Implicit hyperlinks

There are two types of hyperlinks: explicit and implicit. If I mention Shakespeare, my explicit link may take you to Wikipedia to see who Shakespeare is. Except if you already know who Shakespeare is, the implicit hyperlink will take you down the corridors of your own mind to remember plays read, performances seen, and innumerable references to Shakespeare in the culture. Obviously, implicit hyperlinks have the potential to be far richer.

But what if you know nothing of Shakespeare? Then you are at the mercy of my explicit hyperlinks. You will go where and when I tell you. You will understand what I want you to understand. And best of all, you will think you have learned a piece of the truth in so doing.

Discovery of the Dylan particle

When gas stations more or less unanimously switched from full-service to self-service in the 1970s, that was also the time when objective reality became more of a self-service phenomenon; postmodernism was coming in, putting the culture in relativistic hyperdrive. It became okay to dismiss consensual reality as a socially-imposed tyranny. Reality was DIY. The most famous articulation of this has come down to us in recent times in the form of the movie What the Bleep Do We Know, which posited that we create our own reality. This, of course, is a concept that the majority of people does not buy into. Which by definition means that it has a lot to recommend it. However, New Orleans changes everything.

Now, with the inundation of this city, which has occupied a such unique and crucial place in the cultural landscape of this country, we are entering a phase whereby nature is wiping the slate clean from both the arrogant suppositions of materialist science and the solipsistic excesses of postmodernism. It turns out that 9/11 was a mere warmup for apocalyptic scenarios that we will become more and more accustomed to in the upcoming years. Like the foundations of rotting buildings submerged in flood waters, the conceptual underpinnings of modern life are crumbling. The bipolar philosophical stance of subjectivism vs. objectivism, which requires dualism to sustain itself, is being swept away in the new imperatives of change.

What we need is a freewheeling quantum cosmosophy which privileges the awakened individual perceptual module as the reality unit, insofar as it is possible to discover reality. I call this unit a dylano (after Bob Dylan) to indicate that conscious unit within each of us that is attempting to come into its full conscious creative capacity. The dynamic release of the dylano particle in the human ecosystem will help the psychology and sociology of the evolving infrastructure to come into balance with the cosmic tidal forces sweeping away the old structures. We will have no choice but to become like rolling stones.

Unintelligent design

With all this controversy about "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolutionary theory, let us step back for a minute and think about what the world would have been like had it been the product of Unintelligent Design.

With intelligent design, you would of course have the leader of a country who was articulate, well-informed, reality-based, and highly ethical. With Unintelligent Design, that leader would get into office by stealing the election, would pursue ruinous social and economic policies based on lies, relentlessly pummel the populace with slogans and verbal pabulum that had no relationship to the facts, and unconscionably take refuge in willful ignorance to protect himself from the immeasurable human suffering produced by his policies. With an intelligently designed world, people would have the natural intelligence to perceive what was going on in such a case and quickly oust the pretender, restoring the social system to its optimal state. Conversely, in an unintelligent design, they would easily succumb to the stupefying effects of mass media, of tendentious pundits telling them what to believe, so that the hideous perversion of democratic ideals could be allowed to fester with impunity.

But if, as we are exhorted by the Discovery Institute, the theory of intelligent design should share equal billing with evolution in the schools, then so should the theory of Unintelligent Design, because it perhaps explains some phenomena that the other theories do not. The devolution of human being into chimp, for example, seen lately at the highest levels, is inadequately dealt with by Darwin; it is here that the burgeoning science of Unintelligent Design truly shines. And yet, despite the continued elaboration of these sophisticated theories, there will always remain the entreaty lingering pathetically on our lips: "Say it ain't so, Lord!"

The transparent revolution

A new book is attempting to popularize the word translucent to describe what is essentially an enlightened state of awareness, except we aren't calling it enlightenment anymore. These "translucents" were interested in enlightenment fifteen years ago, they've been through the guru trip, they've maybe experienced some form of "radical awakening," and now they're into being integrated and holistic and not separating the material from the spiritual. So they're not really here nor there, and that's why we call them translucent. All these unsung translucent types are out there quietly integrating, changing the course of history from the meditation rooms in their upscale exurbian homes. They might be your neighbor; they might be you. But it's a revolution, and you'd best get with the program and buy this book and sling the term around to demonstrate your translucitude.

