic interpretations of my behavior by my psychiatrist, I think I have rational reasons for choosing to step down from my lofty perch as Ruler of the Universe so that I may journey alone to regions unknown, come what may. In my stead, I have appointed someone you all know and whom some of you love. It may come as no surprise that my successor will be Mick Jagger. Believe me, this isn't going to be much of a step up for him, more of a lateral move, from being one kind of god to another. And he'll probably get less action, sad to say, because he'll be busier than ever. But I really couldn't think of anyone more experienced and well-qualified. He's used to being worshipped, and that's a big part of the job. So I will bid you adieu—it's been great, it really has, and I entrust you to the competent administration of Sir Mick, or as he will soon be known, the Almighty Lips. A good chap, he is. Good-bye then. I shall always remember you fondly, all of you.

Absolve our problems

If the world is as we are, we are a real mess. We all need extreme psychotherapy and some kind of radical reconditioning. How did things reach this pass? Were our families of origin really that bad? Did we undergo a plethora of numbing traumas throughout our childhood that caused such major psychosis? How do they even let us walk around freely? We are all mad, you know: irretrievably insane. There's no other explanation. We can see the reflection of our inner split when we look out at this broken mirror of a world, and as the ignorant armies clash by night, we have no island to retreat to, for we are part and parcel of, and indeed the cause of that conflict. That is, if the world is the externalization of ourselves, because the world is as we are. What's the alternative? That objective reality has no connection to us? There's no object without a subject, so that won't fly. There are no two ways about it: the world is coming apart at the seams, and so are we. Look out, shrinks! Get your couches ready. Here we come, billions strong, to make our confessions. Please absolve our problems because we sure can't solve them.

You've got some explaining to do

"Who's there?—Nay answer me: Stand & vnfold your selfe." (Hamlet)

Yes, the time has come to explain yourself. Why are you here? Specifically, why are you here in my universe? By the act of reading this, you have incursed yourself into that quantum of the cosmos under my purview. Therefore, like some medieval gatekeeper before a bridge, I ask you, who goes there? You may be surprised that I challenge you so. You may see no need of it, as you have been innocently wandering through the Web and happened upon my page. Who am I to address you so? Well, if you want to cross into my world, you have to answer. That is the price of admission. Don't blunder into these parts without knowing what you are about. Stand and deliver!

The hidden secret of pronouns

In this discussion I am not going to break down the pronouns into their common categories such as first person plural, second person singular, and so on; that is merely their outward form. Underlying this display of external difference and the multiplicity of sounds which speakers of pronouns may utter, the fact is that all pronouns refer to just a single entity. That being is what is known as the Gathnoq. Instead of standing for different people or things of different genders or non-genders, as is the common misconception, all pronouns in reality stand for the same person or thing. That's right: whenever you use a pronoun, instead of standing for that which you think it stands, it really stands for the Gathnoq. Nobody knows or cares what the Gathnoq is, and that is why we always refer to it through pronouns. But what a mutable entity it is, being able to morph into a human of either sex, or a crowd of people, or a bunch of cars or trees, and when capitalized, even God. You see, if we care enough to actually name something, we use nouns. But that takes energy. Nouns often have more than one syllable. Pronouns have only one syllable and it saves an enormous amount of money each day in conserved energy to allow the Gathnoq to bear the brunt of our nominative references. Without the Gathnoq, our economy would be in dire straits. You could say that the Gathnoq is the secret engine of this great nation of ours. In its silent labors, it substitutes for each and every one of us countless times a day and lifts the onerous burden from our shoulders of continually being named. What is the Gathnoq? The Great Answer That Has NO Question!

Future food

Tomorrow never comes. It forever lies tantalizingly out of reach. Our presence in the time field seems to convert everything into today. That is the quantum effect of the observer. When the time is quantized, its wave function "collapses" and the infinite range of possibilities conveyed in the word "tomorrow" is reduced to whatever can fit into our at times miniscule module of perception at the moment. But insofar as we can speak of discrete units like days, if we were somehow able to magically leap into tomorrow, we would be in a place that had no connection whatsoever to today. It would look like absolutely nothing that we have any current awareness of. That prima materia from the future gets chewed up and digested by us in our trajectory through time, fueling our eternal present. It is like food for us. Or—are we food for it?

There is no ice cream

It has been said there is no such thing as my enlightenment or your enlightenment—there's just enlightenment. This is like saying there's no such thing as my ice cream or your ice cream, there is only ice cream, and the individual flavor of ice cream or flavor of individual associated with the ice cream is irrelevant. But I say there is no ice cream apart from my ice cream. Or yours. Ice cream does not exist except as a reality in somebody's universe. Otherwise, there is no ice cream. However, if there is, it will certainly be eaten.

Missing link

There's a piece missing in the cosmic puzzle. There's me, the world, the stars, and the ineffable absolute. That's one lonely little universe. And all the other lonely people in their lonely universes, which we pretend to share. But nothing can disguise the fact that we are all stumbling in the dark, reaching out and maybe occasionally touching something or someone that gives momentary respite. But it's not enough. What's the missing link? To find it, we have to open up. We're so closed we forget that our world is us. The universe we inhabit is us. But we are inhabited in turn by a multiverse. And it wants to penetrate us with its multifarious presence, and turn us inside out. Let it! I think of the ending of D. H. Lawrence's beautiful poem "Song of a Man Who Has Come Through.":

What is the knocking?
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It is somebody wants to do us harm.
No, no, it is the three strange angels.
Admit them, admit them.

I.Q. test

I was taking an online IQ test and was doing well until I encountered this question: "If some Wicks are Slicks, and some Slicks are Snicks, then some Wicks are definitely Snicks. Is this statement: 1) True 2) False 3) Neither." Well, the answer is obviously #2 because all we know is that some Wicks might be Snicks. We know nothing definitely. All Wicks might be Snicks, or none of them. But then I realized that #3 (Neither) could actually be true as well as #2 (False) because if the statement "some Wicks are definitely Snicks" is false, it is equivalent to saying that "some Wicks are definitely not Snicks," which is obviously false. Therefore #3 has to be true. And #1 (True) is true too, because if Truth is false, how can False be true? The true answer, then, must be all three. The sort of reasoning that got us into Iraq is of this wicksnicking variety. We knew there were Snicks out there and we wanted to stick them, but because they were so oil-slick we attacked the Wicks, knowing they were wicked and therefore some of them were definitely Snicks. So we smacked the sand-wicks and then snacked on sandwiches and Snickers. At this point I abandoned the IQ test, realizing that I had exceeded the time limit and in any case my efforts in achieving a high score would probably go unrewarded in this country under the present regime.

Down the rabbit hole

Life is perennially in development. Anything you can name is in some stage of birth, growth, youth, maturity, or death. The life-cycle metaphor is all pervasive, and, really, somewhat overbearing. Is it not possible to have some other unifying idea—one that doesn't depend for its squishy verification on the science of biology? The problem with the developmental paradigm is its predictability and reductiveness. Let's think of life instead as a drop down the rabbit hole, as in Alice in Wonderland. She drinks something and grows very small, eats something and grows to gigantic stature; nothing is predictable about it. There are no "stages of growth," and nothing can be extrapolated from the previous state. I would like to entertain the possibility that that is how life really is: not an ordered series of stages, but a plunge into the unknown. That never ends.

