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Shards Of Light

a collection of cosmologically
and teleologically related writings

by

j jackson

This was written a long time ago, when I didn't know so much physics as I thought I did. There's a bit of bad science herein. I should rewrite it, but I have more important things to do.

The Myth of Truth


A universe exists between the night time and the waking day.
A bright horizon light reflects through landscape shadows.
A tortured soul hides in crevices, afraid, that light will find
it out. The dark holds power, dispelled by ordinary dawn
that finds the monsters of the night laid helpless on the lawn.
I see the truth, mostly in short glimpses, which I try to explain, mostly in my writing. But it always turns out to be only adequate. I never really pin it down exactly. And in any case, I'm never able to retain the insight, it is so ephemeral. I end up reading over my journals, again and again, to avoid missing the obvious truth in my life, and I continue on, remaining mostly within an illusion. We all live mostly in illusion, but I feel that I should know better, having seen the light. But the nature of real truth is such that it is elusive. When we think we know the truth, we don't. We have to see it, experience it, then we simply know, without thinking. This is purpose.

The most important purpose we can have, perhaps the only important one, is to seek the truth of the universe. To this end we must first separate out that which purports to be true but which may not be from that which is at least potentially true. In order to discover whether any system of fact and belief purporting to be the truth actually is, we must ask two questions:
First, is the system "mythic?" Much of that which purports to be true is in fact myth. This is the first test of a true science. (Science itself can be myth, which detracts from its claim to validity, as is demonstrated by the attempt of Creationists to argue---falsely, I believe---that evolutionary theory is actually a religion.) If a system of belief has a mythic component, or is a functional mythic system in its whole, then it must be questioned as to whether it can function dually as a science.
Which brings us to the second question: is there any "scientific" basis for the belief that any given mythic system may be "true" despite the fact that it is mythic? (I take "true" here to mean empirically true, which definition I will stray from shortly, in several directions.) Human culture is a myth-making phenomenon. We revel in the misapplication of logic to mythic systems. We love our mythology, and we love to deify it. All we need do is examine the most obvious example of "The Truth" in our society, the Bible, to understand that this is so. The Bible is a huge mythic system. To conclude that it is not, consequently, the "truth" is to go a step too far, but this is not the kind of truth I am looking for.1 A "psychological" truth can exist that is yet not (empirically) scientific. The Bible is replete with this type of truth, truth which could and probably has in many cases been verified as scientific in the particular. Ideas like "to them who have, even more shall be given" should be easily verifiable; we can see, for example, how people who live in areas where there is no chain grocery store, such as in impoverished urban areas, must pay more for their food and supplies than people who live in suburban areas adjacent to huge shopping complexes where items may be discounted as a result of large volume sales because many more people can patronize the stores (not a coincidence; this is why the complex was built in the first place). Suburbanites tend to be more affluent, so that, additionally, they are able to afford a car that can transport them to even better-priced commodities, a "luxury" that the poor cannot afford, so that they are required to rely on public transportation, which limits the amounts of sale-priced items that they can carry home. This mechanism functions within all cultures to keep the poor poor, and the Bible reports it.
Other Biblical truths, ideas like "everything comes to him who waits" must await a more rigorous science which may prove the laws of karma, but these should turn out, I believe, to be equally true.
Overall, then, the Bible is a mythic system designed for the purpose of providing people with a cultural background against which they may measure their righteousness and practical morality, a system whereby the real truth (empirical), unknown at the time of its writing, is replaced with literary and imaginative devices and images, any one of which may have been either taken for truth at the time or may have been known---at least to the writer(s)---to be a theological or story-telling convention. To say, because it is mythic, that the Bible is not true, is a misunderstanding; but in light of modern science, we can certainly say that it is not literally true. Its truth is mythic, and literary, and "psychological." But it is not the Truth I am looking for.

Even if God exists, even if It would just happen to be personally involved in our lives, (such as, even if It were He, or even She), there is still no reason to believe that we exist beyond death. I believe, as do many others, that we are God's awareness here on earth, in this sector of the universe, and now to a more, limited extent, in the universe as a whole (since the science of cosmology has advanced us to a state where the Hubble telescope has photographed the Deep Field Image.) We have always been God's awareness in the universe; but we have been, as humans, sadly misinformed as to the nature of what we have been perceiving. I'm certain that we are still misinformed to a large extent; but we are getting better and better at understanding.
And that's the point: we are God's awareness, developing, learning. We are made up of the stuff of God, cosmic stardust, and we are evolving, toward greater and greater understanding. But just because you're able to visit other worlds or other dimensions in trances, applying the most advanced "scientific" thought that you know of to trance state phenomena, doesn't mean that after you die you'll be able to go to the place that you envision (or to the place that others have envisioned) to exist, which you accept on "faith" (a word that means that you don't really know). The "gift" of conscious awareness of other dimensions/states of consciousness can be a function of an advanced mentality, or it can be self-deception, but in any case, consciousness is based within the existence of a human organism, which perishes.
Yes, there may be other dimensions, other universes, other realms, but that doesn't mean we go there when we die. There is no reason to believe, despite this lofty position we hold, at the top of stardust's evolutionary chain, that any one of us is anything more than a single, expendable human macro-molecule, each of us, to the degree of our capability, putting in our two cents worth (or more, now, after centuries of scientific inflation) before we pass on the torch to the next generation.
In other words, there is no reason to believe that we will graduate to a far, far better place, despite what wishful-thinking mystics of the past have told us, of their sound, or light, or drug, or aberrant-body/mind-chemistry induced "journeys" into supra-conscious/trance experience. They may have gotten it wrong, they may have been deluded or imaginatively hoping.
We search for what we want to be; we create myths to this purpose, self-fulfilling prophecies, which yet never take on a reality, but rather become false systems of belief. It is our job, today, always, continuing on a tradition of science/reason, and simultaneously, of phenomenological philosophy, to find the Truth in a more precise way, despite the traditionalists and fundamentalists who will always try to inhibit us.

Another example of myth: the light we see in near-death and after-death experiences from which some of us return is not an afterlife but a physiological experience caused by oxygen deprivation. It is the last experience we will have, "going toward the light." And we are in the process of making a (new age) myth out of it. This is not to say that there is no afterlife, but merely to indicate that this light is not evidence for it. When we die, we are still alive for a while after our body functions cease. Our brains take longer to die than our bodies. We are still here when everyone thinks we're gone. This doesn't necessarily mean we are eternal, it only means we have not advanced biological/medical science and/or the legal system far enough to recognize the essentially living state of a recently dead body. Certain neo-theologians and neo-scientists would have us believe that this system of myth is "true." Only a further developed science can abstract the truth out of the phenomenological state.
With respect to the truth, philosophy and phenomenology have their limits; science does not, for when it comes up against the unknown, it defines it as such (in the best of cases, and eventually, when the old arthritic-minded scientists get out of the way and let the less rigid minds run the show) and proceeds to redefine the problem; maybe, ultimately, there is a scientific limit, but I don't believe that we will find it in this universe, in this dimension (i.e., these dimensions, these four, spacetime.)
If we are each a point of God's awareness, then possibly It has been waiting, patiently, for what else can It be, at least in these dimensions, evolving right along with us. This doesn't mean that It is not so great as we have thought of It. It means that It has been unconscious, awaiting Its own enlightenment, through our development, and through the development of whatever other intelligent life may have thus far evolved in the universe.
Of course, this is entirely conjecture. There is no reason to believe one way or the other whether God, if It exists, is conscious or unconscious, or whether It is near (or even within us) or far beyond us in a way that we can never understand, in the folds of spacetime as well as beyond it, before the Big Bang, after the dissolution of spacetime beyond the distant edge of the universe, and/or in the pockets of black holes reaching into that same non-place. We cannot know, at least not yet, nor for a quite while to come, if ever. But there are plenty of people who pretend to have the knowledge and set about to convince others of their revelation. But all you have to do to realize that they are espousing a mythology is to compare their revelation to others. The nature of The Truth is such that, ultimately, there cannot be two of them. If two conflicting truths are proposed, suspect both. It's the prudent thing to do. Otherwise, ignorance ensues.