In search of a new marketing slogan to push my next spiritual best-seller, I am contemplating trying out "The Transparent Revolution." I think this might have much more popular appeal than "translucent." Remember science class in school, when they taught you the difference between translucence and transparency? You saw this piece of clear plastic, which was transparent, and this piece of cloudy plastic, which was translucent. Well, it was interesting that they had a word for it, but that first brush with translucence did not, I must admit, exactly inspire me. I mean, I did not there and then become a collector of pieces of cloudy plastic. As for transparency, I have gotten a lot of good over the years out of looking out of windows, and reading clear prose from transparently-written books. So I could argue that transparency has been practical in my life, even a source of inspiration.

Making an ideal of translucency strikes me as an attempt to make those who ran the enlightenment gauntlet and for one reason or another crashed and burned, feel good about their relative level of spiritual accomplishment, and give it a name. No enlightenment please, I'm translucent!

Well, get ready for the next phase. In my book, you're going to see through the crap like you've never seen before, O transparent one! Things will be crystal clear to you. You won't even see the separation between you and them. It'll be almost like...being there!

Seek ye first

Recently I was attending a lecture by a spiritual teacher who several times addressed us as "seekers." While I did not take violent exception to the classification, I felt somewhat uncomfortable with it. In truth, I don't think in my life I've ever felt much like a seeker; I prefer the word "explorer." The difference is this. If I am seeking, it means I am looking for something and I probably have some idea of what I'm looking for. As an explorer, I know I am in unknown territory, and though I will do a lot of looking around, and make discoveries in the process, I cannot predict in advance what they will be, or even what category they will be in. I may think I am looking for a new shape of cloud and discover instead a hedgehog.

Even before I seek the kingdom of heaven, I will explore the world without and within, because that is where I find myself, and perhaps I will stumble upon heaven in the process. Anyway, they just might have stuck it in a place you wouldn't ordinarily look.

Law of desire

The law of manifestation is the law of desire. That is, what becomes, comes into being because it wants to be. To understand how this might apply to human life, let us consider how it works in terms of the Absolute. The fifth-century Platonic teacher Proclus discussed the first manifestation of The One, which is the most fundamental reality, stepping into Being (which he calls the Noetic Absolute). At this level, Being is absolute and "unparticipated," or not yet manifested into form, but it represents an activated state that is stepped down from the undifferentiated absolute of The One. At this level, we're not even talking about God; God hasn't been born yet. This is something more mysterious even, like the unfathomable movements of the deep sea far below where we can see or sense.

Desire in human life is often seen as a mechanical principle. Drives for food and sex, for example, seem biologically programmed and the desires that spring from them are chemical impulses emanating predictably from a known configuration. But these biological life programs ultimately derive from the fundamental movements in the depth of Being when The One says, I want to be. Of course there is no I as we know it at that point. It's a movement of desire, though. And in all our human desires, that's really all we want too. To be, just like The One.

Ask yourself what you really want. Burrow deep into your desires and find the core question that always remains asking. You will never answer it. You will act, sometimes blindly, sometimes with consciousness, but never with complete success and fulfillment. It is in the nature of being to always begin again. And the ultimate mystery, that always hides itself in the final analysis, insures that the original desire that teases out the original condition of The One into the Seas of Noesis continuously breathes in us and through us.

Eggless in Iowa

In meditation I heard a voice say, "If you didn't eat any eggs this morning, then you have nothing to let go of." My first thought was, okay, I didn't eat any eggs this morning, I guess I'm all right. Then I thought, but I did take 12 large vitamin capsules. And who knows what else I might have taken in that could have implanted in me some kind of pattern or programming that I would then have to let go of, in order to surrender my egoity into the purifying fires of the absolute.

Woody Allen in Annie Hall maintained that we stay in relationships because "we need the eggs"—citing an old joke about a woman whose husband thinks he's a chicken, and the psychiatrist says he can cure him but the woman says, "No, we need the eggs." And it's quite true that we need the eggs, not just in terms of the human relationships but in terms of every facet of our worldly lives. We need those thought forms to drape around and cushion ourselves from the outrageousness of unmediated existence.

So although I went eggless today, I know I won't tomorrow. And I will pay the price. Yes, I will.

TGIF

Wagner held that Wotan in his Ring of the Nibelung represented humanity. This head god from Norse mythology, who in the story gives up an eye for the sake of knowledge that will help him dominate the objective world, is a tragic figure, as is modern man, who has sacrificed inner knowledge for the sake of worldly power. But it is more than that: to reflect upon the meaning of this primal act in Schopenhauer, who influenced Wagner tremendously, it is the wresting of consciousness itself from nature that is the "original sin," if you will.