Updated wisdom #1

THE PRINCE: by Machiavelli

The prince should endeavor above all else to make chili, not war. Because the ends justify the beans.

Blog for your life

Little girl, why don't you stop your crying. You're gonna feel so good. You're gonna feel all right....Just come on and blog, that's right now, blog, you can do it to it, blog, everybody, blog, can you feel it. Blog for your life if you can little girl, don't hide your head in the sand little girl, blog all night against the Man or that's the end, little girl. Get your blog on!

The thisness of that

If thou art that and all this is that, that's fine, but then what about this? Aren't you this as well? Having been reduced to that, is it impossible to retrieve the thisness? Has this then been all dissolved in the ocean of thatness? Hearing incessantly about the ontological superiority of that, I sometimes feel perversely inclined to celebrate this. This does, after all, have the advantage of being a bit closer in than that. It's here now. Perhaps all that is this. I know some of that is this at least. Let's try an experiment. Once we have known the thatness of this, maybe we should then know the thisness of that. It could be exciting.

Dishevelled cognates

What does "we" mean? It implies we share the same consciousness, that we are one entity. Let us assume for a moment this is possible. We, whatever that is, has nothing to do with me and you. We is we, me is me, and you is you. I know the Beatles said "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together," but maybe it's time to question these cognates, which at this point are looking rather dishevelled; for in truth we inhabit different worlds. The "we" is a convenient syllable to reduce the difficulties of negotiating the vast regions of time and space between us. To realize one's uniqueness is not to commit some original sin or fundamental act of separation from God. Do we deride the snowflake for its moment of special glory in individuation? It takes a certain clarity and courage to recognize the crystalline seed that I carry inside myself, that is only mine: the vibrating presence that bears me to my destiny.

Retromorph

The irresistible allure of the retro is akin to the force of gravity. The past is full of fascinating objects. In recognizing them we of course re-form them through our own bright imaginings. These retromorphs, as I call them, become like sacred objects. In the timeless garden where they are rooted, they shine with an inner radiance. To quote T. S. Eliot in The Waste Land, "these fragments I have shored against my ruins." In my case, I number among my own special retromorphs the novels of John Cowper Powys, particularly A Glastonbury Romance, which is itself a monument to the mother of all retromorphs: the Holy Grail.

Field contextualization

Field contextualization is a term I use to refer to the nature of shifted awareness. In pre-shifted awareness, the subject/object distinction is paramount. There is a fundamental separation between self and other. Post-shift, the field is paramount: the unified multidimensional energetic interaction becomes primary, and while a subject and object can be derived from the field, or many subjects and objects, depending on one's frame of reference, the awareness sees everything in context of the field. Shifted consciousness has the benefit of the holistic bonus: i.e., the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. In my job, we get a Christmas bonus, a little something to spend around the holidays. It's not unlike that. When the times shift, you get an extra energy boost to help you accelerate your mental/physical vehicle to the new rate of vibration.

Grand illusion

The whole universe is but Maya, say the sages. Literally, "that which is not." You could interpret that, as many do, as saying that the world and everything in it, the people, the houses, the butterflies, is an illusion. It's not really there. We're not here right now. I'm not writing this and you're not reading this. Well, I concede that is a distinct possibility. However, if everything is Maya, that would include the idea that everything is Maya. Which means that it too is an illusion. Which means that the idea of Maya is really proof that the world is real. I suspect if you started out to prove the reality of world you would end up proving its nonexistence instead. It's a no-win game.

The thing itself

Nothing can be said about reality that is not error: so it is claimed. Because words are always one step removed from the thing itself. They are representations, maps, not the real thing. And yet...I dare to make pronouncements, using nouns, verbs, and other wordlike entities, claiming to convey something about the real nature of things. It is not so incongruous to do so when one recognizes that reality itself is a fiction, a fabrication, a story. Then it becomes not an error to describe it but more like a sacred duty. Because the story desires for itself to be told. It burns to be delivered into being by that medium which is its own nature. In the beginning was the word. That is why we find ourselves telling our stories incessantly, inhabiting our own fictions. And in the end? We don't know the ending. We are telling the story to find out.

Omnipresence TV-style

All content is becoming omnipresent. In the old days, when you watched a TV show, say "Perry Mason," it was gone, unless you might happen to catch it if it was repeated the following summer. Then with the advent of cable stations, some of which were devoted to nothing but reruns, you got the opportunity to see that Perry Mason episode again and again. Then you could tape Perry Mason and watch it whenever you wanted. Now Perry's on DVD and the number of old shows out in that format is burgeoning. There will be Perry-on-demand, on your web-enabled TV or Pocket PC or even wrist watch (since they have web-enabled watches now). Web-enabled appliances are next. What is to stop this from becoming "push" content? Refrigerators will be rumbling in a Raymond Burr-like voice at us when we forget to shut their doors. We will be castigated by D.A. Hamilton Burger if we leave a pan too long on the stove. Efficient secretary Della Street will gently remind us to pay our bills as we sit down at our desk... we'll interrogated by the lamp in the voice of Lt. Tragg when we come in too late. Nothing that was once conceived will ever be allowed to rest. Forgotten TV shows of lore are being resurrected like zombies to live forever in our homes and appliances, converting our everyday lives into mere extensions of their reality.

A special purpose

When people ask, "What is the purpose of life?" they should be asking, "what is my purpose?" It's not like mine. I have my own. Not to say I've discovered it yet, but I'm pretty sure it's unique. And it's something only I can accomplish. This purpose doesn't actually belong to me, it drives me, it is me. In the mere act of living I am unfolding my purposeful being into this plane of existence. You don't last long in this purposeful ocean of reference without a purpose. You'd sink like a stone. We try to define this purpose in terms of where it is taking us, and we don't really know that until we get there. You can tell the purpose so far by where you've been and where you are. You don't know where you're going. By the way, the purpose of life is not to be happy. If you have some moments of happiness, fine. Enjoy them. But they're a by-product of the process of discovering one's purpose for being here, which is everchanging.

How many of us?

How many of us are there—one or two? You and I. You say there are of course two. But I say, although there are two of us, there is only one at a time. Because if you break down time into its smallest increments, you get Planck time, which is a unit only 10^-43 seconds in length. That would be the length of time it takes a photon traveling at the speed of light to travel its own length. Now in that short length of time and space there is only room for one of us to exist at a time. You just can't squeeze in two. So one instant I am there, the next you're there, and so on, back and forth. We take turns. That's the way it is. That's where the mystical saying "it's all One" comes from. There's only one person in the universe. At a time.