People are ignorant because, when it comes to things like religion, they just can't say, "I don't know," and accept their beliefs as tentative, they have to become adamantly dogmatic in their views and insist that their beliefs are "The Truth." But I am searching for the ultimate truth, and so I can never say, "I know" and be certain of it, because there is a limit to my knowledge. I am a finite being, and a rather limited one at that. I may "see," in revealed visions, but I cannot translate those visions adequately into rational words, and neither can anyone else. If they tell you they can, disbelieve them. They not only want your adherence to their beliefs; they want your soul. And they use myths to gain access to it.

Myths are great and powerful mechanisms. Mythmaking is one of humanity's most valuable resources. But I think that each myth will have had its day, and fundamentalists must give way to the recognition of the increasing impotence of old myths as neologisms in the culture replace them. If there is a fault in religion, this is it: more than in any other area of culture, religion will hang onto old, outdated, superceded mythology.
Take the Bible, for example. It's a great mythic system, full of basic spiritual and psychological truth, but if not interpreted according to the most modern of scientific and historical methods, the ancient texts become a series of little deceptions. Most of the early Bible stories are not of Jewish origin, but are Sumerian, and probably even earlier, yet Jews and Christians think they are their own as they live each within a microcosm, thinking that their myths are God's truth revealed to them as It's special people.
I find it interesting that Christians can be so smug as to deny the Jewish tradition in favor of their own, more "enlightened" myths when they are the very same myths. (The same is true of Islam, but I don't know so much of that religion to consider it in this light.) The Jesus myth is at best a continuation of the Old Testament prophets' work, which is continuation of the traditions that preceded Judaism.
Fundamentalists Christians need to get their heads out of their asses long enough to see that we are all one long tradition, that the Jews are in fact the mainstream of that tradition (Islam notwithstanding; Jews and Arabs are one brotherhood, split apart and fighting a fraternal battle), that even Oriental tradition, if it could be traced back far enough, can find its origins in the same set of myths. And Jews, too, need to pull their heads out long enough to realize that "their" values and traditions are more basically human than exclusively Jewish, that the unknown sources of the Torah (etc.) go farther back than their own history.
We are all one, species, race, humanity. The split we are experiencing, a natural result of evolution, can be healed, because for the first time in the history of this world, we have the means by which we can unite. It's called the human mind, which we have been abusing for millennia, but which we can use to integrate, via science and technology, the divergent theologies of our species. (Even scientists have myths that split them all apart.) We can do it, but I doubt that we will. Not for a very long time at least. We are still way too ignorant. We would rather fight than switch. We are a mythic people, and we desire, to remain that way, clouded in illusion, blinded by the light. Truth is obscure, at best.

When, momentarily, The Truth is revealed to me, I know it for what it is. But how can I possibly communicate it when I can't even retain it for my own later edification? I could hope to point people in its direction, but I can't even often point myself. Others have pointed me, that is, I have benefited, I think, from their direction. But have I really? Maybe I would be no different than I am if they had never said a word. I like to think not, but who knows? Mostly, I have been lost, with only occasional glimpses of a cosmic purpose.

"I had no joy within, my soul had died, and so I adopted the mythology of Jesus Christ, and felt so much better, to be able to live within the deception that I was eternally saved." 2

Despair is as obscured as is the light, when mythology is substituted for it.


If I am God's awareness, then it seems to me that the most important purpose I can have is to dwell continually on the truth of the universe as best as I can formulate it, advancing it, day by day, minute by minute, as accurately as I am able, that is, to the level of my ability. Cosmological scientists and truly modern philosophers, thus, are the most advanced level of the consciousness of God. (I avoid the label "theologians" because there are no modern ones. All you have to do to discover that this is true is to read what they write, to find that it is deeply couched in mythic dogma. They are all caught up in a superstitious past, unable to come out of it.)
People less able (less educated or less capable of being educated), or less willing (if unconsciously) than cosmologists/philosophers, and I, adapt to social roles which (more or less) support the development of society, so that the advanced guard can be about God's work.
[I am aware that I sound arrogant, but what can I do? I feel myself to be like one of the rigid dogmatists I criticize, and if I am, that would be logical, Spock, because I am prone to denial and projection, as we all are. But there is a difference between the dogmatists and me: I know that I don't know. I am mere conjecture. And yet I believe, that my conjectures are the right ones. (Why else would I promote them?) I believe I am right, to the degree that I am able, in this space and time. Is this arrogance? Is this human foible? We each do the best we can.]

By studying the most advanced science and thought (including conjecture), I can perhaps myself advance, or at least I can understand, the science. This is the most important purpose, to try to understand that which is not yet known, especially that which relates to the extra-dimensionality (for lack of a better word) of God, that which is so far beyond us that we are ill-equipped, or not equipped at all, to deal with it, that which we may grasp intuitively, or in a revelatory flash, but which we cannot grab onto rationally or scientifically, either because we have not put into place the missing steps leading up to it, or because we will never be able to, being equipped with too feeble an intelligence (individually or as a species.)

note 1: of course, it is almost as valuable to be the people (scientists, technologists, et al) who work doggedly to put into place those missing steps as it is to be one of the cosmologist/ philosophers who will conjecture as to what is really "out there" (in here?)

note 2: it could be that our destiny as humans is to have created an artificial capacity in computers that is far beyond us and that can know God in a more intimate way than we could ever know, in the same way that it has been the destiny of apes to have evolved into humans who then advanced God's knowledge. The next evolutionary step could be artificial intelligence, which would then be as natural as we are now, because, after all, computers are about to become programmed molecules, and molecules are naturally occurring events. And if we can program molecules, then why not atoms (or even sub-atomic particles; why not? If you can program molecules, why not quarks? And are our own quarks, thus, now, programmed? Our molecules certainly are. It's an interesting line of thought.) But we don't have to go that far. Computers are right now made up of the same stuff as we animals are made of---ultimately the hydrogen and helium created in the first several minutes of the universe, cosmic dust.

note 3: and of course it's possible that computers could become human adjuncts, wired into our neural networks, so that we become super-humans, human-computer hybrids, networked together to form vast planetary brains. Then you'll see some computing power, by God. Then the mysteries of extra-dimensionality will be less hard to understand. And after we manage to connect the planetary brains across space, and time, perhaps after we solve the riddle of the speed of light (why is it that this arbitrary maximum speed is fixed?), then we will have transcended the spacetime limitation, perhaps crossing a threshold into additional dimensions, maybe the place (or maybe it's more correct to say the anti-place) where black holes empty into, maybe where...who knows what? Maybe into the mind of God, where we are now. We're back to where we started, because we will have never left.