If there is one thing I am sure of, it is that there is a fundamental shift taking place, and we can see Wagner as a prophet of that, as in Gotterdammerung there is a complete dissolution of Valhalla, the abode of the gods. The structures that held the whole concept of humanity in place, in this long past age from which we are emerging, are consumed in fire.

You could say that as Wednesday is Wotan's day, which ended in the twilight years of the nineteenth century, the twentieth century was Thor's day, Thursday. Thor is the god of the hammer. We saw a good bit of hammering last century and it's still going on, of course. Even as we watch in fascinated horror at the last throes of political demigods enacting their mundane power plays on the stage of the world, the day is turning from Thor's day to the love goddess Freya's. Thank god(s) it's Friday.

All is not one

To say All Is One is to immediately posit the opposite, All Is Not One. Because if you are positing All you are positing difference. With difference, the Allness encompasses lack of oneness. It might encompass oneness but that does not negate the multiplicity. You might have oneness contained in the All, but additionally you would have Twoness, Threeness, and so on. In fact, even without the concept of "all," the concept of One is enought to imply the concept of Two. There is no one without a second, especially in the field of time, which is why we call the units of time "seconds."

What about outside the field of time? Cannot there be an Allness that is just God, that knows no separation in its essence? Certainly. But if you are talking about all of the All, you have to include the relative world and its infinite variety. Whatever the world might reduce to in terms of a primordial metaphysical soup does not obviate the distinguishing characteristics of its objective phenomenal differentiation.

Really, it is far more interesting to conceptualize the All as all-encompassing, so that it can include our human experience. It seems illogical of the universe to organize these rich, colorful, variegated lives for us if they did not contribute something to the overall canvas.

It's all space

A light year is a measure of distance, not of time. It is the distance light travels in a year. But can you name a so-called measure of time that is not really a measure of distance? A year in ordinary time is the distance that it takes for the earth to make one revolution around the sun. Months, minutes, and seconds are divisions of this unit. They are merely increments of that unit of distance. We talk as though we know what time is. In truth, we are fish swimming in a sea that we cannot perceive. So we use these terms of time measurement which do not actually measure anything but space.

For to say that we have gone such and such a distance in so long a time is to say nothing more than that we have gone such and such a distance relative to another distance. If we are measuring time purely in terms of distance, we have no measurement of anything except space.

Ordinary units of space are not particularly meaningful in themselves, of course. A foot, a mile, and so on—these units are based on rough approximations which we have in latter days codified in arbitrary fashion. Spatial units of measurement are entirely relative, referring back and forth among themselves with no absolute meaning. You could argue perhaps that the Planck length describes something real and not arbitrary, but this is such a tiny unit (1.61 x 10-35 m) that it rarely figures in our calculations of, say, how far it is from our house to Bangor, Maine. (Those who live in Bangor, Maine, may, for the purposes of this example, substitute Ottumwa, Iowa).

My conclusion is that it's all space—what we ordinarily refer to as time, that is, in a misplaced metaphor. And space is nothing more than than the imagination that we can stand still long enough in this cosmos to fix a distance between two objects. (As if the concept of object had some meaning itself.)

To know real time and real space, we had better abandon all notions of time and space whatsoever.

Knowing unknowing

Isn't that nostrum irritating about how the wise person is the one who knows how much he doesn't know? I mean, if he really knows he doesn't know, then he knows. Quit disavowing you know anything. It's false modesty. You do know something. You know what you know, and what you don't know, you don't know. You don't know that you don't know. Otherwise, you know.

Now maybe you define some of your knowledge in terms of what you don't know. That's still knowledge! You see all the stars and planets but you don't know their names, perhaps. So you say, there's a galaxy out there but I am only vaguely aware of its vast complexities. That is my infinitesimal piece of knowledge and that will satisfy. Not! Who are you kidding? In my book, you aren't satisfied with half a glass. Only the whole draught will quench the thirst. And when you quaff it to the lees, you know that you have drunk. You know that you are experienced, as Jimi Hendrix says.

He who is wise, knows what he knows and doesn't know what he doesn't know. That is the truth.