Report from God's psychiatrist #2

In my last report I remarked upon God's tendency for narcissism and self-indulgent escapism. Based upon a through analysis of His latest communication, I would have to add to that diagnosis a Devil-May-Care Attitude (although not in DSM-IV, this clinical condition is under consideration for adoption in DSM-V). It has been well established by theologians throughout history that God has foreknowledge of all events. He evidently has ignored these tracts, as He claims He doesn't know what will happen in the future. Or care. We may perhaps forgive his disinclination to use the antiquated form of address "thou"—although some Quakers of the old school might disagree—but to claim ignorance of all future events is simple irresponsibility. After all, even I know some things that will happen tomorrow. The sun will rise, for example. That's a certainty. Isn't it? All right, there is a statistical probability that the sun will collide with a passing star, in which case the sun may indeed not rise tomorrow, and if it does it will not matter as we will be dead. Yes, we will all have died a most horrible, grisly death. But I'm not worried about that. At least when I'm awake. When I dream, I do imagine things too terrible to be revealed. However, my graphic visions of apocalypse and final catastrophe are not the point. It's God's paranoia we're concerned with here. And avoidance of incorporating the Reality Principle into His everyday life. Let us all devoutly pray that He will come to His senses and stop evading His responsibilities.

Truth à la mode

According to a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, truth is coming back into style. Only recently academics were flogging the concept as outmoded. Since 9/11, like so much else, all that has changed, and because the present government played fast and loose with the facts in order to persuade the populace that it was necessary to go to war, it has become apparent that the ironic postures of relativism do not well serve when it is incumbent upon intellectuals to engage in social criticism. To speak truth to power, one has to have a truth to speak, and not posit, as Stanley Fish did last year, that objective truth is an illusion and philosophy doesn't matter. To indulge in such theorizing is to throw down one's only weapons in the face of an utterly indifferent juggernaut of power-mongering. Indeed, in the political developments of recent days, it appears that truth does have some teeth in it as a weapon that could topple governments. The idea that there may be some hypocrisy in the attacks by the (so-called) President's proxies on his opponent, due to prevarications about the First Texan's own military background, seems to matter to some people. The idea that the incessant distortions of propaganda have been polluting the airwaves for years now and devaluing the democratic process seems to matter as our freedoms erode away at an alarming rate. Thus the truth à la mode is that truth matters. After all, it is self-contradictory to state the opposite; that is what Ken Wilber has long held the Achilles heel of post-structuralism to be: the short-circuiting of relativism by its own internal contradictions. People cry truth, truth, but there is no truth: that is, until they actually decide that it is real. When it's hot, it's hot. When it's not, it's not.

A new bleeping movie

They've gone and done it: made a sexy movie about quantum physics. If you haven't yet seen What the Bleep Do We Know? you must run out and see it right away. It integrates physics, metaphysics, and the human dilemma of being addicted to emotional chemicals that get generated in our bodies, thus trapping us in neuronal patterning that prevents us from viewing reality in a more quantum light. This is the sort of work that rewires our brains just from the act of viewing it. And explains as it goes how it does it! A true miracle of the modern cinema. A lot of fun, too.

It's a wrap

Another day is done. They're rolling away the scenery and locking up the costumes, putting the makeup back on the shelf. And why? Why don't they just leave it sitting out? There will be another performance tomorrow, after all. But reality is quantum. It blinks on, then off, then on again. Everything has to go away before it can come back again. The universe needs a rest. So good night, all. It's a wrap.

Can we talk?

I wonder what you are saying when you say what you say. I wonder what you think those words mean that are coming out of your mouth. I wonder if those meanings bear any resemblance to the meanings I bear. How could they? We are two very different people. Not just people, but conscious entities, extraordinarily complex and mysterious aggregations of thought forms and identities. We haven't a clue, really, who the other one is. We might as well be extraterrestrials encountering each other's species for the first time. In fact, we're not just entities, we're entire universes drifting through the multidimensional fabric of being, occasionally grazing each other with our starry shoulder. Can we talk? I doubt it. That would be a miracle of miracles. What are we, anyway? We don't know. We're struck dumb by our own ignorance of our incomparable existence.

The heart under siege

The heart of America is under attack. Clinton's being in the hospital is symbolic of that. At this moment he is being operated on. And I think everyone in this country is being operated on right now. Without a doubt in the last four years we have been subjected to the most egregious assault on anything that resembles democratic values. Venal bullies have been allowed to run wild, and the name of God has been invoked to justify abhorrent misuses of power. We reel under the weight of lies repeated until truth collapses into a puddle of tears and fears. Will the patient survive? If Clinton does not, we are surely doomed; if he does, then we might have a chance. I will take his survival as a sign of hope. Here is someone who has personified many of the paradoxes of the age, and whose body has absorbed many of the slings and arrows that warring paradigms have foisted into the fray. He is emerging into an almost mythic level of existence, more surely than Mel Gibson's Christ, for his sacrifice actually means something.

Freeze-dried universe

There is little going on that does not meet the eye. The universe is not that inefficient. It creates what it needs when it needs it. And it does a great job of making you think it is concealing mysteries. But it is only creating those mysteries as it reveals them. For me Japan does not exist, because I have never been there. When and if I go there, it will pop into existence. We live in a freeze-dried universe. Add consciousness, and it blows up into a three-dimensional form that finds its unique expansive expression within the context of our individual knowing. Without the act of knowing, it is in potentia and not "out." Existence means coming out. Every moment of our lives is a coming-out party.

Letter from God #4

I find myself so often having to disabuse humans of their illusions about me. It seems to give them a certain masochistic satisfaction to posit me as the summation of all perfections and themselves as flawed, imperfect creatures. They think, for example, that I know everything, as what is going to happen to them tomorrow. I don't know what's going to happen to them tomorrow. I don't know what's going to happen to myself tomorrow. Heigh ho! So what, you may ask, makes me God and not you if I don't know these simple things. Well, that's a good question, isn't it? One that you should be asking your priests. If the universe were a democracy, you might even be able to vote me out. (But it's not, is it. Oh no.) Another thing you'll notice I don't do is address you as "thou," as in the famous "thou shalt nots." One of my illustrious predecessors in this job was wont to use that form of address. I don't stand on formality, personally. That's me.

Try to remember

Remember yourself. That is, put yourself back together. Member by member. Because it's September. A time for endings and new beginnings. And what we remember, it will seem, we have never known, because it's raw. That rawness is good, the bracing freshness of youth. Why not dig our hands deep into the raw good earth, and cover ourselves with the very soil of our essence.

7 postulates of quantum reality

1. Quantum consciousness is the systemic activity of an integral perceptual module, called the suboctave, which exists in an immeasurably vast matrix called the octave.


2. There are as many versions of reality as there are modules.


3. The reality of the perceptual module determines what is real in the context of that module. Therefore, if it doesn't exist there, it doesn't exist.


4. Within the octave, there is no common reality because there are no forms present in all suboctaves.


5. If a consciousness is extinguished within a module that has no afterlife, that is the end of that perceptual potentiality.


6. Beings that appear to have consciousness are made out of our consciousness and therefore are us. The "same" being in a different quantum module is a duplicate in what is essentially a parallel universe.


