Boats borne ceaselessly

Individual consciousness can be seen as a quantum wave function which through focusing massive amounts of free energy, manufactures flimsy webs of thought patterns that we string together to make an identity and a life. The amount of time we spend in sleep, dreaming, processing random sensations and perceptions, attending to bodily needs, and otherwise preparing for the moments in the day that we might actually do something really conscious might seem excessive. But that is the way of the universe. It takes a lot to get a little. Dark matter and dark energy account for 95% of the composition of the cosmos. Most of the rest is gas, and there's a little bit left to create the stars and heavy elements that we are familiar with. Our small boat is rocking on this unknown ocean, and we have very little understanding of the contents of that darkness, other than to know it is immeasurably bigger than we are. How can we not question why we are here, when such a vast unknown is buoying us up on the quantum foam in our quixotic quest to enlighten ourselves in the heart of this engulfing night?

Running on empty

"The One" of neoplatonic henosis corresponds to a monadic source that may be congruent with the suboctave-level godbeing of quantum cosmosophy. It is the primary container for the consciousness of the entire universe as each of us conceives it. This divine suboctave monad in turn is a spark contained in the greater octave-level godbeing.

In neoplatonism there is a concept of an emptying in the henotic deification whereby one becomes One, that recalls the "kenosis" of Christian theology, whereby the person is emptied of anything separating him or her from God. This Buddhist-like flavor in the Greek and Christian traditions could be said to tie hen and ken to Zen.

The art of deception

We are led to Believe a Lie
When we see with, not through the Eye
Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night
When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light
—William Blake

The eye does not see. I see. The eye is a window that allows us to receive sensory data. No matter what an extraordinary organic machine the eye is, it is not really an "I." It is not us; we see through it. Seeing is not believing. In fact, to see clearly and fully is to see many sides of a thing, to encounter contradiction from every angle.

Deceivers in politics and the media maintain control and influence by carefully selecting what they want people to see, depending on natural subservience to received sense impressions. And the belief principle, touted as it has been by fundamentalist religion as the way to salvation, becomes a handy accomplice in the subversion of independent thought. Belief follows seeing and thus guarantees subservience to the masters of the world at any given time. So as we turn a blind eye to the manifold injustices and atrocities, taking refuge in the good news and good views allocated us, we miss not only the sordid realities of our worldly condition but also the entire principle by which we can truly understand the world and ourselves.

From here to here

Which is farther: the distance from here to here, or the distance from here to there? I say it is from here to here. Because in order to get to here from here you have to go there, then come back to here. Whereas if you're already there, all you have to do is come here.

But why, you ask, can't you just stay where you are if you're already here? Because here refers to a spacetime location. If you are in space you are also in time. There is no purely spatial reference. That is basic relativity: we live in a four-dimensional universe. There is no "getting here" without going through time. So however close to here you designate there to be, it will always take you twice as long to get from here to here.

Two wrongs make a left

Everything that people agree on cannot be real. Or to put it more bluntly, nothing that they agree on can be real. Since we can only know what is in our own minds, we are necessarily outside the reality that is beyond our minds. Therefore any beliefs or perceptions that we can share with other people just multiplies the misperception, which is why masses of people, and of course their leaders, behave uncommonly stupidly.

Our conception of reality is based on a panorama of perceptions and interpretations that originate within our thought-producing apparatus. For that reason, people tend to trust or give credence to commonly held beliefs as opposed to those that stand outside the norm. But these shared assumptions about reality are the first things we should discard if we are interested in truth.

Two wrongs do not make a right. If I am wrong and you are wrong, together we make a left. The composite of individual awarenesses projecting their illusions in concert constitutes a left turn from reality. Leave it all behind, for God's sake.

A shift in time

The overarching project of downloading the future presents itself as what's hot right now. Global warming is coming down the pike, on a collision course with humanity's pride, but that's not all. A many-tentacled tomorrow is grasping at us on many fronts, and one might speculate that these are cosmological imperatives and not merely earth changes. What they impel is a shift in the techtonic plates of the mind, forcing us to change focus from the labyrinthine paths of the past, pulling us into the perceptual matrix of the present, so that the compelling and ardent heart of the future can have its way with us.

Freevolution

Now that the American public has definitively rejected the theory of evolution, with 51% saying that God created humans in their present form and only 15% believing that God had no role, scientists should perhaps be well advised to rethink their approach to promulgating their theories, as they do not seem to be convincing many these days. Some of the antipathy towards evolution seems to be an uncomfortability with the idea that natural processes could of themselves yield an intelligent result. Yet there is nothing in nature that does not reflect intelligence, from the mathematical symmetry of seashells to the distribution of matter in the universe to the checks and balances inherent in the biodiversity of species. It is not these kinds of examples of an underlying intelligence, however, that evolution's dissenters seem to care about. Rather they see God's hand in the social institutions and norms that define humanity in its present form. They are idealists of the first magnitude, to believe in belief itself as the principle that saves the appearances of nature from the self-referentiality of secular perception.

That 51% proves a democratic mandate for abandoning all notions of the democratic structure in nature, where organisms might slip out from under the control of an all-powerful boss. Evolution, in substituting a possibly random, unknown force for the intelligent design of a creator, is a dangerously radical departure from the simple, orderly vision that informs the mass mind. The freedom inherent in this idea is the ultimate threat to the God of the 51%; even though they trumpet freedom as their political raison d'etre, it eludes their grasp and manifests as radical ideas, showing the unpredictability of the creative force. Freevolution even eludes God, or any God we could possibly imagine, and the creation is indeed a continual thorn in God's side, a constant reminder that to dream, even divinely, is to risk devolving, putting on the mantle of Creature and riding into the great unknown: a journey which might, in due course, evolve God into something greater than even It could possibly imagine.

The watchers

We are the watchers. We have been there when the nation began. We watch. Day after day, week after week, we watch. And what we watch is you. All of you.

We've noted what you are attempting. It is ambitious. Houses made of that particular stage of matter are notoriously difficult to inhabit. There have been many who have not exactly risen to the challenge, to say the least. Still, we watch, and ask questions, and learn. We have positioned ourselves strategically on your dollar bill, like a sentinel from the future, in a hermetic symbology that locks up secrets to be released when the note comes due.

We are the watchers. Someday you will see us again, but rarely. You will rarely see us, but we will always see you.