Time release

It is indubitable that the human race has an antagonistic stance as regards time. For one thing, Time and Death are personified in the same way, as a grim reaper. To wit: "Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come." (Shakespeare) We speak of killing time, and in returned are killed by him—why "him," by the way? Why does the feminine (Mother Nature) bring life and the masculine bring death (Father Time)? Do we all hate our fathers, is that what this is all about? Is humanity Oedipal at its root? Is all this talk of an all-merciful loving God the Father who takes care of us just a smokescreen? Come on! We hate the sucker! After all, he spies on us, judges us, punishes us—kill him! Nail him up! We don't like him, not really.

As for Time, it is perhaps unfairly implicated in this species-wide psychological disturbance. Time is no doubt bemused that it is the object of such massive amounts of infantile projection. Why can't we let it go, release it from being victimized by our terrifying collective psychosis? The tyranny of the clock to which we are subjugated, which we chafe against even as we celebrate its cycles, has nothing to do with time, after all. It was not time's idea to invent these infernal machines. No, like so many of the messes that man makes, we did it to ourselves, sad to say.

The nonlinearity of the first dimension

We assume that a one-dimensional object is linear, because by definition a line is an extension along one dimension. But there can be no linearity without measurement and there can be no measurement in a first dimension without a second dimension, because there is no way to ascertain units of length within the confines of one dimension. You simply cannot compare one unit with another. A measuring stick cannot be created without the second dimension.

So because measurement is impossible in the first dimension, no finite linear object can exist in it. To propose that there may be only one object in the first dimension, an infinite line, is tantamount to saying there is no object at all, only dimensionality itself. To speculate that there could be a finite line whose existence is not invalidated by its lack of a property of measurability from within its own dimension, is to ignore that the quality of finitude is dependent on measurability; it is not an a priori property but one that has to be derived by systematic observation. Therefore, the first dimension is nonlinear—on its own terms.

However, here in the world of the third dimension we are very linear indeed. Even though we don't have to think in one-dimensional terms, we do anyhow. There is something about the crushing gravity of materiality that compresses thought. Perhaps Hamlet could be bounded in a nutshell and count himself a king of infinite space. But there are too few Hamlets in the world, who have discovered the existence of depth.

One person at a time

What if there really is just one person in the universe at a time, and the idea that there are a multiplicity of people is just an illusion? The one person who truly exists is faster than the proverbial speeding bullet, darting around from mind to mind experiencing things from one point of view, then another, for an infinitesimal moment, then jumping into another point of view, but doing it so fast that each mind thinks itself experiencing time in a continuous unbroken flow, which creates the illusion of an individual identity. Like watching a movie with discrete frames, each individual consciousness is only experiencing individual moments.

This may not be a complete fantasy; physicist Paul Davies proposes it in his book About Time as a plausible explanation of what really is. If so, then One is truly the loneliest number, and God is a restless creator in an empty universe.

Base tables

Create a relational database describing the universe. There are people: John, Mary, and Susan. And there are planets: Earth, Mars, and Venus. We start out with two base tables containing the entities of people and planets respectively. Then we create queries on these tables and what we end up with is John's Earth, Mary's Earth, and Susan's Earth; John's Mars, Mary's Mars, and Susan's Mars; and John's Venus, Mary's Venus, and Susan's Venus. If we try to resolve the multiplicity of experienced planets, we can say that they derive from the base tables. Objective reality simplifies to the essential entities such as people and planets.

Except for one thing. Those essential entities were derived in the first place. And what were they derived from? The experiences that were supposedly derived from them. In other words, because an experience happened, we objectify it by deriving an experiencer and an experience. These objects are identified and categorized in base tables. Then retroactively the experiences from which they are derived are categorized as derived from them.

Before there was Susan or Earth, there was Susan's Earth. Mary's Venus preexisted either the planet or the person. After the entities were rationalized out, it was determined that there was a subject and object of that experience. The existence of those categories, and their population in base tables, "proves" that a complex reality is based on simple identies and categories. You can't fill out the scorecard unless you know who the players are. But who's keeping score? We are. We paper the walls of our world with printouts. But what are the databases based on? Where did the data come from? And how real are these entities it presumes to describe?

Blogging and the writing process

This being my second post in a row about blogging, I may be in danger of excessive self-referentiality. (But then isn't even one act of self-referentiality excessive? So if you're going to do it, do it big!) In any case (a convenient phrase of dismissal) I am going to risk overstepping my rhetorical bounds because I think the blogging medium offers a great format for developing ideas. If I were still teaching writing, I would definitely make it an assignment for my students to blog daily. Since blogging is writing for publication (I do believe more people read my blog than have read some of the books I have published!), and nothing improves your writing faster than knowing that people are reading it, it would be a wonderful teaching aid.