7. Oneness of being is a metaconcept that does not supersede the integrity of a subreality. Monadic phenomenology is a fundamental cornerstone of the real as the octave-level godbeing who dwells in godspace has no expereience outside the totality of the modular experiences.

While you were out

While you were out, the universe ended and a new one was created. You don't remember what was going on before you left even though you think you do, because actually you ceased to exist. When you came back into existence, you thought you remembered yesterday but that is clearly false, because this universe wasn't here yesterday. So give up thinking you know what is going on. Your thoughts on the future are similarly unreliable because this universe is due to expire tonight. You cram your mind with expectations and predictions based on the assumption that the same world will be here tomorrow that was here today. But no, my friend, it won't. We're living in a short-term reality. In fact there's no you that persists from cosmos to cosmos. How could there be? You get dissolved along with everything else. This concept of persistence of identity is a convenience and not a very accurate one. So give it up. This universe is up for grabs, and your concepts about anything at all have no merit whatsoever. Say, it's getting dark again and it's about time for you to leave. Bye now. When you show up tomorrow, just remember, you weren't here today.

The whereness of awareness

Location, location, location. Where does your awareness live? Are you present, or will you be presently? Where is your when? The chronometric reference points we use to map time are too precise to pin down this quantum fluctuation known as me and you. With fuzzy logic, we might approximate the field in which we dwell. But we'll be blasted like Tunguska before anyone actually locates us, before we locate ourselves. We're quicksilver girls and boys. Lovers of the world, we've seen every branch on the tree.

Hendrix and the absolute

When Jimi Hendrix asked "Are you experienced?" he was essentially asking, "Do you know the nature of reality?" And reality, as he found out, was too hot to handle. When we observe the experience of others who seek the ultimate experience and burn out in the process, we may be understandably skeptical of whether it is worth it. Now certain spiritual teachers would caution us that our experience is not our experience in any case; that we must see it as an illusory construct attached to an illusory identity. That may be true, but there is something in Jimi's question that cannot be easily dismissed. If we answer with anything but "Yes," we are unfulfilled, and nothing, including the most profound insights of saints, will keep us from answering it for ourselves.

Ego trip

It's very common in spiritual writings to find the nostrum that the ego must be destroyed. This is a corrective to the social norms that preserve people's limited sense of self and keep them locked in patterns based on fear that they will lose that equilibrium of knowing who they are. But I find the idea of getting rid of this thing called the ego a bit questionable. What is the I, after all, but a very thin, single letter. Maybe we all tend to inflate it up a bit more than we should, but is it really necessary to destroy it? Oh, we'll die and be reborn all right, several times while in this body if we're living right, but it will be found that despite all that, this slim little letter endures. Why can't we get rid of it, even in our more exalted spiritual states (which unaccountably seem to inflate it in their own subtle way)? Because the I is inseparable from our consciousness and our experiencing apparatus as human beings. It is the point of reference from which it all starts here on this earth. So I think I'll keep that ego for a bit longer, thank you. After all, if it's so bad that everyone wants to destroy it, it must have something going for it.

Commentary on nothing

It turns out there is plenty to say about nothing. Take any encyclopedia. Although the articles all seem to be about things, or identifiable entities (I use the term in its information engineering sense), really they amount to extended attempts to define these entities through drawing boundaries and suggesting relationships with other entities. All these descriptions modularize knowledge and make it portable, but at the cost of losing a lot of information. Imagine an encyclopedia that started rebuilding all the categories from the ground up, such that what you had in the end was a completely alternative explanation of everything in the world that had very little in common with traditional descriptions. What if everyone were educated, not in the details of the received standardized knowledge, but in techniques of compiling their own encyclopedia? Then everyone's lives would be dedicated to writing a commentary on nothing (because they would define for themselves what things existed), and it is quite likely no one's versions of reality would agree. Wouldn't that make for a lot more interesting conversation?

Wise fools

Those who know, don't speak, we are often told. They are the wise fools, the dumb clowns, littering the Fellini landscape like inscrutable mystics. By their presence alone they teach. We feel just a little more holy in the faint afterglow as they pass in the morning light. Yet when the afternoon comes, tired from the labors of the day, we harbor an ungracious thought or two, why don't you just tell us? The eloquence of your silence fails to subdue our inquiring minds! And when the evening comes, and it is time to pray, we are forced back on ourselves to find the words to express the inarticulate yearning of our hearts. And we get no help from the wise fools, who do not even seem to want us to join them in their silent wanderings.

When does the movie start?

We're sitting in the theater, and the movie still has not started! Our popcorn is already gone. Preview after preview continues to roll, and we are tantalized with promises of what we will see next week. But what about today? We need a movie now. Some people have given up and left the theater. Oh, they of little faith! Of course the movie will start, eventually...won't it? But in fact it has already started. The previews are part of it. Coming in and sitting down in the theater before the previews started was part of it. Getting up this morning was part of it. Being born was too. We've always been sitting here waiting for something to start, but that waiting is part of something that's been going on a long time. The movie always was, even when we didn't know we were in it. And it will go on; it's an epic.

Free speech

Free speech can really only be understood by the person speaking, and perhaps not then. If someone else were to understand it, it would no longer be free. The speech that our ears capture everyday is never free speech. The words in the media, heard by so many, are the least free of all. That is why there is so little truth value in what we see in the mass media. So the fewer people hear your speech, the better. This blog is a good example, as practically no one reads it, and it contains considerably more truth than your nightly newscast on NBC. It may not particularly pertain to anything you are interested in, but then you're not paying much for it either.

"Don't step on the grass"

One sees a lot of signs like this commanding one to do or not do something. The act of putting up a sign is an aggressive act, practically a violent act. Power may defined as the right to put up signs. They are terribly influential in shaping human behavior. People will just simply believe them and obey them, most of the time. Most people will even stop at a stop sign out in the middle of the desert. Perhaps in the interests of political correctness, Congress should pass a law requiring all signs to bear both sides of the argument. "Stop/Don't Stop"; "Step on the Grass/Don't Step on the Grass"; and so on. It would allow people to both to exercise their freedom of choice and revel in the fact that truth is always paradoxical. This policy might also result in a lot fewer signs.

The new flat earth

At some point people stopped believing the earth was flat and started believing it was round. And at some point they will no doubt go back to believing it is flat. Wouldn't it be interesting if the earth actually changed from being flat to being round at the exact moment the beliefs changed? Perhaps the beliefs were just changing to reflect the reality of the time. Actually, I can see how the earth might be flat. In his epic poem Milton, William Blake talked about his visionary perception of the earth as "one infinite plane." I think he was seeing it from a fourth-dimensional vantage point. After all, if you could step outside the three dimensions and see the round globe from every angle at once, what would you have? An infinite plane. Well, it may not be quite the same as the flat earth of the two-dimensional thinkers who preceded Galileo, but call it the flat earth of the future, which we will all eventually embrace and will be taught in schools. The symbol of my publishing company Qubik Books is the tesseract, the four-dimensional square. That is the higher-geometry precursor object to what Blake is talking about. I don't know if too many people have noticed that Blake quotation, but if anyone has, I bet it is someone in The Flat Earth Society. They actually posit that Earth is flat from the standpoint of the fifth dimension, and have topological reasons to support their hypothesis, which I do not understand. They have also proved that neither Idaho and North Dakota exist, and that the earth is hollow and populated inside by either green-skinned women or Nazis. I think I would rather start my own Flat Earth Society more as a political movement, and call it something like the Plane Truth Party.