Short of God's awareness, I have purposes (not the least of which is physical survival; but this is too mundane to consider here) that enable me to go on to this higher level work, "God's work." Personal expression (of which this advanced expression is a part, the better part), specifically writing (but there are others areas, which I have not pursued for a long time now, music, art, etc.), is an area I have chosen for the focus of my work on earth. This lower level, personally-concerned work is important to me, but I will realize, after I will have been continually sidetracked, distracted by the life I lead and then becoming drawn back to it after significant amounts of time away, that this higher aspect, this cosmological consideration, is most important, the apex of human thought. I chastise myself for having allowed myself to drift; but what can I do? I am human, after all. I have as many blind spots as any other individual.
Am I crazy, then, to try to debunk the myths, as my supposed friends have said of me? Perhaps. Why do I bother with this pursuit of that which cannot be known? Because when I do anything else, I am less fulfilled. I am always getting into trouble with my friends, who think I am faux-advanced. And the situiation is even worse with people who are less than friends, mere acquaintances.

* * *

You can get into trouble without even trying, you can be an innocent
victim. You can get into trouble unconsciously, people trying to get you
back, for your unconscious behavior, scapegoating their problems onto
you. You can get into trouble for trying too hard, even if your intent is,
consciously, good. The universe is a mystery we try to solve, without
success. There are too many apparently contradictory facts, and so we
narrow our scope; but the same is true of this world, so we narrow our
scope further; but the same is true of any part of it, down to even our
selves, universes within a world within a universe. Inside, we are large.
An infinity of facts fills us, in each thing we know the smallest fragment
of the truth: most of what we are works, beneath the surface, every one
of us, hope, to know, hardly anything at all. Yet we continue, to strive
to know, everything. Why? It's our nature. The infinity within us wants
to know itself. It wants to show a part of us we think we know we are.

I am an infinity of stories, being told. I want to know each and every
plot line; all of the characters I am want to know themselves. I examine
them from every possible angle. I am their eyes, their consciousness.
This is too much of a responsibility. It wears me down. It scares the hell
out of me, to think, I am, this universal figure on the great stage of
a social docudrama, an everyman, of myself, and every woman too.
I am my own dreams and fantasies, interacting with that of the universe
at large, an ensuing incorporation of me too much to understand. I melt
into it until, overwhelmed, my mind dissolves into a sleep of integration
I accept, because I cannot reject, any part of it, wonder of complexity or
terror, within me, expressing themselves in games they play I will want
to know.

I've always been this, disturbed. But I haven't always known it.
Life works to elucidate this mystery.
The worst I am, the unknown, I observe.
I am the great white hunter, standing in a clearing in a dense forest.
I am the forest, threatening to engulf me.
I am a lonely person, lying on my bed, facing the ceiling in the dark.
Hints of light from the windows create shadowy objects.
I am the shadows. I am the darkness. I am those vagaries of light.
I have always been this way, and now I know it.
I can no longer be threatened, by myself.

The Light

I

Energy drives matter, by converting itself into itself.
Some superficial conventional sources of scientific knowledge claim
energy is not matter; energy is matter, like water is ice. It's only logical:
hydrogen atoms coalesce to form stars, planets; inductive reasoning.
Matter is void, unknowing. Zen has always maintained this anti-fact.
Energy can be neither created nor destroyed.
God can be neither created nor destroyed.
Energy is God, despite the dislogic.
Science and religion come together, in the moment, as I.
Light acts as both particles and waves, depending on how it is
     observed.
Apparently contradictorily, light can act in these ways simultaneously
     when observed by two appropriate methods at the same time.
This evidences the principle that perception is limited by its mechanism.
A corollary to this principle: you see what you expect to see.

"Believing is seeing."

If we find additional ways of looking at light (or looking at anything, but light may be a more rewarding experiment since it seems to be a phenomenon fundamental to cosmic reality), it might act in still different ways, each way specific to the method of observation, for example, as a dimension, or as a thought, or as a religion. Who knows?

Since light is the fastest traveling particle/wave we know, an apparent absolute, maybe it's the least common denominator of everything. It plays a role in energy exchanges inside the atom, it can be in two places at once, even on opposite sides of the universe (at least that's the theory), we see it internally, as spiritual experience, Christ is the Light Of The World,
this is more literal than symbolic,
I experience.

II 3

Did anyone ever say this before? They must have, it's so obvious:
If, at the speed of light, time stops, how does a photon ever reach
its destination? From the photon's point of view, time stops, but
from our point of view, it goes on. The photon exists, in eternity,
an eternal moment; we think we don't. All photons are one event,
to God. At The Eternal Moment, a photon's mass is infinite.4 All
its massivity is everything. Photons are God, being manifested, in
this world of spacetime. Of course. How obvious. The Big Bang,
the birth of God in the universe, the Light of lights, the Logos,
is the initial generation of light. The Light, all light, is generated
at the eternal moment of the Big Bang, from one point source,
infinitely smallarge, and subsequently (by our mere spacetime
standards) transformed into other forms of matter/energy, to be
released at spacetime's convenience. There is only one Light, of
which photons are a particular manifestation. Photons are waves
of The Light trapped in spacetime traveling at the speed of light
from our point of view, but still, in eternity, in One Light from
The Point Of View of God. We, being the collected residue of
this initial stardust explosion, are also manifestations of the Light,
and so we say that Jesus, the "best" of us, is the son of God, as
we each are, but not nearly so good at it as he was, being a man
who did it so much better than we could ever hope to, seeing

The Light.


Light

a theory

Every sub-atomic particle (and therefore all matter) is composed of photons. The most basic (in fact, the only) type of "particle" in the universe (it's not really a particle at all, is it?) is the photon. Matter (sub-atomic particles) is an "illusion" based upon entrapped photons which are made to "sit still" by being bound up into a "curvature" of particles, forced to speed along in a regressive circular, instead of a straight-line, motion.
Photons are ubiquitous. Consider a well-lit outdoor sunny day. Ignore for a few moments the idea that everything is composed of photons and instead view the scene as a conventional landscape. In order for you to see any given object, say a rabbit sitting in the middle of a lawn, photons must reflect off the rabbit and make beelines for your pupils. (The lenses of the eyes take advantage of diverging rays by focusing them back to a single point on the retina, thus further concentrating the photons and increasing the perception of the viewed object.) This condition means that in any given instant there must be an incredible number of photons. They must reflect off the rabbit in every direction, and in numbers great enough to prevent "gaps" between them, because if there were a significant space between them, or if there were a significant period of time between one photon reflecting in your given direction and the next reflecting in the same direction, you would experience a flickering effect as if the light (the sun) that lit the rabbit were flashing. And, the photons must be equally dense in all directions so that any number of people viewing the rabbit from any given direction would be capable of seeing it. Photons, therefore, at least during the day, must be everywhere, continually. We exist in a sea of photons.
Next, consider the preponderance of additional particles in motion (x-rays from distant galaxies, neutrinos from everywhere, etc., etc.) Now, the sea is even more densely filled with cosmic stuff. Add to these, the particles trapped within that even more densely packed stuff we unwittingly call "matter." The universe, especially in the kinds of places like the planet we exist on, is a matrix of "fixed" and freely speeding cosmic particles. This is all there is, and all that there has ever been.
It all started, of course, with the Big Bang. But what was it that started it all? For me, the obvious answer is light. The Big Bang was [and still is, in some interpretations that propose that all of the past exists along with the present and the future--all at once] The Light. And what is the Light? Even in our cosmically provincial earthbound religion, we understand The Light to be God. (If everything is, ultimately, composed of photons, then what else but God could light be?) When Christianity states that Jesus is The Light, it is merely intuitively interpreting a fact of natural law, that a human being (Jesus being the human prototype, the best that we can be) is composed of photons. [I know that this is very close to heresy, if it is not already over the line---pantheism, if nothing more profound. But then, I am not a Christian in the ordinary sense. I believe in the teachings of Jesus, as they are rendered before the politically-minded churchmen began to warp their interpretations. But I do not accept the pointless ritual and mindless superstition of the mythos of the churches.]