The definitive PKD

Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s: The Man in the High Castle / The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? / Ubik, Library of America, 2007
In the 1960s, when he wrote these four novels, Philip K. Dick was not known, as he is today, as an acclaimed "literary" science-fiction writer and visionary who inspired many films. Since his death in 1982, his reputation has steadily soared, a little bit too late, and now this former genre journeyman toiling in obscurity has become the first sf author to be enshrined in a handsome omnibus volume in the esteemed Library of America series. Of course, I had to buy it even though I already owned multiple copies of all these novels. It is a genuine pleasure to read any of the LOA volumes, so lovingly produced they are. And this one especially so, compiled as it was by an author heavily influenced by Dick, Jonathan Lethem. You will never see a biographical chronology so interesting to read in its own right: we even learn that Timothy Leary called Dick during John and Yoko's bed-in and he put the famous pair on the phone to tell PKD that they wanted to film one of the four novels contained here, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Incidentally, Lethem's taste is impeccable. Though Dick wrote no fewer than 21 novels in the 1960s (plus a couple of dozen more before and after), these are without a doubt the four best: The Three Stigmata, The Man in the High Castle, Ubik, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? One could easily compile another such volume with four more extremely strong novels of this period: Clans of the Alphane Moon, Dr. Bloodmoney, Now Wait for Last Year, and Martian Time-Slip. However, the ones collected here are the ones I would pick, if I could have only four. They are all absolute classics and support many rereadings. I remember when in the 1970s, I encountered Three Stigmata for the first time and could not totally make sense of it, but I was intrigued. It was hallucinogenic, it was trippy, it was theological. A few years later I found myself seeking it out again, rereading with a passion, finally really "getting it," and then compulsively seeking out everything I could find by PKD. It took me years but I eventually tracked down every last out-of-print forgotten paperback. Since then all his works have been reprinted and made easily available. But my original "discovery" experience is why this LOA volume means so much to me now. The Man in the High Castle is perhaps the best alternate history ever written, a speculation on what life would have been like if the Germans and Japanese had won World War II. Ubik is a brilliant ontological quest into the very structure of reality. Do Androids Dream, the novel on which the film Blade Runner is based, is among other things a meditation on what it means to be human. These four novels have become like cornerstones in my own life's journey. For them to have been given this respectful and definitive publication is something that brings me a lot of pleasure, and would also, I think, have pleased Philip K. Dick.

The Buddha machine

The new improved Buddha machine is a perfect infinite self-reflective, self-replicating enlightenment device that enables you to plug into a quantum circuitry of perpetual nonmotion.

Machines are not supposed to be compassionate or conscious, but this one is. However, you will never know the depth of what the Buddha machine feels or knows, because your own inquiry will be reflected back to you by its ancient, glittering gay eyes (see W. B. Yeats, Lapis Lazuli). Oh yes, it has eyes, the more the merrier, the better to see you with.

Say hello to the next pervasive technological turn-on. Try it for 90 days and see if you don't agree that the Buddha machine will turn you and the whole universe into high-octane wake-up juice. Pow!

The end of the world

Perhaps the end of the world will never come, because to get to the end of the world we would have to keep going indefinitely around the world in every direction for ever and ever. And even then we would never arrive at the end. Unless we did. So either there is an end, or there isn't. And if there is no end, then there was never a beginning, so there can be no question of an end in any case. Neither is the world an end in itself, nor has it an end or purpose, except to grow creatures of light. So the unknowable recesses of being remain secret, and the agendas of beings beyond our ken remain inscrutable. And we are naked in our pure souls, when we walk vulnerable but unscathed to the mountain, ready to raise our glorious swords to the sun, and vanish in a puff of smoke.

Another book I can cross off my list

From the Amazon.com description of Immanence & Transcendence in Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon: A Phenomenological Study, by Joakim Sigvardson:

The investigation studies Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon as a novel that comes to giveness in terms of three strata of manifestation: the arty, the rhizomatic, and the acosmic. Utilizing an affective turn implemented within the phenomenological movement by Michael Henry, the study proposes that alongside a rhizomatic mode of accessibility promoting transcendence, Mason & Dixon manifests a withholding of transcendence. The study investigates the manifestation of this ontological withholding by carrying out the phenomenological reduction established by Edmund Husserl, and by elucidating the phenomenon of immanence in the literary text by means of a theory of auto-affection rooted in - but not reducible to - such methodological reduction. The study proposes that the thematization of anomaly in Mason & Dixon may be unconstructed by means of phenomenological moves that uncover strata of phenomenalization that are not apparent on a thematic or merely playful level. These strata, with their promotion of immanence at the expense of transcendence, are found to be complexly affective in nature. The affectivity governing the withholding of transcendence in these strata is discovered to be instrumental in the work's critique of colonial modes of spatialization, of logocentric modes of transcendence, and of post-Nietzschean modes of affective mastery.

Based upon this description, I have decided to ontologically withhold my immanence from Mr. Sigvardson's fine opus, in that I have not yet phenomenologically investigated even the outer strata of Mr. Pynchon's transcendental objective correlative, namely the book about which Mr. Sigvardson's book is logocentrically concerned. So be it. There is little enough time to explore the rhizomatic giveness of existence let alone the acosmic craperia.

Gnostically correct

...None of this totally deproblematizes the gnostic problematic inseparable from Pynchon's Weltanschauung, but it helps us to understand how a complex, self-conscious irony that constantly subverts its own deformations has all too easily conjured up for many readers a nihilistic miasma in which no norm beyond a generalized iconoclasm is discernible.
—Dwight Eddins, The Gnostic Pynchon

I mean no criticism of Mr. Eddins' criticism, but how gnostic is it to use "problematic" as a noun and "deproblematizes" as a verb in the same sentence? Just asking.

Primary process

Now, more than ever, it is incumbent upon humanity to begin to disassemble its obsolete concept of reality so that a reality worthy of the name can take its place. To do this, two things are necessary: deconstruct the self, and deconstruct time and space.

To deconstruct the self, one must recenter the consciousness as the source of the universe by realizing that everything that tells us that our personal module of perception is insignificant is a kind of propaganda. We must turn a deaf ear to the voices inside and outside our head that propagate the ideology of self-objectification. In their place, we open a dialogue with the immanent godbeing and reinitiate our identity inside the puissant consummation of its unfolding self-wonderment.

And then to deconstruct spacetime as we know it, which is the analogical product of a processing plant called the nervous system, we dive beneath the smooth, silky surface of the continuum. Underneath, as we swim through the akash, the omnipresent medium of virtual space, we witness the chunky datafeed of the realtime stream. To become aware of this datafeed before it has hit the reality processor (similar to a food processor, except that it is mashing up chunks of time rather than vegetables), we are hoisted onto the back of the godbeing and thereby witness the primary process as an inexhaustible source of pure intelligence.

A blog in time

I submit this blog at close to the last minute in this most august month of the year so I can say I did not skip an entire month in my blogging career. Much could be said, but at this point I have little time to say it, even if that which could be said I could say. If you conclude that I am simply filling up empty space in order to make a point, I would respond that most of what is written does little else. In fact, if one had no point to make, it is unlikely that one would feel compelled to record that fact in writing. And while my point is very close to no point at all, it does fall on the side of having it spill out in words in any case. Sometimes this happens in the course of cosmic events.

Spiritual risk management

Wanting to buy shares in God, Inc. (having heard that it is the biggest corporation in the universe), I went to the Church and eagerly bought into their mutual fund. It seemed great at first; they took care of everything, and there were always lots of people to talk to about how great our portfolios were doing. But after ten years I realized I had only been getting a 1% return. Hey, the Church was doing great but I wasn't.

Then I heard about this guru/broker who was offering a much better deal, so I signed up with him. He only had a small group of clients but that was better because I got a lot of personal attention. He encouraged me to invest everything in The Self LLC because it was a small cap, supposedly faster growth than the lumbering God Inc. which the Church seemed to have an overly cozy relationship with. Everything seemed great but after another ten years, I added up what I had made and was a bit shocked to find I had only made 3% when after all under the guru's guidance I was expecting nothing less than to get rich.

So I began wondering how else I could get my piece of spiritual fortune. I decided to try to do it myself and jumped into speculation, directly buying futures on God using metaphysical leverage and got burned pretty badly when the market tanked in one of those "Dark Night of the Soul" depressions. I wasn't totally wiped out, but I was down to my irrefrangible religious assets (IRA).