You're not there

You're not there, I tell you. For one thing, the you that is not you is definitely not there, not to your knowledge, anyway. That's definitely true. And even the you that is you is not there, if you're not reading this. You're somewhere else. But what about the you that is reading this? Surely you're there! I say no. Because I don't know where there is. You think you know. That does me no good. I might know something about here. I know nothing of there. So you're as good as not there, even if you are. There. I said it. You're not really there, you know. You just aren't.

One God or many?

It seems obvious to me that there are many Gods, not one. Why? Because everybody you ask what their conception of God is, you will get something different. For the 6 billion people in this world there are at least 6 billion Gods. Now some might say that this is only their conception of God and not the real God. They might say, none of these conceptions are totally true, there's only one true God and no one knows him. But if so, this God who does not reveal himself to anyone, who is the one and only true God, I say he has no interest in being God. And in fact he would deny he is God. He would say, I am not God, but if I ever was, I don't want to be God anymore. You all have enough Gods, 6 billion of them. Be content with them and leave me alone. All these Gods are compassionate, all-wise, omnipotent and omniscient. I am none of these things. Your Gods are far greater than I am. So you have no need of me. I am one and all alone and ever more shall be so. Let me be me, and I wish for you the same.

If I were you

If I were you, I would go to a bar in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and dance on a table top. I would write tracts bemoaning the demise of the beach party movie. I would incorporate as a city of one and run for cat-catcher. I would carve replicas of Trump Tower and sell them on the streets of New York. I would write a book about the sex lives of famous mathematicians. I would become the lead singer of a marginally competent neo-psychedelic rock band called The Hinges. I would write a chain letter to the Pope. I would organize a community group to build a 50-foot high salad. These are the things I would do, if I were you. That does not mean, however, I think you should do them. Far from it.

The sky

According to Heidegger, we are geworfen or "thrown open" in this world. Our existence is predicated on a condition of being exposed. Most people spend most of their life and energy on battening down the hatches to minimize the effects of this extreme existential vulnerability. To be reminded of how open this world we are in is, we need only look up to the sky. It serves as a reminder of the ultimate openness, which goes on forever. Beyond the horizon there is nothing but limitless space. That space is us, and there is more of us than we will ever know. All we can do is gaze with awe and wonder upon the vistas of subtly painted clouds and pointillistic stars, and remember that we cannot be defined, any more than the sky can be captured in a paper bag.

Twilight zone

Why do old people always look old? Specifically, look old in the way that they always have? The old people when I was a boy looked exactly like the old people look now that I am in my 50s. Of course, there are a lot of things in the Midwest that still look like when I was growing up in the 1950s. A lot of these Iowa towns, with their quiet tree-lined streets, look just like they must have looked in the Eisenhower era and people talk and behave like he were still president. It's like being in one of those Twilight Zone episodes where somebody goes back to their small town and it turns out to be stuck in the past. It's a strange feeling to be in one of those places. A nice place to visit, and you might even want to live there, but it's definitely kind of weird.

Eternally on the path

Man is the seeking animal. And having been pretty successful at seeking nuts and berries, and then fish and beast, and then money in all its denominations, he set upon the quest for something that would forever frustrate him, so that he would not contradict his own seeking nature. That Holy Grail was nothing less than absolute, total fulfillment. But the quest for that perfect state, which has defined our religious and spiritual yearnings for so many centuries, comes fraught with peril. Greater even than the risk of failure, or of falling into the many nets of pain and disillusion that dot the path, is the risk of succeeding. For then what will the seeking animal do if it can no longer seek? Luckily, there is an almost foolproof defense against success, and that is the fixed idea in the mind that success is impossible. Even then, however, events may conspire to thwart one's most cherished belief that the final goal, if it is worthy of attainment, cannot be attained. What a profound disappointment it must be for the seeker to suddenly find that game, set, and match are over, and that he must relinquish his burnished ideals for the simple reality of who and what he is.

All reality is virtual

"Virtual" is a word that has come to signify a certain class of reality: one that exists as an electronic map. Virtual reality is one step removed from that which it maps and when well-conceived is a good reproduction of the real world of the senses. But according to Plato, the reality of the senses is itself a secondary, and therefore a virtual reality. It is a shadow of the real. We would have to have primary vision to see beyond the sense impressions to the originating level. But even if we could, who is to say that primary reality is not virtual too? Why should it ever end? Furthermore, who is to say that sensory reality, or its shadow cyber-reality, is not authentic enough on its own terms? A second-order reality or subcreation can possess integrity. Read The Golden Bowl by Henry James or Ulysses by James Joyce. These are self-consistent realities worthy of respect.

Picasso and archetypes

Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" (1907) is a fascinating painting.
Much could be written about it, but let me point out a few things: The second and third figures are like mirror images of each other. In the composition of five women, these are positioned just off center. The process of psychological mirroring is always going to be slightly off center because when you look in the mirror you tend to privilege yourself as observer. Thus the object of perception gains a mysterious power by way of compensation. This power is reflected in the painting by the more archetypal beastlike/masklike outlying images. Picasso was definitely in touch with the archaic level of that underlies the thin mask of conventional identity. The masks that he paints are like broken glimpses into that terrifying primal power.

Time travel

We all travel through time all the time; every day we travel through time one day. Just as when the only time we are aware of our passage through space is when we are accelerating or decelerating, the only time we are aware of our passage through time is when we start slowing down or speeding up. That is when we feel that time is passing slowly (we're slowing down) or fast (we're speeding up). Since it is possible to change the speed of our time travel, how is it that at the end of a given time period we always reach our destination? What if we kept slowing down progressively so that the end of the day never came? Since that doesn't happen, there must be some kind of "time gravity" keeping us moving into the future. But if that were the case, the speed of time must be constantly accelerating, just like an object dropped in the gravitational field of the earth. And if time were constantly accelerating, why don't we feel that time is getting faster? Well, guess what, we do. This is why we always feel that generally speaking time is speeding up as we grow older and we never have enough time. At least I don't. Which makes it a miracle that I am writing this blog, which I probably don't have time to do. Time must be slowing just a bit at this moment so I can do it. Maybe it likes blogs for some unknown reason.

The science of selective perception

To see only what you want to see, to hear only what you want to hear, is a real science.  It requires great concentration to filter out unwanted data, massive amounts of energy to stay alert to that which fits the parameters of our inquiry while wilfully ignoring that which might call it into question. Since the more rigidly we adhere to these standards, the more "noise" the universe is likely to offer to throw us off the track, so we must build in a "fudge factor" to compensate. In the end the world we come up with must fit the predicted outcome; otherwise, all is lost. It is a delicate balancing act, and one that the human race is apparently well equipped to manage; for most people appear to be veritable Einsteins in figuring out how to ignore 99.99% of the data that they are presented with.