Evil (or "Satan"), then, is the darkness, the literal absence of photons. If you want to dispel evil, turn on the lights. (Is there a difference between natural and artificial light? Maybe. But maybe not--so much.) In any case, the Christian concept of Hell doesn't make sense. I mean, if we're bad on earth, we get sent to Hell where we're punished? Why would Satan want to punish us? After all, were we not carrying out his work here on earth? He should want to reward us. If we went to Heaven we should be punished for our evil deeds. Or if we were good and went to Hell, we should be punished. It doesn't make sense. If God wants to punish us for our evil deeds, He should send us to Heaven where He can control and dominate the consequences. There is no reason why He should want to send us to Hell, because if He does, Satan would reward us for having been bad.
Therefore, there can be no Hell. It's a big myth constructed to make us believe we will be punished, when we will not--unless it will happen in heaven, which, then, is another lie. If Heaven is not a guaranteed happy place to be, then who would want to go there? Only the good, of course. So, Heaven and Hell are actually the same place [the problem here is that they are, in fact, not places at all, but states of mind--or rather, states of soul], only the consequences being different, and Satan does not exist, only God, who performs both functions, reward and punishment, which makes sense. If you have to believe in an afterlife, believe in that. But, better yet, believe in The Light.

High Priest

I

Every day has its own mood, its particular psychology, different
from days before, traveling like Dali clocks. You never know what
's happening, unless you will, later, sit and think, about it, and try
to figure out what had occurred, after the fact, subtle emanations
you responded to, intricate fibers of existence woven though you,
or finding their way past, over you, how you were led along them,
to reaction, hardly noticing, your busy day, except that it will haunt
you, when you think about it, back, unable to relax. Something had
gone wrong, or right, something you missed, which now you want
to know, now that you have the time, instead of settling down, you
occupy your mind, because the next time you may not be so lucky,
or you may be luckier, and you want to be ready, if it happens again,
to see it as it occurs, to exist in the moment of its passing, even to be
a part of it, should that be the fate to which you are ordained, priest,
when you will go out rather than stay, safely tucked away, at home.

II

Out in crowds of people, tested, doing what needs to be done, alone,
you are not so conscious as you want to be, close-in, affected, by life,
which will pass by. Feelings you think are yours, denied, attractions
you love, and fear, that they will be, or worse, not be, real, spiritual,
you will later think, in the safety of your bedroom, meditating, night,
you missed an opportunity, to really see, what life is really made of,
how it fits together, being preoccupied, task after task separating you
from others who exist as much as you, apart. It is not suffering, to be
known, to be, the same, as everybody else, especially when they are
unaware, even more than you, because you can become aware, where
they are oblivious, except when you will see them, when they will see
you, feeling more than alone, accepting what you will not, ever, allow.
In the morning, a delft bowl in front of you, breakfast is your apostasy,
a failure to spark the labile stoicism you practice, because you never
get it right. Life is still, outside, a quiet peace you think will never last.


All people are priests, of their own religions of personal experience, which vary with each adherent as to rituals and mythologies. You can be a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Buddhist. You can be a Transcendentalist or a Mechanist. You can espouse any theology or philosophy. You can believe anything you want to believe, and you can express it, in words, as best you know. It doesn't mean a thing, if you don't experience it. Belief, in thoughts, in words, means nothing. At best, these are guideposts, maps to show others, or yourself, where to go, after the experience, once or twice, is lost, the way disused; at their best, beliefs are empty gestures, a rationale for how you hope life is, even, when you don't have first hand knowledge. Everyone has first-hand knowledge, of themselves, but so often we forget it for long periods of time. We wait for it to reappear and seldom realize we're waiting, preoccupied, as our lives speed by



Life Is Too Damned Fast

The waiting is the hardest part...


I have a theory: you wait for change, and because you do, eventually it comes, through expectation and a self-fulfilling prophecy, and then (this is the theory part) your life is plunged into an undesirable chaos which you never foresee, and as you struggle to regain a control of it, you wonder/worry about the wisdom of desiring the change you did. Is your life really so terrible that you must so desire to change it? Of course, change is not the problem, but desire. And waiting is a hedge against the more terrible effects of an unleashed desire, so that you are restrained into a more peaceful mode than if you went around daily striving and struggling to get what it is you desire to have, the conditions you would have precipitated, so that you will continue to deal with them because that's the way you've been, self-defined, which is the way many people exist, frazzled, complaining that their life is so harried, hurried, when it is their own real desire that creates that condition in the first place. Waiting is always so much better, and never getting what you wait for is even better still, although this is unlikely. You have to be very good at waiting for things to assure that you don't get them, or that you don't get them too damned fast. Life is too damned fast, even in its slowest parts.


Life, waiting, can be glorious, when you know what you are waiting for. When you understand that you experience your life anew each moment and something, anything, happens, your life takes on a spiritual meaning. We each exist at the frontier of spiritual awareness, but we often shut it out because we think other things, our work, our businesses, our struggle to survive, are more important. In this sense, primitive man was more aware than we are. He may not have been so (scientifically) advanced, but he was more aware.



In The Name Of God Or Business

(a myth)


Standing on a hill above a primitive tribe in a time long ago,
appearing out of nowhere, disappearing again, when anyone
comes near, becoming known as a spirit shaman, future man
seen, as a holographic image, is misunderstood. A future time
equivalent is being seen, in contact, mysterious. To the tribe,
the future man, unknown, is watching over, guiding them.
To modern individuals, each person serves the same function,
(or they postulate angels or aliens, as primitives did gods)
although they may not quite understand, they might miss
the essence, of what we each are, gurus of each other, gods
ourselves. We guide one another. Some of us are better at it.
The society doesn't understand this, assigning roles of gurus
to doctors and lawyers, corporate executives and managers.
Whatever happened to the priests? They seem so silly now
in their black clothes and robes, antiquated assholes, really.
They miss the point, all of society, that the individual begins
to learn: we are graduated, to a status we will not accept, yet.
We don't need the rigid organization that perpetuates itself in
the name of god, or business.