Finally I realized I needed to be realistic about the downside of my investments in my spiritual life and decided to take a more conservative approach, looking for incremental regular gains rather than a windfall by betting the farm. I mitigated my speculative excesses by writing low-risk option spreads on the DIV index (a market basket of gods and saints of all religions) protected by stops whenever the index moved too close to my strikes. Thus whenever the heat gets too intense I jump out of the fray and cool my heels until the moment is opportune to trade again. The returns are steady, and they do add up.

You have to learn to manage the risk, because you sure can lose it all, but you're not going to really make it unless you take control of your own fund of spiritual happiness. It's possible to do it, and the Tao of it is—very carefully.

Space for a moment

Insofar is not a word
to be used in a poem
and yet insofar as this is a poem
it will be used.

Truth is spoken here,
let us be clear,
and in these few words
we’ll create a space for a moment
where the real can find a perch.

Feel it when it lands
how it speaks commandingly in your cells
and delivers its disarmingly
frank message.

It wants nothing more
than to be a significant other
while turning your body into molten love.

In so far a way as you may walk
you are near for what is here for you
for what is.
Ingest the truth, my friend.

Declaration

Through the power vested in me, I the quintessential monad of consciousness energy, declare myself a free and independent State of Being. I claim all worlds, galaxies, and universes, all time and space, all created manifestation and uncreated potentiality, all possibilities imagined and unimaginable, as my rightful domain. The energies of all the archetypes, human and cosmic, I summon to drive the engine of my divine body. That which was and will be, and that which is and is not, is my birthright and shall be evoked through the universal mind that I inhabit and enfold. All things animal, vegetable, and mineral are now contained in me, and all conscious entities are expressions of my intelligence. The manifold unfoldment of my being continuously reveals the awe of my own existence.

Therefore let all elsewheres be summoned to become and take root here and now. The singularity is near. I have occupied the center and all will become known through the self-reflection of the power of indomitable Light. Let there be...

Why it is the end

When Jim Morrison announced in 1967, "This is the end," what did you think he meant?

This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend
The end of our elaborate plans
The end of ev'rything that stands
The end

Interpret this in terms of a journey of the soul across a dying waste land. "The end is where we start from" (T. S. Eliot). "Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain," Morrison says, "And all the children are insane." Philip K. Dick thought we were still living in Roman times, that "the Empire never ended": in other words, that "modern history" is an illusion and we are in reality stuck back in ancient times. We are living in a Matrix-like simulation of a world that never actually evolved from what we think of as being 2000 years in the past. That past is with us still. Imagine George Bush in a toga and with a Roman haircut. That's what's really happening.

So does Morrison's "end" mean the end of all that? Will we finally see a real beginning? One can only hope.

Floating subjects

Nothing is really self-evident (certainly not life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which are now specious values in the eyes of the American government); but if anything is, it would have to be the idea that there are more objects than subjects. Or so it would seem. After all, for every subject in the universe there are billions of objects. Because these objects present themselves so differently to each subject one could hardly prove they are the same objects; therefore one cannot count any one of them more than once. Outside their manifestation to a particular subject, they do not exist. So what we have are a universe of objects that number in the billions, times the number of possible subjects.

Except for one thing. There could be numberless subjects that have no objects. How did they come to be in the first place? Because those billions of objects needed subjects, and that crying need called them into being. But eventually these subjects grew tired of looking at objects all the time, counting them, cataloguing them, rescuing them, celebrating them, consuming them; doing, in sort, whatever was needed for and to these innumerable objects.

The end result? Billions and billions, uncountable multitudes of orphaned subjects: those insular beings that have drifted to the outer reaches of the cosmos, exiles from the court of matter, renunciates of the objective, floating in their bubbles of blessed solipsism, and eternally free of the compulsion to recognize anything outside of themselves.

How many of these lost subjects clot the vast spaces between the galactic superclusters? As dark matter and dark energy, undetectable by ordinary means, have been proved to constitute the great bulk of matter and energy in the universe, we can hypothesize that the epistemological principle that results in the generation of subjects and objects is essentially a correlate of the principle of creation of dark matter and dark energy, and that there is an infinite number of these lost subjects, whose numbers dwarf the population of objects, which when all is said and done, are after all dispersed rather sparsely throughout the visible universe.

Therefore, to all you lonely nowhere men, living in your nowhere land, I say Bon voyage! Send a postcard to us sometime, saying having a wonderful time, wishing you weren't here, and there's really nothing to see.

Dark Matter (actual photograph)

My interpretation

"She walks in beauty like the night"
Like the night walks. Walks right through our world. Inevitably. Invariably. Nothing is as certain as that the night will walk straight through your life. Tonight. Mysteriously. Sensuously. Like her.

"Of cloudless climes and starry skies"
When there are no clouds in the sky, you can see the stars better. I would like to fly through fields and fields of stars.

"And all that's best of dark and bright"
Her shadow that follows her, and follows you, the best of dark. If you're going to be dark, be dark like that. Lustrous. Poised, sensually, ripe and ready to drop. Oh, the shadow knows. She knows what she knows and you don't know what she knows. But you are ready to find out.

"Meet in her aspect and her eyes"
How she appears. The beauty of which you will drown in. You will forget to look for the being that sits on the throne behind her eyes. But she will remind you, penetrating you forever with her perfect gaze.

The self is the question

The Self is just one big question mark. I'm not talking about the elusive nature of the self that compels us to ask "What is the self (or Self)?" For the purposes of this discussion, by the way, I'm not going to differentiate between the big-S Self and the small-s self. Let's pretend there's just one Self. And I say, that Self is just one big question mark.

And who am I to say that? The Self. Ask yourself instead who are you to question me? The Self as well, you big question mark.

Okay, having established that, what is the question? Is it "to be or not to be"? Let's say that Hamlet wasn't actually talking about the advisability of living vis-a-vis dying, in other words wasn't a contemplation of suicide as that soliloquy is usually interpreted. Maybe he was talking about the the nature of the Self's question. Maybe that's why that soliloquy resonates so much, because of the absolute universality of its theme.

So the Self is asking, first and foremost, should It Be, or not? And upon the answer depends whether material creation itself will come into manifestation.

What was the answer? Maybe the answer is the universe itself. And if you believe there is no universe, just a maze of illusion and a lot of ghostly selves stumbling around in it, the thing that remains, without question, is the Question, eternally hanging.

If you don't answer it, who will?

The last word on the subject

I know some people say that sex and love are easily confused, that you may think that sex is love when actually it's just sex. But I say, if you say that sex is anything but love, you're not talking about sex. Because sex is love.

Don't talk nonsense and say that sex is not love. You might as well say that love is not love. Shakespeare said that. Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds. Sex is not sex that loves not when it sexes.

Sex is love. It is the body loving. It is anything loving. It is pleasure. And now know also that love is sex. Love is nothing but sex. But can't there be love without sex? you ask. Um, not really. You see, you must love with your whole being, which includes, as it happens, your body. Or else you have altered the love beyond recognition. I don't care who or what you're loving. It's a body thing, ultimately.

The next time you plan to use the word "love" in a sentence, at the last moment substitute "sex" instead. Know the truth of what you just said. Feel the implicit rightness of it. See how people react. They will be surprised. That is how you know when you have touched the real.

Echoes

Somewhere along the line, I drowned in experience.