My current plan is to write a book on the physics, philosophy, and psychology of time. And based on my experience in blogging, I have decided to structure it in bloglike units. It will have chapters and so on, but the real unit within the chapter will be something that is more or less self-contained, like an individual blog entry. Not only will this make it possible to read the book non-sequentially, it will induce all sorts of thematic cross-referencing (without the hyperlinks, of course, at least in the non-digital version). In the process of writing I will be posting entries on the subject of time, thus generating content in a form that may eventually be reproduced in the same form in which it was written (or more likely go through a lot of transmutation first, perhaps to end up in the bloglike state from which it began). It will be an interesting experiment.

The existential blogger

To blog is to live. It is the act of thrusting one's naked essence into the indefinite void, of offering up one's humility and pride and passion and stupidity, one's eloquence and wit and desperation, into that by and large indifferent fog we call the blogosphere.

Why do we do it? For the momentary diversion of the few hapless strangers that might happen upon our markings in the cybersand? What real virtue lies in the exercise of virtual virtuosity?

Perhaps it is because we know deep down in our souls that there is something inexpressible yearning in us to be expressed anyway, like singing the blues during a tsunami, or playing chess with death. Is that overdramatizing what is going on with this phenomenon? How else to explain how even the most mundane narrations become peculiarly compelling once they have been bloggified!

A parenthesis on panpsychism

In my previous post Communique from Neverland I expressed a certain disquietude with being categorized as a panpsychic and felt that there was something there that did not quite mesh with the quantum cosmosophy that I am experimentally espousing. Now I see what it is. According to the definition on FutureHi.net, panpsychism is "the belief that mind, or consciousness, is omnipresent throughout the universe and is a fundamental aspect of the universe. Examples of panpsychic beliefs are that atoms have atom consciousness, rocks have rock consciousness, trees have tree consciousness, planets have planet consciousness, and the universe has universe consciousness, and so on." The probem with that is that it presupposes that there is an outside world! All these projections about what kind of consciousness might exist are posited on the qualities that we perceive "outside" ourselves. That's what I really mean when I say there is no there there! Any cosmology based on the myth of objectivity is bound to be bound in some kind of philosophic parenthesis.

Panpsychism is right to assume that we inhabit some sort of conscious matrix. But the warp and woof of it is nothing but ourselves. Does that sound lonely? It is indeed. Only an entity which knows true loneliness can ever break on through to the other side, to the incomprehensible true meeting with another quantum being. The quantization of consciousness is the fundamental principle, but it is not posited on the categories we see in the physical world. Let us not begin and end our investigation into the nature of things with the things themselves; they are part of the magic lantern show that has been conjured up for our entertainment by the incomprehensible, inexhaustible creativity inherent in the fiery furnace of formlessness. Quantum consciousness is based on the much more radical quantization of pure witnessing monads.

Communique from Neverland

Having noticed that I have been classed as a "panpsychic" by the good people at FutureHi.net, I felt it behooved me to find out what this thing was that I was supposed to be. My first thought was that it might have something to do with Peter Pan. But on that site it is explained that "Panexperientialism or Panpsychism is the belief that mind, or consciousness, is omnipresent throughout the universe and is a fundamental aspect of the universe." In other words, everything in the universe is made out of mind.

I would not disagree with that statement, except that it seems a bit limiting. If the stars, rocks, and seas, as well as the vast multitudes of living beings in the world, everything that exists, is a thought form, a construction of consciousness, then the conditional aspects of that creation must reflect the conditions of mind that constitute them. The objective world becomes a mirror for our fractured psyches. Unless, that is, the partial awareness that we bear is not really causative in this creation; the mind of God is the ultimate subjectivity that is molding things. But that seems too remote to me. In the various forms I perceive, I can only grasp them in terms of what I know and what I am, not in terms of what I am not. For as soon as I see something that is not me, it instantly becomes me. My knowledge of it is only a reflection of that temporary coalescence of thoughts and impressions that I call my self. Now, with that understood, it somehow makes the universe a little too small and claustrophobic, like watching a 60s Bergman movie. Which means that the world in which I find myself is inherently not one in which I feel totally comfortable. Too many pirates, crocodiles, and lost boys—lost souls.