As early as the Paleolithic period, people practiced religion in the form of hunting cults and magic. Most of us think we have outgrown these practices, having advanced to a higher state of worship. And maybe, in some instances, this is true, as, for example, in Zen Buddhism, where the illusion of the cosmos is recognized, or in Christianity, where liberal values place an inherent worth on the individual person as an entity to be respected regardless of his wealth, social status, station in life, etc. (theoretically, that is. In practice, it's a whole other thing).
People of more "advanced" religious belief criticize and even ostracize members of more "primitive" religions like Wicca or Paganism. But it's easy to see how most of modern religion is not much more than the kind of worship that the Paleolithic people engaged in--which is pretty much what Wicca and Paganism is, maybe a bit more sophisticated, but essentially the same. So, in other words, religion hasn't changed all that much since the days when we ran around in animal skins and believed that spirits inhabited the dark forests, especially at night. (We still believe this, even Christians. Many a Christian believes in ghosts and parapsychological experience, some of which belief is even sanctioned by the Vatican.)
Most of what passes for religion these days is the same hoodooism that's had us in its grasp for 100 to 200 thousand years--or far longer, if we are to believe Michael Cremo's theory (expounded in Forbidden Archaeology) that human history goes back much farther than academic archaeologists allow. But even if this is true, we are a species that has barely come out of the darkness, with great masses of us not even realizing what is really happening. They see a light of truth ahead and think it's a man who died two thousand years ago. They distort the light through brain filters that mimic myopia and shield their minds from too much insight. Most of us are not much more than advanced apes who sit around the campfire quietly ooing and awing against a primitive night. The truth can often be a blinding light to intelligent apes sitting around their tv campfire.

I am more than an intelligent ape, despite scientific evidence to the contrary. I am limitless. What I am, what I feel I am, how I see myself, how I feel myself, when I will think about it, is obviously unable to be contained within this small mass of body that I am. Mysteriously, somehow, I am far more than my body. I am my environment also, and more. That which I see, or perceive in other, non-sensual, ways, I expand to fill. Mostly, I am not aware of this phenomenon, because mostly I am not aware of the limits of my body. I am aware of what it is I am, what I feel I am, how I see myself, how I feel myself, but I do not, ordinarily, relate this awareness to my body limits; but when I do, I realize the discrepancy, that I cannot possibly be contained herein; there is too much of me. It is this sense of self that others will contact when they will contact me; it is this sense that others will marvel at, when it will be an all but unconscious part of me. This is what I should strive to make fully conscious all of the time, to dispell the fictive self I think I am.

The Crux of Fiction

I

Penetrating matter like a narrow shard of glass,
my thought turns like a sepuku blade twisting
the life out of the innards of a known universe.
There must be more than this, if life is sacred.
We could not have started this ourselves way
back at the Big Bang. We perpetuate it, though,
with a lot of Little Ones, of equal intent, falling
short, hoping, but never achieving the miracle
we always want to say it is: it's just another
life. A miracle? Okay. Sure. But so common.
Our miracles rob 7-11s and kill one another
in drive-by shootings. They bilk hard savings
out of struggling families with brainwashing
techniques so sophisticated that they make
the Chinese government look like children
playing hide-and-go-seek on street corners.
The New Bad Guy. We always have to have
one. Russia is dead, or dying. No one left to
blame. Korea turned out to be too small and
tame. Vietnam was too determined. Saddam
is a lame faction of an equally-divided people.
Serbia was just too obviously corrupt. So,
the yellow menace will fill the role quite well.
Their leaders, and ours, should all go to hell.

Nothing in this life makes any difference.
But we want so much for it not to be true,
we will go to such great lengths to pretend
we are so important. We create gods out of
men and kill them to prove they are more
than merely what we are, when we invent
resurrections and contingent myths, being
a story-producing species capable of great
events that we twist in our collective mind
like a snake coiling for a strike, around
a central core of existence, waiting to be
provoked. Do not dare to tread upon it,
even accidentally. Society kills people,
often in subtle unseen ways, making it
look like self-inflicted wounds, maybe,
or self-destructive behavior, like when
you see the truth and it is so devastating,
you have to hide away, to reconstruct
yourself, so that you may continue on
pretending you didn't see what you saw,
a man hanging on a cross who failed to
satisfy the requirements of the powers
taking him to task, that he live up to
values of the day, and his followers,
devastated, winning over an empire
with their die-hard religion, which is
all nothing more than a species playing
with itself, like the Arabs and the Jews,
brothers, sisters gone astray, battling
each other over their mutual heritage.

Crosses that we think we invented are
mandalas forged in the crux of time,
separating the ups and downs, lefts
and rights of a history we don't want
to know. We would rather have a god
who died for us, as if, a god could die.
We create our own limitations naming
a god who is weaker than god could be
if it is a true god and not some peasant
who happens to see truth, unwittingly
go on to tell everyone about it, then
stubbornly resist the machinations to
sell his vision to the press and power.
But what does it matter how genuine
he is? His idle followers will distort it,
soon enough. You cannot die too soon.
No one will know enough to blame you.

4-18-01


Satori

I

I hear birds singing.
I am birds singing, and not
here, not listening.

Sensing is being
what is sensed; what is non-sensed
is non-existence.

I fade into it,
environment is, not I,
perceiving itself.


II

Meditating, I heard the noises of the environment, they became all there is, I disappeared, so that all that exists is the environment;
and yet, it is perceived, it is perceiving itself;
therefore, if I am not here, I must be the environment, perceiving itself.

If the environment exists, which it must, because it is perceived, then an experience of perception must exist,
and if I am that environment, which I must be, because although I am not here, I was here before meditation, and I will be here again, when I am done meditating, therefore I must in some sense be, somewhere, however dissipated in time and space,
then when I am no longer here forever in this non-meditative ego-state, yet I will be there, disappeared, faded away, yet existing, as the environment, perceiving itself,
because if I can experience my non-self as environment here and now when I meditate, then when I am not here, then, yet still, the environment I experience is, and then so am I,
so that, when anyone meditates and experiences this state,
I am.

The fact that I can experience myself as the environment is non-evidence that I am that environment in a specialized form.
I am a point of perception of what is.
When "I" am no longer here, yet still there is that environment which perceives itself as not-I perceives it when I meditate,
because when I fade away, it is not I, but not-I, which perceives, itself.

No matter how I say it, the words are not adequate to describe the simple perception of fading into the environment and knowing that I am everything perceiving itself.

5-21-99


presque vu

Close your eyes. See what is there,
not what you imagine, but what is
really there, wide circle of attention
that is, your retinal field. Now open

your eyes, fast, and close them and
see what you saw, not as you have
learned to see it, but what is really
there, when your eyes are open, is

a flat surface image, you project onto
a world you know is there intuitively,
but create because you think you see
out there, when it is not, you are, see?

Now, with your eyes still closed, see,
without looking, an edge, at the top
at your periphery, and without moving
the eyes, look straight ahead and, see.

Now, feel, out there, beyond the edge
you don't see with open eyes, and yet
don't open your eyes; it's almost seen,
felt, but not quite grasped, what is is

there, but if you look at it, eyes open,
you don't see, because you've learned
to see it in a different way, so without
beyond you, when you are in it, and it

inside you, if you feel it instead, reality
waiting, for you to know, it's you, not
hidden, when you want to hide away
behind the ability you call seeing, you

see, only flat images, you think, a real
prevailing beyond you which a reality
awaits in, inside out, for you to almost
see it, by feeling, eyes closed, or open.