It had to do with why I'm here. Part of the deal: to dive, to penetrate the heart of the matter, to dream, to die. To become extinct. And then, felicitously, to awaken in odd moments, and perhaps for longer spells, and to move inside the presence of an eternal moment. It is a consummation to which one would wish to be devoted.

Now I ride the tractor beam of rock 'n' roll, an energy being directed from somewhere else to somewhere else. Pulling us back to a reality that existed long before this cracked mirror we call the world. Echoes, as Pink Floyd says:

And no one showed us to the land
And no one knows the wheres or whys
But something stirs and something tries
And starts to climb toward the light

Holographic worlds of if

One of the science-fiction magazines I used to read was called Worlds of If. How apropos a title. The word "if" heralds untold possibilities for alternate worlds. Consider it the jumping-off place for parallel universes, which, if certain physicists are to be believed, are constantly branching off from this reality. Conceived as such, reality is very open-ended and in fact continuously generating different versions of itself at any given moment.

Were we to follow any of these branches, we would likely soon get lost and never find our way back to our own reality. But there is much information about these parallel worlds we can glean from the facts that are in front of us, that makes it somewhat unnecessary to actually visit them. We can know alternate realities through holographic research into our own minds. That is, by the art of "delving," or looking into the mind concerning a certain point we are curious about, we will receive definitive information about that thing. This process takes advantage of the holographic structure of reality whereby all potential knowledge is embedded in the thing itself and the seeds of all things are embedded in our minds.

Once one has become adept at delving, one can then explore parallel universes at will. The multiverse is indeed an infinite library such as Borges wrote about.

Doing your thing

What is your thing? Painting? Listening to music? Talking to trees? Climbing mountains? I hope, whatever it is, it involves the senses. Because a thing is not truly done until the sense organs get involved. Just as organ pipes need air to make a sound, we need prana in order to fill up the senses. We breathe in the refined air of beauty and the energy of love flows.

Actually, what is the thing being done? In what is it a thing at all? And in the doing of it, what is happening but a verbing? A pure process. That's when the thing is enjoyable of course. For I do hope, whatever your thing, that it is enjoyable. I fear that there are too many people who are not happy just doing their thing. Maybe it's because of their being too busy being done by things. Pity upon them.

And let us now move to the doing of our sacred thing. And enjoying the doing by others of their holy thing.

Do it!

Marginalizing Pluto

You may not be aware there is a conspiracy afoot to strip Pluto of its planethood. For some time now, a certain reactionary contingent of astronomers has been agitating for demoting the ninth planet to the status of something like planetoid or extra-solar object. Bad enough to be the smallest member of the family (Pluto, if dropped on top of North America, would be a little short of covering the continent), but if they now attempt to marginalize this lord of the underworld...there'll be Hades to pay.

Now what? Schoolkids of the future being taught that there are eight planets? That's just wrong. Attention must be paid. Oh yes.

Pluto and its moon Charon

A lapse in time

It has been commented upon and lamented by many that the mind's relentless processing of experience creates a stumbling block for full enjoyment and appreciation of life. It is as if a gigantic data stream were being fed into a computer in order to create a representation of the primary reality. That representation is primarily visual and verbal, and its parts can be disassembled and reconstructed in various ways to make experience portable through time.

The real problem with this processing is not that it happens, but that of necessity there is a time lapse between the individual's being-in-the-world and the manufacture of the representation. Even if we are only talking about a split second, that time lapse can be like an eternity, as if a chasm had interposed between the vibrant living body of Now from the abstracted, skeletal essence of the Past. The existential separation between these modalities of being is absolute.

To notice this gap is the beginning of gaining greater ease with the way things are in the psychological universe, rather than protesting the disharmony. Maybe it is still possible to get in rhythm with the time lapse, so that in that crack into which so much time has disappeared, so many lost long moments, some nectar of experience can be preserved. One's reach must exceed one's grasp, or what's a blog for?

If a tree falls

If a tree falls in a forest and there is nobody to hear it, does it make a sound?

Yes it does. Because for sure the tree is hearing it, whoever else may or may not be around.

Don't you believe that a tree can be that sensitive? Why, it is the most sensitive of life forms. Don't let that bark fool you. That's not keeping out the sensation. It's a skin of the most sensitive sort. And when the tree falls, that skin feels its death at the moment of passing. And experiences the sound waves from the ensuing crash. And feels joy and gratitude all the time.

What teachers are these trees we find around us? Cherish them, cherish them.

Becoming real

To know consciousness as real, and to know consciousness as being, dissolves the mistake of the intellect in which one is identified with and defined by the object of perception. The realization of being detaches the knower from the known and gives immediate perspective on the true nature of self. But that leads to the second mistake of the intellect: that consciousness is one and the same as being. That can be a very seductive and fatal illusion.

Consciousness becomes fulfilled in the light of being, and like the moon moves into fullness with the sun's light, but the moon does not become the sun. The fulfillment of consciousness is a great thing: so great that one might think one is absolute being. But just as the moon wanes, so the consciousness will inevitably recede from being until it returns to the zero point and the long dark night of the soul.

How terrible it is to lose being. But how less confusing if one knows it is only a phase. If, however, you think you now are eternal being when your consciousness has filled to the maximum, then it will be especially painful. Consciousness is forever becoming. Whatever it becomes does not last. So when it becomes being, it immediately starts becoming not-being. Its mutability is what makes human life beautiful. Beauty resides in the veil thrown over the light. Life needs both the light and the veil.

Do not think that being and consciousness are the same. You can know being and even become being, but you are not being. You will soon lose track of yourself. And then you will find yourself again. Endlessly mutable, your consciousness plays a game of hide-and-seek with itself that goes on forever. Rest in being so you can live to play another day. But the game never ends, at least not until the universe snuffs out, if it ever does.

Do not wish to be the sun. It is too fierce; it burns too hot and will melt your delicate wings. Then you will fall like Icarus. Better than becoming being is to become real.

It is in the cool of the evening when the moon rises full that you will know (to quote D. H. Lawrence):

That beauty is a thing beyond the grave,
That perfect, bright experience never falls
To nothingness, and time will dim the moon
Sooner than our full consummation here
In this odd life will tarnish or pass away.

How far out is out

I just read a New York Times article called Far Out Man, But Is It Quantum Physics? about the movie "What the Bleep", and more broadly about the many books out there that based on a bit of half-baked physics make rash and far-fetched conclusions about the nature of reality. The writer characterizes this tendency as "purporting to argue...that reality is just a mental construct that we can rearrange and improve, if we are enlightened or determined enough." In contrast, he offers real science, i.e., the atomism of Democritus, which if memory serves came down the pike a little before quantum physics, but never mind. The point is that real physicists never indulge in metaphysical speculation (Ken Wilber somehow filled a book full full of these speculations by Einstein, Schroedinger, Born, and others in Quantum Questions). Thank you, New York Times, for once again setting us straight. "I would have the courage to see the world clearly, in all its cruelty and beauty," says the writer: in other words, without the crutch of mysticism that makes us believe there is some free will in the universe and that our consciousness can affect such things as the way the atoms randomly crash into each other and thereby create our world and everything in it.

The mystery of subjectivity, then, is conveniently consigned to being an epiphenomenon of materiality. Consciousness itself is just a product of blind, random physical processes. We never seem to be able to get beyond that level of discussion in the popular media. Reality is blind chance: deal with it, says NYT. Thank you, scions of the real, for illuminating this truth for us, but I prefer my comforting illusion that consciousness is a player. Because if I believed everything you and Judy Miller said, there would actually be weapons of mass destruction and those quantum fluctuations going on in a place called Iraq would actually have a bleeping point.