Divine discontinuities

"Time is an illusion...death is an illusion." From the standpoint of our limited three-dimensional reality, that is correct. Certainly the appearances of changing phenomena, plucked through the narrow chink of our senses, are not to be regarded as "real" (although they seem real enough to the experiencing ego). The discontinuties that rock our world from time to time are relative fluctuations in a personal reality construct that is inherently unstable, a house built upon sand.

If you read Janet Sussman's book The Reality of Time you will learn that time from the higher-dimensional physics perspective is much different than the narrow linear referential time sense we all live by. "Real" time has an aspect of randomness and freedom; its shifts are experienced by us as actual breaks in the fabric of spacetime. It is as if at these junction points a tsunami of information from higher dimension pours into ours and our mental constructs are simply swept away.

John Lentz in Transposition holds that the greater godbeing of this cosmos is actually undergoing a shift out of its own reality structure into a new life that is unimaginable even to it. If that is the case, King Kong and Godzilla could come crashing through your living room and you would not bat an eye. There will be matters of greater moment engaging your attention at that point.

Tetrapartite telepathy

As Buckminster Fuller points out in this letter on Tenesgrity, the four vertices of a tetrahedron are the minimum number necessary to achieve awareness-recognition of a structural system. Could this explain why the Beatles were so much better together than as solo artists? Maybe a certain kind of musical telepathy was engendered when this critical mass was reached in the geometric configuration of genius.

The key of high seeing

John Lentz's essay Transposition is as concise and clear an exposition as presently exists on Quantum Cosmosophy, a term I have just this moment coined (and it will likely have a short life span). It is difficult, though, to put any label on a body of thought that (in my mind at least) is currently more of an inarticulable sensation than a coherent philosophical system. My own version of this is what you read in qubikuity, but I should explain that this all derives from John's original cognitions, though I put my own spin on it which I take full responsibility for.

The idea of transposition is, in short, that the "greater godbeing" (which you could call God, except that concept carries a lot of baggage) is going through a quantum shift in which it is evolving beyond this Creation, even as we here on earthplanet plane are being drawn into an inconceivable vortex of change. It is a parallel process. As the collective human mind awakens from its "world dream" which derives from the godbeing's own cosmic dream, the human story starts to completely unravel. As John writes: "Passing through the channels of the greater godbeing beyond, through the elemental godbeing walking the earth and into the human beings who are no longer moved by the passions of the race, the cosmic life force signals its intent to withdraw like a tide sliding back into the sea."

What does this mean? Is it all over? And if it is, does it really matter? Does it matter in the scheme of things that the dream we were dreaming the hour before morning got interrupted, then erased? Or to put it another way, if the universe were a Clint Eastwood movie, should we be surprised that there comes a time when, inevitably, the Man With No Name rides off into the sunset without a word or a glance backwards to the few bewildered survivors of the apocalypse He has wrought?

Random thoughts

Perhaps you have heard of the Global Consciousness Project. In this experiment, which has been going on for years, a group of 60 computers all over the world is generating a constant stream of random numbers 24 hours a day. The interesting thing is that on occasion patterns in the random number stream develop that should not be there by the laws of probability. These periods of coherence seem to correspond to global events such as the tsunami, 9/11, or Princess Diana's funeral, making it seem that the random flow is being affected by world consciousness at that point in time.

Can human consciousness, magnified many fold when cataclysmic world events are happening, cause aberrations in the usual random processes of nature? Quite possibly. But I am more inclined to look for an explanation in the philosophy of time, as propounded by Janet Sussman in The Reality of Time, rather than in the nature of consciousness. She says that time is a field that generates breakfronts when loops in the space/time continuum return to their source. These cataclysmic world events that we all feel so keenly are symptomatic of quantum shifts in the fabric of time. I think the real explanation of the random number anomalies is that it's a synchonistic phenomenon that registers on the level of consciousness the same as when you shift gears in the car; you feel a shift. And it registers simultaneously on the quantum level (the numbers are randomized according to observation of quantum-indeterminate events) because physical reality itself is shifting at these breakpoints.

Sensory metabolism

The nature of human consciousness seems to be one that likes to connect the dots. Because dots are what we are given in the perceptual field. As light particles strike the retina intermittently, and impact us through the on-off firing of neurons in the brain, we are receivers of a panoply of ones and zeros, a digital data stream. Immediately upon intaking this binary repast, we mash it up, homogenize it, convert it to a digestible waveform. We connect the dots between the points, between the bits, and come up with a rainbow of continuity that constitutes our comfortable known world.