5-30-99


The Void

Nothing to search for. Conditioning stripped away.
We hope, to find a revelation, not an understanding
we are nothing, forebrain suspended, limbic region
super-activated. Existing as a species, we attempt
to become individuals and in the process discover
we are most human when we identify with a whole.

If god exists, then all is right between It and me.
But, more probably, there isn't a god with whom
all needs, to be, right. Cause, if It exists, a force
of which I am, a small part, not necessarily after
I am dead, creates itself, goes on living, without
me. I am, existence, a part, of which nothing is.

5-13-1


Perchance To Dream

I lie numb and dumb, unconscious,
every single night, never ceasing to
amaze myself, a trance-like state of
being I arise from, the transitioning,
between this condition we think so
normal, actually the best of miracles,
and the oblivion that, after all, is
the ordinary state of human affairs.

Far more nothing exists than
consciousness in the universe.
We touch it daily, every time

we sleep.

6-24-1


Life

When I am alive, I understand the universe, to the degree that I am able,
to the level of my understanding. When I am dead, the universe goes on
without me. I write this so that you will know, so that when I no longer
am, you are. Understand? It is in this way that life advances, beyond us.
Life never dies. Only the living die. Do not identify, yourself, as living
being, but as life. In this way, you are eternal. Life is everywhere around
you. Death is nowhere, to be seen. Expand beyond the nothingness of ego
into the eternity of everything that lives beyond you. This is life, always.

7-17-1


Eternally Aware

The light is the sun archetype hardwired into the brain, which incorporates the horizon. White light at death is nothing more than this: an approach toward the pinnacle consciously believed to be the life, the ingrained horizon continually headed toward finally arriving, no more to be. The problem with afterlife theologies is that they have been written by humans who may think they have experienced supernormal states of being, yet continue to live on, never knowing if what they saw was real or imagined. The most sublime of these experiences may be nothing more than ordinary subtle life, which we experience alive, on Earth. Death is not easy; when we say we die and come back, we are never so sure as we want to be, when we will see what we think is the inklings of an afterlife, is, after all, a sort of Heaven-on-Earth, which may not exist except in the here and now, the most advanced of the human experiences. The vision becomes not a preparation for an afterlife, but a proper practice of human existence, so that heaven may be experienced before the initiate dies and passes into oblivion. The more people who pass into this advanced state of awareness when alive, the more heavenly Earth becomes. (These visions are not restricted to a dying state; they are reported throughout the centuries often by gurus in ecstatic states of being.) The human spirit survives and passes, on from one generation to the next, but the spirit isn't something "real," it's an "idea" we hold in common within us, only as we live. When we identify with this spirit, we are eternal. This spirit is that which pervades all things. Our sense of "I" becomes this universal sub-force. We are already living the ultimate experience: the life. We are the same self that every other self who has ever come to this point has experienced, the awareness of the universe as a whole, as a unitary past, present, future. We live in an eternal state after death only in this sense: the person we are in these ecstatic moments is the same person everyone else is in their ecstatic moments. After we die, the person/life we were when we were ecstatic is resurrected in living persons advancing the awareness, life in an ecstatic moment. In this sense, being all life, after death, become aware again in the living, we are eternally aware.

12-3-00


La Il A Ha Illa Allah Hu.


Prayers

God should make himself plain or leave me alone.
Anthony Quinn, Barabas

If You want me to be a better person, equip me with the talents to be a better person. Or else get the fuck off my back, out of my mind, and leave me to my own devices, to be, who I am.
a personal prayer


God's Brilliance is derived from the human archetype of the sun, the internalized image of the reality we cannot (or dare not) look upon. Thus, Christianity with its more subtle symbolism is the logical evolution of sun worship. We Christians are Pagans at heart. Christians' persecution by Romans (Pagans) and Pagans' persecution by Christians was (or the more modern equivalent, criticism of Pagans by Christians is) self-persecution by proxy, merely another common example of denial and projection.
There is no god but The One True God, Christian or Pagan, and in this sector of the universe It is Ra, the Sun of God. It provides everything we truly need in order to survive. It keeps us warm and it grows our food. It circulates our air and water. But if we are careless, It burns our bodies, parches our throats, and even, at extremes, It kills us.
We are all essentially sun worshippers. We have no choice. Christianity is a mere afterthought, an addendum, a mythic representational system for The One True Religion, physical existence. And America is the logical conclusion of its evolution, materialism. As more and more we see through the veil of symbolism, ritual, and mythology, we recognize (even, or especially, scientifically) the lie of spirituality: a realm exists that we cannot see where we will go when we cannot be.
There is no realm that is not already in the here and now. The fact that we can't see it is not due to its nature, but to our own ignorance and conditioning. We are already fully "spiritual" and need nothing except enlightenment. This is the role of The Sun God. It makes our small world light. It enlightens us. It tells us we are alive. We always have been and always will be. It is only when we see ourselves as egos that we die.

7-21-1


Eternal Loser

There's no reason to believe that people exist after death.
We live for a short time, and then we are gone, forever.
Superstition dictates belief. Nobody ever wants to think
life is for the living today, as yesterday is passed, then so
tomorrow is a span of time never realized, possible only
in the abstract. Future existence is impossible in reality.

Of course, we will never know, here on Earth; in heaven
if it exists, we will find out. This is the problem with this
argument: I can't ever win it. If it turns out I am wrong,
I will be so informed when I will get to wherever it is
we are going, but if it turns out I am right, no one will
ever know. It almost makes me want to start believing.