Am I right?

If only one of us were real, who would it be, you or me? Would you be a figment of my imagination or would I be a figment of yours? Let's say I can prove the latter is the case. You would have to have dreamed up this person, me, who is calling into question your very existence, because if I am right that only you exist, your existence depends upon my being right. And if I don't really exist, that is a very tenuous platform to base your existence on. And if I happen to be wrong, then I exist and you don't. Therefore, you are probably safer to regard yourself as a figment of my imagination, because you stand just as much of a chance of my being wrong (and therefore your being real) as if I were a figment of yours. And this way, there's not as much chance for unpleasant surprises if you start out with no expectations of having any real existence.

Report from God's psychiatrist

God has been showing signs of severe depression of late. I refer you to His recent letter. He is showing deep antisocial tendencies. Not only does he want to abandon the profuse companionship available in The Creation®, but he is planning on "hitting the road." Might I note this is a profoundly narcissistic attitude. It is also dangerous to the health of many others, you and me, for example, because if God abandons the universe (which he now denies having created) for the supposed greener pastures of ... whatever else might be out there, then how much more quickly will the forces of entropy reduce this already alarmingly deteriorating world to ashes? This is not the behavior of an well-integrated being. There are medications that would improve God's adaptation to reality as we know it, if He could be persuaded to take them. I admonish you all to pray that the Supreme Being will see the wisdom of accepting a bit of "therapy" for the sake of the greater good.

Wisdom of the Beatles

I have a fantasy of writing a book that is a compendium of Beatles wisdom. It would be a gloss on virtually every line of every song, explaining the real meaning behind it, similarly to how I used to cognize the real meaning of song lyrics when tripping on some powerful psychedelic. Now, many years later, I inhabit a reality whose psychedelic properties are embedded in its materiality. The sacred and the profane are no longer so differentiated. The ups and the downs are more field-contextualized. So what comes out in these Beatle lyrics might be different than what it was in the 60s. It would be worth doing. Imagine "Goo goo goo joob" interpreted from the integrated perspective of Vedanta, tantra, and applied metaphysics.

Construction problems

The world is too ticky-tack. The costumes is getting a little too threadbare and the scenery a little too worn out. Poorly constructed. Perhaps it is unfair to blame the builders, whoever they are. After all, they are not well compensated. We the audience have not invested much in this show and we get what we pay for. Maybe if we put a little more of our energy into being here, and in fact said, I inhabit this body and this world with every measure of passion and feeling, then hmm, I bet the environment would perk up a bit.

Life is absurd

"Absurd" comes from the root surd, meaning an unvoiced or silent sound; or in mathematics, a number that has no rational expression, such as the square root of 2. Life is absurd, but that does not mean meaningless. Certainly we all flounder around at times trying to discern its meaning, for its meaning is constantly changing and often obscures itself. But that is no reason to rant against the unfairness of the universe and the gods in conspiring to frustrate us. Our mission, and we did choose to accept it, is to track the meaning for ourselves. And then write a report to the best of our abilities. Someone will read it, and be critically dependent upon every detail of the intelligence that we have gleaned. I'm a spy in the house of love, and I know what the square root of 2 is. It's what happens between one and one other one to give the illusion there is more than one.

What in the world

The thingness of the world is truly something. Everywhere you look there are things, individual objects. And they tend to stay the same. They change over time but so many of them do not seem to change very much. This incredible inertia is rife. Once something becomes thinged, it is very difficult for it to become another thing. As we know from physics, matter is nothing more than energy vibrations. But our minds are convinced that the world consists of things. Things are very persuasive. They can convince practically everybody that they are real. But their reality consists not in their thingness, but in their quiddity, and that is a very different thing.

Letter from God #3

I received quite a bit of mail objecting to my letter stating that I would no longer be held responsible for the injustices and imperfections in The Creation®, because after all, as I have now realized, I did not really create it. By saying so, I seem to have inadvertently violated many people’s most sacred beliefs. After all, if I didn’t do it, who did? I think, barring the possibility of a right-wing conspiracy, that it all “just happened,” like so many things in life. S**t happens. So do universes.

I have a request. Please stop worshipping me. Unless your name is Johann Sebastian Bach and you need inspiration to write another cantata, it really is not very seemly to be singing my praises all the time. See, you don't know me. Don't say you do when you don't. Why don't you put all that energy into something constructive, like helping your fellow man or making love or reading a good book?

There may be some who will ask me to justify my existence if I am abandoning the role of cosmic parent. Justify your own. I'm hitting the road.

I wish

I wish I could paint my dreams. I wish I had dreams to paint. I wish I had paint to paint with, and something to paint on. I wish I had time to paint. I wish I had time to sleep so I could dream so I could paint my dreams. I wish I could paint.

Relationships are old paradigm

Discussions of relationships are invariably old paradigm. They never go beyond the ego level. Ships have to be full of air in order to float, and you have to blow up the individual egos in order to make a vessel that will float in these rough seas. Thus relationships, carrying their ego-freight, seem to sustain their floatability by bolstering the individuals' sense of separateness. New paradigm relationships need a new name and an awareness that they are not posited on ego dynamics. One thing I know: a hit of pure existence love experienced in the eyes of another person will blow any concept of relationship out of the water. Taste reality, dissolve duality.

All is one

I am one. You are one. We are two. What divides us? Our duality. But anything divided by itself is one. So we are one. I see many different things when I look out my window. But the source of the difference is me, because I see them as different from myself. All these things have their reflections in myself, because as I see them I ingest them as perceptions. They become me, and in doing so they become one. Their own difference creates a condition whereby their difference is negated. Make two and see how quickly they become one again. Laugh and enjoy the paradox. Things are constantly dividing themselves by themselves in order to return to unity.

Frog blog

I know many frogs; but the frog I like best is called The Large Frog. He has many unusual qualities. For example, he can watch television without it being turned on. And he does, for hours on end. This is very useful for, unknown to practically everybody, he is Tiger Woods’ coach, and he needs to be able to see what Tiger is doing in order to advise him properly. Unfortunately, Tiger is not doing very well this year. But unless ESPN or some other news outlet picks up this blog revealing The Large Frog as Tiger’s secret coach, The Large Frog’s reputation will not suffer. After all, it is quite a skill to be able to watch TV in the way that he does. It goes beyond the capabilities of any other amphibian I am aware of

Naked theatre

Theatre is naked. Actors wear the personae and costumes of characters. Yet the thing that they cannot hide is their own truth. The stage gives them an excuse and a necessity for revealing it. When actors do take their clothes off on stage, it seems curiously redundant.