This sensory metabolism is so pervasive that we never question the idea that we live in a waveform, despite how much the underlying reality is digital. On the particle level, not much is certain. The particle may be here, it may be there; you cannot pin it down without losing vital information. But we confront the quantum cosmos like recalcitrant audiophiles, preferring analog to digital.

We are dots ourselves, points of consciousness in an unfathomable multiversal ocean, flashing unpredictably in and out of awareness. We create a continuity out of our own thoughts and call that effect a self. What laser light will illuminate our digital souls, calling us forth one by one to see clearly at last?

Neither here nor there

In the 1950s, the You Are There show with Walter Cronkite depicted various historical situations (D-Day, the Gettysburg address, etc.) as if being covered by a modern TV reporter. Such a show would hold no interest today. We are no longer as innocent about history as we once were. We no longer believe there was something "real" there to retell in such a way so as to give it relevance and versimilitude; here at the fag-end of postmodernism, we see only one fiction dressing up another fiction, journalists constructing convenient narratives for our entertainment and politicians invoking mythical pasts to distract us from their nefarious activities.

Nowadays we know that not only we aren't there and can't be there, we never were there. Neither was anybody else. There's no there there. Never was. So it stands to reason there's no here here either. So where are we? Neither here nor there, it seems. Get used to it. This is about as much certainty you're ever going to have about anything.

Monadology

In Leibniz's philosophy, a monad is a conscious unit of perception. You could say we are all monads insofar as we are individuals, or undivided. On some essential level, we do not interact; we live in our separate universes and send signals to each other which we somehow receive and interpret. The most interesting feature of Leibniz's cosmology is how he deals with this problem of how a multiplicity of independent units of eternal substance, the monads, can find common markers so as to learn to coexist. His idea is that there is something called "preestablished harmony."

This is what lets my monad talk to your monad. And any soul communion is posited upon music, essentially. The Leibnizian parallelism of substances reflects what Mozart heard when he wrote the Jupiter Symphony.

Two Heads

The relation-net

It is time for a new kind of relation. A "relationship" is like the Titanic, too heavy to float in this iceberg-packed sea. It is a ship that has sunk many, to quote Osho. The problem is that the relationship has to be airtight in order to keep out the sea and thereby float and travel from point A to point B. The relationship feeds the ego and fixes the individual identity amdist the tides of change. That sort of relation is not what is called for in the current environment of quantum consciousness shift.

The new kind of relation I envision is a relation-net, which has an entirely different purpose, not to travel in any linear fashion but being porous so as to sink into the depths. Where perhaps a gleaming silvery treasure fish may be caught, alive and thrashing in the warp and woof of the matrix of complementary energies...of you and me.

New Age religions

We tend to underestimate the phenomenon of all the New Age religions that are growing up around us like kudzu on steroids. Don't you realize that Christianity, Islam, and so on are on their last legs? In a few years they will be as defunct as Mithraism, and instead people will be paying obeisance to images of Deepak Chopra or Neale Donald Walsh. Worshippers will do rituals at the lotus feet of Carolyn Myss and worship the Divine Mother in her incarnation as Madonna (Ciccione). Priests will intone passages from Wayne Dyer's holy writs; scholars will write exegeses on Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now.

Of course, all of these charismatic personalities will have to be sacrificed in picturesque and gruesome ways so that some Mel Gibson of the future can make a stirring movie about how they saved us all from our New Age sins (such as low self-esteem, non-lateral thinking, and lack of quantum vision). Perhaps the Bush administration, with its new "mandate," will be persuaded by its core constituency to make a pre-emptive strike on all New Age religions lest they gain a competitive advantage over a certain legitimate state religion that should enjoy monopolistic privileges under our Constitution. That will be self-defeating in the long term, for martyrdom will feed the mania of self-empowered multitudes. But in the meantime, Deepak, watch your back!

Purpose of life

The purpose of life is to find the purpose of life. More specifically, your life. No one else matters. Their purpose of life is their business. They can and will answer this question differently from you. What's more, the way you answer this question will be different every time you ask it, because what is important to us is never precisely the same from day to day; certainly the way we express the answer changes, evolves, deepens.