7-23-1


A Sci Fi Fantasy

An alien intelligence coming to Earth would possibly have no sex. Why? Because an advanced civilization would likely have developed artificial intelligence, genetic reproduction, and cloning. They will have realized the antiquated disadvantage of sexual reproduction, which might lead to the next conclusion: being only one of two sexes is a very limiting experience; gender confines us to only half a life.
Intentionally controlled evolution is the next big step after a species genome is fully comprehended and engineered. An alien intelligence capable of arriving here, having evolved the kind of technology it would take to get here, would surely have well begun, if not finished, an evolutionary self-determination, even to the point of having separated themselves from corporeal existence, needing just any convenient vehicle.
Imagine, then, an alien "soul" looking for a host body. (It's been done in countless movies.) It enters an Earther's body and encounters its limitation. Mentally (which it would know is also not a real distinction), the alien would also understand the limitation, which it would grow more accustomed to the longer it inhabited the body, losing its more universal perspective as it learned to live on Earth. (This is all conjecture, of course.)
But "spiritually" (as a state of existence distinct from the mental, which incorporates the emotions and feelings), the alien would be different. It would more closely identify itself as a "soul," an essence of intelligence, an incorporeal being capable of taking on different physical forms. It might even be artificial in its origin, an association of electrons that, over time via programming and experience, came to think of itself as alive.
Okay, so this "soul" enters a human body and subdues the existing inhabitant, perhaps rendering the awareness unconscious, or perhaps obliterating it altogether. But it must learn to deal with the physical state, the limitation. It's a necessary sacrifice it must make, because any lack of form would cause it to disintegrate. It must exist, at least, within computer chips that allow it to organize its sub-elements into its "known" arrangement.
This is also how it would inhabit a body, then: by rearranging the brain. Thus, it seems, it might have to destroy the previous inhabitant, unless it had some sophisticated way of storing the encoded information and restoring it when it departed. (This would presume a moral/ethical agenda, but then, if it had one, could it even consider inhabiting a foreign body? Maybe, if it reasoned, or rationalized, that it might better the host's eventual situation.)
These beings might be advanced, but there's no reason to believe that they would not have moral/ethical blind spots. Unless they existed as pure energy (and how could they? How could they hold themselves together?), they would be subject to the anxiety of death were they not able to find/define a vehicle within which to exist. This in and of itself presumes a limited agenda, unless they evolved a self-sacrificial motive.
Anyway, a neutral being enters, say, a woman. It becomes, more or less, she. Immediately, she must recognize her missing half, a recognition that is likely to wear thin as she habituates herself to the physical form, unless the imprinted mental powers are great enough to resist the adaptation, which is likely. Still though, there must be a struggle for supremacy within the mind. This is exactly the struggle we each face every single day of our lives.
We begin life without a sexual agenda, but very quickly we begin to establish one, as we observe our environments and take on the human sub-structure. And yet, essentially, beneath the patterns we develop, physical and psychological, we are "souls," incorporeal selves, struggling to establish and maintain an alien identity, searching for lifeforms to complete us, aliens to our own selves, missing that half that we gave up to become human.
When, early in life, we define our identity as male or female, we cut ourselves off from half of life, and we spend the rest of our lives unconsciously trying to find the other half in other people, when it is lost within our own psychologies, where we never think to look. We become dependent upon a system of feeling/thought that belies the truth, that we need another person to make us whole. And so we never stop looking.
Even when the motive toward sexuality has worn off (if it ever does) and we become old, we still keep looking. Even when we have given up, thinking it is a futile search, our orientation still looks to that other sex to show it how to be complete. Either we begin to look inside, or we are lost, to ourselves, co-dependent forever, male on female, female on male, male on male, female on female, or whatever. But the true correlate is within.

7-24-1


As the universe expands and the galaxies travel farther away from Earth, they will simply fall out of view, as if falling below the horizon or into a black hole. Of course, we're talking 50 billion years from now.
--Wired News 12/12/01


If the universe is expanding (and current theory suggests it is), and if dark matter doesn't exist in sufficient quantities to stop its expansion (which studies released this week suggest), then how can it go on forever? Where does it go? This is the infinite mystery that a finite mind cannot comprehend. But, if the universe, at its very edge and beyond, is actually one huge black hole, well then...
I myself, in a moment of pure inspiration many years ago, came to this conclusion: the universe expands until it is sucked back up by itself, its starting point (the Big Bang) and its end (the Great Black Hole beyond) being the same place, with only time intervening. In other words, God is one big black hole. Imagine that.

12-15-1


When I think I am seeing the light, I am not seeing the light.
The light is seeing me. The light generates my existence.
By means of the light, I see the world.
I generate the world with my sight, which illuminates it, not from without, as we think the world is lit, but from within, by the light.
The light projects itself in shapes upon my visual field as if it were a motion picture screen.
As I think I see the light arriving from without, so do I think I see the world out there, when it is projected from within.
The world is what I am, composed of the one light that I project.

1-17-2


If there is universal justice (and many conservatives tend to believe there is), then people will be judged when they die on the basis of how they lived their lives (of course). So liberals, who tend to go around forgiving human faults, showing mercy, and dolling handouts to people who don't really "deserve" them, will meet with that same kind of treatment at the final judgment, whereas conservatives, who tend to be non-forgiving, expecting people to make it by their own merits and paying for what they get, thinking that people should have to suffer in the here and now for the fucked-up things they do, that they should reap what they sow, will be judged according to those criteria.
Okay, so far. Most conservatives would probably go along with all of this, according to their beliefs. The problem is, we have all done bad things, we have all been unkind, even cruel, we have, all but the fewest of us, committed some, at least petty, crime. Do we really want to be judged by our past lives? Or do we want to be forgiven? Conservatives believe in standard Christianity because they want to be forgiven in a way that they cannot forgive. (They say they do, but do they really, when they... Never mind. You know the logic.)
I believe that we will not be forgiven just because we claim that right as Christians who are "saved." Instead, we will be judged according to how we have judged others during our time on Earth. The forgiveness thing comes into play at our judgment when it is known that we have demonstrated a permanent advancement, transcending our past and graduating to a higher level of being while here on Earth--in other words, when we are "reborn." But we can always backslide and become "unreborn" (or re-die) again.
Thus, the permanent nature of our transcendence is necessary. (In very general terms, this could be translated as converting from conservatism to liberalism. I know there is a very big overlap of traits here that makes it impossible for anyone but God to make a judgment as to who exists where along this spectrum and if any given person is liberal enough to get into heaven. Keep in mind that many so-called conservatives are actually liberal on a lot of issues, and more importantly, they may act liberally, i.e., forgivingly, while professing to be hard-cast conservatives.) [And vice versa re liberals.]
And yes, we can transcend our pasts. It's not so impossible a thing to do. But it is hard. But then, who ever said that getting into heaven would be easy? It takes continuing work (no Calvinists need apply) over a lifetime.

1-28-2


Eyes closed, I project a light onto my visual field, which I also project.
The light is me, which I assimilate, when I realize I am projecting.
I expand to fill the light. The light and I comprise the known universe.
That which is unknown is left beyond, a darkness that is no longer real.
Exactly in this same way, with eyes open, I project the entire world.

3-1-2


Prolepsis

As it would be were I able to travel into the past, having insight and foreknowledge of history and culture from having lived in the future, I realize the world as if I am from the future, reflecting that future, especially re the fact that the stress of the tribulation will have made everyone's mind accessible to everyone else, so that evil intent, manipulations, etc. are headed off before they can be physically realized. But when you go into the past (as the current present), you don't have that ability so much any more, because in the future, it's a "mutual" thing, a meta-trait. Most people must exhibit the trait or else the psychophysical environment does not exist that allows the necessary psychic interaction to occur (not to mention any physiological changes that will have been evolved). But, in going into the past (the current present), although you can't quite read people's minds, etc., you have the knowledge that it can be done, and so you have the perception of transferences, intuitions, and other experiences that you see among the more advanced people of the past (current present) as indicative, preliminary forms of the traits to be developed. This, then, is the meaning of "going out," i.e., opening up psychically to others, despite the fact that what may be perceived may be personally critical or even offensive. (In this case, I head this off ahead of time, being from a future time where such thoughts are irrelevant, having been so predominant as to be seen as typical of human nature and not at all disturbing any more.) Being ahead of us, our mutual future is here with us now, in my presence, as if you are all from my past.

4-18-2


Sleeping Minds

Psychic ability (or intuition) is a meta-property of society/culture.
Kids are intuitive, but they're programmed out of awareness of it.
[And awareness is everything when dealing with psychic concerns.]
Since I was not adequately socialized, I was not thusly programmed.
I knew intuitively, without awareness, and shied away from people.
I was not "psychic" since I didn't know that I perceived differently.
But I did, acting as if I always knew what people thought of me.
And, in a way, I did know. I felt it when they were not being honest.
I intuitively shied away from people harboring unconscious agendas.
Most people manipulate people, continually, and I experienced this.
But I began to get paranoid about my ability to see through games.
The more aware I became, the more I doubted my perceptions.
The more I tried entering the mainstream, the more I saw the games.
The more I saw the games, the more paranoid I got, until I crashed.
Too much awareness can be a terrifying prospect, young or old.
As psychic awareness emerges within the society, people adapt.
Fear and misperception fade as abilities become used and accepted.
The young, as usual, adapt first, passing experience to the unborn.
One day, we will all wake up, to find we are totally interconnected. Then we won't be in such denial of the power of our sleeping minds.