The most universal number

Pick the most universal number:
0
1
2
3

You could say “0” because everything starts from the zero ground-state. You could say “1” because one is the fundamental unit of every other number (dividing or multiplying by one yields the same result; every integer is constituted of ones). You could say “2” because everything in the world is posited on dynamic opposition, the yin-yang of existence, without which nothing is.

But I think the most universal number is 3. Here is my reasoning.

Three is the base of all numbers (i.e. all multiples of three) that embody the principle of self-replication. Therefore it replicates itself into a universe and if it didn’t there would be no universe. So it’s the universal number.

Zero is not self-replicating. It ain’t even there. One does not replicate itself. One is one and all alone and evermore shall be so. Two does not replicate. Now there you might argue. But just because A and B get together and interact and cause C to emerge, whether C be an idea, an emotion, a new widget, or a human being, twoness is a state of division. It represents a transitional state. Three, which incorporates the fruit and materialization of the interaction, represents a new wholeness which rolls over easily into a new replication.

Note how the three-based rhythm creates a feeling of universal ongoingness. I am speaking of the waltz, as in 2001: A Space Odyssey, when the camera pans down the length of a huge space station while the Blue Danube plays gloriously on the soundtrack.

Noah's ark was a two-by-two affair. The ark of this universe is a three-by-three vehicle. All aboard!

Fallen to earth

We are meteorites. That is, we are what is left when as meteors in our downward trajectory to this planet most of us burned up in the atmosphere. We're lucky to be here at all, but wasn't our moment of glory in the getting here, not the surviving? We burn brightly and light up the sky. Then it's over. Almost.

So what do we do with this big rock of ourselves that's left? Well, maybe we could dig into the core of it and see if there's any ore in there. There is a legend that meteorite ore is useful in the crafting of magical weapons. Perhaps we are supposed to fight some dragon. Is that what we're doing here?

You know, we really have no clue why we're here. But I am sure of one thing: there is a reason. I haven't figured out what my purpose is yet. But I know there is one. I just hope I find it before the last glow in the core of this meteorite finally fades into black.

Loving what is

According to chapter 2 of Douglass A. White’s Observer Physics, the word "believe" derives from the Indo-European root *LEUBH, which means to care, desire, love; with the intensifier prefix be. (This, by the way, is in the context of a discussion of four basic paradigms of belief: a priori, a postiori, empirical, and deliberate. Qubikuity is an example of the latter, in which an exploratory belief set is being articulated. Every blog post here is a piece of the puzzle, which is sometimes expressed more formally and other times more peripherally.)

Thus, to believe is to love being.

Of course, the idea of “belief” is much debased because today, most beliefs that are held, championed, and contest with each other for supremacy tend to be very low-order beliefs and have little integrity. A belief lacking integrity may be very persuasive to a believer but it fails to persuade non-believers because it is probably internally inconsistent, as well as inconsistent with general experience, scientific facts, or reason itself.

Why should we not resuscitate this oft-maligned term, the victim of shoddy usage? As we embrace the isness and while abandoning or rejecting beliefs that do not suit, let us adopt an attitude of belief whereby we love what is. Because we are worthy to recognize beauty and truth where we find it, and respond with our sensitive acceptance of that quality.

The results could be unbelievable.

Consciousness is quantum

Consciousness is quantum. Experience is fractal.

Consciousness may be expressed as shifts between integral dimensions (1,2,3,4,5,6…) Thus it lends itself to talking about in terms of states in the same way as we talk about states of matter: solid, liquid, gas, plasma. Consciousness has the property of resolving into a discrete categories of functioning and can take the identity of individual modules of consciousness (my consciousness, your consciousness, his consciousness, her conscoiusness). Individual means undivided: i.e., integral.

The fundamental property of “having” consciousness is that it one is alone in that self-contained field. The root of who we are is consciousness itself in its quantum state. However, when experiences begin to accrete to our identity, in the random and fractional quality of real numbers (3.14, 9.86, etc.), we adhere to the infinitely varied fractal patterns that occur in our individual lives. And the stories we tell about our lives often develop into infinite real number sequences: 3.14159265…, 9.86965056… and so on. These stories are not individual in the sense of integral consciousness states. Like fractals, their forms are extraordinarily complex and may seem random and chaotic on the surface. Chaos mathematics might restore some sense of underlying orderliness to the fabric of these stories, but essentially we are dealing with fractional dimensions when we enter the world of experience.

Nonfractal objects are things like lines, rectangles, cubes. We don’t experience life this way unless we abstract out these objects. The fractal object expresses life as we meet it: a constantly shifting, unpredictable, seemingly random territory inhabited by a multiplicity of selves (the components of psychological subjective reality).

When we ask who we are, we can only temporarily alight in the quantum. Quantum, nonfractal states do not appear to occur naturally. Those quantum integers are quickly grabbed by free-floating fractal functions and appropriated as coefficients to produce the infinite textures of our lives.

...And the gods made love

The most important event possible at this point in time is that our galaxy is brushing up against another galaxy. Think of that. What a powerful, thrilling moment this is in the life of our cosmos. And it's just starting to happen, perhaps here in the last few years, astronomers think. And we're here to bear witness to this very rare and amazing commingling of the giant godbeing forms that are living intelligences of the macrocosm. Really, they define what it is to be alive, and here are two of them actually touching. On this level, when you so much as touch another godbeing, a cosmic orgasm immediately begins. This is the energy level that we have the privilege and pleasure and fulfillment of learning to transmit. There is some measure of courage required, like plunging into a still lake on a cold October morning. But the resultant tingle will be beyond our dreams. Bring it on.

Letter from an ex-God

Hello. It's me again. You remember, your Almighty God who took early retirement awhile back. Call it a case of creative fatigue...when you create the Universe, after all, it can really make you tired! (That's a joke, as I didn't really create it, you know. God knows where it came from. No, strike that, he doesn't either.)

Anyway, I'm blogging to answer a few of your questions that arrived via a very determined young FedEx guy. It's touching to think that you remember me and highly encouraging that capitalism is still capable of free enterprise. So let's take the first question: Where am I? Okay, that's a very good question. The first thing you need to know that I am beyond the Universe. When I said I was hitting the road, I meant that I was leaving everything. How can I be beyond the Universe, you ask, when everywhere that is anywhere IS the Universe? The easiest way to explain this to you is to note first that this is a misconception: there are many universes (but I'm not in any of the others either). So what's left? Nowhere. That's it. I'm literally nowhere. If this answer doesn't satisfy, consider your own existence and your location in it. Where are you? (Don't give me a city, state, country, or planet—I'm talking about your absolute location, not with reference to any relative object.) Thus your location, whosoever you are, is 0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0. (I give the eleven-dimensional vertex). That means that you, too, are nowhere. You just think you're somewhere. That's an illusion.

Okay, next question. Are you happy now even though you're not God anymore? Hmm. That was from a woman. Probably concerned about my emotional well-being. The answer is yes, but not even though, because. Think about it. You want to be Madonna? Michael Jackson? Or even Mick Jagger? I didn't think so. These people are as famous as I am, or was, and they've all had their challenges keeping their sanity with that degree of notoriety. To be honest, I'm happy hanging where I'm hanging and nobody can get to me, except, as it turns out, FedEx.