The biological explanation

Whenever journalistic articles on current issues quote some scientist explaining away our social or sexual behavior on the basis of what primitive man once did, they always revert to the biological imperative (women choose men based on which one will give her the healthiest children, thus insuring the survival of the species, etc. etc.) I don't find such ethnobiological explanations persuasive or illuminating. They give an illusion of explaining something essentially mysterious. They replace instinct with rational motives, if not man's, then nature's, but nature may have reasons our minds know nothing of. The biological explanation reduces emotions such as love to chemistry. It seeks a lowest common denominator explanation for age-old questions, but it is no more than a spasm of the mind.

There's no there there

How many sentences begin with the words "There is"? And they all assume that we know where there is. They don't bother to specify. They assume that because there is there, it denotes a simple truth. Whatever follows those words just has to be factual. You fill in the blank. It can be whatever is in the headlines of your daily newspaper. Here's one I just took at random off of Yahoo: "There is complete unanimity of views between China and Pakistan on the issue of terrorism." How much more authoritative that sounds than saying, "China and Pakistan agree completely about terrorism." That I might question. I might say, wait a minute, that sounds a little bit unlikely, a little too pat. But stick a "there is" in there and I am lulled to sleep by the passive construction and accept that yes, indeed, whatever follows those words simply is. But hey, there's no there there unless you say where there is. There. Even I can do it.

Am I an optimist?

Despite some distaste for the idea of optimism, I have to confess that I am an optimist. I think I would rather be a pessimist, but it seems hard to stay consistent in this mode. If I truly believe that everything is going downhill, at some point I will get to the bottom of the hill and find myself starting to go up again, even against my fervent wish. Whereas things that go up have an unlimited potential on the upside. It’s like how being a bear in the stock market is tricky--you can get burnt by going short all the time. Furthermore, if I posit that things are in perpetual decline, I will soon decline myself out of existence, and then I will no longer be able to adhere to my pessimistic philosophy. Pessimism is no better than a short-term strategy, and I need to invest for the long term. Therefore, I am sadly resigned to optimism as a way of life.

Gone today

Be here now? Get real. Nobody is really here. We’re all in Frontierland dreaming of Tomorrowland. We’re always thinking about the next thing, what we want to do next. It is very rare for any of us to even notice the present moment. But while our mind is in the future, dreaming of what is not, our bodies are living in the log cabins of the past. Where’s the present? It is very confusing to try to ascertain exactly when “now” is. My environment is bombarding me with millions of different nows every moment. Light is traveling from my computer screen, from the tree outside my window, and from the sun itself to show me several things that are happening at different moments in time (all in the past). They may be assembled in my mind to give the impression of that they are all happening together, but this is an illusion. Reality is discontinuous, discrete, made up of millions of bits of information coming from different times and places, projecting a movie on the screen of our minds. The universe that we’re constructing is not the real one. We’re gone today, here tomorrow. What’s happening now has already happened and the only thing that’s real is in the future. But by the time tomorrow rolls around, we’ll be gone again. So it goes.

Incompleteness theorem

How frustratingly incomplete life is. Even the occasional moment of perfection soon gives way to the hunger for more, and one has to in effect start over to fill in the empty places. We are like painters for whom new expanses of canvas continually reveal themselves in order to be covered by our creative capacity. And we instantly use the brush of our minds to cover them in thought-forms and perceptions so as to convert them into our world. Sometimes new worlds get created but in time they begin to look a lot like the old world. We are consumers of the fresh bread of pure potentiality, compelled to ingest it at every turn, converting it to form. We are stars trying to burn ourselves out by grasping the void all around and wrapping ourselves in the cloak of darkness. But it feeds us in the process and our universe expands further. There is no end.

Satan for president

Now there's a PR challenge. How do you convince people that it's in their interest to elect the incarnation of evil? You don't do it overnight. It takes years of preparation: putting chemicals in their food and water and frying their brains with electronic transmissions so that they really can't think clearly and spoon-feeding them belief systems through schools and the media that will make them good citizens. You carefully condition people to believe that they live in a democracy, and that the pursuit of happiness (in the consumerist mode) is more to be valued than actually being happy. Once the electorate has been effectively dumbed down, they will cheerfully vote for the man who smiles and talks just like them and doesn't act like he knows more than they do, and they never see his horns, and they never complain as the satanic mills grind their bones into dust. One small step for marketing. One giant leap for demonkind.

Letter from God #2

The thing that all the interviewers have been asking me lately is who I want to win the U.S. Presidency. You’d think that if you had the opportunity to ask God a question, you’d ask about enlightenment or where you go after you die or how the universe was created or some really cosmic thing. But no, they want to know who’s going to win the election, Bush or Kerry. Let’s get one thing straight here. The Supreme Court decides who the President is. It’s in the Constitution, right? It’s the Court. Not the people. Not God. Especially not God. I don’t even have a vote, unless I want to go to the trouble of incarnating again, and after catching Mel Gibson’s movie, I’ve really lost my motivation to do that anymore. I don’t even want to see the flick again. Once was more than enough. You too? But anyway, given the way the Bushies have the Court stacked, they probably have a lock on it again. Well, that’s my $.02, as they say. Next time, ask me about something important, or where at least I know the answer.

I blog therefore I am

I really don't think anybody is reading this. Maybe one person out there somewhere will read this. Or not. I think in some sense I don't exist until one person reads this blog. This blogging is an attempt to come into being. Why do I think my existence is dependent on someone else's perception? I don't think these blogs are mere ramblings in the dark...I think they are like messages we send out into space to see if there's intelligent life in the universe, and that is something that we really need to know. We all want to be met on some level, recognized, and brought into existence through that recognition. "I think, therefore I am" does not quite do it. Descartes was onto some truth about existence as derived from consciousness, although his mistake was thinking that thinking had something to do with consciousness! (Just like French films think that talk has something to do with truth.) Je blog, tu lis, donc je suis.

It's everywhere

In Philip K. Dick's Ubik, God comes in a spray can labelled Ubik. And whatever gets sprayed, the seemingly irresistible forces of entropy and decay get countered. The idea is that there is an intelligence trying to break through into our universe and it will put itself into our way through the commonest devices. When I was a kid I wanted two cans of magic for Christmas. My parents ended up giving me a World Book Encyclopedia instead and in it my father wrote that the greatest magic lay in the hearts of men and women. He died 30 years ago but I know he was right. Every day I see more and more evidence of the greatest intelligence manifesting itself through the little acts of kindness coming spontaneously through the heart. We all have that spray can of Ubik. And boy, do we need it now.

True blue

Blue is not blue. In A's reality, blue is blue. In B's reality, blue is green. In C's reality, blue is red. Question: which blue is true? Well, it's simple. Given, that nothing is what it is. Corollary, nothing is what it seems. Inference, everything is the opposite of what you think it is. Deduction: since green has some blue in it, the answer is C.

It's over

It’s really, finally, over. We knew it couldn’t last forever, and yet it seemed just to go on and on anyway. No more. The clock has ticked its last tick. It’s over, people. Deal with it. You doubt me? Go ahead. I’ll be dancing on your grave. It’s just freaking over. All of it. We’re going down. Down, down, down. And that’s a good thing. Because it’s time. I mean, did you see that movie, The Day After Tomorrow? Consider it a metaphor. I don’t know how we’re going down, I don’t know if it’ll be tidal waves or tornadoes or even a collapse of our individual reality construct, but it’s happening. How many ways can you spell “over”? I mean, we’re toast. We’re crispy critters. We’re history. We’re not even here anymore. Get used to it. It’s already happened. We’re just stone outa here.