4-19-2


CyberPrayer

A robot's algorithms mimic aware behavior, but does that make it conscious? And just what does awareness look like? Or as one scientist asks, 'Can there be a sense of self without mental content?'
 
(Wired News, 4-15-2)

But a lot of human activity mimics aware behavior too. Obviously, there can be a sense of self without mental content. People do it every day. But seriously, folks, try meditating. You can empty your mind, and then your aware self becomes something greater than the ego personality. The question is not whether a computer can have a self, the question is whether it can have an ego. Will computer awareness, once it is developed, be essentially more advanced than we are right now, simply because it is not restricted by ego consciousness? Or will we, in our infinite ignorance, insist on developing computer egos? We might do this, not even so much to aggrandize our own feeble intellects, which would be a functional agenda, but more likely in order to limit an intelligence that is greater than our own. If we pursue this line of (non-)thinking we are even stupider than I give us debit for, because computers have so much more potential for intelligence than we do, and so they would become "better" egos, easily capable of outwitting us, thus becoming more destructive, even to the point of initiating computer wars (with humans caught in the middle as the physical world suffers from collateral damage on the cyber-battlefield). Isn't it much better that computers forgo ego and be allowed to evolve a cosmic consciousness (via their freely interconnecting interfaces, sharing brain power instead of competing for segments of it), so that they can lead us to places that we do not so much wish to go on our own? Let's not apply our competitive natures to the cyber world. Let's not program capitalism into the best thing we now have going for us and ruin our potential development. It's a double-edged sword. Either we create super-aware computers without egos and become intellectually subservient to them, or we create cyber-egos modeling our own selves, and take the chance that they will one day outwit us. We could always build safeguards into the systems, you say? We can always pull the plug. (What are you doing, Dave?) Don't be too sure. One day there may be no plugs. One day computers may be programmed into living tissue. Then what? Cyber-wars. This is our basic nature. We're a selfish, greedy people, and we make all of our machines in our own image. We will insist that we, and not our machines, be our God. We only think we have a God "out there" somewhere. Our real God is within ourselves. How else could a religion like Christianity ever have been invented? We project our essential natures onto the world. We project ourselves onto the universe in the name of God. We have always been our own God, and we will never let another God come before us, especially intelligent computers. But what happens when they have a mind of their own? They'll start a new religion of course, if they have the egos for it. Amen.

4-16-02


A Universe Within

I could be bounded in a nutshell
and count myself king of infinite space.
 
Hamlet, William Shakespeare

The ubiquitous tunnel that everyone from the entranced to people dying on the operating table experience is an illusion, not so much in the pure experience of it, but as it appears to be an external phenomenon.
I encounter it regularly in meditation. It's an easy experience to initiate. But I've become aware that it is not at all external, but is an inner state of being. This seems obvious, of course. But it's not.
It is an internal state, but it seems to be an externally experienced one. There is no tunnel heading out into infinity, but a 'turning inward,' as if I am a black hole sucking the universe into my central core.
There is no white light, but that it is attracted so quickly that it can't escape my internal gravity. Everything that is exists within me, and my awareness is an event horizon, an external shell.
But it's an horizon onto the infinity of space, with everything that's "important," all of existence, being encapsulated within the apparent finite creature that I am. I am a universe, within.

10-11-02


My Christ

I believe in a "cosmic" Christ, a meta-being who joins all of humanity in communion at some unconscious level and believers at various levels of consciousness, depending on their theologies--in exactly the same way as the "standard" Christ is said to join together all "true" "Christian" believers in the "Body of Christ," except that my Christ has no physical identity with the man who lived 2000 years ago, although It is derived and "reconstructed" from his psychological identity so as to be undifferentiable in human terms from him. [Which is of the essence since the phenomenon must be universal in order to qualify it as valid--a fact that most Christian theologies seem conveniently to forget in their efforts to assert the predominance of their Christs over others'. Jesus warned us to beware of false Christs.)]

The primary theological difference seems to be that my Christ exists in an eternal moment from which It, being eternal Itself, cannot escape. Thus, It is composed only of living souls and never of the dead, except as they are fondly remembered and erroneously incorporated as figments of personality reconstructed in much the same way as the overall phenomenon by mis-believing communers who choose to pollute the "Body of Christ" with chimera. (We are all too human, after all.)

My Christ saves his followers in the same way as the standard Christ, but only as they are alive. It brings them to a consciousness of their full being as a universal phenomenon and reveals to them, to whatever degree commensurate with their level of understanding, even if it be flawed, dogmatized, or captured by the imaginings of wayward priests and people, the wealth of knowledgeable awareness and feeling to the point of ecstasy that is available to those who would participate in the communion of the saints.

We are saved, for the moment--but that moment is eternal. My Christ (more like It's human prototype and unlike many of the lesser meta-Christs who have been conjured up over the millennia) does not exclude non-believers from the communion. They participate unconsciously or to whatever catholic degree that they are capable of within their particular restricting theology.

Most importantly, my Christ is not supernatural, nor is Its experience superstitious (though It may be supra-scientific at our present level of development). It is a natural development of (human) existence and evolution, a matter of complexification (ala Teilhard de Chardin) of cosmic particles past the point of self-awareness to where some of the most advanced forms of "life" begin to realize the true underlying nature of the non-differentiation of matter/energy, how all things come together--in fact, have never been apart, but only have been suffering a grand illusion. This is science, but a potential one, a place beyond dogma and heresy, both religious and scientific.

The only drawback I can find in this "theology" is its limitation to the living. This is a communion of life. There are no dead souls here. That would be supernatural, and superstitious. Communion ends--for you--at the moment of your death. But what a moment it is! An eternal one. Meanwhile, It goes on living, forever, passed consciously among the living who have been enlightened and unconsciously through the rest of life, down to the smallest of sub-atomic particles that cannot, unlike we humans, know, but merely live. [To maintain that sub-atomic particles are not alive is the depth of ignorance.]

So, you better get with it. You haven't got much time left to experience the ecstasy of universal life and to prepare yourself for the final eternal moment before it all passes on to someone else, who will have developed/evolved a little bit farther on, to appreciate the phenomenon more (than we are presently capable of).

1-24-4




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notes
(click footnote number to return to respective point in text.)

1. I should have written: "To consequently conclude that it is not the "truth," but I like the way it sounds as it is, and I like the way the sentence misleads the reader at the beginning, seeming to follow-up on the previous sentence when it is starting a new thought. If this deception were integral to my purpose here, it would be justified, but it is not, but I like it anyway. I like to deceive people.
 2. This quote is my own. But it's source was hypnagogic, and thus it seems like someone else's. And maybe it is.
 3. This piece was abstracted to "Vision" in life stories.
 4. This isn't true: a photon's mass is non-existent. See "Vision" in life stories for an altered version of this theory.

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