What does this tell us? That the elusive answer to that eternal question is no answer at all, because it is so mutable? Does that mean we are left with only the question, unyielding, unchanging, while the multitudinous answers dance around it, mocking us? We mock ourselves in pursuing this quixotic quest. Why not let it go? Because we can't. It's our purpose to try to answer. Our very existence on this earth is testament to the fact that the question is on the table.

Why not

There are those who look at temporal things the way they aren't and ask not why. I dream of eternal things that are and ask why not.

Others dream of temporal things that will be and ask when. I dream of dreamers dreaming galaxies unborn and say whenever.

There are others who see my dreams and ask who what why when where. I dream instead of uncharted seas and say, hey look over there.

Others dream my dreams and ask whose. I dream my own dreams and simply snooze.

Letter from Mick #2

Listen, blokes. Now that I'm God, I have even less time than I did before, as what with agents, contracts, tours and the like, I also have to deal now with this incessant praying. Get off your knees! (Hmm...that could be a song title. Almost as catchy as "Under My Thumb"...especially if you conceived it as addressed to groupies...) Right, get off them. I'm particularly fagged with these spam prayers and I have installed an anti-spam-prayer filter. So just know that your time will be wasted if you indulge in this. Have yourself a good shag or at least a good wank, or even a bad wank'll be better than nothing and do you a power of good. Whereas if you keep praying at me (preying on me?) you'll be responded to with a deafening silence.

You cannot petition the Lord with prayer! (Where is Jim Morrison when we need him?)

Happy new year?

2005 A.D. is, according to the Vedic calendar, the 5106th year of Kali Yuga, a period of spiritual darkness lasting 432,000 years. If we are indeed ensconced in the Dark Ages (no, Virginia, they didn’t end with Y1K) then we indeed have something to be really happy about. That is, we’re only 1% of the way into this thing. Yes, it could be a lot worse. We could be 50% into it, and then we'd be in a real pickle.

I wonder about the tsumani wave I saw on the home videos that people took. It seemed fairly innocuous when it was first coming in, like just a large but otherwise normal wave. People watched it come in, greeting it with giddy laughing and excitement which quickly turned to screaming—as the wave didn't break, it just continued to move in relentlessly, suddenly washing away humans and houses and paying no attention to where the land thought the waterline ended.

Sitting here on the verge of what seems to be some sort of global breakdown, I wonder...has the real tsunami just begun?

Youcentricity

You live in a youcentric universe. You are absolutely the center of the universe. If you weren't, you would not even be able to walk across the room; you'd fall on your face. You need that youcentricity to keep your equilibrium. There's nothing wrong with it. Don't be ashamed. You're positioned perfectly for maximum mobility in this universe (look, they even named it after "U"!)

The medieval philosophers were not so far off, only they didn't take it far enough. They said Earth was the center. No, it's a little closer in than that. As close as wherever you are. By the way, where is that? Are you your body? Your soul (whatever that is)? Or are you merely a temporary cohesion in the flux? When you know the answer to that, you will truly be in the center of it all.

The duality in individuality

Obviously we are individuals, you and I. Aren't we? We are autonomous. We are not contiguous. You go your way and I go mine. Yet "individual" literally means "undivided." How is it that we can be divided from each other and still be individual?

Perhaps we will require some kind of fusion, not in a crude reverse-Siamese twins operation, but a more subtle soul-surgery, in order to overcome this contradiction. If no person is an island, we cannot be human in any case without renouncing our isolation.

So here's to a new kind of relationship. What it will mean, we don't know, but it should be interesting, to say the least—in order to finally, at long last, realize our individual freedom.

The present moment

If you would stop thinking for a moment...that's right, just cease that constant onrush of thoughts...you will have arrived in the present. You will know what it is to be "in the moment." What's that? You can't stop thinking? Well, there are spaces between your thoughts, aren't there? Just plop down in one of those for an instant; I know you can't stay there for very long, but try to be there just long enough to get a flavor of what I'm talking about, that nectar of presence.

They say this is being outside of time. Actually, it's being inside time. Past and future, they are outside of time. The present, if and when we can realize it, is like being in the body of time. And what a bod! If we could just get our head inside of time all the way and keep it there, we'd be the ultimate insiders.

The first day

Today is the first day. Not of the rest of your life, because that would presuppose you had been living before now. Or that you had a life. Or that there was a you. All of which are highly controversial theorems.

"I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite space," said Hamlet. And if you were, would you be just another nut in its shell? Or would you be finally privy to the clue that solves the whole conundrum? Ask yourself that, today, on the first day.

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.