Time is not an illusion

There is an assumption nowadays that time is merely an illusion. We know how subjective the time sense is; furthermore, with the theory of relativity it is clear that time itself slows down with respect to an object that is speeding up. So it really would not be politically correct to say that my time is better than your time; it’s just different. This sort of thing demotes time to being a variable function derived from what is going on; it is not even kind of a passive Newtonian background for physical action; it is nothing at all. However, what if time were regarded as an active shaper, a causative force, indeed a conscious being, rather than as a mere dimension? How might that change our physics, our philosophy, our psychology? Rather drastically, I think, for there is nothing more fundamental to our perceptual framework than our understanding of time.

Pope redux

Alexander Pope said, “Whatever is, is right” (An Essay on Man) If whatever is, is right, then whatever was, was right. But might be wrong now. Except if it still is, it has to be right. But if it changed, it was right and now is right differently. Which means right changed. Which means that yesterday’s right could be today’s wrong. But we know that just as many wrongs don’t make a right, many rights don’t make a wrong. In any case: if whatever is, is right, you don’t need to worry about what’s wrong because nothing’s wrong. But if “whatever is, is right” is wrong, then that could explain why things very often seem like they’re wrong. It could even be true that whatever is is wrong, and then we’re in a real mess. Hey, we are in a real mess. Which means Pope was wrong. But we know a Pope can never be wrong. So forget what I just said.

Letter from God #1

I need to clue in all you humans to an important thing I just found out. I did not create the Universe. Now, I know this will come as a shock to you. It did to me. I thought I created it; I told you I did, and you had no reason to disbelieve someone of my exalted status. Well, believe me now: I didn’t do it! How could I have been mistaken about such an elementary fact? It’s a little hard to explain, but at the time it seemed as if I were causing the creation to happen. I recently found out that this was an illusion. I didn't make anything, including you. I am being completely honest now in telling you I have no clue about why and how the Universe got here, and how you and I got here. So would you please quit trashing me for the perceived faults and injustices in the order of creation? I’m not responsible. Don’t hassle me about this anymore. Just grow up. I have.

Transcendence and immanence

The first time I encountered the juxtaposition of the concepts of transcendence and immanence was in a sixties book with a wild psychedelic cover called The Private Sea: LSD and the Search for God, by William Braden. (You can actually read it online.) Braden was concerned with reconciling what was then the “New Theology” with psychedelic experience, and he did this by picking up on the assertion that the transcendent God of ancient times has become immanent through the Incarnation into human form. And the psychedelic voyageurs were the latest manifestation of that trend. I think that both of these terms are useful, mainly for pointing to the direction that you are noticing IT right now. Whether “God” is a useful term anymore is debatable; it reinforces the transcendent dimension, but makes it pretty unapproachable.

Exstasie trip

Your reality and my reality are mutually exclusive. They have their own separate integrity and indeed their own objects and their own laws. How do they interact? How do people, in fact, ever really communicate? Through their eyes, silently, not through words. In “The Exstasie” John Donne talked about how the lovers went out on the double string of their eye-beams while their bodies went into a state of suspended animation. That kind of communion is the only true intercourse between the mutually exclusive universes we carry around in awareness. Of course, Donne implies the bodies are going to be doing a lot more than lying there motionless. That’s okay too. But seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and then all things will be added unto you.

Multifocal solipsism

Solipsism gets a bad rap. Anything so universally disparaged has to have something going for it. In this case, how about the truth? Let’s define. It’s the belief that only oneself and one’s own experiences are real; everything else is just an object of consciousness. I just don’t see what is wrong with that. As I have been saying over and over in this blog, our world is in us, our world is us. That’s all we know and all we can know. I see solipsism as different from subjective idealism, which holds that the world is a product of my subjective consciousness. What I am talking about, which I will call “multifocal solipsism,” posits an experiential matrix in which all points of view are equally privileged by virtue of their ultimate centrality within their own quantum reality construct. Consciousness does not cause the matrix template but does weave it while it wears it.

Bubble people

We’re all bubble people, bubble boys and girls, living inside our bubbles. These bubbles can get very big, as far as the eye can see. We can travel around the world and see just how far our bubble extends. And everybody we meet is inside our bubble. We can look out in space and imagine galaxies and immense distances. And we can think of God, beyond even the boundaries of time and space. Guess what—even God is contained inside our bubble. And the more omnipotent and omnipresent God becomes, the bigger the bubble gets. Because it does continuously grow as our understanding grows. But when all is said and done, you are still inside your bubble and I’m inside mine. Is there more? Maybe. But we'll never know it. Because our bubble is us.

You will find what you are looking for

Good news. Whatever you are looking for, you will find it. If you are looking for the love of your life, she or he will manifest. If you are looking for the laws of the natural or supernatural universe, you will find them. If you are looking for God, you will find Him, Her, It, or Them in whatever form you desire. If you are looking for wealth, you will find it. If you are looking for poverty, you will find it. What you seek will be exactly what you find. In fact, it wasn't there before you found it, but at the moment you find it, it pops into existence. Not that you created it by some force of will or imagination. More likely it re-creates you in the moment of perception. As William Blake said, we become what we behold.

Prove that you exist

You say that you exist? Prove it! You say that you think, therefore you exist? Well, the fact that thoughts are coursing through your brain does not mean that "you" are really there. I accept that you think you are. However, that does not equate to reality in my book. You thought you were you yesterday. How do I know that the you that you said you were then and the you that you say you are today aren't different? How can you even prove it to yourself? You have no reference point other than your memory, and that memory could have been transplanted from another self without your knowledge. We can do it with computers easily enough. So pardon my skepticism, but I just don't think you are who you say you are, and I don't think you can prove it!

The objectivity myth

If by denying a consistent objective reality I seem to be rejecting the value of science, that is not at all the case. Science simply has to evolve beyond the naïve materialist philosophical model that forms its underpinnings in the West for hundreds of years. And with quantum physics and all the mind-bending cosmologies of superstrings and loop quantum gravity it is doing so. Simply by exposing oneself to these viral concepts, they will implant their radical vision of reality into your mind, twisting it into topological forms reminiscent of an Escher picture. See this link for reading suggestions. And good luck.

The story of consciousness

To separate oneself from one’s "story" and know oneself as consciousness—is to create another story. In the shift of identity from that of a conditioned being, lost in the objects of perception, to that of an unconditioned infinite fount of pure consciousness—your new unbounded identity is nothing more (or less) than the main character in a new story—the story of consciousness. Consciousness would not have come into being if there had not been an event of consciousness first, where there was a knower, a process of knowing, and an object known. Get beyond even that primal event, experience the original condition of being, and know your identity as pure consciousness as a story.