One more. Okay, I know some of you have been wondering this. Any chance I will come back? After all, the Who came back. Cream came back. Jesus came back...strike that, he didn't and for your information, he's not going to...The short answer is No. I'm not nostalgic for my divinity days. I'm cool without having to play that role. And you should be too. Be free! Be your own god!Be yourself! That's my inspirational message for today. Bye now!

Thumos

In his superb translation of Parmenides, Stanley Lombardo renders the first lines of the poem as follows:

The horses that take me to the ends of my mind
Were taking me now: the drivers had put me
on the road to the Goddess, the manifest Way
that leads the enlightened through every delusion.

The more literal Peter Kingsley in his wise and revelatory book Reality has it thus:

The mares that carry me as far as longing can reach rode on, once they had come and fetched me onto the legendary road of the divinity that carries the man who knows through the vast and dark unknown...

Lombardo admits that his is a radical translation. "Ends of my mind" instead of "longing" might seem a distortion of meaning. The Greek word usually translated as "longing" or "desire" is thumos. Lombardo explains that his version is meant to suggest "a unique inner experience, the encounter of one's mind with Being and the realization that they are the same." If translated as desire or longing, thumos would seem an activity of the lower mind rather than an insatiable drive for an ultimate encounter with the divine; it is essentially untranslatable.

I see this as a case where the literal translation is an essential gloss on the poetry. On thumos, Kingsley writes that it is "the energy of life itself. It's the raw presence in us that senses and feels; the massed power of our emotional being." So it is not merely desire in the materialist sense of wanting to possess or objectify. It is the fire of life that impels us to travel in consciousness.

It is easy to forget that it is the thumos in us that is running things. If it wants us to ride the wild horses to the end of the galaxy and plunge ourselves into the fiery heart of God, we will do so or die trying. And that is a good thing. The varied veils of human life are relentlessly being peeled away as we struggle, as a species, to climb out of our cradle endlessly rocking, and try so awkwardly to walk. Thumos will not let us sleep forever. It throws off the veil, takes us out of the mind, and takes us to the halls of the inner divinities whose have been waiting, silently, since time began for us to recognize them, so they may whisper to us one true thing at last.

It is time to study Parmenides and Empedocles and the other pre-Socratic Greek philosophers, because they represent the lost wellsprings of the Western tradition. Logic, analysis, and science proceeded from them. Yet what they were about had nothing to do with what we made of their gift. We have yet to plumb the true meaning of Parmenides' statement: "for to think and to be are one and the same."

A Sudoku moment

Sudoku is like a viral that obsesses people without their ever really knowing why. I think it is trying to create some new pathways for the mind. Sudoku is ideally to be solved through pattern recognition rather than through what-if experimentation. The mind is seeking to find more efficient ways to negotiate the modern data overload, and that is the true explanation for this phenomenon.

Bluejay exegesis

The Beatles' song Blue Jay Way (written by George Harrison) starts out describing a "fog upon L.A." in which the singer's friends have gotten lost. "We'll be over soon they said / Now they've lost their way instead." The hypnotic refrain "Please don't be long," repeated over and over, seems to be making a simple point: the singer wants to see his friends and hopes they arrive soon, "or I may be asleep."

However, there is more (much more) to it than this (naturally). Because there is an alternate meaning embedded in the chorus: "Please don't belong." What could this mean? That we, who are the friends George is actually addressing, should not "belong" to the mass consciousness, but break out and join him and his comrades who are sitting in the rarefied regions above the fog. George mentions that probably we asked directions from a policeman on the street: "There's so many there to meet." No, we will not find our way to Blue Jay Way by asking the officer how to get there. We have to follow George's directions, which he says he gave us: "I told them where to go." (Could he be referring to his song Within You Without You on "Sgt. Pepper," in which he talked of realizing how one was really very small in the whole flow of life inside and outside of oneself?)

There's also the possibility that the line means don't be long in the sense of length. Perhaps seeking extension of our lives, our egos, our identities, is counterproductive. Perhaps the longer we stay out stumbling through the fog, the longer we extend our quest and our self-definition, the farther we get from that consummation. And it increases the sense of longing in our lives. George says he will soon be asleep. That was in 1967. Now he really is asleep. And are we any closer to Blue Jay Way? In fact, aren't we a lot farther away then we were?

Still, from the clouds, comes the ghostly refrain: "Please don't be long." We won't, George, we promise. We'll go sit down and get really small, about the size of an atom, then crawl through into one of those higher dimensions which the physicists say are curled up very, very tiny inside our oversized reality.

Free to be fried

With all the talk of freedom justifying any and all wars and depredations against perceived enemies of the state both outside our borders and inside as well (the latter case encompassing just about everybody these days), it is perhaps redundant as well as obvious to point out that freedom is not just a good idea, it's the law. One is now "forced to be free" (an idea Jean Jacques Rousseau thought was desirable, and which helped spawn the French Revolution). The Iraqis know what this feels like, and Americans are learning.

But leaving aside the political ramifications of the term for a moment, let us consider freedom as the law of the universe, whether one feels oneself free from relative entanglements in one's personal life or not. When he made us, God blew a bunch of bubbles and let them float off and each of us live inside one of them. We wave and signal to each other as we float through our days. Sometimes we have the illusion that we are actually communicating with each other. Then we float onwards and upwards. That is true freedom. Not a very enticing prospect: rather lonely and desperate. And yet, that is the condition of human existence. Lest this sound tiresomely existentialist, mustily redolent of yellowing paperbacks by Camus and Beckett, be assured that I have no intention of invoking the French (though I had to quote Rousseau in the last paragraph—seems that even when you try to get away from the French, you end up repeating their ideas—as when they renamed French fries "freedom fries.")

Those who are fried as we ensure their freedom may take consolation in their new status as the most appetizing of crispy critters in the eye of God.

Anti-entropic timeflow

Although time may generally move in the direction of greater entropy, as the second law of thermodynamics dictates, surely there is the possibility of antientropic eddies within that flow, in which a system will exhibit a growth in energy, coherence, and orderliness. Living systems seem to have this characteristic, and even after they have ceased to grow in the ordinary sense, they can be seen to be "growing" in terms of regenerating themselves as long as they are alive. This is because living systems are never closed; they are constantly exchanging energy with other entities in the environment, so they don't run down like a clock that someone has wound up and then put away in a drawer.

Therefore, if it is possible to pedal uphill against entropy, even if only in the short term, and if one can take a breath of fresh air and enjoy a moment of clarity even in the awareness that the doomed universe is headed for final extinction and heat death in billions of years, then it is clear that the landscape of time is marked by many, many mountains, valleys, crevasses, and other irregularities. And since time is relative to the observer, as we know from Einstein's special theory of relativity, there are inherently multitudinous points of view about how fast and in which direction time is moving. For you, it may be going south. For me it may be moving north by northwest and I don't know a hawk from a handsaw.

In which case I might just be crazy enough to stay alive awhile longer.

The inner frog

I find Rennie Davis's use of the term entity very useful and find it cognate with John Lentz's use of the term godbeing. In both cases we're talking about a divine presence that has objective reality. It is not merely a voice in the head. In fact it might never say anything at all. It is an implacable essence, not part of human nature, but something more akin to a mineral bed—or perhaps an animal. We think of the native people's totem animals and how they buffer one from the terrors of the Absolute. It is a bit like that with the entity/godbeing. It is not like one's inner self or higher self, but more like one's inner dog or hawk or fox (or in my case, inner frog).

When I have something to say

There is something in the back of my mind that says I should blog. If I go a day or a week without blogging, that voice reprimands me, as if I have some sort of social responsibility to keep the blogwords coming. But that is obviously silly if I have nothing to say.

Then there is the idea that if I say something, anything at all, it is better than nothing, because then I have kept the "creative current" flowing. That is also a fallacy. If the creative current is not there, no mere exercise of the typing fingers will conjure it up.

I'll blog when I have something to say, ok? Or, to be more precise, when there is something to say.

Primal blog

This is the primal blog of the year, meaning not that it is like the blogging equivalent of a primal scream; that would involve using a lot of uncool capital letters. No, I mean primal in the sense of first. This is the first 2006 post of the qubikuity blog, and as such it is setting a tone for the rest of the year. Thus its primal quality can simply be characterized as an initial imprinting for what will follow.

If this is true, and this post contains the rest of the year in seed form, and as an archetype it is a pattern which will be recapitulated each and every time I blog qubikuitously in 2006, then in a sense you have already received the complete transmission, in its pure state, that is trying to be conveyed here. You've got it. When you return to read the next installment, the same viral will simply be reimplanted.

I am listening to Karen Matheson singing "The Dreaming Sea":

'Til I feel as though I'll never sleep again
When I close my eyes I feel the whole world spin
'Til I don't know where you end, where I begin

Don't say anything. Set aside your objections. Know this as the truth. How does it feel, how does it feel, to be engulfed in the dreaming sea, but now dreaming with open eyes? Then you could really say, I don't know where you end and I begin. And mean it.

So may this truth be a truth that lives in you this year, and in me. And then we'll see where we're at, and where we've been, at year's end, at world's end.

New year's resolutions

My first resolution is not to make any resolutions as I never keep them. In fact, making them is probably a sure way not to accomplish what I set out to resolve to do. If I inadvertently succeed in fulfilling them, it is out of blind luck and not because I actually had the will and energy to follow through on my own account.

However, in making this resolution I have already broken it, as I resolved not to make it in the first place. That proves the rationale for the resolution: that resolutions are inherently futile because they will invariably be broken.

My second resolution is to break any resolutions that I do make, on the theory that they will be broken anyway so why not just accede to the inevitable. If I have made a resolution not to resolve, I have already broken the first resolution not to resolve, but acted in accorance with the second, to break the resolutions I do make. However, by keeping the second I have broken both the first and the second: the first, by making another resolution, and the second, by not breaking it.

As you can see, it is a hopeless business.

Why America slept

They forgot they were free.

The wind swept across the open land where the birds wheeled across the clear sky and the men and women who settled and worked the farms stood proud and looked with fierce singleness of purpose into the naked single eye of the sun.

They looked with such power and purpose that they forgot to see.

And men in suits sat in offices and passed pieces of paper back and forth in the fading afternoon, and did not forget what they were about.

But the others forgot.

And so the land burned and seethed and started to rock.

You cannot fool the earth, the sacred earth, and it will never, never, forget.

Inside outside

inside outside
upside downside
oneside twoside
sheside heside

seeside hereside
whatside whyside
decide nowside
beside myside

Hidden meanings

There are hidden meanings everywhere you look. No nook or cranny of reality is exempt. Let's take just one example: Country Joe and the Fish. (I still listen to them because I still listen to a lot of Sixties music.) Well, it occurred to me the other day something that I had never thought of or heard before even after all these years, that the name of Country Joe and the Fish is an obvious Christ symbol. I mean, you've got the fish, which refer to Christ as everybody knows; and you've got Country Joe, whose initials are like "J.C." backwards. Ok, and you've got "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag," which is like Jesus knowing in advance that he was going to be crucified (and what was he wearing at that occasion but a rag?) —I could go on... "Sweet Martha Lorraine" was none other than the Martha who was one of the waitresses at the Last Supper. Two of the songs on the second side of the first album are "Love" and "Grace": tell me that's a bag that doesn't have "New Testament" written all over it. And check out these lyrics: "So I took out my harp and I played 'em a tune, I could see they were diggin' it, Then the one with the fez, well he turns and he sez,"We'd like to help you make your trip." Who wears a fez? Not people in the Middle East, surely (where Jesus lived!). And you have to go on a trip to get there, for sure! What kind of "harp" do you think was he playing? Maybe the kind they play in heaven, right? Anyway, you get the picture. Hidden meanings surround us, inform us, interpenetrate us. Go to them now, they call you, you can't refuse. Oh wait, that's Dylan. Well, there are hidden meanings in Bob "Buddha" Dylan too...but don't get me started!

C.J.=J.C.?

Whodunit

Ramana Maharshi says: "If one feels one is the doer, one must reap the consequences of his action. If one enquires 'who is the doer?', and enters the Heart, the doership idea will end."

I would add that thinking that you are the doer is just an unnecessarily complicated way of looking at things. Every perturbation in the cosmic manifold serves to rework and remold primary substance, which constitutes the Kosmic body of you. Godbeing energy is the quicksilver essence of your blood, tissues, and bones. The endless process of consciousness dancing through form is happening inside of you, all the time. So you aren't doing anything. If anything, you are being done.

Are you done yet?

Before long

what belongs
to me
longs
to be
so before long
leaves me
which leaves me
longing
for my former
belonging

Communication 101

Last night I spent several hours communicating with two friends, and it soon became apparent to me that what we were engaged in was a true meeting of the minds, or if you will a meeting of the Mind with itself, attempting to reconcile varying points of view. This is part of the homeostatic self regulating function of consciousness itself, checking in with itself to align the perspectives and allowing information flow from one mind module to another as needed.

One thing that I was struck with was that the very act of communicating, which we were doing with facility, must have been learned at some point, and I don't think it was in school, at least any school that I can remember. It was almost as if this triadic configuration was a pattern in itself that had been practiced, different from the dyadic and different from larger groups. If I were to guess I'd say that the monad, the dyad, the triad, the tetrad, the pentad, the sextad, and the septad are the fundamental building blocks of communication, and each has a somewhat different set of strategies associated with it. Obviously, there are some principles that cut across all the root structures: for example, the ability to listen (even to oneself, in the case of the monad). But there are some that are unique to each structure.

For example, in the case of the triad where you are one member, if someone is saying something, you can only focus on them and not the other person. You are not going to be able to have A and B in your awareness at the same moment. But you cannot go too long without referencing the one you are not focusing on. This ability to recoup the connection with the member that is subordinate in a given moment is one of those essentials to learning how to communicate in a triad. As I say, we learned this skill a long, long time ago. And though the place and circumstance of this training may be lost in the mists of time, it bears feeling into the fact that it happened, and that it is a clue to the hidden mysteries behind our bodily incarnation in this plane.

I proclaim

O you who have entered my blog, pity unto you. For this is no ordinary blog. Listen to me now and heed well my proclamation: HENCEFORTH YOU ARE TO BE OWNED, UTTERLY AND COMPLETELY, BY ME! ALL THAT YOU POSSESS, NOW AND IN THE FUTURE, IS MINE!

Perhaps you did not realize that merely reading a blog it could cause this rather disastrous (to you) reversal in your fortunes. You thought you were safe, indulging in your—what they call it—lurking. Well, you've just been outlurked! You did not suspect, you did not know—all of these excuses are to no avail. Come the morn, my agents will have liquidated all your property and my coffers, already bulging, will be that much richer.

Denial, then anger, is the usual response. All to no avail. By an indiscreet click of the mouse, my friend, you have hereby undone your fortunes for the remainder of your tenure on this mortal coil.

The reason I can do all this, and you have absolutely nothing to say in the matter, is that this blog has the power to allow me to convert whatever I proclaim into MY REALITY, where the ultimate arbiter of what is real, what is just, what is good, what in fact IS, is of course me.

All, however, is not without consolation. I have reserved for you certain inalienable rights that I will be more than happy to grant you. To wit:
1. Freedom of religion. You may worship any god you like, as long as She is black.
2. Freedom of speech: you may say anything you choose, so long as you say it in Sanskrit.
3. Freedom of assembly: you may gather in groups of any size so long as you do so naked.
4. Freedom of the press: you may publish anything you like in any medium except that of magical blogs.

For there can be no other blog before me. So I have proclaimed it...and in the country of the blog, the "one-I" blogger is king!

Shiva the deconstructor

In the traditional image of the Dance of Shiva, note that the angles of the legs form two intersecting planes orthogonal to the body's frontal plane. This implies Shiva is simultaneously dancing through many dimensions at once. He inhabits a multidimensional reality, and when we speak of Shiva as destroyer, the larger picture is that Shiva is the Great Deconstructor of realities in the matrix of mutually embedded N-dimensional quantum cosmological systems.

Certainly destruction, as by fire, is one way to purify ignorance. Another is by dismantling or deconstructing it, piece by piece. (I get the feeling that this is what Patrick Fitzgerald is doing.) It is interesting to regard the Shivaic force in this light because it is something we can participate in, not so much in the spirit of the rationalist French deconstructive literary theorists, whose purpose is to use relativistic philosophical strategies to give them power over the tyranny of textual misconstructions, but more as computer programmers debugging code with the purpose perhaps ultimately coming out with a new version. Let's put it this way: if God were Bill Gates, you wouldn't expect World 1.0 to be any good. You wouldn't even begin to take it seriously until World 3.0. I don't know about you but I'm expecting a new release of this buggy world any day now.

The lost art of acid rapping

I submit that there was a moment in time—the Sixties—when a confluence of a certain mode of questing consciousness together with chemical enhancement produced an ecstatic state of elocution called the acid rap, which in its most advanced form yielded miracles of verbiage the likes of which have not been seen in these benighted realms before or since. (Apparently there is a latter-day phenomenon called acid rap, which is an underground subgenre of rap music devoted to evoking the horrific; please, let us not confuse that with the original term.)

There seem to be few recorded examples of the classical acid rap, even those fabled rants of Neil Cassady at Ken Kesey's Acid Tests, although here's an annotated one (you need the annotations, like when he says "I got the penguin right here in my pocket," he's referring to the Penguin edition of Kerouac's On the Road). We can only rue that there was usually no one around functionally capable of recording many such events when they occurred throughout freakdom in that epoch; although surely the most famous example of one that was recorded was The End by The Doors, improvised during the recording session by a subjectively altered Jim Morrison. (How prescient was his "The killer awoke before dawn/He put his boots on/He took a face from the ancient gallery and/He walked on down the hall..." For we are now in the throes of an administration presided over by just such an Oedipal lunatic.)

Some of the most inspired examples of this genre, however, were evidently uttered by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose reputation as a conversationalist at the time (early 19th century) exceeded his considerable fame as a poet. So one can only imagine what kind of magnificent albatross-fixated, Khan-crazed, mariner-opiated torrents of words must have exploded from his bardic lips in those palpitating midnight hours of shared communion with the animating soul of the universe.

See eye, eh?

I am perhaps taking a foolish risk by revealing this information, but I work undercover for the C.I.A. It seems unnecessary to keep this to myself anymore, as my cover will probably be blown soon anyway by the current administration.

Yes, I was recruited to work for the Cosmic Intelligence Agency sometime between my last life and this one; I cannot recall the loka where this happened, but I surely must have been a little under the influence of some divine elixir when I signed on the dotted line, as I now have reason to seriously question the purpose of being here at all. There is precious little intelligence to make note of. The idea, you see, was that I would write up whatever I heard anybody say anything, or saw anybody do anything, that reflected some degree of intelligence here in this realm, which has the code name "The Pit." By this point I have lost the address where I was to send my reports, which I have never had the heart to fabricate anyway. Now it is true that no one has ever contacted me about these missing reports...yet! But it is always possible that I shall be called to account. And then what?

I realize that most people will consign this memo to the category of insane ravings. But if you should happen to know what I am talking about, if it resonates, as they say, then perhaps you too are an agent. Maybe you were recruited, as was I, and have forgotten all about it until now. If you suspect this to be the case, let me know. Maybe together we can figure out what it is we are supposed to do next, in the obvious dearth of data that presents itself. Perhaps we are living in the eye of the hurricane, where everything is happening except where we are. There may yet be hope that intelligent life exists somewhere on this planet outside the circumscribed area of our perception. The prospects for this, however, do not seem encouraging, I must say.

The whereness of here

Why are we here? There are several possible answers to that question. The first is simply, "I don't know." That is honest but not very satisfying. The second is, "We aren't." In other words, denying that we are really here. That is satisfying to some of the people some of the time, but not to all of the people all of the time. And it is not totally honest, as it contradicts bodily intuition about our experience. It can take the form of the noblest kind of transcendental vision, but it involves denial of life, usually by some form of spiritual reductionism.

The third answer to "why are we here?" is: "to figure out why we are here!" To me, that is the most honest and satisfying answer. Because any formulation such as "to help other people," "to glorify God," "to express our creativity fully," and so on, is a bit too restrictive on the radical individuality of the quantum self, if we are being precise. Anyway, it becomes very difficult to define those expressions in any meaningful way. Each of these golden ideals becomes fodder for the ego.

No, we have to figure out for ourselves why we are here, each and every one of us, and nobody's answer will be the same. Maybe we will live eighty years without knowing our purpose, let alone fulfilling it, and then a day will come—and it will come—that we are galvanized into action that teaches us the meaning of meaning, and the light that was trapped in our well-defended hearts will shine out and the bars will melt away and we will be liberated.

So let us start asking not only why we are here, but where here is. That may give us a clue.

On not having read Proust

Recently it occurred to me that I could die without having read Proust. Not that I am that old, but that Proust is that long. So I resolved to set about it. Having now purchased the first three volumes of the world's longest novel in a well-reviewed new translation, I have read all of fifty pages, hardly enough to be able to say I have even begun to read Proust. The question is, when I have finished all million words or so, will I then be able to say I have read him? By that point, won't I have forgotten almost everything I read, and have to start over?

Although I like long, slow novels (and movies) where nothing happens, this is perhaps the ultimate slow read. Proust is not inordinately fond of paragraphs and so he uses very few of them. The net effect is to elongate the normal time span in which one might expect to wade through even a miniscule piece of the novel (significantly titled In Search of Lost Time). I have to say, though, that thus far I am enjoying my Proustian journey, and that is fortunate, for by all indications, I shall wear out several pairs of reading boots while walking that "way."

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.